On Sept. 15, 2006, Raymont Hopewell was found guilty of the murders of Constance Willis, Sarah Shannon, Sadie Mack, Carlton Crawford, and Lydia Wingfield, and four accounts of rape.
Raymont Hopewell was born on June 11th, 1971, in Baltimore, Maryland. When he was a little kid, his neighbors would say he was a good kid and wouldn’t really do anything. At the age of 15 Hopewell decided to drop out of high school. Shortly after Hopewell began to get addicted to drugs and he started selling them. This led him to get arrested for drug possession at the age of 30, but he was shortly released on bail. About one year later in 2002, he got arrested for the same reason again but got put on probation.
Hopewell’s first victim was 60-year-old Constance Willis, she was murdered on Feb. 22, 1999. She was strangled and found in her house. Even though he had been arrested before, Officer Fink from Patriot High School stated that “Getting arrested for drug possession doesn’t require getting your DNA, so it already hard to find the person if their DNA isn’t in the system already.” He did the same to 88-year-old Sarah Shannon on Nov. 30, 2002. About three years later in 2005, Hopewell murdered 78-year-old Sadie Mack. He broke into her house and strangled her to death. The police didn’t know all the murderers were connected until Carlton Crawford was murdered, he was an 82-year-old disabled man who was beaten and strangled to death, on Aug. 21, 2005. Within the span of 10 days, on Aug. 31, he strangled 78-year-old Lydia Wingfield: She was the last person he murdered before getting arrested. he raped 63-year-old Rosellen McDavid in the basement of her home on Sept.2, 2005. He also broke into 55-year-old Elenora Askins-McGee’s house and knocked her out. After he knocked her out, he ended up cutting a 61-year-old man whose name is unknown. On Sept. 10, 2005, he broke into Amelia Tabron’s house. He also ended up cutting her after she tried to defend herself. She ended up surviving.
On September 20, 2005, Hopewell got arrested for the murder of Carlton Crawford. The DNA they found on Crawford matched the rest of the murders. Later, at his trial, he plead guilty due a plea deal to five accounts of murder and four accounts of rape. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. When his trial was taking place, the victims’ families said that the apology didn’t feel sincere. For example, Constance Willis’s daughter, Cecilia Smil said “I don’t think that it meant anything.” Officer Fink also said that “families probably felt very upset, and they might have blamed the police for taking a long time to figure out who the person responsible for killing their family members was, but they are glad the person responsible got what they deserved.”
This is the Baltimore city court located in Baltimore city, Maryland. Hopewell had his trial set here on August 11, 2006. In This is the place where he plead guilty to all the charges against him.
