Dating App Serial Killer Khalil Wheeler-Weaver Charged With Fourth Murder

In the latter half of 2016, Khalil Wheeler-Weaver went on a killing spree in North Jersey.

He set up an account on a dating app, where he would match with women and offer them hundreds of dollars to meet up with him.

Of course, this sounded too good to be true. His 20-year-old victim, Sarah Butler, asked him over the app’s chat, “Wow. You’re not a serial killer, right?”

Despite her suspicions, Butler, like the other victims, made the decision to meet the man who would become her killer.

Perhaps, Wheeler-Weaver knew that they would take no issue with coming to him. He preyed on vulnerable demographics, such as sex workers and young college students, to fulfill his sick desire to maim and kill.

Unfortunately, he succeeded in taking advantage of their trust. Both Sarah Butler and 19-year-old Robin Daphne Michele West were strangled to death, while Joanne Brown, 33, was asphyxiated. West’s remains were set on fire.

The families of these three bright souls still deeply mourn them. The women lost their lives, but another young woman just barely walked away with hers.

Tiffany Taylor is the sole survivor of Khalil Wheeler-Weaver’s attacks. Fortunately, she managed to get away from him before he could kill her, but not before he could violate her.

Wheeler-Weaver had been driving Taylor around, attempting to find a room for the night. This was not Taylor’s first time meeting the murderer, though she did not know that it was him under the ski mask that he was allegedly wearing to accommodate the cold. She had met him several months beforehand during her former job as a sex worker.

Taylor had no intention of sleeping with the man who would be her rapist. So, when she suggested that he drop her off, he knocked her out with a hit to the head and raped her in the back of his car.

Taylor woke up in the middle of the rape, an experience that she recounted in court with teary eyes and a choked voice.

At the end of the attack, Taylor asked him to drive her back to the motel to grab her wallet and her cell phone. Knowing the evidence that her phone would have against him, Wheeler-Weaver was quick to drive her back to the motel so that she could give it to him.

Handcuffed, with the odds stacked against her, this is where she made her escape.

Tiffany Taylor locked herself in the motel room and dialed 9-1-1. By the time police got to the scene, Khalil Wheeler-Weaver was gone.

Sarah Butler can rest easy knowing that it was her cherished friends who had the sharp idea to lure Khalil Wheeler-Weaver to justice.

They set up a fake social media account with the photo of a woman that Wheeler-Weaver would have targeted. He fell for the bait, and Butler’s friends led him to a location where police were waiting for him. Authorities immediately took the killer into custody with the assurance of his guilt.

Still, when it came time for the trial, Khalil Wheeler-Weaver denied the charges against him: three counts of murder, kidnapping, the desecration of human remains, multiple counts of sexual assault, attempted murder, and arson.

Any attempts that both he and his lawyers made to deny the claims were unsuccessful against the bountiful evidence of the prosecutors, most of which were written in digital stone with the records of dating app messages. He had also been googling information about date rape drugs prior to meeting with the women.

As survivor Tiffany Taylor said to the judge, “I hope you don’t show him any remorse because he’s not showing any remorse.”

The jury found Khalil Wheeler-Weaver guilty of all of the charges against him, and in 2019, he was locked behind bars for a total of 160 years with parole eligibility in 140.

In 2016, during Khalil Wheeler-Weaver’s killing spree, Mawa Doumbia went missing. Her parents watched as she left the house one night, never to return.

She was fifteen years old, potentially making her Wheeler-Weaver’s youngest victim.

Her remains were discovered in 2019, but her family did not receive the closure of a confirmed identification until 2021. It was then that investigators discovered that she was killed by strangulation.

In March of 2022, authorities went ahead and charged Khalil Wheeler-Weaver with the murder. The timeline, area, victim, and murder method all fit the serial killer’s pattern.

Mawa Doumbia’s loved ones anxiously await justice for the teenager.

Khalil Wheeler-Weaver’s actions are unforgivable. With so many charges against him, he is guaranteed to spend the rest of his life behind bars–But that does not mean that the world should stop learning from the case.

Sarah Butler, Joanne Brown, Robin Daphne Michele West, and Mawa Doumbia were unjustly murdered, but it is up to the general public to not let them die in vain.

Their deaths should serve as a lesson for young women and men to be very careful when meeting up with a stranger on the internet or on a dating app. Without safety precautions in place, a small percentage of these meet-ups can turn sour very quickly, so it is important for love-seekers to make friends and family aware of their whereabouts at all times.

These four beloved young women are a testament to the fact that a tragedy like this can happen to anyone, so it is important to stay sharp, vigilant, and trust all instincts.