New Sarah Butler was nervous. The 20-year-old college student had borrowed the keys to her mother’s van, explaining that she wanted to meet up with a friend while home in Montclair, New Jersey, over Thanksgiving break. What she didn’t mention, though, was that the “friend” was an online acquaintance offering to pay her $500 for sex. She had backed out of meeting him in person before, authorities say, but this time, she planned to go through with it.
“You’re not a serial killer, right?” she messaged him before leaving the house.
Khalil Wheeler-Weaver was exactly that, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 23-year-old is accused of murdering three women and attempting to kill a fourth, and authorities say that Butler was his final victim. Before the two met up on Nov. 22, 2016, he searched the internet for information about date-rape drugs and homemade poison, according to the North Jersey Record. Ten days later, Butler’s body was found in a nature reserve, covered with leaves and detritus. She had been strangled.
According to prosecutors, Wheeler-Weaver targeted young black women who turned to sex work while coping with mental health issues or homelessness. His thinking, authorities say, was that no one would notice if they disappeared. “They were viewed as somehow less than human, less valuable,” Essex County assistant prosecutor Adam Wells said last month, according to NJ.com.
Butler was a longtime lifeguard at the local YMCA and second-year student at New Jersey City University known for her talents as a dancer. After she disappeared, her friends and family launched a sting operation that led authorities to identify Wheeler-Weaver as the prime suspect in a months-long crime spree that took place in abandoned houses and budget motels across northern New Jersey.
