An unnamed escort in Charleston, W. Va. killed a suspected serial killer on July 18.
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The woman, whose identity hasn’t been released, told investigators Falls drew a gun and tried to strangle her. She said she grabbed Falls’ gun when he set it down to overpower her and shot him.
The southern Ohio deaths and disappearances spurred the creation of a task force including Chillicothe police and the Ross County sheriff’s office, the FBI, state investigators and other local law enforcement.
Police are now investigating the deaths of four women in Ohio, and murder scenes in Nevada from up to a decade ago as they look into whether Falls was an interstate serial killer.
Additionally, evidence discovered with dismembered bodies outside Las Vegas, where Falls lived from 2000 to 2008, was similar to an item found in his vehicle. “I grabbed the gun and shot behind me”.
“These types of items are not something you run across very often”, said Lt. Steve Cooper, Charleston Police Chief of Detectives.
“When he strangled me, he just wouldn’t let me get any air and I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him.
He was going to kill me!”
They are also investigating a small town in Ohio, Chillicothe, where at least six women have disappeared – and four later turned up dead – in the past few months. While it has not been determined how numerous missing women are prostitutes, one-third of repeat killers have killed prostitutes. “I believe she saved lives by shooting Mr Falls, based on what he did to her and based on the items found in his auto”.
Last week, Neal Falls was killed in an apparent case of self-defense by a sex worker he was trying to murder in Charleston, West Virginia.
In his pocket was a list of women – a suspected “hit list”.
“We have been able to locate majority and they were all on a website advertising for escort services”, Cooper said. “If she didn’t fight back, she most certainly would be dead”.
Young women in Chillicothe were living in constant fear of being the next victim, reported Charleston news station WCHS.
“We are entering his DNA profile into CODIS, which is a national crime DNA database, to see if it matches any previous submissions from anywhere in the United States”, Cooper said.
The woman has not been charged and authorities have declared the shooting justifiable homicide, Huffington Post reports.
Charleston Police said the woman they didn’t identify was hospitalized with multiple injuries, including broken vertebrae.
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“I fought men my whole life”, she told the Gazette-Mail newspaper.
