Six missing women in Ohio spark serial killer fears

The fate of six women — four dead, two missing — has a small southern Ohio city on edge. 

Grieving family and nervous residents worry about a serial killer. Police aren’t ruling anything out, but say it’s more likely the women’s troubled histories caught up with them.

All were drug addicts and several had prostituted to feed their habit. The women ran in the same circles, so someone knows the fuller story.

“There’s that one person out there that has the information that’s going to break this case. We know that, we just have to get to them,” said Chillicothe police officer, Bud Lytle.

Charlotte Trego, who would be 28, has been missing the longest, since her mother dropped her off at an apartment in Chillicothe in early May, 2014. She was into drugs and may have turned to prostitution, said her mother, Yvonne Boggs.

“She wouldn’t go this long without calling me,” said Boggs.

Tameka Lynch, 30, disappeared a couple of weeks later. Her body was found on a sand bar, in Paint Creek, by a group of kayakers on May 24, 2014, four days after the coroner says she died.

Her mother, Angela Robinson. described her daughter, a mother-of-three, as a beautiful but naive person, who was too trusting.

“Somebody just tossed her away like a piece of trash,” Robinson said.

The body of Shasta Himelrick, last seen on surveillance video leaving a petrol station early on the morning of December 26, was found in the Scioto River on January 2.

She was pregnant and had traces of painkillers and cocaine in her system. The coroner ruled her death a suicide.

Timberly Claytor, 38, was found shot to death in nearby Massieville on May 29. A suspect in her death is in custody on unrelated charges.

The body of 26-year-old Tiffany Sayre, missing since early May, was found in neighbouring Highland County on June 27, not far from where Lynch’s body was recovered. A cause of death hasn’t been announced.

She had been hanging out earlier in the evening with men, at a Chillicothe motel that has a reputation as a site for prostitution.

Police are still looking for Wanda Lemons, 38, a mother-of-five, missing since last fall. She was a kind person, of whom people took advantage, said her mother, Diana Willett.

The deaths and disappearances have spurred the creation of a task force.