Larry Bright

Little is known about Bright's early life. Born on July 8, 1966, in Peoria County, Illinois, Larry spent his childhood and adolescence moving around the various cities in the county, growing up in a poor household. During his high school years, he played for the local football team. He was popular within the female circle, and considered attractive. He was also known for smoking a lot of marijuana. On June 6, 1984, a few weeks before he was due to graduate, 18-year-old Bright was arrested for burglary and theft, for which he was imprisoned for three years. At the end of 1985, he was paroled and released. He thereafter began to display signs of a mental illness, elevated by his excessive use of cocaine and alcohol addiction. He eventually found work in the construction industry, where he mastered several different professions. While working as a builder for a construction firm, Larry injured his back. Because of this, he had to undergo three spinal surgeries and received prescribed medication, subsequently developing an addiction to the analgesics used. Due to financial constraints, problems with employment, and alcohol substance abuse, he fell into a depression.

In 1989, he was given a suspended sentence for hooliganism and resisting arrest, after he participated in a brawl at a Yates City tavern In the early 1990s, he moved to Abingdon, where he met 18-year-old Kristy Belville, with whom he became romantically involved. On August 9 of that year, their 7-month-old daughter, who had been placed under Larry's care, became ill under unknown circumstances, prompting a 911 call. The child passed away in the ambulance on way to the hospital. Bright's version of events was questioned, after which he was interrogated for possible involvement in the girl's death. He denied the allegations and refused a polygraph test. Ultimately, all suspicions were cleared following the autopsy, which determined that the girl had most likely died as a result of a [[cardiovascular disease|cardiovascular disease]]. Later that month, Bright and Belleville married, however their relationship quickly deteriorated. One month after the wedding, in September 1993, Belleville went to the police station, accusing Bright of physical assault. On March 2, 1994, Belleville filed for divorce, citing Bright's continuous domestic abuse. Bright left the city and moved to Peoria, IL, moving back in with his mother. In the early 2000s, Bright began to demonstrate an increased sex drive for African-American girls and began to consume excessive amounts of pornography, starring black actresses. Not long after, he began to spend most of his free time around sex workers, taking particular interest in the African-American girls.[2][3]

Between March 2001 and October 15, 2004, the bodies of six women were found in rural areas around Peoria and Tazewell Counties, while four others were reported missing from the area. In October 2004, a task force of 13 police officers was formed by the Peoria City Police Department to investigate the cases, with input from other law enforcement agencies in neighbouring counties. That December, Bright came under suspicion after police arrested 35-year-old sex worker Vickie Bomar, for theft. While residing in the county jail, the woman offered to help the investigators in exchange for a plea bargain. Agreeing with her terms, Bomar claimed that in July, a client, Larry Bright, lured her into the outbuilding of his mother's home, where he lived. After sharing alcohol and drugs together, Bright attacked her, attempting to rape her under the threat of a knife, but she managed to escape during the struggle. Since the alleged incident occuring five months prior, the legitimacy of her statement was questioned. Vickie claimed that she felt scared to report it earlier, as she had failed to appear in court on other charges, which was later confirmed after officers checked her criminal history. While investigating the suspect, the investigators became aware of at least six similar cases during which Bright had displayed aggressive behaviour in particular towards African-American sex workers. Based on this, he was detained and interrogated in late December.[4]

Bright was notified that he could be charged with illegal deprivation of liberty under aggravated circumstances, but he refused to cooperate with the officers and denied everything. Since there was no incriminating evidence, he was released. However, in order to inspect his home for potential evidence, on January 20, 2005, the district attorney received a search warrant, allowing the investigators to search Larry's house and the buildings surrounding his property. During the inspection, the police's attention was drawn to several plots of excavated land, for which Bright's mother claimed that she and her son had removed some raspberry bushes. However, after the area was dug through, officers soon found ash and many small bone fragments. Based on these discoveries, Bright was temporarily detained in the Tazewell County Jail. A few days later, following an examination of the bone fragments, it was established that they belonged to a human skeleton. Soon after, Larry was charged with murder and the prosecutor ordered his house be excavated. Not long after, he expressed a desire to admit to his crimes, confessing that he had killed eight women.[5]

Bright stated that he had lured the women to his home since mid-2003, and after sharing drugs and having sex, he choked the victims to death and then mutilated the remains. With the initial four victims, he dumped the bodies on remote roads located in rural areas of Peoria and Tazewell County. The other four were burned in a pit in his backyard, whose bones he would later smash into small pieces and scatter in various places, including around his mother's home. Some of the other pieces and ashes were hidden in six different places outside the house, including a plot of land where his grandmother's house was. During the investigative experiments, he pointed out the location of the dumpsites, where, by June 2005, hundreds of skulls and various other bone fragments were located. Following these findings, Bright was given additional charges.

Bright's first known victim was 36-year-old Sabrina Payne, whom he had picked up in the outskirts of Peoria. He offered her money in exchange for sex and drove Payne to his house. During his interrogation, Larry said that he didn't remember how he killed the girl because he was on drugs. After the murder, he loaded the body in his SUV and took it to a cornfield outside Tremont, where it was discovered on July 27, 2003.[6]

In February 2004, Bright lured 36-year-old sex worker Barbara Williams into his car. After sharing crack cocaine with her, according to Larry, Williams stole money from his wallet, which let to him beating her into unconsciousness. He claimed that he didn't rape nor strangle her, but soon discovered that she had died. He then loaded the corpse into the trunk of his car and took her to the outskirts of the city, where he threw the body into the snowdrift on the side of the road. The body was discovered a few days later. His claims were found to be convincing enough, since the autopsy conducted on Williams' body indicated that she had died from a drug overdose.

In early August 2004, Larry met a 33-year-old sex worker Laura Lollar, after which he offered her money in exchange for sexual services. Like with Payne, he strangled the victim during intercourse, and burned her body in the backyard, in order to get rid of any evidence. In January 2005, he identified her from a photograph presented to him.[7]

On August 25, 2004, Bright picked up 45-year-old sex worker Shirley Ann Carpenter Trapp, a diabetic, in the northern outskirts of Peoria. Once they were at his house, they smoked crack cocaine and had intercourse, after which Larry strangled her. Due to his victim's resistance, Larry severely beat her.

A few days later, Bright met a 33-year-old sex worker Shaconda Thomas. After killing her, he burned her body at the stake, smashing her charred bone fragments and scattering them in different places. During his interrogation, he stated that he couldn't remember her name, but confidently identified her as his victim, when a photograph was shown to him.

In early September 2004, Larry picked up 29-year-old Tamara Walls in Peoria, taking her to his house. There, they smoked crack cocaine and drank whiskey together, and after having intercourse, he attacked and strangled her. Her body was also burned in the house's backyard. After his interrogation, unlike his other victims, Bright remembered her name, as according to him, along with her personal belongings, he burned her driver's license, on which he had read her name. To support his claims, Bright claimed that Walls had traces from surgery on her lower jaw. Dental records and X-rays confirmed that Tamara had indeed undergone surgery during her lifetime, with a plate being attached and screwed to the left side of her lower jaw. After examining the dumpsite, investigators found a lower jaw fragment with a cylindrical hole for screw fastening.

In late September, Bright met with 40-year-old sex worker Linda K. Neal in the parking lot of a furniture store, at Woody's Bar in Peoria. He offered her drugs in exchange for sex, to which Neil agreed. Similarly to the previous victims, he took her to his house, where after using crack cocaine, they had an intercourse. After Neil fell asleep, Larry strangled her. Since his mother was at home, he decided to get rid of the body outside the house. He took the body to Tazewell County, where he discarded it on the side of the road, leaving traces from a shoelace on her neck. While conducting the autopsy, the coroner found the biological evidence from a male perpetrator in the victim's body. After Bright's arrest, several cigarette butts were taken from his home and sent for testing, in order to isolate DNA. Subsequently, Bright's DNA matched to that of Neil's killer.[8]

Bright's last confirmed murder occurred on October 14, 2004, when he killed 41-year-old Brenda Erving. During his interrogation, Bright claimed that he didn't remember her name or where they had met. According to him, as usual, he took her to his house where they had drugs for about an hour, after which they had intercourse. He then attacked the victim, admitting that she was particularly strong and fiercely resisted, almost managing to knock him out. Erving almost managed to run away but was unable to open the door and leave the building, allowing Larry to hit her several times in the back of the head. Having immobilized her, he strangled her to death. While still on drugs, Bright intended to dump the body in a nearby lake, but getting confused he instead discarded the body near a dairy farm in Peoria County, where it was found soon after.[9]

Since Bright had fully admitted his guilt, he was spared the death penalty in accordance with his plea bargain. On May 30, 2005, he was sentenced to several life imprisonment, without the chance of parole.[10]

At the court hearings, Bright claimed that he committed additional murders in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Washington and Arizona, but later retracted his statements. He also claimed that he contemplated suicide on several occasions, but never actioned due to his religious beliefs. He also admitted that he intended to attack the arresting officers with knives so they could shoot him, but refrained because of his mother's presence at the scene. Initially, it was suggested that racism was the main motive for the killings, but Bright denied this, giving several explanations for his motives. At first, he claimed to develop a misogynist view of African-American women after he had contracted AIDS while having a relation with an African-American sex worker. However, this was later questioned after an examination, which resulted negative for the presence of the virus. Later on, Larry claimed that as a 19-year-old boy, while serving a sentence in prison, he was sexually abused by African-American prisoners several times. He developed an urge to punish black men for harming him, but since he wasn't sexually attracted to men, in later years this shifted to hatred towards African-American sex workers.[11]

• List of serial killers in the United States

• Shirley Trapp on The Charley Project
• Illinois DOC Inmate Locator