Reginald Haley

Serial Killer

Reginald Haley: The Los Angeles Murder Suspect and Violent Crime Spree

Background

Reginald Haley was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1960 and moved with his family to Los Angeles while he was still a child. During the early 1980s, Reginald and his younger brother, Kevin Bernard Haley, became involved in an extraordinary series of burglaries, robberies, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes in the Los Angeles area. Police eventually investigated the brothers in connection with a group of murders committed during the same period. For this reason, Reginald has frequently been described as a suspected serial killer. It is important, however, to distinguish suspicion from conviction: Reginald was convicted of numerous violent crimes, but the murder convictions associated with the brothers' crime spree were obtained against Kevin Haley. The Haley brothers generally preyed on people in and around residential neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Many of their victims were women, including elderly women living alone. Investigators believed that burglaries were a major part of their criminal activity and that some encounters escalated into sexual assault and extreme violence. Police also said that drug use, particularly cocaine addiction, was an important motive behind the brothers' repeated thefts. By late 1984, detectives were examining whether the Haleys might be responsible for a much larger number of crimes than those for which they could immediately gather enough evidence to prosecute.

The Murder Investigation

In 1984, Los Angeles investigators began connecting a number of violent deaths with burglaries and attacks occurring in neighborhoods where the Haley brothers were active. Police publicly identified the brothers as suspects in a series that included elderly women murdered inside their homes and a teenage girl shot on a Los Angeles street. Some victims had been beaten or strangled, and several of the elderly victims were attacked during apparent residential burglaries. Authorities considered the pattern sufficiently serious that investigators examined numerous additional unsolved homicides for possible connections. Reginald's role in the suspected murder series was never established in court to the same extent as Kevin's. Contemporary police reporting specifically identified Reginald as a suspect in the killing of an elderly woman named Isabel Buxton, while Kevin was linked much more directly to several other killings. Kevin eventually confessed to killing Dolores Clement, and forensic evidence established his involvement in the murders of Clement and Laverne Stolzy. Those facts are important because accounts that simply describe all of the victims as people murdered personally by Reginald overstate what was proved. ...

Confirmed Victims: (3)

Laverne Stolzy Age: (56), Date of Death: 1984-06-25

Suspected Victims:

Isabel Burton Age: (90), Date of Death: April 20, 1983

D. Robinoff Age: (78), Date of Death: April 20, 1984

Elizabeth Burns Age: (79), Date of Death: June - July 1984

Elizabeth Karp Age: (89), Date of Death: June - July 1984

T. Okauchi Age: (88), Date of Death: August 1984

Kevin Haley - Wikipedia