Serial killer gets 160 years after victim’s sister and friends help solve case

When Sarah Butler did not return to her home in Montclair, New Jersey, after borrowing her mother’s minivan in November 2016, her family immediately recognized that she might be in trouble.

Using Butler’s computer passwords to log on to her email and social media accounts, one of her sisters and two friends found one of the last men she had been talking to online. Then they set up a meeting with him at a Panera Bread cafe in Montclair, with the police waiting in the parking lot.

At the time, the police considered the man, Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, then a 20-year-old security guard from Orange, New Jersey, only a person of interest in Butler’s disappearance.

But the trap that Butler’s sister and friends laid Nov. 26, 2016, helped detectives identify Wheeler-Weever as a suspect and, eventually, a serial killer, authorities said.

On Wednesday, nearly five years later, Wheeler-Weaver, 25, was sentenced to 160 years in prison for murdering Butler, 20; Robin West, 19, of Union Township; and Joanne Brown, 33, of Newark; and for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and attempting to murder Tiffany Taylor. All four were attacked between August and November 2016.

Adam Wells of the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the lead prosecutor in the case, credited Butler’s sister and friends with orchestrating the first in-person meeting between Montclair police and Wheeler-Weaver, giving detectives “a big early break” in the investigation.

“They really did go above and beyond what people often do,” Wells said in an interview. “It’s a testament to their love of their friend and sister.”

Butler was a student at New Jersey City University when she began talking to Wheeler-Weaver on Tagged, a social networking site, where he went by the name LilYachtRock.

After she borrowed her mother’s minivan to meet him Nov. 22, 2016, Wheeler-Weaver strangled her, authorities said. Her body was found in Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange on Dec. 1, 2016.

Before her body was found, police had opened a missing-person investigation. At the same time, Butler’s sister Bassania Daley and two friends, LaMia Brown and Samantha Rivera, began their own detective work.

Because Brown knew Butler’s computer passwords, they were able to log on to her social media accounts and discovered that Butler had been talking to LilYachtRock on Tagged, Wells said.

Rivera created her own profile on Tagged. Within an hour, LilYachtRock had contacted her and started pressing her to meet him in person, Wells said.

Rivera was at the police station in Montclair, hoping to tell detectives that she had just been contacted by the last man who had communicated with Butler, when he called her on her phone, Wells said. Daley pulled out her phone and recorded the conversation.

Rivera arranged to meet him at Panera and waved to him when he pulled up in a BMW, Wells said.

That was when the police, who were waiting in the parking lot, stopped Wheeler-Weaver and questioned him about Butler’s disappearance.

Wheeler-Weaver was not immediately arrested because Butler’s body had not yet been found, and he was considered only a person of interest, not a suspect, Wells said.

But the way he had reached out so quickly to Rivera heightened detectives’ concerns about him, and he gave an alibi that later unraveled, Wells said.

“Getting this initial contact with Wheeler-Weaver was a big early break,” Wells said. “It gave us more reason to be suspicious of him.”

Wheeler-Weaver was arrested days later, after Butler’s body was found. Daley, Brown and Rivera did not respond to messages left at numbers listed under their names. Their role in cracking the case was previously reported by NorthJersey.com.

Although he could be outwardly charming, Wheeler-Weaver tortured and strangled women who were poor, homeless, mentally ill or engaged in sex work, authorities said.

Police found that he had searched online for anesthesia and drugs to “put someone to sleep,” as well as for homemade poisons, authorities said.

Investigators also found a body fluid cleanup kit, zip ties and lighter fluid in the trunk of the car where he had assaulted Taylor in November 2016, authorities said.

After Wheeler-Weaver murdered West on Sept. 1, 2016, he set fire to her body and torched an abandoned house where he had left her, authorities said.

Her remains were so badly charred that she had to be identified with dental records.

“He thought all of the victims would not be noticed,” Judge Mark Ali said while sentencing Wheeler-Weaver in Superior Court in Essex County on Wednesday. “He thought all of the victims eventually would be forgotten.”

Wheeler-Weaver, reading from a sheet of paper, maintained his innocence.

“I have clear and convincing evidence that I was set up, I was lied on, and I was framed by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office,” he said.

During the hearing, Taylor rejected Wheeler-Weaver’s claims. Taylor, who was kidnapped and assaulted by Wheeler-Weaver seven days before Butler was killed, pointed out she had previously met Wheeler-Weaver at his home and recognized him when he assaulted her.

During the attack, Wheeler-Weaver had handcuffed her, put duct tape around her head and had started to cover her nose and mouth, Ali said. But Taylor was able to slip one hand from the handcuffs and then escape when she locked her hotel room door, leaving Wheeler-Weaver outside.

Taylor said that since the attack, she does not do her hair or use makeup and does not have or want friends.

“I don’t trust anyone,” she said. “I’m always paranoid. But I’m just happy to still be here and be able to tell what happened so that he could be locked up for it.”

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