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Convicted New Jersey Serial Killer Charged In Murder Of Teen Who Disappeared In 2016
Teenager Mawa Doumbia was last seen leaving her Newark home in 2016; her body was found in 2019. Police have now charged convicted serial killer Khalil Wheeler Weaver in her death.
A convicted serial killer has been charged with the murder of a 15-year-old New Jersey teenager, who disappeared in 2016 after leaving her family’s Newark home.
The new charges against Khalil A. Wheeler Weaver, 24, in the death of 15-year-old Mawa Doumbia were announced Thursday by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Wheeler Weaver is already serving a 160-year prison sentence for the brutal murders of three woman and the rape of a fourth victim who managed to escape — also all in 2016.
Doumbia’s father and sister said that the last time they saw the teen was on the night of Oct. 7, 2016 as she was leaving their Newark house.
“She was reported missing but efforts to locate her were unsuccessful,” authorities said.
The decomposed remains of a young woman were eventually discovered in an old carriage house on Main Street in Orange, New Jersey on April 19, 2019. Those remains were positively identified as Doumbia’s in November 2021.
Doumbia had been killed by “ligature strangulation,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
After an investigation “involving extensive digital evidence,” Orange Police determined that Wheeler Weaver had allegedly met the teen online and solicited her for sex the same day that she disappeared.
Investigators say they have evidence allegedly showing that Wheeler Weaver traveled to the area of Doumbia’s home the night of her disappearance and then took the teen to the vacant carriage house, where they said he strangled her to death and left her body there.
Wheeler Weaver — who investigators say sometimes used dating apps to find victims — was sentenced in October to 160 years behind bars for the murders of Robin West, 19, Joanne Brown, 33, and Sarah Butler, 20, People reported. Wheeler Walker killed the women in Orange, where he lived, and in West Orange, on Aug. 31, Oct. 22 and Nov. 22, respectively.
He was also convicted of raping a fourth woman, who picked up Wheeler Weaver for sex on Nov. 15, stopped so he could urinate and later came to in the back of her car, handcuffed with her face covered in duct tape, according to northjersey.com. The woman, who testified against her attacker at trial, said Wheeler Weaver was raping her when she regained consciousness.
She escaped after convincing Wheeler Weaver to return to the motel where she had been staying, claiming she'd left her phone that had evidence of their contact.
She called the police on Wheeler Weaver that night, she testified, but they didn't believe her.
Wheeler Weaver was eventually arrested after a daring plot by Butler’s sister lured him out.
Butler, a college student at Montclair College, disappeared on Nov. 22, 2016 after meeting Wheeler Weaver online through the app, Tagged. Before she agreed to pick him up in her parents' mini-van, she had sent him an ominous message asking “You’re not a serial killer, right?”
After her disappearance, Butler’s sister and a friend discovered his profile on Butler’s social media accounts and plotted to catch him by catfishing him. On Nov. 26, they arranged to meet him at a Glen Ridge restaurant but, when Wheeler Weaver arrived at the location, he found himself face-to-face with Montclair police, according to northjersey.com.
They let him go.
Butler's body was discovered on Dec. 1 at the Eagle Rock Reservation, WNBC reports. Wheeler Weaver was arrested on Dec. 6.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether Wheeler Weaver could have had any other victims.
