Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder and assault. Reader discretion is advised.
Netflix’s Homicide: New York dropped its five-episode second season chronicling five infamous cases, one of which explores Arohn Kee’s case. The fifth and final episode, titled “East Harlem Serial Killer,” looks into his crimes that lasted for almost a decade, reported Forbes. Kee, the East Harlem rapist and serial killer, murdered at least three teenage girls and sexually assaulted multiple girls.
According to The New York Times, a jury convicted Arohn Kee of several murders and rapes. He had remained a suspect in the murders of Paola Illera in 1991, Johalis Castro in 1997, and Rasheeda Washington in 1998. The following year, detectives arrested him in Miami using his DNA. After this arrest, the DNA linked him to Washington’s murder and two other rapes.
Arohn Kee was convicted on 22 counts of murder, rape, sodomy, and robbery. He then received multiple life sentences as well as 400 years in prison. His prison terms include three life sentences for raping and asphyxiating 18-year-old Rasheda Washington and murdering Castro and Paola Illera.
When and How was Arohn Kee caught?
According to the United States Department of Justice, Arohn Kee’s crimes began in 1991 when he raped and murdered Paola Illera. The New York Times reported that Illera was only 13 years old when Kee strangled and raped the girl. Police found her body in an East Harlem apartment building. Kee lived in the same apartment building at the time. A few days later, authorities learned that Kee might have been the last person to see the victim alive.
Kee then murdered Johalis Castro, 19, shortly after she called him, in September 1997 in East Harlem. Per The New York Post, police found Castro’s still burning on an East 104th Street rooftop. A subsequent autopsy revealed lungs revealed that she was likely still alive when the killer set her on fire. Then, in June 1998, Kee murdered Rasheeda Washington, 17, who was a fashion student. Washington was found dead in the stairwell of a Harlem housing project.
The DOJ report stated that authorities had initially arrested Arohn Kee on an unrelated petty theft charge. However, he denied any involvement in the assaults and murders. Detectives, who were suspicious of him, tested DNA from a drinking cup he had used in jail. Then, using the DNA evidence, they were able to link him to the crime, which eventually resulted in his arrest and conviction.
Kee reportedly remained a suspect in the three murders and two other rapes of teenage girls until early 1999. In January of that year, investigators, via DNA testing, discovered that the same man killed Washington and raped two of the girls. The police formed a task force on the case, and after receiving a crucial tip, they arrested him at Miami’s Sun Hotel in February. With him, they found Angelique Stallings unharmed.
Before his arrest, authorities believed Arohn Kee, who was a murder suspect, went into hiding in Manhattan. Police received information from Stallings’ parents after they saw Kee’s photograph in a newspaper article about the murder and rapes. The parents filed a missing person’s report. They claimed to have last seen their daughter when Kee picked her up for a Valentine’s Day date.
In December 1999, a jury convicted Kee of 22 counts of murder, rape, sodomy, and robbery. In 2001, Kee received three life sentences without parole for the murders of Rasheda Washington, Johalis Castro, and Paola Illera. Later, in 2004, DNA linked him to the 1994 rape of another teenage victim, reported The New York Post. He got 400 additional years for the rapes of four victims.
Homicide: New York premiered on March 20, 2024, and is now available to stream on Netflix.
