Steven Pennell

 

 

 

Steven Brian Pennell, aka "The I-40 Killer," aka "The Corridor Killer," was a monster. Plain and simple. His crimes shocked the liitle state of Delaware, not because it was the first and only case of serial murder in the state's history, but more so due to the twisted savagery of the crimes he committed. Most, if not all of Delaware was happy to get rid of Mr. Pennell when he executed for his crimes in 1992.

Not much is known of Pennell's childhood except that for the most apart, he appeared to come from a normal and stable upbringing. At some point he ended up in Delaware and applied for numerous positions in the state police department. Up until this point he had pursued a career in criminology, having completed several semesters at the University of Delaware. In any event, all of his applications were rejected for various reasons and he ended up working as an electrician. He married and settled in New Castle. Life for Mrs. Pennell must not have been the most pleasant, since her husband took incredible pleasure in controlling her life and acting as the dominant presence in the household. The Pennells had two children, one boy and one girl, who lived with relatives previous to Pennells rampage.

In November of 1987, Steven Pennell began what was to become the most appalling case of murder in the history of Small Wonder (Delaware). For the next eleven months, Pennell cruised Interstate 40 and 13 in search of women that he could torture and rape. He found the perfect victim in form of a prostitute. Once engaging in a conversation with a local hooker, Pennell would coerce the unsuspecting woman into his van and then drive to an isolated spot where he would then procede to subject his new captive to unspeakable amounts of torture and rape. Inside the van he carried a so-called "rape kit" that contained specially chosen devices used to torture his victims. Such items included pliers, a whip, handcuffs, needles, knives, and other types of restraints. His modus operandi varied in every murder which through the police off track. Sometimes he would simply bind his victim by the hands and ankles while he raped them and beat their buttocks with his whip, other times he would hit them with a hammer until they were battered and bloody (and still alive), and in another case he used the pliers to squeeze the victim's breasts and cut off her nipples. Eventually he would show mercy by strangling them to death, then bashing in their skulls with a blunt object for good measure. Finally, the bodies would be dumped along wooded areas next to highways 40 and 13.

Pennell was finally caught when an undercover state police officer named Renee C. Lano posing as a prostitute on route 40, was able to gather fibers from Pennell's van and submit them to the FBI laboratory for testing (blue fibers from an automobile had been found on one of the victims). The results were a perfect match and Pennell was soon arrested. Due to the police's inexperience with serial murder, the FBI had agreed to help, mostly aided by the efforts of special agents John Douglas and Steve Mardigan (Douglas testified against Pennell at his 1989 trial). On Halloween of 1991, Steven Brian Pennell was sentenced to die by lethal injection aftering have been convicted of two of the five murders he committed. On March 14, 1992, the sentence was carried out. Pennell was 34 years old. His execution cost the state a grand total of $47,085, a rather high figure for an execution. Pennell was the first man in more than 45 years to be executed in Delaware.