Baltimore police on Tuesday were considering more charges against suspected serial predator William V. Brown — this time in the alleged aggravated assault of a prostitute who told her account of a near deadly encounter with Brown to The Examiner last week, according to a source familiar with the case.
Michelle Wolford, 38, told The Examiner a man she identified as Brown, 41, of Gwynn Oak, picked her up on Wilkens Avenue in late July and drove her to a deserted lot where he beat her and then choked her until she was unconscious.
Police interviewed Wolford on Friday, she said, and were considering more charges against Brown, according to the source. Brown also has been charged with raping and killing two females — Emma O’Hearn, 25, in 2003 and Antania Mills, 15, in 2004 — and raping and brutally beating another woman in 2003 who eventually recovered from her injuries.
“I had to pick him out of a lineup of six people,” Wolford said on Tuesday while sitting on a stoop on Wilkens Avenue. “The police were very nice to me, but it’s so scary. I’ve had trouble sleeping.
“I can still see him beating me in my mind,” she said before breaking down into tears.
Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford said he could not comment on pending charges.
The allegations constitute the first recent act of violence linked to Brown.
He was arrested July 25 and was denied bail Tuesday.
Prosecutors say a person they believe to be Mills’ killer left a note at her neighbor’s house that read:
“Hi. I was at the funeral. I am sorry for killing your child. She tried to blackmail me. She told me she was 20 years old. When we finished having sex she said she is 15 in December, to get her $5,000 or she would get me arrested and there goes my career. She said that somebody named Murder would kill me if that person found out. I didn’t mean to kill her. Sorry.”
The teenager’s body was found wrapped in a blanket in the 2500 block of Talbot Road on a construction site in Northwest Baltimore near Leakin Park. She had been strangled..
Brown’s DNA is being compared with evidence from five recent strangulations.
The arrest of Brown came after The Examiner wrote a series of articles highlighting the number of unsolved killings of prostitutes, including the case of O’Hearn, who was found beaten into a coma at Calverton Middle School in June 2003 and died in January 2004.
Examiner Writer Carrie Wells contributed to this report.
