Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED A SERIAL KILLER: The Catfishing Killer

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

In November of 2016, Tiffany Taylor is held captive and brutally assaulted in Essex County, New Jersey after agreeing to give a ride to a man in exchange for some much-needed cash. What she doesn’t realize however, is that her passenger is a serial killer - who’s killed twice before, and is out for blood. Tiffany recalls in her own words how she used her quick wit and drive to survive to manipulate her would-be killer into unwittingly granting her a chance to escape his deadly clutches. Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Omaha Steaks: Go to OmahaSteaks.com and use promo code SURVIVED at checkout for $35 off. Minimum purchase may apply.Progressive - Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.TesterUp: Download TesterUp for free now using our link https://bit.ly/411Wdaw See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Police arrested 20-year-old Khalil Wheeler-Weber last night at his house in Orange. It involved murders that had been executed in sort of a cold calculating way. 911, where it's a urgency? There's a fire in somebody's health. Oh, my God. They find a body, and the remains could not be identified.

We believed he strangled her and then set the building on fire to cover his tracks. Three women murdered. A fourth woman attacked and nearly killed. That's when the serial killer alarms start going off, and we didn't know if more people would die. He took off his mask, and he said, you don't remember me? He had handcuffed my hands behind my back. Then he was right behind me going upstairs to the room.

I knew he was a monster, and I knew that I was really in trouble. Real people who faced death. and live to tell how this is I survived a serial killer. My name is Tiffany Taylor and I survived a serial killer. I'm from Jersey City, New Jersey. I was about 34 in 2016. At that time, I was homeless. My mom had ovarian cancer and she beat it.

Thank God. But we lost everything. So we were staying at different hotels. November 15th, I was staying at a motel in Elizabeth, New Jersey, with my friend. It was his birthday. And the plan was just chill, watch some movies. But I had got a call from my best friend at the time.

She was telling me her friend needed a ride to Pennsylvania. He was supposed to give me about $100. I was always thinking about the next day, how I'm gonna pay for the room, so I definitely jumped on the offer. She gave me his number, and we started texting back and forth. I believe it was ETH that night.

He kind of just popped up at the room. He had on gloves, and a ski mask, you know, that pulls over, but it didn't look too suspect, because that's like the same thing. because that's like the style for guys in wintertime. We got into the car and I started to drive off. He then asked me, can I pull over? Because he had to use the bathroom. So I pull over down the side block,

not far from that hotel. That's basically the last thing I remember. I'm thinking he might have hit me because I had pain in the back of my head and I don't know. But I know. I went out and I woke up to him raping me and choking me out. He was whispering in my ear. Like I wish we was in a room.

I would have demolished you. I think he got off of seeing fear. I went out of consciousness at least three times. He was a monster. 9-1-1- where is an emergency? There's a fire in somebody's house. Oh my God. Adam Wells is an assistant Essex County prosecutor.

A little more than two months before Tiffany Taylor was attacked. It was a fire at an abandoned house in the city of Orange, New Jersey. David Porter is a reporter for the Associated Press. Firefighters respond, and they eventually find a body that is so damaged from the fire that the remains could not be identified. It took about two weeks of investigation to identify positive. those remains is Robin West. Robin West was 19 years old,

and she had been working in the sex trade on and off over the years before her disappearance. Before the fire, Miss West's good friend reported her missing in Union Township. She described that a man pulled up in a car and pointed to Robin West and indicated for her to get in the car. After that, Robin West went missing.

It was choking me. out and raping me at the same time. I tried to scratch his face and he said, don't do that. That's when I saw the handcuffs and he handcuffed my hands behind my back. Then after that, he pulls out duct tape and he wrapped it around my head like a gift like this.

Then he took off his mask and he said, you don't remember me? Seven months before I was attacked. My same friend, had this guy that she was prostituting with. When he saw me, he had this really big obsession. But being that I was raised a Jehovah Witness, I was strictly against having sex for money.

But one day, he offered a couple hundred dollars. I was being blinded by fast money, and I said, yeah, sure, I'll meet up with you. He had me meet him at this place, and he gave me $200. gave me $200 up front. And that's when I said, oh, I forgot the condoms in the car.

I went downstairs and hopped in the car. I just took his cash and left. I never thought that I would see him again after that. When he revealed himself to me, that's when I remembered exactly who he was. His name was Khalil Willa Weaver. I knew that I was really in trouble. For the longest time, I treated

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Terms applies to C-Sight for details. The duct tape has started lifting up from, like here, from me sweating and crying. I remember saying to him, you almost killed me. And he said, no, I was just putting you to sleep. I know what I was doing. Just one week after Tiffany Taylor was attacked in Elizabeth,

Sarah Butler went missing in Montclair. Sarah Butler was a 20-year-old college student who was home for Thanksgiving break. On the night of November 22nd, 2016, Sarah Butler takes her mom's minivan and then disappears. The next day, her mother actually went around trying to find out does anyone know where Sarah is? She just disappeared.

That night, Sarah's mother went to Montclair Police to file a formal missing person's report. In addition to reaching out to police, Sarah Butler's family and friends take the investigation a little bit into their own hands. Sarah's best friend who was very close to her, knew that Sarah was going to go meet a guy she'd met online, but she didn't know all the particulars.

She also knew the password to her email account. So they logged in. They wanted to see who she might have been in contact with in the hours and days before she disappeared. Sarah had met this man, Will Yacht Rock, over a particular social networking site that was focused on meeting people in your immediate geographic area.

She actually said to him, you're not a serial killer, right? Eventually she did agree to meet up with him, so they wanted to find him. I'm very street smart, and I think fast. I thought maybe I could manipulate him and try to have him follow what I say instead. So I said, you know, my phone with our text messages, going back and forth, I left it in the room. If I do pop up missing, they're going to know who you are.

And he started to panic. I said, look, if you take me back to the room, I'll retrieve a cell phone if you promise to let me go. Tiffany's a very smart woman. She is also the definition of a survivor, and she was very clever in playing him. I'm double-jointed and flexible, so I knew how to break out of cuffs. So at this point, I'm out of one cuff. And when he pulled up to the hotel room, I had to slip the handcuff back on, so he didn't notice that I was out.

He took the duct tape off, and I remember him pulling me out the car. He put my coat that I had over me to try to hide the cuffs. Then he was right behind me going upstairs to the room. I kick on the door, my friend opens it. I immediately run in and slam that door so hard behind me. He knew he couldn't get to me, so he ran off. I called my best friend at the time, and I was yelling at her saying,

You know your friend tried to kill me. tried to kill me just now. And I remember her saying, why would he do something like that? And I'm trying to explain to my friend at the hotel room. What's happening? And he called 9-1-1. What injuries do you have? What injuries do you have?

Look at my face on the duct tape. For the what? I had abrasions from him taking the duct tape and putting it on and taking it back off. So you let him duct tape you or what happened? I just think he'll go. He put the handcuffed on me first. He choked me out and asked me showing me one.

What happened, all happened in the car? They probably thought it was maybe a prostitution thing that went bad, but they really did not believe me at all. They said that they'll keep me posted and they left. I felt like I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to and thought he was going to come back looking for me. I was very scared for my life. Those were like the longest days of my life. A couple days after Sarah Butler went missing, Sarah's best friend, Sarah's sister, and Sarah's sister's best friend, set up an account on that same social network that Sarah had been communicating with online,

which, you know, I've been sort of casually referring to as the catfishing incident. And within an hour, Will Yacht Rock sends her message asking, you know, does she want to meet him? Sarah's family and friends were determined to find out what had happened to her. So they set up a date at a restaurant nearby, and then they went to the Montclair Police, and so the Montclair Police actually went as well. Before Little Yacht Rock even got out of the car, the Montclair Police identified themselves. They said they were working on a missing person's investigation, and would he cooperate? And lo and behold, Little Yacht Rock turned out to be Khalil Wheeler Weaver.

He ended up following the police in his own car back to Montclair Police headquarters and talking to them for a little bit there. Khalil Wheeler Weaver was a 20-year-old. He lived in Orange. He held down two jobs as a security guard, and he was interested in becoming a police officer. He does admit that he met up with Sarah. He told them, Sarah came and picked me up. I got in. We drove around a little bit.

He says he asked to get dropped back off. So she drops him back off at this parking lot. At that point, they had no reason to believe he was anything other than a witness. So they let him go. At this point, we have Sarah Butler missing from Montclair. Tiffany Taylor attacked in Elizabeth and Robin West, disappearing in Union Township and then her body being found in Orange. So right now, you've got four different jurisdictions,

and perpetrators can slip through the cracks because not. not all of those jurisdictions necessarily communicate, at least early on. When Sarah disappeared, her whole family put out information on social media with pictures of Sarah and pictures of the van. And three days after Sarah disappeared, a family friend did in fact spot the van. It was in an out-of-the-way parking lot in the middle of this industrial park. The friend calls both the Butler family and the police. Once the van was recovered, we had tangible evidence.

that Sarah didn't just run off in her mom's car. Something bad had happened. Essex County investigators begin combing through Sarah Butler's phone records and where her phone was last recorded by the nearest cell phone tower. One of the last places her phone pinged was in the general area of West Orange near the Eagle Rock Reservation.

Eagle Rock Reservation is sort of a mountainous area not far from Eauleur. It was a fairly extensive search. And nine days after Sarah went missing, her remains were recovered, concealed under brush. She'd been strangled with her own pants, and they'd been found around her neck. It was an unusual crime scene.

The manner of the killing, the extent to which the body was concealed, and the car being dumped someplace else, it seemed like this person had done something like this before. That's when the serial killer alarms start going off. And we didn't know if more people people would die. Then four days after Sarah's remains were recovered,

Joanne Brown's remains were recovered in an abandoned house. Joe Ann Brown was 33. She had been living on the margins of society and was working in the sex trade at the time of her death. She was found on a set of stairs with a woman's blazer around her neck that she had been strangled with. So now investigators have two women who have been killed in the same fashion in the same basic

It would be extraordinary for these things to happen than not to be related. Investigators are able to determine that Kull Wheeler Weaver was the last person to be in contact with Sarah Butler before she disappeared. And even more important, his cell phone records show that he was in the area of Eagle Rock Reservation around the time she went missing. We had a very strong suspicion that he was the killer. So on the 6th of December, we made the decision that we were going to place him under arrest before anyone else. before anyone else was killed. So I had this moment recently where I looked at my screen time and realized, I am already spending a lot of time playing games on my phone.

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Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy, or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be, visit progressive.com and give the name your price tool to try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Price and Coverage Match Limited by state law. On the 6th of December, we made the decision that we were going to placed Wheeler Weaver under arrest for the murder of Sarah Butler.

Police arrested 20-year-old Khalil Wheeler Weiler Weber last night at his house in Orange. And we filed additional charges for the murder of Joanne Brown. Once we charged him with the two murders, we believed that it was very unlikely that those were the only crimes that person had ever committed. So we did a law enforcement database search to see who else had ever tried to look up Khalil Wheeler Weaver.

And one of the places we found was Union Township. And there was a disappearance of Robin West, whose remains were recovered in an abandoned house fire. Robin West was working on and off in the sex industry, and on that particular night, she and a friend were approached by a man in a car. And when Robin West got in the car, her friend was savvy enough to write down the license plate number. The Union Township Police Officer ran that license plate. It came back to Khalil Wheeler Weaver. The story he told them was that he dropped her off at this industrial building and that that was the last place he saw her. At that point in their investigation, they hit a dead end.

Robin West's case then remains unsolved for more than three months until Essex County authorities charged Kalil Wheeler Weaver. Once the homicide task force took over the investigation, we started looking into where Wheeler Weaver's phone put him on the night Robin West disappeared. Investigators discovered that Kalil Wheeler Weaver was in the vicinity of the house where Robin West's body was found at the time the fire was started. So we believed he strangled her and then set the building on fire to cover his tracks.

After he's arrested, Khalil Wheeler Reaver was brought for his arraignment of the charges of murder. My brother saw it on the news and called me. I was so relieved. unhappy when I found out that he was in custody. I wanted to do whatever I could do to make sure that this guy did not come home. So I went and spoke to the prosecutors myself.

She came to the court because she knew he's the same person who had attacked her, and that she had not been taken seriously by the authorities that she'd reported it to in the past. These are no joke real handcuffs. These are the handcuffs that were on Ms. Taylor's arm the police arrived. I went to court and I testified against him.

When I saw his face, I felt like I saw a ghost. I was scared, but I'm very proud of myself for being strong enough to testify against him. On December 19, 2019, Khalil Willow River was convicted by an Essex County jury of the murders of Joanne Brown, Sarah Butler, and Robin West, as well as the attempted murder of Tiffany Taylor.

I definitely feel like justice was served, and I definitely feel like I had a part in it. In the fall of 2021, five years after the murders were committed, Khalil Wheeler-Weaver was sentenced in Essex County Superior Court. But the sentencing hearing, that's what everybody's waiting for, to hear the person speak. You want to hear some kind of remorse or explanation. I have maintained and expressed my innocence.

I was not the person who committed these crimes. I just want to say, as far as him saying that he still didn't do it, makes me feel like he has no type of remorse about it at all. And I hope you don't show any remorse on him just like he's not showing any remorse. And you give him the maximum time. I sentenced to defend it to 160 years,

145 years of parole and that was. The purpose of the sentence is that this defendant never walk among society again. I was very glad that I could give the families that closure and I was relieved that he would never walk free again. For all the women out there, I've been through something like this. Be brave. Don't be scared to speak up. If you do, people will start to let you. We'll start to listen after a while. Just keep trying.

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