Vann was previously convicted on September 28, 2009, in Travis County, Texas, of a sexual assault committed in Austin in 2007 and sentenced to five years in a state penitentiary, being released on July 5, 2013.

A Gary deputy coroner, whose suspicions were also rebuffed by the local police, agreed with Hargrove and also added 3 suspected victims to the list.

Upon apprehension, Vann was found to have possession of several key pieces of potential evidence which included Hardy's phone.

His next hearing was held on October 28 at Lake County Jail in Crown Point where he pleaded not guilty to two charges of murder filed against him in the deaths of Afrikka Hardy and Anith Jones as well as robbery.

Vann was also charged with battery by bodily waste for allegedly throwing a carton of urine and feces at a Lake County correctional officer at the jail on February 24, 2016.

[20] In November 2016, Judge Samuel Cappas denied Vann's motion to declare the state's death penalty statute unconstitutional.

[21] In January 2017, a Lake County judge decided that Vann could make an appeal with his claims that Indiana's death penalty statute is unconstitutional.

[22] In April 2017, the Indiana Supreme Court turned down Vann's request to look at the constitutionality of the state's death penalty statute before he went to trial.

[28] In August 2021, Ben Kuebrich, host of the "Algorithm" crime podcast, obtained tape recordings via FOIA requests in which Vann confesses at length to interviewing detectives about numerous unsolved murders he had committed across the country.

In them, he claimed to have killed dozens of women, predominantly in Chicago, Illinois, but also in other locations such as California; North Carolina; Texas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Minnesota and Detroit, Michigan.

[29] Vann was convicted of murdering these seven women: Afrikka Hardy, 19, had recently moved to Chicago after graduating from high school.