The Serial Killer Who Displayed His Victims In A Haunted House Attraction

Gary, Indiana is known for their surplus of abandoned homes, 10,000 to be exact. Most of them too run down to even give away.

In most recent years, the city has since made efforts to deal with the problem but is overwhelmed with vacant homes due to a floundering economy and residents who’ve moved elsewhere for jobs the city can no longer offer. The city of Gary has officially stated about 20% of residential homes are uninhabited.

However, one individual would turn up to this sleepy town in October of 2014 and use these vacant buildings to his advantage…

In October of 2014, a man invited the local residents and children of the neighbourhood into the abandoned home that he had occupied and made his own.

Seemingly wanting to get into the festive spirit of Halloween, the man had created a ‘House of Horrors’ attraction and as people flocked to his home, he directed them to the basement to proudly show off his work, that he had been prepping 8 months prior.

As they made their way down the basement stairs, the guests were hit with a foul stench; a stench they could hardly bare.

As they continued on to the bottom, they were met with a Jeepers-Creepers style basement, with mannequins hanging from the walls, seeming to imitate that of the ‘House of Pain’.

One attendee said:

Hanging on the walls stuck to crosses, were 11 mannequins that gave a creepy, effect that felt a little too realistic to some.

As one man in attendance approached one of the figures, he reached out and touched it to the encouragement of his wife. Turning ghostly white, the man exclaimed: “Let’s get out of here! I think that’s real!”.

At that point, people began to run from the house screaming at the realisation that this was not a fun Halloween attraction, this was a real killer’s lair and these were not mannequins stuck to the walls, they were the host’s real victims that he was proudly displaying to the public.

Another eyewitness said that the host of the attraction just sat there in a chair at the door entrance while people ran out. One attendee stated:

Over the next few minutes, the police department reported receiving over fifty 911 calls reporting the incident. Police showed up within minutes, and arrested the host, who was identified as 43 year old, Darren Deon Vann.

It turned out that police had been looking for Vann since 2005.

According to police, when 25 bodies were found between 2005–2012 — all of the murders shared one thing in common…the victims had been found with ‘crucifixion’ style markings on the hands and feet.

Authorities say Vann turned the basement of this abandoned house into a makeshift morgue, collecting the bodies of his victims. In a videotaped confession, Vann admitted he wanted to get caught. “I wanted to end this. But I wanted to make sure I’d be remembered.”

His confessions were only the tip of an iceberg, as he claimed during interrogation that he’d been killing a lot more and for a lot longer.

Along with the 11 victims found in Darren’s House of Horrors, a further seven women, ranging in age from teenagers to a 53-year-old, were murdered in 2014, between January and October.

Their bodies were not discovered until Vann led authorities to their exact whereabouts. All of the women were making a living as sex workers, and many were struggling with drug addiction and Darren had left their lifeless bodies in abandoned homes throughout Indiana.

Several of the women had been missing for nearly a year. The last victim, Afrikka Hardy, was just out of high school when she met up with Vann through an escort service.

Hardy had moved to the Chicago area shortly after she graduated from high school in Aurora, Colorado. She was described as vivacious and musical, with a lovely singing voice.

Her aunt, Mary Miller, whom Afrikka had lived with along with her mother, told The Times she believed Hardy left the Denver area because “We were struggling.”

She also speculated that her niece was probably ‘lured into something’ and that she most likely went where ‘she would make money quick.’

Hardy got what work she could find, taking gigs through an escort service that advertised on backpage.com, in which another female helped arrange dates for her.

On October 17th 2014, Hardy met her date for the night in nearby Hammond, Indiana. She’d been called to a job at Motel 6 on 179th Street.

She kept in touch with her contact person, using her pink cell phone. Her female contact began texting Hardy a little after 9pm because she wasn’t getting the usual type of communication she expected.

Getting no response, the woman and a male friend drove to Motel 6.

When they entered the motel room, they found Hardy in the bathtub. She had been strangled to death. They contacted authorities, who were able to use phone records to link Hardy to Vann.

The evidence against Vann was damning, and it wasn’t his first offence. He had a fairly extensive track record of violence against women, and he was a registered sex offender.

The state of Texas, where he’d previously resided, arrested him for rape and indicted him in July 2008 in connection to a sexual assault. After Texas locked him in prison for five years, they designated him a low-level sex offender for life — considered unlikely to re-offend.

This is despite the fact that Vann had a prior arrest, for which he served 90 days, for holding a woman hostage in 2004.

In 2013, after he was released from prison in Texas, he moved to Gary.

Despite the death penalty being sought for Vann, he entered a plea deal in on May 4th 2018, where he pleaded guilty to seven of the murders.

On May 25th 2018, he was sentenced to seven concurrent life sentences without parole.

In January 2019, the city of Gary razed the abandoned buildings where the victims’ remains were discovered.

The Gary Mayor, Karen Freeman-Wilson, commented that the step might bring some consolation to the families and that, “It’s the least the city can do.”