UPDATE: NBC-DFW reports that a suspect has been arrested and charged for the murders.
Reports of a rumored killer said to frequent Harry Hines Blvd. coincide with an ongoing investigation by the Dallas Police Department in possible connection to the murders of Kimberly Robinson, 60, Cherish Gibson, 25, and a third unidentified victim. While clear connections have not been made between attacks, DPD has stated that at least two of the victims have ties to sex work. The department has chosen to share news of this investigation to “inform this population of this trend.”
First described online through a series of posts shared across social media platforms and most prominently on TikTok, rumors of a serial killer have taken shape in previous months as disappearances and murders have been attributed to a suspect fitting a consistent description.
A woman working the Blade, referred to here as D, evaded an attempted murder by an individual matching this description and driving the associated vehicle. In an interview, she details witnessing Cherish Gibson working the Blade hours before her death, her own nearly-lethal encounter with the alleged killer, and her assertions on the killer’s methods.
On the night of June 23, D made her return to the Blade. The Blade refers to the area frequented by sex workers, often offering services off the curb to approaching cars. After two years of working from an online ad exclusively, a lull in her revenue stream led D to return to Harry Hines Blvd. to make some cash. “My ad had been slow, so I had started walking the Blade or whatever. And I had about a good four customers before he came along. He’s Mexican, he has a low haircut, and his hair is black,” D says. “His skin color, like if you’ve ever seen El Chapo, it’s like that.”
At the time, D was unaware of the rumored killer discussed by ladies steadily working the Blade. His described vehicle, believed to be a 2006 Scion xB, rolled along as the driver stopped to speak to several other women as D’s night continued. One of the women D recognized while walking the Blade happened to be Cherish Gibson, a new face on Harry Hines.
“I had gotten down at 11 or 12 o’clock, so I had probably seen her at two or three in the morning,” D says. “By the time I’d talked to him, it was almost six in the morning. The sun was starting to come up and that made me feel safer.” Cherish Gibson’s body was found hours later around 8 am on June 24 in a field near the 200 Block of Santa Fe Ave, near Santa Fe Trestle Trail and 8th & Corinth station.
The alleged killer circled back to D hours after picking up Cherish, asking about the price of a quick fifteen minutes. “I said $120. He said that he only had a hundred dollars. I was like, ‘Well you’re going to have to come back when you have the money,’ and he kept asking, ‘Please, please, please,’” D says. “He comes back and I make him show me [that] he has the money.”
D then put the money in her phone case, having recently dropped off previous earnings from the night in her room. “I don’t ever keep that much money on me because I know I’m liable to get robbed,” D explains. The alleged murderer had attempted to take her further away from Harry Hines, but D expressed discomfort and requested he stop in an alley off of a road near Caesar’s Tacos on Shady Trail instead. “We get started. I had kept my window kind of rolled down just in case. I was holding my vape and my pepper spray in my hand. He kind of knocked it down. but played it off,” D says.
After 30 minutes, D insisted that they finish up, as he had already used up an extra 15 minutes and she was hoping to avoid trouble with her pimp. When she reached down to pick up her vape and her pepper spray, she felt a blade pressed against her neck.
“He climbs on top of me and puts a knife to my neck. He says, ‘Give me the money.’ I gave him the money back,” D says. “I try to grab his wrist to keep him from stabbing me, I’m holding my arm up while I’m trying to feel for my phone with my other hand. He threw my phone [out the window] and it gave me a second to open the door. He went to slash at me, but I hit him in the face […] and I started yelling for help.”
D explains that she was able to exit the car and retrieve her damaged phone off the ground as her attacker attempted to run her over before driving off. Her phone still working despite a heavily cracked screen, D walked back to the Blade as the sun was rising. She attributes the oncoming daylight, her instincts to stay close to home, and her willingness to fight back as critical factors in ensuring her survival.
“If he got to do what he would’ve wanted to me, he would’ve raped me, he would’ve robbed me, and he would’ve killed me,” D says.
Only a 15-minute drive from where Cherish Gibson was last seen on Harry Hines, the field near the 200 Block of Santa Fe Ave. is also where the body of Kimberly Robinson was found almost exactly two months prior. The remains of an unidentified woman were recently found less than five miles away in the same field, closer to the 800 block of Brazos St. on the opposite side.
D asserts that the alleged killer targets sex workers primarily, murdering his victims outside his car in open fields. As she didn’t notice any blood in the car despite Cherish’s murder occurring only hours before, D believes Cherish was killed outside the vehicle. “He wanted to hit the play with me outside the car in the first place. I told him I wanted to stay in the car because it was more discreet. I think he was having sex with her outside the car when everything happened.”
D ended up seeing her attacker the next night and fled from him when he began shouting at her from his vehicle. D arranged to be picked up and taken home immediately following this. She has not returned to the Blade since. “He’s tried to come when the police aren’t there to pick girls up from a dark location so other people don’t see. That’s what he did to me. I just want other girls to be safe, be on alert, and be aware,” D says.
DPD requests that anyone with information on this case contact Detectives David Grubbs at 469-540-6377 or david.grubbsjr@dallaspolice.gov or Christopher Walton at 214-701-8453 or christopher.walton@dallaspolice.gov.