An American woman has been slammed with 28 charges related to the murders of four men she allegedly met for s3x before drugging them and robbing them of their belongings.
Rebecca Auborn, 33, from Ohio is facing charges over the separate killings which happened between December 13 and June 17.
She is accused of meeting up with men for sex at hotels in northeast Columbus, giving them lethal doses of fentanyl, and stealing from them.
Four out of five of her alleged victims died of overdoses and one man survived but authorities have refused to publicly identify them.
Investigators believe there are more victims out there.
Auborn is being held in Franklin County jail and an arraignment is scheduled for 9 am on Monday.
Auborn has been charged with four counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, five counts of aggravated robbery, five counts of felonious assault, five counts of corrupting another with drugs, one count of tampering with evidence, and four counts of trafficking in drugs.
The first attempted overdose of a victim is said to have occurred on December 13 but he survived. But four other victims died from overdoses on January 15, April 1, April 13, and June 16.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost shared news of her indictment and warned: ‘Don’t buy sex in Ohio – it ruins lives and could cost you yours.’
He believes Auborn meets the criteria for a serial killer because the four deaths she is accused of follow a similar pattern.
‘For me, if you’ve got somebody that has a series of killings that are separated in time, they’re a serial killer,’ Yost told the Columbus Dispatch. ‘We have the same MO here.
‘I’ve never seen a case similar to this in my career, and having talked to colleagues, they haven’t seen this kind of thing.
The suspect had already been indicted and pled not guilty to murder and drug-related charges in September over the overdose of the man who died in January- 30-year-old Joseph Crumpler.
But this case has now been included in the new indictment filed on Wednesday which had redacted the names of the victims.
Court records indicate that she admitted to detectives on March 31 that she put fentanyl in a man’s crackpipe and that she knew he was overdosing when she left the hotel room and took his car and debit card.
The investigation remains ongoing, according to the attorney general’s office and investigators are focusing on her activities in northeast Columbus between between December of last year and August 2023.
It is being focused on the area between Interstate 71, Ohio 161, Cleveland Avenue, and East 17th Avenue as officers search for more possible victims.
‘These indictments are a result of our close collaboration with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation,’ Columbus Division of Police Chief Elaine Bryant said.
‘The Columbus Division of Police remains dedicated to ensuring justice for all victims and their families affected by the actions of a single individual.’
Auborn, who has at least one child and had a daughter who died in 2016 at just 18 days old, had no prior criminal history.
The first hearing on the charges against her was supposed to take place on Friday but this was postponed until Monday, October 30.
Anyone with information relating to any overdose deaths between December and August has been asked to contact the U.S. police’s homicide tip line. While anyone who has interacted with her has been asked to come forward without any fear of prosecution if they solicited sex.
