Linwood Forte

The following year, his appeal for an unrelated attempted prison escape and assault on a prison guard was rejected by the North Carolina Court of Appeals. As of July 2022, Forte remains on death row, awaiting execution.

In 1996, Forte was convicted of firing a gun inside his home in Dudley. As a convicted felon, he was obliged to submit a DNA sample so it could be entered into CODIS. Five years later, his DNA was linked to the Nightstalker murders, resulting in his subsequent arrest on April 30, 2001, at his workplace in Dudley. While he was awaiting trial at Central Prison, detectives found evidence that supposedly linked him to the 1994 murder of 46-year-old Dora Ann Thomas, who was found raped and strangled at her apartment in Goldsboro on June 30, 1994. He was never brought to trial for this crime but is still considered the prime suspect.

On May 26, 1990, Forte's first recorded attack occurred at the home of 70-year-old Eliza Jones, whom he attempted to strangle in her bed but had to flee because her daughter arrived home. When questioned about the perpetrator, Jones claimed that she could not remember and could not provide any clues. Approximately two months later, on July 14, 79-year-old Hattie Davis Bonner was found suffocated in her bed in a strikingly similar manner to the previous attack.

Linwood Earl Forte (born July 25, 1964), known as The Nightstalker, is an American serial killer and rapist who was linked via DNA to a series of rapes and murders committed in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1990, and is the prime suspect in an unrelated murder in 1994. He was convicted of his confirmed crimes and subsequently sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution.