Kyle Swanson is a serial killer of gay black men who he picked up at bars.
Background[]
Swanson was a campaign manager for closeted gay senator Jack Nathan. Swanson also identified as gay and found high-risk, closeted gay black men to bring to his apartment. There, Swanson would drug, sexually assault, and degrade the men for pay out of a thirst for power and dominance, even going as far as overdosing Andre Walker into a coma. Swanson killed a young man named Louis Knight, who Kate Dixon tried to get justice for when he was found dead at a construction site in 2020. No leads led to his death being written off as an overdose. Swanson continued his assaults on black men, eventually also killing Darien Wilson before stuffing him in a luggage trunk and leaving him on the street.
Wicked Game[]
After discovering Darien in the trunk, Cosgrove and Bernard discover that Darien attended Senator Nathan's fundraiser event which was hosted by Swanson. After questioning Senator Nathan, who had a sexual relationship with Darien, Cosgrove and Bernard visited Swanson's place with a search warrant and discovered that Swanson had hooked up with Darien. Swanson told Cosgrove and Bernard that he didn't know what happened to Darien or how he died but when they searched more around the house, they discovered that there was a missing luggage trunk which was used to stuff Darien inside.
While interrogating Swanson, Swanson demanded to leave, and Dixon confronted Swanson about his involvement in Darien's murder. Dixon realized the haunting similarities between Darien and Louis being murdered, and she had an instinct that Swanson had drugged men and took advantage of them often. Passionately determined to get justice from realizing the truth, Dixon took the case to Price and Maroun after the detectives found Swanson killed five other men the same way, pushing them to prosecute Swanson for murder. Even though they thought it was best to charge him with negligent homicide when Dixon showed them the evidence, Price took it to McCoy.
McCoy definitely knew that Swanson was connected, and he charged Price to work closely with Dixon to get more evidence and prosecute him for murder. After Swanson's arraignment, Dixon asked Price to charge him with a hate crime since he targeted poor black gay men. Price told the judge that Swanson was a 'power-hungry killer'. After a witness, Jalen Brooks, goes missing, Andre approaches Dixon and tells her that he can't testify against Swanson because his parole was violated from the narcotics Swanson shot him up with.
Dixon told Price about this, and she didn't want to sacrifice him going to jail because he violated his parole. Price made Dixon realize their situation and that there was no turning back. Andre took the stand and told them about his near-death experience. Eventually, Swanson was found guilty of murder and imprisoned. As he was taken away in cuffs, he screamed he was innocent and swore to use his connections to get the precincts on his case fired.
Known Victims[]
- Five unnamed Black men (all drugged, raped, and killed with drug overdoses)
- Louis Knight (drugged, raped, and killed with a drug overdose)
- Darien Wilson (drugged, raped, and killed with a drug overdose; left in a trunk in an alley postmortem)