If Damien McDaniel is convicted of the 18 murders with which he is charged, he would become the most prolific known killer in Alabama’s history.

If he is convicted of just two of those 18 killings, he would officially be labeled a serial killer under the FBI’s definition.

The 22-year-old Fairfield man, described in federal court records as the primary “enforcer of violence and homicides” for a Birmingham-area drug organization, may not fit the traditional idea of a serial killer.

But, according to a well-known profiler, true crime author, podcaster, public speaker and educator, that’s exactly what McDaniel is.

“He is the new prototype of the serial killer,” said author Phil Chalmers. “Most people have no idea this happening.”

“Serial killers can’t be classified like they used to be,” Chalmers said. “It’s not all Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.”

“Some are lust killers. Some are angry. Some are doing it for profit,” he said. “There’s a reason why they do it and they’re all different.”

McDaniel is accused of two Birmingham mass murders in two months, as well as a string of murders that claimed the lives of a young couple expecting a baby and an on-duty firefighter.

In all, he is charged with killing 18 people and wounding 30 others during a 14-month span.

His alleged crimes include a mass shooting at Trendsetters Lounge on July 13, 2024 and another at Hush Lounge on Birmingham’s Southside that happened Sept. 21, 2024.

The murders helped drive Birmingham’s 2024 homicide total past a record high that stood since 1933. The spree may well be the bloodiest in all of Alabama’s 205 year history.

The deadliest mass shooting in Alabama history came on March 10, 2009 when Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people and then himself in Coffee and Geneva Counties.

“People think serial killers today are stabbing and strangling, and they are, but predominately they’re shooting people,” Chalmers said.

Chalmers, over the past 40 years, has interviewed hundreds of violent killers, including serial killers, school shooters, mass murderers, family annihilators, and spree killers including Charles Manson, the Son of Sam, BTK, The Hillside Strangler, The Gainesville Ripper, The Zodiac Copycat and The Smiley Face Killer.

“People think serial killers are white, and they’re not,” Chalmers said.

Efforts to reach McDaniel’s attorney to comment for this article were unsuccessful.

‘It’s over with.’

McDaniel’s alleged crime spree, according to authorities, began in July 2023 and ended in September 2024.

It started with the alleged murder-for-hire ambush killing of Birmingham Firefighter Jordan Melton.

McDaniel and Eddie Jerry Jones, 47, are charged in Melton’s shooting death, which also injured another firefighter.

Charging documents against Jones, who was previously convicted of murder in a 1999 homicide, state Jones provided specific information to McDaniel regarding Melton’s identification and location which led to his death.

The criminal complaint says Melton was killed because he was subpoenaed to testify against Larry Denzel Rollins in a murder trial.

The “crime stemmed from, was caused by, or was related to the capacity or role of Jordan Ellis Melton as said witness,’’ the warrant states.

Rollins has not been charged with any crime in connection to Melton’s death. He was acquitted in the murder case in which Melton was scheduled to testify.

He is, however, one of six people – including McDaniel – charged with capital murder in the 2024 shooting death of Jamarcus McIntrye, who was killed during a theft of his backpack the night after the Hush mass shooting, in which McDaniel is also charged.

McIntyre’s death was the last killing for which McDaniel is accused.

Rollins and Jones were both recently arrested in a massive drug conspiracy case and identified as the organization’s leaders.

Though McDaniel isn’t charged in the federal drug case, his name surfaced multiple times in court records involving the drug suspects.

On Jan. 7, 2025, McDaniel, Rollins and others had state bond hearings in Jefferson County.

In calls intercepted by law enforcement officials, records state, Jones contacted an individual and told him that he wanted to identify the detectives and that once the detectives were identified, “It’s over with.”

Following that call, safety measures were followed to protect the identity of witnesses.

‘A cooling off period’

On Feb. 25, 2025, Jones and McDaniel spoke about McDaniel’s arrests on the homicides.

They also talked about how McDaniel and Rollins were persons of interest in Melton’s homicide, “but they were not certain how McDaniel was a suspect because the firearms used in the homicide were hidden,” records state.

They discussed whether certain people were cooperating with law enforcement and discussed the evidence surrounding the mass shooting at Hush Lounge.

McDaniel stated that the police may have his DNA from that shooting, the agent wrote.

In the days leading up to the mass shooting at Trendsetters, McDaniel, records show, texted another drug conspiracy suspect for what appeared to be an order for specific calibers of firearms or ammunition.

Many of McDaniel’s alleged crimes are murder-for-hire but authorities say some were personal, such as the January 2024 shooting death of Mia Nickson, an ex-girlfriend, and the 2023 robbery and shooting death of Reginald Bryant in Pratt City.

He is also charged with the Valentine’s Day 2024 killings of Angeliyah Webster and Chris Norris, both 20, and their unborn son.

A motive has not been publicly disclosed but Norris and McDaniel had, at one point, been friends.

“My definition of a serial killer is what the FBI’s definition is – you have to kill at least two people with a cooling off period,” Chalmers said.

“With Damien McDaniel, he does a mass shooting, he does a hit, he does a robbery-gone-bad, he does another shooting here, another shooting there,” Chalmers said.

“He’s definitely got two or more with a cooling off period. He for sure is a serial killer.”

‘Damien is Michael Myers’

Chalmers has a new book set for release this summer detailing the myths around serial killers.

“I do a lot of training, and I ask them, ‘Who are serial killers?’” Chalmers said. “They say white males in their 20s and 30s and I say if you use that profile, you’d only arrest 7 percent of serial killers today.”

According to Chalmers, 60 percent of today’s serials killers are Black, mostly male, and only 31 percent are white. Additionally, he said 42 percent of serial killers shoot their victims.

“It throws off law enforcement, it throws off investigators because they automatically think three people shot in Birmingham has to be gangs or drugs and they go, ‘next case,’” he said.

“A lot of times they never make the connection.”

Chalmers rattled off a list of recent serial killing incidents whose profiles are similar to McDaniel, including Robert Hayes, the ‘Daytona Beach Serial Killer,’ who was convicted in 2022 of killing three women and sentenced to life in prison.

There is also Wesley Brownlee, a California man accused of killing seven people in Stockton, seriously wounding another; Howell Donaldson III, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to killing four people in random encounters in Tampa in 2017; and Tyrone Steele, who was convicted last year in a string of New Orleans killings when he was 18 that claimed five lives over 45 days in 2022.

“It’s a new trend and it doesn’t quite get the coverage that other serial killers get,” Chalmers said.

“Robert Hayes is called the Daytona Beach Serial Killer but yet nobody knows who he is. I think one because he’s Black and they don’t want to cover that case and two, sometimes they feel the victims aren’t important.”

“Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy got a little more coverage -they’re white males, their victims are white,” he said. “(The ones listed above) just don’t get the coverage, but to me, they’re just as scary and just as crazy and just as violent as the others.”

Up until recent times, Chalmers said, the FBI was pretty specific about who they counted as serial killers.

“They wouldn’t count gang members, they wouldn’t count hitmen, but they’re slowly adding those to the definition,” Chalmers said.

In a U.S. Department of Justice handbook of sorts called Serial Murder, Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators, the FBI says a serial killer is the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender or offenders in separate events.

The FBI lists several motivations of serial killers: anger, financial gain, ideology, power/thrill, psychosis, sexually based, or criminal enterprise in which the motivation gives the offender benefits in status or monetary compensation by committing murder that is drug, gang or organized crime related.

Chalmers said he was quickly made aware of the allegations against McDaniel. He does Google searches every night and also receives tips from law enforcement officers.

In the case of McDaniel, “I got it both ways,” he said.

“He looks like an average guy,” Chalmers said, “like all serial killers do.”

Chalmers hopes to speak with McDaniel.

“If you sat down with Damien McDaniel today, your first reaction would be he seems like a nice guy,” Chalmers said.

“There’s a guy in Atlanta – Aeman Presely. He was killing homeless people,” Chalmers said. “He’s very friendly and cordial with me but in the wrong setting, in the wrong environment, Damien McDaniel is very dangerous, Damien is Michael Myers.”

‘They all seem normal.’

Of McDaniel, Chalmers said, “I’m sure he had a messed-up childhood. I’m sure he’s dealing with some issues of anger, he’s probably an anger retaliatory killer, caught up in the gang, street lifestyle.”

“I’m sure he’s had some issues with his father, or no father, or a bad father,” he said. “The breakdown of family is usually the case.”

McDaniel’s father, 43-year-old Damien Laron McDaniel Jr., is in federal prison in Kentucky. He was sentenced to 26 years in 2013 for trafficking cocaine and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The older McDaniel was described in news reports as a former leader of the Bloods gang in the Fairfield area.

When McDaniel III was 5 years old, his father was charged with the fatal 2007 shooting death of 23-year-old Cedric Burch in Fairfield two months after McDaniel Jr. and others allegedly poured gasoline on Burch and set him on fire.

At the time of that homicide, McDaniel Jr. was out on bond for shooting Burch’s brother and had already served at least part of a 10-year sentence for possessing cocaine.

The case was nol prossed, and Damien McDaniel Jr. never went to trial for the slaying.

His son was a few months shy of his 12th birthday when McDaniel Jr. received the 26 year sentence. Damien McDaniel Jr. is scheduled to be released in 2037, according to the federal prison system.

Chalmers said he grew up with a violent alcoholic father.

“I know exactly what it’s like growing up in dysfunction,” he said. “It’s probably why I can relate to the guys, and I’ve to so many – Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, BTK.”

“The most shocking thing is they all seem normal. You meet them at a bar, and you’d say, ‘That’s a nice guy,’” he said.

“That’s what I see. I’ve been face to face with a lot of big-name people and I’ve been face to face with a lot of people nobody knows, and they all seem very cordial and very friendly,” he said. “And I would expect that out of (McDaniel).”