Steven Brian Pennell

Steven Brian Pennell (November 22, 1957 – March 14, 1992), aka The Route 40 Killer, was Delaware's only known serial killer, convicted of the murders of two New Castle County, Delaware women and suspected of killing three others.

Pennell, an electrician by trade, picked up his victims in his van along U.S. Route 40 near Bear, Delaware. The key evidence against him was the blue carpet fibers found on the first in a series of women which police and the FBI had determined to be have been killed by a single person. An undercover policewoman posing as a prostitute was approached by Pennell in his van and was able to pull some fibers from the van's carpet while "admiring" it. While the fibers were being analyzed Pennell was placed under surveillance, during which he was observed to drive late at night along U.S. Route 40. The fibers from the van were found to match those from the victim.

He was arrested November 29, 1988 and convicted of killing Shirley A. Ellis, 23, in November 1987, and Catherine A. DiMauro, 32, in June 1988. He pled no contest to killing of Michele A. Gordon, 22, and Kathleen Anne Meyer, 26, in September 1988, on the condition that he be executed. Pennell was also suspected of the August 1988 murder of Margaret Lynn Finner, 27.

Pennell was the first condemned man to argue his own case before the Delaware Supreme Court, arguing to affirm his own death death sentence. Without admitting guilt, he said he wanted "to spare his wife and two children the prolonged pain of his spending the rest of his life in prison." He was executed March 14, 1992 by lethal injection, the first person executed in Delaware since 1946.