The Wheeling Police Department announced murder charges against a Wheeling man and a Fairmont man in separate cases Thursday morning.

Dwayne Herring, 53, of Wheeling has been charged with one count of murder following a joint month-long investigation conducted by the Wheeling Police Department and the Albemarle County Police Department in Charlottesville, Virginia. Also, Dennis Terrell Evans, 37, of Fairmont was charged with one count of murder in a 2023 malicious assault case that resulted in the death of the victim.

In the Herring case, on March 21, 2025, police were called to a home in the 400 block of South Front Street after a woman, identified as 56-year-old Kathleen J. Herring, was found deceased inside. During the investigation, initial findings at the scene revealed that foul play was suspected. Kathleen Herring’s body was taken to the West Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy, where preliminary findings indicated signs of a homicide.

On April 28, 2025, the Albemarle County Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit located and arrested Dwayne Herring on Woodlake Drive in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dwyane Herring is currently being held in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where he awaits extradition back to West Virginia later this month.

In the Evans case, on July 28, 2023, police were called to the Fink Street area on the southern end of Wheeling Island for a woman who was found unconscious in a yard with physical injuries. The woman, later identified as 49-year-old Christine Lynn King of Wheeling, was taken to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown at the time of the incident to be medically treated but later died from her injuries at Wheeling Hospital on Oct. 20, 2023.

The West Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an autopsy of King and, in October 2024, ruled the manner of death as a homicide as a result of blunt force trauma. After conducting multiple interviews, gathering information from the crime scene and forensic evidence, detectives charged 37-year-old Dennis Terrell Evans on May 1, 2025, with one count of murder.

Evans has been incarcerated since September 2023 after being arrested and later convicted on an unrelated felony crime (strangulation). He is serving a three-year prison sentence in Saint Mary’s Correctional Center and Jail, located in Pleasants County, W.Va.