Dellmus Charles Colvin was born on August 3, 1959, in Akron, Ohio. He grew up in the countryside, and his early life was typical. As a teenager, he had some conflicts with his mother but did not show aggressive behavior. In high school, he participated in sports like wrestling and football.

After graduating, Dellmus worked as a driver. He later became a taxi driver in Atlantic City and its suburbs. In the mid-1980s, he started to show some signs of anti-social behavior and struggled with social skills. He became unpopular in his community and began living a criminal lifestyle. He often spent time with prostitutes.

In the late 1980s, Dellmus moved back to Ohio. Over the years, he lived in Swanton, Lima, Orient, and Toledo. In 1989, he was arrested in Summit County for assault and illegal possession of weapons. He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was paroled in 1992 but violated his parole and was sent back to jail in July 1993. He was released again in 1996 and moved to Toledo, where he found work as a truck driver.

After some time, Dellmus began to show more impulsive and violent behavior towards women. In April 2004, he was arrested after a woman reported that he had kidnapped her at a truck stop, robbed her, beaten her, and attempted to rape her. She escaped, which led to an investigation where police took DNA samples from him to check for any past crimes.

In November 2005, Dellmus Colvin was charged with the murders of two women in Toledo, Ohio. Jackie Simpson, 33, was murdered on April 16, 2003, and Melissa Weber, 37, on May 9, 2003. Colvin was also charged with a rape that happened in the same year. In September 2006, he went to trial for the murders. The prosecutors suggested a plea bargain, which included removing the death penalty from consideration. Colvin agreed and pleaded guilty to the murders of Simpson and Weber, along with three additional murders.

Colvin testified that in January 2000, he lured Valerie Jones, 38, into his truck, strangled her, and dumped her body in Lake Erie. He also admitted to killing Jacquelynn Thomas, 42, on September 1, 2000, after luring her into his truck. Her body was found the next day. He had also killed Lily Summers, 43, in 2002, after offering her money for sex.

On October 3, 2006, Colvin confessed to another murder: Dorothea Wetzel, 40, who was found dead on August 5, 2000, near the Maumee River in Toledo. During questioning, he stated that his motive for the killings was misogyny. In October of that year, he received several life sentences as part of the plea bargain.

In June 2010, Colvin was charged with the cold case murder of Donna Lee White, who was killed on September 15, 1987, in Atlantic City. He was extradited to New Jersey and appeared in court in April 2011. Colvin pleaded guilty to White's murder, claiming they had met when he was a taxi driver. He said that after drugs led to her overdose, he strangled her with a plastic bag and disposed of her body. In April 2011, he received an additional 30 years of imprisonment to be served concurrently with his life sentences.

In September 2020, Colvin spoke with a podcaster and claimed to have killed 52 girls and women between 1983 and 2005 across the U.S. To support his claims, he described the murder of a prostitute in 2005 in Illinois, saying he had dumped her body in an abandoned building. After this conversation, a search was conducted at the site, leading to the discovery of two bones. However, these bones were later found to be non-human.