City-County Force Formed to Probe Serial Slayings

Los Angeles police detectives and county sheriff’s investigators announced formation of a task force Tuesday to track down a serial killer who may have struck again over the weekend and who authorities now believe may be responsible for the slayings of 15 prostitutes.

The latest figure increases by four the number of victims that authorities had linked to the killer. One of the unsolved slayings added Tuesday occurred nearly four months before the murderer was thought to have first struck.

A decision to form the task force was made Monday, after the body of a 22-year-old prostitute was found in an unincorporated area of Southwest Los Angeles. Investigators said they believe that killing--the second in as many weeks--represents the latest in the grisly string that may have begun in September, 1983.

The fully clothed body of Tammy Lynn Scretchings, 22, was found Saturday in an alley east of Halldale Avenue between 95th and 96th streets. Scretchings, who had a prostitution arrest record, as did the other victims, had been strangled, Capt. Robert Grimm, head of the sheriff’s homicide bureau, said Tuesday.

“We can’t say positively that it is related,” said Deputy Lynda Edmonds, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman, “but there are a number of similarities.”

Scretchings was black, as were all but two of the previous victims. Most were both stabbed and strangled. Their nude or partly clothed bodies have been dumped on side streets or in alleys. Several apparently had been tortured, receiving superficial knife wounds before they were killed.

It could not immediately be determined whether Scretchings also was stabbed. County coroner’s officials said they had not yet completed their autopsy report on the case.

Authorities previously thought that the first killing occurred on New Year’s Day, 1984, when Patricia Coleman, 28, was found dead in Darby Park in Inglewood.

Until this week, authorities had attributed 12 slayings, including that of Stretchings, to the killer. However, on Tuesday, Los Angeles police added to the string the unsolved murder of Loletha Prevot, whose body was found Sept. 4, 1983, in South-Central Los Angeles.

“Going back over unsolved cases, we felt there were enough similarities to the others that it should be included,” said Cmdr. William Booth, a Police Department spokesman.

Similarities in the cases also led the Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday to include two other unsolved murders in the investigation. In both cases, suspected prostitutes were strangled, said Sheriff’s Capt. William R. Hinkle.

One of those two victims was Myrtle Collier, 36, whose partly clothed body was found by a passer-by Nov. 7, 1985, wrapped in a sheet in an alley on Hawthorne Boulevard in Lawndale. The other case involved 28-year-old Gidget Castro. Her body, nude from the waist up, was discovered Dec. 26 in an alley off East Washington Boulevard in Commerce.

In all, nine of the killings have occurred in the city of Los Angeles, three have taken place in the sheriff’s jurisdiction and there have been two in Gardena and one in Inglewood.

The Police Department has committed 13 homicide investigators to the task force while the Sheriff’s Department has assigned four. Officers from the Gardena and Inglewood police departments are working independently of the task force.

Booth said the task force will be based in police headquarters at Parker Center, but that sheriff’s investigators will continue to answer to their own commanders. Police and sheriff’s detectives will investigate killings that have occurred in their respective jurisdictions, and will meet regularly to compare notes on any leads, Booth said.

Investigators are seeking a man described by prostitutes and other witnesses as black with a dark complexion and medium build, 30 to 35 years old, and 5 feet 10 to 6 feet tall. He is said to have black hair, brown eyes, muscular arms and chest and a small mustache.

Authorities also are searching for three vehicles spotted at or near the scenes of some of the killings. They include a 1984 or 1985 dark-colored Buick Regal with a baby seat in the rear, a 1960-1969 Ford pickup truck with gray primer paint, and a 1984 Plymouth Reliant station wagon with a dark brown horizontal stripe.

Some prostitutes in recent weeks have criticized the Police Department for failing to make more progress in the killings. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for an organization that lobbies for the rights of prostitutes criticized the lack of progress in the case.

“It’s about time they did something,” said Margaret Prescott of the group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). “No one cares, because they’re black prostitutes. If they lived in Beverly Hills or Westwood, then everyone would be interested.”

Los Angeles police officials bristled at Prescott’s remarks.

“We’ve got our best detectives assigned to this case working 14 hours a day, and they’ve got the gall to suggest were not doing anything,” said Lt. Dan Cooke, a department spokesman. “To us, a homicide is a homicide. We work just as diligently no matter who it is.”