Possible 16th Victim of Serial Killer Found in San Dimas

A prostitute found strangled in a San Dimas park may be the 16th victim of a serial killer who, until now, had concentrated his attention on streetwalkers more than 25 miles away in South-Central Los Angeles and adjacent areas, detectives said Thursday.

The partly clad body of Lorna Patricia Reed, 35, of Pomona was discovered Tuesday in brush in an isolated section of Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park, leading investigators to suspect that the man they are seeking has been frightened away from his primary killing ground and shifted his attention to the San Gabriel Valley.

“We’re concerned that with the effort we’ve made in South-Central Los Angeles, the killer may have moved to a different area,” said Los Angeles Police Department Lt. John Zorn, co-leader of the joint LAPD-Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department task force investigating the murders. “We’re now faced with the possibility that the suspect . . . is operating in the extreme eastern portion of the county.”

Zorn said Reed’s death is “very close to the pattern” of the other homicides.

He cited these similarities:

- Reed, like most of the victims, was a black prostitute. She was 35 and had an arrest record dating back “a number of years, mostly in Pomona,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Gary Vance, who heads the sheriff’s investigators assigned to the task force.

- She was strangled, an autopsy showed. The prior victims were either strangled, knifed or both, detectives said.

- Her body was found in an isolated park. Most of the others were discovered in parks or vacant lots.

On Thursday, detectives were working Pomona’s Holt Avenue, looking for other streetwalkers, pimps and clients who may have seen Reed or her murderer Monday night. Based on forensic tests, they figure that she died sometime between 10 p.m. Monday and 2 a.m. Tuesday.

Zorn and Vance said they could not be sure if Reed was killed where she was found or at another location.

Sheriff’s investigators also were looking for Holt Avenue residents who might recognize the description of the serial killer with which the detectives have been working--a black man, age 28 to 36, 160 to 165 pounds, with a muscular upper body, medium to dark complexion and, possibly, an accent of an undetermined type.

They were searching for someone who might have seen a car matching the description of those given by witnesses in past attacks attributed to the serial killer. Four different autos have been sighted.

Meanwhile, the hunt for the killer goes on in Los Angeles, where detectives continued to check out “1,100 clues provided by the public and a great deal of information developed with traditional investigative tools,” Zorn said. None of it, he admitted, has gotten investigators very far.

Although most of the victims in the series of slayings dating back to September, 1983, either worked the streets or were found dead in the vicinity of South-Central Los Angeles, there have been indications that the murderer is branching out. On Jan. 10, a downtown streetwalker fought off a knife attack by a man who, police suspect, is responsible for the string of slayings.

Reed’s death may indicate that the killer is working farther off his usual beat, perhaps because the South-Central area is too hot for him, Vance said.

“We’ve had intensified police activity down there, the press has been there, and public attention has been focused on the area,” he said.