L.A. Plans to Post Reward in Prostitute Slayings

Pressured by a small organization of women from South Los Angeles, city officials Tuesday announced plans to offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture of a man suspected in the strangling or stabbing deaths of 16 women during the past 2 1/2 years.

The announcement was a victory for the recently formed Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murderers, which for weeks has bitterly complained that police, elected officials and the news media were making insufficient efforts to find the killer, because all of his victims were prostitutes and all but two were black.

Police believe that the killer has picked up most of the women while they worked the streets of South Los Angeles. While the women’s nude or partially clad bodies have been found mainly in Los Angeles and nearby communities, the latest case involves a woman found strangled in the eastern San Gabriel Valley last month.

Members of the women’s group said they welcomed the planned reward but said it should have been offered last fall, when a pattern involving the murders was first made public. Los Angeles County Supervisors offered a $10,000 reward in September.

Created Anxiety

The women said authorities are insensitive to the fact that the killings have created as much anxiety among black women in South Los Angeles as the Night Stalker murders did among Los Angeles County’s suburban residents last summer, before the suspect in the case, Richard Ramirez, was arrested.

“There’s a lot of fear out here,” said Margaret Prescod, a housewife who organized the coalition.

In response to the women’s lobbying, City Councilman Robert Farrell, whose district includes South Los Angeles, introduced a motion Tuesday to offer the reward. While the motion still requires City Council approval, Farrell, Mayor Tom Bradley and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates immediately held a news conference to publicize the reward and urge residents to be on the lookout for clues.

Prescod said she had attempted to enlist “more established civil rights groups” to pressure police but was not successful, because of the “stigma” of the victims’ prostitution background.

“These women are more than just a police record,” she said. “They’ve left behind loved ones. Our coalition will do all we can to establish that a life is a life, no matter what the color of your skin, your bank account or the line of work you do.”

Prescod fired her first salvo last October, when she organized a coffin-carrying demonstration in front of police headquarters downtown to criticize police investigative efforts, an action Gates blasted at the time as “asinine.”

Now, the group plans more conventional activities, such as printing thousands of flyers with a police composite drawing of the killer and information about the case. The flyers will be distributed throughout South Los Angeles with the help of community groups.

Description Given

The attacker is believed to be a medium-complexioned black man, with curly hair, mustache and brown eyes. He is described as being between 28 and 31 years of age, between 6 feet and 6-feet-2 and weighing 165 pounds.

Another member of the women’s coalition, Bobbie Hodges-Betts, a director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Pacific Southwest office, said she began attending fewer night meetings, after she discovered her home was close to a location where the body of one victim was discovered.

“Now when I pull up in front of my garage . . . I sit there with the car lights on and lock the doors and wait for my dog to start barking,” she said.