The Region : Victim Confirmed as Serial Killer’s 17th

The coroner’s office said a woman found dead in a stairwell at an elementary school was strangled, and she was officially listed as a victim of the so-called Southside Serial Slayer. Los Angeles police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said Verna Patricia Williams, 36, is the 17th woman whose murder was blamed on the man in the serial killings that began in 1983. Her partly clad body was discovered Monday by children playing at the 68th Street School. Like most of the other victims, she was black and had a record of arrests for prostitution, said Police Lt. John Zorn, head of a special task force assigned to capture the killer.