2 Bodies Found; 1 May Be Serial Killer’s 17th Victim

The bodies of two young women were found on separate South Los Angeles school grounds Friday, and authorities said one slaying appeared very similar to 16 others attributed to the so-called Southside Serial Killer.

In the other case, Los Angeles Police Lt. John L. Zorn, co-leader of a joint police-sheriff’s task force, was more hesitant about a possible link.

Zorn said that in the most likely connected case, at the 66th Street Elementary School, there were signs that the unidentified, partially clad woman, probably aged 16 to 20, had been killed on the school grounds during the night.

He said police were especially interested to determine how access was obtained to the fenced and locked schoolyard.

If the case is indeed linked to the serial killer, it would be the second time in the past two months that one of the victims--most of whom have been young black prostitutes--has been found on a school ground.

The other body, that of an unidentified, clothed woman, aged about 25, was found by a summer school student at about 8 a.m. in a vegetable garden on the grounds of Locke High School, about five miles away at 325 E. 111th St.

Late Friday afternoon, Zorn said the “crime at 66th Street School seems to be pretty well connected with the other serial murders. It is in the pattern. . . . The one at Locke is generally similar, but we can’t tell. It could go either way.” He said a final determination on both cases will await completion of autopsies.

The 66th Street School, located on San Pedro Street, is closed for the summer. A custodian found the body in plain view on the playground about 7:35 a.m., and within hours 35 members of the serial killer task force were at work at the scene.

The task force--a joint police and county sheriff’s team organized last January and now numbering 49 officers assigned full time to the serial murders--took charge of the 66th Street School case but deferred to LAPD’s Southeast Division in the Locke High School murder.

Detective Mike McDonagh, in charge of the investigation at Locke, said the victim had apparently been stabbed to death.

Speaking to reporters about four hours after the body was found at the 66th Street School, Zorn was hazy on many details. His officers were being so careful not to disturb the scene, Zorn said, that he had not yet been able to determine for sure whether the victim had been shot. But he said this appeared unlikely and that her death was probably a combination of the stabbing and strangulation that have been the usual modus operandi of the killer.

Zorn said the body had been “badly traumatized” and that he could not say whether the woman was “black or Hispanic.”

Appealing for public cooperation, he said anyone aware of any young woman missing should call the task force, either at its weekday number of 485-7583 or its weekend number of 485-2803.

“We are anxious to know the background of the victim, where she was last night, who last saw her alive, who she was with, how she got to the school,” the police lieutenant said. “We need to know everything we can about the conditions leading up to the murder.” He added, however, that it appeared to investigators that the woman had gone to the schoolyard willingly.

Zorn added that the police have been hampered by the scarcity of evidence in the past cases, and there were no obvious signs pointing to a suspect in the latest discoveries.

“The killer has been careful,” he observed. “We still don’t know what drives the killer.”

The task force has previously released a composite sketch of the serial suspect, showing a medium-complexioned black male, 28 to 35 years of age, about six feet tall and weighing 160 to 165 pounds, with black, curly hair, brown eyes and muscular upper body and arms.

He has been seen wearing a black baseball cap and a mustache of the same color. He possibly has freckles or pockmarks on his face, and there has been a suggestion from one person that he may have an Eastern or Caribbean accent.

Before Friday’s discoveries, police believed that they had definitely linked 16 murders to the killer and that they had neither definitely connected nor ruled out a link in two other cases. All 16 of those clearly linked had either arrest records of prostitution or relatives or friends who identified them as prostitutes. Two of the victims were white, the rest black.

All the bodies in clearly linked cases have been found in an area bounded by 40th Street on the north, Imperial Highway on the south, Western Avenue on the west and Central Avenue on the east. Most have been found in alleys, parks and vacant lots.

But on May 26, the strangled body of Verna Patricia Williams, 36, was discovered on the grounds of the 68th Street Elementary School, just eight blocks from the 66th Street school.