Man Convicted of Raping and Killing Four Elderly Women

The prime suspect in a series of slayings of more than a score of elderly Los Angeles women between 1981 and 1983 was found guilty Friday of four of the five murders with which he was charged.

Brandon Tholmer, 29, who once served a Patton State Hospital sentence as a mentally disordered sex offender, will face either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. The jury that convicted him after two weeks of deliberations will hear evidence in the penalty phase of his trial beginning Aug. 5.

Tholmer was found guilty of slaying four elderly women who lived within a two-mile radius in the East Hollywood-Silver Lake area. The victims were: Rose Lederman, 80, strangled in her Silver Lake home in August, 1981; Wolloomooloo Woodcock, 69, strangled and beaten in her East Hollywood home in August, 1982; Dorothy Fain, 70, stabbed in her Hollywood home in August, 1983, and Mary Pauquette, 72, beaten in her Monroe Street apartment in September, 1983.

The jury also found that during the course of the murders, Tholmer also committed rape, sodomy, arson and burglary--special circumstances that make him eligible for the death penalty.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Clarence A. Stromwall declared a mistrial on two other counts on which the jury deadlocked: An attempted burglary and the murder of Lorraine H. Wells, 76, who was smothered in her Hollywood bungalow apartment in May, 1983.

After Tholmer’s arrest in November, 1983, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said Tholmer was a suspect in some of the 34 unsolved slayings of elderly Los Angeles women between 1981 and 1983. Since then, police have closed the book on investigations of 12 homicides they believe were linked to Tholmer.

Would Stake Out Victims

Murder charges, however, were filed only in the cases where there was the most evidence, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lance Ito, who prosecuted Tholmer.

Authorities speculate that the tall, lanky defendant staked out his victims while hanging out at two supermarkets where his girlfriend worked. He then broke into the women’s homes late at night to attack them, authorities theorize.

At the time of his arrest, Tholmer, a shipping clerk at a shoe company, was receiving court-ordered psychiatric therapy at the Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Center in Los Angeles as the result of a 1976 conviction for raping an elderly woman. In that case, Tholmer was sentenced to serve 42 months at Patton State Hospital and ordered to undergo therapy as a mentally disordered sex offender.

After his release in 1979, Tholmer was placed in the Gateways community treatment program, first as a resident and three months later as an outpatient. At the time of his arrest, Tholmer, a Rampart neighborhood resident, was visiting Gateways for counseling once a month and was being considered for release from the program because a therapist said he had made “considerable progress.”

During the trial, in which jury selection began in late January, Ito presented more than 100 witnesses and 100 exhibits to link Tholmer to the killings.

Jewelry identifications played a role in the cases of Fain and Lederman. With Fain, a ring that Tholmer had given his girlfriend was identified in court by a relative of the victim. In the Lederman case, a former roommate of Tholmer testified that the defendant sold him a Chinese-style jewelry box that was later identified by Lederman’s relatives as having belonged to her.

Prints Led to Arrest

William Weiss and Kathleen B. Cannon, the deputy public defenders who represented Tholmer, argued that the jewelry evidence was inconclusive.

Evidence in the Woodcock killing included a distinctive shoe print that was traced to Tholmer.

With Pauquette, Tholmer’s fingerprint was found in a bedroom, although he denied that he was ever in her house.

After the fingerprint led to Tholmer’s identification, a 20-member police task force investigating the slayings of elderly Hollywood women began following him. He was arrested five days later by task force members as he was observed at about 4 a.m. entering the home of Iel Rogers, 85, a paraplegic woman who lived near him on the outskirts of Hollywood.

One witness during the trial, the vocalist for “The Hostages,” a rock band in which Tholmer played drums, testified that Tholmer would often leave band practice at 1 or 2 a.m. saying: “I’ve got to go make money, or I’ve got business to take care of,” Ito said.

Tholmer’s girlfriend told authorities that Tholmer’s favorite song was a rock and roll tune entitled “Killer on the Loose.”