Study of Prints Intensifies in Killings

Civilian experts in the Los Angeles Police Department’s scientific investigation division are working overtime on fingerprints related to the Southside serial killings, but a department spokesman said Tuesday that does not mean “anything imminent” is about to break in the murders.

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize the transfer of $10,000 from the department’s general salaries account to enable the civilian experts to put in 400 hours of overtime needed “to compare suspects’ fingerprints against the latent prints obtained from the Southside Slayer cases.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said he introduced the special overtime motion at the request of Capt. Joe DeLauderanty, commanding officer of the department’s scientific investigation division.

No ‘Exercise in Futility’

The motion said in part:

“These crimes have precipitated an increase in the need for civilian overtime for forensic print specialists who must compare fingerprints of suspects against latent prints obtained from the Southside Slayer cases.” Yaroslavsky said the motion itself was prepared by police after discussing the matter with him. “I don’t think they would do this (ask for the overtime) as an exercise in futility,” Yaroslavsky said.

Police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth declined to elaborate on the motion or comment on speculation about what latent fingerprints the experts might be working on. “We can’t expound on the justification given for it (the overtime measure) but it does not portend an imminent breakthrough,” Booth said.

He did say, however, that “there are a lot of suspects you may take into custody (for other reasons) and as a matter of routine it would include an examination of their prints with those from a variety of sources.”

Booth also said there are “sufficient similarities” in two recent slayings--Austerberta Alvarez and Canosha Griffin--to include both women as victims of the Southside Serial Killer.

Griffin, 22, was found at 9 a.m. Friday at Locke High School. She was stabbed to death. Alvarez, also 22, was found at 7:45 a.m. the same day at 66th Street Elementary School, about five miles from the high school. Her death was attributed to multiple cut and stab wounds and multiple blunt force trauma.

Both women were described by police as “street people” from South-Central Los Angeles. But Lt. John L. Zorn, head of a police-sheriff’s task force investigating the murders, said neither of the latest victims had a record of prostitution, as did the other 16 victims.

In another development Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the unknown killer or killers, on the loose since 1983. The City Council previously had announced a $25,000 reward.