Serial Killer Suspected in 4 Transients’ Deaths

Four Skid Row transients have been found shot to death, execution-style, in downtown Los Angeles this month, and detectives are investigating the possibility that the slayings may be the work of a serial killer.

The body of the latest victim, Christopher Corrales Boyle, was found Monday shortly after 2 a.m. in the 300 block of North Hill Street, near the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial monument and just east of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s central offices, police said.

Like the three earlier victims, Boyle, about 25, had been shot in the back of the head with a small-caliber weapon, apparently while he was sleeping, a detective said.

“A link has not been definitely established, but the deaths are similar because of the nature of the victims and the method of death,” Los Angeles Police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said.

The body of the first victim, Rogellio Sirven, 31, was found in a brushy area in the 300 block of North Hill Place on Sept. 13. Four days later, the body of an unidentified man, believed to be in his mid-20s, was found in a parking lot in the 400 block of North Spring Street. Last Tuesday, the body of David Townes, 36, was found in the 200 block of West 18th Street.

All of the victims were apparently homeless men who slept in open areas, police said.

Booth said detectives have come up with a partial description of the killer, but not enough to develop a composite sketch. An investigator said the suspect is a young black man, six-feet tall with a medium build and wearing a medium-large Afro hair style.

Investigation of the four killings has been transferred from the Central Area detective bureau, the police jurisdiction in which the slayings occurred, to the Robbery-Homicide Division at police headquarters, Booth said.

The transfer--routine in cases of major crimes--resulted from detectives’ concern “as to the possibility” that the killings are related, said Lt. William Hall, who heads the Central Area detective bureau.

When told of the police investigation Monday night by a reporter, transients along Skid Row said they were unaware of the possible serial killings. But none expressed surprise.

Outside the Union Rescue Mission on Main Street, where about 40 men were lined up to get beds, the general sentiment was that Skid Row is no more dangerous now than it has ever been.

The danger is “just part of living down here,” said Ray Williams, 54. “I’ve been through all of it.”

“It’s dangerous down here. . . . Always has been,” said another man who declined to give his name. “There’s killings and stabbings all the time. (The media) don’t report them until something like this happens.”

That constant threat of violence on the streets, several said, is precisely why they go to the missions in the area, hoping to find a bed.

At the corner of First and Main streets, four men huddled in the doorway of a bank building.

One man, who wore no shoes and identified himself only as Jack, 26, said he has been “living on borrowed time down here for years. There’s a lot going on down here. But when your time comes, it comes. I ain’t going to worry about it.”

If the four slayings are linked to one killer, it will not be the first time the men of Skid Row have been the targets of a serial slayer.

In 1977, Vaughn Orrin Greenwood, the so-called “Skid Row Slasher,” was sentenced to nine life terms after being convicted of slashing the throats of eight men--six transients in the downtown area and two men in Hollywood--in 1974 and 1975.

In 1978, Bobby Joe Maxwell, 35, was arrested for two of 10 ritualistic killings of transients in the downtown area. After he was convicted, Maxwell claimed that he killed them to put them out of their misery.

In 1984, Norman Bernard, 32, pleaded guilty to the stabbing deaths of three transients on Skid Row. Like Maxwell, Bernard also claimed that he killed the men because he “felt sorry for them and . . . wanted to help them.”

Local authorities already are grappling with one unsolved serial murder investigation.

A task force of Los Angeles police, county sheriff’s deputies and suburban police officers is seeking a man dubbed the Southside Serial Killer, believed responsible for murdering 17 women, most of them prostitutes, whose bodies have been found dumped in South-Central Los Angeles over the past three years.