Ho-Osborn Slayings Suspect Is Linked to San Diego Murder

Homicide detectives here have uncovered evidence linking Warren Bland, the convicted sex offender charged with the kidnap-slaying of 7-year-old Phoebe Ho of South Pasadena, to the recent killing of an 81-year-old San Diego woman, police said Tuesday.

Police said they believe that Bland strangled Ruth M. Ost and then ransacked and stole “valuable items” from her downtown San Diego apartment. Ost’s nude body was found with her hands tied behind her back by the apartment manager on Feb. 4, several days after she was killed.

Acting on a warrant issued in the Phoebe Ho case, San Diego police shot and captured Bland on Feb. 9. Shortly afterward, homicide detectives learned from witnesses that Bland had visited Ost’s apartment on at least one occasion before her death, Lt. Phil Jarvis said.

Bland is also the leading suspect in the strangulation death of 14-year-old Wendy Osborn of Placentia, whose body was discovered in the Chino Hills on Feb. 1.

On Tuesday, flyers asking potential witnesses for help were distributed in downtown Anaheim near the liquor store where Wendy’s purse was found in a trash can within two hours after she disappeared.

San Bernardino County authorities, who had searched the 1970 blue Toyota that Bland had been driving in an attempt to uncover evidence that would tie him to Wendy’s death, said that a number of items recovered from the car belonged to Ost, including some that had her name written on them, Jarvis said.

Bland, who is being held in the Riverside County Jail, has not been charged with Ost’s death. Jarvis said investigators will write their reports and submit the case to the San Diego County district attorney’s office in the next few days.

Both Phoebe and Wendy had been sexually assaulted, apparently tortured with pliers or some such tool and then strangled, authorities say. Homicide detectives in San Diego said they also believe that Ost was sexually assaulted but may never be able to prove it because her body was so badly decomposed by the time it was found.

At the time of the crimes, Bland was on parole after being convicted of molesting an 11-year-old Torrance boy, whom he had tortured with pliers. Bland had an extensive record of rape and child molestation dating back to 1960 and had spent all but five of the past 26 years either in prison or state mental institutions.

Phoebe Ho’s body was discovered Dec. 18 in Riverside County, where authorities early this month issued a murder warrant for Bland’s arrest, based largely on physical evidence. The South Pasadena girl disappeared Dec. 11 while walking to school. At the time, Bland was working as a house painter at an apartment complex less than two blocks from where she was last seen.

No Solid Evidence

Wendy Osborn vanished Jan. 20 on her way to school in Placentia in Orange County. While Bland remains the leading suspect in that case because of similarities to the murder of Phoebe Ho, authorities have been frustrated by their inability to uncover any solid evidence.

“Basically, he’s the only named suspect we’ve got,” San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Stodelle said. “He’s not stronger or weaker (as a suspect) than he started out to be.”

Authorities are not certain when Bland fled to the San Diego area in an attempt to evade one of the most intensive manhunts in Southern California in recent years. Local residents had reported seeing Bland--who has a distinctive, eight-inch dagger-and-rose tattoo on his forearm--in the San Diego area for days before his capture.

During his stay in San Diego, Bland worked at a McDonald’s restaurant in the Pacific Beach area of the city. Five days before police shot Bland in the buttocks after he was spotted in a restaurant parking lot, Ost’s body was found in her apartment. The woman’s daughter had called the apartment manager to report that she had been unable to contact her mother.

Jarvis said that investigators were initially stumped by Ost’s killing.

“There were no obvious signs of a break-in,” Jarvis said. “It was very difficult to understand how someone got inside a security building and got up to her apartment. We were at a little bit of a loss to explain it.”

Suspect in Armed Robberies

When Bland was captured, San Diego police suspected that he may have committed some armed robberies with a .32-caliber revolver recovered from the Toyota. But homicide detectives did not have any reason to question Bland or search his vehicle for evidence in connection with the Ost slaying, Jarvis said. Police sealed the vehicle and preserved the evidence for authorities investigating the two child killings.

The break in the Ost case came several days later when a “little old lady” in Pacific Beach told police that a man befriended her and accompanied her on a trip to Ost’s apartment before the elderly woman’s death.

“She didn’t have any idea it was Bland,” Jarvis said of the key witness, whom he refused to identify. “She didn’t know his true name.”

In addition, police found witnesses who said they saw a middle-age man resembling Bland leave Ost’s apartment around the time of her death.

Jarvis said that when San Diego homicide detectives inquired about Ost, San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators immediately recognized her name. A check of the numerous pieces of evidence taken from Bland’s car revealed items with Ost’s name written on them, Jarvis said.