Southside Slayer Suspect Recants Earlier Confession

An unemployed Watts construction worker suspected of three of the so-called Southside Slayer killings testified Tuesday that he confessed to the murders because that is what homicide detectives “wanted to hear.”

In taking the witness stand in his own defense, Louis Craine, 32, recanted earlier statements he made to Los Angeles police detectives that he was responsible for five murders, including three linked to the serial murders of 18 young women, most of them prostitutes, between the fall of 1983 and May, 1987.

Craine insisted he is innocent of the murders despite the fact that his admissions were taped and played back during his trial in Compton Superior Court.

“I said those things, but they were lies,” Craine said. “They (detectives) wanted to hear things. They got things in their own minds . . . that they wanted to hear. It was all made up.”

Pressed by prosecutor John Watson, Craine said he lied to make detectives “feel good about themselves.”

Craine is charged with the strangulation murders of five prostitutes between November, 1984, and May, 1987. He also faces five counts of sex crimes that allegedly occurred during the murders.

Because of the special circumstance of multiple murders, Watson said he will ask for the death penalty should Craine be convicted of first-degree murder in any of the homicides.

His defense attorneys, Morris Jones and Donald Skyers, have contended in court that Craine’s confessions were the result of lengthy, intense interrogations.

“He often is given to exaggeration and he parrots other people,” Jones said during a court recess Tuesday. “He just repeated what detectives told him (in earlier talks).”

But Watson said Craine’s testimony “doesn’t make any sense” because much of what he said in his confession involved evidence known only to the killer and was given without prompting by the detectives.

During his testimony, Craine:

- Denied that he led detectives, without prompting, to the precise spots near his parents’ Watts home where two Southside Slayer victims--Sheila Rae Burton and Gail M. Ficklin--were found, respectively, in 1984 and 1985. He contended that the detectives coached him into revealing where the bodies of the two women were dumped.

- Contradicted earlier statements he made to police that he visited his parents’ Watts home in 1984 and ’85. “I was never there then,” he said.

- Contended that he never assaulted Cheryl Williams, a family friend who testified that Craine sodomized her and threatened her with a knife. “That never happened,” he said.

At times during the cross-examination, Craine and Watson sparred over the defendant’s repeated repudiations of his taped confessions.

“You’re playing psychology (with me),” Craine told the prosecutor on several occasions.

The case is expected to go to the jury on Friday.