Skull Discovered Near Rancho Bernardo

What appears to be a human skull was found Saturday afternoon in a secluded field near Rancho Bernardo. The skull is being studied to see whether it came from a victim of an ongoing series of prostitute slayings, police said.

The skull was found about 2:30 p.m. by a reserve San Diego County sergeant who last month assisted in a police search of the area after bones were found there.

The skull was about 1.8 miles north of Black Mountain Road, just past the entrance to Black Mountain Park. The reserve deputy voluntarily went back to that area Saturday to search further, police said.

Reserve Deputy Found It on His Own

“Apparently this reserve sergeant had been involved in a search of that area after the initial bones were found,” Police Lt. Mike Blakely said. “He went out on his own and rechecked this area, and that’s when he found the skull.”

Blakely said it was not immediately determined whether the skull was human or if it matched the other bones found there.

“That’s something that will have to be put together by the coroner,” he said. “But it was found in the general area of where the other human bones were found.”

Earlier this month, city and county law enforcement officials created a joint San Diego Metropolitan Homicide Task Force to investigate at least 32 slayings in which the bodies of women--many of them prostitutes and transients--were killed and their bodies dumped in remote areas of the county.

The discoveries of the bodies began in 1985, and there is some speculation that the killer or killers may also have been involved in the Green River slayings in the Seattle area.

Most of the San Diego bodies have been found in portions of East County. But officials have lately been finding bodies in parts of North County, particularly along Black Mountain Road between Rancho Bernardo and Rancho Penasquitos.