Transient Arrested in Probe of Killings of 3 Dozen Women

A transient living in a van in San Marcos was arrested Tuesday by a law enforcement task force investigating the possible serial murders of more than three dozen women whose bodies have been found in remote parts of San Diego County.

Alan Michael Stevens was named in an arrest warrant in connection with the murder of Cynthia Lou McVey, 26, who was last seen in a Carlsbad tavern and whose nude body was found Nov. 29 in a field off California 76 near Pala.

Although Stevens, 46, has not been linked by police to any of the other 39 slayings, task force officials said that aspect of the investigation is continuing.

Authorities in the Seattle area, where a similar multiple murder case involves 40 victims and eight disappearances, have already ruled out Stevens as the suspected Green River Killer.

Officials said Stevens’ arrest was not the result of a tip from a viewer of a recent internationally broadcast television show seeking clues to the Seattle and San Diego cases.

Police sources said the investigation focused on Stevens because of statements made by people who were inside the tavern where McVey was last seen.

But Foster said Stevens was connected to the slaying on the basis of “physical evidence,” which she declined to explain.

No photos of Stevens were released, because authorities want witnesses in the other murders to view him in lineups. One police source described him as “huge, a mountain of a man.”

McVey, of Livermore in Northern California, died from asphyxiation due to strangulation, according to a coroner’s report. She was a transient and a drug user who was not “above turning a trick” for prostitution if she was desperate for money, her husband has told police. Many of the victims had a history of prostitution.