Serial-Slayer Force Probes New Strangulation Attack

A law enforcement task force probing the possible serial murders of 40 San Diego County women began investigating the early-morning kidnaping and attempted strangulation of a San Diego prostitute Friday, police said.

Helen Ruth Toy, 33, told police that she was choked unconscious but survived the attack and was able to give police information about her assailant, said Sgt. Liz Foster, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force.

Similarity to Others

The city-county task force took over the case because of its similarity to a 3 1/2-year string of murders of women whose nude, manually strangled bodies have been found in remote parts of the county, Foster said. Detectives believe that many of the women were prostitutes who disappeared after soliciting customers on El Cajon Boulevard.

The task force also is attempting to determine whether the killings are linked to a series of 40 unsolved slayings and eight disappearances in Seattle, known as the Green River killings, which drew intense publicity in the early 1980s.

The task force last month arrested a transient and charged him in connection with the latest killing, the November slaying of Cynthia Lou McVey, whose body was found Nov. 29 in a field off California 76 near Pala.

The man, Alan Michael Stevens, who had been living in a van in San Marcos, will be investigated as a possible suspect in four to six more of the killings, police sources said at the time.

Police said Toy told them that she was working as a prostitute when she was kidnaped about 3:30 a.m. Friday from Delta and 42nd streets in Southeast San Diego.

She was reportedly taken to a rural area off Rancho Janal Drive, just East of the Upper Otay Reservoir, where her abductor tried to strangle her and left her unconscious about 4:30 a.m.

She was found by a passer-by and taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista, where she was released Friday afternoon.

Bone Chipped

Hospital spokeswoman Diane Yohe said Toy had no neck injuries. She suffered a chipped bone in her foot and a 2-inch cut on her right knee that required stitches, Yohe said.

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said it is possible to choke a victim to unconsciousness without leaving marks or injuring the victim’s neck.

Police refused to say who found Toy, when she was found or whether she was nude when she was found.

However, the attack on Toy differs from many of the other assaults in its location. Most of the murder victims were found in remote areas of the northern and eastern sections of the county.