Reports of Serial Killings Stir Fear, Fatalism on Southside

Kay, a streetwalker for 26 of her 46 years, started tucking a knife into the pocket of her designer jeans about a month ago after another prostitute was found murdered near one of the grimy Figueroa Street corners she frequents in South-Central Los Angeles.

The blade of her knife is small but sharp, its edge smeared with garlic so the wound it inflicts will burn. She knows of other streetwalkers who have gotten into the habit of carrying butcher knives.

Still, she and other streetwalkers working Figueroa Friday afternoon said they were not about to stay off the streets, despite reports that as many as a dozen South-Central prostitutes have been murdered since 1985 in what appears to be the area’s second wave of prostitute serial killings.

“I’m going to be careful,” Kay said, scanning the strip for clients. But she has to earn a living.

Although she said that police had warned her of the killings, several other streetwalkers complained that they had heard about them only through fragmentary news reports this week. And Los Angeles City Councilman Robert C. Farrell, whose council district covers much of the South-Central area, blasted the Police Department’s decision not to inform the public about the investigation into the slayings.

“We should have been informed,” Farrell said in a press conference Friday. “After all their effort to get South-Central involved in Neighborhood Watch and crime prevention programs, we should have been told about this series of tragedies.”

For Figueroa’s streetwalkers, the reputed serial killer is another threat in a world of drugs, AIDS and clients who would sometimes just as soon cut their throats as pay them.

With a blend of fatalist faith and instinct, they try to navigate the dangers, often abiding by certain rules: Don’t get in a car with a client, take money rather than drugs and check the guy out before you take him to a motel room.

“I can look at their eyes and say uh-uhh,” said 32-year-old Mary, one of many who need money for cocaine habits. If you accept drugs rather than money, she explained, “that lets a person know how low you’ll go,” thus giving him the advantage.

Her way of life, she said, “is like slow suicide,” but she does not want anyone ending it for her. “I’m not going to let nobody take me. I’m not going to put my head on no chopping block.”

Combing her wig in the reflection of a shop window, a 36-year-old streetwalker said she hopes she does not encounter the killer, “but I’m going to trust in the Lord and hope for the best because I need some money.”

Angela, 27, prefers not to think about the murder threat. “I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s like AIDS,” she said. “We all got to survive. I ain’t going to sleep at no bus stop.”

Farrell said he was particularly “outraged” about reports that investigators informed prostitutes in the area about the possibility of a serial murderer while information was being withheld from the public.

“It’s the issue of credibility,” Farrell said. “This is not a marginal investigation, this is murder.

“For us not to know that there was the potential of serial crime, and for the Police Department to have been telling prostitutes about this investigation, but not the public, says to me that there’s been a breach of faith between the police leadership and the people of South-Central.”

Police Department Deputy Chief William M. Rathburn, commander of the South Bureau, defended the decision not to inform the public and said the department is continuing to withhold details of the investigation.

“I can’t comment on (the investigation) period,” Rathburn said. “We have valid reasons for not releasing information about the investigation, and those reasons are still valid.”

Rathburn added that he was “not at all concerned about” Farrell’s criticism. “I have discussed with him the problems with homicide investigations in the South Bureau, and he appreciates our situation,” he said, referring to an earlier dispute over the relatively low rate of solving crimes in the area.

Police have said little in response to news reports of the serial killings, describing the victims only as “strawberries,” the street name for women who sell sex for drugs.

The investigation overlaps that of the Southside Slayer case involving 17 women found strangled in South-Central Los Angeles between 1983 and 1986. Nearly all had been stabbed, and all but a few had arrest records for prostitution. One man has been convicted in one of the deaths, and two other suspects were charged separately in seven of the slayings.

In the most recent series of killings, KABC-TV reported on its Thursday newscasts that at least nine and as many as 12 prostitutes have been found shot to death over the last three years.

Farrell had harsh words for the department’s “low clearance rate” of crimes in South-Central, saying the rate is about 60% compared to “higher rates in other parts of the city.”

He urged passage of a bill requesting that the City Council authorize a $3.3-million appropriation to strengthen police homicide and narcotics investigation capability, particularly in the South-Central area.