Deputy Reportedly Seized in Series of Prostitute Slayings

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has been arrested in connection with a series of slayings of prostitutes who sold sex for drugs in South-Central Los Angeles, a source close to the investigation said late Thursday.

The deputy, whose identity was not disclosed, was arrested while driving an official county vehicle about midnight Wednesday by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division, the source said. Police have recovered a weapon that may have been used in the killings, the source said.

Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Cmdr. William Booth would not comment on the case except to say that Chief Daryl F. Gates and Sheriff Sherman Block will hold a news conference today to announce a “significant development in a case of mutual interest.”

Police have refused to acknowledge that they were looking for a serial killer. They would only say that they were investigating a series of crimes that involved women who traded sex for drugs.

Since August, 1985, at least nine such women, known in street slang as “strawberries,” have been found shot to death. The same small-caliber handgun had been used in the slayings.

The first victim was found in an alley off West Gage Avenue. The body of the last of the women was found in November, 1988.

A 77th Street officer, who asked not to be identified, confirmed that a deputy had been “detained” Wednesday night on a “Vehicle Code violation.”

“He was turned over to the Sheriff’s Department for administrative investigation,” the officer said.

Harshly Criticized

Community activists harshly criticized police for keeping the investigation of the killings a secret until it was leaked to a television reporter last week. Police said publicizing the current murders would have hindered their investigation.

“We are outraged that you have made so deadly a calculation when so many lives were at risk,” Margaret Prescod, founder of the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders, told members of the Police Commission.

Prescod, whose group was formed during a separate wave of prostitute murders in South-Central Los Angeles, charged that the department’s refusal to publicize the slayings unnecessarily endangered the lives of poor, black women in South-Central Los Angeles.

As many as 14 of those earlier murders, then-believed committed by a the so-called Southside Slayer or Slayers, occurred between September, 1983, and July, 1986, a period overlapping the current investigation.

One man has been convicted in one of the deaths, and two other suspects have been charged separately in seven of the slayings.