Help Sought in Finding 4 Potential Witnesses in Prostitutes’ Deaths

A law enforcement squad investigating a string of prostitution deaths is turning to the public for assistance in finding four potential witnesses in some of the cases, as well as in locating a vehicle believed to have been used in the attempted murder of a prostitute.

Detectives working with the San Diego Metropolitan Homicide Task Force discovered photographs of four young white people, who investigators believe may be witnesses in some of the 40 cases the task force is reviewing, Lt. Liz Foster said Monday.

The photographs of the four were found when detectives served a search warrant at an undisclosed location.

“These people are possibly potential witnesses to some of the task force investigations,” Foster said. “They are not in any danger, and we are just asking the public’s assistance in contacting these people.”

Foster, who, as a San Diego County sheriff’s lieutenant, is the designated spokeswoman for the joint county-city task force, said she did not know what the people witnessed but that investigators believe they and their testimony are crucial to the investigation.

The task force was formed last year after the nude bodies of numerous strangled women were discovered in various remote areas of the county. For the most part, the victims were prostitutes with a drug and street life style.

The killings here began after a similar series of slayings ended in the Seattle area, where investigators are still probing the so-called Green River murders. Authorities in San Diego have said they do not believe the two serial murders are related.

Foster said Monday that San Diego detectives also believe “there is no connection at this time” between the killings here and a series of similar slayings in New Bedford, Mass., where eight women have been slain.

The task force is also asking the public to help it find an older-model, full-size white station wagon with a damaged passenger wing window and dark-color interior.

Foster said the station wagon was used in an attempted murder that occurred Jan. 6. In that case, Helen Ruth Toy told police she was choked unconscious by a man who drove her to the Upper Otay Reservoir.

Since then, Glesty O. Waters has been charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and kidnaping. But the vehicle described by Toy has never been found, Foster said, and detectives have been unable to determine whether it might have been used in any of the other slayings.

Anyone with information about the four potential witnesses or the car are asked to call authorities at 298-9973.