S.D. Police Interested in Man Held in Oakland Prostitute Killings

A San Diego native charged this week with killing two prostitutes in Oakland is being investigated by authorities here to determine whether he had any role in the slayings of 42 street women found dead in San Diego County during the past four years.

Sgt. Jim Cooke of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said Thursday that authorities are interested in 25-year-old Dewain Hall because of his ties to San Diego and as a possible link to the unsolved series of slayings here.

“He’s been in and out of the county since the series commenced back in 1985,” Cooke said. “We’re not calling him a suspect in any specific case, but we still want to take a look at him. There are similarities in that the victims are prostitutes.”

Hall is accused in the Oakland shooting deaths of Teresa Ann Greenlee, 26, whose body was found Sept. 25, and Annie Green, 29, whose body was found Sept. 20.

Police also believe Hall was in San Diego as recently as 10 days ago, when he drove here with the woman who eventually turned him in.

Five prostitutes and a homeless woman have been found dead in the Oakland area, either shot, beaten to death or hanged. In San Diego, however, most of the female victims were strangled.

But, like the Oakland victims, the San Diego women were killed in one location and their bodies dumped elsewhere, officials said. Nevertheless, Cooke cautioned that Hall is only “someone we’re interested in looking at. And it’s way too early to say anything positive for sure.”

According to a probation report filed when Hall was sentenced to state prison for a San Leandro robbery two years ago, Hall said he was born in San Diego, the youngest of three children.

He said he graduated from a San Diego high school in 1982 and served four years in the Navy before being discharged in February, 1987. He also has said he worked as a landscaper at a San Diego airport.