Suspect in 2 Oakland Killings Probed in 42 San Diego County Murders

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 the county during the last four years.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jim Cooke said Thursday that authorities are interested in Dewain Hall, 25, 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.”

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.

According to a probation report filed when Hall was sentenced to state prison for a San Leandro robbery two years ago, Hall was born in San Diego, graduated from an area high school in 1982, served four years in the Navy and was a landscaper at a San Diego airport.