Police Probe Abductions of 2 More Women : Crime: Kidnapings in week now total four. Authorities doubt that they are connected.

Authorities on Tuesday were investigating the abductions of two more Los Angeles-area women--one of whom was sexually assaulted and killed--bringing to four the number of local women kidnaped in less than a week.

Detectives, however, said the cases probably are not related. Descriptions of suspects provided by witnesses have varied, as have the suspects’ methods and weapons used.

Moreover, detectives said they do not believe that the spate of cases represents an upturn in violent sexual attacks or abductions which, at least in Los Angeles, have declined statistically in recent years.

“If you saw the reports we get daily, these kinds of occurences, unfortunately, happen all the time,” observed Detective Steve Laird, a Los Angeles Police Department sex crimes investigator.

Laird noted, perhaps ironically, that sexual assaults in Los Angeles tend to decline during December.

It was last Friday when Irene Franco, 20, was abducted from a Carson drive-in theater by three armed men who beat her boyfriend and then raped and murdered her. The suspects remain at large.

The most recent abduction occurred about 4 a.m. Tuesday, when a man driving a van offered a ride to two young women walking in the 2400 block of Pacific Coast Highway in Wilmington, said Lt. Mike Markulis of the LAPD’s Harbor station.

Markulis said the man grabbed one of the women and handcuffed her to the steering wheel.

When the other woman, Zennie Joanna McGowan, 23, of Long Beach, ran from the van, the suspect chased McGowan, trapped her against a chain-link fence, and beat her with a padlock and chain that was hanging from the fence gate.

The woman handcuffed to the steering wheel--whom McGowan identified as either Michele Thomas or Michele Thompson, 24, of Carson--has not been seen since, nor has the van, which Markulis described as a light blue Ford or Dodge.

The suspect was described as white, about 35 years of age, 5 feet, 7 inches, and 140 pounds. He had long dark hair, a dark mustache and was wearing eyeglasses.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles police detectives in the Wilshire area were looking for two men in last week’s kidnaping, sexual assault and slaying of a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center filing clerk whose body was found Friday afternoon in a vacant lot behind a church in the 5700 block of Rodeo Road.

Norma Johnson, 25, was last seen alive at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, when she left work at Cedar’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she had worked for three months, according to hospital spokesman Ron Wise.

Police said they believe that after shooting the woman once in the head and dumping her body, her attackers went to Inglewood to burglarize her home. There, at about 1:30 a.m. Friday, they encountered her husband, Charles Johnson Jr.

Johnson, an Army recruiter, tried to run outside to call police, but was shot several times in the torso. He died at a nearby hospital.

Police said detectives were able to put the two homicide cases together when Mrs. Johnson’s father filed a missing persons report with Inglewood police after the slaying of his son-in-law. Los Angeles detectives, monitoring teletype messages between police departments, recognized the missing woman’s description as being that of Mrs. Johnson, whose body initially could not be identified.

Mrs. Johnson’s car was found abandoned Saturday in South Los Angeles.

Detective Dan Andrews said there did not appear to be any connection between the Johnson homicides and the slaying of Irene Franco.

“There were different calibers of guns used, different parts of county, different methods,” Andrews said. “Although we are keeping an open mind, there is nothing at this point to link anything together.”

Elsewhere, Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators were still searching for clues in Monday’s abduction of a 33-year-old Bassett woman.

The woman and her husband, 34, were in their car in a park in the City of Industry when two gunmen forced the husband out and drove off with the woman. She was released unharmed about an hour later and 12 miles away in San Dimas.

The couple’s car, a 1988 white Thunderbird, license plate 2KHY059, was still missing on Tuesday.

And, in Orange County, Garden Grove homicide detectives continued searching for a stolen car that they believe may lead them to the assailant who raped and killed a 30-year-old Fountain Valley woman on Sunday.

The victim, Hong Thi Nyugen, was shot in the head after being sexually assaulted. Her white Toyota MR2 was missing and apparently stolen.