Probe of Prostitute Slayings Intensifies

The task force investigating the mysterious series of prostitute slayings that have consumed law enforcement officials for two years is nearly doubling in size and requesting outside help for the first time.

The joint city-county Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, which has been investigating the deaths of 43 women--most of them prostitutes--since 1988 is expanding from 11 to 21 investigators, including at least one representative from the state attorney general’s office, a law enforcement source said Wednesday.

A statement released Wednesday by the task force announcing the expansion did not disclose the reasons. However, The Times has reported that the group’s top-priority case has become the death of Donna Gentile, a prostitute-turned-police informant who testified about misconduct in the San Diego Police Department shortly before her body was found in June, 1985.

The task force’s expansion suggests that officials are intensifying efforts to solve Gentile’s murder and 42 others that occurred since then and fit a similar pattern. Most of the victims were prostitutes, transients or drug addicts, sometimes strangled and sometimes mutilated.

“It’s clear that the chief is committed on this,” said Cmdr. Larry Gore of the Police Department, explaining the sentiments of Police Chief Bob Burgreen. “He wants these (investigations) concluded to whatever extent possible.”

Burgreen, along with Sheriff John Duffy and Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, direct the task force.

Gore declined to discuss the expanded task force’s method of investigation.

“We will not conduct our investigation in the public arena,” he said. “We will do so methodically, slowly and correctly.”

In June, Burgreen detached Norm Stamper, the second-ranking officer in his department, to review the Gentile case. Burgreen said at the time that he wanted to end speculation about whether police officers were involved in Gentile’s death.

Adding a prosecutor from the state attorney general’s office is seen as a way to silence critics who say that task force members, many of whom are San Diego police detectives, cannot objectively scrutinize members of their own department who may be involved.

“You can’t have peers investigating each other,” said a law enforcement source who asked not to be identified. “The state attorney’s office is being called in to give this investigation some credibility and some impartiality.”

The task force, a conglomerate of investigators from the sheriff’s office, Police Department and district attorney’s office, has helped convict seven people since 1988, all of whom had attempted to kill prostitutes. All seven are still considered suspects in some of the 43 murders, said Assistant Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis, a member of the task force.

The task force is working under the assumption that more than one serial killer is responsible for the murders, she said.

Dumanis said Deputy Atty. Gen. Gary W. Schons would be joining the task force and that other “investigative and clerical resources” may be used from his office. Schons is head of the special prosecutions unit in San Diego and has been with the office 12 years. Schons could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Gentile’s severely beaten, nude body was tossed off Sunrise Highway in rural East County five years ago. Gravel was stuffed inside her mouth, an indication that she may have been killed because she testified against police officers.

Because of her association with police, an officer was fired and a lieutenant demoted.

Gentile told the city’s Civil Service Commission that Officer Larry Avrech gave her confidential police information in exchange for sex. The commission later concluded that it had no evidence to support Gentile’s allegation but upheld other charges that Avrech impeded a police probe of the matter and revealed internal police procedures against prostitution.

Testimony at Lt. Carl Black’s hearing revealed that he gave Gentile money to help pay legal expenses for her prostitution arrests. Black was demoted but has since been reinstated.

So convinced was Gentile that she was about to become the target of police retaliation that she tape-recorded her fears four months before her death.

“I feel someone in a uniform with a badge can still be a serious criminal,” she said on the tape, which was turned over to the press upon her instructions after she was killed.

The Gentile case has long disturbed Burgreen.

“There is no slaying in this city that has bothered me more than the murder of Donna Gentile,” Burgreen said in June. “And, if indeed a police officer was involved in murder, I want him arrested, and I want him put behind bars.”

Burgreen dispatched Assistant Chief Stamper, who normally runs the department’s daily operations, to the task force’s hidden Mission Valley headquarters. Stamper, who remains detached from his regular duties, and other task force members did not return telephone calls Wednesday.

Wednesday’s task force announcement provided few details about the operation, including its size or the number of investigators to be added.

“Details of the task force enhancements were not, and cannot be, revealed because publication of such information impedes task force work,” the statement said.