Homicide Task Force Gets Added Help From State

The task force that for two years has probed the murders of 43 women, mostly prostitutes and transients, is adding two more members of the state attorney general’s office to help investigate possible police corruption.

The two investigators will join Deputy Atty. Gen. Gary Schons on a team concentrating on police misconduct, including allegations that police had sex with prostitutes and might have been responsible for some of the murders.

Unlike Schons, however, who is an attorney, the two new members are law enforcement officials trained to investigate criminal wrongdoing rather than prosecute criminal cases.

The task force now has a staff of 23, including representatives from the district attorney’s office, city Police Department, county Sheriff’s Department and attorney general’s office. Sheriff John Duffy, Police Chief Bob Burgreen and Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller are in charge of the group.

The attorney general’s participation in the case is considered important to the credibility of the task force because some people have questioned how police officers can investigate their own without bias.

Adding the two investigators from the attorney general’s office “adds to the independence of the task force,” task force spokeswoman Bonnie Dumanis said.

However, police investigators are part of the group looking at police corruption, Dumanis said. She would not say how many officers are part of that effort.

Concern over the murders intensified Tuesday after sources disclosed that the task force was investigating the disappearance of Cynthia Maine, a prostitute and police informant who was a friend of Donna Gentile. Gentile’s nude and battered body was found in June, 1985, shortly after she testified against two police officers at a civil service hearing.

Her mouth was stuffed with rocks, leading to speculation that she might have been killed by police officers attempting to label her a snitch.

Like Gentile, Maine was a police informant who helped set up drug buys. Maine was imprisoned in September, 1985, for passing bad checks, but had her sentence reduced by two months, her sister said, after she gave police information linking officers and prostitutes. She was released in November, 1985, and disappeared the following February.

Her family believes she might have been killed by police officers for telling the department’s internal affairs unit what she knew.

The task force last week searched the home of Sgt. Sal Salvatierra, who worked in internal affairs before being transferred. The task force was said to be looking for photographs of Maine and Gentile. Maine’s sister said Maine met with Salvatierra on several occasions, but said she did not know the extent of their relationship.

Salvatierra was the subject of a 1985 internal affairs investigation into allegations that he and other officers had sex with Maine, according to information from two sources familiar with the investigation. Investigators dropped the case after they could not conclude whether the allegations were true or false.

Maine’s family said she was romantically involved with Officer John Fung, a member of the narcotics street team. Maine met Fung after he arrested her in July, 1984, and they began an affair that lasted until she was jailed in September, 1985, her family said. Fung used Maine as an informant, her family said, and she fell in love with him.

In a diary she kept during the latter part of 1984, Maine made repeated jottings about Fung and their relationship, including various trips the two supposedly made to the bedroom.

Maine also mentioned in the diary meeting Detective Les Oberlies of the department’s criminal intelligence division. Her family said she also met with former Sgt. Dennis Sesma.

None of the officers could be reached for comment.