Rape Suspect Questioned in Serial Killings

A 23-year-old San Diego man being held in a Las Vegas jail on suspicion of rape is being questioned in connection with the series of stabbing deaths of five women in Clairemont and University City, police said Monday.

“But I have my doubts” about whether he’s the killer, Lt. Gary Learn, head of a task force investigating the killings, said at an afternoon press conference.

Learn identified the man as Louis Mandez, who also spells his name Mendez, police said. The suspect was picked up by the Nevada State Highway Patrol at 4:35 a.m. Sunday on a road just outside Las Vegas, authorities said.

Mandez is being held in the Clark County jail in Las Vegas in lieu of $3,000 bail, a spokeswoman said. He was arrested on suspicion of possessing a stolen vehicle and having raped a woman in San Diego on Saturday afternoon.

Learn said Mandez matches the description of a light-skinned black male seen running from the Clairemont apartment where 18-year-old Holly Suzanne Tarr--the third victim in the serial slayings--was stabbed to death April 3.

That man was described by a maintenance man and a painter who saw him leave the apartment as being 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-10, 18 to 23 years old, with a trim to medium build and short-cropped dark hair. A composite drawing bearing that description has circulated for months.

But Learn expressed doubt several times Monday that Mandez is, indeed, the Clairemont-University City killer.

Mandez was described by officials at the Las Vegas jail Monday night as 6-foot-1, 175 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. He was also described as white. Asked to confirm the description, a spokeswoman for the jail said: “He’s WH, Caucasian, white. That’s what the officers wrote on the arrest report.”

Learn said San Diego authorities received a report that a dark-skinned male raped a Pacific Beach woman, a 22-year-old UC San Diego student, in her townhouse apartment in the 900 block of Loring Street about 1 p.m. Saturday.

He said the woman fit the pattern of victims in the series of killings, the first of which occurred Jan. 12, 1990, on Cowley Way in Clairemont. Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the first slaying, and police “took note of that,” Learn said.