Connection Sought in Murders of 8 Women : Crime: Most of the victims had a history of drug use or prostitution. All were found in the Lake Elsinore area.

It had been a year, almost to the day, since the last one. And with the passage of time, Katherine Chapman had begun to cope. Then came the grim news the morning of Jan. 19: Another local woman had been murdered, her body dumped amid a pile of rubbish alongside Interstate 15.

Kathleen Milne, 42, was the eighth woman found slain since April, 1988, in this seemingly placid lakeside town in southwestern Riverside County. Chapman’s daughter, Julie Lynn Angel, had been victim No. 5. She was bludgeoned to death and discarded nude beneath a stand of scraggly eucalyptus trees one November night in 1989.

“When I read about that poor girl . . . it just brought everything back,” recalled Chapman, 60, a forgotten cigarette smoldering between her fingers. “I had started to get used to seeing my daughter’s bed empty, to living without her. Now this. . . . I just wonder, when will it stop?”

Riverside County sheriff’s detectives are investigating a possible link among the eight homicides, and say the murders may be the work of a serial killer.

Most of the victims, authorities said, had a record of arrests for drug violations or prostitution, and most were found near the Interstate 15 corridor--some within several hundred yards of where another body had been found. Many were nude or partially nude, and all but one was from Lake Elsinore.

“The common thread is their history,” said Sgt. William Walsh, a sheriff’s spokesman. “These women moved in crowds where you can run into some pretty lousy characters, and that’s one reason I tend not to believe they were all killed by the same person. But we’re certainly not ignoring that possibility.”

Walsh said investigators have talked with detectives searching for the so-called Green River killer, who is suspected of murdering as many as 49 women in Washington state. They also have met with authorities from San Diego, who are investigating whether several dozen women killed between 1985 and 1989 are the victims of a single person.

Also, discussions are ongoing with police in nearby Riverside, where four women were murdered--possibly by a serial killer--last year.

In the Washington, San Diego and Riverside cases, the victims tend to fit a profile similar to the women slain in Lake Elsinore: most were prostitutes who used drugs. But so far, Walsh said, “we have no connections, no link.”

Moreover, a review of the evidence in the first seven killings by the state Department of Justice has also failed to establish any link, Walsh said.

The string of unsolved murders in Lake Elsinore has shaken some residents in this growing community of about 15,000, which was a mecca for water-skiers until the lake level began to plummet last year, largely because of the drought.

“We moved out here because it was a quiet little place,” Susan Meyers, a silver-haired retiree who relocated from Torrance two years ago, said recently while sipping coffee at a downtown cafe. “Now you read about all this awful stuff. It’s scary. I’m certainly locking my doors.”

Many other locals, however, seemed undisturbed by the killings.

“There was another one?” a clerk at Elsinore Office Products said when asked if she was worried about the murders. “I’m not real concerned. It’s not the kind of people I have anything to do with, so I really haven’t given it much thought.”

Pat Lovitt, owner of the popular Granny’s Kitchen restaurant downtown, believes that comment typifies the prevailing attitude. A lot of townsfolk, she said, feel “these girls, because (most) were prostitutes, just didn’t count.

“If it were a bunch of housewives getting killed, or little kids, then everyone would be running around with a gun, like vigilantes,” says Lovitt, who knew several of the victims. “But if it’s prostitutes, people figure it’s no concern of theirs.”

Indeed, one local real estate agent, who declined to give his name, seemed disgruntled that the crimes had attracted a reporter’s attention, worrying that publicity might hurt already depressed property values: “It’s not like we have a Hillside Strangler here. We have a health nut. He’s just cleaning up the town a little.”

Katherine and Robert Chapman are aware such views exist in Lake Elsinore, and such talk hurts the couple deeply. Their daughter, a petite brown-haired woman and the mother of two teen-agers, was a drug addict, and she resorted to prostitution to support her habit. Her parents were not happy about that, but, they say, Angel’s troubled life should not make her violent death any more acceptable.

“She was a good person, believe it or not,” Katherine Chapman said solemnly as she studied a coroner’s Polaroid of her daughter’s horribly beaten face. “She had two kids. I don’t care what my daughter or all these other girls did. They didn’t deserve to die.”

The homicides date to April 19, 1988, when the body of Linda Ann Ortega was found on a rocky hillside not far from downtown Lake Elsinore. Ortega, 37, had been stabbed in the heart.

Thirteen days later, Martha Bess Young, 27, was found slain on another hillside less than a mile away. Her body was so severely decomposed, Walsh said, a definitive cause of death was never determined. Investigators, however, feel confident it was a homicide.

After that, there were six more grisly discoveries:

Diane Mae Talavera, 37, was found along the lake shore on Jan. 17, 1989. Unlike the other seven victims, who detectives said were dumped after being murdered elsewhere, Talavera was killed on the beach--strangled not far from the mom-and-pop shops along Main Street.

Kimberly Lyttle, 28, was found June 28, 1989, another strangulation victim. Lyttle’s body was dumped off of Lost Road in a rugged area not far from Interstate 15.

The Chapmans’ daughter, 36-year-old Julie Angel, was found slain Nov. 11, 1989. Her body was discovered just a few hundred yards from Interstate 15, off a street her mother drives every day on her way to work.

A month later, on Dec. 13, 1989, the body of Christina Leal, 23, was found off of Railroad Canyon Road. She had been strangled and stabbed.

Darla Ferguson, 23, was next. She was found strangled Jan. 18, 1990, off a dirt road less than a mile from where Lyttle’s body had been dumped.

Milne, a Riverside resident with a history of prostitution and drug-possession arrests, was the latest victim, found by a couple who spotted her body while driving. Detectives have ordered the coroner’s record sealed and have not released any details about the killing or the victim. But Walsh said it was murder and it “fits the pattern” of the other slayings.

And, as in the earlier murders, Walsh said evidence in Milne’s death is “extremely slim.”

He declined to reveal any details about that murder--or any of the other slayings--but said he remains hopeful that “we may get enough to make an arrest. We certainly hope so.” Detectives, he added, are still watching “some” suspects in the previous killings, but do not have enough information to build a case.

Frustrated by the lack of evidence, Robert Chapman, 67, last year launched a personal crusade to find his daughter’s killer. In his hunt for clues, he has questioned prostitutes and drug users he knows through his job as a private security guard, and he has drawn elaborate charts, hoping to spot an important link among the murders that might have been overlooked by the authorities.

“I’m not going to leave one stone unturned, and I’m not ever going to give up,” he said. “The person who did this to my daughter will pay.”

Chapman believes detectives are doing the best they can on the murders given the dearth of evidence. But others have questioned the investigators’ diligence, wondering if the victims’ profession and low community status might have reduced interest in solving the murders. Walsh responds angrily to such suggestions.

“That’s insulting,” the sergeant said. “These people were human beings, just like you and me. I don’t care if they were prostitutes, I don’t care what they’ve done. They didn’t deserve what they got. . . . This department will spare no expense to find their killers.”

LAKE ELSINORE KILLINGS

The bodies of eight women have been found in the Lake Elsinore area since April, 1988. All of the deaths are considered homicides and the Riverside County Sheriff’s detectives are investigating the possibility they were murdered by a serial killer.

1. Linda Ann Ortega, 37, found April 19, 1988. (First victim found)

2. Martha Bess Young, k27, found May 2, 1988.

3. Diane Mae Talavera, 37, found Jan. 17, 1989.

4. Kimberly Lyttle, 28, found June 28, 1989.

5. Julie Lyn Angel, 36, found. Nov. 11, 1989.

6. Christina Leal, 23, found Dec. 13, 1989.

7. Darla Ferguson, 23, found Jan. 18, 1990.

8. Kathleen Leslie Milne, 42, found Jan. 19, 1991.