No Police Link Made in Slaying of Prostitutes

Nearly 2 1/2 years after it began investigating the murders of dozens of prostitutes, a law enforcement task force has found no evidence that San Diego police officers were involved in any of the slayings, The Times has learned.

The prostitute murders and the speculation that police officers may have had something to do with one of them have consumed San Diego’s law enforcement community for nearly six years, since the body of 22-year-old prostitute and police informant Donna Gentile was found near a rural highway in East County.

Sources familiar with operations of the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force say that, although investigators may identify suspects in some of the murders, there are no police officers among them.

Six to 12 officers remain under investigation, however, for potential police corruption, but those cases are expected to be forwarded to the Police Department’s internal affairs unit without criminal prosecutions, sources told The Times. Those sources said the group investigating police corruption may complete its work and be disbanded as early as this summer.

The Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, a conglomeration of detectives and prosecutors from the Police Department, Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office and the state attorney general’s office, has been probing a series of 44 prostitute and transient murders since 1988.

Police Chief Bob Burgreen was so distressed by persistent rumors about possible police involvement in Gentile’s death that he sent his second-in-command to review the case and come up with recommendations.

But critics of the investigation have long maintained that a task-force investigation involving police detectives was incapable of an impartial probe and predicted that it would never lead to criminal indictments against any police officers.

Speculation about possible police involvement in Gentile’s murder surfaced in June, 1985, when her body was found nude and strangled. Several months before, Gentile had testified at a Civil Service Commission hearing about misconduct by San Diego police officers. Her testimony led to the firing of one officer and the demotion of another.

Before her death, she also tape-recorded fears that she might disappear because she had testified against police officers.

“I feel someone in a uniform with a badge can still be a serious criminal,” she said.

Because her mouth was stuffed with gravel at the time she was found, it was widely speculated that Gentile had been a victim of retaliation by police officers for her testimony.

One source close to the investigation called that interpretation “sophomoric” and said the task force no longer considers it a working theory. Instead, the source said, the task force believes that, if police officers were indeed involved in Gentile’s death, it is unlikely she ever would have been found so easily and so soon.

“All factors point away from the cop theory,” the source said. “If you have known police suspects” whom Gentile testified against during civil service hearings “and no arrests have been made in what has been probably the most intensely investigated homicide of all time in San Diego, what does that tell you?”

Gentile’s testimony prompted an internal department investigation that led to the firing of Officer Larry Avrech and the demotion of Lt. Carl Black, who has since been reinstated.

According to Gentile, Avrech provided her with confidential police information in exchange for sex, a charge Avrech has repeatedly denied. Testimony also revealed that Black gave Gentile $1,000 to defray her legal expenses on prostitution arrests and contacted a probation officer on her behalf.

Nearly six years after Gentile’s death, neither man has been linked to the crime.

Sources stressed that a bona fide suspect could emerge at any time, but, at this late stage of the investigation, they cannot tie the murders to any police officer, nor do they believe any will be arrested.

In fact, the task force branch dealing with police corruption may complete its work and be disbanded as early as this summer.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation and interviewed by The Times have refused to be named because of the sensitivity of their jobs. The task force itself has maintained an unusually high level of secrecy and made it policy that nobody connected to the group besides spokesman Dick Lewis should speak for the agency.

Lewis did not return telephone calls left at his office Thursday and Friday.

Three major factors buttress the task force theory that a police officer did not murder Gentile, a task force source said:

* That the body was found at all. Police officers are knowledgeable about crime and would not have dumped Gentile’s body in an open area where it could have been found and inspected.

* The condition of the body. Gentile was found nude and strangled, not likely the work of a professional killer, the source said.

* The slaying was the second of the 44 that the task force is investigating, so it is unlikely that the killer chose the method to disguise her death as part of a series.

Task force members now believe her death was more likely the work of a “sexual serial killer,” the source said.

Last year, the task force included in its probe of possible police involvement the case of Cynthia Maine, the daughter of former San Diego Police Officer Kenneth Maine. Like Gentile, Maine was a prostitute and police informant. She disappeared shortly after her release from jail in 1986, where she had served four months for writing bad checks.

Maine’s family identified several police officers that Maine was working with as an informant and at least one with whom she was sexually involved.

Investigators are working under the assumption that Maine is dead, but her body has never been found. Very few homicide cases are ever solved without finding the body, law enforcement officials say.

Maine’s brother, Mark, a former San Diego police officer, said the task force has no credibility.

“No family who has any connection to (the murders) would ever be satisfied with the police investigating themselves,” Maine said. “They are blatantly washing each other’s hands over there. Maybe they’ve got no suspects and no more evidence, but we have a missing family member, and we want to know why.”

Maine said his family had not been contacted by the task force since last November, when reports of Cynthia Maine’s disappearance surfaced in the news media.

Although the state attorney general’s office was added to the task force to quell criticism that police could not conduct an impartial investigation, Maine said the state came onto the scene far too late--more than five years after Gentile’s murder.

The task force, established in September, 1988, started its investigations more than three years after her death. By that time, Maine said, evidence was no longer fresh.

The arm of the task force that is looking at potential police corruption is looking at three areas involving allegations against six to 12 current and former officers, a source told The Times: sexual involvement with prostitutes; lying to the 1989-90 grand jury examining the Police Department’s handling of Karen Wilkening’s call-girl operation and failing to make arrests when officers were confronted with drug use.

Investigators also have found no evidence that police officials tried to hamper the investigation into the death of Gentile or others, according to a source.

The task force is expected to forward its findings to the Police Department’s internal affairs unit. Department administrators will decide whether any officers should be disciplined.

Several of the officers under investigation are represented by Everett Bobbitt, a San Diego attorney who has a contract with the Police Officers Assn., the collective bargaining unit of the 1,850-member force.

Bobbitt said none of the allegations involve murder.

“No cops have been suspended and none have been terminated,” he said. “From what I know, there’s nothing that any cop in this investigation can be prosecuted for. Everything has been total gross speculation and exaggeration.”

In an interview last week, Police Chief Bob Burgreen refused to comment on the work of the task force except to say they are doing “significant work . . . we hope that a lot of questions that have weighed heavily on our minds will be answered in 1991.”

No police officer can ever be cleared until the task force finds Gentile’s killer, he said.

“The only way we can take the pressure off the Police Department is to arrest someone” other than a police officer, Burgreen said. “My principal purpose is to find out who killed Donna Gentile. I hope that takes place early in 1991.”

Gentile’s murder, and the possibility that a police officer was responsible, so distressed Burgreen that he ordered Assistant Chief Norm Stamper last summer to leave his regular duties running the department to work full time on reviewing findings of the task force.

Stamper declined last week to comment on whether police officers were suspects in the prostitute murders.

But he said speculation last year that his personal review of the case would soon lead to a police officer’s arrest was off base.

“There was some very bad information coming out at that time,” he said. “I know people were saying, ‘They must be close to something if Stamper went down there.’ A more plausible explanation might have been that the investigation was almost 2 years old, and the task force was getting attacked in the media for not doing anything, and I was down there to figure out why.”

Stamper returned to his regular duties in November after suggesting that the task force be restructured so that one branch be responsible for police corruption, one be in charge of the Gentile murder and Maine disappearance and a third to oversee the other murders.

The task force membership was nearly doubled, and the state attorney general’s office was asked to head the police corruption probe, also at Stamper’s suggestion.

Ten law enforcement officials originally were assigned to the task force, but 13 more were added last September to handle the crush of information about the murders. This month, Sheriff Jim Roache added two more from his department.

The task force has convicted nine people so far in its investigation, but only one of murder. The others were convicted on a variety of charges, including assault, kidnaping and attempted murder.

Last month, a Superior Court judge sentenced Alan (Buzzard) Stevens to 25 years to life in state prison for the strangulation death of prostitute Cynthia McVey, 26, whose nude and strangled body was discovered in November, 1988.

McVey was the 40th prostitute or transient to be linked to the series of murders. Since then, four more have been killed, including a male transvestite.