Link Between Body, Serial Killings Is Not Ruled Out

Authorities are investigating whether the body of a woman found wrapped in a blanket near Ortega Highway in February is connected to a string of murdered women in Riverside County.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department detectives have identified the victim as Teresa Cacho, 20, of Riverside.

Cacho, identified by fingerprints, was discovered Feb. 3 at the bottom of a dirt embankment near the Riverside County line, said Lt. Richard J. Olson, Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

The county coroner’s office determined that she died of suffocation.

“Right now we’re looking at it as potentially being related to ours,” Riverside County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Dan Miller said. “We haven’t discounted it as being connected.”

The Riverside department has been trying to solve what officials there believe is a serial-murder case, in which 10 women, many of them prostitutes, were apparently slain then dumped in rural areas, Miller said.

The Riverside string of murders began in April, 1988, when authorities found Linda Ann Ortega, 37, who had been stabbed in the heart. The latest murder that Riverside authorities suspect as being the work of one killer was of Kathleen Leslie Milne, 42, whose body was discovered near the Corona Freeway.

Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Olson also said that his department is not ruling out the possibility that the Cacho murder is part of the string of Riverside slayings. He said that no suspect has been identified in her murder.

Olson said Cacho’s identification, which was made possible through the computerized Cal-ID fingerprinting computer system, may provide a new lead in the case.

The identification “gives us a whole new world to start investigating,” Olson said.

A week before Cacho’s body was found, the nude body of a woman was discovered along Ortega Highway, near San Juan Capistrano.

Last week, authorities in Phoenix arrested Francisco Martinez Soriano, 29, in connection with that murder, Olson said. The identity of that woman is being withheld pending notification of next of kin, who are believed to be living in a small town outside of Mexico City.

Detectives had ruled out any connection between that case and the Cacho murder.