Murder, Rape Trial Set for Ex-Athlete : Courts: Judge rules evidence is sufficient to hold former Compton College basketball star. He is accused of attacking and killing two women.

Former Compton College basketball star Roy Zachary Williams was ordered Monday to stand trial in the slayings of two young women--including a popular honor student at the school--and the kidnaping, rape and attempted murder of a third.

Williams, wearing a blue jail jumper and large, horn-rimmed glasses, leaned forward attentively in his seat as Long Beach Municipal Court Judge James L. Wright denied a defense motion to dismiss the charges. Williams did not show any emotion when Wright ruled after a four-day preliminary hearing that there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial.

The 6-foot, 8-inch former center was remanded without bail to the County Jail, where he has been held since his arrest in April.

Outside the courtroom, relatives of Lina Aldridge, whose partially nude body was found stuffed in the trunk of her parked car in San Diego two years ago, expressed relief.

“Justice is moving along,” said Katie Aldridge, grandmother of the dead girl. She wore a T-shirt with a large picture of her granddaughter on the front and the words “Justice for Lina Aldridge.”

The death in July, 1989, of Aldridge, 19, cast a pall over the Compton College campus. Authorities first said the student body vice president and peer counselor had died of a drug overdose, but her family insisted all along that she had been killed.

Williams, 26, also is charged with the rape and stabbing death in 1988 of Trina Denise Young, 19. Young’s body was found in her mother’s home in North Long Beach. The back yard of the house faces the Compton College campus.

Williams is also charged with the abduction and rape in July, 1989, of a 21-year-old Compton woman. Those charges were brought after the woman saw Williams on television in a news report about the slayings and recognized him as her assailant, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Carbaugh. “This is one of the worst persons we’ve seen in Long Beach,” Carbaugh said of Williams after Wright’s ruling.

Williams faces 10 counts. He also faces special-circumstances allegations that could lead to the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. A decision on whether to seek the death penalty will be made in the next two months, Carbaugh said.

Law enforcement sources told The Times this year that Williams was convicted of murder when he was a minor and served time in the California Youth Authority. Carbaugh would not discuss Williams’ juvenile record.

After Aldridge was killed, Williams was recruited by Cleveland State University in Ohio and transferred there. He was suspended from the basketball team and from the classes last December because of academic problems. Within days of his suspension, he was arrested and charged with raping an 18-year-old student at a fraternity party. Williams posted bail and left Cleveland. Carbaugh said a warrant has been issued for his arrest in that case.

In the Aldridge case, Williams, had been detained and questioned by police because he had been seen with her shortly before her death. It was Williams who first suggested to police that the young woman died of a drug overdose, Carbaugh said.

The dead girl’s family, however, vehemently denied that such a thing could be possible. Toxicology tests proved them right, but no cause of death could be determined by the San Diego County coroner.

The family hired a private investigator and an independent pathologist, who determined that Aldridge had been strangled or smothered. The family then filed a lawsuit against the Compton Community College District, contending that school officials knew that Williams had a criminal past and should have warned Aldridge, who, as a peer counselor, was working with him.

At his court hearing, a friend of both Williams and Aldridge testified that when Aldridge was last seen alive, she was with Williams in her gray Toyota. Another witness testified that Williams was seen driving such a car in San Diego.

In the Young case, police linked Williams to the killing through a DNA test of body fluids discovered at Young’s mother’s home. The test matched a blood sample taken from Williams during the investigation into Aldridge’s death.

Williams’ lawyer, Edward M. Cook, had tried to get the DNA test suppressed on the grounds that such tests are not universally accepted by experts, but Wright would not grant his motion.

After the hearing, Cook discounted the relevance of the test in a murder case.

“The DNA proves that he had sex with her,” he said. “It doesn’t prove he killer her.