Suspect in Serial Murders Charged With 2 Killings : Crime: Ex-convict is being investigated in 17 other slayings of women in Riverside County since 1986.

A beefy stock clerk who served 10 years in a Texas prison for the beating death of his infant daughter was charged Tuesday with two of the 19 grisly killings of women that have haunted Riverside County since 1986.

Detectives said that William Lester Suff, 41, of Colton is being investigated in the 17 other murders of women who were known prostitutes or drug users. But Riverside County Sheriff Cois Byrd, addressing a crowded news conference, said it was not known whether Suff will be charged as a serial killer responsible for the other slayings.

“There is strong evidence linking Mr. Suff” to the murders of Riverside prostitutes Catherine McDonald, 31, and Elenor O. Casares, 39, two of the three most recent victims whose deaths have been attributed to a serial killer, Byrd said.

“We will be closely reviewing and evaluating the other 17 homicide cases for any link to Mr. Suff,” Byrd said.

Despite the sheriff’s cautious words, some law enforcement authorities seemed to characterize Suff’s arrest as a bigger triumph in the long-running investigation: “We’re all relieved that an end to these killings is in sight,” Riverside Police Chief Linford (Sonny) Richardson told reporters.

Suff, a native of Torrance described by one former neighbor as “the quiet type,” was charged with the two homicides during a videotaped jailhouse proceeding Tuesday. He is being held without bail at Riverside County’s Robert Presley Detention Center and will enter a plea at his arraignment Feb. 4, said his attorney, public defender Floyd Zagorsky.

Zagorsky would not discuss his client or the case, saying only that “It’s been a very trying matter.”

Suff was arrested purely by chance at 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 9, one block from University Avenue, a busy boulevard near downtown Riverside that is the hub of the local prostitution trade and where many of the victims were last seen alive.

Riverside Police Officer Frank Orta stopped Suff’s 1989 Mitsubishi van when it made a U-turn after pausing beside an alleged prostitute, said sheriff’s Lt. Al Hearn, supervisor of the 14-member serial killer task force.

Hearn said the officer found irregularities with Suff’s vehicle registration and noticed his driver’s license had expired. Orta arrested Suff, who was described as cooperative, and the vehicle was impounded. After unidentified items that “caused suspicion” were found in the van, the serial killer task force was notified, Hearn said.

On Friday, investigators obtained search warrants and removed items “of a scientific nature” from Suff’s home, said Hearn, who declined to describe the evidence. Suff was held on a Texas parole violation until the murder charges were filed Tuesday.

Suff has worked for the Riverside County Purchasing Department since October, 1986, county officials said. He recently moved to Colton from Lake Elsinore, a quiet town in the county’s southwestern reaches where many of the bodies were dumped.

Guyla Lovely, daughter-in-law of the woman who manages the complex where Suff lived in apartment G for about a year, said Suff had portrayed himself as a police officer when he moved into the building. Relatives of several victims have speculated that the killer might be an officer or a police impersonator--someone whom the prostitutes would not fear.

“Nobody ever saw a car or a uniform, but he said he was a cop who patrolled the lake area,” Lovely said. “He kept late hours and when he was home the shades were always down. . . . Nobody knew much about him.”

Lovely said Suff had a woman living with him for several months at the end of 1990 or early 1991, and he announced last year that they had married. He then moved out, telling the manager he was going to live with his bride’s mother. But he declined to leave a forwarding address--choosing instead to forfeit a $400 security deposit--and everyone at the building lost contact with Suff, Lovely said.

The seven-unit apartment building is two blocks from Lake Elsinore’s Main Street, where several of the murdered prostitutes were seen last before disappearing.

“We’re all breathing a lot easier around here, let me tell you,” Lovely said. “If he is the Elsinore Killer, as we all call him, then we’re glad he’s behind bars.”

A similar sense of relief could be heard in the voices of prostitutes Tuesday night in Riverside. The killer has had many on edge, and news of an arrest was the talk of the sidewalks.

When shown a picture of Suff, several women who called themselves “ladies of the night” said they recognized him. Tina Bryant, 34, said she had “dated” Suff before Christmas, charging him $40.

“He was real quiet,” Bryant said as she stood at 7th Street and Park Avenue, where Suff had been arrested five days earlier. Suff, she said, had been “around here a lot” since October.

Tuesday marked the second time Suff has faced murder charges. In 1974, he and his wife were convicted of beating their 2-month-old daughter, Dijanet Jawn Suff, to death at his Ft. Worth home.

At the trial, the Tarrant County medical examiner said Dijanet died of a ruptured liver caused by multiple blows from a heavy instrument. He added that the infant had suffered many other blows before her death, including 12 broken ribs, a broken arm, a cigarette burn on the sole of her foot and numerous deep bruises.

The prosecutor in the case called Suff and his wife, waitress Teryl Rose Suff, “animals.” The jury apparently agreed, taking only 30 minutes to convict the couple and later sentencing each to 70 years in state prison.

Teryl Suff, however, was released after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned her conviction in January, 1976. The court concluded that while the evidence portrayed Mrs. Suff as a poor mother, there was not a “scintilla of evidence” that she was guilty of murdering her daughter.

Ft. Worth attorney Kenneth Pounds represented Teryl Suff. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Pounds said he remembers the “horrifying” case “like it was yesterday” and still sees images of the battered baby in his mind.

The Suffs, Pounds said, “were strange, cold. Remorse was not an emotion they seemed to express.”

Pounds said he believed his client had divorced her husband and moved to Austin after her release. The couple had an older son, William Suff Jr., who apparently was put up for adoption, Pounds said.

After serving nine years and nine months in Coffield State Prison near Palestine, Suff was paroled to San Bernardino in 1984, said David Nunnellee, a spokesman with the corrections division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Once here, Suff was required to adhere to both Texas and California parole guidelines, according to the California Department of Corrections. Because of a “satisfactory adjustment,” Suff in 1987 was placed on “annual report status,” said Raven Kazen, a spokeswoman for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. That required him only to mail in a yearly report to officials.

But in 1988, Suff stopped filing those reports, and after his arrest in Riverside, Texas authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.

According to court records and attorneys involved in his Texas criminal case, Suff has worked at numerous jobs during his lifetime, ranging from ambulance driver to day laborer. Before being discharged after a 15-month stint in the Air Force, he was a medic in the pediatrics ward at Carswell Air Force Base Hospital. (Military records were not immediately available to explain the discharge.)

Sandy-haired and beefy at 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighing 210 pounds, Suff had a penchant for vanity license plates, records show. State motor vehicle files show that Suff owned a Mitsubishi van with plates reading “BILSUF1” and previously had plates reading simply “BILSUF.”

Officials in the Riverside County Purchasing Department declined to discuss their co-worker on Tuesday. But Mary Stewart, a county government secretary, said she met him at a chili cook-off last fall and called him “real friendly.

“He was a real nice guy,” said Stewart. Suff, she recalled, won the top prize for the best chili in the county contest.

Detectives stressed on Tuesday that the task force will press on with its investigation of the other murders. The slayings began in 1986, abated in 1987 and then continued in subsequent years, with the last victim, Casares, turning up in a citrus grove on Dec. 23. The body of McDonald, the 17th victim, was found Sept. 13 on a barren hillside. Some of the women were stabbed, others were strangled.

On Tuesday, the relatives of one victim, 35-year-old Delliah Zamora, urged detectives to continue their hunt for clues.

“I’m relieved for these two families . . . but we can’t put our sister to rest until they find her killer,” said Jose Zamora, who came to Tuesday’s news conference carrying a picture of his sister, a mother of six who became the 18th victim found Oct. 30.

“It’s something that tears your heart out every day,” he said. “It’s like daggers in your heart.”

Warren reported from Los Angeles, McDonnell from Riverside County. Times staff writers Paul Feldman and Janet Rae-Dupree also contributed to this story.