Slayings Suspect Questioned in Abuse : Serial killings: He was interrogated about injuries to his infant daughter, but freed for lack of evidence.

The stock clerk charged with two in a string of 19 Riverside County murders was questioned by Rialto police in October on suspicion of severely abusing his infant daughter, but authorities didn’t discover he was on parole for murdering another infant in Texas 18 years ago.

The 3-month-old baby was hospitalized at Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in Fontana and nearly died of severe brain damage, three broken ribs and a broken leg, officials said Wednesday.

William L. Suff and his second wife, Cheryl Lewis Suff, denied responsibility for the baby’s injuries, and results of polygraph tests were inconclusive, the Rialto detective who handled the case said Wednesday.

Citing insufficient evidence, the San Bernardino County district attorney declined to bring charges against the Suffs. Nevertheless, the baby was placed in protective custody by county officials and is now living with a family out of the area, authorities said.

“When I heard the news of his arrest (for two murders), I was shocked,” said Rialto Detective Joe Cirilo, who questioned Suff in October and blamed “a computer error” for the prior conviction not showing up.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the task force investigating the string of murders Wednesday upgraded Suff, 41, to a “prime suspect” in the serial killings. But Suff has only been charged in the two deaths and is being held without bail.

Suff’s 20-year-old wife was described by a friend Wednesday as “depressed and shocked” at her husband’s arrest in the murders of Catherine McDonald, 31, and Elenor O. Casares, 39, victims 17 and 19 of the prostitutes and drug users slain since 1986.

Beth Fitzgerald, who attended the couple’s March, 1990, wedding in Las Vegas, said Cheryl Suff knew nothing of her husband’s criminal past and has been “basically a basket case” since reports about him emerged. They met at a Lake Elsinore convenience store where Cheryl worked, Fitzgerald said.

“He told us, and he told her, that he lived in (Lake) Elsinore all his life,” said Fitzgerald, a resident of Canyon Lake who attended Elsinore High School with Cheryl Suff. “She’s finding out a lot in the newspapers. . . . She wants to be by herself. She wants to sort everything out.”

In 1974, Suff and his then-wife, Teryl Rose Suff, were convicted of murder in Ft. Worth, Tex., in the death of their 2-month-old daughter Dijanet. The girl’s liver was ruptured from a beating, she had 12 broken ribs, and a cigarette burn almost to the bone on her heel.

Both Suffs were sentenced to 70 years in prison, but Teryl’s conviction was overturned on appeal. William Suff served 10 years before his parole to California.

Suff was arrested by fluke on Jan. 9 after a Riverside traffic officer saw him make an illegal U-turn in the city’s red light district. A Riverside County stock clerk, Suff became a suspect after investigators impounded his gray Mitsubishi van and found suspicious evidence in the vehicle and later in his Colton apartment.

“He’s our No. 1 candidate in two of 19 related killings,” said Riverside Sheriff’s Detective Henry Sawicki, spokesman for the task force. “That means he’s a prime suspect in the others.”

Sawicki said detectives are now “trying to take (Suff) . . . and plug him into each individual case.” Investigators will check Suff’s whereabouts at the time of each killing and may use scientific testing of hair and blood, Sawicki said.

It might take “weeks, even months,” before investigators decide whether Suff will face charges in the other killings, Sawicki said: “But he’s not going anywhere.”

Elsewhere in the Inland Empire, authorities and acquaintances painted an increasingly bizarre portrait of Suff, a Torrance native who graduated from Perris Union High School before joining the Air Force and moving to Texas.

Former neighbors described Suff as a self-appointed watchman who portrayed himself as a police or California Highway Patrol officer. He kept a pistol and handcuffs in his van, and a CHP cap sat prominently on the dashboard, they said.

“He was a gung-ho type of person,” said a neighbor in Rialto who did not want to be named. “I remember one time, a guy was parked in his space and he went out with a pistol. He acted like he was a cop or something.”

Some appreciated this tough-guy behavior: “He was like a local hero around here,” said Eric De Mauney, 21, of Rialto. “He was interested in helping us put up the Neighborhood Watch.”

Others, however, said they were unnerved by Suff.

“I noticed that a lot of times he’d be leaving at strange times of night,” said Glen Selden, a construction worker and neighbor in Colton.

Strange, Selden said, was Suff’s appearance on the afternoon of Dec. 21, when Selden knocked on his neighbor’s door to request that Suff move his van.

“When he came to the door I noticed that he had all these scratches down his face, like someone had taken their hand and scratched him from the forehead down to the face,” Selden said. “I knew he couldn’t have done it by shaving. No one shaves their forehead.”

Two days later, Selden saw the news reports--police had found the body of Casares--and remembered the scratches.

In Rialto, the Suffs lived in a cramped two-bedroom apartment brimming with science-fiction books, a computer and a fish tank, neighbors said. The couple were evicted in November after falling four months behind on their rent, said Rauna De Vault, the building manager. Left behind in the unit, she said, were about 40 telephone books and pieces of what looked like X-ray equipment.

Rialto police encountered Suff on Oct. 28, when Detective Cirilo questioned him in the beating of the couple’s 3-month-old daughter, named Bridgit Anne and called Brie-Anne by her parents. The Suffs had brought their infant to the hospital three days before, telling doctors she had been acting “moody and fussy” for some time, Cirilo said.

There were no bruises evident on the baby, and doctors initially prescribed ear medication and sent the child home. But later tests revealed more: The baby had “severe head injuries that had caused serious brain damage,” as well as three broken ribs and a broken femur, Cirilo said. Her condition was “very critical,” he said, and her prognosis poor.

Doctors diagnosed the injuries as “shaken baby syndrome,” in which adults violently shake youngsters, sometimes causing hemorrhaging and irreparable harm to the brain, Cirilo said.

Because results of the polygraph were inconclusive and there was virtually no evidence that abuse had occurred, no charges were filed, said Frank Vanella, the San Bernardino County deputy district attorney who handled the case.

Still, Vanella said “I don’t believe it was an accidental injury.”

Times staff writers Jenifer Warren and Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles and Ted Johnson in Riverside County also contributed to this story.