Police Fight Time in Effort to Link Austrian, Killings : Crime: The man is the prime suspect in the deaths of three L.A. prostitutes. But investigators may lose him to extradition before building a solid case.

Prosecutors say that although they do not have enough evidence against convicted Austrian murderer Jack Unterweger to file charges against him in the deaths of three prostitutes in Los Angeles, the former disc jockey is still their prime suspect.

“The cases are still under investigation,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael J. Montagna said earlier this week. “We know he was in the Los Angeles area at the time those three women died. We know that he apparently frequented prostitutes in the areas where these women worked. And we know that all three were strangled with their bras, which is basically similar to the 1973 murder in Austria for which he was convicted.”

Details about the three murders began to emerge Thursday as police and sheriff’s detectives--faced with the prospect of losing their suspect to extradition--intensified their efforts to build a case against the Austrian.

Unterweger, 42, who is being held in a Florida jail on an Austrian arrest warrant, first gained widespread attention in Europe in the 1980s. While serving time in an Austrian prison for the 1973 strangulation of a prostitute with her bra, he wrote an autobiography that made him the toast of Viennese cafe intellectuals.

Pressure from the literary set won him a parole in 1990 and his writing skills got him jobs as a free-lance journalist. Last year, he visited Los Angeles, where, at his request, police took him for a ride in a patrol car through areas frequented by prostitutes. When he returned to Austria, Unterweger wrote magazine articles about Los Angeles prostitutes.

Meanwhile, police in Austria were looking into the unsolved murders of seven other prostitutes who had died there--six of them by strangulation--after Unterweger was paroled. In February, an arrest warrant was issued for Unterweger in connection with two of those murders, but by then, the suspect had fled Austria with his 18-year-old girlfriend.

On Feb. 27, Unterweger was arrested in Florida on the Austrian warrant. Interpol--the international police agency--sent an inquiry to Los Angeles, noting Unterweger’s visit here between June 11 and July 16, 1991. The inquiry ended up on the desk of LAPD Detective Fred Miller.

Miller contacted Deputy Ron Lancaster, a counterpart at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The two investigators found themselves talking about three unsolved murders--two LAPD cases and a sheriff’s case--that they had discussed six months earlier, shortly after the crimes were committed.

“At the time these things happened, they were so similar we figured whoever did his two did mine too,” Lancaster said recently.

Miller, Lancaster and their partners are reluctant to discuss the cases, which are still under investigation, but said that the first one involved Shannon Exley, 35, whose body was found June 20, 1991, on a brush-covered hillside on the shoulder of the Pomona Freeway in the Boyle Heights area.

Sources close to the investigation said the isolated spot is typical of those chosen by prostitutes who service clients in the clients’ cars.

Detective James Harper, Miller’s partner, said Thursday that Exley was known to have solicited business on downtown streets near the inexpensive hotel where Unterweger first stayed during his visit to Los Angeles.

“The guy is a real charmer,” said Harper, who told of interviewing a pleasant but uncommunicative Unterweger at the Miami Correctional Center shortly after his arrest in February.

“How are you going to get to women if you’re not?” Harper asked. “They’re not going to get into a car with just anybody.”

The second case involved 33-year-old Irene Rodriguez, whose body was found sprawled on the pavement of a truck-loading area at 1st and Myers streets in Boyle Heights on June 30. Police say she was known to have worked the streets near the downtown hotels.

The third case involved 26-year-old Peggi Jean Booth, who also used the name Sherri Ann Long. Her body was found July 10 in rugged brushland near Corral Canyon Road in the remote Malibu Hills.

Investigators say Booth had worked the streets of Hollywood, where Unterweger stayed briefly after moving out of his downtown hotel. A menu found among Unterweger’s belongings in Austria two months ago came from a restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, about midway between Hollywood and the spot where Booth’s body was found.

Police said there is more evidence--bodily fluids found on one of the victims in the LAPD cases--that could have come from the killer.

Although Harper declined to be more specific, he said sophisticated laboratory tests are being conducted to determine if the genetic fingerprint from the fluids matches samples from Unterweger.

The detectives are working against time.

Unterweger has waived his right to fight extradition to Austria and the detectives say that if he is not charged in Los Angeles within the next couple of weeks, he probably will be returned to his homeland.

“He’d probably like that,” Harper said. “He doesn’t want to stay here because we have the death penalty. They don’t have it over there.”