Convict Pleads Not Guilty in Slayings of 4 Prostitutes

A man serving a 22-year state prison sentence for rape and kidnaping pleaded not guilty Thursday in San Diego to charges that he brutally murdered four prostitutes and attempted to kill two other women.

Bryan Maurice Jones, 30, is linked to the murders by “forensic evidence--DNA, fingerprints, hair (and) fibers,” according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Dusek, a prosecutor with the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force.

Three of the four slain women were found in trash bins “within spitting distance of his apartment” near 51st Street and El Cajon Boulevard, Dusek said.

The prostitutes worked along El Cajon Boulevard and were killed in 1985 and 1986. Two of the women were set on fire after their bodies were placed in the trash bins.

Dusek said Jones was linked to the crime in 1989 after he was matched to a fingerprint lifted from one of the trash bins. However, because of the number of cases the task force is handling, it took three years to put the case together, he added.

“Time was not of the essence at that point” because Jones was serving time in Corcoran State Prison after being sentenced in 1987.

The two surviving victims, one of whom may have been a prostitute, knew Jones, Dusek said, but he would not elaborate on their relationships.

“One lady was choked unconscious three times,” Dusek said. “The other lady was choked once.”

Jones is also charged with raping and sodomizing one of the surviving victims.

On the order of Municipal Judge Nicholas Kasimatis, Jones is being held without bail in County Jail downtown. He will next appear in court next Thursday at a hearing in which attorneys will set a preliminary hearing date.

Court records show that Jones was convicted in January, 1987, of forcible rape, kidnaping by force and four sex charges. His conviction followed an Oct. 16, 1986, incident in which he met a woman in a phone booth near 48th Street and El Cajon Boulevard and eventually was invited into her house.

However, at her residence, he used a steak knife to threaten her as he raped her.