Task Force Counts Gains, Critics Losses, as It Disbands : Crime: Law enforcement insiders heap praise on the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, formed to find the slayer of 45 women. But others note that many killings remain unsolved.

They followed a grisly path of 32 slain transients and prostitutes dumped along rural roadsides in East San Diego County and kept an eye on a similar set of killings in Seattle.

Along the way, their membership doubled, their methods grew more secretive, the deaths increased to 45 and the convictions of suspected violent criminals began to build.

Come Wednesday, nearly four years after San Diego police, sheriff’s detectives and county prosecutors worked together as the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force to track down serial killers, the combined effort will quietly end.

Those inside the group rave about their accomplishments to date: 14 suspects either charged or convicted. Compared to other serial killing investigative teams, most notably the Green River task force, which did not charge anyone in the deaths of 49 young women in Seattle from 1982 to 1984, San Diego detectives have done a superior job, insiders say.

(Local authorities originally believed that the Seattle and San Diego cases may have been related, but quickly dropped the hypothesis.)

“I think it’s clearly the most successful task force of its type in the history of this country given the totality of what we have accomplished,” said San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen. “Considering how old those cases were and the time we spent, you are going to see we did one hell of a job.”

Critics say the numbers are so far underwhelming--only two suspects have been convicted of one murder each, leaving dozens of unsolved deaths.

Four of the 14 suspects are charged with murders of women who were not prostitutes or transients but whose cases were examined because they were so compelling. Those not convicted of murder have been accused or found guilty of attempted murder, assault, kidnaping and other charges.

Organizers of an art exhibit that opened in San Diego in February depicting each of the murdered women complain that the task force has done too little to solve the crimes. They have asked a mayoral committee on women’s issues for an independent investigation of the deaths.

“I keep waiting for these hot breakthroughs that Burgreen announces each year are coming,” said Scott Kessler, one of the artists in the exhibit entitled “NHI,” or “No Humans Involved,” after a slang term used for prostitutes.

“I’m surprised the (task force) is breaking up,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, they haven’t done their job. I still have a lot of questions.”

Although the task force held a celebratory farewell party Saturday at a rented hall in the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and Wednesday will be clearing out of its Mission Valley offices under a freeway on-ramp, several cases are still to be prosecuted.

Ronald Porter, a former Escondido auto mechanic, is charged in two murders: those of Sandra Cwik, 43, a transient from Florida, and Carol Gushrowski, 26, an El Cajon mother of two discovered in an area where many of the bodies were found. He is scheduled for trial in August on those charges and the attempted murders of five other women.

Porter had been sentenced in 1989 to four years in state prison for an attack on Annette Russell, a 30-year-old prostitute, but was paroled last year after 20 months.

Three people are charged with murdering Irene Melanie May, a 23-year-old Lakeside woman, who was tortured with electric wires and injected with battery acid before being stabbed with a screwdriver and knife. Mark Lee Thomkins, 29, of San Diego, Sheryl Ann Baker, 28, of El Cajon, and Kerry Lyn Dalton, 39, of Lakeside were arrested in May and are being held without bail.

Last month, task force detectives arrested Wayne Robert Amundson, a 32-year-old Wisconsin man, in connection with the killing of a woman they have not yet identified. He is in the process of being extradited.

Last Thursday, Bryan Maurice Jones, 30, pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered four prostitutes in 1985 and 1986: Tara Simpson, Trina Carpenter, Joanne Sweets and Sophia Glover. Three of the bodies were left in trash bins close to his home near 51st Street and El Cajon Boulevard, and two of them were then set on fire.

Jones, who was arrested while serving a 22-year state prison sentence for rape and kidnaping, was also charged with the sexual assault and attempted murder of two other women. He is being held without bail in the downtown County Jail.

In September, the Navy Lt. Cmdr. Leonard Eddington will be tried on charges that he murdered his wife and buried her body in 1987. Although the case is not connected to the others, task force investigators took it up because they had so much information already gathered by a former sheriff’s detective who later joined the group.

So far, the team has obtained murder convictions for Elmer Nance, 63, accused of killing Nancy White in 1986, and Alan (Buzzard) Stevens, 48, convicted of killing 26-year-old Cynthia McVey, whose body was discovered in 1988 near an isolated part of the Pala Indian Reservation.

Five others--James Morris Jackson, Glesty Waters, Daniel Thomas Stafford, Blake Raymond Taylor and Thomas Eastgate--were convicted of a variety of offenses against prostitutes, including kidnaping, assault, attempted murder and forced oral copulation.

Task force officials have long believed that many of those charged and convicted are responsible for far more murders or attacks. For example, Stevens may have killed three or four other women, task force spokesman Richard J. Lewis has said.

“Just wait until you see the percentage of cases we are going to close at the end of this,” Burgreen said. “I think we’ll soon be in a real good position to say what cases are tied to whom.”

The chief declined to say what percentage of cases will be closed, but task force officials say it will be close to 40% or 50%.

In much the same way that Atlanta authorities blamed Wayne Williams for the murders of 22 youths though he was convicted of only two killings in 1982, San Diego officials are expected to assign responsibility for up to two dozen murders to those already charged or convicted.

A press conference is being planned for mid-July in which task force administrators will, for the first time, unveil some of the inner workings of their operation and try to put the investigation into context, Burgreen said.

Until now, the task force has operated virtually in secrecy, even refusing to disclose its headquarters. Press conferences and news releases have been rare, despite pledges by its top leaders to be more open with information.

Back in September, 1988, when it was created, nobody knew quite what to expect of the task force or how it should operate.

The first mistake, task force officials concede, was that it took three years after the discovery of the first body in the series--that of prostitute and police informant Donna Gentile in 1985--before the joint law enforcement team was formed.

When it did get off the ground, it was under the direction of three masters: Burgreen, Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller and then-Sheriff John Duffy.

“While the task force was envisioned as being independent of all three agencies, in fact we were under constant pressure to keep the agency heads advised to what was going on,” said Chuck Rogers, a former deputy district attorney who was the first head of the task force. He is now a municipal judge.

In particular, Rogers said, the task force needed to keep some information about alleged police involvement with prostitutes away from top police commanders, although they demanded to know the investigation’s progress.

“On more than one occasion, San Diego police officers assigned to the task force were put in the uncomfortable position of having to refuse to give information to their superiors,” Rogers said. “It hampered our investigation in some respects. It diverted our efforts and resources from investigating crimes to smoothing feathers.”

Arguments between sheriff’s and police officials were well publicized, especially disagreements early over whether the slayings were the work of a serial killer.

In January, 1988, sheriff’s Detective Thomas Streed, assigned to Gentile’s murder from the start, complained to then-Sheriff John Duffy that police administrators interfered or would not cooperate with his investigation.

Streed has long maintained that police officers were responsible for Gentile’s death. She was found dead with rocks stuffed inside her mouth shortly after testifying against two police officers at a civil service hearing. An arm of the task force, led by the state attorney general’s office, found no evidence that police officers were involved in any of the deaths.

Still, the question of who killed Gentile, or how Cynthia Maine, another police informant and prostitute, disappeared are enduring mysteries that may never be solved unless they are linked to one of the suspects already charged or convicted.

“It’s something that I think about every day: the resolution of those issues,” Burgreen said.

Besides the lack of initial cooperation, the second task force mistake, Burgreen and others believe, was to spend almost all of its resources looking into the background of Karen Wilkening, a San Diego madam whose Rolodex was confiscated by police.

The 1989-90 San Diego County Grand Jury investigated allegations that police had taken the card files to protect Wilkening’s business and that former Police Chief Bill Kolender was one of Wilkening’s customers.

Both Kolender and Wilkening have strongly denied the accusations.

Shortly after the Rolodex was seized, Wilkening fled to the Philippines. The task force, believing there was some connection between Gentile and Wilkening, brought Wilkening home, and she pleaded guilty to one charge each of pandering and obstructing justice. She spent two years in prison before being released in May, 1991.

The state attorney general’s office, working with the 1990-91 grand jury, concluded that no preferential treatment was given Wilkening, though some police officers arranged or attended parties where Wilkening employees were present.

The 1989-90 jury found the testimony of Kolender and other officers “incredible” as it related to liaisons with prostitutes.

Judge Rogers, who worked as a prosecutor with that jury, said he was stunned that the 1990-91 grand jury dismissed the allegations without listening to two former Wilkening employees who swore Kolender was a Wilkening customer.

“In my judgment, those witnesses were credible,” Rogers said. “The (1990-91 jury) didn’t talk to those witnesses nor did they talk with the previous grand jury. As a judge, I couldn’t decide a case like that. I have difficulty understanding how a valid result could be reached without personally assessing the credibility of the witnesses who made these crucial allegations.”

As the task force dug into continual rumors of police corruption in the fall of 1990, police administrators recommended that the group be divided in three: one branch to look at alleged corruption; another to investigate Maine’s disappearance and Gentile’s death, a third to examine the other killings.

The police corruption team found isolated instances of minor corruption. Two officers believed to be sexually involved with Maine were given unpaid suspension of 20 days each. A third officer, who admitted to hiring a Wilkening employee for a bachelor party, was given a 10-day suspension.

The 46-month investigation brought many victories but more than its share of embarrassing moments.

In September, 1990, the task force spent weeks viewing 750 videotapes it had seized from children’s television show host “Shotgun” Tom Kelly, which it believed showed Kolender and Duffy with Donna Gentile. Although videotapes did surface that portrayed Duffy and Kolender putting on a television talk show in Kelly’s garage, there was no tape that included Gentile.

Perhaps the low point of the inquiry came in October, 1990, when a task force informant said she had a sexual relationship with one of the team’s original members. The woman, Denise Loche, is suing Harold E. Goudarzi, the city of San Diego and the Police Department for allegedly drugging and raping her. Goudarzi, a 21-year-veteran and sergeant when he was fired for the relationship a little over a year ago, said it was consensual.

“It was not one of the SDPD’s finest hours,” Burgreen said. “It was a personnel issue, and it clouded the integrity of the task force for a period of time. It was a type of story that led to a lot of media reports of the tabloid type, and it didn’t do the department or the task force any good.”

Other seemingly promising leads went nowhere. For instance, the task force seized financial records from the San Diego Chargers to determine whether two former San Diego police officers “double-dipped” by simultaneously collecting salaries from the football team and the Police Department. No charges were filed.

When the task force developed information that two San Diego police officers planned and carried out a false arrest, the county district attorney’s office chose not to file criminal charges, saying the crime was too old because it had occurred six years before.

As the years passed, investigators were criticized for working on the cases with no deadline in mind. To date, the task force has spent nearly $2 million on its cases during its four years in operation.

After Jim Roache replaced Duffy as sheriff in January, 1991, he repeatedly questioned the progress of the task force at a time when he had 175 unsolved murders of his own in the past five years.

In May, he brought the detectives back to work on his department’s cases two months before the rest of the group was scheduled to disband.

“I kept asking, where are we on all this, and how long is it going to take?” Roache said. “I wanted to be cooperative, but I kept looking at all the homicides we had, and I just couldn’t spare the detectives. I kept them there a year longer than I wanted to.”

In the end, the progress of the task force may never be gauged fairly or accurately, some believe.

“It is difficult to measure the success just based on the numbers,” Rogers said. “The cases are hard to investigate and prosecute. This particular series was made more difficult by allegations that one or more members of the San Diego Police Department were responsible for the homicides. It would have been nice to have more prosecutions. In some respects, the best that can be hoped for is that all the cases were investigated thoroughly.”