Wis. Man Extradited in Prostitute Attacks

The day before disbanding, the San Diego Metropolitan Homicide Task Force on Tuesday extradited a Wisconsin man to face charges of killing one Oceanside prostitute and attempting to kill another.

Wayne Robert Amundson is scheduled to be arraigned in Vista Municipal Court today in the 1986 slaying of 22-year-old Melissa White and the attempted strangulation of 30-year-old Delores Fernandez, authorities said.

The extradition comes the day before the end of a four-year, coordinated effort--among San Diego police, San Diego County sheriff’s detectives and county prosecutors--to track down supposed serial killers responsible for 45 killings of female transients and prostitutes beginning in 1985.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Dick Lewis said physical evidence links Amundson to White’s killing, but he declined to be more specific.

According to a preliminary report issued by a DNA-testing firm, a vaginal swab from White’s body supplied by sheriff’s investigators matched a blood sample from Amundson.

“There is no evidence that the semen on the vaginal swab originates from anyone other than Wayne Amundson,” according to the April report issued by Serological Research Institute of Richmond, Calif.

Amundson, who moved to Oceanside in 1981 and returned to his native Wisconsin in 1988, was arrested May 4 in La Crosse, Wis. He had been on probation after spending a year in jail for a 1989 conviction of sexually assaulting a woman in that state.

In 1986, White’s nude body was discovered in a flood-control culvert off California 76 in Pala, a mile from Amundson’s residence, said Lewis, a deputy district attorney with the task force. She had been strangled.

The bodies of four other slain prostitutes have been found in the vicinity of Amundson’s Pala home, and he will be questioned about those killings after he arrives in San Diego, Lewis said.

Amundson, who Lewis said had been working in Oceanside as a cable television installer, was identified by Fernandez in a photo lineup in February, and a warrant was issued for his arrest in April, according to court documents.

According to the documents, Fernandez told police that, at about 9 p.m. on Dec. 29, 1986, Amundson picked her up at 8th and Hill streets in Oceanside, where Fernandez agreed to engage in a sexual act for $50.

Fernandez got into Amundson’s black and blue MG and they drove to a parking lot behind the Welcome Lanes Bowling Alley, the documents say. After they were partly undressed, Amundson began strangling Fernandez, she told police.

“Fernandez attempted to say, ‘My kids, I have kids,’ to which the defendant just kept saying something like, ‘I have to do this,’ ” according to the documents.

Fernandez escaped by biting Amundson’s testicles, the documents say.

In April, Fernandez also identified a picture of Amundson’s car as the one in which the attack took place, the documents say.