Parolee Indicted in Killings of 14 Women : Crime: William Suff, who was arrested in January, has been a prime suspect in 19 serial slayings in Riverside County. He remains under suspicion in the other five.

William Lester Suff, the Texas parolee suspected of being the Riverside County serial killer, was formally accused Tuesday of murdering 14 female prostitutes whose bodies were found in the county between 1986 and 1991, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday.

Suff, 41, a former Riverside County stock clerk who was living in Colton when he was arrested in January, had previously been charged with only two of the killings, but authorities had long considered him the prime suspect in 19 slayings blamed on the serial killer.

Suff remains under suspicion in the remaining five cases, said Paul E. Zellerbach, supervising Riverside County deputy district attorney, but the nature of physical evidence--some of the five bodies were badly decomposed when found--prompted prosecutors to take only 14 murders to the grand jury.

Police from throughout Southern California--including San Diego, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties--are also reviewing unsolved murder cases, notably those involving prostitutes, to determine if there is any possible link to Suff, Zellerbach said Tuesday.

Despite the long-anticipated indictment, Suff’s alleged motives remain a public mystery. Law enforcement authorities who have extensively examined the accused killer’s background declined to share their thoughts on what may have prompted his alleged malice toward prostitutes.

In a previously unreported case, the grand jury also charged Suff with assault and attempted murder and rape on Jan. 10, 1989, of a former Lake Elsinore-area prostitute, Rhonda Jetmore, who managed to escape and reported the attack to police, Zellerbach said.

Jetmore, believed to be the only known survivor of an attack by the suspected serial killer, identified Suff as her assailant in a photo lineup, authorities said.

“It can safety be said that the prostitute serial killer in Riverside County is now in jail, where he belongs,” Zellerbach told a news conference here that attracted many of the victims’ relatives.

“This is not going to bring my girl back to me, which is what I want more than anything else in the world, but at least we know he’s not out there to harm other girls,” said a sobbing Hester Sternfeld, whose daughter, Susan Sternfeld, was found dead in Riverside on Dec. 19, 1990.

Dina Zamora, whose daughter Delliah Zamora-Wallace, 35, was found dead Oct. 30, 1991, added: “At least we don’t have to worry that he’s still lurking around out there.”

Prosecutors plan to seek the death sentence, Zellerbach said, although the trial is expected to be at least a year away.

There is substantial physical evidence linking Suff to the crime scenes, authorities said, including tire and shoe impressions, as well as hair and carpet fibers. Moreover, Zellerbach said, more than one witness has identified Suff as being at or near the sites where the women disappeared or where their bodies were discovered.

Authorities believe that Suff enticed the victims into his vehicles under the guise of being a client, but later turned violent and strangled the women. Some were also stabbed.

Additional evidence, including DNA analysis of bodily fluids found on the bodies, is pending, Zellerbach said. Semen was found on all 19 bodies, the prosecutor said, though he declined to specify how many, if any, had been sexually assaulted.

Some victims were sexually mutilated, and several bodies were posed in lewd positions, Zellerbach said, declining to be more specific. Some victims also had bite marks.

The 14 cases in the indictment begin with the murder of Charlotte Palmer, 25, whose body was found in rural Romoland on Dec. 10, 1986, and conclude with the slaying of Eleanor Casares, 39, whose remains were discovered in a Riverside orange grove last Dec. 23.

Casares was the final victim in the series. Suff was arrested Jan. 9 after Riverside police stopped him for making an illegal turn in his van along the city’s seedy sex strip, where many victims had last been seen alive. Many other victims once cruised the pay-for-sex strip along Main Street in Lake Elsinore, where Suff used to live.

On the evening of Suff’s arrest, police had bolstered patrols and were on the alert for a van driver whose description somewhat matched Suff’s physical characteristics. The serial killer was known to seek victims in January and December, authorities say, but the significance of those months has not been discussed publicly.

At the time of his arrest, the pace of the killings had accelerated to almost one per month, and the degree of violence inflicted on the victims had also been escalating, authorities said.

Suff, 41, a native Southern Californian who was raised in the Lake Elsinore and Perris areas of Riverside County, was paroled back to his home state in 1984 after serving 10 years of a 70-year sentence for the 1973 murder in Texas of his infant daughter. The 2-month old girl died of massive hemorrhaging caused by a beating so severe that her liver was ruptured.