Triple Killer Expected to Be Charged in Slaying of Agent : Crime: Victim in 1980 shooting was first female Secret Service officer to die in the line of duty.

The district attorney’s office is expected to announce today that a man already serving time for a triple killing will be charged in the unrelated murder of the first female Secret Service agent to die in the line of duty, sources close to the investigation said Wednesday.

Julie Cross, 26, was gunned down on June 4, 1980, as she and her partner, Lloyd Bulman, sat in their unmarked car at an intersection near Los Angeles International Airport.

Despite a reward that rose to $100,000 and case files that grew to fill a four-drawer filing cabinet during an investigation that stretched over more than a dozen years, no suspect was identified.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, the district attorney’s office announced that it had scheduled a news conference in connection with the case for 11 a.m. today.

Spokespersons for Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner declined further comment, but investigative sources said the suspect will be identified as Andre S. Alexander, 40, who currently is serving a life term at the state prison in Corcoran for the murder of three people in 1978. Details surrounding those killings were not available Wednesday night.

How Alexander was linked to the murder of Cross was not immediately clear.

Cross, a former San Diego police officer who joined the Secret Service in October, 1979, was assigned to the agency’s anti-counterfeit squad in Los Angeles on June 1, 1980. Three days later, while waiting to serve a search warrant at a nearby apartment, Cross and Bulman parked their sedan near the darkened intersection of Belford Avenue and Interceptor Street.

Police said that as the two agents chatted quietly, two men, apparently bent on robbery, approached.

One of the assailants wrestled with Bulman and the other grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun that was on the front seat of the sedan, investigators said. Cross was shot twice with the shotgun before the suspects fled in another automobile, sideswiping a parked car. Bulman was uninjured.

While one of the suspects is expected to be identified as Alexander, the other suspect has not been named.