Convict Linked to Slaying of Officer : Justice: Twelve years after the murder of Secret Service agent Julie Cross, Los Angeles D.A.’s office files charges. She grew up in San Diego and spent three years on force here.

Twelve years after the murder of Julie Cross--a former San Diego police officer who became the only female Secret Service agent to die in the line of duty--the Los Angeles district attorney’s office filed murder charges Thursday against a convicted triple-murderer now serving a life sentence in state prison.

Andre Stephen Alexander, 40, was charged following a six-year investigation by Los Angeles Police Detective Richard (Buck) Henry, who succeeded in linking Alexander to the crime after huge rewards and appeals on a television crime show failed to turn up new leads, authorities said.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said the evidence against Alexander was developed through Henry’s investigation into the murder of three people in 1978. That investigation led to Alexander’s triple-murder conviction two years ago.

Reiner said witnesses from the earlier case led to the discovery of physical evidence tying Alexander to Cross’ murder.

Reiner refused to provide more details about the cases, saying detectives are still searching for a second suspect involved in the shotgun killing of Cross while she was sitting in an unmarked car with another agent near Los Angeles International Airport.

“It’s been a long process,” Henry said. “I’m pleased with the filing.” But he said, “A lot of work has yet to be done.”

The new murder charges carry the possibility of the death sentence since Cross was a federal agent and was killed during the commission of a robbery.

Reiner said the case could have been filed in federal court because Cross was a Secret Service agent. But prosecutors decided to try the case in the state court system.

“In California we do have the death penalty . . . and we have life without the possibility of parole,” Reiner said.

Cross grew up in San Diego County and spent three years as a police officer here. Fulfilling what one friend said was her “dream come true,” she joined the U.S. Secret Service staff in San Diego in October, 1979. On June 1, 1980, she transferred to the agency’s Los Angeles anti-counterfeit squad.

The day before she left San Diego, Cross spoke of a premonition.

“She said she was excited, but said she felt something bad was going to happen,” San Diego Police Sgt. Cheryl A. Meyers remembered four years after Cross was murdered.

Less than a week later, Cross was killed while she and her partner, Agent Lloyd Bulman, were investigating a counterfeiting operation in Westchester.

The pair were parked near a staked-out house, waiting for a search warrant. While the two sa in their car, two men approached, apparently planning to rob the agents.

Cross and Bulman identified themselves as law enforcement officers, and Cross got out of the car with her gun drawn, Reiner said.

She was somehow disarmed in an ensuing scuffle. Investigators say Alexander grabbed a shotgun in the agents’ car and fired first at Cross and then at Bulman on the other side of the car.

Bulman was wounded, but survived after feigning death. Cross was killed, less than a year after joining the Secret Service.

Henry, then a patrol officer, first arrested Alexander in 1972 for robbery. It was then that Henry discovered they had attended Venice High School together.

Eight years later, Henry was one of the first patrol officers to arrive at the scene of Cross’ murder.

As a detective in 1987, he again arrested Alexander for the 1978 triple murder of a printer, his girlfriend and another man who were all involved with Alexander in a counterfeit money order scheme.