Diary May Offer Clues to 1970s Murders : Unsolved crimes: Serial killer’s unpublished manuscript has uncanny references to the slayings of a 7-year-old and a 19-year-old.

It was a first-person account by a serial killer of his thoughts and emotions while he kidnaped, tortured, sexually assaulted and, finally, murdered his young, female victims.

The writer-killer describes himself as getting depressed, or making “the fall.” He kidnaps and tortures victims as part of his remedy, or “restoration.”

Victims who go into shock, like an 11-year-old girl who failed to scream--even after cigarette burns and knife cuts were inflicted--are useless to him.

Five chapters of such details were sent to publishers under the incarcerated killer’s nom de plume “John Novak” in a manuscript entitled “Diary of a Serial Killer.”

But instead of generating a book contract, the would-be author’s efforts resulted in a search warrant that has apparently ended the project.

In late February, police seized the manuscript, plus numerous letters, from the home of a researcher collaborating with Manuel Cortez, a former La Puente resident who was convicted of killing two 11-year-old girls in Ashland, Ore.

The seizure prompted authorities in Oregon, Texas and California to review half a dozen unsolved murders, all dating back more than 15 years, for possible links to Cortez, who is serving a 50-year-to-life sentence in the Oregon state penitentiary in Salem.

Two of the unsolved crimes--the deaths of 7-year-old Margaret Madrid and 19-year-old Helen Lopez--occurred in 1977 in the San Gabriel Valley.

Cortez’s literary efforts, brought to a screeching halt, have revived stale investigations and given hope to authorities who thought they had reached an impasse, said Detective Les Rainey of the Eugene, Ore., Police Department.

The manuscript “is not a serial number, not a fingerprint,” Rainey said, “but it is consistent with other evidence.”

That Cortez should seek the authorial limelight is not surprising to Rainey. “Cortez sees himself as this elite criminal” like Ted Bundy, the detective said, referring to the serial killer who was executed in Florida in 1989.

Although Cortez, 37, is linked by police to a dozen abductions and slayings, he is imprisoned in Oregon for only three crimes: the Dec. 27, 1979, murders in Ashland of Rachel Isser and Deanna Jackman, both 11 years old, and the Dec. 6, 1977, kidnaping of a 16-year-old City of Industry girl, who escaped.

In 1980, Cortez was convicted of the Ashland murders. In 1982, he pleaded guilty to the City of Industry kidnaping.

As the years passed, Cortez sat in prison, enviously watching while other serial killers gained fame with books and movies about them, Rainey said.

“He had to bite his tongue all this time, because California and Texas have the death penalty,” the detective said. “He got no credit for how clever he’s been, for how he’s avoided detection.”

So, six years ago, Cortez teamed up with Ronald Holmes, a well-known University of Louisville criminology professor who was gathering information on serial killers, Rainey said. Cortez hoped that his time for recognition finally had come, even if vicariously and anonymously, the detective said.

Holmes, reached by telephone at a law enforcement conference in Hawaii, said Cortez contacted him because of regret over his past killings. The convicted killer had been assaulted while in prison and got a taste of what his victims had gone through, Holmes said.

The researcher said he cautioned Cortez not to give him details of slayings other than the Ashland crimes, but encouraged the convicted killer to talk about his feelings while committing murder. Holmes, an author who lectures nationwide, said he used Cortez’s statements to help police understand the mind of a murderer.

The manuscript was intended as a semi-fictitious work and not a confession or recanting of Cortez’s unsolved crimes, Holmes said. The crimes in the account are fiction, the researcher insisted.

But Rainey believes otherwise. Although the names of victims and some facts surrounding their deaths are altered, substantial similarities exist between the manuscript accounts and actual cases, the detective said.

After a source tipped him off to the manuscript’s existence, Rainey said he met with Holmes and decided that he was not getting full cooperation. So he got a search warrant.

Rainey admits that Cortez’s statements in the manuscript are not considered evidence because they are hearsay and that Holmes was not legally required to tell police about them. But the detective, nonetheless, believes that the researcher ignored ethical responsibilities by failing to offer police the information.

Holmes, however, believes that Rainey has gone overboard, and he wants the seized material back.

“If Manny told me he killed somebody on a particular date, I would tell police,” Holmes said. “But I don’t have any particular knowledge that he’s done any particular crimes.”

Meanwhile, Cortez’s attorney, Walter Todd of Salem, Ore., declined to comment on Rainey’s investigation. And he said he did not want his client speaking to reporters. Todd added that he believes all the issues can be resolved without court trials.

Rainey’s focus on Cortez began 1 1/2 years ago when the detective was assigned the unsolved murder of Karen Whiteside. The 16-year-old girl’s strangled body was found in a Eugene elementary school playground in March, 1978.

Although Cortez had been a suspect since 1981, Rainey again began gathering information about him. That search led to a dozen other unsolved murders, including two in San Antonio and one in a Bexar County park near the Texas city, Rainey said.

In the San Gabriel Valley, the murders Rainey suspects Cortez of committing include the Lopez killing on Aug. 14, 1977, and the Madrid slaying on Nov. 6, 1977.

Lopez, 19, of Hacienda Heights, disappeared at dawn while on her way to catch a bus to Whittier, where she had recently begun working in a doughnut shop. Her body was found 13 days later near Crystal Lake in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Madrid, 7, of Valinda, was left alone for five minutes on a Saturday afternoon at the corner of Temple Avenue and Amar Road in West Covina while her older sister went to a nearby grocery store. The child’s body was found the next morning in a gutter on a cul-de-sac in the City of Industry.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives declined to comment on the cases, other than to say the investigations remain open.

Rainey, 41, who has made visits to San Antonio and Los Angeles to pore over unsolved murder records, believes that Cortez may also be linked to three other San Gabriel Valley area murders. They are the April 11, 1976, death of an unidentified woman, in her mid-20s, found on Lopez Canyon Road in Crescenta Valley; the April 8, 1977, kidnaping and slaying of Rosa Williams, 26, of San Gabriel; and the Nov. 4, 1977, strangulation death of Theresa Berry, 19, whose body was found in Walnut.

Rainey said his investigation is hampered by the passage of time and because Cortez’ stay in the San Gabriel Valley overlaps the period of the Hillside Strangler murders. Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi were later convicted in that notorious string of slayings of women.

“There’s a fair amount of confusion” about which unsolved murder cases might be linked to Buono and Bianchi and which ones to Cortez, Rainey said.

Rainey said he considers Cortez a likely suspect in the three San Gabriel Valley area cases not only because of his Oregon convictions but also because of his past record of crimes in this region.

In 1975, at age 19, Cortez was placed on probation and ordered to serve four weekends in jail for the attempted kidnaping of a 17-year-old Buena Park girl.

In August, 1976, and also in October of that year, he was arrested in two separate incidents for kidnaping, rape and attempted rape in the abductions of two La Puente teen-age girls. Both cases were later dismissed.

On Dec. 6, 1977, Cortez kidnaped a 16-year-old girl from a bus stop in the City of Industry and took her to his family’s home in La Puente. She later escaped, and Cortez, identified as a suspect, fled to Oregon. After his convictions for the two murders in that state, he confessed to the City of Industry kidnaping.

“He led a real charmed life as far as law enforcement is concerned,” Rainey said of Cortez’s ability to escape all but minimum prosecution in the San Gabriel Valley crimes. Part of that ability may have been due to his demeanor, the detective said. “He’s polished, articulate. He tests in the superior range with an IQ of 115 to 125.”

Born in Texas, the oldest of seven children, Cortez came to the San Gabriel Valley as a 4-year-old with his family. His father, Henry, ran a vocational rehabilitation program and Cortez worked there for a time. But, unlike his brothers and sisters who grew up to hold jobs and start families, Cortez veered off to pursue sex crimes, Rainey said.

“He’s considered to be a sexual sadist, a ‘lust killer,’ ” the detective said. “It’s really not so much the killing. For him, what he gets off on is the torture.”

Diagnosed by court-appointed psychiatrists as antisocial, a sociopath or psychopath, Cortez’s behavior can never be altered, Rainey said doctors have concluded. For this reason, the detective continues to seek evidence in the hopes of getting a death penalty conviction. Although Cortez may never be released from prison in Oregon, Rainey said he fears that a legal loophole could set him free.

“My concern is that somehow he could get out,” the detective said. “And there’s no doubt in my mind, if he ever got out, he’d kill more children.”