Witness Says Accused Serial Killer Choked Her

In dramatic fashion, a witness Tuesday identified William L. Suff as the man who tried to strangle her six years ago, the first in a series of alleged attacks by Suff that prosecutors say left 13 other prostitutes dead.

“That is the man who attacked me,” Rhonda Jetmore said firmly, looking at Suff, who looked down and scribbled notes on a legal pad.

“Is there any doubt in your mind?” asked Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Zellerbach.

“None whatsoever,” she responded. “That’s him. I’ll never forget that face.”

Jetmore’s testimony followed opening statements by defense lawyer Frank Peasley, who acknowledged that Suff enjoyed the company of prostitutes but said that evidence linking Suff to the killings was flimsy.

He also said one of the victims had been seen by two other prostitutes after being observed earlier that night with Suff, and questioned the statistical validity of DNA analysis of semen that the prosecution alleges will tie Suff to most of the victims.

Earlier Tuesday, Zellerbach concluded his opening statement by saying that some of the DNA matches between the semen and Suff could be expected in only one in a billion cases.

However, Peasley told the jury that the matches could be as frequent as “one in tens of thousands, not one in a billion. That’s a big difference.”

Jetmore, the only woman known to have survived an alleged attack by Suff, said she met him in January, 1989, in Lake Elsinore, when she agreed to provide sex for $20 at a nearby abandoned house.

Once inside the darkened house, Suff gave her only a $1 bill, she said. Before she could protest, he wrapped his hands around her throat and pressed his thumbs so hard she started to pass out, Jetmore said.

She said she hit him on the head with a flashlight, bit his finger so hard she broke a tooth, and escaped after Suff stopped to look for his eyeglasses.

She said she moved from Lake Elsinore within days of the attack, eventually settled in Northern California and knew nothing of the serial killings until interviewed by investigators after Suff’s arrest in January, 1992.

The trial is expected to last about six months. The prosecution has no eyewitnesses to the killings and is building its case on circumstantial evidence, including shoe and tire tracks, fibers, DNA analysis, a bloody knife and items belonging to some victims later found in Suff’s possession.