A serial killer sentenced to death for 12 murders in Southern California more than three decades ago has confessed to additional killings after his DNA was matched to that of his victims, authorities said Tuesday.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials identified the victim as 19-year-old Kathy Small. She was found unconscious on a South Pasadena street on February 22, 1986, and later determined to have died from stab wounds and strangulation, LA County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Patricia Thomas told reporters.
The suspect, William Lester Suff, 73, who confessed to the murders, is being held at a substance abuse treatment facility north of Los Angeles, according to state prison records. His lawyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday night.
Kathy Small. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department via Facebook
Thomas said Small’s murder remained unsolved until a coroner investigating the death of a 63-year-old South Pasadena man from natural causes five years ago discovered shocking images and newspaper articles reporting Small’s murder in the man’s home.
The coroner notified the sheriff’s office, and authorities initially believed a 63-year-old man was the likely killer in Small’s murder, Louis Aguilera, the lead detective on the case, told reporters.
But DNA analysis showed the man’s DNA did not match genetic material taken from Small’s clothing or from a sexual assault kit taken after the victim’s death, Thomas said.
But there was a match with Saff, who was on death row at San Quentin Prison in California for the murders of 12 women between 1989 and 1991, Thomas said.
At the time of the murders, Suff was on parole for the 1974 murder of his 2-month-old daughter in Texas, Thomas said.
Like Small, Saff’s other victims were prostitutes, according to a Los Angeles Times article about his indictment in 1992. Saff was charged with murder in 1989 after a woman escaped an attack and identified him in a photograph, the paper said.
Thomas said Suff, who was convicted in 1995, became known as the “Lake Elsinore Killer” and the “Riverside Prostitute Killer” after the murders took place in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles.
At the time of the slaying, Small, a mother of two, was living in the Lake Elsinore area. Her roommate told authorities that Small had left the home the night of Feb. 21 and planned to drive to Los Angeles with a man named “Bill” for $50, Thomas said.
“He never saw her again or heard from her again,” Thomas said.
After Saff’s DNA was identified as the source of genetic material in the murders, he agreed to be interviewed by authorities and spoke with sheriff’s office detectives for more than seven hours, Thomas said.
Suff said he was working at a computer repair shop in Riverside County at the time of the murder, where Small met Suff and gave him his phone number, Thomas said.
According to Sheriff Thomas, Suff told investigators that she called Small on Feb. 21, 1986, and asked her to accompany her to Los Angeles to pick up her boss. Sheriff’s deputies said Suff agreed, and Small came to pick her up at 10 p.m.
After arriving in Pasadena, Saff told investigators they got into an argument and Small knocked his glasses out of his face, after which Saff stabbed Small multiple times, Thomas said.
Thomas said Saff told him he pushed her onto the street and left her there.
Thomas said the sheriff’s office only submitted the case to the district attorney’s office with the aim of dismissing it because of Saff’s past convictions and death sentence. (California Governor Gavin Newsom suspended executions in the state in 2019, citing wrongful convictions of people on death row in the state.)
In a statement provided to the sheriff’s office, Small’s sister said her brother was “not a statistic” and described him as a kind, talented older sister who taught her how to swim, ride a bike and play cards.
“The last time I saw my sister, she was exploring sobriety,” her sister said in a statement. “I was only 10 years old, but I knew she was trying hard to get her life back on the right track.”
According to the statement, Small’s sister said she doesn’t know why Small chose to go with Suff, but she has spent her life trying to find out who killed her sister.
“I think about her every day,” she said in a statement. “Thanks to Detective Aguilera, I now have answers.”
