A convicted serial killer on California death row for murdering a dozen people in the 1980s and ’90s confessed to the 1986 murder of a 19-year-old woman in Los Angeles County, the police announced on Tuesday.

William Lester Suff, 70, confessed in May 2022 to stabbing Cathy Small to death and dumping her body on a South Pasadena, Calif., cul-de-sac, where her body was discovered by police on Feb. 22, 1986, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced at a news conference on Tuesday. Why the announcement came more than two years after the confession was not clear.

Ms. Small’s body was found in the morning wearing a nightgown, and she died from multiple stab wounds and strangulation, Lt. Patricia Thomas said.

Ms. Small’s body was identified three days later by a man who had read about the killing in the news and had called detectives to say he was concerned that the victim could be his roommate.

He told detectives that she had worked as a prostitute in the Lake Elsinore area and had lived at his house for a few months, Lieutenant Thomas said.

The man said that Ms. Small left their house on the night of Feb. 21, 1986 wearing a nightgown. Ms. Small, he added, told him that a man named Bill was paying her $50 to join him on a drive to Los Angeles.

Ms. Small’s roommate never saw her again, Lieutenant Thomas said.

Ms. Small’s killing went unsolved for nearly four decades despite multiple leads, Lieutenant Thomas said. However, a DNA test conducted in 2020 on previously untested evidence — including Ms. Small’s clothing and a sexual assault test kit — ultimately linked Mr. Suff and another unknown male to the killing, she added.

Mr. Suff, the authorities said, is a serial killer sitting on death row at San Quentin. Known as the “Riverside Prostitute Killer” and the “Lake Elsinore Killer,” Mr. Suff was convicted in the murders of 12 people in Riverside County, Calif., including Lake Elsinore, and sentenced to death in July 1995.

He carried out those murders over a two-year period from 1989 to 1991 and had been on the loose until January 1992, when he was arrested during a “routine traffic stop,” Lieutenant Thomas said.

Mr. Suff’s murderous rampage began at least 12 years before he killed Ms. Small. He was convicted in 1974 and sentenced to 70 years in prison for murdering his 2-month-old daughter in Tarrant County, Texas.

Mr. Suff was released on parole to California 10 years later, Lieutenant Thomas said.

It was unclear why and under what conditions he was paroled.

Over the course of two days in May 2022, detectives extracted a full confession from Mr. Suff.

He told detectives that in 1986 he was living in Riverside County and had a job at a computer repair shop. Ms. Small, he said, came into the shop one day and gave him her telephone number.

Later that day, Mr. Suff said he called and asked her to join him on a trip to “go pick up his boss” in Pasadena, Lieutenant Thomas said.

He picked her up that night and made the drive. Upon arrival, Mr. Suff said they got into an argument.

Mr. Suff told detectives that he became enraged when she knocked the glasses off his face and that he stabbed her in the chest as she sat in the front passenger seat.

Then, he told detectives, he pushed her body out of the car onto the street and drove away. He also corroborated photos of the crime scene shown to him by detectives.

Mr. Suff will not be charged for killing Ms. Small because he is already on death row, the authorities said.

The authorities on Tuesday said that the confession brought long overdue justice to Ms. Small’s family. Ms. Small left behind two small children, the authorities said.

She also had a younger sister, Deana Larson, who in a letter read aloud by officials Tuesday described Ms. Small as a “protective big sister, a loving mother and a good daughter.”

“Cathy was funny, smart and caring,” Ms. Larson wrote in the letter. “She had a big heart and would do anything for anyone.”

Ms. Larson, who was 10 at the time of the murder, said that Ms. Small had been “seeking sobriety” at the time of her death.

“But before she could take another step forward, her life was ended,” the letter said.

The post Nearly 40 Years Later, a California Serial Killer Confesses to Another Murder appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

According to the Riverside Police Department, 50-year-old Luis Contreras was arrested by Mexican authorities in Mexicali on July 8, and has since been extradited back to Riverside County to face charges.

Contreras, who was 32 at the time, is the primary suspect in the June 14, 2005, killing of 38-year-old Alfonso Vera. Vera was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds inside a home on the 4700 block of Doane Avenue in Riverside.

Witnesses heard the shots and saw people running and two vehicles leaving the scene, police said. Those witnesses were able to provide a license plate number of one of the vehicles.

Investigators later determined that a man was involved in an argument with his girlfriend and became physically violent with her. Vera came to the woman’s aid and intervened and was shot multiple times by another person.

Three suspects were believed involved in the case, two of which were apprehended weeks after Vera’s killing. But the gunman, who police said was Contreras, was never located, and it was believed that he fled to Mexico to avoid arrest.

In June 2024, nearly two decades since the deadly shooting, detectives reopened the cold case and renewed the search for Contreras.

Within weeks, he was located and arrested by Mexican authorities in coordination with the U.S. Marshals Service. He’s since been brought back to the U.S. and was booked into the Cois M. Byrd Detention Center near Murrieta.

Now 50 years old, Contreras is awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges and is currently being held on $1 million bail, according to jail records.

He’s expected to appear in court on Aug. 2.

Of the two other men believed to be involved in the killing of Alfonso Vera, one served a three-year prison sentence for being an accessory to murder and the other was not charged due to a lack of evidence, police said.

Anyone with information about this investigation is urged to contact the Riverside Police Department’s Homicide Cold Case Unit by email or by calling 951-320-8000.

Earlier this month, a man suspected in an Orange County homicide that happened 18 years ago was arrested in Mexico and extradited back to the U.S. to face charges.

The post Man suspected in Riverside homicide arrested in Mexico 19 years later appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.