DNA Links Los Angeles Man to Killings That Span Decades, Police Say
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/us/01murder.html?ref=global-home
Police officials here said Thursday that the DNA of a 72-year-old Los Angeles insurance adjuster matched evidence found at five murder scenes spanning two decades.
The genetic material, as well as the ages of the victims — from 56 years old to 80 — possibly link the suspect to as many as 25 other unsolved murder cases and numerous sexual assaults through Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s, police officials said.
The police arrested John F. Thomas Jr., a convicted rapist, on March 31 after investigators with the Los Angeles Police Department linked his DNA to the unsolved murders of Ethel Sokoloff, 68, in 1972, and Elizabeth McKeown, 67, in 1976. The killings allowed investigators to link two series of rape and homicide cases in Los Angeles and Inglewood that had previously been thought unrelated.
Investigators said that they expected to file more charges shortly and that detectives with at least six law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were pursuing leads in four cities and two states.
“This is the tip of the iceberg right now; this is literally a case about history,” said Charlie Beck, Los Angeles deputy chief of police, whose father, now retired, supervised the first team of detectives to investigate the so-called Westside Rapist murders that terrorized Southern California in the ’70s and ’80s.
Chief Beck said investigators were awaiting additional DNA results, even as they pored through handwritten paper case files dating to the 1950s.
“We think he could be linked to as many as 30 cases in Los Angeles alone,” said Richard Bengtson, a homicide detective who is one of the lead investigators on the case. “But really we don’t know how many more.”
The genetic material, as well as the ages of the victims — from 56 years old to 80 — possibly link the suspect to as many as 25 other unsolved murder cases and numerous sexual assaults through Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s, police officials said.
The police arrested John F. Thomas Jr., a convicted rapist, on March 31 after investigators with the Los Angeles Police Department linked his DNA to the unsolved murders of Ethel Sokoloff, 68, in 1972, and Elizabeth McKeown, 67, in 1976. The killings allowed investigators to link two series of rape and homicide cases in Los Angeles and Inglewood that had previously been thought unrelated.
Investigators said that they expected to file more charges shortly and that detectives with at least six law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were pursuing leads in four cities and two states.
“This is the tip of the iceberg right now; this is literally a case about history,” said Charlie Beck, Los Angeles deputy chief of police, whose father, now retired, supervised the first team of detectives to investigate the so-called Westside Rapist murders that terrorized Southern California in the ’70s and ’80s.
Chief Beck said investigators were awaiting additional DNA results, even as they pored through handwritten paper case files dating to the 1950s.
“We think he could be linked to as many as 30 cases in Los Angeles alone,” said Richard Bengtson, a homicide detective who is one of the lead investigators on the case. “But really we don’t know how many more.”
