Serial Killer Confesses To Teen's 1986 Murder After New DNA Testing Of Clothing, Rape Kit
A convicted serial killer confessed to killing a Southern California teenager in 1986 after DNA testing linked him to the crime, authorities said this week.
William “Bill” Lester Suff, now 70, confessed to killing 19-year-old Cathy Small, whose body was found at 7 a.m. on Feb. 22, 1986, lying in the middle of a South Pasadena street in her nightgown, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Patricia Thomas said at a news conference Monday.
A medical examiner later determined that Small, a mother of two, had been stabbed multiple times and strangled.
Suff, also known as the Riverside Prostitute Killer and the Lake Elsinore Killer, was sentenced to death in 1995 and remains incarcerated in San Quentin. (California in 2019 put a moratorium on capital punishment.) He had been convicted of murdering 12 women, all sex workers, in Riverside County between 1989 and 1991. He’d previously been in prison for beating his 2-month-old daughter to death in Texas but was released on parole in 1984 after serving just 10 years of a 70-year sentence.
Small was initially listed as a Jane Doe when her body was found. Several days after her death, her roommate learned about the killing in a newspaper article and contacted police, Thomas said.
The roommate identified Small’s body and told detectives that she had been living at his Lake Elsinore house for the past few months.
The roommate, who was not named at the news conference, said he last saw Small, who was a sex worker, alive at around 10 p.m. the night before her body was found. She told him a man named Bill was picking her up and giving her $50 to drive with him to Los Angeles. She left wearing a nightgown, he said.
The case went unsolved for more than three decades until an unrelated death investigation prompted detectives to reexamine Small’s case file.
In October 2019, a coroner investigator contacted detectives when she found numerous photographs of women who appeared to have been assaulted and held against their will at the home of a 63-year-old South Pasadena man who had died of natural causes.
The investigator also found a newspaper article in the man’s home about Small’s killing. Detectives learned that her body had been found directly across the street from where the man lived, Thomas said.
Detectives initially considered the deceased 63-year-old a suspect, but his DNA wasn’t linked to any crimes, including Small’s murder.
Detectives then realized that DNA testing had never been conducted on evidence collected during the investigation into Small’s killing, including her clothing and a rape kit. After a DNA sample was submitted for analysis, a DNA profile was submitted to CODIS, the FBI’s national database of convicted offenders, and it was determined to be a match for Suff.
During an interview with detectives in May 2022, Suff said he had asked Small to ride with him to visit his boss. They got into an argument in the car, he said, and he became so enraged when she knocked off his glasses that he stabbed her multiple times in the chest while she was sitting in the passenger seat. He said he then pushed her out into the street where she was found and drove away, Thomas told reporters Monday.
Authorities did not immediately explain what took place between Suff’s 2022 confession and the public announcement about the case on Monday. HuffPost reached out to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for comment.
Small was “funny, smart and caring,” her younger sister, Deanna Larson, said in a statement Thomas read aloud at the news conference.
“She had a big heart and would do anything for anyone. Cathy was talented, but her life was cut short before she could even begin to make her own dreams come true.”
Small was “seeking sobriety,” Larson continued, and “working hard to put her life back in the right tracks. … Before she could take another step forward, her life was ended.”
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office told HuffPost it has decided not to file additional charges in this case.
“We understand the pain and loss experienced by the victims’ families and our community. This decision does not diminish the severity of the crimes but recognizes that additional charges would not alter the current circumstances or bring further justice,” the district attorney’s office said.
“I will always miss my sister, Cathy,” Larson said. “Nothing will bring her back. Bill Suff is where he’s supposed to be, and he can no longer hurt anyone.”
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