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.
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