The killer admitted to another murder after his DNA was linked to the victim, officials said Tuesday. The killer was sentenced to death more than 30 years ago for 12 murders in Southern California.
The victim was named as 19-year-old Cathy Small by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office. On February 22, 1986, she was found on a street in South Pasadena not moving. It was later found that she had died from being stabbed and strangled, according to Sheriff’s Lt. Patricia Thomas.
William Lester Suff, 73, has admitted to killing someone. He is currently being treated for his addiction at a prison north of Los Angeles, according to reports from the state prison system. On Thursday, Frank Peaseley, one of Suff’s trial lawyers, said that he was shocked to hear about the statement because his client had never admitted guilt before.
Peasley said, “He was always adamant about not confessing.”
Thomas said that disturbing pictures and a newspaper story about Small’s killing were found at the home of a coroner’s official who was looking into the natural death of a 63-year-old man in South Pasadena five years ago. The murder of Small had not been solved.
The coroner’s investigator told the sheriff’s office, and at first, Louie Aguilera, the lead officer on the case, told reporters that they thought the 63-year-old man was most likely the killer of Small.
A DNA test, however, showed that the man’s DNA did not match genetic material found on Small’s clothes or a sexual assault kit test done on the girl after she died, Thomas said.
Thomas said there was a match with Suff, who was on death row at California’s San Quentin jail at the time for killing 12 women from 1989 to 1991.
Thomas said that Suff was on parole at the time of the killings for killing his 2-month-old daughter in Texas in 1974.
A report in the Los Angeles Times from 1992 says that Suff’s other victims, like Small, were sex workers. The newspaper said that he was charged with the killings after a woman who had fled an attack in 1989 recognized him in a photo lineup.
After being found guilty in 1995, Suff was called the “Lake Elsinore Killer” and the “Riverside Prostitute Killer.” These names came from the places where the killings happened in Riverside County, which is east of Los Angeles, Thomas said.
Small, a mother of two, was living in the Lake Elsinore area when she was killed. Thomas said that her roommate told police that she had left home on the night of February 21 and was going to drive to Los Angeles with a guy named “Bill” for $50.
“He never saw or heard from her again,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that after Suff’s DNA was found to be linked to the murder, he agreed to be questioned by police and spent more than seven hours talking to officers from the sheriff’s office.
Before the murder, Suff told them he worked at a computer repair shop in Riverside County. Thomas said that Small met him there and gave him her phone number.
Thomas said that Suff told police that on February 21, 1986, he called Small and asked her to go to Los Angeles with him to pick up his boss. Thomas says she said yes, and he picked her up at 10 p.m.
Thomas said that Suff told police that he and Small got into a fight when they got to Pasadena and that she knocked his glasses off his face, which made him stab her several times.
Thomas says Suff said he pushed her out into the street and left her there.
Thomas said that the case was only sent to the district attorney’s office for decline because Suff had been convicted before and was on death row. (In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom stopped killings in California because of wrongfully convicted people who were sentenced to death in the state.)
Small’s younger sister told the sheriff’s office that her sister was “not a statistic” and that she was a caring and skilled big sister who showed her how to swim, ride a bike, and play cards.
The sister said in the statement, “She was trying to get sober when I last saw her.” “Although I was only 10, I knew my sister was working hard to put her life back on the right track.”
The statement says the sister said she didn’t understand why Small picked Suff. She said she had spent her whole life trying to find out who killed her sister.
In the letter, she said, “I think of her every day.” “Only because of Detective Aguilera do I now have answers.”