DNA test links California serial killer to murder of young woman near Los Angeles in 1986

LOS ANGELES — The long-unsolved 1986 murder of a young Southern California woman is linked to a convicted serial killer who admitted to the crime, authorities said Tuesday.

DNA from the murder of 19-year-old Cathy Small matched that of William Suff. Suff was sentenced to death in 1995. He was found guilty of committing 12 murders in Riverside County between 1989 and 1991, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lieutenant Patricia Thomas.

Suff was known as the Riverside Prostitute Killer or the Lake Elsinore Killer, Thomas said at a news conference. He was also convicted in 1974 of the death of his two-month-old daughter in Tarrant County, Texas, and despite a 70-year prison sentence, was released on parole in California in 1984.

Small's body was found on a street in South Pasadena, a small suburb of Los Angeles, at 7 a.m. on February 22, 1986. Small was wearing only a nightshirt and was found to have been stabbed and strangled.

She was considered an unknown until a resident of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles southeast of South Pasadena, called police and said that after reading a news report about the murder, he feared it might be a local prostitute with whom he had lived for several months.

The resident identified Small and told investigators that the night before her death, she told him that a man named Bill would pick her up and give her $50 to drive with him to Los Angeles, Thomas said.

Nevertheless, the case remained unsolved for years.

In 2019, a Los Angeles County coroner contacted homicide detectives after responding to the natural death of a 63-year-old man who was found on a couch in a South Pasadena home across the street from Small's body.

“The coroner observed several disturbing items in the house, including numerous photographs of women who had apparently been attacked and held against their will, possibly by the deceased,” said Thomas.

There was a newspaper article in his bedroom about Small's identification as a victim of the 1986 murder, she said.

Investigators reviewed the Small murder case file and found that the evidence was never DNA tested. Later tests found matches to Suff and another unknown man, but not to the man found on the couch who was not linked to any crime, Thomas said.

In 2022, detectives questioned Suff for two days in a Los Angeles County jail.

“He confessed to the murder of Cathy Small and discussed it in detail,” Thomas said. “He also discussed and admitted to some of the previous murders in Riverside County.”

Investigators are not expected to try Suff for Small's murder because he has been previously convicted and is pending the death penalty. California has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 2019.

Small had two young children and a younger sister, authorities said. Thomas read a letter from the sister, who was unable to travel to the news conference.

“My sister Cathy Small was not a statistic,” the letter says. “She was a protective big sister, a loving mother and a good daughter. Kathy was funny, smart and caring. She had a big heart and would do anything for anyone.”