California serial killer in prison for murdering 12 women confesses to another murder

A serial killer sentenced to death for a dozen murders in Southern California more than 30 years ago confessed to another killing after his DNA was matched to that of the victim, authorities said Tuesday.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials identified the victim as 19-year-old Cathy Small. She was found unconscious on a South Pasadena street on Feb. 22, 1986. She was later determined to have died of stab wounds and strangulation, sheriff's Lt. Patricia Thomas told reporters.

The confessed killer, William Lester Suff, 73, is in a drug rehabilitation facility north of Los Angeles, state prison records show. His trial lawyers did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment Wednesday evening.

Small's murder remained unsolved until a medical examiner investigating the natural death of a 63-year-old man in South Pasadena five years ago found disturbing images and a newspaper article about Small's murder in the man's home, Thomas said.

The coroner alerted the sheriff's office and authorities initially believed the 63-year-old was most likely responsible for Small's killing, Louie Aguilera, the lead investigator in the case, told reporters.

However, DNA analysis found that the man's DNA did not match genetic material taken from Small's clothing or a sex crimes test conducted after the victim's death, Thomas said.

However, there is a match with Suff, who was on death row at California's San Quentin prison for the murder of 12 women between 1989 and 1991, Thomas said.

At the time of the murders, Suff was on parole for the 1974 murder of his 2-month-old daughter in Texas, Thomas said.

Like Small, Suff's other victims were sex workers, according to a Los Angeles Times report on his 1992 prosecution. He was charged with the murders after a woman escaped an attack in 1989 and identified him in a lineup, the newspaper said.

Suff, who was convicted in 1995, became known as the “Lake Elsinore Killer” and the “Riverside Prostitute Killer,” references to the locations of the murders in Riverside County east of Los Angeles, Thomas said.

At the time of her murder, Small, a mother of two, lived in the Lake Elsinore area. Her roommate told authorities she left home on the evening of Feb. 21 and planned to drive to Los Angeles with a man named “Bill” for $50, Thomas said.

“He never saw or heard from her again,” Thomas said.

After Suff's DNA was identified as the source of the genetic material linked to the murder, Thomas said he agreed to be interviewed by authorities and spoke with sheriff's office detectives for more than seven hours.

Suff told them he was working at a computer repair shop in Riverside County at the time of the murder. Small met him there and gave him her phone number, Thomas said.

Suff told investigators he called Small on Feb. 21, 1986, and asked her to drive with him to Los Angeles to pick up his boss, Thomas said. She agreed, and he picked her up at 10 p.m., Thomas said.

Suff told investigators that an argument broke out between them after they arrived in Pasadena and that he stabbed Small multiple times after she knocked his glasses off his face, Thomas said.

According to Thomas, Suff said he pushed her out into the street and left her there.

Thomas said the sheriff's office only sent the case to the district attorney's office for dismissal because Suff had previously been convicted and sentenced to death. (Governor Gavin Newsom halted executions in California in 2019, arguing that the state had a history of wrongful convictions of death row inmates.)

In a statement made to the sheriff's office, Small's younger sister said her sister was “not a statistic” and described her as a protective and talented big sister who taught her to swim, ride a bike and play cards.

“The last time I saw her, she was seeking rehab,” the sister said in the statement. “Even though I was only 10, I knew my sister was working hard to get her life back on track.”

The sister said she did not know why Small chose to drink, the statement said. She said she had spent her life trying to find out who killed her sister.

“I think about her every day,” she said in the statement. “It is only thanks to Detective Aguilera that I now have answers.”