Undercover police hunt a serial killer

Late one afternoon last week, a prostitute sauntered out of the dismal City Motel and put herself on display at the corner of Figueroa and 48th streets. Hands on hips and dressed in a pink tank top, tight shorts and clear plastic heels, she cast smiles at men as they slowed their cars. The sun hung low in the sky behind her, bathing South Los Angeles in a soft yellow glow.

A white van passed by and pulled over to the curb. A short, middle-aged man with glasses and a thin mustache got out, stuck his hands in his pockets and walked back to the hooker. He paid no attention to a man sweeping the sidewalk across the street or another leaning against the motel wall.

The john and hooker struck a price -- $70 for sex. As the john returned to his van to retrieve something, the two men he had ignored earlier closed in. One flashed his Los Angeles Police Department badge, told the stunned-looking john to turn around and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. The hooker, also an undercover officer, disappeared into the motel.

It was the kind of arrest the members of the LAPD vice squad had made hundreds of times. That afternoon, however, the stakes were higher. With the LAPD hunting for an elusive serial killer who has claimed 11 victims in South L.A. since the mid-1980s, the squad was hoping for the equivalent of a lightning strike.

Det. Doug Winger, the operation's supervisor, waited in Room 102 of the motel, which had been turned into a makeshift holding cell. Three other johns -- all in their 20s -- sat handcuffed on the edge of the bed. One glanced up at a large mirror affixed to the ceiling. All of them, Winger knew, would have been just kids when the killer first struck.

The new john was led in and Winger scanned his license for the birth date. "1959," Winger said to another officer. "He's old enough. Let's swab him."

Little is known about the serial killer. The seven detectives on the task force created to hunt him know that he targets young black women in the sordid world of prostitution and drug addiction. They know he typically shoots them with a small-caliber handgun, sexually abuses them and dumps their bodies in alleys along a corridor of Western Avenue.

And, from bodily fluids he has left at crime scenes, they know his DNA. Exhaustive comparisons to genetic profiles stored in felon databases, however, have produced no matches. "We have a beautiful picture of what this guy looks like -- it's a dot, a dash and a line on a screen," said Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who heads the task force, referring to the computer rendering of the killer's DNA profile. "We just don't have a name to go with it."