Serial Crime

In the days before he fled the country, rape suspect Andrew Luster wired money from a trust fund and placed long-distance calls that authorities now believe were part of a plan to skip town and avoid prosecution. According to search warrants released Tuesday, Luster tried to cover his tracks by removing the hard drive on his computer. After Luster fled, his friends told investigators they saw no indication that he planned to leave the country.

A teacher and three youngsters at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, were gunned down Monday by a motorbiking assassin said to be armed with the same .45-caliber weapon used to kill three French soldiers of North African origin in similar attacks in southwestern France last week. The gunman, wearing a black motorcycle helmet and visor, opened fire as parents were dropping off their children at the Ozar Hatorah private school in a residential area of the city. The killer, armed with two guns, picked off his victims one by one, aiming at their heads, witnesses said, leaving what one parent described as a "vision of horror," before he escaped on his scooter.

As many as 125 investigators had worked on the case, checking over 1,700 leads but coming up empty in their frustrating search for the man whose abductions and sexual assaults on young schoolgirls terrified several South Bay communities two years ago. On Thursday, law enforcement officials announced that they believe they have found their man--in a cell in Men's Central Jail.

An arrest warrant has been issued in the 1983 abduction and slaying of an 8-year-old Watts girl, the Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday. Detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department's cold-case homicide unit said prosecutors have filed murder charges against Luis Garcia Villalvazo, a Mexican citizen who is serving time in a Mexican jail for the unrelated killing of another girl. In March 1983, Victoria Denise Brown was walking home from Graham Street Elementary School in the Florence-Firestone area of South Los Angeles when a blue van pulled up next to her. The 8-year-old stopped to talk to someone in the van. Moments later, the van peeled away from the curb, and the girl had vanished.

Serial burglar Ignacio Pena Del Rio gave up his tools of the trade, and on Tuesday had six months shaved off his prison sentence. Pena Del Rio, known as one of Los Angeles' most industrious and prolific cat burglars until his arrest in 2006, agreed to authorities' unusual request. He starred in a 70-minute video in which he disclosed all his techniques for a Los Angeles Police Department training video.

Fortified by muffins and coffee, the detectives gathered under the chandeliers in the hotel's Grand Ballroom. San Francisco Police Inspector Greg Ovanessian prepared to start his presentation. "Before I begin," he said. "Not all Gypsies or Rom are criminals." "Bull...!" yelled someone in the back. After the laughs died down, Ovanessian, a bespectacled, soft-spoken investigator, continued.

Parents descended on elementary schools in the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday, alarmed by reports that a serial molester has assaulted 22 children since February near schools from Canoga Park to North Hollywood. Many of the parents--and some school officials--criticized Los Angeles police for leaving them in the dark about the menace of the wide-ranging assailant. "It's becoming almost a frenzy at this point," said Sheryl Walters, principal of Sunny Brae Avenue Elementary School in Canoga Park.

A Temecula pool hall owner is a suspected serial rapist who may have committed 86 burglaries, sexual assaults and other crimes across Orange County during an eight-year rampage that ended with his arrest, authorities said Tuesday. Police said the 45-year-old suspect typically left his victims obscene notes or exposed himself during burglaries and sometimes returned to the same homes to rape the women who lived there.

In the parlance of their trade, the Beverly Hills robbers were "professionals." They had staked out the 21-room mansion for weeks, even conducting dress rehearsals during which they crept along the service alley and climbed the 7-foot-high wrought-iron fence--masks, gloves and radios at the ready. They knew there was a staff of two--the butler and his wife--and that, each night, the butler headed toward North Elm Drive to walk the dog, a Belgian Schipperke. This night, Jan.

One of Mexico's most notorious fugitives -- wanted in numerous bank robberies, kidnappings and murders but perhaps most famous for his daring escape from prison 20 years ago -- has been captured living on a tree-lined residential street in South Gate.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives and federal authorities have broken up a San Fernando Valley burglary ring behind a string of high-end break-ins that netted several million dollars worth of electronics, jewelry and luxury items. The burglars targeted luxury homes in and around the Valley that were tented for pest eradication and those having estate sales, using Craigslist to find locations, authorities said. "In one house alone they stole more than $750,000 of items," said Lt. Alan Hamilton.

For nearly two decades, Mary lived with the overwhelming fear that her knife-wielding rapist would return. Some nights, she slept in a bedroom closet. Other times, she sat in bed gripping a gun, with the rapist's threat echoing through her sleepless mind: "If you call the police, I will come back to kill you." But she did call -- and then called back, year after year. The recurring answer filled her with dread. No arrests. No suspects. Finally, advanced DNA testing identified a suspect: George W. Girtman, already behind bars for a series of Orlando rapes in the 1980s and 1990s.

The 13-year-old girl wanted to ditch school to avoid some bullies. So when her older neighbor, John Albert Gardner III, offered her a ride, she hopped in. They went to his place, he turned on a movie, and then attacked her. Gardner, a former lifeguard, heaved the girl onto the couch and pulled down her pants. When she resisted, he choked her and hit her repeatedly in the face and head, leaving her heavily bruised and vomiting. Gardner eventually pleaded guilty to molestation and false imprisonment charges.

Eighty-year-old Doris Thompson has made a long career of petty theft and burglarizing medical buildings. And although this week she was sentenced to three years in state prison for her latest crime, officials aren't sure that's enough to stop Thompson's escapades when she is released. "She likes to burglarize medical suites for some reason. That's her niche," said Paulette Paccione, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case. On Wednesday, Thompson, who has a rap sheet dating to 1955 and has landed in state prison nine times, pleaded guilty to a commercial burglary she committed in December, when she hid in the restroom of the Children's Medical Group office in Torrance and waited until employees left for the day. A security camera caught Thompson prying open drawers with a chisel and screwdriver, Paccione said.

Twenty-six years ago, police discovered the partially nude body of 85-year-old Isabel Askew in a vineyard near Ontario International Airport. She had been reported missing from her Claremont apartment more than a week earlier. The cause of death could not be determined because of the condition of her body. But three years later, her daughter, Adrian Askew, was found strangled in the same West Bonita Avenue apartment where she had lived with her mother. The 56-year-old retired school crossing guard was found lying face-up with bedding pulled over her head and she had been sexually assaulted.

Hawthorne police say a man arrested on suspicion of raping and beating an elderly woman last week may be responsible for other similar crimes. Gary Labon, 48, was arrested Friday after officers responded to a neighbor's call about "a female screaming outside" and found him on top of a 70-year-old woman in the 12900 block of Jefferson Avenue, authorities said. The woman was collecting recyclables about 3 a.m. when the suspect allegedly attacked her, said Lt. Michael Ishii. The victim, who was found unconscious, was sexually assaulted and badly beaten.

In Torrance, he's brazen. He hasn't physically struck his victims, according to police, but he's audacious enough to attack in daylight. In Long Beach, he's methodical. He seems to have researched his victims, knowing they are alone and preying on them only then. And in Hancock Park, he was so obvious, or careless, he got caught--allegedly. Perhaps the strongest commonality among the three serial rapists is that they are terrorizing the Los Angeles area this summer.

A teacher and three youngsters at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, were gunned down Monday by a motorbiking assassin said to be armed with the same .45-caliber weapon used to kill three French soldiers of North African origin in similar attacks in southwestern France last week. The gunman, wearing a black motorcycle helmet and visor, opened fire as parents were dropping off their children at the Ozar Hatorah private school in a residential area of the city. The killer, armed with two guns, picked off his victims one by one, aiming at their heads, witnesses said, leaving what one parent described as a "vision of horror," before he escaped on his scooter.

Authorities announced charges Thursday against a Mexican gang that took Tijuana-style violence to the upscale suburbs of San Diego County, kidnapping, torturing and killing well-to-do residents, even after some families paid large ransoms. The gang, a rogue cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, moved across the border in 2002 and posed as U.S. law enforcement, donning FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places, said San Diego County prosecutors.