Serial Murders

Displaying gruesome photographs of strangled women with bloated faces, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday that he would prove Chester Dewayne Turner was one of Los Angeles' most prolific serial killers. "These are the victims of a killer," said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bobby Grace, gesturing at the photos. "Today we can say the name of that killer: Chester Turner."

A San Bernardino County jury on Thursday called for the execution of Wayne Adam Ford, a long-haul trucker who confessed to killing four women, cutting up some of their bodies and dumping them in waterways across California. Ford, 44, who turned himself in to a Humboldt County sheriff's station in November 1998 with a severed breast in his jacket pocket, showed little emotion and stared straight ahead as the court clerk read the jury's decision.

When a convicted rapist was recently charged with murdering 10 L.A. women, some longtime residents were reminded of a grisly case from the 1920s. On Feb. 2, 1928, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies found a burlap bag containing a headless body in a La Puente ditch. A male teenager had been shot through the heart with a .22-caliber rifle.

Salbi Asatryan was found dead in her bed. It was 4:26 a.m. An Armenian immigrant, Asatryan, 75, had been rushed to Glendale Adventist Medical Center three days earlier, on Dec. 27, 1996. She was in acute respiratory failure and needed a nasal ventilator to help her breathe. They put her in Critical Care, bed nine. To Bob Baker, she was "just a little old lady . . . a little barrel-chested thing, and sweet." He was one of the respiratory therapists who treated her.

The Zodiac, the hooded serial killer who menaced the Bay Area 40 years ago, has so fascinated the public that major motion pictures, books and blogs have been devoted to sifting through clues for his identity. Just when you thought every angle had been covered, along comes Deborah Perez, who announced at a raucous sidewalk news conference in San Francisco that the Zodiac was her dad and she rode in his car when he went out to kill.

The search for 50 women who were photographed two decades ago by a convicted murderer took a grim turn Thursday with the discovery that one of them had been strangled and dumped in the high desert in 1980. Detectives said the woman's slaying was never solved but had similarities to a killing William Bradford was convicted of committing in the early 1980s. This marks the second woman identified as being one of Bill Bradford's 50 photo subjects to have been found slain.

Last March, a plain white envelope arrived at the local newspaper. Inside was a single sheet of paper, containing three photocopied pictures of a woman's strangled body. After 25 years of silence, the serial killer who had terrorized Wichita in the 1970s was back. That same spring, a balding, paunchy dogcatcher by the name of Dennis Rader took his family to a tulip festival in Michigan.

SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. -- The murders were among the most publicized in recent Virginia history: three girls abducted from their yards and killed in the rolling hills of the state's Civil War battlefields. For more than five years, investigators found few clues. They called in psychics and checked out 11,000 leads. DNA from 400,000 convicted felons was tested. A $150,000 reward was offered. Even a segment on "America's Most Wanted" failed to produce any useful tips.

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.

A 38-year-old man with a violent past went on a 16-hour rampage in Ventura County, killing three people -- including a mother who was pistol-whipped in front of her children -- and injuring five others before taking his own life Tuesday morning inside a Wal-Mart store, police said.

In the ongoing search for a serial killer who has claimed at least 11 lives in South Los Angeles since 1985, police officials released a series of sketches Thursday that picture what the killer might look like today. The three new sketches were based on a description given to police in 1988 by the only woman known to have survived an attack by the man. Deputy Chief Jim McDonnell, head of detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department, said he hopes the images will jog the memory of someone familiar with the killer.

It's been nearly 24 years since Robbin Brandley, 23, was stabbed to death in a parking lot after leaving a piano concert at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. Her killing sparked successful efforts to make college campuses safer by requiring better lighting in parking lots and the disclosure by schools of information about crimes on campus. Still, no one has ever been prosecuted for her death. On Monday, a former Marine who confessed more than a decade ago to stabbing Brandley to death and killing four other women in Southern California was indicted by an Orange County grand jury, setting the stage for an eventual trial.

Joe Keiper squinted into a microscope and pressed the dead maggot with a pair of surgical forceps to determine how much human flesh the fat white larva had eaten. The forensic entomologist had plucked hundreds of them off a corpse found inside a Cleveland house the day before Halloween. "Understand insects, and you can understand death," said Keiper, a slender, balding scientist of 40. For nine years, Keiper has studied all things creepy-crawly as the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's director of science and curator of invertebrate zoology.

Authorities are investigating whether a murder suspect whose home and yard harbored the remains of at least 11 people is connected to any killings in places he lived while in the military, including California, Japan and the Carolinas. The FBI will investigate any leads in the case against Anthony Sowell, 50, who served in the Marines from 1978 to 1985, said Scott Wilson, an FBI spokesman in Cleveland. Sowell was stationed at various times at Parris Island, S.C.; Cherry Point, N.C.; Okinawa, Japan; and Camp Pendleton, Calif.

A registered sex offender whose Cleveland residence contained the remains of 10 bodies and a human skull stored in a bucket was ordered held without bond Wednesday as police prepared to tear down the walls of his home in search of more bodies. At the bond hearing, Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecutor Brian Murphy told the court that Anthony Sowell, 50, could face the death penalty if convicted of the murders and called him "an incredibly dangerous threat to the public." Kathleen DeMetz, Sowell's court-appointed defense attorney, argued that Sowell should be granted bond because of medical concerns.

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.

A jury spared a man convicted in a series of random nighttime shootings from the death penalty on Wednesday, sentencing him to life in prison. Samuel Dieteman, who pleaded guilty to two of six murders in the metropolitan Phoenix Serial Shooter case of 2005 and 2006, appeared stoic as the jury's decision was announced. "I'm truly sorry for the pain that I've caused to many, many people," Dieteman, 33, said after his sentence was read. He thanked the court for treating him like a human being.

The serial killer who terrorized a South Carolina community by shooting five people to death before police killed him Monday was a career criminal paroled just two months ago, authorities said. Patrick Burris, 41, was shot to death by officers investigating a burglary complaint at a home in Gastonia, N.C., 30 miles from where the killing rampage started June 27.

By the time homicide Det. Dennis Kilcoyne met with Diane Webb last fall to discuss the maddening search for a serial killer who has stalked South L.A. for decades, he was wide open to suggestions. Despite more than a year of chasing leads, Kilcoyne and his team of detectives were no closer to catching the man suspected of sexually assaulting and murdering at least 10 young black women.

The Zodiac, the hooded serial killer who menaced the Bay Area 40 years ago, has so fascinated the public that major motion pictures, books and blogs have been devoted to sifting through clues for his identity. Just when you thought every angle had been covered, along comes Deborah Perez, who announced at a raucous sidewalk news conference in San Francisco that the Zodiac was her dad and she rode in his car when he went out to kill.