William Lester Suff worked as a stock clerk in the Riverside County supply warehouse while a series of women were being killed in the western part of the county. Between June 1989 and December 1991 twelve women were killed in and around Lake Elsinore, Riverside, Highgrove and Corona. A task force assembled to find the killer was watching for a two-tone van when a police motorcycle officer stopped Suff in Riverside on January 9, 1992, for failing to signal a turn.
He was not a stranger to the courts. In 1974 a Texas jury had convicted him of murder in the death of his two-month-old daughter, and he had served about ten years of a seventy-year sentence before he was paroled to California in 1984. In 1995 a Riverside County jury convicted him of the first degree murders of the twelve women and of the attempted murder of a woman who had escaped from him in January 1989, and it returned verdicts of death. The Supreme Court of California affirmed the judgment in 2014. Ten years later the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced that DNA testing had linked him to the 1986 killing of a 19-year-old mother of two in South Pasadena, and that he had confessed to it.
Witnesses called by the defense at the penalty phase of his trial described his early life, and the California Supreme Court summarized their testimony in 2014. When he was 16 his father left the family abruptly, without telling anyone he was leaving, and did not write to them afterward. Relatives and other witnesses testified that his mother took little interest in her children and that Suff stepped into his father's place, helping to care for his four younger siblings and working part time to support the household. People who knew him in school remembered a normal, quiet high school student who did not seem to have trouble with girls.
After high school he joined the Air Force and moved to Texas. A girlfriend became pregnant while he was away. The two married, and the baby was given to his mother to raise, his mother testified.
In 1973, in Texas, his two-month-old daughter, Dijanet Suff, died, and he was convicted of murder in her death, a conviction the California Supreme Court described in its 2014 opinion. The Associated Press, reporting in 2024, placed the conviction in Tarrant County in 1974 and said he received a seventy-year sentence and was paroled to California in 1984.
He spent about ten years in Texas prisons. A prison expert who examined his Texas records for the defense found two disciplinary incidents in that time, neither involving violence. His mother testified that he came back to California more withdrawn than he had been.
When he was arrested in 1992, the press reported that he had been paroled after ten years of the seventy-year term and that he had not reported to the Texas parole authorities as required each year. One report, as the 2014 opinion recounted, blamed a "computer glitch" for the failure of Texas officials to keep track of him.
Suff lived in an apartment complex in the Riverside area from March 1987 to the middle of 1988 and again from March 1989. In January 1989 he was living in Lake Elsinore with a woman described at trial as his former wife, and he sometimes drove her white station wagon. Later he married again, and his wife gave birth to a daughter in July 1991.
His employers spoke well of him. Witnesses at the penalty phase described him as enthusiastic, friendly, likeable and punctual, and praised his computer skills. One couple trusted him to collect their child from school. His supervisor at the county supply warehouse, where he worked as a stock clerk, said he volunteered for workplace social events.
Other witnesses, including his brother and a friend, testified for the prosecution to hostile remarks he had made about women between 1984 and 1991, which the prosecution offered as evidence of motive.
In January 1989 a woman was attacked by a man in Lake Elsinore and escaped. She noticed that his belt buckle bore the name "Bill." She reported the attack later that month. In 1992 she picked Suff's photograph out of a six-photo array, and at trial she identified him and said she had "no doubt." Suff's former wife identified photographs of him wearing a belt buckle reading "Bill." The jury convicted him of attempted murder on this count.
Kimberly Lyttle was the first of the twelve. She was found in the Lake Elsinore area on June 28, 1989. She had been strangled.
Tina Leal was found in the Lake Elsinore area on December 13, 1989. She was strangled and stabbed.
Darla Ferguson was found in the Lake Elsinore area on January 18, 1990. She had been strangled.
Carol Miller was last seen in Riverside on February 6, 1990, and was found in the Highgrove area on February 8. She had been killed.
Cheryl Coker was last seen by her husband in Riverside on October 30, 1990, and was found in Riverside on November 6. She had been strangled.
Susan Sternfeld was last seen in Riverside on December 19, 1990, and was found in Riverside on December 21. She had been strangled. The DNA profile in her case matched the profile in Cheryl Coker's. The defense pointed to a timecard showing that Suff worked from 7:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on December 19, and argued that he could hardly have met her at about 2:00 p.m., when she was last seen.
Kathleen Milne, who also used the name Puckett, was last seen by her sister on January 18, 1991, and was found in the Lake Elsinore area on January 19. She had been strangled.
Sherry Latham was found in the Lake Elsinore area on July 4, 1991. She had been strangled.
Kelly Hammond was last seen in Riverside on August 15, 1991, and was found in Corona on August 16. She had been strangled. At trial a woman identified Suff as the driver of a van she had been in that evening, and the manager of a fast-food restaurant identified him as a man he had seen with her, though in 1991 the manager had said he could not remember the man.
Catherine McDonald was last seen by her daughter on September 12, 1991, and was found in the Lake Elsinore area on September 13. She was four months pregnant. She was strangled and stabbed.
Delliah Zamora, also known as Delliah Wallace, was found in Riverside County on October 30, 1991. She had been strangled. Jewelry that had belonged to her was later found with Suff's household and with a neighbor.
Eleanor Casares last spoke to her sister on the morning of December 23, 1991, and was found in Riverside County later that day. She was strangled and stabbed.
As the deaths mounted, so did the coverage. The 2014 opinion recounts that between 1988 and 1990 a few articles reported the deaths of women in the area, two of them raising the possibility of a serial killer. In 1991 sixty-two articles appeared, increasingly referring to a serial killer and keeping a tally of victims that had reached nineteen by December. On January 1, 1992, the press reported that Riverside's homicides for 1991 had set a record.
A task force had been assembled to catch the killer. A police bulletin described a late-model, two-tone Chevrolet Astro van, blue over gray, and asked patrol officers to record field information on vehicles that matched.
On January 9, 1992, Officer Frank Orta, a Riverside police motorcycle officer who knew of the bulletin, saw Suff's van in Riverside and stopped it after Suff turned without signaling. Suff said he did not have the registration with him. His driver's license had expired, and the van's registration had lapsed more than a year earlier. The van was impounded and its contents were inventoried. Suff told an officer he was on parole in Texas, and he was arrested for a parole violation.
Detective Christine Keers arrived about twenty minutes later and, with Suff's permission, searched the van. Officers then took him to the station, and detectives interviewed him the next day.
The case the prosecution built over the next three years rested on physical evidence. According to the 2014 opinion, DNA from nine of the women matched Suff, with estimated match frequencies that ranged, depending on the case and the population group, from one in 7,000 to one in a billion. Fiber, hair and tire-track evidence linked his van to several of the deaths. Belongings of several of the women were found at the county supply warehouse where he worked, at his home and with acquaintances who said he had given them the items.
Suff was charged in mid-January 1992 with two of the killings. Press accounts that month said he was suspected in nineteen deaths, then in thirteen. In June 1992 the press reported that scientific tests had linked him to fifteen more deaths, and in late July 1992 a Riverside County grand jury indicted him on fourteen counts of murder and on the attack on the woman who escaped in 1989. The task force was disbanded after the indictment.
In October 1992 the district attorney moved to remove the Riverside County Public Defender's office from the case. The office had represented the woman who escaped, who would not waive her privilege, and eighteen potential witnesses in fifty-six matters, eleven of whom also refused to waive. The trial court found an actual conflict and a potential conflict it called "staggering," removed the office, and appointed the county's conflicts panel. The Supreme Court later found no abuse of discretion and held that any error was harmless.
In May 1993 the defense asked for discovery about six other killings of women in which Suff had not been charged, and about any profile of the killer that law enforcement had prepared. His lawyers later argued on appeal that the refusal of that discovery denied him due process.
In December 1994, about two months before trial, the defense moved to move the trial out of Riverside County. A survey of 396 county residents found that 73.2 percent recognized the case and that about 49 percent thought Suff definitely or probably guilty. The county had about 1,357,000 residents. The trial court denied the motion. Of the twelve jurors and eight alternates, six said they knew nothing of the case and four had only limited knowledge.
The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2014. It described the coverage as "largely factual," noted that nearly three years had passed between the most intense reporting and the trial, and found that every juror had said he or she could put aside what had been heard and decide on the evidence. It held that Suff had not shown a reasonable likelihood that he could not receive, or did not receive, a fair trial.
The jury panel was accepted by March 1995. The defense attacked the credibility of prosecution witnesses with their prior convictions and inconsistent statements, including those of the woman who escaped, the restaurant manager, the woman who identified the van's driver, and Suff's brother, whom it impeached with a misdemeanor and three felony convictions.
The sharpest dispute was over DNA. The prosecution's analysts had used both the older RFLP method and PCR. Laurence Mueller, a population geneticist called by the defense, testified that the FBI's frequency calculations ignored differences among population subgroups, that its matching criteria could understate the chance of a coincidental match, and that the FBI had not followed a National Research Council recommendation. John Gerdes, the clinical director of an organ-matching company, testified that contamination could produce false matches or false exclusions and that PCR analysis should not be used in court until adequate controls existed. In rebuttal, Bruce Budowle, an FBI research scientist, called the Research Council report poor science and said Mueller's approach "defies genetics and science."
The jury convicted Suff of the first degree murders of Kimberly Lyttle, Tina Leal, Darla Ferguson, Carol Miller, Cheryl Coker, Susan Sternfeld, Kathleen Milne, Sherry Latham, Kelly Hammond, Catherine McDonald, Delliah Zamora and Eleanor Casares, and of the attempted murder of the woman who escaped in 1989. ABC7 Los Angeles, reporting in 2024, dated the guilty verdicts to July 1995. The jury found true the special circumstances that he had been convicted of more than one murder and that he had intentionally killed each victim while lying in wait, and found that he personally used a knife in the murders of Leal, Miller, Coker, McDonald and Casares. Suff waived a jury on the allegation that he had a prior murder conviction, and the court found it true.
On a thirteenth murder count, for the death of Cheri Payseur, the jury could not agree, and the court declared a mistrial on that count.
At the penalty phase the prosecution presented evidence of the 1973 Texas murder conviction. It also offered evidence that Suff killed Lisa Lacik in San Bernardino County in January 1988, a death with which he was never charged. A witness picked Suff's photograph from a lineup in 1992; the defense emphasized that she had said she "didn't get a really great look" at the man and presented evidence to cast doubt on the identification. Sixteen relatives of ten of the murdered women gave victim impact testimony.
The defense called his mother and other relatives to describe his father's departure and the role Suff took on afterward, along with the employers and friends who spoke of his reliability. Jail staff described him as "always pleasant and polite," with a single disciplinary write-up, for contraband. James Park, a prison expert, predicted that Suff would be "an excellent, conforming prisoner, nonviolent," and said he might need protective custody.
The jury returned verdicts of death on all twelve murder counts. The trial court denied the motion to modify the verdicts and sentenced Suff to death on each of them, with a term of life with the possibility of parole for the attempted murder and five years for the weapon findings. The appeal to the California Supreme Court was automatic.
The court filed its opinion on April 28, 2014, nearly two decades after the verdicts. It rejected his claims that the removal of the public defender's office, the denial of a change of venue and the denial of his motion to suppress the evidence from the traffic stop required reversal. On the stop, the court held that the Vehicle Code required Suff to signal his turn even after stopping at a red light, that Officer Orta, riding behind the van, was in a position to be affected by it, and that the officer could therefore stop the van, demand the license and registration, impound it for the lapsed registration and take an inventory of its contents. His appeal also challenged the denial of the discovery he had sought about other killings. "We affirm the judgment," the court wrote.
Cathy Ann Small was 19, from Lake Elsinore, the mother of two small children, a daughter and a sister. She was found dead in South Pasadena on February 22, 1986. She had no identification and was listed as Jane Doe No. 17 until she was identified days later. An autopsy found that she had been stabbed and strangled. The case went cold.
It was reopened in 2019 after new information reached Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives. Detective Louie Aguilera and his colleagues found that evidence in the case had never been tested for DNA. On August 19, 2020, a sheriff's criminalist reported two male DNA profiles. One was Suff's. The other man has not been identified.
In May 2022 detectives interviewed Suff over two days, for more than seven hours. He confessed to the killing and "discussed in detail the murder of Cathy Small," Lt. Patricia Thomas of the sheriff's homicide bureau said, and he admitted some of the earlier Riverside County killings. Sheriff Robert Luna announced the result at a news conference at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles on August 13, 2024. "We believe we are bringing a sense of long-overdue justice and closure to the victim and her family," he said. The district attorney's Major Crimes Division reviewed the case and declined to file charges because of Suff's existing convictions and death sentence.
Thomas read a letter from Small's younger sister. "My sister, Cathy Small, was not a statistic," she wrote, describing her as a protective big sister, a loving mother and a good daughter whose life "was cut short before she could even begin to make her own dreams come true." "I will always miss my sister Cathy," she wrote. "Nothing will bring her back." Speaking to KCAL News, she said of Aguilera, "He looked at her like a human being and he cared and he fought."
Suff was convicted of twelve murders in Riverside County and one in Texas. The other deaths connected to him rest on different footing. The count for Cheri Payseur ended in a mistrial when the jury deadlocked. The Lacik killing was offered at the penalty phase as evidence of other violent conduct; he was never charged with it, and the defense disputed the identification. The six other killings his lawyers sought discovery about in 1993 were never charged against him. The press reported in 1992 that he was suspected in as many as nineteen deaths, a figure that fell to thirteen in later reports that month, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in 2024 that he had admitted some of the Riverside County killings without saying which. His confession to the 1986 killing of Cathy Small was not tested in court, and a second man's DNA in her case remains unidentified.
When the Small case was announced in August 2024, Suff was 73 and under sentence of death. CBS News Los Angeles reported at the time that he was held on death row at San Quentin. California has had a moratorium on executions since 2019.
Age 16: his father leaves the family.
After high school: joins the Air Force and moves to Texas.
1973: his two-month-old daughter, Dijanet Suff, dies in Texas.
1974: convicted of murder in Tarrant County, Texas; sentenced to seventy years.
1984: paroled to California after about ten years.
February 22, 1986: Cathy Small, 19, is found dead in South Pasadena (killing he confessed to in 2022; not charged).
March 1987 to mid-1988: lives in an apartment complex in the Riverside area.
January 1988: Lisa Lacik is killed in San Bernardino County (attributed by the prosecution at the penalty phase; never charged).
January 1989: a woman escapes an attack in Lake Elsinore (attempted murder conviction).
June 28, 1989: Kimberly Lyttle is found in the Lake Elsinore area.
December 13, 1989: Tina Leal is found in the Lake Elsinore area.
January 18, 1990: Darla Ferguson is found in the Lake Elsinore area.
February 8, 1990: Carol Miller is found in the Highgrove area.
November 6, 1990: Cheryl Coker is found in Riverside.
December 21, 1990: Susan Sternfeld is found in Riverside.
January 19, 1991: Kathleen Milne is found in the Lake Elsinore area.
July 4, 1991: Sherry Latham is found in the Lake Elsinore area.
August 16, 1991: Kelly Hammond is found in Corona.
September 13, 1991: Catherine McDonald is found in the Lake Elsinore area.
October 30, 1991: Delliah Zamora is found in Riverside County.
December 23, 1991: Eleanor Casares is found in Riverside County.
January 9, 1992: stopped by Officer Frank Orta in Riverside and arrested.
January 10, 1992: interviewed by detectives.
Mid-January 1992: charged with two killings.
Late July 1992: indicted by a Riverside County grand jury; the task force disbands.
October 1992: the public defender's office is removed from the case.
May 1993: the defense seeks discovery about six uncharged killings.
December 1994: change of venue motion filed and denied.
March 1995: the jury panel is accepted.
July 1995: convicted of twelve first degree murders and one attempted murder; mistrial on the Payseur count.
1995: sentenced to death.
April 28, 2014: Supreme Court of California affirms the judgment.
October 2019: sheriff's detectives reopen the Small case.
August 19, 2020: DNA testing in the Small case produces two male profiles, one matching Suff.
May 2022: interviewed over two days; confesses to killing Small.
August 13, 2024: the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announces the Small case result; no charges are filed.