The California Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death penalty and convictions of serial killer William Suff, found guilty of murdering, and in some cases mutilating, 12 women whose bodies were found dumped in fields, citrus groves and along rural roadsides in western Riverside County from 1989 through 1991. The state’s high court voted 7-0 to uphold the convictions and death sentence for the worst serial-murder case in Riverside County history. Most of the victims, from Riverside or Lake Elsinore, were prostitutes hooked on heroin or other drugs. Some of the women were married. Several had children. They died from strangulation and stabbing, and some were found in posed positions. Police said Suff kept jewelry and clothing from the women he killed, washed the articles and gave them to female friends.
Suff, now 63, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995. “Nobody deserves the death penalty as much as this guy does,” said Suff jury foreman Joe D’Errico, now 51 and a resident of Boise, Idaho.
Sadistic and twisted relationship between serial killer-to-be, Norman Bates, and his mother Norma. Norman's formative years and reveals how he became one of the most infamous murderers of all time. Season 1, Episode 4: Trust Me. Season 4, Episode 9: Forever. Jun 9, 2013 - Richard Ramirez, a mass murderer and serial rapist known as the 'Night. For 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14.
“You don’t get much more guilty.” He recalled Suff as “pathological personality” who manipulated people close to him, including those who testified on Suff’s behalf during the penalty phase of his trial. “In the courtroom he was grandfatherly, a mild-mannered guy. But he was carrying on a charade and was guilty of these horrible things.” Suff’s victims’ bodies were found in remote areas such as Cottonwood Canyon south of Canyon Lake; in a dumpster in northeast Riverside, and in an orange grove located a half-mile from a Riverside police station. Suff lived in Colton and was a warehouse clerk for Riverside County at the time of his arrest. He participated in county van pools and chili cook-offs. Suff was charged with 13 slayings and convicted of 12 of them. Police said he used his own van to pick up the victims, several of them on Riverside’s University Avenue.
Distinctive tire-tread tracks from the van linked him to several of the killings. During their investigation, authorities said that 19 women in Riverside County had been identified as possible victims of the serial killer, beginning in 1986. Suff also was linked to at least one slaying in San Bernardino County and others in Orange and San Diego counties, but there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge him.
Suff was hired by Riverside County in 1986 while on parole from Texas after serving part of a 70-year prison term for the 1973 murder of his 2-month-old daughter, Dijanet, who died of a ruptured liver and numerous broken bones. In 1991 his 3-month-old baby, Bridgette, suffered serious injuries in Suff’s Colton home and was removed by San Bernardino County authorities. Jurors did not hear of the 1973 murder until after they had convicted Suff of the serial killings, D’Errico said. “That was absolutely shocking,” he said of the revelation. “If you only get one pass in life, that was it.” D’Errico, a former Norco resident, said he worked for the California Youth Authority in Chino after the trial and moved to Boise in 2000. He is currently a court clerk.
During Suff’s trial, authorities used DNA and other forensic evidence to link him to the crimes. Jurors hung 11-1 for conviction on the 13th victim, Cherie Payseur, 24, whose body was found behind a bowling alley in Riverside in April of 1991. An automatic sprinkler system had washed away much of the evidence that detectives hoped to collect. Sam Lyttle of Carlsbad is the father of Kimberly Lyttle, 28, whose body was found in Cottonwood Canyon in June 1989. She was the first of the victims named in the indictment against Suff, although authorities are convinced she was not his first victim in the series of slayings. “It’s not going to happen in California,” Lyttle said of the death penalty imposed on Suff and upheld 19 years later.
Suff can ask for a reconsideration of the case by the state supreme court, seek a separate habeas petition from the state, and then can take his case to federal court once he has exhausted all state remedies. “We learn to live with that in California,” said Lyttle, now 88. “When it first happened, it was terrible, an emotional thing for my wife and I to go through,” Lyttle said in a phone interview. “It took me a long time to even mention my daughter’s name without bursting into tears.” He said he and his wife of 47 years, Anna Eileen, have managed in the intervening years to work through their emotions. He said now he mostly remembers meeting the families of other victims during the trial.
It's been a week of outrage, disbelief and small graces for victims of crime in Alberta. Watchers at an Edmonton court room expressed their anger audibly on Friday, after hearing that all charges were being dropped against a teen of two city residents. It was alleged the teen boy killed Barry Boenke, 68, and his friend Susan Trudel, 50, after escaping from a youth home.
The Crown said it no longer had a case after the judge dismissed all evidence gathered by the RCMP under a Mr. Earlier in the week, authorities and commentators were left in disbelief when they learned that after admitting the TV show and to attempt to kill a second, had his own flat screen TV in his cell and on which he watched as much Dexter as he desired. Twitchell is serving a life sentence for luring a man to his rented Edmonton garage, killing him, dismembering him and disposing of the remains in the city's sewer. And it was a small solace but a solace nonetheless after three teens were sentenced on Friday to the max, while the young boy slept in the Samson Cree reserve. The three took turns firing a rifle into the central Alberta home of a Native chief.
One of the bullets hit the five-year-old while he was sleeping, killing him instantly. The culprits all being teens, their sentences will count more in the months than in the years. But although it was one particularly busy week in Alberta courts, that is not to say violence and grisly crime is worse now than before. In fact, as the gallery below - which highlights some of the most notorious crimes in Alberta history - shows, crime has and will likely always be present as long as human beings are part of the equation.