Charlotte Palmer, Lisa Lacik, Kimberly Lyttle, Tina Leal, Darla Ferguson, Carol Miller, Cheryl Coker, Susan Sternfeld, Kathleen Puckett, Cherie Payseur, Sherry Latham, Kelly Hammond, Catherine McDonald, Delliah Zamora, Eleanor Casares.
These are believed to be only half the victims of the Riverside Prostitute Killer, but, across three counties, more than two dozen unsolved murder cases were “closed” with Bill Suff’s arrest. And, while the murder spree was going on, there was no reason not to believe that any woman could fall victim, any woman who crossed the killer’s path.
Bodies “officially” began piling up in 1986, when Charlotte Palmer’s half-nude corpse was found carefully posed along a roadside near the desert oasis of Sun City in Riverside County, California. Charlotte hadn’t been tossed there like some rag doll, she’d been carefully, painstakingly posed to convey some sort of meaning, and she’d been left in a place where she was certain to be found at first light. The killer might as well have pinned a note to her—he was telling the world a story, he was announcing himself and explaining just what sort of demon he was. Charlotte Palmer was his prop—he was the debuting debutant, he was the one that mattered, the one who had something to say, something to prove.
But who could read the “story” of this murder scene, who could interpret this “art”, what was the killer conveying beyond the fact that he could strike with impunity, he could mock both his victim and the authorities, and he was absolutely going to strike again and again and again, until caught?
How many open-air, roadside galleries would be filled with these murderous pastiches before these killings would come to an end?
Charlotte Palmer was a pretty woman and she was in good shape. She was not using drugs, and she had undigested fast-food chicken in her stomach at the time she died.
She seemed to have been strangled.
Traces of that gray/brown glue/goo from duct tape were found around her ankles, wrists, and thigh. She was pretty well bruised from head to toe.
Charlotte had last been seen in Sun City. She had no known job there, so she was officially classified as “transient”, and maybe she did a little hooking to earn enough to move on from place to place until she found the place she was looking for, certain that she’d know it when she got there.
She hoped.
And maybe the night of her death Charlotte was hooking, or maybe she just accepted a ride from a kindly stranger on his way up the freeway to that place that might be the place that she was looking and hoping for.
Either way, the two of them—Charlotte and her benefactor— picked up a little KFC and shared a laugh as they headed out onto the blacktop that whispers forever through the desert dark.
And then, when she was soft and warm and contented with food, running her tongue along her teeth to rub off the last taste of grease even though you can still smell the stuff for hours after, Charlotte suddenly got whacked across the face, took an elbow to the throat, and found herself tied up with tape, raped and beaten and murdered, posed later at the side of the road.
If she could have looked back down at herself lying there, Charlotte Palmer must have wondered one simple thing: how in the hell did this happen?
But the police didn’t wonder at all—they knew: a serial killer had just crossed the county line.
And, even though this guy signed his crime with a flourish, with the pose, he did not leave one hard evidentiary clue that could lead to his capture or conviction.
This guy planned his crime. He planned it, committed it, and then cleaned up afterward. No bloody glove here. A guy like this, a guy worried enough to make sure he wouldn’t get caught, couldn’t get caught; he wasn’t some trucker just passing through, and this killing was in no way personal. No, this guy was careful, he was organized, he was impassioned but focused, and, scariest of all, he had to be living right here in Riverside, living with his victims and his pursuers, living right under their noses, living as their friend and neighbor.
Hey, neighbor!
He could be anybody.
But he had to be a nobody.
Somebody who was so indistinctive he could move freely, and yet so sociable you wouldn’t suspect him as weird or out of place.
He probably even had a wife or girlfriend. And surely a dog or a cat or some fish.
And, over the course of the many years of his murders, it’s fair to say that, without realizing it, damn near everybody who lived in Riverside stood next to or drove past or tipped a hat to or saw their man somewhere going about his business.
His business of murder.
A business he would get even better at as time went on, as he got even better organized, more brazen and yet more careful.
Charlotte Palmer, Lisa Lacik, Kimberly Lyttle, Tina Leal, Darla Ferguson, Carol Miller, Cheryl Coker, Susan Sternfeld, Kathleen Puckett, Cherie Payseur, Sherry Latham, Kelly Hammond, Catherine McDonald, Delliah Zamora, Eleanor Casares.
When they found Lisa Lacik’s body next door to Riverside County in 1988, the authorities got really worried. She’d been strangled and posed—a familiar tune at this point, with other mur-ders in other counties—and there were no good clues, but, unlike previous victims, she’d been horribly mutilated with a knife. She’d been explored, exposed, ransacked, and debased, and her right breast had been cut off.
Typically, it was hard to get the authorities from different counties to trade information and evidence, to even know for certain that they were all dealing with the same serial killer, but, finally, after several more murders in Riverside, it became more politically expedient to subsidize a task force rather than ignore a bunch of dead, chopped-up hookers, and so all the counties were brought together, along with FBI advisors and profilers and DNA experts and computer jockeys.
Thank God for election years, right?
However, now, in the autumn of 1990, the murders began to happen fast and furious. In Riverside there had been a lag—nine months had passed between Carol Miller and Cheryl Coker—but the renewed attacks were even more vicious than before. Where there had been an almost twisted whimsy, a taunt and a leer in the previous murders, Cheryl Coker’s death was very angry and almost desperate and even a little bit rushed. There was the palpable sense that now, here we go, there might finally be a chance to catch this guy because he was upping the ante, operating right on the edge of control versus risk.
There was therefore a real urgency—catch this guy, or else watch the body count go through the roof. It’s not that the killer wants to be caught, it’s that he can’t stop himself from killing, even when he might get caught, even when he might fuck up.
Charlotte Palmer, Lisa Lacik, Kimberly Lyttle, Tina Leal, Darla Ferguson, Carol Miller, Cheryl Coker, Susan Sternfeld, Kathleen Puckett, Cherie Payseur, Sherry Latham, Kelly Hammond, Catherine McDonald, Delliah Zamora, Eleanor Casares.
Despite the task force, bodies. In Riverside alone, a body a month in the latter half of 1991.
And still, no clues, not enough to do anything but tantalize the investigators. Some fibers, some hair, some shoe prints, some tire tracks. Duct tape had given way to surgical tubing that left no trace evidence at all. No fingerprints anywhere ever. Could’ve been anybody. Had to be somebody. Might as well have been a ghost. No matter the warnings, hookers still kept getting killed, mutilated, and posed. A head stuck in the ground. More shorn right breasts. Cigarette burns on the skin. Bite marks. A lightbulb in a uterus. A sock down a throat. Odd clothes put on the bodies after death.
And then, in January 1992, a break.
A cop with a hunch. A cop willing to make an unlawful search on a guy in a van who’d been trying to solicit a hooker.