A Red Van, A Sleeping Bag, and Thirteen Dead Women
From child killer to serial murderer: the horrifying truth about William Suff.
How many times have we seen it?
A serial killer operating, and they seem to only get caught by chance for something entirely unrelated. The case of the Riverside Killer is no different.
For five years the mutilated bodies of women were turning up with increasing regularity in Riverside, California, with the murderer remaining frustratingly elusive to police.
It wasn’t until 1992 when 41-year-old William Lester Suff was pulled over for making an illegal u-turn that the Riverside Killer was finally caught.
William Lester Suff
Born in 1950, Stuff grew up in Torrance, California, and was described as being a small child, not particularly academic, with a flair for music. His father left that family home, leaving Suff’s mother relying on welfare payments to support them.
In 1969, Suff entered the Air Force but left in 1970. It was in 1974 that Suff committed his first known crime.
Child murderer
In 1974, a 24-year-old Suff, along with his wife Teryl, were convicted of beating their two-month-old baby daughter to death. She died after suffering a ruptured liver and multiple broken bones. The pair were jailed for the horrific attack, with Teryl’s conviction eventually being overturned, but Suff sentenced to 70 years for murder.
He was released in 1984 after only serving 10 years. It’s at this point he moved to Riverside.
A Serial Killer Emerges
In 1986, Suff was working as a stock clerk for the county government. Those who worked with him described him as a friendly nerd, who was always keen to help people. He was sociable, and engaged regularly in neighbourhood activities. No one around him knew of his terrible past.
On 30 October 1986, the body of 23-year-old Michelle Gutierrez was discovered. She had been stuffed inside a drainage ditch, and her clothes torn off. Her body had been mutilated after being stabbed multiple times, as well as being strangled.
A few weeks later the body of 24-year-old Charlotte Palmer was also discovered, and a month after that, the body of 37-year-old Linda Ortega.
Three bodies, with similarities between them confirmed to police that they had a serial killer, but the discovery of more bodies cemented it to everyone in the area.
How to catch a killer
With no fingerprints, and DNA still something of the future, the police had to rely on physical evidence found on the bodies, but Suff hadn’t left a lot for them to work with. Investigators relied on old-fashioned police work to begin linking the cases, finding consistencies throughout each crime scene which made them easier to link together.
They found:
Red fibres from a sleeping bag;
hairs from a ginger cat;
shoe prints from a particular brand of sneaker; and
multiple tire tracks
The discovery of different tire tracks alongside the consistency of the other evidence led police to believe a different vehicle was being used for each crime in an attempt to throw them off.
A break in the case
A woman came forward to say that her friend — one of the most recent victims — had got into a van with a red sleeping bag in the back. As a sex worker, she saw different men each day, but this one had given her a particularly bad feeling.
She provided a description to the police who created a composite sketch, confirming that he was overweight, greying and wearing glasses.
While the image circulated, police continued their investigation, with the crime scenes revealing that it wasn’t multiple vehicles, but rather different tires being swapped out. Using measurements of the tracks, they managed to narrow it down to one specific make of van.
It was while the entire force was looking for this van, that Suff was pulled over for making an illegal U-turn. He produced an expired licence, and when the registration was found to be expired also, he was arrested.
Inside the van, there was a bloodied knife, rope — and crucially, a red sleeping bag.
When police searched his home they found 41-year-old Suff was married to an 18-year-old woman who knew nothing about his past, or what he was up to when he went out for the evening. They also found a ginger cat, a yard full of tyres, and trainers matching the shoe prints from the crime scenes.
Trial and sentencing
In March 1995 Suff went on trial for murder, convicted of one count in Texas, and twelve in California. He was sentenced to death.
That August he was found guilty of the murders of Kimberly Lyttle, Darla Ferguson, Carol Miller, Cheryl Coker, Susan Sternfeld, Tina Leal, Kathleen Milne, Sherry Latham, Kelly Hammond, Catherine McDonald, Delliah Zamora and Eleanor Casares.
In 2024 it was revealed that two years earlier in 2022, Suff had confessed to a further murder. Cathy Small was stabbed to death in California in 1986, and her case had remained cold until Suff’s DNA was linked to her death.
He remains in prison on death row in California.
Sources: Wikipedia, murderpedia, Crime Library, VocalMedia
