Southside Serial Killer Stalked by ‘Clue Hunters’

Clue No. 2,009 came from a terrified Long Beach woman convinced that her peeping Tom resembled the mystery man who police say has killed at least 17 prostitutes, most in South-Central Los Angeles.

The clue was a long shot, as raw as they come. But any investigator worth his badge knows that even the most obscure snippet might break a big case wide open.

Which is why Sgt. Leonard Isaacs and Officer Lynn Horton piled into an unmarked police car one morning last week and diligently set out for Long Beach, to talk to a woman afraid that she had glanced at death’s face through her bedroom window.

In the end, however, there would be no good leads, just another day for two “clue hunters” stalking the Southside Serial Killer.

Horton, Isaacs and 18 other uniformed officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Metropolitan Division have been made temporary detectives, assisting 10 regular homicide investigators probing the string of unsolved slayings that date back to 1983. All of the officers are part of a joint task force that also includes 16 sheriff’s investigators.

But while nearly 30 other non-related crimes, from simple thefts to assaults, have been solved because of its work since January, the task force has had little success in breaking the prostitute-killings case, police say. That reality has proved perhaps the most frustrating for Isaacs, Horton and the other clue hunters, as they have come to be known by task force coordinators.

They have been at it six days a week, 12 hours a day, researching the more than 2,000 tips and other bits of information that have poured in as the killer’s tally has grown.

Among themselves, they are not hunters, but rather “clue clowns,” a joking, self-effacement of the ridiculous dead ends to which they must sometimes travel.

“You have to keep an open mind every time,” said Horton, 37. “You listen and watch and keep going because, my God, you want to get this solved so there are no more victims.”

Horton is a nasally, Tyne Daly look-alike who paints her nails pink and packs her revolver in a shoulder holster. Isaacs, 44, her supervisor and partner on this day, bears the permanent frown lines of someone who has spent more than half his life arresting people.

Driving toward Long Beach, they have stories to tell of the clues they’ve tracked in pursuit of a ghetto killer who strangles and stabs his victims, leaving them to die in the dark.

There are the semi-plausible clues. Take No. 1,694: An informant provided police information that three men are killing the hookers to force a takeover of the prostitute trade in South-Central neighborhoods. The informant even offered names.

“Then you find out that one of the three guys died a year ago,” Isaacs said. “You account for the other two guys and there goes your clue.”

There are the truly absurd clues. Like those from well-meaning citizens who finger old white men as possible prostitute killers--even though the suspect is described in a well-publicized police composite sketch as black, 28 to 31 years of age and 165 pounds. The suspect has been seen wearing a black baseball cap and mustache of the same color.

Then there are clues not so easily retired. No. 1,925, for example: Somebody recently saw an old Ford pickup truck, possibly gray in color, parked near Hoover Street and Imperial Highway. The description matched that of a truck seen near one of the slayings.

“Needle in a haystack,” Isaacs remarked. “You could look for ever.”

No matter its ultimate worth, that tip and all the others are first detailed on a clue “fact sheet,” a mimeographed form upon which an investigator takes down information about the reporting party (if the clue is not anonymous), and how the information relates to one or more of the homicides.

The form and a file jacket are assigned the same number that reflect the order in which the clue was received. All bits of data from that clue--names, dates, places--are cross-indexed in the task force’s computer before the file is doled out to a clue hunter by detective coordinators.

Each hunter, at any one time, is assigned an average 15 or more clues to investigate.

“It’s not like normal police work,” Horton said. “Normally, you arrest a guy, get off work and that’s it. On something like this, you’ll be sitting at home watching TV hours later, and you’re still thinking about it. You’ll think, ‘Maybe this (clue) is the one,’ and your heart beats a little faster.”

But on this summer day in Long Beach, there would be nothing to make a clue hunter’s heart beat faster. The woman whose peeping Tom resembles the killer of prostitutes was not at home. The Long Beach police had no record of her ever having made a report about him.

Perhaps they would try to see her tomorrow.

Still, there was other work left to do. Horton had a confidential interview scheduled at Los Angeles police headquarters. Isaacs dropped her off and picked up another clue hunter, Officer Myron Bitting, 45, a one-time Iowa farmer who came to Los Angeles 20 years ago for a little excitement and never left.

Bitting and Isaacs would wind up their day cruising south of downtown, hoping to spread among the hookers a few more copies of the composite sketch. The prostitutes were not hard to find.

At 49th Street and Broadway, a woman in short-shorts sighed and smiled nervously as Isaacs and Bidding pulled up. Hesitant at first, she finally leaned into the passenger-side window, sensing that the two investigators were after bigger fish.

Isaacs asked her if she was being careful on the streets. She nodded.

“I’m scared to be out here, that’s why I only work during the day,” she said. “Listen, you know I’d love to cooperate with you, but I got a customer waiting over there. Can I talk to you tomorrow?”

The policemen let her go.

At 29th Street and Central Avenue, Isaacs and Bidding drove into a glass-strewn vacant lot. Leaning against a light pole was a bespectacled hooker six months’ pregnant.

Already familiar with the composite sketch, she assured them that she no longer “dates” black men; that she shies away from potential customers wearing black baseball caps.

The officers showed her photographs of the victims, hoping she might know something. She pointed out two of the snapshots. “This one I went to school with; this one I did time with.”

She stood silent for a moment, before handing the pictures back to Isaacs.

“Ever figure out why this man is killing all these people?” the prostitute asked.

The clue hunter smiled. “If I knew that, dear,” Isaacs said, “I’d be God.”