A serial killer has been charged with the murders of three women in Southern California that happened nearly 50 years ago.
In 1977, Kimberly Fritz, 18, Velvet Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21, were strangled to death, but investigators had no leads at the time.
“While we believed these three crimes were indeed related, leads did not emerge and detectives were unable to identify the perpetrator of this horrific murder,” Ventura County District Attorney Eric Nasarenko said at a press conference this week.
The suspect, Warren Luther Alexander, of Diamond Head, Mississippi, who was working as a long-haul truck driver at the time, was linked to the murders after his DNA was matched with that from the crime scene after it was uploaded to the national database, the Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS), last year.
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A serial killer has been charged with the murders of three women in Southern California that happened nearly 50 years ago. (Ventura County District Attorney’s Office)
Alexander was extradited Tuesday from North Carolina, where he was detained and charged with murder in 1992.
All of the California victims were killed between late May 1977 and December 1977.
“These murders may have happened 47 years ago, but investigators from the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, investigators from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit, and officers and detectives from Port Hueneme and Oxnard never gave up. They never gave up on seeking justice for these three victims, their loved ones and their families,” Nasarenko said.
“Just because a case goes unsolved doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.”
Authorities said all three women were prostitutes and frequented shopping centers and motels in the Los Angeles area that were known for prostitution at the time.
Alexander is being held without bail.
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In 1977, Kimberly Fritz, 18, Velvet Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21, were strangled to death, but investigators had no leads at the time. (Ventura County District Attorney’s Office)
Authorities have said they believe he may be a suspect in unsolved murders that occurred in California and other states while he worked as a truck driver from the 1970s through the 1990s.
“We believe there may be victims both locally and in other states,” Nasarenko said. “This is an ongoing investigation and we will continue to pursue any leads we have. This investigation is not over.”
Ventura County District Attorney Eric Nasarenko has said Alexander may be connected to other unsolved murders around the country. (Ventura County District Attorney’s Office)
He was arrested in North Carolina in 2022 for the 1992 murder of 29-year-old Nona Cobb.
Alexander grew up in Oxnard, California, where Sanchez was killed in September 1977, and moved back to the area in the 1970s.
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“Judgment day has finally come in Ventura County for former fugitive Warren Luther Alexander,” Nasarenko said.
FOX 5 and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
