A 70-year-old convicted serial killer in Lake Elsinore has confessed to another murder in Southern California, authorities announced Tuesday, closing a decades-long cold case.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide lieutenant Patricia Thomas said at a news conference that William Lester Sal, known as the “Riverside Prostitute Killer” and the “Lake Elsinore Killer,” William Lester Suff admitted to killing 19-year-old Cathy Small in 1986. Saff also acknowledged other killings in Riverside County, but authorities did not immediately provide details about those cases. He is currently on death row in San Quentin.
According to authorities, Saff’s killings date back to the 1970s and 1980s, when Los Angeles was known as the serial killer capital of the United States. In 1974, he was convicted in Texas of killing his two-month-old daughter and sentenced to 70 years in prison. But in 1984, Thomas said, he was paroled to California.
Thomas said that on February 22, 1986, South Pasadena police received a report of a woman lying in the road on Banks Street. The woman was found unconscious and wearing pajamas with multiple stab wounds. She was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy determined she had been stabbed and strangled.
Three days later, detectives received a call from a Lake Elsinore resident who had seen a newspaper article about the homicide and was concerned the woman was his roommate, according to authorities. The caller later identified the victim as 19-year-old Cathy Small, a prostitute who had been living with him at his home for several months.
Thomas said the man told detectives that Small left the home on Feb. 21 and told him a man named Bill was picking her up and gave her $50 to drive to Los Angeles with him.
Detectives followed several leads over the decades but never solved the case. Authorities later discovered that the sexual assault kit and Small’s clothing in the case had never been DNA tested; on August 20, 2020, DNA analysis linked the case to two men. Sav is one of them.
When interviewed by detectives in 2022, Saff said he lived in Riverside County in 1986 and worked at a computer repair shop. He called her and asked her if she would go with him to Pasadena to meet his boss.
Thomas said the pair got into an argument when they arrived at the Banks Street location and Sav became furious when she knocked his glasses off his face. Sav took a knife from the car and stabbed her several times in the chest. He then pushed her into the street and drove off.
Saff remained free until 1992, when he was arrested during a routine traffic stop, eventually confessed to more than a dozen murders in Riverside County between 1989 and 1991 and was sentenced to death.
Authorities said Sav is not expected to stand trial for killing Small because he is already on death row.
“We believe we are bringing a long overdue sense of justice and closure to the victims and their families,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a news conference Tuesday.
Thomas read a statement at the news conference from Small’s sister, who had two young children and was getting her life back on track when she was killed.
“She was a loving mother and a wonderful daughter,” the statement read. “She had a huge heart and would do anything for anyone.”
