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Friday, May 01, 2009 - 10:20 PM
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Los Angeles police said a DNA match has prompted them to conclude that a 72-year-old man may be connected to around 30 killings in and around the city, some dating back decades.
Police arrested John Floyd Thomas, an insurance claims adjustor, in March after learning his DNA matched samples from five rapes and slayings of elderly women. But they are also investigating him in connection with roughly 25 other Southern California killings and will likely expand the investigation to more cases, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said Thursday.
Mr. Thomas was convicted of burglary and attempted rape in Los Angeles in 1957 and sentenced to six years in prison. He was convicted of a rape in Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles, in 1978 and was in prison until 1983. He is currently being held in the Los Angeles County Jail. Raoul Hutchens, a lawyer in the office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender who is representing Mr. Thomas, declined to comment on his client's situation.
Despite the earlier convictions, officials hadn't previously connected Mr. Thomas to a string of unsolved rapes and deaths in the 1970s that clustered around several Los Angeles areas, including Hollywood and Inglewood. Nor had he been linked to a series of similar killings east of Los Angeles that started after Mr. Thomas was released from prison the second time. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
"He had never come up on the radar at all," said Richard Bengstan, an LAPD detective working on the inquiry. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
But new DNA evidence led police to look into Mr. Thomas's potential involvement in all those crimes.
"This is a case about tenacity and science," said Deputy Chief Charlie Beck. He credited advances in DNA technology with giving new life to the investigations, which were handled by the LAPD's Cold Case Homicide Unit. Details of the events were earlier reported by the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
Police believe Mr. Thomas might be one of the most lethal serial killers in Los Angeles history. Around the country, Ted Bundy, executed in 1989, killed at least 20 women and bragged about killing many more. Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer of the 1980s and 1990s, pleaded guilty to 48 counts of murder.
The 1970s and early 1980s saw many such crimes, such as the Son of Sam murders in New York in 1976 and 1977. In Los Angeles, in addition to the deaths possibly connected to Mr. Thomas, cousins known as the Hillside Stranglers went on a rape-and-killing rampage in 1977 and 1978. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
A California law approved by voters in 2004 calls for officials to collect DNA samples from convicted sex offenders. While working through the backlog, officials in October swabbed Mr. Thomas's cheek for DNA. A state lab notified police late last month that his DNA was a match in five slayings.
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