John Floyd Thomas, Jr., 72, Los Angeles' most prolific serial killer?

[annalyzer]

Police call man LA's 'most prolific serial killer'

1 min ago

LOS ANGELES – Police believe a 72-year-old insurance claims adjuster arrested earlier this month is the most prolific serial killer in the city's history, having raped and strangled as many as 30 older women over two decades. The break in the cold case came in October when John Floyd Thomas Jr., who had twice been convicted of sexual assault, had a DNA sample taken as part of an effort to build an offender database.

Thomas was charged April 2 with murdering one woman in 1972 and another in 1976. DNA matching Thomas' was found at three other crime scenes in the 1970s and '80s, Los Angeles police cold case Detective Richard Bengston told the Los Angeles Times in a story published Thursday.

Detectives now consider Thomas also a suspect in two waves of killings that left at least 22 women dead based on the circumstances of the crimes, the newspaper reported. It could not be immediately determined where the other killings took place.

"When all is said and done, Mr. Thomas stands to be Los Angeles' most prolific serial killer," Bengston told the newspaper.

Thomas was being held in county jail and could not be reached for comment. Authorities reached by phone by The Associated Press did not know whether he had obtained an attorney.

Thomas was sentenced to six years in 1957 for burglary and attempted rape in Los Angeles. Two parole violations sent him back behind bars until 1966.

In the first wave of killings in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, a man police dubbed "The Westside Rapist" entered the homes of dozens of elderly women who lived alone, raped them and choked them until they passed out or died. The 17 people killed were found with pillows or blankets over their faces.

During that time, Thomas was a social worker, hospital employee and salesman. The attacks stopped in 1978 — the year Thomas went back to prison for the rape of a Pasadena woman.

After his 1983 release, he moved to Chino in San Bernardino County and took a job as a hospital peer counselor in nearby Pomona. That year, a series of attacks on elderly women began that included five slayings in the nearby Los Angeles County town of Claremont. The attacker also used blankets or pillows over his victims' faces.

Despite some 20 survivors, detectives didn't connect the two cases. There were conflicting descriptions from victims, a lack of communication between agencies and an absence of DNA technology.

Since 1989, Thomas worked at the State Compensation Insurance Fund in Glendale. He was arrested at his South Los Angeles apartment on March 31.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430/ap_on_re_us/us_serial_slayings

[Roamer]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/30/westside.killings/index.html

CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A man who Los Angeles police believe raped and murdered dozens of women decades ago was arrested by cold case investigators this month after a computer matched his DNA to evidence from two killings in the 1970s.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/CRIME/04/30/westside.killings/art.mugshots.lapd.jpg John Floyd Thomas Jr. may have begun his killings as far back as 1955.





http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/img/2.0/mosaic/base_skins/baseplate/corner_wire_BL.gif



John Floyd Thomas Jr., 72, may have begun his killings as far back as 1955 and he could be one of the worst serial killers in United States history, according to Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.
"We have yet to reach the depths of what he has done," Bratton said Thursday.
Until his April 2 arrest, Thomas was a Los Angeles insurance adjuster. Police now call him the "Southland Strangler" -- named for the geographical section of Los Angeles County where they suspect he killed at least 30 women and raped many more.
Thomas, who sits in a Los Angeles jail, has been charged with two killings -- in 1972 and 1976 -- but prosecutors will likely add more cases when he faces arraignment on May 20, Bratton said.
While Thomas was arrested "a number of times between 1955 and 1978" for sex crimes and burglaries, detectives did not have the technology to identify him as a suspect when the region was terrorized by a series of killings then blamed on the "Westside Rapist," Bratton said.
Officials, using new computer databases and software, are now "looking to see what the patterns were," said Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Charlie Beck.
"A lot of work has yet to be done," Beck said.
Bob Kistner had just begun his law enforcement career in 1976 when his great aunt, 80-year-old Maybelle Hudson, was beaten, raped and strangled in the garage of her Inglewood, California, home.
He had just retired as a sergeant with the Long Beach, California, Police Department when he got the call recently that investigators linked Thomas to her murder.
"I waited my entire career for that phone call," Kistner said.
It was a routine call to Thomas from an LAPD officer last fall that led to the break in the case.
Thomas, a registered sex offender, is required by California law to provide a DNA sample for inclusion in the state's database.
Because of a backlog of cases, Thomas was not asked until October to report to a patrol station to have the inside of his cheek swabbed.
"He was very cooperative," the patrolman who took the sample said.
The California Department of Justice called LAPD cold case detectives on March 27 to tell them the DNA came up as a match to rape kit evidence collected from Ethel Sokoloff, who was 68 in 1972 when she was found beaten and strangled in her Los Angeles home.
Those detectives had sent the biological evidence from the Sokoloff case to a state lab in 2002 as part of their review of about 6,000 unsolved murders in Los Angeles that happened between 1960 and 1996.
DNA analysis in 2004 concluded that Sokoloff's killer also beat, raped and killed Elizabeth McKeown, 67, in 1976, Beck said.
The murders of three other older women -- including Maybelle Hudson -- were also linked by DNA to a common killer, he said.
"Because of Thomas's criminal background, the close proximity of his homes to murder locations, similar victim descriptions [white elderly females] and other evidence that suggests the type of modus operandi used by the suspect, detectives strongly believe Thomas is very likely the suspect in 'The Westside Rapist' cases," a police statement said.
Thomas is single, although he has been married five times, police said.
While he served about 12 years in prison between 1955 and the late 1970s for his previous convictions, he has no record since his last arrest in 1978, police said.
Deputy Chief Beck said the growing use of DNA databases and computers to match them to crime evidence will likely lead to more cold case killers being identified.

[sarahhod]

Claremont woman's death linked to man arrested in suspected serial killings

Lori Consalvo and Will Bigham, Staff Writers
Posted: 04/30/2009 09:22:34 PM PDT
Updated: 04/30/2009 10:00:41 PM PDT


An alleged serial killer suspected of raping and strangling as many as 30 older women over two decades in Southern California has been linked by DNA to a 1986 slaying in Claremont. John Floyd Thomas Jr., a 72-year-old insurance claims adjuster, has been charged with murdering two elderly Los Angeles women in the 1970s and was linked by DNA to at least three other killings in the 1970s and 1980s, authorities said.
The former Chino resident was arrested March 31 at his home in South Los Angeles.
In addition to dozens of killings, police suspect Thomas may have committed scores of unsolved sexual assaults possibly dating back as far as the mid-1950s, said Deputy Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department.

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site203/2009/0430/20090430_105955_ON01-KILLER.jpg (http://www.contracostatimes.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=2419711 )
Inglewood police Capt. Eve R. Irvine, commanding officer of the Detective Bureau, reflects as she stands next to a 1982 mug shot of John Floyd Thomas Jr., 72, at a news conference Thursday at Parker Center in Los Angeles. Authorities suspect Thomas is connected to the rapes and slayings of about 30 women in the 1970s and 80s. (Will Lester / Staff Photographer)


"We have not yet reached the depth" of what Thomas is capable of, Beck said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon.
One of the cases Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators have linked to Thomas using DNA evidence is the June 1986 strangling death of Adrienne Askew, Claremont police Capt. Gary Jenkins said.
Askew, 56, was attacked in her apartment in the 600 block of West Bonita Avenue, according to news reports of the incident.
Detectives were also investigating Thomas as a possible suspect in at least one other attack in Claremont from the 1980s, police said.
Thomas remained jailed Thursday without the possibility of bail and is next due in Los Angeles Superior Court on May 20 for an
http://us.bc.yahoo.com/b?P=ce5ca1ae-3632-11de-af95-277446b6778d&T=19fmduf1f%2fX%3d1241170270%2fE%3d2022776582%2fR% 3dncnwssr%2fK%3d5%2fV%3d8.1%2fW%3d0%2fY%3dPARTNER_ US%2fF%3d3622418973%2fH%3dYWx0c3BpZD0iOTY3MjgzMTc5 IiBzZXJ2ZUlkPSJjZTVjYTFhZS0zNjMyLTExZGUtYWY5NS0yNz c0NDZiNjc3OGQiIHNpdGVJZD0iMzAxMDUxIiB0U3RtcD0iMTI0 MTE3MDI3MDYxMzEzMSIgdGFyZ2V0PSJfYmxhbmsiIA--%2fQ%3d-1%2fS%3d1%2fJ%3d27558862&U=13u2ipigd%2fN%3dIse8AWKIVMo-%2fC%3d600126017.600129788.402127467.402127467%2fD %3dLREC%2fB%3d1727124319988430800%2fV%3d2arraignme nt hearing. In the first wave of killings in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, a man police dubbed "The Westside Rapist" entered the homes of elderly women who lived alone, raped them and choked them until they passed out or died, according to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the case.

The 17 people killed were found with pillows or blankets over their faces.
Aspects of Askew's death, as described in 1986 news reports, appear consistent with police descriptions of Thomas' alleged killing methods.
The wife of the man who discovered Askew's body said Askew was found face down on her bed, fully clothed, with a piece of bedding over her head, such as a sheet or pillowcase, the Claremont Courier reported in its July 9, 1986, edition.
A coroner's report listed Askew's death as homicide caused by strangulation.
Askew's killing occurred the same year that two other elderly Claremont women were raped in their apartments, the Courier reported.
On March 4, 1986, an 83-year-old woman who lived in the same apartment complex as Askew was raped and robbed. In early April, a 78-year-old woman was raped in her apartment - only a few blocks north of Askew's complex.
Following Askew's death, police and sheriff's deputies also investigated the possibility that her killing may have been linked to the disappearance and death three years earlier of her mother, Isabel Askew.
The mother and daughter shared an apartment at the time of Isabel Askew's 1983 disappearance.
Eleven days after Isabel Askew went missing, her body was found in an Ontario grape vineyard a few hundred yards north of Ontario International Airport, the Courier reported.
Sheriff's officials on Thursday declined to identify the Claremont cases they believe may be linked to Thomas, citing an ongoing investigation.
At Thomas' May 20 arraignment hearing, the District Attorney's Office will announce

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site203/2009/0430/20090430_034450_thomas.jpg (http://www.contracostatimes.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=2418907 )
John Floyd Thomas Jr., a 72-year-old state insurance claims adjuster. (Police booking photo)


possible charges for the additional killings linked to Thomas by DNA, according to a Los Angeles Police Department news release. If convicted of the two counts of murder, Thomas could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors may seek the death penalty if Thomas is convicted of any killings after 1978 when the death penalty was reinstated in California, Beck said.
Thomas' defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Raoul Hutchens, did not return a call seeking comment Thursday afternoon.
The prosecutor handling his case, Deputy District Attorney Darci A. Lanphere, was not available for comment Thursday, a district attorney's spokeswoman said.
The victims in all 30 cases under review were older white women, mostly of lower incomes and often widows living alone, said Los Angeles police Capt. Denis Cremins. All had been sexually assaulted and most were strangled.
Despite some 20 survivors, detectives didn't connect the cases. There were conflicting descriptions from victims, a lack of communication between agencies and an absence of DNA technology, according to the Times.
Thomas had been twice convicted of sexual assault and detectives in October collected a DNA sample from him at his home as part of efforts to build an offender database. He offered no resistance when the swab was collected, Cremins said.
Soon after his arrest on March 31, Thomas resigned from his job with the State Compensation Insurance Fund in Glendale, where he had worked since 1989.
He was charged April 2 with the murder of Ethel Sokoloff, 68, in 1972, and Elizabeth McKeown, 67, in 1976, both in Los Angeles.
Investigators said Thomas' DNA also was connected to the scene of a 1975 Los Angeles murder, a 1976 Inglewood murder, and the 1986 Claremont killing.
Thomas was born in Los Angeles. His mother died when he was 12 and he was raised by an aunt and godmother, attended public schools and joined the Air Force in 1956. He was considered sloppy and late and was dishonorably discharged, the Times said, citing military records.
In 1957, he was convicted of burglary and attempted rape in Los Angeles and sentenced to six years in prison. After his release, parole violations sent him back behind bars until 1966.
A few years later, a series of attacks on elderly women began by the so-called "Westside Rapist," who roamed from Hollywood to Inglewood.
During that time, Thomas was a social worker, a hospital employee and a salesman.
The attacks stopped in 1978 - the year he went back to prison for the rape of a Pasadena woman.
After his 1983 release, he moved to Chino and took a job as a hospital peer counselor in Pomona. That year, a series of attacks on elderly women began that included at least one slaying in Claremont.
Investigators say the wave of attacks stopped in 1989 - the year Thomas began working in Glendale.
"As far as why he stopped, we don't know for sure if he stopped," Los Angeles police Detective Rick Jackson said. "Who knows? It could be age-related. We just don't know enough about him at this time."


Timeline
December 2003: Detectives are notified that a male DNA profile was deduced from Ethel Sokoloff evidence.
Oct. 22, 2008: The LAPD collects a DNA sample from John Floyd Thomas Jr.
March 27, 2009: DNA from Thomas reportedly matches the profile from evidence analyzed in the slaying of Sokoloff.
March 31: Detectives are notified by the Department of Justice that five unsolved murders are forensically linked. The DNA profile reportedly matches the profile belonging to Thomas. Thomas is taken into custody and is booked on suspicion of murder.
April 2: The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office files two counts of murder with special circumstances on the LAPD cases.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_12268584

[sarahhod]

Anna started a thread here:-

http://www.helpfindthemissing.org/forum/showthread.php?p=589723#post589723

I only just noticed it!!

[Roamer]

Thanks, Sarah. I merged the two threads.

[LiveLaughLuv]

Police say John Thomas Jr. may have begun killing as far back as 1955

Thomas arrested April 2 and is charged with killing two women

72-year-old could be linked to dozens of other killings and assaults

updated 4 hours, 54 minutes ago


By Alan Duke
CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A man who Los Angeles police believe raped and murdered dozens of women decades ago was arrested by cold case investigators this month after a computer matched his DNA to evidence from two killings in the 1970s.

John Floyd Thomas Jr., 72, may have begun his killings as far back as 1955 and he could be one of the worst serial killers in United States history, according to Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.

"We have yet to reach the depths of what he has done," Bratton said Thursday.

Until his April 2 arrest, Thomas was a Los Angeles insurance adjuster. Police now call him the "Southland Strangler" -- named for the geographical section of Los Angeles County where they suspect he killed at least 30 women and raped many more.

Thomas, who sits in a Los Angeles jail, has been charged with two killings -- in 1972 and 1976 -- but prosecutors will likely add more cases when he faces arraignment on May 20, Bratton said.

While Thomas was arrested "a number of times between 1955 and 1978" for sex crimes and burglaries, detectives did not have the technology to identify him as a suspect when the region was terrorized by a series of killings then blamed on the "Westside Rapist," Bratton said.

Officials, using new computer databases and software, are now "looking to see what the patterns were," said Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Charlie Beck.

"A lot of work has yet to be done," Beck said.

Bob Kistner had just begun his law enforcement career in 1976 when his great aunt, 80-year-old Maybelle Hudson, was beaten, raped and strangled in the garage of her Inglewood, California, home.

He had just retired as a sergeant with the Long Beach, California, Police Department when he got the call recently that investigators linked Thomas to her murder.

"I waited my entire career for that phone call," Kistner said.

It was a routine call to Thomas from an LAPD officer last fall that led to the break in the case.

Thomas, a registered sex offender, is required by California law to provide a DNA sample for inclusion in the state's database.

Because of a backlog of cases, Thomas was not asked until October to report to a patrol station to have the inside of his cheek swabbed.

"He was very cooperative," the patrolman who took the sample said.

The California Department of Justice called LAPD cold case detectives on March 27 to tell them the DNA came up as a match to rape kit evidence collected from Ethel Sokoloff, who was 68 in 1972 when she was found beaten and strangled in her Los Angeles home.

Those detectives had sent the biological evidence from the Sokoloff case to a state lab in 2002 as part of their review of about 6,000 unsolved murders in Los Angeles that happened between 1960 and 1996.

DNA analysis in 2004 concluded that Sokoloff's killer also beat, raped and killed Elizabeth McKeown, 67, in 1976, Beck said.

The murders of three other older women -- including Maybelle Hudson -- were also linked by DNA to a common killer, he said.

"Because of Thomas's criminal background, the close proximity of his homes to murder locations, similar victim descriptions [white elderly females] and other evidence that suggests the type of modus operandi used by the suspect, detectives strongly believe Thomas is very likely the suspect in 'The Westside Rapist' cases," a police statement said.

Thomas is single, although he has been married five times, police said.

While he served about 12 years in prison between 1955 and the late 1970s for his previous convictions, he has no record since his last arrest in 1978, police said.

Deputy Chief Beck said the growing use of DNA databases and computers to match them to crime evidence will likely lead to more cold case killers being identified
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/30/westside.killings/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[sarahhod]

More about this here:-

http://www.helpfindthemissing.org/forum/showthread.php?p=590060#post590060

[packy]

More about this here:-

http://www.helpfindthemissing.org/forum/showthread.php?p=590060#post590060

Thanks, Sara, got it merged.

[sarahhod]

YVW packy.

I have a feeling there are going to be alot of articles on this.

[Pandabear]

http://news.aol.com/article/la-serial-killer/454935

LA Police Arrest Suspected Serial Killer
By THOMAS WATKINS

posted: 1 HOUR 9 MINUTES AGO

LOS ANGELES (April 30) - Larry Manchester discovered the body on Feb. 18, 1976.
The woman, a 67-year-old retired school administrator, was dead inside her red-and-black '65 Chevy Chevelle, two blocks from her west Los Angeles apartment.

The young homicide detective popped open the trunk and saw Elizabeth McKeown lying on her side. She was naked from the chest down. She'd been beaten, raped and strangled three days earlier.
Despite his efforts and a $25,000 reward, Manchester and his colleagues could not solve the killing. For 33 years and long after he retired, Manchester, now 64, berated himself. He would clip newspaper stories about similar murders in hopes of spotting a clue.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Department announced it had solved McKeown's case. The suspect, they said, was likely responsible for the murders of as many as 30 women, dating to the mid-1950s, which would make him the most prolific killer in city history.

"I was crying," Manchester said of his reaction when he learned John Floyd Thomas Jr., 72, had been arrested. "It was remarkable that they caught him."
Thomas, an insurance claims adjuster, so far is charged with two killings after cold-case detectives matched his DNA to the McKeown murder and to the 1972 strangling of Ethel Sokoloff, 68, who was sexually assaulted.
The LAPD also has partial DNA matches to two other killings, and he is a suspect in three killings in Inglewood. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is looking at him in at least two other cases.
"We believe that Thomas is likely connected to many more sexually motivated murders," Deputy Chief Charlie Beck said.

Thomas was being held on $1 million bond. He could not be reached for comment, and the public defender's office said he had yet to be assigned an attorney.

Because the killings occurred before the 1977 reinstatement of the death penalty, prosecutors are seeking life in prison without parole. If Thomas is charged in later cases, they may seek death.
In Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, a man police dubbed "The Westside Rapist" entered the homes of elderly women who lived alone, raped them and choked them until they passed out or died. Beck said police believe Thomas is the rapist and may be involved in scores of unsolved rapes.

The attacks stopped in 1978 — the year Thomas went back to prison for the rape of a Pasadena woman.
He may also be involved in killings beyond Los Angeles. A decade later and 40 miles to the east, at least one elderly women in Claremont was found raped and killed. The Times reported Thomas was being investigated for the death of five elderly women in that city, but sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said only one case was being looked at there.

Thomas is black. The victims in all 30 cases under review were older white women, mostly of lower incomes and often widows living alone. All were sexually assaulted and most were strangled.
Police said Thomas likely targeted the women because of their vulnerability and because they all lived alone. Cold-case detective Richard Bengston said serial killers frequently select victims of a different ethnicity.

Thomas had been twice convicted of sexual assault, and as a registered sex offender, he was required to check in annually with police.
During one visit in October, officers took a saliva swab to collect his DNA, which is a requirement for all sex offenders. Police weren't sure why he had not given a sample sooner.

Police Chief William Bratton and other officials credited Proposition 69, a voter-approved initiative that requires convicted felons and certain arrestees to submit DNA samples that are stored in a statewide database.
DNA and fingerprinting are the most important tools at a cold-case detective's disposal, Bengston said. When the killings were first investigated, there was no central computer system to quickly flag possible connections between crimes, and detectives relied on teletypewriter printouts and monthly meetings to exchange information.

Thomas was arrested at his South Los Angeles apartment on March 31, authorities said. Soon after, he resigned from his job with the State Compensation Insurance Fund in Glendale.

Born in Los Angeles, Thomas was 12 when his mother died. He was raised by an aunt and godmother and joined the Air Force in 1956. He was considered sloppy and late and was dishonorably discharged, according to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the story.

In 1957, he was convicted of burglary and attempted rape in Los Angeles and sentenced to six years in prison. After his release, parole violations sent him back behind bars until 1966.

The allegations about Thomas stunned a friend, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, prominent host of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable and a commentator and author of books on the black experience in America.
"Shocked, shocked, shocked," said Hutchinson, who had known Thomas since about 1989. "He was very engaging, very involved, seemed very informed."
He said Thomas is married and has children.

Los Angeles police are still investigating at least a dozen other murders connected to an unidentified serial killer who has been dubbed the "Grim Sleeper."


ETA: Thanks for the merge....I tried to find it, I really did!!! LOL

[Pandabear]

In his picture from 1982, he reminds me so much of Clarence Williams III who played "Linc" on the TV show "Mod Squad".

[Amusedtdth]

In his picture from 1982, he reminds me so much of Clarence Williams III who played "Linc" on the TV show "Mod Squad".

I thought the same thing...

[lost indie]

<snipped>

A few years later, a series of attacks on elderly women began by the so-called "Westside Rapist," who roamed from Hollywood to Inglewood.
During that time, Thomas was a social worker, a hospital employee and a salesman.

<snipped?

He was a social worker??????

:g:

How the heck does that happen????

:mad: