Alleged serial killer linked to Claremont slaying due in court Wednesday

John Floyd Thomas, Jr., a suspected serial killer known as the "Westside Rapist," will appear in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday morning to be arraigned on two counts of murder.

Thomas, 72, is charged with two 1970s killings in Los Angeles, and his been linked by DNA to three other cold cases elsewhere in Los Angeles County, including a 1986 killing in Claremont.

Police say Thomas would target elderly women who lived alone. He would enter their homes, rape them, then strangle them to death while obscuring their faces with a piece of bedding such as a sheet or pillow case.

Among his victims, police believe, was 56-year-old Adrienne Askew, who was killed in June 1986 in her apartment in the 600 block of West Bonita Avenue.

Police suspect Thomas committed an additional 25 unsolved murders in Los Angeles County in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as scores of unsolved rapes.

Thomas lived in Chino from 1983 to 1989, and during that time worked at a hospital in Pomona as a peer counselor.

Cold-case investigators for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department are not investigating Thomas as a suspect and any unsolved homicide cases in the county, and have not linked him by DNA to any unsolved killings, said Sgt. Frank Montanez, head of the department's cold-case unit.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office may announce new murder charges against Thomas at Wednesday morning's hearing, according to an April news release from the Los Angeles Police Department.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said this afternoon that she didn't know whether additional charges would be filed Wednesday against Thomas.

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Click here for a photo gallery from the April 30 news conference announcing Thomas's arrest.

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Here's the initial story the paper published about Thomas' link to the Claremont slaying:

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

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) - Thursday, April 30, 2009

Author: Lori Consalvo and Will Bigham, Staff Writers

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.

"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 arraignment 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 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."

Staff writer Joe Blackstock and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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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.