Recently in Claremont Category

LOS ANGELES -- Authorities say a 70-year-old Claremont woman and her son are among four people indicted for money laundering as part of a narcotics scheme to send a powerful and often-abused cough syrup from California to Texas, where it was sold for the street concoction "purple drank."
The U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement that Lucita Uy of has been indicted for buying three pharmacies so she could purchase more than 97,000 pints of Promethazine for the wholesale price of about $9.
On the streets of Houston, where the drug is especially popular, the same bottle can go for as much as $600.
Uy and her son, Lemuel Libano, have pleaded not guilty to two money laundering charges apiece and are scheduled to start trial Nov. 29.

LOS ANGELES -- A former state insurance adjuster pleaded guilty Friday to killing seven women and was sentenced

to life in prison for a series of deadly sexual attacks by a man known by police as the "Westside Rapist."

John Floyd Thomas, 74, pleaded guilty to seven counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to seven life terms, including one without the possibility of parole in the attacks that terrified Los Angeles County in the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles County district attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said.

Some of the murders included special allegations that the crimes were committed during the commission of burglary or rape.

A call to Thomas' court-appointed public defender, Alan Gelfand, was not immediately returned.

Based on cold-case DNA testing, Thomas was arrested in March 2009 and charged in the "Westside Rapist" case in which a man entered the homes of middle-aged and elderly women who lived alone, raped them and choked them until they passed out or died.

Although he was charged with seven murders, investigators have said they believe he may have killed as many as 30 women and raped many more.

The attacks stopped in 1978 -- the year Thomas went to prison for the rape of a Pasadena woman -- but authorities say they resumed a decade later in the eastern county.

Thomas initially was charged with the 1972 murder of Ethel Sokoloff, 68, at her home in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles and the 1976 murder of Elizabeth McKeown, 67, in the Westchester area.

Sokoloff, a retired school administrator, was found semi-nude and dead inside the trunk of her car two blocks from her apartment.

Thomas later was charged killing Cora Perry, 79, in the unincorporated Lennox area in 1975 and with the 1976 Inglewood killings of Maybelle Hudson, 80, Miriam McKinley, 65, and Evalyn Bunner, 56.

He also was charged with killing 56-year-old Adrienne Askew in 1986 in Claremont, about 40 miles east of Los

Angeles. At the time of that killing, Thomas was living in Chino, a community only a few miles away.

The killings again appeared to stop in 1989, when Thomas took a job with the state workers compensation insurance agency in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale.

Thomas has a criminal history that included a 1978 rape conviction and a nearly decade-long prison term for burglary, attempted burglary and subsequent parole violations that kept him locked up until 1966.

As a registered sex offender, he was required to check in annually with police. During one visit in the fall of 2008, officers took a saliva swab to collect his DNA, which is a requirement for all sex offenders.

Cold-case investigators later used the swab to link Thomas to the killings.

Until his April 2 arrest, John Floyd Thomas Jr 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 is also in the frame for a spate of crimes police say were committed by the "Westside Rapist".

On first glance this suspect doesn't fit the profile of the Grim Sleeper. Reports suggest he targets much older females who live alone and are white. This is a direct opposite of the Grim Sleeper's known victims - young and black. However there are some striking similarities that are worth mentioning.

Many of Thomas' victims were strangled and beaten and at least one victim was killed in a location other than her home which suggests Thomas' MO is markedly varied. The LA times is quoted as saying "On the 17 who were killed, he placed pillows or blankets over their faces." This is also a signature of the Grim Sleeper who is known to have placed items over the faces of some of his victims.

.Perhaps one of the most startling similarities is the time span and 'gaps' that separate Thomas' crimes. The first wave of slayings took place in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. There followed a decade of 'Sleep?' until 1983 when Thomas was released from prison. He committed rape and murder over the next 6 years until 1989.

"the Grim Sleeper attacks women within one mile from his home, and works to blend into the neighborhood."

DNA leads detectives to John Thomas Jr., 72. He is held in two slayings, but police suspect he may have killed up to 30 elderly Westside and Claremont women a decade apart.

Thomas had been working as an adjuster handling workers' compensation claims since 1989 -- the year the killings stopped. He resigned after his arrest March 31.

Jennifer Vargen, a spokeswoman for the State Compensation Insurance Fund, would not comment on whether the employer was aware of Thomas' criminal record, saying it was a personnel matter.

Co-workers at his office in Glendale described Thomas as quiet but friendly. They said his job mostly involved paperwork.

His steady employment masked a troubled past.

Thomas was born in Los Angeles. His mother died when he was 12 and he was raised by his aunt and a godmother. Thomas attended public schools, including Manual Arts Senior High School.

He briefly joined the U.S. Air Force in 1956. At Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, a superior described Thomas as often late and slovenly. He received a dishonorable discharge, according to his military records, and was arrested for burglary and attempted rape in Los Angeles. He was convicted and sentenced to six years in state prison in 1957. Two parole violations sent him back behind bars until 1966.

Since Thomas had a prior arrest in Pasadena, detectives are looking into whether any unsolved cases may fit the same description.

"The cold case unit is taking a look at it in terms of some of the other unsolved homicides that may have taken place prior to and after, to see if there is any relation," said Police Department Spokesperson Janet Pope Givens.

Specifically, they are looking into cases involving women who were killed around that time period.

Thomas was originally arrested in Pasadena in 1978 on suspicion of rape, but was convicted of lesser charges, she said.

The file on his arrest, which is more than 30 years old, is no longer available, she said. 

The Pasadena PD is examining the possibility that John Floyd Thomas, Jr. may be responsible for homicides there in the late 1970s, officials said Thursday.

Thomas, a onetime resident of Pasadena, was arrested there in the late 70s, officials said.

Thomas, the suspected "Westside Rapist" may be responsible for the deaths of as many as 25 elderly women in Los Angeles County in the 70s and 80s. An LAPD homicide detective dubbed him "prolific."

We'll have a story up later today. We're also looking at Thomas' connections in Pomona and Chino where he worked and lived, and his connection to at least on homicide in Claremont in 1986.

From the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES - Police believe a 72-year-old man charged with two cold-case murders is tied to two decades-old waves of Southern California serial killings and as many as 25 victims.

DNA matching former insurance adjuster John Floyd Thomas Jr. was found at five crime scenes spanning the killing-and-rape rampages in west Los Angeles in the 1970s and Claremont in the 1980s, said LAPD Robbery-Homicide Cold Case Detective Richard Bengston.

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

Police planned to reveal details of the case at a Thursday news conference.

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. The 17 who were killed were found with pillows or blankets over their faces.

A decade later and 40 miles to the east, five elderly women in Claremont were found raped and killed, also with blankets or pillows over their faces.

Despite some 20 survivors of similar attacks, detectives said they didn't solve either set of cases nor connect the two. They blamed conflicting descriptions from victims, lack of communication between agencies and a past absence of DNA technology.

LA Times map of Westside crime spree.

*LAPD press release on the jump

State parole agents arrested a pair accused of stealing a purse from the parents of Moe the chimp. Here's the story from reporter Brian Day:

CLAREMONT - A man and woman suspected of stealing a purse from the owners of Moe the chimpanzee late last month in West Covina were arrested Thursday, officials said.

Baldwin Park residents Karen Jean Cervantes, 46, and Michael Dean Huffman, 44, were arrested shortly after 8 p.m. when state parole agents stopped Huffman's truck in Claremont, said West Covina police Corporal Rudy Lopez. Huffman, a parolee, immediately led police to Cervantes, he said.

The pair has been booked on suspicion of several felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from the theft of a purse from La Donna and St. James Davis' shopping cart at a Target store in the Eastland Shopping Center on March 30, Lopez said.