A long-haul trucker suspected of being a serial killer has been extradited to California to face murder charges in connection with the deaths of at least four women. Warren Luther Alexander, now 73, is believed to be responsible for a series of brutal strangulation murders that occurred in Ventura County in the 1970s. These cases had remained unsolved for decades until recent advances in genetic genealogy provided a breakthrough.
The murders, which took place in 1977, had long been suspected by both investigators and the media to be the work of a single individual. The three victims were all women involved in sex work, and each was strangled with her own undergarments. The killings were linked by their chilling similarities, yet for years, the identity of the murderer remained a mystery.
The first known victim was 18-year-old Kimberly Carol Fritz, who had recently moved to Port Hueneme from Michigan. In May 1977, her body was discovered in a room at the Marv-Inn Motel. Just four months later, another woman, 31-year-old Velvet Ann Sanchez, was found dead at the Villa Motor Court Motel in Oxnard. Sanchez, who was separated from her husband and children in Bakersfield, had been living at the motel for about a month.
Witnesses from that time reported seeing a man with a “stocky build and brown hair, wearing overalls and a tan jacket” with Sanchez shortly before her death. This description matched that of a man who had been seen with Fritz before she was found dead, raising suspicions that the same person was involved in both murders.
Then, in late December of 1977, the body of 21-year-old Lorraine Ann Sanchez (no relation to Velvet) was discovered on a bridge on Laguna Road in Oxnard. She had been strangled, with her bra tied around her neck.
Investigators learned that Lorraine had been staying at the same motel as Velvet Sanchez before her death. Lorraine, a married mother of two, was last seen alive on the evening of December 26, and it was believed she had been killed elsewhere and her body dumped at the bridge.
In February 1978, Ventura County medical examiner Ronald Kornblum publicly suggested that the murders of Fritz, Sanchez, and another woman, 26-year-old Cassandra Lee Miller, were likely connected. Miller had been found dead in 1975 at the Port Hueneme Surfside Motel.
Kornblum noted the similarities between the cases: all three women had been seen with a customer before being found dead in motel rooms, and their bodies had been posed in ways that appeared intended to degrade them. Despite these observations, the cases remained unsolved, and the trail eventually went cold.
Everything changed in March 2022, when investigators in North Carolina made a significant breakthrough using genetic genealogy. They got a DNA match in a 1992 cold case involving the murder of 29-year-old Nona Cobb. Cobb had last been seen getting into a Peterbilt truck at a rest stop on Interstate 85, and her body was later found along a highway in Surry County, North Carolina.
The DNA found at the scene of Cobb’s murder led investigators to Warren Luther Alexander, who was living in Diamondhead, Mississippi. Alexander was taken into custody on suspicion of murder, and his DNA was entered into the national law enforcement database, CODIS.
Meanwhile, in Ventura County, investigators re-examined the cold cases from 1977, developing DNA profiles from the evidence they had preserved. When they ran these profiles through CODIS, they finally got a match—linking Alexander to the unsolved murders.
Detectives discovered that Alexander had lived in Oxnard from the late 1950s and into the 1960s. As an adult, he worked as a taxi driver, an electrician with the Marine Corps, and a long-haul trucker.
His work often took him across the country, placing him in various locations during the times of the killings. Detectives believe that Alexander returned to Oxnard in the 1970s, coinciding with the period when the murders occurred.
“We believe there may be additional victims locally and in other states,” Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said during a press conference. “This is not in any way closed.”
After being held in North Carolina, Alexander was flown to California on Tuesday to face charges for the murders of Kimberly Fritz, Velvet Ann Sanchez, and Lorraine Ann Sanchez. Investigators are also looking closely at Cassandra Lee Miller’s case to determine if it, too, is connected to Alexander.
Nasarenko emphasized the significance of this development, saying, “The day of reckoning in Ventura County has finally arrived.” Alexander is scheduled to appear in court on August 21 for arraignment and still faces trial for the murder of Nona Cobb in North Carolina.
Source: SFGATE
