http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=20796§ion=LOCAL&year=2003&month=1&day=16
One for the libs on the board.Oh no we can't execute the person who did this after all they are victims of society.This is real life people not some F_cking dream world you people seem to live in.The death penalty is 100% effective in making sure criminals like this NEVER kill again. JJ
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Body found in ravine
Head, hands missing from female corpse. Police have few clues to victim's identity and say it might be hard to ascertain.
By JOHN McDONALD and JEFF COLLINS
The Orange County Register
The body of a woman with the head and hands cut off was discovered thrown in a ravine along Ortega (74) Highway on Wednesday, closing the road and drawing nationwide inquiries from police.
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The partially clad body was spotted lying belly down about 150 feet off the road by a couple driving by at 7:21 a.m., Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.
The couple believed at first that it might be a mannequin but called police anyway.
The removal of the head and hands will make identification difficult, Amormino said. Such mutilation is rare in Southern California, he added.
The woman was described as white, between her late teens and early 30s, 5 feet, 8 inches tall, about 150 to 175 pounds, and with red hair. There was no information on how she was killed.
A nine-mile stretch of the highway was closed shortly before 9 a.m., as investigators searched for body parts and clues. The road was reopened at about 6:30 p.m.
The corpse was discovered about 15 miles east of the San Diego (I-5) Freeway in the Cleveland National Forest, about five miles west of the Riverside County line, officials said.
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Removal of the head and hands has long been associated with organized-crime killings and slayings by some serial killers who prey on women for sexual reasons, said Gregg McCrary, a retired criminal-suspect profiler for the FBI.
"It is done by the more-thoughtful offender to delay or obstruct the victim from being identified. It is not generally something done in a psychotic fit or in the heat of passion," McCrary said. "Without an identification, you usually can't find the killer."
At least two serial killers decapitated victims, he said.
Joel Rifkin of Long Island, N.Y., killed more than 20 prostitutes in the early 1990s and removed the head of at least one. Ed Kemper was a Santa Cruz serial killer who butchered six young women, his mother and another woman from 1972 to 1973. He took the heads of some victims home and also cut off hands and feet, McCrary said.
Both Rifkin and Kemper are in prison. McCrary said he is unaware of any serial killer now on the loose who cuts off his victims' heads.
Authorities needed almost six hours to remove the body from the ravine. Investigators, a deputy coroner and a forensic technician had to be lowered by rope to the location by a team of firefighters specially trained for climbing and rappelling. The body, later covered with a white sheet and strapped to a gurney, was hoisted up the ravine. An autopsy was planned.
The only article of clothing on the body, officials said, was either a pair of white shorts or white underwear. Investigators said they did now know whether the woman had been sexually assaulted.
Officials said the body was probably dumped overnight.
They said the victim did not appear to be pregnant, discounting theories that she was Laci Peterson, a pregnant Modesto woman who disappeared Christmas Eve.
Meanwhile, inquiries came from law enforcement agencies as far away as New York, but officials said they had no details to give them.
