World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 10 - William Suff - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: The 8th of February, 1990, Riverside, California. The half-naked corpse of a woman was found
in a grapefruit orchard on the outskirts of the city by two local workers. - STEVE: We didn't know who she was.
We lift up her shirt, and right in the middle of her chest were four very distinct stab wounds.
- NARRATOR: Forensic scientists later identified the woman as 35-year-old sex worker Carol Miller.
Her stab wounds were a calling card of the so-called Riverside Prostitute Killer, who'd already slain three women.
Thirty-nine-year-old Bill Suff would go on to take another nine victims. - CHRISTINE: I would tell the girls, "Stay off the streets
"for a while, it's not safe. There is a serial murderer out there." - NARRATOR: But by day, Suff was a model employee
for the local county. - PAUL: He was very friendly. He was the guy next door. He was a chameleon.
He could become this monster, and brutalize these women horribly. - NARRATOR: The Jekyll and Hyde killer
even attacked his own children. - I was not wanting to believe that he would kill our child.
There was no rhyme or reason for it. - NARRATOR: Suff beat his two-month-old daughter to death.
He brutally killed and mutilated 12 women. He spread fear across the county of Riverside,
making Bill Suff one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - ♪ - NARRATOR: The 23rd of December, 1991,
Riverside, California. A workman made a shocking discovery. He found the body of 39-year-old Eleanor Casares
lying in orange groves. She'd been strangled, stabbed, and mutilated, and was the 13th victim of the man who'd later become
known as the Riverside Prostitute Killer. - ♪ - ELIZABETH: When we look at this particular murder,
it was very violent. And if we look at what he did with the victim's breast, he mutilated it and he threw it some 40 feet away.
He's just discarding this woman's body part like it's trash. And I think that's how he saw these victims.
- NARRATOR: In an act of bravado, the killer dumped Eleanor's body just a block away
from the Riverside Police Department. Local detective Christine Keers Sheffield had warned Eleanor about
a serial murderer on the loose only days earlier. - When we saw it was Eleanor, I was just like, "Oh my God.
"You know, we just had this talk. We just had this talk." And I knew she had little children.
You fight back your emotions and say, "We gotta get this solved. - NARRATOR: Knowing a serial killer
was on the rampage shocked the county of Riverside. - The fear was rampant. It affected people's willingness to go out at night
and just walk in their neighborhoods. And the papers played up to that. There was a great deal of building pressure on us--
law enforcement--to find this individual. - ♪ - NARRATOR: This killer's story begins
on the 20th of August, 1950. William Lester Suff was born in Torrance, California.
- ♪ - ELIZABETH: From the outside, his family did appear to be very traditional.
He was the oldest of five siblings. But there was an incredibly abusive relationship
that went on between Suff's parents. And when a child grows up in an environment like this,
they learn violence is a way of getting what you want, violence is a way of maintaining feelings of control.
And those are very toxic things, but they take root. - His mother, Elizabeth, was domineering,
overbearing. His father, William, rather remote. I'm not suggesting for a moment there was abuse.
But there was certainly a very poor male role model anywhere around him. - NARRATOR: At the age of 16,
Suff's father walked out on the family. And his mother was left bringing up five children on her own.
Suff had to work part time to support his family, who were in dire straits. - Well, Suff had to take on quite a considerable role
looking after his siblings. He had a lot of responsibility. He was essentially an adult in this house.
And I think that impacted upon his own development, to make him quite an isolated and quite a solitary individual.
- Elizabeth starts up another relationship with a man she was eventually to go on and marry.
Now, he was the opposite, if you like, of Suff's father. He was firm, disciplinarian, very tough, I think,
on Suff. - NARRATOR: At school, young Suff was an unremarkable student, but he held his own amongst his peers,
achieving average grades. He also developed an interest in music and learned to play the trumpet.
- He was in the high school marching band. As a matter of fact, um, in his senior year in high school,
his high school marching band had been selected to participate in the Rose Parade, which is quite an accomplishment.
- NARRATOR: It was here, playing with his band, that the 18-year-old Suff met his first love--Teryl,
who was just 15. - TERYL: Well, me and my friends from school, we went to the game, and Bill was there,
and he was kinda cute. And so naturally, we all flirted. At the time, I was infatuated.
I thought he was a cute guy. He asked me for my phone number, and I gave it to him.
And then, uh, I heard from him a couple of months later. He was going into the Air Force.
- NARRATOR: Suff wrote to Teryl from his Air Force base in Texas, where he was training to be a medic.
And just over a year later, in May 1969, he asked for her hand in marriage. But Teryl had suffered a devastating event.
- TERYL: I had been raped, got pregnant. And I said, "No, I can't marry you," you know, circumstances, and told him what happened,
and he says, "Well, I wanna marry you anyway." So we did. - Although Suff had accepted that Teryl had been raped
and that she was carrying the child, ironically, he didn't accept the child. - NARRATOR: Suff lied and told Teryl that the Air Force didn't
allow children to live at the base. She was forced to leave the baby with Suff's mother
and stepfather in California, and make the move to join him in Texas alone. - ELIZABETH: For him, it was an opportunity
to exert control over somebody else. Teryl was someone who was quite vulnerable,
who had been through quite a lot. So, I think he took advantage of that situation.
- TERYL: Pretty much his behavior started changing when I moved to Texas, 'cause then he felt like he had
complete control over me. He started to get physical. And that was only six months in.
- NARRATOR: In early winter 1970, Suff was discharged from the Air Force. The following November, the couple had
their first child-- William Jr. - GEOFFREY: Suff himself at this point is 21, a new, young
father, struggling to realize what being a father means. I think fatherhood was a dreadful shock to him.
- NARRATOR: The couple stayed in Texas, but Suff drifted from job to job until he found work
as a parking attendant. Even then, he was fired for stealing a client's car. So, Teryl had to work in a restaurant to pay their bills.
- So, when he loses his job and Teryl becomes the main breadwinner, this causes quite a lot of conflict in him,
because it compromises those feelings of control that he has over this family. Suff has some very fixed views about men and women.
Men should be breadwinners, women should be caregivers. So, I think this causes quite a lot of conflict for him.
- NARRATOR: In July 1973, the couple had their second child-- a daughter called Dijianet.
Affectionately known as Didi. Whilst Teryl went out to work, the volatile Suff was left at home alone with Didi,
and their newborn bore the brunt of his frustrations. - When somebody's abusive and they're used to
getting what they want through being violent, and they try and use that tactic on a baby, it doesn't work
in the same way that it would work on an adult. If anything, it's gonna make the baby cry more,
it's gonna make them scream more. And this is just a really toxic environment to bring a child into.
- ♪ - NARRATOR: But soon, the angry and possessive Bill Suff would break into a rage that would spiral out of control.
Before long, the little life he held in his hands would be in mortal danger. On the 25th of September, Teryl receives some alarming news
about their two-month-old baby. - ♪ - Suff rings his wife at work and says, "You must come home
at once, because, uh, Didi's not breathing." Teryl rushes home to discover that her newborn daughter
is indeed not breathing. - When we look at the abuse that their daughter was subject to, it is really horrendous--
broken ribs, broken wrists, cigarette burns. It was really awful. - GEOFFREY: Suff tries to explain her injuries by saying
that his son, William Jr., had been too aggressive in hugging and kissing her. Bizarre, I would've said, because I don't think any
toddler is capable of inflicting those kinds of injuries. But that was Suff's story.
- I was not wanting to believe... ...that, uh, he would kill our child. And, uh, when he was arrested, I was trying to still
work in my mind how he could've done it or why. There's no rhyme or reason for it.
- NARRATOR: When the doctors examine Didi, they also found evidence of old injuries,
which suggested she'd been abused over a period of time. Teryl's world was turned upside down even further
when she, too, was arrested on charges of murder. Their son was taken into care.
And on the 11th of April, 1974, both parents were sentenced to 70 years for killing their daughter.
- TERYL: I didn't have my son. I'd lost my daughter. And...I really had nothing.
You know, I was just devastated, destroyed. And I wasn't sure how I was gonna actually make it through.
- ♪ - NARRATOR: 20 months into her sentence, Teryl was granted an appeal hearing.
The court was not satisfied with the evidence against Teryl and exonerated her. - TERYL: I walked outside the courtroom and just screamed.
[chuckles] 'Cause now I can try to move on. And I immediately started divorce proceedings.
And it was one of the best days of my life. - NARRATOR: Meanwhile, her ever-manipulative ex-husband was
making his own plans for an early release. - When Suff's in prison, he demonstrates the kind of
behavior that officials want to see. He's compliant. He appears to be someone trying to better himself.
- He volunteered for the prison library. He took two degrees, caused no trouble whatever.
Suff is such a model prisoner that he serves only 10 years of his sentence and is released in 1984.
- NARRATOR: On the 6th of March, 33-year-old Suff was awarded parole. He moved back to California and found a job
in the county of Riverside selling Greyhound bus tickets. - He appeared to be a real pillar of the community.
And it diverts attention away from him, he blends in, he's the average Joe. - NARRATOR: In October 1986, Suff got a new job
as a supply clerk for Riverside County. He'd started dating a teacher called Bonnie
and moved in with her to help care for her elderly grandmother. - He's effectively creating the persona--the quiet man
who doesn't mind helping, very ordinary, but within him, something quite different was happening.
- CHRISTINE: People at work loved him. He was good to everybody on the outside. He had this façade going on about him that, um,
you could trust him, that he was kind and giving person, but at the same time, had that secret devil within him.
- NARRATOR: Suff split up from his girlfriend, Bonnie, after he admitted stealing money from her grandmother.
He often spent nights cruising the local red light districts, looking for casual sex.
He developed a hatred for the women he saw on the streets. - I think he reserved that particular distaste for
sex workers because he saw them as less than women. He saw them as women who weren't fulfilling the roles
of the caregiver and the nurturer, and he had some very rigid ideas about who women are
and how they should behave. - NARRATOR: Soon, this seething resentment would escalate.
In January 1989, 38-year-old Suff was driving his van down Main Street in Lake Elsinore,
when he spotted a young woman called Rhonda Jetmore. They agreed on $20 for sex, and she demands the money upfront.
- GEOFFREY: But it's extremely dark. Suff hands her the bill, and she switches the flashlight on
to look at it, and instead of it being a $20 bill, it's a $1 bill. Now, she's furious.
"I'm not doing this for a dollar bill." She is angry. Suff launches himself at her in attempt
to begin to strangle her. - NARRATOR: Rhonda fought back, smashing Suff around the head
with her flashlight and made her escape. - GEOFFREY: I think it taught Suff something very specific:
never let them survive. If you attack them, they must be killed. You cannot afford to have another Rhonda.
- NARRATOR: Six months later, on the 26th of June, 1989, single mother Kimberly Little was soliciting sex
along Main Street. Suff was one of her regular clients. He picked her up. - GEOFFREY: Put her into his van,
take her to an isolated spot, rape her, stab her, strangle her, and he put some of his clothes on her.
He demonstrated an extraordinary lack of DNA awareness. He left semen at the scene.
He left pubic hair at the scene. - BOB: She was clothed, and she was wearing a man's Western-style shirt, she had pants on,
but she had a long, blue bath towel that covered her. Now, this was significant to the profiler,
because he felt that the suspect knew her. There was a sign or an indication of remorse.
He couldn't look at her. He covered her, he left her there. - NARRATOR: Any remorse Suff may have felt soon disappeared.
Six months later, on the 12th of December, 1989, Suff returned to Lake Elsinore's red light district again.
He picked up 23-year-old Tina Leal, then strangled and stabbed her. She was dumped off a quiet road in nearby Paris.
And a couple discovered her body the following day. - BOB: She was wearing men's clothing.
The suspect had mutilated her body. But the evidence showed that she was dressed
after she was killed. - STEVE: We noticed that she had very distinct stab marks towards the middle of her chest.
Not the typical kind of stab marks that you'd see when somebody's in a rage. These were very controlled, very clean-looking stab marks
that would indicate somebody had control over their senses, their emotions at the time.
- NARRATOR: It wasn't until the autopsy later that day that the detectives discovered the true horror of Suff's
final act of humiliation against his victim. - The pathologist discovered that a 95-watt light bulb
had been inserted into her vaginal vault. Now, according to the pathologist, he felt
that the suspect had to take quite a bit of time with her, because the light bulb was intact, it hadn't broken.
- NARRATOR: With at least two victims under his belt now, Suff was becoming bolder.
Just over one month later, on the 18th of January, 1990, he struck again, strangling another sex worker,
Darla Ferguson, after sex. - Her body was found in a remote area along a dirt road
just outside of Lake Elsinore. Now, the unique thing with Darla Ferguson was that
she was nude, she was strangled just like the other victims, but her upper torso was covered in a very large black bag--
a trash bag, and it was tied at the waist. - STEVE: We did not look at the first murders
as being connected at all. They were like independent events that happen. The only similarity that we knew at the time--they were
in the Elsinore area and they were female prostitutes. - NARRATOR: But soon, a pattern would begin to emerge
for investigators. Just over two weeks later, on the 6th of February, Suff had identified a hunting ground closer to home.
He picked up 35-year-old Carol Miller from Riverside's red light district, University Avenue.
He stabbed and strangled her, then dumped her in a grapefruit orchard on the outskirts of the city.
She was discovered two days later by agricultural workers. - STEVE: Well, I went out to the Carol Miller scene,
and she was naked, except that she had a-- her shirt over her face. Next to her was a partially eaten and peeled grapefruit.
And we lift up her shirt, and right in the middle of her chest were four very distinct stab wounds.
I was aware of the Tina Leal case where she also had four distinct stab wounds that seemed to be very deliberate.
Carol Miller had the same, and that was atypical. Just not what we normally see.
- NARRATOR: Steve Secofsky was also drawn to something else that the killer's van had left at the scene.
- STEVE: There were hundreds of feet of tire tracks. So we took, literally, hundreds and hundreds
of pictures to document them, see if they matched anything else. - NARRATOR: Questions were now starting to be asked
about whether this series of killings could in fact be linked. - Tina Leah, Darla Ferguson, and Carol Miller--
they had occurred in consecutive months. So, we didn't really know what was gonna happen,
and we didn't know if we were gonna expect another case. So it's like, "Did we have a serial killer?"
So now, the object was, "Well, let's analyze the evidence and see what we can come up with."
- NARRATOR: Whilst investigators poured over the evidence he left behind, serial killer Suff had made his mark,
killing the sex workers he so despised. Despite having killed at least four sex workers,
his rampage had only just begun. At night, Suff stalked the streets in his van looking for his next victim.
But by day, the local county clerk was a pillar of the community. - Riverside County was promoting a rideshare program
to conserve energy. And interestingly enough, Mr. Suff was the poster boy for the program.
He was on the front page of the newsletter. And the headline said, "Take a ride with Bill."
And he was standing next to his van that he had killed, kidnapped, and murdered and assaulted all these women in.
- NARRATOR: Things were going well for Suff. Not only was he a model employee, he'd started a new relationship.
- CHRISTINE: He meets Cheryl. And there's got to be at least, oh, I would say, 20 years' difference in their age.
- ELIZABETH: She was only a teenager. Abusive and controlling men tend to target younger women,
because they are easier to manipulate, they're easier to isolate, they're easier to shape and
mold, and to chip away at their sense of identity. - GEOFFREY: Whirlwind romance.
He rushes her off to Las Vegas, they get married. She really doesn't know anything about him.
She's a child compared to this mature adult, who also happens to be a serial killer.
Cheryl becomes pregnant. - NARRATOR: Despite being a newlywed, Suff could not suppress his need to kill.
So, he came up with a clever ruse to tell his new and expected wife. - He was telling her that he did
the disaster preparedness program for the County of Riverside and that's why he was out late
'til 1 or 2 in the morning. He had disaster preparedness pamphlets. I don't know if he ever passed any of 'em out, but he
convinced her that that's what he was doing at nighttime. - NARRATOR: Just seven months after getting married,
Suff was looking for his next victim. On the 30th of October, he returned to University Avenue
in the city of Riverside, where he picked up 33-year-old Cheryl Coker. After sex, he strangled her,
then placed her body into a dumpster. She was Suff's fifth victim. And in his final depraved act, he sliced off her right breast.
- ELIZABETH: He's making judgments about them as women, because breasts are obviously a part of nurturing children.
And I think this is perhaps his way of saying, "These women, "in my opinion, are not fit to be mothers.
They are not fit to be women." - CHRISTINE: From where the body was located, there was an embankment.
And when he sliced her breast off, he tossed it like a Frisbee that went all the way
up the embankment on the top up there. So, that was rather unusual. - ♪ - Once again, he leaves DNA and fiber evidence behind.
He's not grown any more aware of forensic proof than he was before. - NARRATOR: Just seven weeks later, on the 21st of December,
another sex worker, Susan Sternfeld, was found strangled in a dumpster close to the location of the previous killing.
- CHRISTINE: When you're starting to find women that are placed in dumpster areas,
you start to do a little bit of a tie-in. So, in my mind, I'm thinking that there's somebody out there
that feel that these women are nothing more than trash. And so, we're gonna treat them like trash.
After we kill them, we're gonna dump 'em in the trash. - NARRATOR: Now Suff, The Prostitute Hater,
was picking up pace with his murders. Barely a month later, on the 18th of January, 1991,
42-year-old Kathy Puckett vanished whilst working University Avenue in Riverside.
She was found strangled the next day by a motorist at the side of a dirt road 30 miles away.
Forensic scientist Steve Secofsky attended the scene and made an important discovery.
- STEVE: I saw dozens of tire tracks. And I noticed that there was one that struck
a familiar cord to some of the tire tracks in the Carol Miller case. We have, finally, some physical evidence that would
link at least two of the cases. That was the first time that we now had some evidence,
forensically, that said, "We've got a serial killer going here." - NARRATOR: When Steve Secofsky started looking for
other evidence linking the spate of sex worker killings, his suspicions were confirmed.
- I started looking at all the trace evidence, the fibers, and saw some commonalities.
I saw fibers that were gray in color from one victim to the next to the next. And so, we were starting to build up some idea
that, in effect, we do have a series going on, this serial killer. We had to put a stop to it.
- To us, it was not that they were prostitutes, it was--they were human beings being killer.
Women are being killed and dumped in places all over the place. So, we need to make a tie-in here somehow.
- NARRATOR: Now that there was conclusive evidence confirming that a serial killer was on the loose, a task force was
created linking the various law enforcement agencies investigating the killings in both
Riverside and Lake Elsinore. They put out posters appealing for locals to come forward
with any relevant information and offering a reward of $11,000. By the 27th of April, they had an 8th case of a dead sex worker
on their hands-- 24-year-old Sherry Pacer. For the forensic team, gathering evidence at this crime scene
proved much more difficult. - We were in the process of looking at the body to see if
there were any fibers on it, we already saw a shoe print, and the sprinkler system came on.
It was just a small, little garden area behind... the bowling alley. We're standing on top of, literally, sprinklers
coming up on us to keep the water off the body, and yelling, "Have 'em shut the sprinkler system off!"
- NARRATOR: With the sprinklers washing away potential evidence, it reduced the amount of information
forensics could gather. However, they did find traces of semen on Sherry's body.
Despite having a heavily pregnant wife, Cheryl, at home, on the 3rd of July, Suff struck again,
taking his next victim-- 37-year-old Sherry Latham. The whole task force is starting to feel pressure,
because we have these bodies that are appearing. And I didn't feel any closer to identifying or providing
that kind of information to catch the guy. - NARRATOR: Three weeks later, Suff became a father once again
when Cheryl gave birth to their daughter. Whilst he was forced to spend some time at home,
the task force were making every effort to close in on him. - One of the deputies was assigned to try
and identify some shoe impressions that were left at several of the scenes. So what he did was is he took a photograph
of the shoe impression, and was blown up to a 1:1 ratio, which means it's the actual size of the impression.
What that deputy did is he went to all the different shoe stores, picking up shoes, looking at the bottom,
at their soles, to try and find the same pattern. And after many hours, he was successful.
He found that shoe. So now we had a shoe identified. And we have a shoe size identified.
- NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Forensic scientist Steve Secofsky's hard work had started to pay off.
He'd been analyzing the tire marks found at the scenes of Carol Miller and Kathy Puckett's killings.
And he, too, had made a breakthrough. - I was able to identify what kind of tire it was.
It was an Armstrong Ultra-Trac. Had a very unique kind of tread design or pattern.
And so, I would take this picture with me wherever I would go. I remember one time, I went to a restaurant with my dad
and my two youngest kids, and I'd be looking at the cars in the parking lot to see if I found a similar tread design.
They're going, "Dad, what are you doing?" - NARRATOR: The task force were so determined to catch this
killer that many were unable to leave their work at the office. - CHRISTINE: Many times, I would take my casebook home
and lay it out on the bed and say, "What are we missing? "Is this somebody that knows these girls?
"Is it somebody that works down here? Is it somebody coming in from out of town?"
And it was rather, uh, disturbing to me, to say the least. So, I started putting all my effort into it.
- NARRATOR: But an even bigger break would come for the task force on the 15th of August.
At 10 p.m., serial killer Bill Suff was once again cruising Riverside's red light district.
- Suff goes out searching for prey again, and comes across a young woman called Kelly Whitecloud.
She is spirited, and not one to suffer fools gladly. They make a deal. - She got in his van, and went with him to McDonald's,
because she wanted him to buy her a hamburger. - NARRATOR: Once they got back in his van, Suff said
he wanted to take Kelly out to nearby orchards for sex, but she refused. An argument broke out.
- She felt uneasy. And so, ultimately, when they drove out of McDonald's parking lot,
she bolted from the van and ran away. - NARRATOR: As Kelly recovered from her encounter with Suff,
she witnessed him pick up her friend and fellow sex worker, Kelly Hammond, further down University Avenue.
- Whitecloud is shouting to her down the street, "Don't get in the van. Don't get in."
Hammond ignores it, gets into the van, and becomes Suff's next victim. - NARRATOR: Suff had sex with Kelly in the back of his van,
and then strangled her with a ligature. - GEOFFREY: He dumped her nude body in an alleyway
and posed it with her legs in the air. Which meant, almost for the first time in his spree,
that she was found relatively quickly. Her body was still warm when it was discovered.
- NARRATOR: Suff had taken the lives of at least nine sex workers. But a witness had seen the predator on the prowl.
The net would soon close in on the killer. - ♪ - NARRATOR: On the 16th of August, an office worker found
Kelly Hammond's body and called the police. Detective Christine Keers Sheffield had previously gone undercover as a local sex worker,
so she investigated the latest murder using her contacts on the street. - I knew, because I had a rapport with the girls, that
Kelly Hammond was a good friend of Kelly Whitecloud's. So, I went to University Avenue,
and I looked for Kelly Whitecloud, and I found her, I said, "Get in the car, Kelly."
And I asked her, "When's the last time you saw Kelly Hammond?" She goes, "Oh, I saw her last night. Why?"
And I said, "Well, man, I'm gonna tell you this." I go, "Kelly was murdered last night."
And so she, of course, became hysterical and was crying. - NARRATOR: Kelly told Detective Keers Sheffield about
her altercation with the client in the van, and how the same man had picked up her friend.
With this breakthrough of finally finding a witness, the task force rushed in a forensic artist
to create a sketch of the suspect. - CHRISTINE: And Kelly told her, he's a white guy
with a chubby face, he's wearing glasses. And she really gave an awesome description.
I--I was ecstatic. I just felt that we--we were getting closer now. We were getting closer.
We had something. - BOB: So we now have a drawing of a suspect. We have the type of vehicle and color that he was driving.
We're excited about this. This is the best type of information that you can hope for.
- NARRATOR: By now, the police had drawn up a profile of their serial killer. Detective Keers Sheffield was asked by her superiors
to update them on the investigation. - I said, "This guy, you know, he starts off,
"he's only doing white females. "And now we're getting Hispanic females. But he's never done an African-American female."
The following day, um, my chief of police decided to do a press release. And he put the information out.
And it came out in the newspaper. - NARRATOR: So, on the 12th of September, Suff had a sinister surprise in store.
He picked up a black sex worker, 30-year-old Catherine McDonald, stabbed and strangled her, then left her on a deserted
building site 40 miles south, in Lake Elsinore. - CHRISTINE: I think he was thumbing his nose at us,
saying, "You don't know what I like. "You can't guess who I'm gonna do next. And I'm a free man out here."
I think he was taunting us. - NARRATOR: Suff repeated many of the hallmarks he used
in his previous killings so that the police could be in no doubt as to whose handiwork this was.
But in his haste to show off, he also unwittingly left clues. - Where Catherine McDonald was laid was an area
that had a lot of fresh dirt, which is very conducive to cars driving over it and leaving very good tire track impressions.
Forensically, there was a lot of information just in the tire tracks and shoe prints.
- NARRATOR: What investigators didn't realize was that on the very same day, their serial killer
was hiding in plain sight. Two newly appointed members of the task force were visiting
the council warehouse Suff worked at to collect new office furniture when their pagers went off.
- BOB: They asked Bill Suff if they could use his telephone to call dispatch, and Bill Suff said sure.
And while Bill Suff was nearby watching them, these investigators were taking down notes
on the very body, on the very person--the victim-- that he had killed the day before.
You can just imagine the euphoria that he felt, the feeling that he was smarter than us,
and we had no idea that it was him. - NARRATOR: Whilst the smug killer relished watching
the police run around in circles, trying to work out who was behind the slayings,
at home, things were beginning to slip. Suff was, once again, struggling with being a father.
- ELIZABETH: So, history almost repeats itself here. And this is a very toxic, a very dangerous environment
into which to bring a child, because he doesn't possess those feelings of attachment and warmth and love
that make most fathers put the needs of their child first. - NARRATOR: Cheryl threatened to leave Suff
because of the abuse he'd subjected their daughter to. But manipulative as ever, he asked for one more chance
to change his ways, and she decided to stay. - BOB: Bill was pleading with Cheryl to get back with him.
He was making all kinds of promises. They had gotten a apartment now in the city of Colton.
And she decided to go back with him. When she did, in her own way of offering him a present,
she had bought a pair of Converse shoes for him for Christmas. And she had given him those shoes
as an early Christmas present. - NARRATOR: But there was no sign of Suff the serial killer stopping.
Seven weeks later, on the 30th of October, he took his 11th known victim-- 35-year-old sex worker Delliah Zamora.
Then, barely 2 months later, on the 23rd of December, Suff lured 39-year-old Eleanor Cassares into his van
in broad daylight. - He's becoming incredibly brazen, that the fear of getting caught
does not seem to be something that is on his radar. He's really engaging in some quite risky behavior.
- NARRATOR: Suff killed Eleanor, and took her to an orange grove just a street away from the Riverside Police Station.
He left her body there to taunt the task force investigators. - Yet again, strangulation.
Yet again, dumped. And now, part of the signature: her breast is cut off. - NARRATOR: Just two hours later, her body was found
by an orchard worker. And the police were called to the scene. Once again, though, Suff slipped up,
leaving footprints and tire tracks in the dirt. He'd been wearing the new shoes Cheryl had given him as a gift.
- I was able to identify that these are Converse tennis shoes, because that's how good the impression was.
And from there, I was able to tell that there were three different types of tires on this vehicle
and where those tires were located, where the different types were. - NARRATOR: Having known Eleanor personally,
this was a particularly difficult time for Detective Keers Sheffield. - I wanted to make sure that I was there with the coroner
when he told the mother and the children. And the brothers were absolutely out of their minds.
They wanted to grab guns and hit the streets. And I said, "Please don't." I said, "I considered Eleanor a friend.
"So I'm asking you, just let us handle this for the next few weeks and let's see what we can do."
- NARRATOR: Detective Keers Sheffield was determined to get the extra resources necessary to finally
get this killer off her streets. - Had it been college students, there'd been at least
100 detectives on this case. All power would have been out there on it. I just felt it was a slap in the face, because it's like
saying, "Well, okay, it's just a prostitute, "so we'll give it our best shot, but we're not gonna give it 100%."
And I...was absolutely livid. I went to the chief and I said, "Listen, here's what we need to do."
- NARRATOR: Her chief agreed to launch a weeklong, intensive police operation in Riverside's red-light district.
- CHRISTINE: We decided to call it Operation Apprehension. I put a picture of the suspect.
and I said, "He will be on University Avenue. "If you see this individual, and he's tried to pick up a prostitute, stop him."
- NARRATOR: On the 9th of January, 1992, the operation paid off. A police motorcyclist followed Suff's van
down University Avenue. A short while later, he witnessed the vehicle make an illegal turn and pulled it over.
- He gets Suff's driving license, which is out of date. The vehicle registration is out of date.
So...he then starts to take a vague look in the van, where he discovers, among other things,
a fishing knife with what looks like blood on it, not to mention all kinds of other stuff.
The traffic cop knows what the police sketch of the possible serial killer is. And Suff looks, well, really quite like it.
So, now, he calls for backup. - The phone call came, and I asked the officer, "Tell me what the driver side front tire was."
And he looked down, and he told me. And I had a chart of exactly what tire was in what position
on the vehicle. I then ask him to go to the passenger-side rear vehicle and tell me what the tire brand was.
When he did that, I said, "Freeze the scene." - Now, Suff is taken into custody.
And the interrogation begins. - ♪ - BOB: Early in the morning, I got a phone call from my partner.
He goes, "Bob, we got him." I said, "What do you have?" He goes, "We got him. He's in custody."
And I couldn't believe it. I got goosebumps. I mean, it was just--it's one of those feelings that I'm not
sure what you can equate it to, but it was just enormous. - NARRATOR: Detective Keers Sheffield confronted Suff
with the damning evidence that proved he had been at the orange grove. - CHRISTINE: He goes, "Yeah, I went out to pick some oranges."
"On your way to work?" "Yeah." And as I'm interviewing, he goes, "I found a body."
I said, "Oh, you found a body out there in the orange groves?" "Yeah," he said, "I found a body."
I asked myself, "Who in their right mind, finding a body, would go on to work?" - NARRATOR: Suff then decided to stop talking
and never admitted his guilt. But when his apartment was searched, the police found another pair of sneakers that match
shoe prints left at some of the other crime scenes. Most damning of all, the same gray carpet from Suff's van
was linked to fibers found on seven of the bodies. And his DNA matched profiles discovered on eight of the women.
- We even had some cat hair at some of the more recent crime scenes, and we ultimately tied that to--into the cat
Mr. Suff had in his apartment at the time that he was arrested. - NARRATOR: On the 25th of March, 1995, Bill Suff
finally stood trial at the Riverside Hall of Justice and pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of murder.
Deputy District Attorney Paul Zellerbach presented the case for the prosecution.
- I called 271 witnesses to testify during that trial. We had over 1,000 pieces of evidence.
The trial lasted seven months. And it was all out of circumstantial evidence. - NARRATOR: But on the 19th of July, 1995,
the jury finally delivered their verdict, finding him guilty on 12 of the 13 counts.
He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Rhonda Jetmore. On the murder of Sherry Pacer,
they were unable to make a unanimous decision despite Suff's semen being found inside her.
The water from the sprinklers at the garden where she was found had potentially destroyed
vital evidence. On the 10th of October, 1995, Bill Suff was sentenced to death. Despite a successful result, Detective Keers Sheffield,
who'd been close to some of the victims, couldn't help but feel a sense of unease.
She firmly believed that Suff was guilty of Sherry's murder, too. - That's the one case that the jury hung on.
And they hung on it because she had two deposits of semen. I was hugging Sherry Pacer's grandmother,
and I whispered in her ear, "You and I know he did this. "You heard all the physical evidence.
"So let your mind be rest assured and let your heart "be at ease, because he's gonna die for all the others.
And he'll die for her, too." - NARRATOR: Suff remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California.
- TERYL: I firmly believe he's going to hell. There's too much dark in him. He had a look in his eyes that just--
it was so scary. It was--it was an evil look. I'm basically the one that got away.
- NARRATOR: Suff spread fear amongst vulnerable women on the streets of Riverside.
He attacked his own children, brutally beating his two-month-old daughter to death.
He murdered and mutilated 12 women, and the police suspect he had many more victims.
That makes Bill Suff one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪ ♪♪ - [whoosh]

Bill Suff mutilated and murdered twelve sex workers in Riverside, California during the late 80s. At its peak, his spree of killings resulted in a victim a month.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Bill Suff, the Riverside Prostitute Killer, murdered at least 12 women, evading capture until his arrest in 1992.

Key points

The Model Employee. Bill Suff appears to be a model citizen while hiding his dark side.
The Riverside Prostitute Killer. The chilling story of Bill Suff, who murdered multiple women in Riverside.
A Shocking Discovery. Eleanor Casares's body is found just blocks from the police station.
A Mother's Nightmare. Teryl learns of her daughter's tragic fate and her husband's arrest.
The Final Act of Depravity. Suff's last victim, Cheryl Coker, suffers a horrific fate.
The Rise of a Serial Killer. Bill Suff escalates his killings, leaving behind DNA and fiber evidence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You fight back your emotions and say, 'We gotta get this solved.'.

Christine's resolve after Eleanor's murder.

3:14WatchAug 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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