He admitted to stabbing and strangling her before discarding her body on the road of the 800 block of Bank Street in South Pasadena, as revealed by Los Angeles County Lieutenant Patricia Thomas at a press conference on Tuesday.
It was on February 22, 1986, when the lifeless body of 19 year old Cathy Ann Small was discovered by police around 7am.
Small's body was found clad in a nightgown, and she had succumbed to multiple stab wounds and strangulation, according to Thomas, reports the Express US .
Three days later, Small was identified after a man from the Lake Elsinore area, who had read about the murder in the newspapers, contacted detectives fearing that the victim could be his roommate.
The roommate informed detectives that Small had been working as a prostitute in the Lake Elsinore area and had lived with him for several months, added Thomas.
He also disclosed to detectives that Small had left their house around 10pm the night before her death, wearing the same nightgown that was found at the crime scene.
Thomas revealed that Small had informed her roommate about a man named "Bill" who was supposed to pick her up and offer her $50 for a ride to Los Angeles, yet she never returned.
Despite chasing down numerous leads, police were initially stumped by the murder, leaving the case unsolved for almost 40 years.
However, in October 2019, a cold case saw a major development when an investigator from the Los Angeles county medical examiner's office reached out to homicide detectives after examining the natural death of a 63 year old man discovered on his living room couch across from where Small's body was found.
It was then that the coroner investigator came upon several alarming items in the house, including "numerous photos of women who appeared to have been assaulted and held against their will, possibly by the decedent," according to Thomas.
Additionally, the investigator found a newspaper clipping in the man's bedroom that identified Small as the victim of the 1986 murder, Thomas noted.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department detectives revisited Small's murder file and realized that the evidence had never undergone DNA analysis, prompting them to secure a search warrant.
In an attempt to link the DNA from Small's case to any of the items in the man's residence, authorities conducted DNA tests, but they failed to find a match.
"Numerous items of evidence were recovered from the residence, and DNA tests were conducted on several of the items by criminalists from our crime lab," Thomas revealed.
"However, investigators learned the decedent's DNA did not match the DNA found on victim Small and was not linked to any crimes," she added.
A major turning point came when homicide detectives discovered that certain evidence from Small's case had never been tested before, including her sexual assault kit and clothing.
Then, in August 2020, DNA analysis of these previously untested items conclusively connected Suff to the murder.
William Lester Suff, notorious as both the "Riverside Prostitute Killer" and the "Lake Elsinore Killer," received a death sentence in 1995 for the killings of 12 women, mostly prostitutes, across Riverside County from 1989 to 1991.
In addition to these horrific acts, he was found guilty of murdering his two-month-old daughter in Tarrant County, Texas back in 1974. Strangely enough, after his conviction and despite being handed a 70-year prison term, Suff was paroled to California a decade later.
The reasons behind Suff's parole, despite the severe sentence for such a serious offense, remained unclear.
Suff evaded capture until January 1992, when a routine traffic stop led to his arrest and subsequent charges for the string of murders, as Thomas pointed out.
Suff, who was on death row in San Quentin until May 2022, was transferred to the Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles. There, he confessed to detectives over a two-day interview that he had murdered Cathy Small.
"Detectives interviewed him for two days, over seven hours. He confessed and discussed in detail the murder of Cathy Small," Thomas revealed. "He also discussed and admitted to some of the previous murders in Riverside County."
Suff informed detectives that he had been living in Riverside County and had met Small at a computer repair shop where he was employed.
Small gave Suff her phone number one day at the store, which led to him calling her and arranging to pick her up for an outing later that night.
Suff recounted to detectives that they had an argument while driving that night.
He claimed that the dispute enraged him so much that he knocked his glasses off his face, grabbed a knife he kept in his car, and stabbed Small multiple times in the chest.
Suff told detectives that he dumped Small's body from the car onto the road and drove off, discarding her from the front passenger seat.
Despite his confession, investigators reportedly will not charge Suff for Small's murder as he is already on death row facing prior convictions.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna stated that authorities believe the confession alone has brought a "sense of long-overdue justice and closure" to Small's family.
"Amongst everything else we're talking about today, you've always got to remember when we're talking about something as significant as this, we're talking about a victim who lost her life, and the family who will never forget that," Luna stated during the press conference.
Small left behind two young children and her little sister, Dean Larson, who was only 10 when she passed away.
Larson, unable to be present at the press conference, had a letter read aloud by officials in which she described her as a "protective big sister, a loving mother, and a good daughter."
"Cathy was funny, smart, and caring. She had a big heart and would do anything for anyone," Larson penned in the letter.
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