Warren Luther Alexander has been arrested on suspicion of being involved with the unsolved murders of three women in the late 1970s: here is what we know about him so far.
The 73-year-old, from Diamondhead, Mississippi, was a long-haul trucker in 1977, when Kimberly Fritz, 18, Velvet Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21, were all strangled to death in Southern California.
Their murders, thought to be related at the time, remained a mystery until Alexander’s DNA was uploaded to the national database Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in 2022 and matched with the crime scenes.
On Tuesday, California extradited Alexander from North Carolina, where he was in custody, awaiting trial for the 1992 murder of 29-year-old Nona Cobb.
She was found dead on an interstate northwest of Winston-Salem after seemingly being strangled, according to her autopsy reported on by local broadcaster WXII-TV.
Alexander was arrested and charged with Cobb’s murder on March 15, 2022, which is how his DNA ended up being registered on CODIS. He is set to be arraigned on the California charges on August 21.
Fritz, Sanchez and Rodriguez were all sex workers, found dead in Port Hueneme, Oxnard, northwest of Los Angeles.
In a press conference this week, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko gave some brief background on Alexander. He told how Alexander lived in Oxnard in the 1950s and 1960s when he was at school.
Alexander returned there in the 1970s, when he was working as a trucker for around 30 years.
Nasarenko said: “While believing these three crimes [the three women in California] were indeed connected, leads ran cold, and detectives were unable to identify who was responsible for these horrific murders.
“These murders may have occurred 47 years ago, but the investigators with the Ventura County DA’s office, the investigators with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Cold Case Unit, officers and detectives with Port Hueneme and Oxnard never gave up. They never gave up seeking justice for these three victims and loved ones and their families. Just because the case has gone cold does not mean it should ever be forgotten.”
Nasarenko also said that Alexander may have been involved in other murders around the country.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now helping state authorities with the investigation, through its Highway Serial Killings Initiative, established in 2009 to focus on crimes where the bodies of victims have been found along highways.
