Three women were found strangled in California. Four decades later police arrest suspected serial killer

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Back in 1977, three women were strangled and their bodies found dumped in California.

For over four decades, no arrests were made and the case went cold.

Now, police believe they have solved the mystery – and say that it was the work of a suspected serial killer already charged with murder across the country in North Carolina.

Warren Luther Alexander was charged on Wednesday with the murders of three murders of Kimberly Carol Fritz, 18, Velvet Ann Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Ann Rodriguez, 21, which all took place in Ventura County, California, in 1977.

The three women were all strangled within eight months of each other – Fritz on May 29, Sanchez on September 8 and Rodriguez on December 27.

Alexander, a 73-year-old from Mississippi, would have been 26 at the time.

The suspect was first arrested in Diamondhead in 2022 and charged with the 1992 murder of Nona Stamey Cobb, whose body was found by Interstate 77 in Surry County, North Carolina.

Witnesses had last seen Cobb climbing into a truck with an unknown man at a Cleveland County rest area in July 1992, The Winston-Salem Journal reported.

Cobb’s sister Vickie Gregory told the outlet that year that Cobb had lost custody of her three-year-old son Josh seven months before her death because of her struggles with substance abuse. “She loved us, and we loved her,” said Gregory. “Just because you do something wrong doesn’t mean you stop loving her.”

While he was held behind bars awaiting trial for Cobb’s murder, investigators tied him to the murders in California.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office’s Cold Case unit had reopened the investigations into the three 1977 killings.

Ultimately, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the Surry County Sheriff’s Office said they were able to use DNA samples to identify Alexander as the suspect.

The suspected serial killer was extradited from Surry County to California this week.

He is now being held in Ventura County Jail without bail ahead of his arraignment on August 21.