Unknown Butcher: At Least Four Victims

by Los Angeles (UPI)

A human head, believed to be from a body mutilated by a sex maniac, was discovered in a paper products plant yesterday. Police said the body was discovered by a plant employe who told them it rolled from a sack while he was stacking paper on a conveyor belt. Police said, it appeared to be the head of a young male adult, and they were 99 % percent certain it came from the dismembered body found last Sunday. Detectives from six law enforcement agencies were meeting in nearby Seal Beach yesterday to discuss the hunt for the maniac who kills and mutilates young men.

At least four known victims have been found, including two who have been chopped up. All were found in beach region towns in Los Angeles and Orange counties since December. All were sexually attacked, police said. The most recent was a corpse hacked to pieces and distributed along the Terminal Island Freeway in Los Angeles County and in Sunset Beach. Four plastic bags were found along the freeway Sunday, containing a leg, two arms, and a torso. The genitals had been cut off. A leg was found Wednesday, in an identical green plastic bag, in a trash can behind a tavern in Seal Beach, 10 miles to the south. Police said it appeared to have come from the same body as the pieces found along the freeway. The head had not been found.

The victim appeared to have been a young man in his 20s, who was stabbed to death, according to the coroner’s office. The first body found was that of a Marine from Camp Pendleton, Edward Daniel Moore, 19, who was strangled. The nude body was discovered December 26 near the junction of the San Diego and 605 Freeways. Another nude body was found Feb 6 near the Terminal Island Freeway, just south of the Pacific Coast Highway. The victim, who had been strangled, was about 20, but has not been identified. The dismembered body of a man in his early 20s, killed by a blow on the head, was found in Huntington Beach April 14.