Trash Bag Slayer Talks, Police Claim
by Bill Farr
While convicted murder Patrick Wayne Kearney has cooperated with sheriff’s investigators working on 18 deaths, filing of charges may well be two to three weeks away. Stephen Trott, a deputy district attorney, said the information provided by Kearney in a six-hour session at Chino State Prison will require additional investigative work. Investigators have presented information on 13 cases to the District Attorney’s Office for filing Another five cases are in various stages of completion, with investigators saying only one still needs extensive work. Sgt. All Sett of the Sheriff’s Department said Kearney has denied any know ledge of the disappearance of 4-year-old Kevin Dewayne Portis and an unidentified adult, both of Inglewood.
Investigators from Inglewood had sought information from Kearney in hopes of clearing those cases. Portis, of 7451z Stepney Place, was reported missing May 26, 1976. Kearney’s attorney was present Tuesday when the man convicted of three so-called trash-bag murders in Riverside County was questioned. Sett said Kearney, 37, previously had claimed to have killed 21 persons and Tuesday provided details on 18 victims. We never had any details on the slayings of Merle Chance, Ronald Dean Smith or David Rogers, a Marine at Camp Pendleton, Sett said. But he has given us information on those and the others. If we ever discover the other (18th) man’s name and find him, then we would file on that one remaining case, Sett said.
The string of killings became known as the trash bag murders because bodies of victims were found stuffed in large plastic trash bags and left along highways. Several South Bay residents are among those for whom authorities expect to charge Kearney with murder. In addition to 8-year-old Merle Hondo Chance of the Venice area, Ronald Dean Smith 5, of the Lennox area and the Marine, are two South Bay residents whose identities have been withheld pending notification of relatives. The two children and 13-year-old Michael McGhee of Redondo Beach were mentioned in a letter Kearney sent to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Dec. 23. McGhee was reported missing June 17, 1976, and Smith was reported missing Aug. 24, 1974. Smith’s body was found Oct. 12, 1976, near Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.
McGhees body has never been found. Other victims include Kenneth Eugene Buchanan, 17, of Lawndale, John Demchik, 13, of Inglewood, a still unidentified body found beneath a Culver City home formerly occupied by Kearney, Wilfred L. Faherty of Redondo Beach and Nick Hernandez, 28, of Los Angeles, whose body was found at the Lennox Boulevard underpass of the San Diego Freeway. Kearney pleaded guilty in Riverside court to the murders of Albert Rivera, 21, of Los Angeles, Arturo Maquez, 24, of Oxnard and John O. Lamay, 17, of El Segundo. He is serving a life term at Chino for those murders. Sett said it would be up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek the death penalty when additional cases are filed.
