LAWMEN UNCOVER RAPE, SLAY PLOT: THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 16, 1980

Sheriff Peter Pitchess of Los Angeles County opened his news conference at the Hall of Justice on Friday, February 15, 1980, with a number meant to frighten: more than 500 young girls, he said, "may have been marked for murder." Searches of property belonging to two men already in custody had turned up candid snapshots of some 500 teenage girls, taken along the beach in southwestern Los Angeles County and at or near a high school in Burbank. The men were Roy Norris, printed here as Roy Lewis Norris, 32, of Redondo Beach, and Lawrence Bittaker, 39. Five girls were known to be dead.

The number began to shrink almost as soon as he said it. Pitchess told reporters that between 30 and 40 of the photographed girls had been reported missing and might have been murdered. Later that day one of his own investigators said the sheriff had misspoken: missing-persons cases were being checked, none had yet matched a photograph, and the 50 to 60 girls identified so far were all alive. The case had surfaced only the day before, when the Daily Breeze in Torrance came upon papers in the municipal court there describing five girls raped, tortured and killed. Four of them had last been seen hitchhiking.

Of the two men, one was talking. "I think Mr. Norris sees the advisability of cooperating," Pitchess said, and a plea bargain had been discussed. The previous Saturday Norris had taken investigators into the San Gabriel Mountains above San Dimas and shown them where two Redondo Beach girls, Jacqueline Leah Lamp, 13, and Jacqueline Gilliam, 15, had been left after they vanished while hitchhiking on September 2; the searchers found their bones. The others were Lucinda Schaefer, 16, of Torrance, who disappeared on her way home from church on June 24; Andrea Joy Hall, 18, last seen in Redondo Beach on July 8; and Shirley Ledford of Sunland, last seen on Halloween. A month later Norris pleaded guilty to all five murders.

This is an Associated Press account of a sheriff's news conference a month before Norris entered a plea, and the 500 "potential victims" were the sheriff's speculation, trimmed by his own investigator the same day. The paper says both men were arrested on November 20, 1979, in a kidnap and rape; Norris was in fact held for a parole violation, selling marijuana, and Bittaker on suspicion of kidnapping and rape. It has Norris leaving Atascadero the previous June, while later accounts put that release years earlier, before the prison term in which he met Bittaker. "Jackie Doris Gilliam" was Jacqueline Doris Gilliam, and Shirley Ledford's age is given elsewhere as 16 and as 18. On March 18, 1980, Norris pleaded guilty to all five murders and was sentenced to forty-five years to life.

Roger Gillott wrote this story for the Associated Press, and The Salt Lake Tribune ran it on page A3 on February 16, 1980. The scan is from Utah Digital Newspapers, kept by the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library, which rates the issue "In Copyright," as a 1980 publication under the 1976 Copyright Act. The story carries no copyright notice of its own; the "(Copyright)" lines elsewhere in the issue close other syndicated stories. The citation and the library's rights statement sit beneath the scan.

A single clipping holds the whole column, and the transcription renders it word for word with nothing marked illegible. The paper's own forms stay as printed: "Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker," "Jaqueline Leah Lamp" without its c, and "none of them have been." The ages, dates and spellings of the victims' names are left as the paper gave them.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

Lawmen Uncover Rape, Slay Plot

By Roger Gillott

Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than 500 young girls may have been marked for murder in a sadistic rape-torture-murder plot that has claimed five known victims, Sheriff Peter Pitchess said Friday.

Pitchess said candid snapshots of 500 teen-age girls were found in searches of the property of two men who are already in custody on other charges.

"We have reason to believe that those girls were all potential victims," the sheriff said at a Hall of Justice news conference.

Pitchess initially told reporters that "between 30 and 40" of the photographed girls had been reported as missing persons and may have been murdered.

However, a sheriff's investigator involved in the probe said later that Pitchess misspoke.

The investigator said the cases of 30 to 40 missing girls were being checked to see if they were possible victims, but that none of them have been matched up with the photographs checked so far.

He added that 50 to 60 of the photographed girls have been identified, but that they are all alive.

Pitchess said the photographs were taken along the beach in southwestern Los Angeles County or at or near a high school in Burbank. He did not say precisely where the photographs were found.

First word of the probe surfaced Thursday when a newspaper in suburban Torrance, the South Bay Daily Breeze, ran across documents filed in Torrance Municipal Court detailing five cases in which the girls — four of whom were last seen hitchhiking — were raped, tortured and murdered.

Arrested in Kidnap, Rape

Two men — Roy Lewis Norris, 32, of Redondo Beach and Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker, 39, who was living in a Burbank motel — were arrested last Nov. 20 in an unrelated kidnap and rape. Those charges have since been dropped, but Pitchess said evidence developed while they were in jail linked them to the five killings.

They are currently being held on an unrelated assault charge, although Pitchess warned: "We will bring charges immediately (in the five killings) if they try to make bail."

Norris, who was released last June from the state mental hospital in Atascadero where he was being treated after a rape conviction, was being held in lieu of $10,000 bail. Bittaker, paroled in November 1978 on a conviction of assault with a deadly weapon, was being held without bail for parole violation.

Suspect Cooperating

"One of the suspects — Norris — is cooperating," Pitchess said, adding authorities had discussed a plea bargain with him. "We have reached no agreement (on the plea bargain), but I think Mr. Norris sees the advisability of cooperating."

Norris led investigators on a search of the San Gabriel Mountains above San Dimas last Saturday, showing them the sites where the bodies of two of the victims — Jaqueline Leah Lamp, 13, and Jackie Doris Gilliam, 15 — were dumped.

Investigators found skulls, ribs and jawbones of the two Redondo Beach girls, who were last seen hitchhiking on Sept. 2. An ice pick was still embedded in the ear of Miss Gilliam's skull.

The sheriff's department said other known victims were: Lucinda Schaefer, 16, of Torrance, who disappeared on her way home from church June 24; Andrea Joy Hall, 18, last seen in Redondo Beach on July 8; and Shirley Linett Ledford, 16, of Sunland, last seen Oct. 31.

Notes: Kept as printed: "Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker"; "Jaqueline Leah Lamp"; "none of them have been". This is a fuller, bylined version of the same day's AP story than the shorter one filed for Lawrence Bittaker (Ogden Standard-Examiner, the same date). It is filed here for Roy Norris because it covers his co-operation and plea discussions. No words were illegible.