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Man Charged With Murder in Three Stabbing Deaths Near Compton Creek Homeless Encampments

Tracy Walker, 56, pleaded not guilty to killing Patricia Loeza, Kenneth Jones and Cesar Mazariegos, found stabbed along Compton Creek over eight months.

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AI-generated illustration, not the real place or event: a jail booking corridor with two officers walking away

For eight months, the dead kept turning up along the same stretch of Compton Creek. On Tuesday, February 16, 2021, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced that it had a man in custody for all three killings: Tracy Walker, 56, found by homicide detectives at a homeless encampment beside the creek bed in the Rancho Dominguez area. That afternoon, in the Compton courthouse, Walker pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. The criminal complaint alleges that he used a knife in all three killings.

Detectives had picked him up the Thursday before, and he was booked into jail on February 11. He was being held at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in lieu of $2 million bail and was ordered back to court on March 16, when a date was expected to be set for a preliminary hearing.

Patricia Loeza, 26, was the first. She was found just after midnight on June 7, 2020, down a dirt embankment east of the creek bed, north of Del Amo Boulevard, with stab wounds to her upper torso, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. The district attorney's office placed her in the 19000 block of South Susana Road. Nearly eight months passed before Kenneth Jones, also 26, was found on January 15, 2021, in the 20000 block of South Santa Fe Avenue, roughly a mile away. He had been stabbed in the upper body and had suffered blunt force trauma to the head.

By February, deputies were patrolling the creek bed because of those two deaths. On February 9, a patrol came upon Cesar Mazariegos, 30, on a dirt embankment on the east side of the creek near Del Amo Boulevard, close to where the other two had been found. He had been stabbed in the upper torso and was declared dead at the scene. The Sheriff's Department had said earlier that his body was found rolled up inside a large carpet. Two days later, Walker was under arrest.

"All three of the victims were killed in close proximity to each other, and all three victims appeared to have been homeless, possibly staying (at) homeless encampments at or near the Compton Creek bed," the department said in its statement. It did not explain how detectives came to Walker, saying only that investigation had identified him as involved in all three murders, and added: "While being interviewed by homicide detectives, suspect Walker implicated himself in the murders of victims Loeza, Jones and Mazariegos."

District Attorney George Gascón announced that his office would seek a life sentence. "The heartless and brazen nature of these murders against some of the most helpless members of our community shock the conscience," he said. Under Gascón's new policy, his office was not filing sentence-enhancing allegations except in what he defined as the most heinous crimes, among them those involving children, the elderly and hate crimes, so Walker did not face a special circumstance allegation of multiple murder, the allegation that would have made him eligible for death or life without the possibility of parole.

What was established on February 16, 2021. Walker had been charged and had pleaded not guilty; he had not been convicted of anything in these deaths. The account of what he said to detectives is the Sheriff's Department's, and the department released no further detail about the evidence. Some reports spelled the first victim's name "Patrica"; City News Service and KTLA give "Patricia." One report described the killings as spanning 11 months beginning in January 2020, which does not match the June 7, 2020 date the Sheriff's Department gave for the first death.

Sources