Authorities said Thursday night that an arrest has been made in a case of four cold-case homicides in Inglewood and LA, dating back to 1980.
According to LAPD officials, detectives from the two cities’ police departments went to Fort Worth, and arrested Billy Ray Richardson — who is 76 years old — using assistance from the Ghost Unit of Fort Worth Police Department.
The LAPD suspect Richardson is responsible for the killings of Debra Cruse, Beverly Cruse, and Kari Lenander in LA in 1980, and of Trina Wilson in Inglewood in 1995.
Richardson was held in custody Thursday night before extraditing him to LA, according to the police.
“Investigative and forensic work over decades connected these murders through DNA and linked them to [the] suspect,” police said.
The case was presented by the authorities to the LA county DA’s office, which then filed four first-degree-murder-counts, with special circumstances surrounding multiple murders, as well as murder committed while commissioning rape, according to police.
Debra and Beverly Cruse were discovered dead by James—their brother—in Beverly’s Palms apartment bedroom, according to an article published in the Times on March 6, 1980.
James had grown concerned after not hearing from the pair for multiple days, and went to the location in Overland Avenue to find out what had happened.
Beverly, aged 25, worked for the USC and was a part-time student there. Police believed that 22-year-old Debra, who worked as a receptionist, was visiting her when both were killed.
“Investigators said both young women had been murdered, but there were no obvious wounds on their bodies, which were decomposing,” The Times said.
KFI’s Stan Brown told the Times back in 1980 that Debra had a part time job at the station, having acquired this employment through a temp agency. “She seemed to be a pleasant young lady,” Brown said. “Pleasant and full of life.”
Close to five months after that, 15-year-old Kari Lenander was found strangled and raped. Her body was discovered dumped in a gutter in Southern LA, according to a newspaper story published by the LA Times Magazine on April 4, 2010.
An LAPD bulletin was posted in 2012 asking for help solving the cold case, saying she was found on Jul the 26th of in 1980, on Victoria Avenue.
Kari—a Palisades Charter High School student and a Brentwood resident—was visiting Toni Garfield, her best friend, to arrange a sweet-16 party, said the 2010 article.
Toni’s parents were not in town, and the girls had drunk tequila. They then decided to go out dancing in the Hollywood hills, and started hitchhiking at the Barrington Avenue- Wilshire Boulevard corner.
A man came by and picked them up; he gave his name as Ken, and said he was a visitor from Canada. The three went to Hollywood and made a stop to use the restroom, when Toni understood that she’d drunk too much, the article said.
The man who had introduced himself as Ken agreed to drive her back to Brentwood. When they got there, however, Kari said she wished to stay with him. She said she wanted to “keep partying”.
“It was about 10 p.m. when the girls said goodbye outside Toni’s house,” the story said. “Just five hours later, Kari’s body was found under a brightly shining moon, a world away from Brentwood.”
On Thursday night, information regarding the circumstances around Trina Wilson’s demise was not available.
