‘Jigsaw John’ on Trail of a Slayer : LAPD’s Most Experienced, and Most Dogged, Manhunter Works Slowly but He’s Sure They’ll Get ‘This Guy’

Somebody out there is killing prostitutes on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles. He chokes them and cuts them, stashing their bodies in dark places where investigators later scratch for clues.

To Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John, the killer is known simply as “this guy.” They’re all just “this guy” until “Jigsaw John” learns their true names and pieces together the evidence to put another one away.

“I know we’re gonna catch this guy sooner or later,” St. John said, “but I don’t know when and how. The how comes in the strangest ways sometimes.”

If there is anyone who has seen evidence of that truism, it is the plumpish, 67-year-old St. John--the Police Department’s most senior officer, most renowned homicide investigator and now coordinator of a police-sheriff’s task force hunting Los Angeles’ latest serial killer.

St. John was assigned to the case before there was a task force, before the string of slayings grew to 15. Last summer, while other detectives investigated possible suspects in the “Night Stalker” case, St. John plodded after “this guy” whose tally of street walkers would later reach double figures.

St. John has since received help. The Police Department this week increased the number of homicide detectives assigned to the investigation to 19, including him. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has committed four detectives.

None is regarded as more savvy than the aging, affable investigator who carries detective’s badge No. 1 in the pocket of his suit jacket.

Some of those on the task force had not yet been born when St. John became a Los Angeles patrolman in 1942.

“I’ve done just about everything in this Police Department,” he said, looking more like a grandfatherly insurance salesman than a cop. “I guess I’ve got more experience in blood and guts than anybody else around.”

He’s been called “Jigsaw” for years, ever since he solved a murder in Griffith Park in which the victim had been dismembered jigsaw-style. There was a book written and a television series produced about his exploits. The series, “Jigsaw John,” starring Jack Warden, ran for 15 episodes on NBC.

In 1982, St. John became the second recipient of the Police Department’s Distinguished Service Medal for his eight-year investigation resulting in the conviction of the “Freeway Killer,” William Bonin.

But St. John is not one to dwell on past successes, those who know him say. All but a few of his plaques, awards and other souvenirs of achievement are crammed into a closet and roll-top desk in his home.

In his more than 30 years as a homicide detective, St. John has handled, by his own count, between 500 and 1,000 murders, including eight or 10 sets of the serial variety. Most were solved.

This latest case, he said, bears the trademarks of others from the past.

“These guys all kill the same way you or me pick a banana off a tree,” he explained. “Whenever they get the urge, they go out and do it to get their sexual gratification or whatever. They’ll keep doing it, too, until you stop them.”

St. John may be old, but he’s slow, detectives joke. And that, his understudies say, is one reason he is good. He doesn’t rush. He is methodical in his interrogation of witnesses and meticulous in studying a crime scene, making sure not to miss a clue.

In addition, detectives also say he has an excellent memory for details, and can often link unsolved cases to a suspect by remembering the minutiae of crimes long ago forgotten by other investigators.

“His stamina is unbelievable,” said Detective Fred Miller, his partner for the last six months and 28 years St. John’s junior. “The guy can go and go.”

Take the prostitute serial murders.

St. John, like the other task force detectives, has been putting in 12 and 14 hours a day on the case. While the sun is out, he handles paper work, helping the task force’s commander, Lt. John Zorn, assign incoming tips to detectives and catalogue information. But at night, St. John and his partner are on the streets, working areas where the killer of prostitutes has taken his toll.

Many of those questioned by St. John are disarmed by his appearance. He shuffles rather that struts; the tip of his nose is slightly florid; his gray eyebrows snake north and south when he emphasizes a point. But beneath his brow are the unwavering, pale blue eyes of a policeman.

“A lot of the street walkers will see my card and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re Jigsaw John,’ “St. John said, genuinely flattered. “I had one say to me, ‘You’re a nice old man, what do you think of black ladies?’ What do you do in a situation like that? You say, ‘Thanks anyway.’ ”

There is speculation within the department that the current case may be St. John’s swan song, that he may retire and finally head toward that bit of mountain land he owns up north.

But to those who ask if he is going to hang it up soon after 44 years on the force, St. John only smiles.

“I got more things going right now than Carter’s got pills,” he says.

Meanwhile, there’s this guy out there.