Suspect Targeted in the Murder of Prostitute

An Escondido man who served a jail sentence for assault on a prostitute is under investigation by the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force in at least one in a series of 44 slayings of prostitutes and transients since 1985.

Task force members are keeping a 24-hour surveillance on Ronald Elliott Porter, 44, who pleaded guilty in 1989 to two felony counts in an attack on a 30-year-old prostitute in October, 1988.

The prostitute said she had been hitchhiking when Porter offered her a ride, assaulted her, choked her until she was unconscious and left her at the side of an East County road in the Buckman Springs area.

Porter was sentenced in April, 1989, to four years in state prison and released late last year. During his stay in prison, task force members visited him and asked him questions about the serial killings, law enforcement sources said.

While Porter was in prison, four of the 44 prostitutes were slain.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Task Force, a multi-agency group formed 2 1/2 years ago to concentrate on solving the slayings, said Wednesday that Porter was under investigation but downplayed his importance to the case.

“We have many people we are looking at, and he is just one of them,” said spokesman Dick Lewis. “We are taking a look at him just as we are looking at anyone else.”

Lewis declined to elaborate on what task force members wanted to know or why they were maintaining such intense surveillance.

But a task force report released in March, 1989, identified Porter as one of five men under investigation for prostitute murders.

The report said Porter, an Escondido mechanic at the time of his arrest, was being investigated in the killing of Sandra Cwik, 43, a transient from Florida who was raped and, like Russell, dumped in the Buckman Springs area.

Cwik’s partly clad body was found on Sheephead Mountain Road in July, 1988, and she died from a loss of blood, the task force determined.

At the time Cwik was found, law enforcement authorities speculated that she was assaulted about a mile from where she was dumped and died trying to reach help after walking barefoot down a rugged road.

During that time, officials also began investigating the possibility of a link between Cwik’s death and Russell’s assault three months later. The bodies were dumped about a mile apart.

Charged originally with six felony charges--including assault, battery and oral copulation of an unconscious person--Porter pleaded guilty March, 7, 1989, a week before he was due to go to trial, to two counts, assault and sexual battery, records show.

Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the remaining four charges, according to records.

On April 4, 1989, Superior Court Judge Andrew G. Wagner sentenced Porter to four years in state prison and, when he was out from behind bars, four years’ supervised parole. When he was sentenced, Porter already had built up 262 days of credit toward the four-year prison term, records show.

Porter told KFMB radio, in a report aired Wednesday, that task force officials visited him in prison and served a search warrant on his home after he was released. Porter said investigators took clothing and shoes from his home, and KFMB reported they were trying to match his footprint with those found at the Cwik murder scene.

Porter also confirmed that task force agents have maintained a 24-hour surveillance on his Escondido home since he was released from prison 2 1/2 months ago, KFMB reported, adding that Porter has denied any involvement in murder. Law enforcement sources also independently confirmed to The Times the continuing surveillance that began late last year.

According to court records, Porter had worked at the Pep Boys auto shop for three years before his arrest. A store manager said Wednesday he had not worked there since.

Porter has a history of sexual offenses, including a 1976 conviction for kidnaping involving a 16-year-old male hitchhiker and another for indecent exposure.