Trial Begins for Man Accused in the Killing of Transient Near I-8 : Justice: Escondido auto mechanic Ronald Porter is also charged with attacking five other women who accepted rides from him.

Most of the women were hitchhiking east on Interstate 8 when the driver stopped and agreed to take them as far as El Centro.

Sometime during the ride, he mentioned the need for a bathroom and pulled off the freeway, into the remote darkness. Once outside the car, he’d make his way to the passenger’s side and open the door.

Attacking quickly, he’d drag the women onto the ground, wrap a forearm around their necks and squeeze until they passed out. When they awoke, their blouses were usually unbuttoned and bras pulled aside.

From 1986 to 1988, a prosecutor alleged in San Diego Superior Court on Monday, an Escondido auto mechanic named Ronald Porter choked six women, strangling one to death, striking each time in the same manner. Two of the women were raped with a foreign object.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, which has spent four years investigating a series of 45 prostitute and transient deaths in and around San Diego, said Porter is a suspect in several other murder cases.

“He’s charged with a murder in the I-8 corridor and we’re looking at him in connection with others,” said Richard Lewis, a deputy district attorney and task force spokesman. “We’ll see what happens in this trial before moving ahead with other cases.”

Porter’s trial opened Monday with a recitation of the crime series, which began with the attempted murder of Kecia Betts in November, 1986. Betts, now Kecia Gardner, testified Monday that she was eight months pregnant when she accepted a ride in Porter’s van.

Having argued with her husband that day and deciding to leave him temporarily, she recalled trying to get to Florida to see her grandfather.

Carrying a bag of clothing, a walkie-talkie, a radio-cassette player and a stack of country and western tapes, she rode with Porter from El Cajon until he took the In-ko-pah exit near Imperial County for a bathroom stop.

“Next thing Kecia Betts knows, she is being choked out,” prosecutor Jeff Dusek said. “No warning. No advance warning at all. The man who is doing this says, ‘I’ve got a gun.’ She lost consciousness and she was out. She came to later that evening on that dirt road. The van was gone. The man who choked her unconscious was gone.”

Betts walked to the other side of the freeway and notified a couple, who called the police, Dusek said.

Investigators found Betts’ walkie-talkie in Porter’s San Marcos storage shed and a strand of his hair in her shoe, prosecutors have said. She has identified Porter in court as her assailant but picked out the wrong man in a 1988 video lineup, according to court documents.

The next attack in the series, in February, 1988, came against two friends who were hitchhiking from Tucson to Los Angeles, Dusek said.

After visiting San Diego, Robin Brown and Donna Abbott were returning home when a man slowed down to offer them a ride. Abbott got in the back seat and went to sleep. Brown sat in front. The driver stopped the car at an area called Crestwood Summit to go to the bathroom. He asked them both to get out the car and began choking Abbott, who passed out. Then he choked Brown.

Brown has told police that the man who picked them up said he had gotten out of the U.S. Marine Corps in 1968. Porter was discharged from the Marines that year, court documents indicate.

Investigators have found footprints that match Porter’s shoes and tire tracks matching a spare tire from his car. Brown could not pick him out of a 1988 photo lineup, however. Abbott has identified Porter as her attacker.

Betty Bass took a ride with a driver in March, 1988, after leaving a La Mesa motel. Somewhere off I-8 near Alpine, the driver stopped for gas. He drove to a remote area and choked Bass. Shoe prints match Porter’s and tire tracks matched those of his car. A fiber found on Bass matches one found in the trunk of Porter’s car, according to investigators.

Bass picked Porter out of a photo lineup but not in court during his preliminary hearing, defense attorney Terry Kolkey said.

In May, 1988, Maria Weidmark left her husband in El Cajon after an argument and began hitchhiking along I-8. A driver said he would take her as far as El Centro. He said he wanted to visit a Buckman Springs hang-gliding shop, where he had friends.

Before they arrived, she asked to go to the bathroom. He choked her until she passed out. Tire tracks and shoe prints again link Porter to the crime, investigators said.

Porter is also charged with murdering Sandra Cwik, a 43-year-old Florida transient whose body was dumped in a remote area of Buckman Springs in July, 1988.

Naked from the waist down, Cwik had been beaten about a mile from where she was attacked. Task force investigators concluded she died of blood loss after walking barefoot down a rugged road for help.

Shoe prints found at the scene match Porter’s, Dusek said.

Porter was arrested in 1989 and sentenced to four years in state prison for his attack on 30-year-old prostitute Annette Russell, who also had been picked up hitchhiking. Like the other cases, the driver said he was going to El Centro but got off at the same Buckman Springs exit where Cwik and Weidmark were driven.

Once the car stopped, the driver choked Russell until she became unconscious.

A sheriff’s deputy found Russell’s body, saw a gray Honda drive away, and broadcast the car’s description. Porter was pulled over and arrested. Charged with six felony counts, including assault, battery and oral copulation, he pleaded guilty a week before trial to two counts, assault and sexual battery. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.

Porter was released from prison last year but violated parole and went back to jail. The day before his release for the parole violation, he was charged with the series of East County crimes.

Prosecutors also charged Porter with a second murder but that charge was later dismissed for lack of evidence.

Defense attorney Kolkey said Monday the state’s case is largely circumstantial. Although an FBI agent is due to testify at trial to a match between Porter’s tire tread and tire marks at various crime scenes, Porter’s tires are of a similar size and design but not identical matches, Kolkey said. The match of shoe prints also is not identical, he said.

Hair and fiber samples, Kolkey said, are inconclusive and of limited value.