‘Suspected serial killer’ from South MS accused of 1977 cold case deaths of 3 women

A Diamondhead man accused of a decades-old killing in North Carolina was extradited on Tuesday to Southern California, where authorities charged him in the 1977 killings of three more women.

Warren Luther Alexander, 73, faces three counts of first-degree murder that stem from a series of unsolved strangulations of three women, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office announced in a news release on Wednesday.

Alexander arrived in California on Tuesday. He previously was held in Surry County, North Carolina, where he was awaiting prosecution for the 1992 cold case killing of Nona Stamey Cobb. He was arrested on that charge in 2022 in Diamondhead.

In California, Alexander is accused in the deaths of three women: Kimberly Carol Fritz, 18, Velvet Ann Sanchez, 31, and Lorraine Ann Rodriguez, 21.

He appeared in Ventura County court Wednesday morning and is held without bail, the Sheriff’s Office said.

In the news release, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office called Alexander a “suspected serial killer.” The agency said it’s cold case unit started to re-examine the killings in February last year.

This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 4:19 PM.