Samuel Suarez, 49, was found dead in a fifth-floor Los Angeles hotel room on January 30, 1975. Suarez, described as Hispanic, was the final victim in a series of killings attributed to the Skid Row Slasher. Victims in the series were often transient and were discovered with their throats slashed plus ritualistic elements at the scenes, including cups of blood and rings of salt around the bodies.

The investigation was hampered early on by an inaccurate suspect profile that described a white man in his late twenties or early thirties with shoulder-length blond hair and a height around six feet — a description that did not match the eventual suspect, Vaughn Orrin Greenwood, 32, an African American man with a prior violent conviction. Greenwood was linked to the killings after an unrelated hatchet attack on February 2, 1975, in Hollywood and was subsequently identified and arrested. Further investigation connected him to Suarez’s killing and the other murders in the series.