Phyllis McClinton, a 25-year-old Black woman, was found deceased in a vacant lot in South Los Angeles on November 4, 1980. Authorities did not release a precise location or detailed circumstances, but her death was later linked to another killing that fit the same pattern: Sonia Smith, also 25, who had been found on August 19, 1980. Both women were discovered in abandoned fields with their wrists and ankles bound, suggesting a connection between the cases.

A survivor of a November 1980 assault, attacked in a similar manner, identified her assailant as Larry D. Hubbard. Hubbard had escaped from a Florida prison in 1977 after a robbery conviction and was living in Los Angeles at the time. He was arrested and charged with false imprisonment for the assault on the surviving woman and received a six-month prison term and four years probation. Years later investigators linked Hubbard by DNA to multiple unsolved Southern California murders, including the deaths of McClinton and Smith. Hubbard was extradited to Florida; he attempted to hang himself and later died from complications on January 13, 2008.

Does anyone have information about McClinton’s life or movements in South Los Angeles in 1980 that could help clarify what happened that fall?