Catherine McDonald, a 30-year-old Black woman from Riverside, California, was identified in September 1991 as the seventeenth known victim in a series of murders centered in the Riverside/Lake Elsinore area. Her body was found at a remote construction site in Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. Investigators noted she fit the general profile of the killer’s victims—women with histories of drug use and/or prostitution—but her ethnicity marked a departure from earlier victims, who had been white or Hispanic, a detail investigators described as significant.

McDonald had recently moved to Riverside from Los Angeles and had prior contact with law enforcement; her identity was confirmed through a statewide fingerprint system. The discovery of her body helped prompt an expansion of the Riverside County Sheriff’s investigative team from four to twelve detectives after an influx of tips and national attention.

Reports link these murders to William Lester Suff, known as the Riverside Prostitute Killer or Lake Elsinore Killer, whose victims were often found in remote or industrial locations and who is believed to have killed multiple women in the region. Did anyone in Riverside or Lake Elsinore know Catherine or have information about her activities after she moved there?