Suspect Held on $250,000 Bail While Probe Into Serial-Killer Link Continues

Alan Michael Stevens was ordered held on $250,000 bail Thursday in the strangulation of a woman whose body was found last month in North County, and the San Diego County district attorney’s office said authorities will continue to review his past to see if he might be involved in more than 3 dozen similar slayings.

The 46-year-old Stevens, wearing manacles binding his tattoed arms, appeared briefly in San Diego Municipal Court on charges of murdering Cynthia Lou McVey, 26.

A 300-pound former biker with a long, scraggly beard, Stevens told the judge that he wanted more time to attempt to hire a private attorney to defend him.

Lower Bail Denied

Although Judge Patricia A. Y. Cowett granted the extension, she denied Stevens’ request for $100,000 bail, and he was returned to County Jail downtown on the higher amount.

Outside the courtroom, Charles Rogers, a deputy district attorney who is working with the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, said the group will study Stevens’ activities over the past three years to determine whether there is any connection between him and the murders of 39 other women, whose bodies, like McVey’s, have been found in remote parts of the county.

“The investigators are naturally going to consider if he is involved in other homicides,” Rogers said. “Although he is not being charged in other homicides at this time, the normal process is to look at the other cases and see where that leads you.”

Rogers said authorities plan to ask several witnesses in some of the homicides to view Stevens in a police lineup and that photographs of the former San Bernardino County man will also be shown to potential witnesses.

Rogers said his office does not expect to seek the death penalty for Stevens in the McVey slaying. Asked if that decision could change if evidence is obtained to tie Stevens to one or more of the other unsolved homicides, Rogers said, “Of course.”

He said that, in the McVey case, investigators have found “physical evidence that we think--no, that we believe--links him to the homicide.” But he declined to describe that evidence or say whether it was found near California 76, where McVey’s body was dumped, or inside Stevens’ yellow van.

Search Warrant Sealed

Rogers said a search warrant signed by a Superior Court judge and executed by police to examine the contents of the van has been ordered sealed and probably will remain so until Stevens is arraigned and a preliminary hearing held in the weeks ahead.

McVey, whose body was found Nov. 29 near Pala, was listed as the 40th and latest victim of a possible serial killer who it is believed is preying on San Diego County women involved in the street life of drugs and prostitution.

Her death is similar to many of the other slayings in that she was reportedly a drug user whose body was found nude, strangled and near the spot where an unidentified victim was found two years ago.

But her death does not fit the serial pattern in that she was not a prostitute working the El Cajon Boulevard strip, where many of the other victims were last seen, and in that she had been in San Diego County only a short time.

Also, although the other victims supposedly were chosen randomly by their assailant, McVey may have known Stevens for some time before her death. Patrons and employees at the Ralph & Eddie’s bar and card room in Carlsbad have reported seeing them there at various times.

Meanwhile, authorities in the Seattle area, where another string of prostitute killings remains unsolved, have already ruled out Stevens as a suspect in their Green River investigation.

Routine Questioning

But a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department official said Stevens underwent routine questioning in the 1984 disappearance there of 3-year-old Laura Bradbury of Huntington Beach.

Stevens was “one of thousands of people” questioned in the case after the girl vanished from Joshua Tree National Monument on Oct. 18, 1984, while camping with her parents, said Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Stodelle.

The case drew international attention as the child’s parents, Mike and Patty Bradbury, vainly sought to find clues to their daughter’s whereabouts.

“We questioned him (Stevens) in December, 1984, and January, 1985, because he lived in a van in the community of Joshua Tree,” Stodelle said. “We were confident then, and we are confident now, that he had no connection to Laura Bradbury’s disappearance.”

Stodelle acknowledged that Stevens’ name also has been linked to two other unsolved crimes tenuously associated with the Bradbury case. Stodelle said Stevens “was an acquaintance” of Clifford Leville, 41, and Leville’s girlfriend, Toby Ann Santangelo, 22, whose bodies were found near Twentynine Palms in 1985.

“There was street talk that those two (Leville and Santangelo) had some information about the Laura Bradbury case,” Stodelle said. “But they never officially came to us, and, as far as I know, it was just street talk.”

Stodelle said it is not unusual that Stevens would have known the murdered couple, “because everybody knows just about everybody in a small community like Joshua Tree.”

Times staff writer Bill Billiter contributed to this story.