Kimberly Carol Fritz, an 18-year-old Caucasian female, was found dead in a motel room in Port Hueneme, California, on May 29, 1977. Her death was one of three similar cases in Ventura County that year, all involving young women who were strangled. The other victims were Velvet Ann Sanchez, a 31-year-old Hispanic female, and Lorraine Ann Rodriguez, a 21-year-old Hispanic female.
All three women were sex workers who frequented local hotels, and their deaths were initially believed to be linked due to the similar circumstances and methods of their murders.
The cases went cold for decades, despite the collection of DNA evidence from the crime scenes. In 2006, detectives uploaded the DNA evidence to CODIS, the nationwide law enforcement DNA database, but did not find a match. However, a breakthrough came in February 2023 when detectives re-uploaded the DNA evidence and found a match to Warren Luther Alexander, a 73-year-old Caucasian male from Diamondhead, Mississippi. Alexander's DNA was in the system because he had been arrested in North Carolina in 2022 in connection with a 1992 cold case murder.
Alexander, a former U.S. Marine, taxi driver, and long-haul trucker, had lived in the Oxnard area during the time of the murders. He was extradited from North Carolina to California in August 2024 and charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Kimberly Carol Fritz, Velvet Ann Sanchez, and Lorraine Ann Rodriguez. Alexander made his first court appearance in Ventura County Superior Court and is being held without bail. His arraignment is set for August 21, 2024.
The Ventura County District Attorney's Office, along with the Ventura County Sheriff's Department Cold Case Unit and the Oxnard and Port Hueneme police departments, worked tirelessly to bring justice to the victims and their families. The investigators never gave up on the case, and their persistence paid off with the identification and arrest of Alexander. The day of reckoning for the victims and their loved ones has finally arrived, as Alexander faces prosecution for his alleged crimes.
