On October 14, 2000, the body of 27-year-old Christine Fields, a Black woman from Pomona, California, was discovered in a field in Riverside County. She had been strangled to death, and investigators believed her body had been moved from the original crime scene. Christine Fields was the second woman found murdered under similar circumstances in Southern California that year. Two months earlier, on August 11, 2000, 45-year-old Vanessa Williams was found strangled in a vacant field in Pomona.
Both victims were Black women from Pomona, and their deaths bore striking similarities to two unsolved murders from 1980 in Los Angeles.
In 1980, 25-year-old Sonia Smith and 25-year-old Phyllis McClinton were found bound and strangled in abandoned fields in Los Angeles. At the time, a surviving victim of a similar assault identified Larry D. Hubbard as her attacker, leading to his conviction for false imprisonment. However, Hubbard's connection to the murders remained unconfirmed until decades later.
In 2007, Hubbard was arrested in California for an outstanding warrant related to a 1974 robbery conviction in Florida. While awaiting extradition, he committed suicide in his cell. Subsequent DNA analysis linked him to the murders of Sonia Smith, Vanessa Williams, and Christine Fields. Investigators believe Hubbard may have been responsible for additional unsolved homicides in Southern California.
