Dr. Satinder Gill, a respected 62-year-old physician in Yuma, Arizona, was known for his dedication to his patients and his community. Born in New Delhi, India, on May 16, 1945, he had built a life and career in his adopted home. But on November 2, 2007, a concerned friend’s call to police would reveal the violent and tragic end to the doctor’s life.
His death would unravel a dark story of greed and lead investigators to one of Arizona’s most ruthless serial killers.
Police officers performing a welfare check at Dr. Gill's home on West La Quinta Loop found a deeply disturbing scene. The house was filled with natural gas from the stove's open burners, and lit candles flickered throughout, a clear attempt to set the structure ablaze. After extinguishing the candles and clearing the gas, they discovered Dr. Gill’s body. He had been brutally attacked, suffering from blunt force trauma to the head before being strangled and left with his head in a bathtub filled with water. An autopsy would later confirm he died of asphyxia due to ligature strangulation and the head injuries. It was a violent end for a man dedicated to healing.
The investigation quickly turned from the grim discovery to the motive. Robbery appeared evident, as a large sum of money was missing from the home. The day before his body was found, on November 1, Dr. Gill had urgently asked a friend to cash a $24,000 check for him, citing a "family emergency." The friend cashed the check, which the bank paid out mostly in $50 bills, and delivered the cash to the doctor's house, handing it to him through the door without going inside. Dr. Gill was never heard from again.
Suspicion soon fell upon a man named Preston Alton Strong, a former car dealership employee who police described as a "career con man." Strong was already in custody on unrelated fraud and theft charges just a day after Dr. Gill was killed. The connection became clearer when Strong's own girlfriend at the time grew suspicious. She worked in Dr. Gill’s medical office and reported to police that Strong had given her $9,500 in cash on the day the doctor's body was discovered, with no explanation for where it came from. Investigators meticulously tracked Strong's movements, uncovering a crucial financial trail. On the evening of November 1, hours after Dr. Gill is believed to have been killed, security video captured Strong at a Walmart attempting to buy a single money order for $4,300. When asked for identification due to the large amount, he claimed not to have any and instead purchased five smaller money orders, totaling the same amount, to circumvent the ID requirement. A cashier testified that he paid for these transactions using a large number of $50 bills.
In 2012, Preston Strong was tried for the murder of Dr. Gill. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, and attempted arson. For these crimes, he was sentenced to natural life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 25.5 years. But the investigation into Strong’s violent history was far from over. By the time he was convicted of killing Dr. Gill, police had already publicly named him as a person of interest in another, even more horrific Yuma crime: the 2005 La Mesa Street Murders.
This separate investigation revealed that Strong had, two years prior to killing Dr. Gill, murdered his own best friend, Luis Rios, along with Rios's girlfriend, Adrienne Heredia, and her four young children, ages 6 to 13. The motive in that case was also financial; Rios had reportedly decided to stop giving Strong money. The methods were chillingly similar, with victims dying of asphyxiation and gunshot wounds. In 2017, while already serving a life sentence for Dr. Gill’s murder, Preston Strong was convicted on six counts of first-degree murder for the La Mesa Street killings and was sentenced to death.
Preston Alton Strong, a serial killer responsible for at least seven murders, remains on death row in Arizona. He has continued to appeal his convictions, but the Arizona Supreme Court has upheld his death sentence. For the community of Yuma, the resolution of the cases brought a measure of justice, but it could not erase the shock and sorrow of losing a dedicated physician like Dr. Satinder Gill to such a senseless and brutal act of violence.
