California investigators announced Friday they had charged a former US Marine electrician with the murders of three women in Ventura County in 1977.

Warren Luther Alexander, 73, was already in jail in North Carolina, where he was awaiting trial for the 1992 strangulation murder of 29-year-old Nona Cobb, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said.

He has been extradited to California and charged with first degree murder in the deaths of Kimberly Fritz, 18; Velvet Sanchez, 31; and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21. All three were strangled to death.

Nasarenko added that investigators “believe there may be additional victims, both locally and in other states.”

“This is not in any way closed,” he said.

The district attorney said that Alexander, from Diamondhead, Mississippi, lived in Ventura County in the 1950s and early 1960s, where he attended school, and returned to the area in the 1970s. During that time he was in the Marine Corps and worked as a cab driver. During the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, he was a long haul trucker.

Nasarenko said Alexander was ultimately identified by DNA after his arrest in 2022 for the 1992 murder in North Carolina. He said that detectives had long considered the three murders may have been committed by the same suspect because of certain “patterns and similarities” in the deaths and the victims, who were all sex workers who frequented the Plaza Marina Shopping Center and nearby motels at the time. All three were strangled.

“These murders may have occurred 47 years ago, but the investigators … never gave up,” he said. “They never gave up seeking justice for these three victims, their loved ones, and their families.”

North Carolina investigators said they had used investigative genetic genealogy to identify Alexander as the suspect in Cobb’s murder, WXII reported. He was arrested in Mississippi and extradited to North Carolina.

North Carolina authorities agreed to the extradition to California because the Ventura County cases are much older than the one there, Nasarenko said.

Alexander is being held without bond in the Ventura County jail. His next court date is August 21.

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[Featured image: Kimberly Fritz, Velvet Sanchez, and Lorraine Rodriguez/Ventura County District Attorney’s Office]