Serial Killer Documentary Podcast · Deberah Barr

The Riverside Prostitute Killer

·44 min·2 clips

Susan Sternfield was found posed inside a factory dumpster area, with her feet and hands deliberately arranged.

Riverside is introduced as a Southern California community with citrus roots and later light industry. By the 1990s, it is still a quiet suburb east of Los Angeles and Orange County. The episode notes that crime was generally low, though one boulevard area had a rougher reputation. Then the killings begin. Women in Riverside become the target of a sadistic killer. The violence is described in brutal, specific terms. The killer cuts off a breast and tosses it away. As his confidence grows, the murders escalate. He wants power, authority, and control. The body count rises. The narration keeps pressing the urgency of stopping him. The story then widens into the killer's home life. Bill's relationship with Terrell is shown as one of manipulation and control. She cannot go to the laundromat or grocery shopping alone. Their sex life is presented as coercive and one-sided. When a kitten will not stop meowing, Bill shoots and kills it with a BB gun. Their son is later slapped, and the violence toward children is framed as part of the same pattern. A baby death in 1973 deepens the rupture. The closing reflection weighs predisposition, marriage, loss, and prison in Texas, while one son remembers his mother by trying to live with honor.

As heard by us

Riverside's quiet suburbia frames a grim study of control, violence, and the lives left behind.

This episode treats the Riverside killings of the early 90s as more than a crime story; it becomes a study in escalating control, with a quiet Southern California suburb giving way to the pattern behind the attacks on women.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Riverside case that starts in a quiet suburb and ends in grim domestic terror.

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