North Carolina
Ex-trucker awaiting trial in North Carolina murder is charged with suspected serial killings in California
A former long-haul trucker awaiting trial in the 1992 murder of a North Carolina woman was charged in the suspected serial killings of three more women in California more than four decades ago, authorities said Thursday.
Warren Luther Alexander, 73, was charged with three counts of murder in connection with the 1977 strangulation deaths of Kimberly Fritz, 18; Velvet Sanchez, 31; and Lorraine Rodriguez, 21, law enforcement officials said at a news conference in Ventura County.
The women, all sex workers, were found dead in Port Hueneme, Oxnard and an unincorporated part of Ventura County, respectively, in May, September and December of that year, officials said.
Alexander, who is being held without bail at a Ventura County jail, was extradited earlier this week from North Carolina, where he was charged with murder two years ago in the strangulation death of Nona Cobb, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko told reporters.
Cobb, 29, was found dead on an interstate northwest of Winston-Salem on July 7, 1992, according to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
Her autopsy showed that she had been strangled, according to NBC affiliate WXII-TV of Winston-Salem.
Alexander was arrested in connection with the killing on March 15, 2022, in Diamondhead, Mississippi, the bureau said in a news release at the time.
Court records for Alexander’s case in North Carolina were unavailable Friday night and it isn’t clear if he has entered a plea or who is defending him.
Alexander is scheduled to be arraigned on the California charges on Aug. 21, court records show. A lawyer for Alexander did not respond to a request for comment Friday night.
Nasarenko said authorities in North Carolina used genetic genealogy, a technique that matches DNA obtained from crime scenes and elsewhere to profiles assembled by genetic testing companies, to link Alexander with Cobb’s killing.
After Alexander’s 2022 arrest, his DNA was uploaded to a nationwide law enforcement database and authorities in Ventura County were alerted to the case, Nasarenko said.
In 2006, investigators in the county had uploaded DNA preserved from the 1977 crime scenes to the same database, Nasarenko said, but it wasn’t until after Alexander’s arrest that his DNA entered the database and there was a match.
“Today marks the first crucial step toward achieving long-awaited justice,” the prosecutor said.
Alexander lived in Oxnard, roughly 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in the 1950s and 1960s while attending school, Nasarenko said. He returned there in the 1970s and worked as a long haul-trucker for the next three decades, the district attorney added.
Detectives who investigated the cases initially suspected the same suspect was responsible for the series of killings, he said, but they exhausted their leads and the cases went cold.
Authorities are now working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation through its Highway Serial Killings Initiative to help identify other potential victims linked to Alexander, Nasarenko said.
Authorities believe there may be others locally and in other states, he said.
“This is not in any way closed,” Nasarenko said.
North Carolina and NC State, scheduled to meet just once in the men’s basketball regular season for the second consecutive season, are working to schedule a nonconference meeting in Greensboro in December, WRAL has learned.
The Atlantic Coast Conference rivals had played annual games in Raleigh and in Chapel Hill for more than 100 years before last season when the teams met just once in Raleigh. This season, the ACC scheduled just one meeting between the schools in Chapel Hill.
The additional meeting, which is not finalized, would be played Dec. 15 in Greensboro, according to a source.
The 18-team ACC moved from 20 conference games to 18 before last season in an attempt to improve the league’s NCAA Tournament credentials. It worked as the league received eight bids to the NCAA Tournament in 2026, but it also created some scheduling changes, including the elimination of a second game between NC State and UNC in most seasons.
The current conference schedule dictates that each school plays two teams twice (a primary partner and a variable partner), plays 14 teams once and misses one school altogether. In 2026-27, UNC will play Duke (primary) and Louisville (variable) twice and won’t play Clemson. NC State will play Wake Forest (primary) and California (variable) twice and won’t play Syracuse.
Greensboro was the longtime home of the conference office. The ACC men’s basketball tournament has been held at First Horizon Coliseum, formerly the Greensboro Coliseum, 29 times – the most in league history.
For decades, the ACC played a true round robin among its members — a format that became unworkable as the league grew to 12, 15 and, now, 18 basketball-playing schools.
State lawmakers have pursued various measures to force schools in the UNC System to play each other, citing the economic impact of such meetings. North Carolina and NC State are UNC System schools.
A 2024 bill would have required the two ACC schools to play each other and other in-state public universities in football and basketball. A 2025 bill, aimed at potential conference realignment, would have required that NC State and UNC play each annually in football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball. The Senate’s 2025 budget proposal would have required more basketball games between UNC, NC State and smaller schools across the state. The budget would have added UNC and NC State to the schools that receive annual distributions from sports betting tax revenue.
None of those measures have become law.
NC State and North Carolina have been conference mates since 1911, first in the South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association, then in the Southern Conference and now the ACC. Both have been members of the ACC since its 1953 founding.
There is some sad news from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s popular Barn Owl Live Cam.
Wildlife officials say a Great Horned Owl entered the barn Wednesday around midnight and killed one of the barn owl owlets. Biologists have not been able to determine which owlet was lost.
They have confirmed it was one of the three youngest birds in the nest. The Wildlife Commission says the incident is heartbreaking but also a natural part of life in the wild.
Great Horned Owls are one of the main predators of Barn Owls, and encounters between the two species do happen. The attack was captured on the live camera.
Officials say the video also shows an extremely rare moment when the adult female Barn Owl fought the Great Horned Owl on top of the nest box. Despite the loss, the surviving owlets are expected to continue growing over the coming weeks.
They will lose their fluffy down feathers, begin exploring outside the barn, and continue developing hunting skills.
The Wildlife Commission says some of the young owls could leave the nest as early as July.
After leaving the nest, they usually travel alone and may eventually move hundreds of miles from where they hatched. The Barn Owl Live Cam remains available for the public to watch.
(WLOS) — In a tragic update, one of the baby barn owls being monitored by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has died after a great horned owl entered the barn and killed the owlet. The barn owlets had attracted worldwide attention through the wildlife commission’s ongoing observation efforts.
Officials with N.C. Wildlife said it is not yet clear which owlet was killed, but confirmed it was one of the three youngest.
The wildlife commission said it captured a photo of the great horned owl and the adult female barn owl fighting on top of the box, calling it an “extremely rare encounter to capture on camera.”
PHOTOS: OWLETS ‘HOO’ GAINED WORLDWIDE FAME ARE GROWING QUICKLY INTO YOUNG ADULTS
The wildlife commission said that while this loss is tragic, it is a common encounter because great horned owls are a top predator of barn owls. Officials also said this will likely not be the last encounter.
Over the next few weeks, the commission said viewers will likely see the remaining owlets start exploring, leaving the barn and learning to hunt. The fledglings may leave the barn as early as July to start hunting on their own, according to the commission.
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