Although Leslie Allen Williams had a long prison record and was a suspect in two other crimes involving women, police say they had no reason to suspect he raped and killed four teen-age girls until he confessed.
"This guy has got a record. But we can't interrogate everyone with a record," Lawrence Holland, the police chief in Wixom, was quoted in Saturday's Detroit Free Press.Williams, 38, confessed to the killings after his arrest last Sunday for allegedly abducting a woman from a cemetery. He was arraigned on murder and sex charges in two of the slayings Friday in Walled Lake and was to be arraigned in the other two slayings Monday in Livingston County.
Williams said he raped and killed Kami Villanueva, 18; Cynthia M. Jones, 16; and sisters Michelle Urbin, 16; and Melissa Urbin, 14.
He also confessed to raping a 9-year-old Wixom girl in August 1991, a month before the first murder victim disappeared. Police had dismissed him as a suspect in that case when his car didn't match the victim's description, the newspaper said.
Police say nearly a year before the rape, Williams was placed under surveillance when he was accused of abducting a woman in another case to which he has since confessed. But the woman later dropped the charges.