Convicted Serial Killer Heading To Southland
Andrew Urdiales is expected to appear in an Orange County courtroom Friday to face charges in the murders of five women — including three in the Coachella Valley.
Investigators say Urdiales killed Julie McGhee back in 1988 in Cathedral City. Then murdered Tammy Irwin in Palm Springs the next year. And Denise Maney in Palm Springs in 1995.
All three victims were prostitutes.
Urdiales allegedly assaulted them, shot them, then dumped their bodies in remote areas of the desert.
“Cathedral City was investigating their murder. We had two murders here. Never put the group together. Never realized we got a serial guy here because they were all years apart,” said retired Palm Springs Police Lieutenant John Booth, who was the lead investigator in the Palm Springs cases.
Urdiales is also accused of murdering a woman in Mission Viejo in 1986 and another in San Diego in 1988.
They were cold cases until 1996, when Urdiales was arrested in Indiana for unlawful possession of a handgun.
That gun was traced to the murders of three other women in Illinois. Urdiales confessed to those murders. Then soon made another chilling confession to a detective in Chicago.
“As he’s walking him down, he turns around fast to the detective — says ‘you should call Palm Springs because I’ve killed a bunch of people there too,'” said Booth.
The next morning, Booth flew to Chicago to interview Urdiales who went into gruesome details about the killings.
“He methodically told me exactly how he did every one of them. What kind of gun he had, what kind of car he had. Where he took them, the sex acts that were performed,” said Booth.
Urdiales carried out his alleged southland killing spree while he was a Marine stationed at Twentynine Palms and Camp Pendleton.
“What he told me was when he’d have a leave or break, he’d come down here to meet with a prostitute, have sex with her, then kill her. Go back to the base,” said Booth.
Booth says Urdiales was out of the military when he returned to Palm Springs for a vacation and the Maney murder in ’95.
Urdiales was convicted for the murders in Illinois — but didn’t get the death penalty.
“This is what the death penalty was written for. If those people in Illinois are not going to do it, I think California is more than willing to try,” said Booth.
