Police link death to serial killings

A serial killer terrorizing the Phoenix area may have been present at the killing of a former Coeur d’Alene woman last year, police said Wednesday.

Georgia Thompson, 19, was shot in September, shortly after moving to Arizona from Idaho. She was found dead in the parking lot of her Tempe apartment.

James Mullins, 33, previously admitted to the killing while in a Kentucky jail on robbery charges.

Mullins “remains steadfast in his confession,” Tempe police Sgt. Dan Masters told The Spokesman-Review on Wednesday. “He has not wavered.”

But on Wednesday, Phoenix police said Thompson’s death also was linked to a series of crimes by a man the Arizona media have dubbed “The Baseline Rapist” and whom police call “The Baseline Killer.” Since August of last year, he is believed to have committed eight robberies, seven sexual assaults and six murders.

Mullins was extradited and is being held in a Phoenix jail. Police said Mullins is not the person known as the Baseline Killer. But Thompson’s homicide is “definitively linked” to the Baseline crimes through forensic evidence, they said. Investigators would not elaborate.

Mullins met Thompson at the Scottsdale strip club where she worked the night of her death, Masters said. Detectives are looking into whether someone was with Mullins at the time of Thompson’s killing. Thompson was not sexually assaulted, and detectives have not yet determined a motive for her shooting, Masters said. Police will not disclose what specific evidence led them to believe the crimes are connected but said time of day, location and suspect description all play a part.

The latest killing in that series of possibly related crimes was the June 29 shooting death of 37-year-old Carmen Miranda, a mother of two. A second series of possibly related crimes in the Phoenix area includes 34 shootings since May of last year in which 22 people were shot; five of them died from their wounds. The killer – or killers – in that series also has targeted animals, killing four dogs and three horses.

Just four of those shootings have been definitively linked by evidence, police said, but the others are believed to be related because of how the victims are targeted. People have been shot from behind while biking and walking and appear to be targeted at random, said Sgt. Andy Hill, a spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department.

The only thing the two possible killers have in common, Hill said, is the seeming randomness of the victims.