Official: Suspect in 1979 death may be serial killer

RENO, Nev. — An Arizona auto dealer charged with killing a California woman in northern Nevada 40 years ago may have killed other women in the late 1970s, Nevada’s attorney general said.

“All evidence points to defendant being a serial killer,” state Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a court filing submitted ahead of Charles Gary Sullivan’s arraignment Tuesday in Reno in the 1979 bludgeoning death of 20-year-old Julia Woodward. Sullivan, 73, pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.

However, no evidence was described in court and Sullivan’s attorney, David Houston, said in an interview he doesn’t believe DNA evidence that was presented to a grand jury ties Sullivan to Woodward’s killing.

Houston and Sullivan didn’t challenge a no-bail order, and a judge set another hearing for Jan. 30.

Ford said on the courthouse steps in Reno that the long-unsolved cases remain open.

In the court filing, Ford and prosecutors called Sullivan a suspect in the killing of Jennie Smith, a 17-year-old waitress at a Reno hotel-casino whose body was found in November 1979, and the unsolved disappearance of Linda Taylor, 23, in March 1979.