Possible Police Involvement in Killings Probed : Task Force: Unit investigating 43 prostitute killings says it is looking into any police links, particularly in the case of a slain prostitute who testified against officers.

The law enforcement task force investigating 43 unsolved killings of prostitutes since 1985 announced Monday that it had been restructured to include an investigation into possible police involvement in the slayings.

The task force also defended its record of a single murder arrest during the two years of its existence.

It was the first press conference given by the task force. During the conference, it was disclosed that one of the three divisions of the reorganized force will look solely into possible police misconduct, specifically allegations of officers’ involvement with slain prostitute Donna Gentile, 22, who was killed in 1985 shortly after she had testified against two officers. That division is headed by a deputy state attorney general.

When Gentile’s nude and battered body was discovered off Sunrise Highway in East County, her mouth had been stuffed with stones, which some investigators interpreted as meaning she had been killed in retaliation for her testimony at a police civil service hearing.

“In the course of our investigation of prostitute deaths, we have uncovered allegations of police misconduct, which includes the fact that more than one officer was involved with Donna Gentile,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis, the force spokeswoman.

Dumanis would not provide names, nor say whether the officers were still on the force.

Because of associations with Gentile, one police officer was fired and a lieutenant was demoted in 1985. The lieutenant has since been re-promoted.

Although it had been widely speculated that police misconduct was one focus of the investigation, the task force would not publicly comment on the matter until Monday’s press conference. One of the two other divisions of the task force is specifically investigating the Gentile killing, while the other is probing the slayings of the other prostitutes.

Dumanis also announced the law enforcement affiliation of 11 new task force members, who have joined 10 others who are sorting through hundreds of possible leads in the prostitute killings. They include seven police officers, two district attorney investigators and Gary Schons, a deputy state attorney general from the San Diego office.

The task force is made up of investigators from the district attorney’s office, the state attorney general’s office, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and the San Diego Police Department.

Schons said the task force will collect any other information about police corruption and conduct its own prosecution if necessary, even if a case is not directly related to the prostitute slayings.

No one would comment Monday on what other areas the task force might look into.

“If there’s some spinoff evidence on this, we’ll refer it to (Police Department) internal affairs, send it to the grand jury or charge someone ourself,” Schons said.

“In the area of any police misconduct,” Dumanis said, “we’ll take the appropriate action.”

Dumanis and Schons Monday defended the task force’s record, which includes one murder arrest in two years and the conviction of six other persons on charges of attempted murder, assault or kidnaping.

Dumanis said the task force’s conviction of “Rolodex madam” Karen Wilkening for pandering and conspiracy to obstruct justice and of her attorney Buford Wiley on a conspiracy charge also are proof of the group’s progress.

Dumanis said the task force has not established a strong link between Wilkening, who headed a call-girl operation, and Gentile other than the fact that Wilkening employed prostitutes and Gentile was a prostitute. Wilkening has repeatedly denied knowing Gentile.

Schons said the task force should not be criticized for its lack of progress in finding killers.

“You have bodies dumped in the county that take weeks or months to find, and you can’t even identify some of the victims. To try and identify a suspect is difficult, and to establish a case and try to prove someone did it is a monumental task,” Schons said.

Dumanis would not comment on a task force search warrant served a month ago to the Fletcher Hills home of Thomas Irwin, also known as Shotgun Tom Kelly, a children’s television host on KUSI-TV.

The task force took a Rolodex, personal papers and 600 videotapes from his home, and said they were looking for tapes that included Sheriff John Duffy, former Police Chief Bill Kolender and “anything concerning the Karen Wilkening case,” Kelly said Monday.

Kelly said he routinely made humorous videotapes patterned after NBC’s “The Tonight Show” that included his family and friends. One of the tapes includes Duffy, playing host, and Kolender as his guest. Kelly said the tape has nothing to do with Wilkening or any prostitutes, including Gentile, but was done as a prototype to sell to television stations.

Duffy and Kolender have denied being on a videotape that includes prostitutes.

Kelly said he has a studio in the back of his home that he has used to film about 20 versions of the variety show. The rest of the tapes, he said, are cartoons, old movies and old television shows.

Although his superiors at KUSI-TV are concerned about the investigation, Kelly said he is still employed and will continue to do his children’s show in a couple of weeks. He is not filming now, he said, because the station is moving its studios.

A source close to the task force, who asked not be identified, said the tapes are a minor part of the investigation.

“The tapes have been blown out of proportion,” the source said. “They’re just a very small part of a very big picture. It’s fair to say that the videotapes (the task force is) looking for relate to Gentile. Who appears with her? Who can the task force talk to? There’s no link right now with Duffy and Kolender, although if we ran across them on the same tape, it doesn’t mean the task force wouldn’t be interested.”

To help develop new leads, the task force Monday unveiled a clay model of what experts say is a reconstructed likeness of one of the victims.

The victim is known as “Pala Jane Doe” because police found her badly decomposed body on the Pala Indian Reservation in North County in October 1986. Based on the facial reconstruction, investigators believe she was white, 5-foot-4, with dark brown hair and about 20. At the time she was found, she was wearing a white sweater, blue and white striped pants and white boots.

She had four tattoos: a red rose above her right breast; a red heart on the inside of her left breast; a butterfly and a swastika on her right buttock; and a motorcycle wheel with wings and the letters H and D beside it on the left buttock. Police believe she may have belonged to a Harley-Davidson motorcycle gang.

Sam Bove, a retired sheriff’s deputy who is working as a crime scene investigator with the task force, said the technique is a first for a homicide investigation in San Diego County and may be used for some of the other victims whose bodies are severely decomposed.

The technique, usually the last resort in seeking to identify a body after dental or fingerprint identification fail, dates back to the 1800s, according to Dr. Rodger Heglar, a forensic anthropologist who is a consultant for the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Heglar said the age, sex, race and height of the victims are determined by using traces of the skeletal system. From there, tissue depths are measured, and the clay is applied, sometimes to the victim’s skull.

Anyone with information about the identify of the woman is asked to call the task force at 260-6400.