Prosecutor Suggests At Convicted Murderer's Sentencing That He Also Killed Several Sex Workers

Before a California man was sentenced to life for the 1980 murder of a 14-year-old babysitter, prosecutors suggested that he may have killed other women.

Mitchell Lynn Bacom, 68, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on Monday for the 1980 kidnapping and murder of Suzanne Bombardier, the Bay Area News Group reports.

Bombardier was babysitting her older sister Stephanie Mullen’s kids when she was kidnapped. Her body was found four days later floating along the Antioch River. She had been raped her and stabbed once in the chest.

Bacom, whom Mullen had dated briefly at one point, was arrested in 2017 after DNA linked him to her death. He'd been questioned in the 1980 investigation; he would have been 27 at the time.

"Justice was finally done for Suzanne Bombardier,” Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons, who was credited with assisting in a break in the case in 2017 and is currently working on a book about it, told Oxygen.com on Monday. “Now I hope the DA looks into the new accusations that Bacom killed sex workers while working as a truck driver — especially the cold cases of sex workers Valerie Schultz, Rachael Cruise, Jessica Frederick. I also hope they look at the cold case of Lisa Norell, who died around the same time."

"Miracles can happen when people care," she added.

Before Bacom was sentenced on Monday, deputy district attorney Mary Knox told the court that Bacom’s former cellmate at the Martinez Detention Facility claimed Bacom had confessed that he “raped and sliced” sex workers as he drove around the country working as a truck drive, according to the Bay Area News Group. 

Paul Holes, a renowned cold case investigator who worked on the Golden State Killer case, told the outlet that this alleged confession should be taken very seriously.

Bacom had been convicted of sex offenses twice in the past, including a 1981 conviction for raping a minor under the age of 14. In the 1990s, he also discussed in media interviews that he had sexually assaulted and stabbed a woman in 1973 — a case that drew comparisons to Bombardier's murder, the Bay Area News Group reports.

“Attention needs to focus to determine what other cases he is responsible for,” Holes said.

During Monday’s hearing, Mullen expressed her hope that her sister’s killer would receive the death penalty.

“He deserves to die. He took my sister’s life,” she said. “My sister never got to be a wife or bride or mother. He took that all from her.”