Stockton Serial Killer's Lone Survivor May Be Key to Catching Suspect

Police recently released more information on a series of killings in Stockton, California, announcing that one victim survived an apparent attack. This survivor could potentially help law enforcement in eventually catching the suspect, according to a former FBI agent.

In a recent Facebook post, the Stockton Police Department said that they were able to connect two other incidents to a series of similar killings in the area, including one where a 46-year-old Black woman was shot but survived. The seventh incident tied to the "person of interest" resulted in the death of a 40-year-old Hispanic man, which is similar to the five other victims police previously released information on.

Thomas O'Connor, a former FBI agent and Senior Consultant at The Soufan Group, told Newsweek on Tuesday that a surviving victim in a series of killings like this "is extremely important" as they can potentially act "as an eyewitness."

"Eyewitnesses are very important but they can be unreliable because of the stress of what just happened. If someone is shooting you, you are gonna remember certain things [that] may not be completely accurate," O'Connor, who began working in law enforcement in 1983 and joined the FBI in 1997, told Newsweek. "So, law enforcement can't take those statements by a witness completely 100 percent this is verbatim."

O'Connor went on to explain that law enforcement officials will use forensic evidence to help either corroborate or dispute a witness's account of the incident.

"The forensic evidence, which does not lie, is the accurate way to view this," O'Connor said. "But that witness statement could be so important. Maybe this person saw this person...even just basic information of the shooter could be extremely important and using the forensics recovered from the crime scenes are able to put that mosaic back together again and come up with something that may lead to a person of interest."

O'Connor added that a witness statement "could be a major break" for law enforcement officials working the case with the addition of the "collection of forensic evidence."

While the only surviving victim so far is a woman, the other victims who were fatally shot were all men, police said. The Stockton Police Department also confirmed to Newsweek that the five victims fatally shot were all "ambushed" by the suspected person of interest.

As police continue to investigate the series of killings, Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said last week that "by definition, you could probably very well call this serial killings."