Detectives in the city where this murder-mutilation took place believe it is drug related, that the suspect is a drug dealer and that the victim was a prostitute who got a little too far behind on her payments. The mutilation was sexually oriented and reminiscent of Jack the Ripper and was believed to be a message to the victim's coworkers. "Ladies, don't get behind on your payments".
This is a very old case and of course I didn't have access to an FBI catalog and for the first and only time I had to do a profile composite because the witness saw the suspect with the victim, did not know him, and only saw his profile Later a DPS artist took my profile drawing and met with the victim to see if a full face likeness could be developed. I don't know what the outcome of that effort was or the outcome of the case.
I would have guessed that this was a Jack the Ripper, Black Dahlia psychopath murder and in fact did a series of drawings of ways in which the suspect could have changed his appearance and made them available to the city PD. City PD however seemed to have very good reason to believe this was a local perpetrator because of certain chemicals found on the garments of the victim, because there was no blood at the location where the body was found and because of certain configurations of wounds on the body. I think they might even have had a suspect but never enough probable cause to get either a search warrant or an arrest warrant. End of story. End of victim.