Suspect Confesses to Anaheim Man’s Slaying : Crime: A man walks into a police station and admits that he killed two people with a hatchet in Tacoma in 1991. God told him to clear his conscience, he tells police.

TACOMA, Wash. — A man who said God told him to confess walked into a police station and said he was involved in the 1991 ax murders of two people, including an Anaheim man, authorities said.

Lotolua Ilaoa, 28, was questioned and arrested for investigation of two counts of first-degree murder, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Curt Benson said.

Until his confession, Ilaoa had not been considered a suspect in the slayings of Manuel Medina, 27, of Anaheim and Ricardo Gaxiola, 22, of Tijuana.

The men had been dead three days when their bodies were found in June, 1991, in the bed of a pickup truck off a dirt road near Greenwater, 40 miles east of Tacoma. Both were killed by hatchet blows to the head.

Officials said they identified Medina’s body after sending a facsimile of a photograph of his remains to his wife in Westminster.

Medina’s relatives told detectives that he had gone to the Tacoma area “on business.”

Sheriff’s officials described the slayings as revenge killings, possibly a pay-back on a drug deal gone sour.

Ilaoa walked into a Walla Walla police station Wednesday night and said that “God told him to clear his conscience,” Benson said.

Walla Walla police notified Pierce County authorities. Two Pierce County detectives flew to Walla Walla on Thursday, interviewed Ilaoa and flew him back to Tacoma that night.

Ilaoa “provided information that convinced the detectives he had knowledge of details that could only be known to someone involved,” Benson said.

Investigators are not sure of Ilaoa’s occupation but said he may be a student in Walla Walla with ties to the Tacoma area.

More arrests are possible, Benson said.