A former American football player has been charged with three more counts of murder, as he was awaiting a retrial in another murder case.
Anthony Wayne Smith, who was defensive end for the Oakland Raiders, is accused of the kidnap and killing of three men between 1999 and 2001.
This is in addition to a murder charge over a 2008 killing, where the case resulted in a mistrial in April following a hung jury.
Smith's lawyer Michael Evans said his client would plead not guilty to all the charges and that the new criminal case came as a "surprise to all of us".
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said he was being held without bail until his first court appearance on July 17.
Smith, 43, a first-round 1990 draft pick of the Raiders, then based in Los Angeles, and an 11th pick overall for the NFL that year, played all seven seasons of his career for the Raiders, first in Los Angeles and then in Oakland.
The latest charges were announced just days before the retrial of the original case - charging Smith with murder in the October 2008 killing of an associate Maurilio Ponce - begins on Monday.
The first jury was deadlocked at 8-to-4 in favour of a guilty verdict, leading to a mistrial.
The latest charges are in connection with the November 1999 killings of brothers Kevin and Ricky Nettles, and the June 2001 death of Dennis Henderson. They were allegedly tortured before they died.
The Nettles brothers were apparently abducted from a car wash in Los Angeles by two individuals posing as police officers and were found shot dead the next day.
It is not yet known if prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Smith if found guilty.
The defence has acknowledged Smith and Ponce were once involved together in a cargo theft, and that Smith was seen driving Ponce's car a month after he was killed.
But Mr Evans has insisted his client had nothing to do with Ponce's murder and argued during the trial that police lacked any physical evidence, such as DNA, fingerprints or gunpowder residue, linking him to the crime.
