Criminology - The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

In California, in the 1970s, a large number of women and girls were murdered while hitchhiking. The authorities struggled to solve the murders or even determine whether or not they were a series of murders committed by one or more serial killers. California experienced a large number of serial killers who operated in the 1970s in the same area which made the job for authorities even more difficult. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders. Hitchhiking was popular back the 1970s and as we look back 40 years later we know how dangerous it is. Many people have lost their lives after accepting a ride from a stranger. This series of murders in Santa Rosa highlights that fact. But, so many questions remain. Were these murders all connected and, if so, were they committed by one or more perpetrators? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 191 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you, buddy? Not too much. Just got down a nice, healthy workout and sipping some ice cold water and ready to relax and do this episode with you.

What's new with you? Oh, not a whole lot. So is this part of your New Year's resolution? You're working out. You're getting buff. Is that what we're talking about? This is it. I've got a, you know, 50 is the new 20 type thing.

So I'm trying to get back to that old thing. Like, that's ever going to happen. Always trying to get better. But we're always striving, right? That's it. It's a thought that counts. All right. Let's get into our Patreon shoutouts.

We had Susan Hayes, Unsolved VA, Jody Ray, LaTronica, Kimmy and Charlie with an eye. So that's a lot of great support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, some familiar names in there too as well that support us on social media and stuff too. So that's really cool. And anyone out there that would like to help support the show, we appreciate it. You can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology.

All right, buddy, you've got your workout out of the way for this morning. It's time to jump into this episode. We're heading to California to discuss a really good. gruesome and disturbing series of murders that occurred there. We know, right, California has had more than a share of infamous serial killers from the 1960s to the 1980s, killers with monikers like the Golden State Killer, the Nightstalker, the Hillside Stranglers, the Freeway Killer, the Doodler, and the Zodiac roamed California. And then you had many others like Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, Leonard Lake and Charles Inns,

who prowled the Golden State. But it was a series of murdered young women in Santa Rosa, California, that sort of flew under the radar, that many people, including authorities, believed to be the work of one suspect. And this killer was never identified, nor was the killer ever given one of these sinister monikers. Instead, the series of murders themselves were dubbed

the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders. Sonoma County is the northernmost county in California's Bay Area. Its current population is almost 500,000 residents, with just under half of those people living in Santa Rosa, its largest city. Santa Rosa, Spanish for St. Rose, is located in California's wine country. The city founded in 1833, has been home to people like Charlie Brown creator Charles Schultz, Robert Ripley, creator of Ripley's believe it or not, and actress Natalie Wood. It's in Santa Rosa that these shocking murders happened in the 1970s.

Much of the information we'll be discussing comes from the website, Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders.com, which is run by Deb Silva, who's the foremost expert on this case and spent many years gathering material related to these murders, which began in early 1972. At around 7.30 p.m. on February 4, 1972, 12-year-old Maureen Sterling and her friend, 13-year-old Yvonne Weber, both students at Herbert Slater Middle School, were dropped off by Maureen's mother at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena on Grenville Road. The two planned to meet back at the same spot at 11 p.m. to be picked up, but

when Maureen's mom arrived, there was no sign of the girls. The last time they were known to be at the ice rink was about 9 p.m. and friends saw, them get into a car on Guernville Road not far from the ring. News reports at the time include the phrase either voluntarily or forcibly. So it seems that the witnesses who saw them get into a car could not discern what was actually happening. Police believed they had run away. There were no leads, but really not much of an investigation. Surprisingly, the disappearance of the two middle school schoolers didn't garner major news coverage in the San Francisco Bay area. Police didn't have many clues to work with. And the girls' families were left to wonder, what did

happen to Maureen and Yvonne? Exactly a month after Maureen and Yvonne vanished. Around 5 p.m. on March 4th, 19-year-old Santa Rosa Junior College student Kim Allen left her job at a natural food store in Larkspore, California. She was wearing her aluminum-framed backpack and carrying a 19-pound wooden soy barrel, with red Chinese lettering on the side. She hitched a ride as usual, heading to her home on Gernville Road in Santa Rosa, a distance of about 40 miles. She was dropped off by two men at around 5.30 p.m. at the Bell Avenue entrance of Highway 101 in San Rafael, just a few miles from her job. That was the last time she was seen alive. The next day on March 5th, Kim's body was found by two high school students at around 2 p.m., face down in the creek, below a

20-foot embankment on Enterprise Road in Santa Rosa. An examination of Kim's body revealed that there were scratch marks on her that indicated she had rolled down the embankment, perhaps after being thrown from a vehicle. She still had one gold ear ring in her ear, and the other wasn't found. Her body was completely nude, and there were ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. Investigators believe she was tortured, very slowly strangled with a rope or wire until she died, which Sonoma County coroner Andrew Johansson estimated would have taken about half an hour. She had been sexually assaulted and a semen sample was taken from her body.

Investigators believed that she had been killed around midnight and then driven to the spot where she was dumped down the embankment. A mark directly uphill from Kim's body led police to believe that whoever had left her there had slipped, possibly. Possibly. injuring himself. About 10 feet below the mark, there was an imprint in the dirt, about one foot long and 14 inches deep. Nearby hospitals were alerted to be on the lookout for anyone with a leg injury, but none were reported. The men who dropped Kim off in San Rafael came forward after seeing the news about her murder and were clear to suspects after one of them passed a polygraph test. At 9.30 a.m. on April 25, 1972, 22, 20-year-old Jeanette Camahili left her apartment in Katadi, California, and headed to Santa Rosa Community College about eight miles away.

Her usual method of transportation was hitchhiking from the Katadi on ramp of Highway 101. A friend heading to pick her up, saw her getting into an older-looking pickup truck with a wooden camper shell, driven by a white man in his 20s or 30s, with an Afro-style haircut. She was wearing a dark brown top, Levi's jeans, sandals, and gold earrings. At the time, she was carrying a brown leather purse. Jeanette never arrived at the college, and she was never seen again. Later that year, on November 11th, 14-year-old Lori Kursa ran away while shopping with her mother at You Save Market in Santa Rosa. This wasn't the first time.

She had run away from home, but she had always come back. She was last seen wearing bell bottom jeans, brown suede, cowboy boots, and a brown leather jacket. As she had done previously, her mother filed a missing persons report with the police department. Lori stayed with friends who remember seeing her on November 20th or the 21st. Less than a month later, on December 14th, 1972, around 320 in the afternoon, Lori's body was found, 30 feet down an embankment. on Calistoga Great. She was nude, but there were no signs of sexual assault.

Tragically, Lori had died from complications of a broken neck and was paralyzed. That, coupled with the cold weather she was left in, led to a slow death. Her body was partially frozen by the cold. Her date of death was estimated to be between December 1st and 10th. Lori's ear piercings had wire loops in them, with no earrings. attached. Her body was identified through dental records. Investigators believe since Lori had not been sexually assaulted, that she had actually jumped out of a moving vehicle, fleeing an abduction, or had possibly been thrown from the vehicle, and had then fallen down the embankment until she hit a

tree and stopped, suffering the broken neck on the way down. On December 28th, as 1972 was drawn to a close, At around 4 p.m., two teenage boys on Franz Valley Road discovered the remains of Yvonne Weber and Maureen Sterling. Their bodies were 60 feet away from the road down a steep embankment above Franz Creek. This location was almost 20 miles away from the arena where they were last seen 11 months earlier. No cause of death could be determined due to the state of the remains, which were identified through dental records. A 14-carat gold cross necklace in one earring, which was a metal surrogue. with a lace pattern and orange beads hanging from it were recovered with the bodies. No clothing was found with or near their bodies.

While their disappearance in February 1972 didn't get much news coverage, the discovery of their bodies made headlines. They were officially the 20th and 21st victims of homicide in Sonoma County in 1972, more than double the number of homicides in 1971. On February 6th, 1973, at about 7 p.m., Carolyn Davis ran away from her home in Anderson, California. She was wearing a brown leather jacket with a fur collar and faded jeans. She kept in touch with her grandmother, who dropped her off at the Garberville post office around 1.30 p.m. on the 15th. She headed toward Modesto hitchhiking.

Just a couple of weeks later on July 31st. round 7.30 p.m. a motorcyclist investigating a bad smell found Carolyn's body on Franz Valley Road just about four feet from where Yvonne Weber and Maureen Sterling's remains had been found. She was nude, but investigators could not determine if she had been sexually assaulted.

The piercing in her right ear, which was her only pierced ear, was empty. There was no damage to the brush on the roadside. So it looked as though her body had actually been thrown over the bushes and down the embankment. Investigators believed her killer was either one very large man or perhaps two people. Carolyn's body was identified through dental records. Her date of death was estimated to be July 20, 1973. Bizarrely, she had been poisoned with strychnine, which causes intense convulsions and eventually suffocation and death. it would have been a long and painful death for her.

A supposed witchcraft symbol is formed out of twigs and rocks at the site where her body was found. It's one large wide rectangle and one smaller narrow rectangle, connected by a line in the middle, with three smaller lines outlining the leftmost borders of the large rectangle and a small line next to the right border of the smaller rectangle. According to Detective Sergeant Erwin Karlstedt, the symbol represents the carrier of spirits. This symbol has reportedly been found at two other Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murder sites, but it's not clear which the other two scenes are.

In December 1973, 23-year-old Teresa Walsh was visiting friends in the Los Angeles area. She was making her way home to spend Christmas with her husband and son and her parents in Miranda, California. Teresa was last seen on December 22nd, 1973, across from Zuma Beach and Malibu. She was carrying an olive green backpack. Six days later on December 28th, kayakers on Mark West Creek, just northwest of Santa Rosa, saw Teresa's body floating between a rock and a log. It was unclear where her body had actually entered the creek before getting stuck. Rigger Mortis was still present.

and her death was estimated to have occurred within two days of her discovery. Teresa's thumbs had been bound together, and then her wrists had been bound together in front of her body, and tied to her thighs. Her ankles were bound, and a piece of rope connected her ankles to a loop of rope around her neck and pulled her heels against her rear end. If she had tried to relax her legs at all,

She would have tightened the rope around her neck, slowly strangling herself to death. This was a very sadistic method of torturing someone. By this point, the authorities knew that they had a big problem and that they likely had one killer in Santa Rosa, targeting young women, many of them hitchhikers. But just as police began to put plans together to stop this killer before he struck again, the murder stopped. The final victim connected to this series of murders wouldn't be discovered for another. other five years. On July 6th, 1979, the body of an unidentified female was found in Rincon Valley,

around 100 yards from where Lori Curse's body had been found. This currently unidentified woman is called Sonoma Jane Doe, or sometimes referred to as Calistoga Jane Doe. Jane Doe's remains were mostly skeletal, but rope from a clothesline or a Venetian blind cord remained looped around the ankle bones and stretched up the back before looping around the neck four times. Investigators found pieces of fabric and grommets, leading them to believe that the body had been transported in a duffelback of some sort before being dumped in the ravine. Police have put forth the theory that she may have been alive

when she was thrown down the embankment and was so tightly tied to prevent her escape. Her right arm had been broken near the time of her death. reddish brown hair, several teeth, brown thread, and a hard contact lens were found in the soil. According to NamUs, the contact lens was found inside a metal tin with cherries on it. At first, these remains were thought to be Jeanette Camahalys. But that was ruled out because Jeanette had a dental bridge and none was found with Jane Doe's remains. There was no sign of any clothing at the scene. her date of death has been estimated to be sometime between 1972 and 1974.

This estimate was due to the fact that for a time after the mid-1970s, hard contact lenses were hard to find. Jane Doe is estimated to have been around 19 years old, five foot three with brown hair. X-rays reveal that she had once broken her rib. Jane Doe is considered the final victim found in the Santa Rural. Rosa Hitchhiker murders. Even though the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murder stopped, police worked tirelessly trying to find a killer. Many sources online cited in 1975 report by the FBI linking most of these murders and other

murders in the general area, 14 in total to one suspect. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down this report, and it looks like most of the references to this FBI report actually cite Wikipedia citation of it. So trust that, if you will. It's important to note that the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which eventually branched off into the behavioral analysis unit. The branch of FBI you're supposed to be seeing on criminal minds was not developed until 1985. DNA was not yet in use when this report was released. So a definitive link to one suspect, especially with multiple causes of death, seems unlikely.

All right, Morf, so I think we need to switch gears a little bit and begin talking about suspects in these murders. Over the years, many names have been thrown out by both investigators and online sluice. One of the most seemingly obvious suspects is Lawrence Singleton, who attacked 17-year-old Mary Vinson in Modesto, California in 1978. Mary was hitchhiking from Berkeley, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. When Singleton picked her up, he beat her with a sledgehammer, knocking her unconscious, sexually assaulted her nearly all night and cut off both of her forearms with a hatchet before throwing her nude off a 30-foot cliff near Del Porto Canyon in Stanislaus County, California. Incredibly, Mary survived. She shoved her arms into the mud to stop the bleeding and somehow climbed back up the cliff and walked three miles before finding a passing car for help.

The information she provided led to Singleton, and he was arrested and convicted for the. attack and sentenced to the maximum sentence allowed by state law, 14 years in prison. 14 years for an extremely heinous and violent crime, and in 1987, he was released after only eight years. Sounds like he should have been in prison, and the key thrown away, right? What happened to Singleton after his release? He moved the Sulphur Springs in the Tampa area of Florida, his home state. His arrival there made news, and a local car dealer offered him $5,000 to leave the state. Singleton declined the offer and stayed in Florida. In February 1997, Singleton was arrested for the murder of 31-year-old

Roxanne Hayes in his home. A painting contractor who was doing work for Singleton entered Singleton's home and caught him in the act of attacking Roxanne Hayes, who was screaming for help. This guy raced out and called 911. When police arrived, they confronted Singleton and found him covered in blood, and they saw Roxanne's body on the floor. They arrested him right there on the spot. Mary Vincent, who had miraculously survived Singleton's attack, back in California, attended his trial and testified against him. Singleton was found guilty and sentenced to death, and he died in prison from cancer in 2001.

So we know that Singleton was a sadistic and brutal killer. There was no doubt he was capable of some very heinous stuff. All those attack on Mary Vincent bore some similarities with the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders, especially the discarding of his victim down the side of a hill. There were differences, most notably that he sliced off Mary's arms, something that wasn't done to any other victims in the series. It's also been reported that during some of the Santa Rosa murders, Singleton may have been away at sea on a ship.

As of now, there's nothing physically that we know that ties him to the series. And Morif, I want to go back to his original sentence. 14 years in prison for, you know, what he did to marry Vincent. Okay, 14 years is a long time, but he got out in eight. And, you know, personally, I don't think 14 years, even though it is a long time, is enough for what he did, let alone then you factor in that he got out in eight years. But how many times do we see this in the cases that we cover where people are caught, they're saying. they're sentenced, they don't do what I think a lot of us believe is the right amount of time, a just amount of time. And then they're released just to later go on and commit more violent acts.

Yeah, it's really frustrating. We talk about it far too often, especially in some of the older cases, because the laws back then were just sort of insane the way that the penalties were. But when you see someone that's capable of doing what he did chopping this woman's arms off and just throwing her down the hill like a piece of trash. Someone like that, it seems like there's no limit on what they might do. They're dangerous. And that's the kind of person you don't want out on the street. But here he was back out on the street and another woman paid for him being released. Well, and obviously they must have thought after the eight years, he was rehabilitated. And, you know, there's no, there's no way for us to know the details around how they came to that conclusion. I think in the final

analysis, though, it's pretty easy to see they were wrong. This guy was obviously not rehabilitated. He should have never been let out. But I will agree with you, Morp, on the sentencing guidelines. You know, when you look back during the 60s and 70s, some of them, especially for violent acts against women, We're so short that it's ridiculous. Yeah, I always think back to when we cover the Golden State Killer case and some of the statute of limitations on the rapes and police reports and rape kits and things like that getting tossed out because they could no longer be used because the whatever it was, the five-year statute of limitations had expired. It's just, it's mind-boggling. In Los Angeles, six and a half hours south of Santa Rosa, a pair of killers known as the Hillside Strait. Kingeth Bianchi and Angelo Bwono left six of their victims, who they had strangled to death,

nude, down, steep hillsides. The M.O. and their murders matched in some ways to the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders. The Hillside Stranglers, known crime spree, took place between 1977 and 1978, well after the murders in Santa Rosa, but their victims ranged from age 12 to 28, much less than. like the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murder victims. However, one of the pair didn't even move to California until 1976 and was in Rochester, New York during the period of time when the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders took place. So I think when you look at it, obviously there are some parallels there, but I think we can safely rule this murderous pair out for the Santa Rosa

of murders. Ed Kemper, the co-ed killer's name, has also been thrown out. His victims include five female university students in the Santa Cruz area of California. He makes a compelling suspect, since there's a strong similarity in an MO. But although the victims in Santa Rosa were the type he usually targeted, he usually dismembered his victims. And Kemper was in custody after April 25, in 1973, leaving him unable to have killed every victim in the series. As recently as 2011, investigators were pursuing a theory that Ted Bundy was a possible suspect. Bundy had claimed to have murdered in California around the time of the Santa Rosa murders. Some people do believe that the reason Jeanette Camahaley was never found was that she was a

victim of Ted Bundy. However, credit card records proved that Bundy was in Washington when Yvonne Weber and Maureen Sterling were abducted and his method of bludgeoning girls didn't fit with most of the deaths. In September 1981, news reports indicated that 34-year-old Stephen Peter Morin of Nevada, California, was wanted for questioning in the deaths of eight hitchhikers. Morin was also wanted in three states on charges of kidnap, rape, and murder. We actually discussed Morin in an episode of criminology in our episode about the murder of Kim Bryant. He was suspected in Las Vegas of killing Susan Blati, Cheryl Daniel, and Kim Bryant.

Morin had a belt in a storage unit that was similar to the one Kim Bryant was last seen wearing. A friend of hers remembered Morin creeping came out at the skating rink, just two weeks before she disappeared. But he was ultimately not the one responsible for her murder. In late 2021, a DNA match found that had been a 19-year-old Johnny Blake Peterson who killed Kim Bryant. He had never been suspected. Stephen Peter Morin was executed on March 13, 1985 in Huntsville, Texas. Due to Morin's history of attacking hitchhikers, he was considered a suspect in this case. But we don't know if there's anything that ties him to the case as far as physical evidence.

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutal. murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

In December 1984, a 31-year-old man named Jackie Horvarter was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and trying to murder a 15-year-old who accepted a ride from him near Fortuna, California. He threatened her with a knife before binding her hands with electrical tape and strips of a cut-up t-shirt and then gagging her. After sexually assaulting her, he drove to Hopland, California, let her out of the car, shot her in the head, and kicked her into the river. She was still alive. The bullet had only graced. her head and she played dead, floating in the river until he left. Horvarder was then linked to the murder and sexual assault of 16-year-old Dana Elizabeth

Walsh, who he kidnapped in Willis, California on August 24, 1984. She was found in the Eel River in Scotia, California, fully clothed, but barefoot with her underwear on inside out. A yellow piece of nylon rope was looped around her neck several times. similar to the Santa Rosa murders of Teresa Walsh and Jane Doe. But as far as we know, there is nothing physically that ties him to the Santa Rosa murders. So more if I think, you know, when you look at these last two individuals, Morin and Horvartor, obviously they were very horrible people.

There were some similarities between what they did and the details of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders. You could see why authorities would want to take a look at them. But like we said, you know, as far as we know, there's nothing that really ties them to the murders. You know, my takeaway about talking about all these different guys is how frightening is that there's this many people operating in the same vicinity at the same time. California, for as beautiful as it is, it definitely had it sure of bad guys doing really bad stuff back then. Yeah, and they overlapped each other. You know, when you look back through the history of California and serial killers, you had a lot of people, bad people, serial killers, kind of operating at the same time,

overlapping areas. It is pretty scary when you think about it like that. Sonoma County Sheriff Don Stripke had a theory that the Zodiac killer was responsible for the murders of about 40 young women in California and its neighboring states, including six in Sonoma County and four in San Francisco. San Francisco Homicide Inspector William Armstrong didn't believe that there was any link between the Zodiac Killer and those 40 murders. Detective Sergeant Erwin Kralstadt, who appeared to agree with Stripke's theory,

mentioned a design of twigs and stones found at a remote site where three Santa Rosa victims' bodies were found, is representative of an ancient English symbol meaning to carry the souls away to take them into paradise. This was a common symbol in Old England. Carl Stett added the murders of Yvonne Quillantang, Angela Thomas, Nancy Gidley, and Rosa Vasquez, as San Francisco victims that fit the pattern. In a message to the San Francisco Chronicle, his last known letter, the Zodiac Killer claimed that he had 37 victims.

However, only five murder victims have been confirmed to be the work of the Zodiac. Jeanette Camahaley is specifically mentioned in the Robert Graysmith books Zodiac and Zodiac unmasked as a possible Zodiac killer victim. And of course, Robert Gray Smith's favorite Zodiac suspect was Arthur Lee Allen. And as it turns out, Allen lived in the Santa Rosa area for a stretch in the night. By 1989, Detective Sergeant Kralstett seemed to have changed his tune about who the right Santa Rosa suspect was. Deputy Chief Coroner Tom Seby and Detective Kralstett had a theory that two men were responsible for the killings. One, a married man, had died in a car accident in the 70s. The second

man was also deceased by 1989, but there's no information given about him. According to Karlestead, once the two men died, there were no more murders fitting the Emma of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker killer. The final name suspect that we're going to talk about in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders, Frederick Manali, is also some people's present-day guess for the Zodiac Killer. Like Arthur Lee Allen, he was mentioned in Robert Gray Smith's book Zodiac Unmast, although not by name. Gray Smith tried to hint that Allen and Manali may have worked as a team.

in the Santa Rosa murders, although there is no evidence that the two even knew each other. Frederick Manali, a creative writing professor at Santa Rosa Junior College, died in a head-on collision when his van drifted into oncoming traffic on August 25, 1976. Two days later, a personal ad ran in the San Francisco Chronicle that read, Zodiac, your partner is in deep real estate. You're next. The Imperial Wizard can save you. Surrender to him or I'll terminate your case. Due to the timing of this ad so soon after Manali's death, coupled with the mention of Zodiac and a partner, some people felt that this could have been an indication that Manali was involved in the Zodiac crimes

and had a partner. Following Manali's death, his widow found drawings of Santa Rosa victim, Kim Allen, a former student of Manali's, and another female student depicted as being hogtied. She also found other drawings of people being whipped. Manali also reportedly had a backpack, belonged to one of the seven victims in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker series of murders. Although it was never disclosed which victim's backpack he had. Kim was one of the victims known to have a backpack. Manali also had a lock of hair in his wallet, but it was determined not to be Kim's. A search into Manali's background revealed that on August 9, 1956,

he was arrested in Illinois where he was a teacher for threatening a 16-year-old girl, grabbing her wrist in the process. One headline from the next day stated that he was arrested for molesting a girl. On January 29, 1957, the Rockford Morning Star published a blurb about Manali, waving a jury trial for charges of assault with intent to commit a lewd and lascivious act. looking at a photo of Manali and a few members of his junior high football team in 1949 when he was just 13 shows that he's the same size of the coach. A large and athletic man standing well over six feet tall and a U.S. Army veteran, he would have been able to lift and toss an adult woman, as was theorized in the dumping of some of the victims in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders. Before his death, Manali acknowledged police suspicion of him in a letter that he wrote to a colleague.

The letter read in part, I left Santa Rosa under a cloud of paranoia. The cops questioned me at length about the murder of a former student female. I didn't do it. But there seems to be a young lady, perhaps another former student, I don't know her name, who is vindictive enough toward me to want to see me in the gas chamber. Maybe I gave her a deed. So more if I did find this letter, interesting, obviously, Manali felt as though he had to defend himself

to the point where he wrote this to a colleague, he admits that he was questioned at length about a murder, but then basically blames it on a young female former student who was vindictive against him. And then I think he's a little glib at the end saying, maybe I gave her a deed. Yeah, he ends it with a little bit of humor. and I don't think there's anything funny about it.

It sounds like a very serious situation if you're being questioned in a murder. But, you know, the point of this letter is it does verify that he knew he was a suspect and that they were looking at him. But the thing that jumped out at me is why write the letter at all? Why did he feel as though he had to acknowledge it to a colleague? That kind of jumped out of me. Yeah, unless he felt maybe that this person knew a, about it and he wanted to clear up rumors that might be going around or whatever. Yeah, it could be.

I think we've also seen in cases where people who protest too much, people who feel as though they need to explain things that others wouldn't feel the need to explain, you know, sometimes they have a guilty conscience for a reason. I'll put it that way. Fred Manali's sister came forward saying that if it would help to exclude her brother in the murder, she'd be willing to provide DNA. However, it's unclear if police have ever taken her up on her offer or really where Manali stands as a suspect in the eyes of police, despite the possible connections between Fred Manali and Arthur Lee Allen and the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders, as well as the Zodiac

murders. There is nothing as far as physical evidence that we know of that connects the two series and DMOs are quite different. As, you know, the Zodiac was never known to have dumped a body anywhere. Instead, he left his victims where he encountered them before fleeing. One thing we have to consider is the possibility that there wasn't one lone serial killer operating in Santa Rosa, but rather multiple killers. Additionally, although Yvonne Weber, Maureen Stearling, Kim Allen, Jeanette Camahaley, Lori Cursa, Carolyn Davis, Terese Walsh, and Jane Doe are listed as the official Santa Rosa Hitchhiker victims. There are some other attacks on women in that area that we need to discuss that occurred in the

1970s and 80s. There were several news articles in the region at the time about a sexual assault suspect in a pickup truck. It's unclear if these assaults were all committed by the same person. or if there were multiple people in the area, driving pickup trucks preying on hitchhiking girls. 17-year-old Lisa Smith was attacked but managed to escape. In 1971, an article about her appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, stating that she had been hitchhiking from San Francisco to Salisalito and was picked up by a man in a pickup truck who drove her past her destination and tried to sexually assault her. He was armed with a gun.

On Highway 101 to south of Nevada, she jumped out of the truck, which was going 55 miles an hour. She required treatment for concussion at a nearby hospital, but she left before staff could officially identify her. She hitchhiked back to San Francisco where she stayed with friends. It's unknown whether she escaped the Santa Rosa hitchhiker killer or another person who was up to no good. On May 28, 1972, the hitchhiker got into a pickup truck around 2 a.m. near Larkfield, California and was sexually assaulted. On April 30th, 1973, two men armed with a shotgun, kidnapped and sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in Santa Rosa, forcing her into a pickup truck. On July 4th, 1972, a woman picked up a hitchhiking man in Mill Valley and he robbed her. But she chased

him. Soon, the hitchhiker and two other men forced her back into her car and the man then drove to a fire road where he sexually assaulted and beat her. There were also multiple reports of suspects assaulting more than one victim at a time. On August 1st, 1972, two hitchhiking teenage girls, 14 and 15, were sexually assaulted by a man driving a green Volkswagen in Guernville armed with a bayonet. He tied one of them up with strips of material from a bathing suit. 24-year-old Ernest Hoyt was arrested. for this attack. On August 22nd of that year, two hitchhiking teens, 18 and 19, were picked up in

Berkeley. The driver forced the 19-year-old out of the car at gunpoint and then drove away and sexually assaulted the 18-year-old. On January 10, 1973, the body of 18-year-old Barbara Stroud was found nude in a field in Willets, California, just 300 yards north of Highway 101. Her shoes and purse were found in her car about a mile away. It looked like another car. It hit the side of her car, pinning the driver's door shut and trapping her. The fabric top of her convertible was damaged by something sharp,

such as a knife. It looked to investigators as deliberate. In December 1978, 15-year-old Carrie Graham and 14-year-old Francine Trimble disappeared. They were headed from where they lived in Forestville to a mall in Santa Rosa. They were believed at the time to be runaways. In July 1979, the remains of two bodies were found off Route 20 near Willits, 80 miles from where the girls disappeared.

There was one bird-shaped earring found at the scene. These remains weren't identified until 2015 as Carrie Graham and Francine Trimble. Family members confirmed that the earring was carries. On July 8, 1981, James Carus Jr. kidnapped two women at gunpoint, drove them to Placerville, California, forced them to undress and sexually assaulted one of them. He told them to put their clothes back on before shooting them both. One woman, Peggy Pennington, died, but the other woman survived and testified against him at trial. A man named Lawrence Moe, a 28-year-old psychiatric technician, was arrested on charges of forcible rape

and perversion involving a 17-year-old Santa Rosa girl hitchhiker. So more if we just talked about a number of incidents, both sexual assaults and murders that occurred in the Bay Area, some during the time frame of the known Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders, some after. Again, I think it goes back to, okay, there's a lot of bad people out there doing a lot of bad things, but it also ties back to the question. Is the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders a series of murders that was committed by, you know, the same person or persons? Or were there just a lot of hitchhikers being sexually assaulted and murdered in and around this area during this time frame? And I think the answer could be both. Yeah, I think it's impossible to know the answer to how many of these people are involved in which attacks. if any of them are connected, but again, I think it just reinforces that there's a lot of overlap with

some of these bad guys that were running around back then and how a lot of them preyed on women along the highways and why hitchhiking was so dangerous. There are some commonalities among the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murder victims. All the victims that have been found or recovered were white or Hispanic. None of the victims are believed to have been killed where they were found, except possibly Lori Kursa, who may have fled by jumping to her death. In every death where a cause could be determined, it was determined to be a painful and slow death, almost torture for the victims.

There were earrings missing in some cases. Despite similarities in the murders, there are things in some of the cases that don't line up with one single serial killer being responsible for all the murders. For example, in the case of Kim Allen, she was found in an area not that close to where the other victims were dumped. and though she was strangled to death, the way she was found doesn't match the other victims that were strangled. Her body seems to be the only one where a seaman sample was recovered, at least as far as we know, based on what police have released.

Her teacher Fred Manali seemed to have somewhat of an obsession with her. It's possible that his obsession crossed the line, and he abducted and murdered her. Carolyn Davis being poisoned doesn't match any of the other victims. but it may be possible that poison couldn't be detected and some of the other remains due to decomposition or maybe it was just so unusual that it wasn't tested for. There was also someone or multiple people using strychnine at the time to poison animals in the area. There were at least a dozen dog poisonings in Healdsburg alone, just 15 miles north of Santa Rosa. One thing a lot of people fall back on when connecting some of the cases are the earrings,

that the killer may have taken a single earring from his victims, much the same way that Joseph DiAngelo did when he was the East Area rapist, taking earrings as a trophy. But the issue there is there wasn't a single earring found at every scene, which would indicate some sort of signature. And with bodies rolling down in bankments, it's possible. that earrings may have just fallen out. Lori Kursa had wire loops in both ears with no earrings attached.

So the question is, did the attached earrings fall off, or were they taken as a trophy? Carolyn only had one ear pierced and the hole was empty. So could she have just not been wearing an earring that day, or was it taken by her killer? The ages and locations of Yvonne Weber, Marine Sterling, and Carolyn Davis perhaps seemed to point to one single killer. The spot where all three of their bodies were dumped were within four feet of each other, and with so many mountain roads and embankments to choose from in the area, it doesn't seem like a coincidence that they were all together. Teresa Walsh and Jane Doe, having such similar bindings, which were left at the scene, makes it likely that they were killed by the same person.

The question remains were all these young women killed by one single person? There were also reports that a girl matching Lori Curse's description had been seen being led from apartments on Parkhurst Drive and put into an old van heading north by two men on Calistoga Road. Something was clearly odd. It was said that the girl was almost being carried as if she was injured. The driver's door was a different color than the rest of the vehicle. a white man with an Afro-style haircut was waiting in the driver's seat. Unfortunately, the witness's memory was foggy, but the date was sometime between December 1st and 9th of 1972. Again, her body was found on December 14th.

This matches the time that authorities believe Lori's neck was broken, and if it was, in fact, Lori, that witnesses saw being put into the van, this puts three men with her. And if these men are responsible for her death, it could be proof of a three-man team of killers. I think it's important to look closer at some of the victims we've mentioned for similarities between them and the details of their cases. Terese, Jeanette, and Kim had noticeably darker hair than the younger victims, who all had blonde or light brown hair. Jane Doe is thought to have had brown hair, possibly Auburn. Well, Carrie and Francine both had light hair, were younger, and the location of the location. they were last headed does match with the disappearances of Maureen and Yvonne.

They disappeared years after the other victims were found, and long after what is known as Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders were thought to have stopped. If they are related, it's likely that they were killed by whoever killed Yvonne, Marine, and possibly Carolyn. From the location where they were found in Woods, it seems at this point to yet another different killer. Although Jane Doe has never been identified, at least not yet. There are two very compelling possible matches for Jane Doe. In March 1974, 15-year-old Peggy Ann Reed vanished from Gernville Road near Conningtown Mall. This is the exact same area where Yvonne and Maureen were seen getting into a car before they

disappeared. Peggy was Caucasian with light reddish brown hair and brown eyes. She had a strawberry birthmark on her neck. She wore glasses and had contact lenses. She may have been hitchhiking at the time. She was last seen. Peggy was last known to be wearing brown slacks, a blue shirt with a brown yellow and red floral pattern, and she was carrying a small brown purse.

It's unknown whether she has been ruled out as a match for Jane Doe. Another possible match for Jane Doe is 20-year-old Pamela Jean Spencer, who was last seen in Santa Monica, California, on January 26, 1973. She was headed to Malibu. She wore glasses, had contact lenses, and was very near-sighted. She may have been wearing brown, clod boots, and a brown shirt. The contact lenses, timing, and that she was headed to Malibu, where Teresa was last seen,

are all things that are hard to ignore. One final victim that we're going to talk about as possibly being connected to the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders, though it happened in Arizona. is 21-year-old Deborah Carrard. She was traveling from Maryland to California to attend a wedding. To get across the country, she planned to hitchhite and visit national parks along the way. On September 9th, 1975, her body was found in a canyon off the Little Colorado River, just 13 miles east of Cameron, Arizona.

There were signs of blunt force trauma to her head. She was fully clothed but barefoot. There was no sign of. sexual assault, but she had been out in the elements for about three weeks, making that determination difficult. Deborah had pierced ears, but there's no information available about whether any earrings were found. But the way in which she was killed and the way she was dressed don't really match most of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murder victims, but she was a young hitchhiker found in a canyon, just like the rest of the victims who were found tossed down embankments or ravines.

So more if I think Deborah Carrick is a name that a lot of people mention when they talk about the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders. Yeah, I think what really makes it seem possible Deborah was connected to the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders is that before her body was even discovered, just 10 days after her last phone contact with her family on August 17th, some of her belongings were found in Santa Rose's. at the intersection of Highway 101 and Mark West Springs Road. From that location, if you continue east on Mark West Springs Road, you will pass a spot where Teresa Walsh was found.

And if you keep going, the road will turn into Porter Creek Road, which will fork off into Franz Valley Road, where Carolyn Davis, Marine Weber, and Yvonne Sterling were found. According to the Coconino County Sheriff's Cold Case Unit, Debra met a man named Vern, described as a cowboy and traveled with him through Wyoming, Montana, and Yellowstone National Park on their way to Denver, Colorado. We're on August 16th, her personal calendar noted that she left V.

On August 17th, Deborah checked into the Flamingo Hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona, with plans to see the Grand Canyon on the 18th. Investigators tried to link Deborah's murder to a man named William Zamestil, a tow truck driver who had been convicted of four murders during which he had sexually assaulted the victims. In one case, he had forced a victim to dress after he assaulted her and before he killed her. But the connection couldn't be made, and Deborah's case remains unsolved. Decades went by without much progress in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murder investigation. In 2011, investigators were hoping to add Jeanette Camahaley's DNA to the name of DNA database.

They began working that avenue of investigation. According to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, potential genetic material from the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders was being evaluated as of 2018. In light of what genetic genealogy was capable of after the arrest of Joseph DeAngel, the Golden State Killer, and many subsequent identification of bad guys. Hopefully as genetic genealogy continues to develop

and is used more in crime fighting, these cold cases of murdered young girls and women in the Santa Rosa area may one day be solved, identifying the killer, killers who discarded these girls like trash. So Morph, as we wrap up this episode, I think these types of episodes are tough and these types of investigations are tough, right? When you have a number of murders that occur in the same area, there are a lot of similarities between the murders, between the victims, but there are also some differences. So I think that's part of what makes it tough to really kind of put it together and say conclusively, are all these murders linked to the same person or persons? Or, as you

mentioned earlier in the episode, is it possible because there were so many different people, we know, picking up hitchhikers, selecting their victims that, way that some of these are connected and others are not. Yeah, I think the sheer number of victims makes it seem on the surface that it would be hard for one person to have committed all these different murders. But if that is the case, if that somehow can be proven that it was one person, that would make them a very prolific serial killer. But I think when you drill down and look at each case individually, although there's

things that are similar, those key differences too can't be dismissed. A couple of things that jump out to me at some of these scenes, you have the victims tied in some kind of exotic manner to where they'll slowly, you know, strangle themselves or choke themselves if they move. And I think maybe that takes some kind of skill and that might tell us something about the person that did this. maybe they're into some kind of bondage or S&M or something along those lines that they have this experience with that kind of tying maneuver.

And then also another thing that jumped out was these weird stick and stone figures that were found at some of the scenes that may indicate witchcraft because that could give an occult type of connection here. Yeah, but to me it also kind of really points out the differences and leads me down a path where I'm just not certain that all of these murders are really connected. If they are, then it means that the murder or murderers really went out of their way to do things differently. Does that make sense?

Because, you know, we're not seeing a completely linear M.O. Across all of these murders. There are some very stark differences. Yeah, I think it would be easier for police if every single thing. victim had one tell-tale sign of something that was done at every scene to make their job a little easier. But I think they sort of have to consider everything in all of these cases and land on one side of the fence to the other, you know, as to whether this is one person or not. So their work seemed like it was really cut out for them right from the beginning.

And we know there was seam and found at least one of the crime scenes. So we mentioned genetic genealogy. We continued to be wowed by, you know, some of the amazing things that are coming out. It seems like almost weekly or monthly using that technology. My thought, though, morph is that if they could come up with a suspect, if they could match that DNA, how much trouble would they have trying to pin the other murders on this suspect, given some of the differences that we've just talked about. I think they'd be in a tough spot. If they could identify the person that contributed at seaman, that would be a starting point,

at least, to where they could look at their background and see if were they out of state during one of the murders, were they in prison during one of the murders, so they could sort of eliminate them or exclude them or possibly still consider them as being potentially the killer in the other attacks. But that would be a good starting point at the very least. I think, think, and hopefully that's something that will come to fruition. Well, and obviously they could pursue charges in the one murder, for sure. And then, like you said, work from there. Special thanks goes out to Deb Silva at Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders.com for allowing us to gather

material for this episode from our website. If you want to learn even more about this case, go check that site out. Thanks also goes out to Sunny Landon for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating, keep telling your friends who are into true crime about a criminology podcast. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod, you can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans.

All right, Morph, that's it for our episode on the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders. but we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.