Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - The Doodler | 7. The Man in the Sketch

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

After the publication of the composite sketch, leads begin to pour in. SFPD receives a call from a psychiatrist’s office. The doctor claims the man in the sketch might be their patient. Homicide investigators act on the tip and question the man. But today there’s little information about what they learned and the psychiatrist can’t be found. So Kevin and Mike are left wondering why the patient was never arrested. This is a re-released series from The Binge archives. Binge all episodes of The Doodler, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠podcastchoices.com/adchoices⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the heat of August, in a forest near Le Mans, the King of France snaps, murdering five of his own men in a frenzy delusion. Before long, this beloved ruler has collapsed into madness, believing he's made of glass. Step inside a kingdom on the brink of shattering. This is History Presents, The Glass King, available wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to The Doodler, a re-release series from The Binge archives.

If you're a subscriber to The Binge, you can listen to all episodes, ad-free right now. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to browse all the great shows on the channel. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. This series contains depictions of violent assault and murder. Listener discretion is advised. Listen to this series carefully and let us know if anything you hear in this show jogs a memory of yours. And if you've got a tip, you can call us at 415-570-2299. The doodler killings seem to stop around late summer 1975.

Almost two years later, in 1970s. 27, homicide inspector Rotei Guilford spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle. Reading it now, it feels like a post-mortem on the investigation, and it's a source for a lot of our best information. Quoted in the article, Rotei gives some background on the case. He talks about the living eyewitnesses and how he hopes one will testify. He makes clear that he's almost certain he knows who the doodler is. Rotea says that certainty comes from the case's first true break. In November 1975, when a psychiatrist called the SFPD, the one that case files refer to as Dr. Priest.

This doctor said that his patient admitted to all the Ocean Beach murders. Rotea Guilford and Earl Sanders decide to call this patient in for questioning, and the patient agrees. I'm Kevin Fagan. From the San Francisco Chronicle, Ugly Duckling Films, and Neon Hum Media, this is the untold story. of the Doodler. Mike Taylor and I get on the phone all the time to mull over the Doodler case. I say this after spending nearly 40 years, you know, doing this shit. Why would anybody ever talk to a cop, ever?

Right. Any suspect or person of interest. Yeah. You know? Did you read Homicide life in the streets? I did. Yeah, but way back when. guy, yeah, there was one guy that they would continually bring in, and he'd just lawyer up,

he just sit there very calmly and say, thank you, officer, and I prefer to talk to my attorney. Oh, yeah. And they go out of my again, and they go out of my guy. Thank you, officer, I prefer to talk to my attorney. Yeah, and a good attorney is going to look at you and say, don't, don't talk. Don't say a fucking word. From what I gather, Dr. Priest's patient met SFPD without an attorney present. Why? Maybe he was cocky? Maybe he had nothing to hide. Or maybe he wanted it to look that way.

Keep in mind that most of what we know about this interrogation comes from that 1977 interview Rotei Guilford gave to the Chronicle. When questioned, the patient denied that he was the murderer. But he admitted that he had experimented with homosexuality. Apparently, the patient had struggled with his sexual identity since he was 13 years old. He didn't want to. to be gay, and he claimed that his sessions with the psychiatrist had, quote, cured him. He had a steady girlfriend now. I don't know how long the meeting lasted. I don't know what else was discussed or what's in the notes that were taken. The case file has this patient's name, and like I've said, he was their main person of interest.

But Dan Cunningham and the SFPD have not given us that name. There's nobody in the police department that I think that we can ascertain who can say, you know, when I looked at this thing, there was a lot more paper. There's nothing like that. In other words, we don't know if Rotea actually did a full report, Rotea or Earl, did a full report on the shrink at Highland and wrote down who it was when they saw him, what he said. None of that, we have no idea.

SFPD's questioning of this shrink's patient supports a theory about the Doolers' motive, one that Earl and Rotea had. and a theory that I share. I first mentioned it in episode three of this series. It's likely that the doodler killed gay man because he was struggling with his own sexuality, pent-up self-hatred that he took out on other gay men. This patient told police that he was wrestling with those kinds of feelings,

even if he stopped short of saying that they had led him to violence. One of the common things with gay men is that for most of us, we were raised in a climate of deep confusion and pain and a lack of nurturing with regards to our own authenticity. That's John Smith. He worked at a gay conversion therapy organization for over two decades called Love in Action. Most of us were trapped in a world that was heteronormative, and many of us raised in religious circles

where we would frequently hear messages of damnation, of shame, and at the maximum of clear condemnation. Gay conversion therapy was a religious-based pseudotherapy that came to prominence in the 1970s. It promised its patients that they could be changed, from gay to straight. Today, the practice has been completely discredited, and Smith has since left and denounced. the Love and Action organization.

But while he was there, he heard harrowing tales of ruined lives. Yeah, we heard all kinds of destructive stories of where people had sexually abused other people, where they had acted out repeatedly in very dangerous sexual practices and ethics. I mean, I remember one guy that, you know, committed arson, serious insurance fraud. He was just so desperate. A lot of people were desperate. Years of denying and hiding your sexuality can intensify feelings of anxiety, fear, and anger. Those experiences create a tremendous amount of psychological and psychiatric harm.

I have no doubt that the outcome of that is and could be a tremendous amount of acting out against other people. It was a long shot, but maybe someone who fit the profile of Dr. Priest's patient, had come to love in action around the time Smyd was there. So we had to ask. Did anybody that you recall, did anybody come in and confess to killing someone? No. I don't remember anything like that. We called more than a dozen people involved with conversion therapy in the 70s,

and none of them remembered anyone resembling the doodler. But we don't know for sure whether Dr. Priest's patient had actually pursued gay conversion therapy. But we do know that once a person's patient had actually pursued gay conversion therapy. But we do know that once Dr. Priest gave SFPD this tip, his patient quickly became the top suspect for the Doodler murders. And we know that this Dr. Priest had gone out on an ethical limb to warn the cops about him. This is Dr. Paul Applebaum. He's a professor at Columbia University and a former president of the American Psychiatric Association.

If a patient reveals to their psychiatrist that they have committed an offense, serious offense, perhaps a murder. The question is, does the psychiatrist have the right to disclose that information to the authorities? He says that in most states, any information shared during therapy is confidential, but there is an exception. In circumstances in which the information suggests not just that a crime was committed in the past, but that there is a likelihood of future. violent behavior, for example, in the case of a serial killer, the psychiatrist would be able to, under the standard tenets of confidentiality, to disclose that information for the sake of protecting potential future victims. This was more or less the case in early

1976, too. To disclose confidential information was at a psychiatrist's own discretion. And it's a difficult decision to make. It requires a betrayal of trust. So for Dr. Priest to have made that call to the SFPD, he likely believed that his patient would kill again. But could Dr. Priest have done more than just put in a call? To build their case, Rotea and Earl would need people who could testify. Could this psychiatrist help bring the doodler to justice? So every state in the country and the federal courts have some form of testimonial privilege for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals that prevents them from being compelled to testify in court about information disclosed in confidence by one of their patients without the patient's consent.

So shrinks can't testify against their patients either, except, again, when the patient poses an imminent threat to others. But remember, in the months between the time Dr. Priest put in that call to SFPD, and when the patient sat down for questioning, the dude the killing stopped. And during that sit down, the patient told Rotea that he'd been reformed, cured of homosexuality, settled down with a woman. So maybe now that danger wasn't so imminent? Or at least not enough for Dr. Priest to break confidentiality to testify? How frustrating this had to be. Rotea and Earl had their eye on someone they were pretty sure was the doodler. They just couldn't build a strong enough case to charge him.

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If Earl and Rotea couldn't count on testimony from Dr. Priest, was there anyone else they could count on it from? Without access to the original case files, Mike Taylor and I are left a piece. this together mostly on our own. Luckily, in that same interview, Rotea gave to the Chronicle in 77, Rotea talked about some living witnesses, people who had survived likely doodler attacks. I've already told you about the actor and the diplomat, neither of whom, it seems,

were willing to testify. The actor had left town, and the diplomat for some reason was too angry with the investigation to cooperate. But in that same interview, Rotea talked about a third witness. a man he described as an entertainer. Was there a third witness involved in this? When I look at the newspaper article in 1977, I see that there's a third person.

I asked Dan Cunningham what he knows about this man, Rotea described, and Cunningham says the man was probably not an entertainer. We don't know what his job was, but he lived in Fox Plaza, the same building as the diplomat. In fact, he lived just down the hall. It was another thing like, you know, 2.15 in the morning. This guy was pretty intoxicated. This guy gets a knock on his door,

opens it up, and there's guy's there, and he goes, hey, can I use your phone? Okay, wow. Middle of the night, the guy's drunk at home, and here's a knock at the door. They later discover the unexpected visitor matched the description in the doodler sketch. This couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

Could it? And next thing, no, he's hog-tied and tied up. How come he didn't kill him? I don't know. This guy started screaming. Yeah. This guy started screaming, and I believe security came up. The guy is hogtied, screams loud enough for help to show up.

And the attacker gets away before security could stop him. Another close call. This whole attack leaves me with a ton of questions. How did the attacker get away? Had this victim interacted with his attacker before? Or maybe the attacker was returning to what he thought was the diplomat's apartment? Really, I have more questions and answers. And the truth is, we don't have the full story here.

In 77, Rotea told the Chronicle this third victim was torn between his desire for justice and his desire to keep his sexuality secret. So Ratea said he was likely gay, and he didn't cooperate with the cops. And that's understandable. We spent a whole episode of this podcast telling you about why the queer community didn't totally trust police at the time. And sadly, we'll probably never get the full story. Cunningham tells me he is 95% sure that now, almost five decades later, this third victim is dead.

Ron Huberman was an investigator for the San Francisco DA's office in 1981. He's had firsthand experience with gay victims. The DA's office at that time had a huge, huge. I'm going to say it was as high as 50%, but it may be much higher than that of victims who were gay who had not come forward. People were too terrified of being outed by having to testify in a case. Gay men didn't really want to go ahead anyway because they were totally embarrassed. You know, there was not an acceptance of the lifestyle like yours now. And they were worried about people at work, would see an article in the paper about it or this, that.

So it was a forced coming out. Huberman is talking about concerns that were certainly on the minds of the living doodler victims. They were afraid of losing their jobs and their families. There were many gay men who had wives and children. It was just too difficult to get on the stand and explain why you were in somebody's car or why you went back to some floppy hotel. You know, I mean, it's just the only way I can use an analogy, it's the same thing if a straight guy has a hooker and the hooker robs them.

You know, when they're questioning you, the DA would be very careful as to what questions would be asked. Now, the defense, you know, you have no control over. So the defense would always malign the victims. And I felt horrible about it, but I would be honest with the victims. And I would tell them, the defense is going to make you to be a dirty old man. The defense is going to make it look like that nobody on this jury would like you. And some of these guys, you know, wouldn't fall through. They just couldn't testify.

And, you know, there's nothing we can do. I mean, we can hold them at contempt because they didn't come in with a subpoena. But, you know, I'm not going to add insult to injury, you know. And so we would lose the case. Looking back today, with the dude, they're still out there, it's clear that none of these witnesses ultimately agreed to testify. Without their cooperation and with no hard evidence connecting Dr. Priest's patient to the crimes, Rotea and Earl didn't have anything that would stand up in a court of law.

You got to understand the antagonistic situation between the real world, as I called it, and the gay world. It just hadn't been a fit yet. I asked Earl's son, Marcus Sanders, about the case falling apart on the two detectives. Yeah, I think that the story was that they met with him, they had a conversation, but there was no evidence that they could connect him, you know, connect him to. the case, you know, where they could bring a charge or go forward. He was the first of interest. You know, they live with it, but, you know, like I said, the reason I'm familiar with Doola case, Dula case bothered him.

Then he didn't get, he shouldn't put a case together. Remember, after Rotea interviewed the patient, there were no more Dueler killings. It made Earl and Rotea even more convinced they had the right guy. They clearly rattled him, but they hadn't caught him. To me, the 1977 interview that Rotea gave to the Chronicle, that article where we've since gleaned so much information, it felt like Rotea was putting all his cards on the table, a last-ditch effort to see if he could rustle up any leads.

But eventually, they had to move on to other cases, cases they could solve, criminals they could put behind bars. For now, the Doodler case was going to remain a round-dial. Nick. One of the ones they couldn't solve. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage is isn't always a bed of roses.

See the roses only in theaters, August 29th. In the heat of August, in a forest near Le Mans, the King of France snaps, murdering five of his own men in a frenzy delusion. Before long, this beloved ruler has collapsed into madness, believing he's made of glass. Step inside a kingdom on the brink of shattering. This is history.

History Presents, The Glass King, available wherever you get your podcasts. There was never a moment where the Doodler case officially ended. It just faded into the background. Harvey Milk, the most unorthodox politician, a homosexual, elected not in spite of it, but because of it, in a district that is largely homosexual. Harvey Milk was elected about a year after the Doodler case went cold. His election marked a milestone for gay rights in San Francisco, and with the support of Mayor George Moscone, there was a feeling that progress on gay liberation, civil rights, and women's rights was just around the corner.

In 1978, Rotei Guilford was appointed by Mayor Moscone to lead a council on criminal justice reform. He was just one step away from being appointed as the chief of police. and Inspector Earl Sanders continued working in homicide with a new partner, Napoleon Hendricks. The cultural and political pendulum in San Francisco was swinging toward war inclusion. But on November 27, 1978, the pendulum quickly and violently swung in the other direction. As president of the board of supervisors, it's my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot.

and killed. Former Supervisor Dan White was the culprit. This is the body of Supervisor Harvey Milk as it was taken from City Hall. Witnesses say after killing the mayor, White ran down the hall and fired three shots at Milk, killing him. As a member of the Board of Supervisors, Harvey Milk championed homosexual rights. The one supervisor who consistently voted against homosexual rights, even voted against a gay rights. against a gay rights parade this year was former supervisor Dan White.

White was arrested and charged. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder. And when that news was released, the gay community kind of went berserk. That's Jim Van Busker, gay historian and author of Gay by the Bay. After the ruling, crowds of angry queer people gathered at city. City Hall for what came to be known as the White Knight Riots. I mean, they knew it was coming and demonstrated at City Hall breaking the front door of the, of City Hall, and there were some fires set. And then after that, the SFPD officers retaliated by going into the Castro neighborhood and attacking the elephant walk, the gay bar.

It was direct retaliation for the violence at City Hall. All the progress the city had made on gay issues stalled. It was a shocked city, an angry city. It's hard to describe, but the murders of Mayor Musconi and Harvey Milk sucked up lots of the attention for a while. And then the 80s came, and with them, a mysterious disease. It's a disease first detected in the gay community that has now spread beyond that.

A disease experts are now calling a national epidemic. HIV AIDS tore through the gay community. It's still tearing through the gay community today. More than 700,000 people in the U.S. have died of AIDS. How many people who were afraid to speak out about the doodler in the 70s would be alive to talk to us today if not for the AIDS epidemic? Around the end of 2000, around the end of 2000, In 2017, Dan Cunningham was getting coffee with a reporter, and they got to talking about a trove of unsolved gay murders.

So Seth Hamelberg, I think his name is, from the Bay Area Reporter. Yeah. It asked me about several different cases they're being looked into from the 1970s, and I started to look through a couple cases, and I came across the Duler case. And I remembered it because a couple of the homicides happened out by where I lived in Ocean, by Ocean Beach. So then I kind of all came back to him. I thought about the people that had died down by Ocean Beach and started looking into it. That neighborhood kid who heard about the Ocean Beach murders as they happened

is now charged with solving the case. And his investigation runs parallel to ours. Everybody's got the different roles to play. And ours is not, we're not supposed to go there with handcuffs and say, okay, Jack, come on. You're going to go down and testify. A lot of what we know leans on what he tells us or doesn't. Here's an example.

Mike Taylor and I hopped on a call with Cunningham about six months into our investigation. This was actually the first time Mike and Dan spoke directly. And after months of my asking Cunningham about the diplomat, the surviving doodler victim, and getting almost nothing out of him, Mike comes in with some new pressure. Let's go back just for a minute to the diplomat. Is it safe to say? I told Mike that we've had this conversation. Is it safe to say that the diplomat is a citizen of the country whose consulate he worked in?

Not sure. Is there any way we can sort of narrow down at least the country in whose consular office he worked? I would say no, because the fact it really easy to figure out who it was. Okay, but what we're talking about Europe or Northern Europe, right? I like you, Mike. He's worked on the upside. Well, he would have fit in. I mean, I have a list here of all the countries in Northern Europe.

I'm sort of going through them one by one. I mean, does he have an American name? or a name from Europe? Just going to, we're going on that road again. If you have us talking to him, we'll elicit more memories. Right. I'm sure you guys would. Well, if you were in Fox Plaza, would you say he lived on the top, one of the top three or four floors? Well, I'll say this is that when the person that was referred to as a dealer met him,

and they walked away from the restaurant that night, and he told him where he lived. The jeweler made a comment to him, well, you must have a pretty good view there. So I'll leave it at that. We're pushing Cunningham because there's still a chance for this case to break in 2021. If the diplomat or another one of those living witnesses

could come around and decide to testify, or maybe if we could find the psychiatrist, Dr. Priest, things might change. And Cunningham can help him. us a little. He's let the diplomat know we want to talk to him. He drove to the diplomat's house in early February to ask a few more questions, and while he was there, the diplomat told Cunningham he might talk to us. For now, Cunningham has likely gotten everything he's going to get out of the diplomat. He's more focused on finding Dr. Priest. There are things he doesn't know that

only Dr. Priest could explain, like why his name didn't crop up more in the investigation, and what exactly his patient confessed to. I contacted, I think it's to Chicago, the board of psychology. Yeah. I had a listing, and they weren't able to provide me any information on a doctor priest that would have been at Highland Hospital at that time or anybody with that name. There was a nurse that was over at Highland during that time period that worked around the psych unit.

And I had a buddy of mine from Oakland PD, contact her with the name. He was pretty sharp, apparently. She'd never heard of it. Nobody I or Cunningham has talked to can find this Dr. Priest yet. I don't know why he waited until now, but Cunningham revealed there was a phone number for the psychiatrist in the original file. My partner ran a bunch of stuff up. I don't know what the hell he did.

He's better on a computer than I am, and he found out that those numbers were Highland numbers. Yeah. And the extension was a Highland number. And Mike had an idea. You know, the thing about... about if there was a number, a phone number with an extension, if we found a phone directory for Highland in 1975, you know, that's one way of finding out.

In our public records request with Almeida County, we are asking for exactly that. The phone numbers are long out of date, but the Highland directory would list the name of the psychiatrist, and maybe even the secretary. I have come up with a doctor who's actually pretty useful. He ran the emergency room at Highland from 73 to 76. And he said, you find the record. I'd be happy to go over them with you and tell you which doctors did what. It seems as though finding Dr. Priest hinges on that directory.

God willing, he'll be alive. And remember details about the patient he warned the cops about all those years ago. Next time, on the 5th. final episode of The Doodler. Dan Cunningham interviews the SFPD's main person of interest in the case. Is he living as a gay man today? Yes. The Doodler is created by the San Francisco Chronicle and Ugly Duckling

Films and produced an association with neon hummedia and Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported by me, the host, Kevin Fagan, and Mike Taylor. Produced and written by Tanner Robbins. Natalie Wren is our co-producer and Odelia Rubin, our supervising producer. Associate producers are Chloe Chobel and Ryan J. Brown. Our sound designer and composer is Hansdale's suit. Our editor is Nick White and our executive editor is Catherine St. Louis.

Editorial support from King Kaufman and Tim O'Rourke for the San Francisco Chronicle. Executive producers are Sophia Gibber and Lena Bousager for Ugly Duckling Films and Jonathan Hirsch for Neon Hum Media.