Witnessed: Fade to Black - The Doodler | 1. The Coldest Case in San Francisco

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

You’ve probably heard of the Zodiac Killer but not The Doodler. Why not? Between 1974 and ‘75 he killed at least 5 gay men in San Francisco and got away with it. But ever since, the case has been mostly overlooked. Until now. SFPD re-opened the case in 2018, with investigator Dan Cunningham at the helm. Meanwhile, award-winning reporter and host Kevin Fagan starts an investigation of his own. He starts by looking into The Doodler’s first known victim - Gerald Cavanagh. 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

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This series contains depictions of violent assault and murder. Listener discretion is advised. This emergency call was made on the night of January 27, 1974. Man helping? I believe there might be a dead person on the beach right across from, are you, Lower Street? A Lower Street?

I just wanted to let somebody now, maybe need help or something. 47 years later, I'm standing on Ocean Beach at the spot where that body was found. We're standing here at 48th and Yala. It would have been right across from where we are. With me is Dan Cunningham, an investigator with the SFPD. At some point, when the police got there, the tide was rising, and his body was getting hit by the tide. To police in the 70s, right away it was clear that this was a murder victim. The San Francisco Examiner identified him two days later, towards the back on page 42.

Here's Dan Cunningham. Gerald Kavanaugh, who was a Canadian man, 49, 50 years old. The paper said that Gerald Kavanaugh was a furniture finisher. Whoever killed him had stabbed him 17 times in the chest the back and the stomach. 17 times. The article didn't include much other information. In fact, it was soliciting leads.

Police provided a phone number for readers to call. So there's people that are out there that were terrified. Terrified when they started bringing it back up again and talking about it. It was almost like they don't want me to come by to talk about it because all these feelings came back up again. Cunningham was in high school, when Kavanaugh was found on this beach.

But today he's the guy tasked with this cold case. And the cases of four other dead men, maybe more. All of them are linked to one suspected killer. Dan and I have been in touch for about two years. We talk, but Dan can't give me too much information. Technically, the investigation is still active. I'm Kevin Fagan. I've been a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle for

28 years. I've covered the Zodiac, William the Freeway Killer Bonin, and the Unabomber. I've watched the executions of seven killers at San Quentin Prison and held the hands of the victims' mothers and fathers as they grieved. I lived on the streets of San Francisco for six months to cover the stark reality of homelessness. I care about the forgotten and the marginalized people at the heart of this city. And there's one case, one unsolved case, that still angers me. It confounds me. Between 1974 and 1975, San Francisco was victimized by one of the most prolific killers of gay men in modern history. He preyed on people in queer neighborhoods across the city, in the tenderloin, Polk Gulch, and the Castro.

He went to gay bars, places with disco music blasting and men dancing. They say this killer watched them, maybe while leaned up against the bar, or sitting in the corner of the room. He'd pick someone, then he would draw, sketching their portrait on a cocktail napkin. Once he showed that man their picture, they were his. The killer would tell his target that he wanted to go somewhere more private. They'd leave the crowded bar behind, and the next morning, the man he had sketched was dead. And that's how this killer earned his name, the doodler. Most people in San Francisco at the time never even heard about the doodler.

His murders weren't headline news. They were missed by the mainstream media, relegated to the back pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. The doodler didn't even make it into the paper by name until January of 1976, well after his last victim was identified. The question is, why? There was a lot of stuff going on. There was zebra, there was Zodiac, there was Doodler, so there were a lot of mysterious random murders.

I feel like it was overlooked, maybe just because it had to do the gay population. People were getting mugged, people were getting harassed, people were getting beaten, and the Doodler took it to another level is that he was killing people and getting away with it because the police didn't be honest with your care. It's been 47 years since the doodler lurked in San Francisco. And it might seem strange that a prolific murderer went unnoticed for so long,

but police at the time didn't have all the information, tools, and context at our disposal today. First, the Golden State Killer, and now there is word of a potential break in the case of another serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area. He was nicknamed the doodler because the serial killer sketched each of his victims before killing them. In 2019, the SFPD held a press conference announcing they were actively pursuing this case. They released an updated sketch of what the doodler may look like today. I was there at that press conference. We know that in the 1970s, this was gripping the gay community in San Francisco.

And so Inspector Cunningham reopened all the cases that were involved at that time to see if we could identify who that is. so that we could get closure for those victims and hopefully make an arrest in those cases. There was a sudden urgency in this case after all those years. Police were asking the public for new tips and offering a reward. On the one hand, I wanted to ask, why now? But on the other, I also wanted to ask, why did it take all these years? In my conversations with police, I realized that to get to the bottom of this case, to answer any questions I might have,

I needed to go back to the very beginning. That's what this podcast is all about. Putting together what the cops have already found with a new investigation, mine. I want to unravel the doodler mystery. Talk to victims' families, friends, anyone who will get me closer to understanding what happened all those years ago. This story bounces from California to Canada to Germany to Sweden and back. I've interviewed retired investigators,

online sleuths, drag queens, and queer historians. I've talked to sisters and daughters, and I'm still chasing leads on one anonymous actor and a foreign diplomat. Because there's another reason behind this urgency that I've discovered in my digging. Police believe the killer is still alive today. Listen to this series carefully, and let us know if anything you hear in this show jogs a memory of yours. We've got more information on our website, thedoodlerpod.com.

And if you've got a tip, you can call us at 415-570-9-299. From the San Francisco Chronicle, Ugly Duckling Films, and Neon Hum Media, this is the untold story of The Doodler. in san francisco you're never that far from the water but even on a summer's day in july your walk can be engulfed by fog a weather pattern so familiar that some folks have taken to naming the fog coral ocean beach stretches three and a half miles down s fs pacific coast bike paths and pedestrian walkways swerve and climb through the white sandy dunes and the sea grass the ocean is a lot of the ocean is a live with deadly rip currents and huge waves.

Dan Cunningham and I walked along the beach around midday, talking about Gerald Cavanaugh. We might have met him walking along the beach. We don't know. Yeah. I got to keep everything open to mind about it. Sure. But this is, I believe, this is what Gerald Cavanagh probably did that night.

We're walking along the route. He probably walked along. Yeah, we're walking. Investigator Dan Cunningham always wears a tie and a jacket on the job. His gray hair is clipped short. He's been working murders for years, and he's seen things most people don't want to see. Cunningham's a dogged investigator. He's the kind of guy who doesn't give up.

The fact that Dan is here with me is a big deal. I'm a journalist, and journalists always want to know the stuff that cops aren't ready to make public. Still, we share a goal. We both want to unravel this mystery. In fact, Dan Cunningham is how I first learned about the doodler. He called me a couple of years ago looking for a reporter who used to cover the case. He mentioned the doodler, and my interest was piqued.

By August of 2020, I'd convinced my editors to let me work on the doodler case full-time. Month later, Cunningham agreed to meet me at a cafe in the North Bay. He still didn't want to make all of his progress public, but we could at least share notes on the original investigation. that's easy for me to sit here and say a Monday morning quarterback I would have done this I would have done that and when in fact I think that the investigators that were working the case at the time did every it took every measure they could to fall through and locate a suspect so number one let's let's look at the first dundler killing they describe what happened he was found parallel to the great highway in the surf and this was

brought to police attention after a phone call was made. When police arrived at Ocean Beach that night in 1974, it was dark, almost pitch black. There's not like light poles down there. It's pretty dark. The victim was on his back. He was middle-aged and balding, short, stocky. With a flashlight, they could see he was covered in blood. There were stab wounds all over his torso and a defensive wound on his hand. He didn't have any identification on him, just a couple of dollars. in his pocket and a timex watch on his wrist.

The surf was starting to take it out when the police arrived. They themselves had to drag the body, I believe, a little bit of ways away before the medical examiner's office got there because they were fearful that it was going to wash out to see. Something about this stabbing led cops to believe it was possible two different knives had been used. The brutal severity suggested this was a rage killing, not a spur-of-the-moment robbery.

But to police at the time, it was just a random act of violence. If you hung around the beach at 2.30 in the morning or people might think something of you because at that time, a lot of the bathrooms that were down by Ocean Beach were kind of used as a center for gay sex. The cops didn't realize it yet, but Kavanaugh was likely targeted because he was gay.

The first in a series of killings like this to come. Did this killer know Ocean Beach was a cruising spot? Did he cruise this beach himself? Or did he meet Kavanaugh somewhere else and take him here? All of that is unclear to me, and probably to SFPD too. But they did release a recording of the emergency call they got that night. Can I guess this is a question. You know, I believe there might be a dead person.

on the beach right across from the lower street if you follow the street right down to the water I was walking along there and so I had somebody lying there but I didn't want to get too close because you know what could happen The caller reported a body by the water

Gerald Kavanaugh's body The dispatcher asked if the caller would give his name. No, I don't think that's necessary. I just wanted to let somebody know maybe need help or something. The person that made the phone call was never located or found. There's a feeling, if I remember right, this might be the guy, right? Bragging or wanting people to find the body before it swept out to see? We've thought of that, and that's a possibility.

Who was ever on call that night gets that case, all right? That's retired SWAT sergeant, Bob Del Tori. It went in order. This went right down the line. Who's next? Who's next? It's just a handoff. Two inspectors got the call the night Kavanaugh was killed.

They showed up in the pre-dawn hours. They combed the beach for evidence and took photos of the body, like they did for every case. These guys were tops in their trade. They were very methodical. That's retired inspector, Frank Falzone. When he thinks back on his work in the 1970s, he lights up. Things were happening in the 70s that were, I think I said to you once, I couldn't wait to get to work.

It was like I searched for adventure. I didn't know what I was going to be walking into each and every day. At the time, homicide detectives on the SFPD worked cases in pairs, and they worked a lot of cases. The Zodiac killer was still sending letters to the Chronicle, and the first wave of zebra killings had begun, a streak of seemingly random shootings that terrorized the city. So the 16 guys working homicide had plenty on their hands.

Falzone calls in an adventure, but to many, the surge in crime that characterized the 1970s was just a horror. Before that, the perception was that murders were commonly committed amongst friends, families, coworkers, people who might have grudges. These cases were different. With the Zodiac, the zebra, and now with the doodler, motives were becoming less clear. Crime was changing, but so was culture.

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so you're getting quality without the crazy markup. Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with Quince. Go to quince.com slash crimes for free shipping and 365-day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash crimes. Back in the early 70s, San Francisco was just becoming a mecca for gay men. If you were gay in Omaha, Nebraska, or Birmingham, Alabama, you were in danger. Gay men were portrayed as sexual deviance, pedophiles, criminals. Identifying yourself as gay was extremely risky, even to loved ones.

What is the worst incident that has ever happened to you since you've been gay as far as being gay? I guess my parents, you know, them finding out was the worst. People came to San Francisco from other parts of the country because they were gay and because they felt like they could be themselves here and that they could start a new life and not be closeted. That's Anne Kronenberg. She was active in the gay liberation movement and worked for activist and icon Harvey Milk.

LGBTQ wasn't even a term back then. There was this freedom if you were in San Francisco and, you know, anything goes. It was like sex and drugs and you had the bathhouses and the bars were just overflowing and dancing. It was just such a fun time. There were entire neighborhoods where you could be surrounded by gay people, bars by the dozens all around. The summer of love was over, but the hippies were still living like it was 1969. Time of great liberation and electricity. That's Tom Amiano.

He's a longtime gay activist, a former San Francisco supervisor in state assemblymen. The civil rights movement, the gay movement, the peace movement, the women's movement. There's a lot of shit happening. The politics and social activism of the 60s and 70s were momentous. People were marching in the streets against segregation and discrimination. Social revolution was.

in the air. Can you tell me what you feel about the homophile movement? I think it's great. I think it's really dynamite. And I think the only way to achieve it is through force and marches like this. But even San Francisco wasn't immune from homophobia.

Two men could walk hand in hand in some neighborhoods. But Tom Amiano says gay bashings were still common. You had to keep your eyes peeled. What is now considered a hate crime was something I think the LGBT community, you know, we were resigned to it. For decades, these attacks went unreported by the victims or ignored by police. But the big issue in the gay community is as simple as law and order.

Gay people are simply afraid to walk the streets at night. Beatings are an everyday occurrence here in the Castro neighborhood. It kind of goes against the image of the fabulous gay haven we imagined San Francisco to be. Cleve Jones, an LGBT rights activist, lived in it. People forget that it was still considered criminal behavior to be gay. We didn't decriminalize until 76, and the police department didn't quite seem to get that memo for a while. There were police raids on gay bars, murders, beatings, and discrimination. Here's Anne Kronenberg again.

Gay men are getting busted after they've been at a bar for the night and pulled into jail because what they're, they did was illegal, in quotes. But Charles Manson, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the Zodiac, the zebra killings, and the wave of violence that kicked up in the late 60s and early 70s, those were the stories that took center stage in California. I was in college in the early 70s, and I can remember, like, walking around San Francisco on the street corner and, like, am I going to get killed by the Zodiac? The zebra killings, because it felt like there was so much going on.

The Zodiac is still one of the best-known zero killers of the last hundred years, and the most famous to be associated with the Bay Area. He killed at least five people, but he claims he killed more. He made those claims in a series of cryptic letters to San Francisco newspapers, including The Chronicle. And on January 29, 1974, two days after the doodler's first victim was found on Ocean Beach, the Zodiac sent a letter to the San Francisco. Chronicle. It read, Me 37, SFPD, Zero. And that same day, the second wave of a completely different murder spree started, the zebra killings. Five people were shot seemingly at random.

The victims were going about their daily lives, running errands, doing laundry at the laundromat, and someone would come up, shoot them, and run. San Francisco's mayor at the time, Joseph Alliotto, summed it up perfectly. One of the problems we're having every time you have a mindless thing without motive, and when the victims themselves are selected at random, when that kind of a thing is there, you can't really investigate it as you would a regular murder. There's no way of doing it. After that, the normally busy streets of San Francisco emptied out.

Nightlife and tourist traffic dropped to almost nothing for a while. Kavanaugh's murder happened in the midst of all this. Maybe that worked in the killer's favor. The Zodiac and the zebra killers wanted to terrorize. They wanted an audience. The doodler didn't seem like that. He didn't want to draw attention. In March 2017, police in Ketchikan, Alaska, got a worried call.

And I haven't heard some of them, so I'm getting worried. It was about a belief. loved surgeon, one of just two in town, named Eric Garcia. When police officers arrived to check on the doctor, they found him dead on a couch. Is it a suicide? Is it a murder? What is it? From ABC Audio and 2020, cold-blooded mystery in Alaska is out now.

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an original series streaming August 12th on Disney Plus. Sign up today. 18 plus subscription required TNCs apply. Standing here at the site of Gerald Kavanaugh's last breath on Ocean Beach, Dan and I are surrounded by a beautiful panoramic scene. A cool breeze is coming off the surf. What do you pull from standing here where Kavanaugh died? What do you learn from this?

I mean, it's just terrific that a person can come out here not knowing they're going to be killed and getting brought down into deep order by somebody. yeah so to speak and ended up getting murdered in a spot like this and almost getting your body washed out to see potentially when all you you did was you wanted to be who you were in those days that was the way people met each other to express themselves to bonding of other people have sex and uh i don't think he should have murdered for it and i believe that uh Nobody should, none of these other murders. Nobody should get murdered ever.

But these were horrific because I think that was the last thing on his mind when he was walking down that piece. Me and I just walked down at 1.30 in the morning, whatever time it was, and thinking he was going to have possibly potentially sex and then do whatever he was going to do after and live his life for how many more years he had on his earth and it all stopped right in front of us.

In 2018, when Cunningham started on this case, he started from the very beginning. He went through all the notes, the crime scene photos, all the contacts the original inspectors were able to scrape together. That's the kind of stuff he isn't allowed to share with us, but he understands that I want what he wants, to figure out what really happened all those years ago. Our investigations are separate, but parallel. How many boxes of files were there? So there was some binders, and I found a binder that was the inspector of the cases. Dan gives a lot of vague answers like that.

He needs to hold on to a few things only the killer would know, save it for the interrogation room. But what's in there is sparse, short on detail. I mean, as we even speak now, I'm still looking for things in regards to it because the offices have moved. Different things have happened throughout the years. Dan can't show me these cases. case files, or even the boxes they sit in. But I can still piece together this story from other sources. At this early stage, all possibilities are open on this case. Police presume Kavanaugh's killer was a man and a well-prepared one. Dan told me police theorized that maybe

he brought two knives with him to stab Kavanaugh, like he had a backup plan in case things went wrong. He picked a well-shielded spot, too. The sound of the waves would drown out any screams for help, but there were still more questions. Did he live in the city? Did he pick Kavanaugh at random? Or did he know him somehow? I did some digging through genealogy websites looking for anyone who might have known Gerald Kavanaugh. He reportedly worked for a mattress company in San Francisco, but after scouring business records and talking to mattress company owners and managers dating back to the 1970s, I could find no record of him. I discovered he was an immigrant from Montreal, Canada. He has family there, but so far no one has

responded to messages. Kavanaugh is buried in Colma, California, thousands of miles from his hometown, and any family he had there. His headstone is set into the ground on a broad, wind-swept field, surrounded by hundreds of others just like it. Maybe that's what you're what he would have wanted, but I doubt it. It feels like his memory was just erased. One of my goals for this project is to undo that, to honor the memories of the dead. Five months after Kavanaugh was found on the beach, Joseph J. Stevens, a drag queen from Concord, was found stabbed. Then it was Klaus Christman, a German on holiday and San Francisco. Then Frederick Caput, a decorated Navy veteran, was killed. And lastly, this killer

took Harold Goldberg, a merchant sailor. Those are just the names we know. My reporting leads me to believe there's at least one more. To profile the doodler, I need to gather everything I can about the people he killed. And surfacing new information is tough. All I've got are newspaper clippings and a few retired police contacts. But most importantly, I've got a guy who can find people. Next time on The Doodler. Hello. Hey there, it's Kevin.

Okay, so we're on the machine now? Oh, yeah. If I stand any chance at all of breaking this case, I need someone who can get to friends, family, anyone who might have known the victims. Mike Taylor and I worked together as reporters of The Chronicle. These days, he's a private eye. We're looking at something that's 45 years old, and so probably a majority of the people connected to it are gone.

But it doesn't take long for him to strike gold. I just got an email that I saw on the lower right corner of my screen from Melissa, saying, hi. We'd love to talk to you. Tell her, yes, I'll go visitor Thursday. Tell her I can come in person. That's next time on The Untold Story. of The Doodler. The Doodler is created by the San Francisco Chronicle and Ugly Duckling Films and produced

in association with neon hum media and Sony music entertainment. It is 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 Bennett Purser, Chloe Chobel, and Ryan J. Brown. Our sound designer and composer is Hansdale Sue. 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 Bowsager for Uglydeckling Films and Jonathan Hirsch for Neon Hum Media.