The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

In 1972, a handful of young women would go missing or be murdered in the area surrounding Sonoma County's most populated city, Santa Rosa. All had reportedly been hitchhiking at the time of their disappearance or death, and a few were last seen getting into the cars of strangers…

Listen to "The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders (Part One)" on Spreaker.

Lisa Michelle Smith was a 17-year-old that ran away from her foster parents' home on March 16th, 1971. Lisa was last seen hitchhiking in Santa Rosa, California - the county seat of Sonoma County - about 55 miles north of San Francisco and approximately 100 miles west of California's capital, Sacramento. While Santa Rosa is now known as an affluent city in Wine Country, just an hour or two outside of the tech-based Silicon Valley, the city had a much smaller population back in the early 1970s... which is when this young woman decided to run away from home.

Lisa's foster parents would report her missing a short time after her disappearance, and would later learn that she was spotted hitchhiking a short distance away from their home, along Hearn Avenue, at around 7:00 PM on March 16th. At the time, she was wearing a white blouse with ruffles, a dark pea coat, green bell-bottom jeans, and cowboy boots. This would be the last known sighting of the young woman, with neither of her foster parents - nor her boyfriend - coming up with many theories about why she remained missing. Despite there being no reason for her to have done so, police labeled her a runaway.

On March 26th, 1971 - nearly two weeks later - a woman matching Lisa's description leaped from a moving vehicle traveling approximately 55 miles per hour along Highway 37, just past the Petaluma River, en route to Napa. A passing motorist would describe the incident to authorities as the young woman was rushed to a hospital in Novato - a small city about 30 miles south of Santa Rosa - where she was treated for a skull fracture and multiple severe abrasions.

While speaking to police at the hospital, as well as nurses, the woman identified herself as "Lisa Smith," and claimed to have been hitchhiking from San Francisco to Sausalito. She said that she had gotten a ride from a man driving a red-and-white late-model Ford truck, which had a horse-like hood decoration, who had started to assault her, demanding sex in exchange for a ride. Since the man wasn't planning on stopping to let her out, this young woman decided to take matters into her own hands, leaping from the vehicle amidst high-speed traffic... leading to her current injuries.

Hospital staff would describe this young woman as looking 21 or so, and - as I mentioned - she used the name "Lisa Smith," which is about as common a name as possible. Despite her giving up very little specific information about herself or her travels, authorities would begin to link her case to the still-missing 17-year-old from Santa Rosa with the same name - who had disappeared about ten days before this young woman was hospitalized - and local newspapers would begin to report that they were one and the same.

On April 1st, 1971, the Press Democrat, a newspaper based out of Santa Rosa, would report that 17-year-old Lisa Michelle Smith had been reunited with her family back home in Livermore, having run away to spend a couple of weeks with her friends in San Francisco. It would appear to put a bow on this saga, proposing a happy ending for the young woman at the center of this story, who endured a horrifying situation but was able to survive... making it home to her loved ones.

However, the truth is that it's unknown what happened to these young women... not only the woman from the hospital calling herself "Lisa Smith," but the missing teenager from Santa Rosa, whose fate remains unknown to this day.

A 2011 article in the same newspaper (Santa Rosa's Press Democrat) would offer up a different perspective on the story, claiming that there had been no reunion for Lisa and her loved ones: that she had never returned home in March of 1971, and was still missing more than forty years later.

This article would detail how the original missing person report from 1971, as well as the young woman's medical records from the hospital in Novato, had gone missing over the years. The officers that had handled the missing teen's case back then - as well as the medical personnel that treated the young woman who leaped from the moving vehicle weeks later - were unable to verify the information reported in various newspapers decades beforehand. Too much time had passed, records had been lost, and those with information about these cases had either passed on or were unable to shed any light on either.

Attempts to recover any kind of record, in this case, had been exhausted, and both Lisa Michelle Smith (the missing teenager from Santa Rosa) and the young woman calling herself "Lisa Smith" (at the hospital in Novato) had proven impossible to track down. What made investigators' task even more difficult was that no one in the original newspaper reports was named (such as Lisa's foster parents or boyfriend, or the witness that had seen the young woman leap from the moving vehicle). And since "Lisa Smith" is one of the most common names on the planet, trying to track down either woman seemed like an impossibility decades later.

It's now widely believed that the article from April 1st, 1971 - detailing how this young woman had been returned to her family in Livermore - was a hoax, played out for some unknown reason. Perhaps someone had fed the reporter in-question false information, but there was no way to verify that this case was closed in any regard.

Speaking in 2011, Detective Jesse Hanshew would tell the Press Democrat about the still-missing Lisa Michelle Smith:

"We can't conclude she was ever found. She may be living well somewhere. We hope she is."

Nearly five decades after this young woman went missing, several questions remain unanswered in her case. The same goes for the possibly-related case that took place less than two weeks later, just miles away. Because none of these questions have been unanswered, investigators believe that this may have been the first victim attributed to a serial killer that hunted young women - primarily, young hitchhikers - in this region of northern California throughout the 1970s.

This is the story of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders.

Sonoma County is a large and prosperous county in northern California, located along the coastline, just north of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sonoma County has been ranked one of the best places to live in all of North America, as well as one of the best places to own a business, although both have started to lose standing over the past decade, due to the high cost of owning and renting property in the area (which had seemingly driven up costs across the board). But back in the early 1970s, this wasn't the case... while the population of the surrounding metropolitan area is now approximately half-a-million, the population was less than half of that just fifty years ago, back when the area was very picturesque for the time.

While this region is mostly known for the large cities nearby - not only San Francisco, but San Jose, Oakland, and Sacramento, all of which are within a couple of hours' drive (depending on traffic) - Sonoma County is an area with a strong agricultural output. As I mentioned earlier, Sonoma is a part of California's Wine Country, and despite Napa County being known as California's premier wine producer, Sonoma is actually the largest producer of wine in all of North America. It's advantageous climate and fertile soil also makes it a leading producer of hops, grapes, prunes, apples and has turned this region into a farming hub along the west coast.

I only mention this because back in the early to mid-1970s, Sonoma County was very much the embodiment of small-town America, which was located close to the big city amenities of cities like San Francisco and Sacramento but was known primarily for its ample farmland. Santa Rosa was the largest city in the county, with the population hovering around 50,000, and the county's other residents were spread out amongst the roughly 1600 square miles that made up Sonoma County.

Santa Rosa will be the primary setting for this story, simply because it's the largest city in the county (and where more than a quarter of the local population lived), but this story takes us throughout the numerous small cities and rural towns that surround Sonoma County.

Yvonne Lisa Weber was born in Carson City, Nevada on January 29th, 1959, but would end up moving to California during her childhood. Yvonne's parents would divorce early on in her life, and her mother Sheila would later remarry a man named David Herrington, who would become stepfather to Yvonne and her older brother, Mark (who was fiercely protective of his younger siblings). Together, they lived in Santa Rosa, and Yvonne would have two half-siblings: a brother named Aaron and a sister named Emily (who was born later in 1972).

Yvonne would end up attending Herbert Slater Middle School, where she became good friends with another girl, Maureen Sterling. Despite being older than Maureen, many just assumed that she was younger.

Maureen Louise Sterling was a Santa Rosa native, who was known to be the more dominant of the two; with a confident, anti-authoritarian attitude that often made people think she was older than she really was. Born on February 18th, 1959, Maureen was well-versed in tragedy from an early age; her father, Larry Sterling, would perish in a water-skiing accident in August of 1958, months before her birth, at the age of 23. This left his wife - Maureen's mother, Arleen - to raise both her and her older sister, Theresa, as a single mother (in an era where that was easier said than done).

Not only was Maureen taller than Yvonne, but many reports state that she was "anti-authoritarian" - possibly related to a strong personality she had developed early in life, due to her family history. Regardless, she and Yvonne had become good friends, who spent time with each other on the weekends.

The two were last seen on the evening of February 4th, 1972 - a Friday - having gone to the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. Also known as "Snoopy's Home Ice", this was a skating rink owned by Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, who had moved to the region and built the rink just a few years prior (1969). In the time since, it had become one of the few places in the region for kids to congregate on the weekends, and Yvonne and Maureen were no exception.

That Friday, the two had been dropped off at the skating rink by one of their mothers at around 7:30 PM but were no-shows when she returned to get them at around 11:00. The mother would attempt to find the two; entering the skating rink and searching around for a bit, before calling the other girls' mother and finding out that they hadn't gone home. She would begin calling around to other friends' homes for a bit, before deciding to report the girls missing.

The Santa Rosa Police Department would oversee the investigation into the disappearance of the girls, beginning their search the day after the two were last seen.

According to police, the last sighting of Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber was at approximately 9:00 PM on February 4th - roughly 1.5 hours after they were dropped off at the skating rink by one of their mothers. The two girls were reported to have gotten into a vehicle along Guerneville Road, just outside of the hockey rink. It was unknown if they were willingly getting into the car (or were being forced/compelled into it), but the two girls were known to have hitchhiked together in the past, and it was believed that they might have done so here. Where they might have gone, however, remained anyone's guess.

Investigators would look into rumors that Maureen and Yvonne had been in contact with a man that lived near Russian River, an area along a river of the same name, but they were unable to find anything definitive putting them in that region. Police would also receive reports that the girls had been spotted at a Santa Rosa bowling alley after leaving the skating rink, but this too would remain an unfounded rumor.

Police would oversee searches throughout the region, spanning out from Santa Rosa towards Kenwood and Sugarloaf, as well as looking in the Spring Lake and Howard Park regions. Unfortunately, it seems like whatever information police were able to compile early on quickly lead to dead-ends, and the rumors - scant as they were - began to evaporate fully. Officer Robert Riddell would recount to the Press Democrat in January of 1973:

"A week later it seemed like all the leads just stopped... and within two weeks of the time they were reported missing, we weren't getting any feedback on the girls."

A culprit for this lack of activity seems to be the reaction from both law enforcement and the press - or, rather, the lack of a reaction. Police would seem to insist early on that the two girls were runaways, who had voluntarily gone missing; likely heading out to visit with a friend of theirs, and would probably turn up in a matter of days or weeks. It seems like authorities didn't push too hard to find the missing youngsters, and the case wouldn't receive much publicity at all until later in the year (but that was when the circumstances changed drastically... more on that in the next episode).

Later on, when it became apparent that the two girls had not run away, Lieutenant John Hess would appeal to the public, asking:

"There's a chance somebody may have given them a ride, somebody who's not connected with their disappearance, but who just gave them a ride somewhere that night. Naturally, we'd like to have any information that would indicate the girls left the ice arena that night, because right now most of our information stops there."

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, this case would receive almost no attention in the press, with police labeling Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber runaways - much to their parents' chagrin. Their disappearance would eventually settle onto the region's backburner, where it would stay for the time being, overwhelmed by other stories from the region... including the story of a murdered coed from Santa Rosa...

Kim Wendy Allen was born on July 22nd, 1952 to her parents, Kimball and Roberta Allen. She would have one sister (Annilee) and one brother (Robert), and her mother Roberta would later recall to reporters with the Press Democrat:

"... she was never a speck of trouble to anyone from the day she came on this earth. She trusted everyone, believed that people were good."

Kim would graduate from the private, all-girl Ursuline High School in Santa Rosa, serving as the school's Senior Class spirit leader, but was known as a relatively private person that often kept her thoughts and opinions to herself - even from the people that she knew and cared for. Robin Wilkey, a high school friend that described Kim as her "big sister," later described her as:

"The most unique person I've ever known. We spent a lot of time together during my freshman year and it still bothered me near her graduation that she knew me so well and I didn't know exactly how she thought about things... But her values were easily seen and she took great interest teaching me the things that meant the most to her. She was a hard person to come close to, but her all-out enthusiasm for the things she was interested in was something that I will always admire."

By 1972, Kim was 19 years old and was already in the middle of her fourth semester at Santa Rosa Junior College, where she was studying art. She lived along the 2200 block of Guerneville Road with a pair of roommates and worked part-time at a natural health food store in Larkspur, a town about 40 miles south of Santa Rosa. Kim didn't have a car of her own at the time, so she often hitchhiked to and from work and class; despite being warned about its dangers by her parents, who were unable to shake her resolve... or her trust in the good of strangers.

Jolene Rich and Fred Samia, fellow students at Santa Rosa Junior College, would later describe Kim as:

"... a pure spirit, innocent... with a child-like acceptance of people."

To those that knew Kim, she seemed like one of the few genuine people in the world, who wasn't afraid of her bizarre quirks; rather, it seems like she embraced them, and made them a part of her everyday life. In addition to being private and "unusual" (according to Elizabeth Barr, one of her instructors at school), she seemed to believe that everyone was inherently good. Many believe that this trait is what eventually led to her falling prey to a killer.

Kim Allen was last seen on March 4th, 1972 - a Saturday - during which she had hitchhiked from San Francisco to Larkspur. She had been visiting with friends in San Francisco but arrived to work at Larkspur shortly before her shift started at noon. She worked for approximately five hours and then began the process of hitchhiking back to her home in Santa Rosa.

Just outside of where she worked, along Larkspur's Magnolia Avenue, Kim would be picked up by a pair of men who were heading north; not too far, however, only a few miles away to San Rafael. She agreed to go with them, believing that it'd be easier to find a ride north to Santa Rosa once there.

The two men dropped off Kim along San Rafael's Belle Avenue, not too far away from the north side of Highway 101, where she was planning to hitch a ride back home. At the time, she was carrying an orange, aluminum-frame backpack and holding a large wooden soy barrel with Chinese characters written on the side, which - according to friends - she was planning to turn into a drum.

Dozens of motorists would recall seeing Kim standing along the side of the road in San Rafael, arm (and thumb) outstretched, hoping for a ride. But this would, unfortunately, be the last known time that the young woman was ever seen alive...

On March 5th, 1972 - the day after Kim Allen was last seen hitchhiking in San Rafael - a body was found in an embankment just off of Bennett Valley Road, about 40 miles away from where she had last been seen (and about 10 miles southeast of Santa Rosa). This body was found at 2:00 PM that Sunday, by a couple of Montgomery High School students that were riding around on motorcycles that afternoon. They found the body about 20 feet away from Enterprise Road, down a steep embankment, lying in a creekbed.

Almost immediately, police began to suspect that the body of the young woman had been tossed down the embankment. Her nude body was found lying facedown in a creekbed, having been bound at her wrists and ankles to the point of intense bruising; indicating that the ligatures had been tied extremely tightly and that she had struggled to free herself before her death.

Early newspaper reports would indicate that the victim had suffered a wound from a knife, but since that wasn't repeated in other detailed, subsequent reports, it's hard to determine its veracity. It was also believed that the young woman had been raped by the person that had killed her, with the sexual assault and murder taking place elsewhere, leading to the dumping of the victim's body in this isolated area, made evident by the scratches all over her body (which indicated her being tossed down the embankment and eventually rolling to a stop).

An autopsy would find that this young woman had been strangled to death with a cord or wire of some kind, but on a strange-and-horrifying note, Sonoma County coroner Andrew Johansen would tell reporters that she had been tortured beforehand, stating:

"The pathologist said it was done slowly. She was strangled for at least a half hour or more."

It was believed that this woman was slowly garroted with a cord-like object for approximately 30 minutes, with the killer depriving her of oxygen numerous times and then relaxing his grip. This was repeated several times, over roughly half-an-hour, before the victim eventually lost consciousness forever. She was believed to have died at around midnight the night before her body's discovery, March 4th. Her cause-of-death was officially listed as asphyxia, and her manner-of-death was homicidal strangulation.

Semen was recovered from her body, which - because this was a generation before DNA testing - couldn't be used to identify the killer, but could help identify his blood type in the future. It would also be noted that an oily substance was found on the right side of the young woman's body, which seemed similar to car oil, indicating a potential link to an autobody or mechanic shop.

Sadly, police were unable to identify the victim right away, simply because her only identifier at the time was a single golden hoop earring, which she had been wearing at the time of the murder. No other clothing or personal belongings were found at or near the crime scene, including the mate of the earring, which was missing from the victim's left ear. It was believed that this might have been stolen by the killer, or permanently lost while rolling down the steep embankment. Regardless, it's never been found.

The roommates of the missing Kim Allen would reach out to authorities on Thursday, March 9th - four days after the young woman's body had been found outside of Santa Rosa - and would identify the victim as their missing roommate later that day. Police would then reach out to Kim's sister from San Rafael, who officially ID'd the remains the following day.

Because Kim's body was discovered outside of Santa Rosa, along a rural country road, the investigation into her murder would be overseen by the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, who would dispatch 10 detectives to work on the case early on, and even procure the services of noted criminologist Peter D. Barnett from Berkeley (who would begin analyzing the physical evidence alongside local detectives).

At the scene where Kim's body had been found, police would discover a leg impression at the top of the road, overlooking the embankment where the victim's body had been thrown. This impression indicated that the killer had slipped or tripped in the process of tossing her body over the side, and had fallen a few feet down the embankment himself. Because of the distance he supposedly fell, it's believed that this man had injured himself was disposing of the remains, and this would become a point of interest for investigators moving forward.

Unfortunately, because Kim Allen was notoriously aloof and private, it was hard for investigators to get a true accounting of her final days. It was reported that she had last been seen by her roommates approximately three days before her murder (March 1st), but had last been seen by coworkers on March 4th (less than 24 hours before her body was found outside of Santa Rosa). Because of this, no missing persons report had been filed, which led to her body remaining unidentified for the better part of a week. No one knew she was missing.

Officers would attempt to recount her final hours through witness sightings, which would begin to pile up after the details of her violent death began to be dispersed by news outlets in the region. Investigators would begin to thoroughly investigate anyone they knew that had come into contact with her that weekend, including the two men that had given her a ride from her workplace in Larkspur to San Rafael. Police were able to track down both men, who were questioned thoroughly (one was even subjected to a polygraph test - which he passed) and quickly eliminated as suspects.

Suspicions were raised when a 20-year-old was arrested that same month for raping an 18-year-old coed from Sonoma State Junior College at knifepoint. But investigators would tell reporters that there was no known connection between him and the unsolved murder of Kim Allen.

The same goes for a local man named Robert Lee Bushon, who was arrested later that same month for abducting a young woman that was hitchhiking in the region. After abducting the woman at knifepoint, Bushon had taken the woman back to his apartment, where he forced her to undress and then bound her in ligatures. Thankfully, the woman was not sexually assaulted - Bushon reportedly just fell asleep next to her - and she was able to escape from his apartment the following morning. Police would later investigate links between Bushon and Kim's murder, but were unable to find any connections. He later pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges and was sentenced to serve time in San Quentin.

These were just two of the more than thirty persons-of-interest that investigators probed in the weeks after Kim Allen's death, subjecting a handful to polygraph tests, but were ultimately unable to connect to the crime via physical evidence.

While police continued to search for answers in this troubling case, a couple of relics from Kim Allen continued to haunt them. This included an aluminum-frame orange backpack that she had been carrying at the time of her initial disappearance, which was found weeks after her death. The same could be said for her checkbook, which was dropped in a drive-up mailbox across the street from the Kentfield, California post office, on the morning of March 24th, 1972 (between the hours of 6:00 AM and 12:00 PM). This was nearly three weeks after her death and was supposedly done by her killer. Police would later claim to have found two fingerprints on the checkbook itself, which they claimed might belong to the killer, but were unable to match this up with any of their suspects.

In the weeks to come, officials would continue to put out feelers for potential witnesses to call in with any information about the case. They would dispatch nearly a dozen detectives to work the case in its earliest days but would have their work cut out for them... especially when another young student from Santa Rosa Junior College went missing just weeks later...

Jeannette Kamahele, born on February 10th, 1952, was a young woman of Hawaiian heritage who spent her formative years in Japan because of her father's naval career. She would graduate from Yokohama American High School in 1970, about 40 miles outside of Tokyo, which was designated for children of military service members stationed overseas.

After graduating from high school, Jeannette would choose to move stateside, and ended up attending Santa Rosa Junior College (the same school that had been attended by Kim Allen). She would end up living in the small town of Cotati, about eight miles south of Santa Rosa, where she lived along the 900 block of Sierra Avenue with her roommate, Nora Morales.

Like Kim Allen, Jeannette did not have a vehicle of her own, and without any available public transit, ended up hitchhiking daily. She would regularly catch rides to school from the nearby freeway on-ramp heading to Santa Rosa and seemed to have had no issue with this throughout the Spring of 1972.

On the morning of Tuesday, April 25th, Jeannette would be seen for the very last time. She departed for class that morning at around 9:30 and would fail to return home later that day - raising the suspicion of her roommate, Nora, who would begin to reach out to Jeannette's teachers, learning that she had been a no-show for all of her classes that day.

Nora would report Jeannette missing later that evening, just before midnight, causing an all-points-bulletin to be issued the following day for the 20-year-old Jeannette Kamahele, who was about 5'5" tall, weighed approximately 120 pounds, with Pacific Islander features, and long, dark hair.

Nora Morales, Jeannette's roommate, would speak to the Press Democrat newspaper just days after Jeannette's disappearance, telling them:

"She was very stable and very conscientious at school. She wouldn't have missed her classes. She is not at all flighty, she wouldn't just take off without telling anyone."

Unlike in the first case of young women disappearing from the region (Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber), authorities would not just assume that Jeannette had run away. After all, she was already an adult that was living away from her parents, and would seemingly have no reason to run away. The recent murder of Kim Allen had also brought the dangers of hitchhiking to the forefront of local conversations (more on that in a bit), so police moved forward trepidatiously, fearing that Jeannette's disappearance could be linked to the high-profile murder from a month prior.

Investigators would attempt to learn when Jeannette had last been seen alive and would discover that she had been seen a short time after leaving her home along Sierra Avenue. An acquaintance that already knew Jeannette had spotted her near the on-ramp to Highway 101, where she usually stood while attempting to solicit a ride to nearby Santa Rosa. This friend of hers had spotted her, and was planning to pull up to offer a ride, but was beaten to the punch by another vehicle that pulled up in front of him and stopped for Jeannette.

This vehicle was described as a 1950 - 1952 pickup truck, which had a faded brown homemade wooden camper atop it. The driver of this pickup truck was described as a young white male between 20 and 30 years of age, who had his brown hair fashioned in an Afro-style cut, along with either mutton chops or a thick beard. And based on his posture sitting in the car, this man appeared to be rather tall.

While police had reason to believe that this witness account was accurate, this was unfortunately where the trail to find Jeannette Kamahele would go cold. Speaking to reporters in January of 1973, nearly an entire year later - after Jeannette's case had been loosely linked to others in the region - sheriff's officials would state:

"She's probably out there somewhere too. We'll probably find her some day."

Unfortunately, that day would never come, with Jeannette Kamahele not being seen or heard from in nearly five decades.

On December 14th, 1972, a set of human remains would be discovered in a ravine off of Calistoga Road, just northeast of Santa Rosa's Rincon Valley. The remains were discovered by a young couple walking along the road on a crisp Thursday afternoon, who reported the discovery to police at around 3:20 PM.

Officers arrived at the scene a short time later and were horrified to find that the nude young woman's remains were frozen solid, indicating that she had been there for some time. Based on her surroundings, it appeared like she had been lying there for approximately one week, and was surrounded by an extensive amount of garbage (stuff that people had discarded and thrown over the road over weeks, if not months).

It quickly became apparent that - just like the body of Kim Allen - the body of this young woman had been tossed down a steep embankment, and was allowed to drop approximately thirty feet before being stopped by a group of trees. Like Kim Allen, she had also been stripped of all clothing and belongings and was only found with a pair of wire loop earrings.

Preliminary reports indicated that this young woman had died from a broken vertebra in her neck, which had left her immobilized without treatment. A more comprehensive examination would establish that the young victim had suffered a broken neck, as well as extensive damage to her spinal cord, but her official cause-of-death would not be listed, simply because there was no evidence to prove how she had died, exactly.

A thorough autopsy would not show any sign of sexual assault (nor any sign of recent sexual activity), but it was theorized that she had been deceased for anywhere between one and two weeks at the time of her body's discovery. A more specific time could not be determined, because the young woman's remains had been left outdoors for an extended period, causing them to freeze in the unusually-cold conditions that month. A pathologist would list an unofficial date of death falling between December 1st and 8th of that year (1972).

Thankfully, this young woman's identity would not remain unknown for long. While police would initially theorize that this victim had been between 16 and 23 years old, dental records would confirm just a day after the discovery of this body that she was much younger than that.

Lori Lee Kursa was born in February of 1959 to her parents, Homer Lee and Lorraine Kursa. However, because of a separation between her two parents early in her life, she would end up being raised by her mother, Lorraine, who lived along the 300 block of Delores Lane. Her father, Homer- a former police officer in Santa Rosa - had moved to Florida, abandoning his family in search of greener pastures. This unfortunately left a mark on Lori, who later expressed some disillusionment with life through a handful of behavioral outbursts.

Lori attended Lawrence Cook Middle School, and would, unfortunately, become known as a frequent runaway. She was known to leave home for days on-end, oftentimes staying with friends in the surrounding area, but ultimately returning after having had time to calm down. She was also known to hitchhike frequently, even at the young age of 13.

On November 11th, 1972, Lori was reported missing by her mother after running out on her at a U-Save grocery store. Rumors would allege that she had told her younger brother about heading to a friend's house in nearby Rohnert Park or attempting to head east to visit her father in Florida, but it's undetermined if either were true.

Despite Lori being seen in the surrounding area over the next couple of weeks - visiting with friends and roaming the streets - her last known sighting remains unconfirmed today. Some friends reported last seeing her on either November 20th or 21st, just a couple of days before Thanksgiving; while another acquaintance would claim to have seen her on November 30th, attempting to hitchhike in Santa Rosa. Both may have been true, but police were never able to learn the definitive truth about Lori Kursa's final days alive.

Investigators would begin to theorize that Lori might have jumped from a moving vehicle, unaware of the steep embankment just outside of her door, and that might have caused her to suffer the broken neck that ultimately led to her death. While this sounds a bit silly at face value, this would become a part of the hypothesis that police began compiling through the available evidence - which included a troubling witness report.

After learning about the discovery of this teenage girls' remains just outside of Santa Rosa, a man would reach out to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, informing them about a strange incident he had witnessed weeks beforehand. This incident took place between December 3rd and 9th (he wasn't exactly sure) but took place at around 9:30 PM when he was usually returning home from work.

This man says that he saw a young woman matching Lori's description being led out of an apartment complex along Parkhurst Drive (in Santa Rosa) towards a white van parked across the street. This van had an off-color door on the driver's side and was being driven by a white man with an Afro-style haircut, who seemed to be waiting for a pair of other men, who were either guiding or forcing the young woman across the street, towards the van.

This witness says that the two men holding up the young women rushed across the street towards the van, and then either pushed or led the young woman inside, before it began speeding north down Calistoga Road (nearby where Lori's body was found just days later). He told police that he was unable to recall many details about the men involved, but described the vehicle they were driving as an older-model Ford van, which had likely been in a wreck in the past. He described an off-color door on the driver's side - which was either dark gray or just painted with primer - which may have also been dented.

Compiling this information alongside the uncertain circumstances of Lori's death, police began to theorize that she had been kidnapped by a group of men, who forced her to undress inside of the car and possibly planned to hurt or rape her. They believe that she leaped from the vehicle at the first possible opportunity, resulting in her breaking her neck near the location she was later found. The men responsible for abducting her had then just left her there, out of sight, where she ended up dying slowly - unable to move or call for help.

This theory - while a bit outlandish - would be backed up by the available evidence, which later revealed that Lori had not died of her broken neck. While it had undoubtedly incapacitated her, it likely wasn't enough to have killed her. It was more likely to forensic pathologists that she had broken her neck and then died of exposure to the frozen elements, since there were no other signs of trauma that indicated her being dead before she was dumped off of Calistoga Road. Other than the two broken vertebrae in her neck, there wasn't enough to indicate a cause-of-death.

However, this official narrative set forth by investigators would fail to explain a couple of things: what had happened to Lori's clothing, and what had happened to the earrings she was wearing at the time of her disappearance? Police had discovered two hoops in her ears at the time her remains were found, but they were missing their ornamentation - the shiny, dangly bits that hang from the hoops. Neither would be found at the crime scene, and it was believed that this might have been a calling card of a burgeoning serial killer... who collected at least one earring or piece of jewelry from the women he killed.

At this point, it's worth taking a step back to talk about hitchhiking itself: the act of hitching a ride with someone that is, more often than not, a complete and total stranger. While this is a foreign concept to many, hitchhiking was seen as a very typical, normal thing back in the era these stories unfolded; especially in areas of the world where public transportation just wasn't a thing (such as Sonoma County, California).

While most of us nowadays are appalled by the idea of hitchhiking - or putting our faith in strangers, possibly for good reason - this has only come about after decades of "stranger danger" and other similar public awareness campaigns (which have almost twisted things 180-degrees in the opposite direction, in that we're now conditioned to believe in the cruelty of others... but that's a conversation I'm ill-equipped to lead).

After the brutal murder of Kim Allen in March of 1972, hitchhiking was brought up in the local press; not only by Kim's loved ones, who implored other young women to find other means of transportation (such as carpools or ride-shares) but by those that were attempting to raise awareness of the dangers of hitchhiking. This included not only local newspapers - who attempted to distribute information about the large number of sexual assaults that had been perpetrated against female hitchhikers in Sonoma County the year prior - but local police. Speaking to the press that year, Sonoma County Sheriff's Lieutenant Charles Kishbaugh warned:

"We have had more than 100 rapes last year and about 80 percent of them have involved hitchhiking. Heaven knows how many girls have been assaulted and don't report it."

It was reported that in the weeks after Kim Allen's murder, at least a handful of young women had called into local police officials and relayed information about sexual assaults that they had endured while hitchhiking, which had gone unreported. Unfortunately, almost all of these cases were months-old at the time - in which case, they were unlikely to help with the unsolved murder - but pointed towards a silent danger that was plaguing the area.

A shockingly large percentage of women in the region were regularly being sexually assaulted by strangers and were too horrified by the treatment of other rape victims by society to report their own trauma. Perhaps they were afraid to endure harsh treatment from law enforcement or were worried about the repercussions they would face if the information about their assault was relayed to those close to them (friends, family members, coworkers, employers, boyfriends, etc.). Nonetheless, this led to an urgent issue being exposed, which had been, for the most part, swept under the rug by the region that these women lived in.

Unfortunately, this rash of disappearances and murders of young women from the surrounding area - which had been linked to reports of hitchhiking - would continue on the following year, 1973...

continue to part two

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on on December 20th, 2020

Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Gabriella Bromley, Peggy Belarde, Quil Carter, Laura Hannan, Travis Scsepko, Damion Moore, Brittany Norris, Amy Hampton, Steven Wilson, Scott Meesey, Marie Vanglund, Kevin McCracken, Scott Patzold, Bryan Hall, Astrid Kneier, Aimee McGregor, Sydney Scotton, Sara Moscaritolo, Sue Kirk, Jo Wong, Thomas Ahearn, Marion Welsh, Patrick Laakso, Meadow Landry, Tatum Bautista, Teunia Elzinga, Michele Watson, Ryan Green, Stephanie Joyner, Dawn Kellar, Jacinda B., Elissa Hampton-Dutro, Sharon Manetta, Ruth Durbin, Cherish Brady, and Jennifer Henshaw