The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

Part Four

In July of 1979 - more than four years after the hitchhiker murders from Sonoma County had come to an end - a couple of grisly discoveries were made in the surrounding area. One came from the outskirts of Santa Rosa, while the other was made approximately 80 miles northwest…

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Kerry Ann Graham was born on November 12th, 1963, the third child of high school sweethearts Margarette and Herbert Graham. She had one older brother and one older sister, named Ron and Kelly (respectively), and all three siblings seemed to share at least a couple of characteristics: hotheadedness and a need for independence among them.

Despite growing up in a relatively comfortable and "normal" American household, all three of the Graham children would end up running away from home during different periods of adolescence: a stubborn attempt to achieve early independence, or something like it. However, all three would end up returning home eventually.

Everyone would remember Kerry Graham as a very hotheaded child, that was described as temperamental even on her best of days. While this made her a nightmare for her parents to handle, this made Kerry a lightning rod for others in her social circle. Among them, her teenage friend and neighbor, Francine.

Francine Marie Trimble was born on September 27th, 1964, and - as described by Gray George in his book, "Lost Coast Highway" - came from a troubled home life. She grew up with her mother, Mary Christine Walsh, and her older brother, Andrew Trimble; but her father, Gerry, wasn't ever really in the picture. Gerry was an alcoholic that abandoned the family before Francine was even born, and contributed about just as much, financially. The other father figures that Francine would look up to - boyfriends and short-term husbands of her mother, Mary - were even worse, subjecting everyone in the house to regular abuse.

Francine was very much the opposite of her friend, Kerry, in every possible way. While Kerry came from a relatively happy household, Francine came from a broken one. She spent a long period of time in foster care due to her harmful upbringing, and would transform into a quiet and shy girl that often kept her opinions to herself. Even after returning to her mother's home, she would experience the harsh realities of living in a poor, single-parent household. Because of her family having inadequate transportation available to them (aka a run-down beater car, which had spotty performance at best), Francine and her mother would often hitchhike because it was the easiest way to get around town.

Despite these obvious differences, both girls lived next to each other in Forestville, California, an incredibly small town about ten miles west of Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County. The two girls were neighbors, and became fast friends despite their slight age difference (with Kerry being about a year older than Francine). According to some, by 1978, the two had become inseparable, and were frequently accompanying one another outside of school, such as when heading to the mall or over to a friend's house. This information would later become relevant when the two disappeared in the December of 1978.

This is part four of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders.

In the early 1970s, a rash of murders and disappearances would plague the region of Santa Rosa, California, a mid-sized city in mostly-rural Sonoma County - about an hour north of the San Francisco Bay Area. The victims of this crime spree seemed to be almost entirely young female hitchhikers: teenagers and other young women that had been attempting to hitchhike around or through Santa Rosa, who were all killed by increasingly sadistic methods of strangulation, and had their bodies dumped over embankments on the outskirts of town.

While many alive today don't remember much about the murders, the story was a headline story in the Santa Rosa area throughout 1972 and 1973, and would ultimately be tied to a rash of similar murders from the surrounding area. These similar murders - which unfolded in the similar time frame of 1973 and 1974 - stretched as far north as Yuba County (north of Sacramento) and as far south as Monterey County (south of San Francisco), and were linked to the Santa Rosa crimes in a confidential report from the FBI in 1975.

But then, both crimes sprees would end just as abruptly as they had begun, with this alleged serial killer either growing bored or moving onto something else entirely. That is, if this was a single killer - or several. To-date, even the investigators in charge of this case continue to doubt whether or not this was the work of a single culprit, a group, or totally unrelated offenders operating in the same general area.

However, a handful of years after both sprees came to an unceremonious end - in the summer of 1979 - these crimes would be thrust back into the public consciousness when a couple of grisly discoveries were made... in one case, just feet away from where the body of a hitchhiking victim had been found half-a-decade prior.

During the first week of July 1979 (some publications report Friday, July 6th while others report Monday, July 2nd), the skeletal remains of a young woman would be discovered in Rincon Valley, a northeastern suburb of Santa Rosa.

In an omen that this might be linked to the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders - which had seemingly come to an end six years prior - it was reported that this discovery was made just off of Calistoga Road; not-too-far away from where the body of Lori Lee Kursa had been found back in December of 1972. In fact, this discovery was made just a few hundred feet away from where her body had been found years prior.

This young woman's remains were discovered by a hiker, who first noticed a skull, arm, and leg jutting out from a mound of silt along a creek bed, according to the San Francisco Examiner. Police would later state that the victim had been left in a shallow grave, having been thrown or dumped off of a steep ravine along a moving body of water.

When police officials arrived at the scene and began the grueling process of unearthing the victim's body, they were shocked to discover that she had been bound in a manner similar as Therese Walsh, who - if you recall from part two of this series - had been found deceased in December of 1973, half-submerged in the Mark West Creek. Prior to her death, however, she had been bound in an intricate and torturous manner that slowly asphyxiated her to death: with her hands bound in front of her, between her legs, while her feet had been pulled back by a rope that was also wrapped around her neck. This required Therese to flex her entire body in order to avoid asphyxiation... an effort that would eventually fail, because no human being was capable of persevering that for long.

It was reported early on that this murder victim had been bound in a similar method, with the remains of a rope loop found that had the victim's ankle bones sticking through, which stretched up the victim's back before wrapping itself around the 2nd and 3rd neck vertebrae four times around. This indicated that this victim had suffered through the same type of sadistic hog-tying that Therese Walsh had endured, which Sonoma County Assistant Sheriff John Sully described as looking like the victim's body had been "rolled up like a ball." Because of this, it was believed that the victim had been bound well before her death, and had possibly been dumped in this location while still alive, unable to free herself from the intricate tying method used by the killer.

In an interesting note, police would discover that the type of ligament used to bind the victim had been a venetian blind cord: the same type used to hang up venetian blinds in windows, which is commonly found at hardware and furniture stores. It was also reported that investigators found a slip knot in the cord used to bind the victim.

Mixed in with the fabric of the cord were fibers of a fabric that indicated the victim being carried in a bag - either a duffle or laundry bag of some type - before being dumped at her current location, along a fire trail in Santa Rosa's Rincon Valley. Because this bag was missing from the scene, it was believed that the killer had likely disposed of it elsewhere in the time since dumping this victim's body.

Unfortunately, while investigators were quickly able to develop theories about this victim and how she had died, they would unable to officially determine her cause-of-death due to the skeletonized state of her remains. Because so much time had elapsed since she had died, officials were unable to definitively determine how she had died, but would operate under the assumption that she had been a victim of homicide - in particular, a victim of strangulation - due to the similarities linking her to the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders.

When questioned, Sonoma County's Assistant Sheriff John Sully would state that "everything at this point" indicated the latest find was linked to the prior murders from earlier that decade, and Sheriff Roger McDermott would double down, telling reporters:

"We believe there is a connection to at least one, and possibly two, of the previous homicides in Sonoma County."

During an expansive dig of the site where this female victim's body had been found, investigators would find several pieces of helpful evidence; which, if not exactly helping them determine the victim's identity, provided a good snapshot of the circumstances she had been killed in.

Several of the victim's teeth would be found near her body, which would later be used to perform a dental analysis. Afterward, authorities would be able to compare her incomplete dental chart to hundreds - if not thousands - of missing women and girls throughout the state, county, and nation. Police would begin specifically looking through the dental charts of missing women from the Santa Rosa area through 1971 - a year before the hitchhiking murders started - in the hopes of learning this victim's identity.

At the location near the crime scene, police would unearth a hard contact lens, which had likely been worn by the young female victim. This would provide a good snapshot of when the victim had been killed, with investigators theorizing that she had died approximately five to seven years before the discovery of her remains. This is because the hard contact lens - which was kept inside of a metal candy tin, which had a picture of cherries on it - was no longer being sold in North America. Hard contact lenses in general had not been sold in the U.S. since the early 1970s, so police were able to peg her estimated date of date as falling sometime between 1972 and 1974, the exact same time frame as the hitchhiker murders.

Unfortunately, none of the victim's other belongings or clothing would be found at the crime scene, not even during an extensive search of the area. Investigators would eventually surmise that the victim had been dumped elsewhere - likely in the stream nearby the fire trail where her body had been found - and had then washed downstream when the water level had risen. She had likely come to a stop in her current location when things had dried up, where her remains had caught onto a tree stump and decomposed over a handful of years.

Dr. Rodger Hegler was a forensic anthropologist from San Francisco, who was called in by Sonoma County authorities to oversee the excavation of the victim's body and oversee the examination of her remains.

During his analysis, Dr. Hegler would state that the skeletonized state of the victim's remains made it impossible to determine many factors, including her gender. This was primarily because several pelvic, hand, and foot bones were missing from the crime scene (likely carried off by scavenging animals in the months after her body's disposal), but made it harder to authorities to determine select details about the victim. But because of the victim's small-yet-developed skeletal frame, she was most likely a young female.

After completing his preliminary analysis, Dr. Hegler believed that the victim was most likely in her late teens or early twenties (between 16 - 21 years old), and had likely stood about 5'3" tall with a Caucasian complexion. She was also most likely right-handed, and had injured her right arm at about the time of her murder. She had endured an earlier injury to her ribs well before her death, which had had time to heal, but left behind telltale signs of a prior injury.

Early on, it was believed that this might have been the body of 20-year-old Jeannette Kamahele, who - if you recall back from part one - had gone missing in April of 1972. Her body had never been found, and despite her disappearance sharing so many similarities to the other hitchhiker murders, her case had only been unofficially linked to the story for that reason. In a lot of the early reporting in this discovery, it was theorized that this might have been Jeannette's body, due to this victim seeming to share so many of the same characteristics. Not only was this victim an apparent match for Jeannette - she stood about the same height, had the same general body proportions, and was in the same age group - but she had been killed at around the same time.

Authorities would reach out to a prior dentist of Jeannette Kamahele, who - if you recall, had lived in Japan and graduated from high school there - most recently had dental work done by a dentist in Yokohama. This dentist would attempt to recreate Jeannette's dental chart, operating from memory, and would reveal that Jeannette had a dental bridge implanted in her teeth - which this mysterious victim did not appear to have. This would seem to rule out a match pretty definitively, but evidence learned later on would double down on this being a previously-unknown victim.

The Sonoma County coroner's office would find either red or auburn hair samples, as well as fragments of brown hair, attached to or near the victim's body. Because of this, it was believed that she had had reddish-brown hair, although the brown hair might have belonged to a third party... perhaps the killer or someone else entirely.

Detectives would attempt to determine the identity of this murder victim for years. Even after scouring missing persons reports from along the west coast - and throughout North America, for that matter - investigators have failed at finding out the identity of this unknown victim. An artist would end up putting together a sketch of the victim - tentatively named "Sonoma County Jane Doe" - which has been circulated through countless law enforcement agencies over the past four decades to no avail.

However, the discovery of this unknown victim's body in July of 1979 would be closely followed by another similar discovery about 90 miles northwest, towards the coastal town of Fort Bragg. There, police would make one of the most shocking finds in this entire story, and one that made them question their original assertions entirely.

On July 8th, 1979 - just days after the skeletal remains of Sonoma County Jane Doe were found outside of Santa Rosa - another similar discovery would be made miles away. While this discovery bears less overt similarities to the hitchhiker murders from earlier in the decade, it has nonetheless remain linked to the case in the public consciousness - and police themselves have yet to rule out any type of link.

That Sunday, a young couple were travelling from Sacramento to Fort Bragg, a quiet tourist town along California's northern coast. They were driving along scenic Highway 20, which took them through Willits, a quiet town tucked away in the woods, about 35 miles away from the coastline. This was a long and winding road that expanded the length of their trip; transforming a 35-mile venture into a scenic, winding multi-hour drive.

About halfway done with their drive, this couple would end up stopping along the curvy road in order to take a short break about a dozen or so miles outside of Willits, having passed through the small town earlier that hour. They ended up pulling off alongside private property on the side of the road, near the Jackson State Demonstration Forest. There, while the passenger closed her eyes for a brief nap, the driver ended up stepping out of the car and walking into the nearby woods. There, he discovered a steep embankment just beyond the treeline, which dropped down dozens - if not hundreds - of feet.

It was here that this man would make a grisly discovery at around 5:30 PM. He carefully made his way back to the vehicle, telling the passenger about what he had found, and was about to speed off to phone police before he realized that this was an incredibly treacherous stretch of road that would be impossible to identify again. This young man would end up placing a Pepsi can along the side of the road in order to mark where he had parked, in order to make it easier for police to locate what the man had just found: at least two decomposed bodies.

Officials from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department would arrive later that afternoon, locating the Pepsi can that the tipster had left along the side of the road. Moving into the nearby woods, police were able to locate the remnants of at least two human skeletons just beyond the tree line, down a steep embankment on the other side - which would prove treacherous for officials and investigators to navigate that evening.

Almost immediately, investigators noted that the two visible skeletons were likely homicide victims, due to them being dumped together. Their bodies were half-hidden in forest foliage - mostly just mud and dirt and leaves that had gathered around them over several months - and scavenging animals had done their own part to separate the bones, which would force authorities to expand their search efforts over multiple kilometers in each direction.

Another realization that police made early on was that both victims had likely been dumped over the edge of the embankment, which was hidden inside the tree line along the side of the road, and allowed to roll to their current location. Grouped together about 80 feet away from the highway, near James Creek, both bodies showed signs of having been bound in plastic and duct tape - proving to authorities that this was, indeed, a double homicide.

Police would scour the area surrounding the embankment, compiling every piece of evidence that they could find. This included several teeth, clumps of hair, remnants of duct tape, scraps of plastic, and more (which they could only assume was related to the crime until it was confirmed or not through testing). It was reported that during their search, police located at least one tooth belonging to a mysterious third party - which didn't match either of the victims, and had characteristics of Native American ancestry - but it's unknown if this was relevant to the ongoing investigation or not.

The most definitive piece of evidence - which police would not publicly reveal for more than a decade - was a single earring found at the crime scene, which was in the shape of a bird. The earring appeared homemade, and was constructed with shell-like material, but would prove to be one of the only personal belongings found at the crime scene. None of the victims' clothing or personal belongings were found, including the mate to this lone earring.

Despite the skeletonized remains of these two bodies being found and compiled together from various bones recovered over the region, police were unfortunately unable to learn much about them. While the bodies were small - definitely not developed enough to be adults - they were also slightly larger than children, so they were believed to be adolescents. However, the gender of the bodies wasn't able to be learned at the time of their discovery - July of 1979 - because of their decomposed state. At the time, it was hard to distinguish between male and female skeletons, especially when they were younger and less developed. For that reason, it was impossible to determine much about these victims other than the fact that they had both been young at the time of their deaths.

Authorities would later call in a university anthropologist to reconstruct and analyze the remains, who theorized that the victims had been a young man and woman, who had both been in their mid-teenage years, if not slightly younger. This anthropologist also believed that they had both been deceased for approximately eight months, but found their cause-of-death to be impossible to determine, because of the rapid decomposition that had taken place (after all, both bodies were skeletons at the time of their discovery). However, investigators would speculate that the two had been strangled to death, due to there being no apparent sign of any other injuries to their bodies.

Unfortunately, this description - of a boy and girl in the middle of their teenage years - did not match up with any missing persons cases from the area. Utilizing the information obtained by the anthropologist in 1980, investigators would begin to theorize that this was either a brother and sister that had been murdered by someone, or a young couple that had gone missing (perhaps teenage runaways from the Midwest, a favored theory of detectives at the time). Authorities would operate under this belief for the next several decades, with it informing every decision when it came to this unsolved case.

Over the next several years, attempts were made to match the unknown murder victims with their real names, with police in Mendocino County reaching out to authorities from other counties and states in the hopes of whoever's loved ones they were obtaining closure. However, because of their analysis, police believed that this was a missing boy and girl. Any other possibilities were almost immediately eliminated.

The FBI would take over the case in 1985, hoping to oversee a rejuvenation of the identification efforts. However, they too were similarly unable to make any headway in finding out the real names of the victims, with the case stagnating - not only in workable leads, but media attention, which had almost evaporated fully by the 1990s.

Police would receive several tips over the next two decades, including a tip from a local woman from Sonoma County, who claimed that the earring found with the two victims had belonged to her younger sister. This sister had gone missing with her friend more than a decade prior - about nine months prior to the discovery of the bodies outside of Willits, in fact. This lead, however, was brushed off by police, who insisted upon the two victims being a boy and a girl - not two girls as speculated, by some.

In 2000, an inmate from New Jersey would confess to killing the two unknown victims, although an analysis of this confession would prove it to be definitively false. Not only had this individual never left the state of New Jersey, but he would have been 12 years old at the time; making his confession - if not impossible - then at the very least, improbable. After all, when it comes to people from New Jersey, I guess you never really know for sure.

That same year - spurred on by this inmate's false confession - a forensic odontologist named Jim Wood would examine the teeth of the victims, and begin to cast doubt on them being related to one another. This was definitely NOT a brother and sister, as had been surmised by several police officials over the years.

More than a decade would pass after this, without so much as a significant update in the case. It wasn't until 2011 that this case would begin to move forward in a productive way, due - of all things - to a BBC documentary. That year, a documentary about the two unidentified murder victims found along Highway 20 had aired on the BBC, and was seen by the same woman that had phoned police decades prior. Still living in the region, this woman's missing sister had never been found, nearly four decades later. After watching the documentary, this woman believed it even more - even though her original attempt to pass on that information had been rebuffed by the police agencies overseeing the case.

Now, more than thirty years after the disappearance of her sister and her sister's friend, this woman would reach out to investigators yet again, jump-starting the painstaking process that ultimately gave each of these murder victims their names back.

Many believe that Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble - the two youngsters whose story I told you in the episode introduction - went missing on December 16th, 1978, a Saturday in which the two were planning to spend at Coddingtown Mall in nearby Santa Rosa; which, it's worth noting, is near Snoopy Home Ice, where - if you recall - Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber had been ahead of their 1972 disappearance. Kerry reportedly told her mother that she was leaving, and was heading to visit with Francine at the Trimble household before heading out to the mall.

At the time, nobody else was in Francine's family's home, but it was believed that Kerry arrived shortly before the two girls left for the nearby mall, likely attempting to hitchhike there. Family would later state that the two girls had been intending to return later in the day or night, because the makeup that they had been using before leaving had been left out, as if they intended to use it again that evening.

As the hours began to pass, however, the girls did not return to either of their homes, and seemingly made no effort to contact their parents to inform them about their current whereabouts. While it wasn't unusual for Kerry for disappear for a day or two under these conditions, it was incredibly strange for Francine. Her mother, Mary, would attempt to file a missing persons report with the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, but was told over numerous phone calls that Francine was most likely just staying with some friends nearby, and would turn up eventually.

Years later, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office would admit that a missing persons report had been filed, but they have never provided a copy of it to the public - citing the unsolved nature of the case. For that reason, it's unknown when, exactly the two girls were reported missing and under what circumstances.

It's believed that the parents of Kerry Graham would relent days later; presumably on Christmas Eve 1978, although the exact date is unknown for the reasons I just cited a moment ago. While the parents of Kerry Graham held out hope that she would return home - believing that maybe she had runaway for good - but their belief in this theory would begin to turn into disbelief with every passing day.

Because of this situation, we do not know when - exactly - Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble were last seen alive. It's commonly reported that the two were last seen on December 16th, 1978, but it's been theorized by many that they might have last been seen the day prior, December 15th.

Friends and acquaintances of the girls from their schools say that they weren't even made aware of Kerry and Francine going missing, despite potentially being some of the last people to have seen them. Multiple classmates of Kerry's say that they last saw the girls at El Molino High School, in Forestville, the morning of December 15th. The two girls were reportedly hanging out in the parking lot with some friends of theirs, smoking cigarettes, and were planning to skip school that day in order to hitchhike to a party in Santa Rosa. Giving credence to this was Francine being present, who was just 14 years old at the time and still in middle school; so her mere presence at the school was an indication of the two girls following through with their plan.

Despite knowing this for nearly forty years - that the two girls had been planning on hitchhiking to a party in Santa Rosa - their friends and acquaintances were never even questioned by authorities after their disappearance. Eileen Goetz (formerly Eileen O'Halloran) was a classmate of Kerry's who spoke to the Press Democrat in 2016, stating:

"They came to school. They didn't go to class. That was the last time we saw them... It makes you wonder, who were those girls partying with?

"What breaks my heart is no one ever asked."

Another high school classmate later told Eileen that they had last seen Kerry and Francine at a local Chevron gas station, which was known as a spot in the region for young people to hitchhike from.

Like many teenagers that went missing during this era, it was almost immediately theorized by police that Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble had run away. For that reason, it seems like minimal effort was put into locating them, with their disappearance gaining almost no exposure in the local press: no newspaper reports, no radio news segments, nothing.

While police continued to assert that the two had likely run off with friends and would be returning any day now, the family of the two teens believed that they had been kidnapped. They didn't know by who - or for what reason - but reasoned that none of the girls' clothing or personal belongings were out-of-place. If the girls had been intending to run away, they would have taken their belongings with them; at least some clothing, to tide them over temporarily. But in this case, nothing had been taken; not even a treasured ring that Francine valued above all else, nor Kerry's antiobiotics, which she had been prescribed after having her appendix removed just weeks earlier.

It wasn't until 2015 - nearly forty years after the girls had disappeared - that police were finally able to link the bodies found outside of Willits to Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble. Both girls had been labeled as missing the entire time, despite these bodies being found just 80 miles away from where they had last been seen; a distance that would have taken approximately two hours to drive back in 1978, when they had originally disappeared. Despite this, police had insisted that the two skeletons recovered outside of Willits were a boy and a girl; not two girls, as Kelly Graham, Kerry's older sister, had insisted for years.

Many wondered how decades could have passed without police linking the case of the missing teens to the two bodies discovered just a few miles down the road a year later, and those questions continue to resonate. Speaking to the Fort-Bragg Advocate-News in 2016, Mendiconi County's Sheriff Tom Allman would state:

"For some reason, and I don't know why, in 1980 the remains were classified as a found male and a found female, both approximately age 14."

This answer wasn't much of a consolation for the loved ones of Kerry and Francine - many of whom had perished in the years since, and died not knowing what had come of the missing teens - but it was at least a start. Will Walsh, the uncle of Francine Trimble, spoke at a 2016 press conference:

"We had resigned ourselves to never knowing why they disappeared. As you might imagine, it's like just learning of the death, as though it just happened. We miss Francine and regret deeply that she never had a chance at a good life. It would really be wonderful to solve this case."

To-date, it remains unknown when, exactly, Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble were last seen alive. Because of the insistence by law enforcement - that the two had run away and would turn up eventually - it's not believed that much of an effort was put into finding them, and their missing persons reports were likely filed inaccurately, if at all.

Because of the time wasted in this investigation - with the two girls going missing in 1978 and their bodies not being identified until 2016 - not much is known today that wasn't already known back in 1979. For that reason, it's believed by many that this case is possibly linked to the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders, despite the apparent differences.

Among these differences, none looms larger than the time discrepancy. The crimes in Santa Rosa began in 1972 (perhaps 1971) but seemed to end pretty decisively at the end of 1973. However, the crimes from the surrounding area - which I detailed in the last episode (part three) - carried on throughout 1973 and 1974. Police had always theorized whether or not this potential link - emboldened by the FBI's report from 1975 - hinted at the killer carrying out crimes in other areas or time periods.

This crime, which would have had to have taken place in 1978, would expand the timeline of the hitchhiker murders by at least four years, which would make it a total outlier in the chronology of this saga. Investigators weren't sure whether or not a killer would be able to cool off for such a long period after committing such a large rash of crimes over such a short time period, but it would fit in with what investigators had theorized: that this killer was patient and cunning, and more than willing to wait if it meant he could continue his game of cat-and-mouse with investigators.

However, if the killer was going to strike again, wouldn't he have struck closer to home? After all, the hitchhiker murders had taken place in Santa Rosa, and the other crimes linked in the FBI report had similarly been focused around the San Francisco area. Was this an attempt to expand the geography and confuse investigators yet again? Or was this an aberration, carried out on a whim? Without knowing the killer, it was impossible to know.

Both of the cases I've detailed in this episode - first, the Sonoma County Jane Doe discovered in July of 1979, and the second being the murder of Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble - remain unsolved to this day. For obvious reasons, both have been loosely linked to the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders, despite there existing many reasons why they might not be. That's primarily because very few other leads exist in this case.

There is still hope that Sonoma County Jane Doe can be identified, perhaps using the same type of DNA testing that led to Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble being identified decades after their disappearance. However, I have found nothing that indicates that happening anytime soon. In my research, I discovered a blog online that theorizes she might be Peggy Ann Reed - a 15-year-old that disappeared from Santa Rosa while attempting to hitchhike in March of 1974 - as her case remains similarly unsolved. That might be an avenue worth exploring for investigators in the future, if they haven't already looked into it.

Speaking to the uneasiness of these crimes remaining unsolved a decade afterward, Butch Carlstedt - a retired detective from Sonoma County - would tell the Press Democrat in March of 1989:

"Sometimes I felt like I was letting the girls down. Somewhere there was a piece of this to put it together but somehow you just can't seem to find it... Girls hitchhike. It's funny no one sees them get in a car. The next thing you find is a skeleton... We had no crime scene, just a body. What are you going to do?"

That's on the next episode of Unresolved.

continue to part five

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on on January 17th, 2021

Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Gabriella Bromley, Steven Wilson, Quil Carter, Travis Scsepko, Laura Hannan, Damion Moore, Amy Hampton, Bryan Hall, Scott Meesey, Scott Patzold, Marie Vanglund, Astrid Kneier, Aimee McGregor, Sydney Scotton, Sara Moscaritolo, Jo Wong, Thomas Ahearn, Marion Welsh, Patrick Laakso, Meadow Landry, Tatum Bautista, Sally Ranford, Kevin McCracken, Michele Watson, Teunia Elzinga, Jared Midwood, Ryan Green, Ruth Durbin, Stephanie Joyner, Jacinda C. (congratulations, by the way, to you and your husband), Jennifer Henshaw, Elissa Hampton-Dutro, and Cherish Brady