The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

Part Five

In the decades since a series of murders plagued the region around Santa Rosa, investigators have pondered whether this case could be connected to some of the most infamous names in all of true crime, Ted Bundy and the Zodiac among them. But nearly half-a-century later, all of these murders remain unsolved...

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

Between 1972 and 1973, at least seven women were murdered in California's Sonoma County.

First came 12-year-old Maureen Sterling and 13-year-old Yvonne Weber, who were last seen at an ice rink in downtown Santa Rosa in February of 1972. Their disappearance would go unreported - with police believing that they had run away - but their bodies were found months later, in December of 1972, on the outskirts of town. Because of the decomposed state of their remains, no official cause-of-death could be determined, but investigators would theorize that the two girls had attempted to hitchhike shortly before their murders.

Just weeks after Maureen and Yvonne's disappearance, another young woman from the region would go missing. 19-year-old Kim Allen was last seen hitchhiking outside of San Francisco in March of 1972, heading back to her home in Santa Rosa. Her body would be discovered a day after she was last seen alive, again outside of Santa Rosa, having fallen prey to a sadistic killer that raped and strangled her to death over at least half-an-hour.

Months would pass before another body would turn up. In December of 1972, the body of 13-year-old Lori Kursa would be found off of a steep embankment along Calistoga Road. The teen had been deceased for several weeks at this point - having died of a broken neck - but had reportedly run away from home a month prior, so her last known whereabouts were hard to track.

Another discovery was made the following summer - in July of 1973 - just feet away from where the bodies of Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber were found months prior. 15-year-old Carolyn Davis had left her family's home in Shasta County that February and had spent the next several months hitchhiking throughout the western United States. She was last seen by her grandmother in July of 1973 and was presumably attempting to hitchhike through Santa Rosa at the time of her death. An analysis of her body revealed that she had died from strychnine poisoning, but officials would state that they had no idea how the poison had been administered.

23-year-old Therese Walsh was another young hitchhiker, who had last been seen days before Christmas of 1973, visiting with friends in southern California. After telling friends that she was planning to hitchhike back north to visit family for the holidays, the body of Therese was discovered submerged in the Mark West Creek, just outside of Santa Rosa, days before the end of the year. She was found to have been sadistically bound and murdered, the victim of not only a brutal rape but a torturous and prolonged murder.

Then, in July of 1979 - years after this spree had come to an end - police in Sonoma County would unearth another body, discovered not too far away from where the remains of Lori Kursa had been found back in December of 1972. This victim - whose identity remains unknown to this day - had been bound in a similar method as Therese Walsh, providing a second clue that this murder was linked to the other crimes.

While this victim's identity remains unknown, some believe that there might be a connection to Peggy Ann Reed, a missing girl from Santa Rosa that disappeared in March of 1974. Reed was last seen near Coddingtown Mall, a location linked to this case from the very beginning, and may have been attempting to hitchhike at the time of her disappearance. While Reed's case has gone cold in the decades since, she matched the physical characteristics and general age of this unknown murder victim and disappeared at around the same time she was killed (sometime between 1972 and 1974).

Over the years, these seven girls have been referred to as the victims of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders: a supposed serial killer that preyed upon young hitchhikers in the area surrounding Sonoma County's largest city. Intriguingly, only the "adult" victims (Kim Allen and Therese Walsh) were reported as having been sexually assaulted before their deaths; a hint of their killer having some kind of bizarre ethical boundary, in refusing to rape the underage victims he also murdered.

While these seven women are the only established victims of this crime wave, they are not alone. In the months and years after these bodies were discovered, police officials would link other cases to the same spree: those from not only the region surrounding Santa Rosa but extended outwards into the area around San Francisco and Sacramento.

Lisa Michele Smith is one such case. A 17-year-old that ran away from home in March of 1971, Lisa was last seen hitchhiking in Santa Rosa in March of 1971. While a local newspaper would report that she was found weeks later and reunited with her family, this wasn't the case; with either miscommunication or a false report leading to the case being closed. Police records from that era are now non-existent, but investigators don't believe that Lisa was ever found, and may have been the first victim of this killer.

Another similar missing woman was 20-year-old Jeannette Kamahele, who was last seen getting into the car of a stranger just outside of Santa Rosa. Jeannette disappeared just weeks after Kim Allen and was never seen again by anyone that knew her.

Another case that has been permanently linked to these crimes is the disappearance and murder of two teenagers from Forestville, a small town about ten miles outside of Santa Rosa. 15-year-old Kerry Ann Graham and 14-year-old Francine Marie Trimble were attempting to hitchhike to Coddingtown Mall in December of 1978 and were never seen again. While investigators have remained cagey about specific details in their case (related to reasons I explored in the last episode, part four), their bodies were discovered less than a year later, in July of 1979, about 80 miles northwest, near Willits. It is unknown if their case is related to any of the others, simply because their bodies were not identified until 2015, due to police incorrectly labeling the two bodies as male and female for decades.

Other cases linked to this spree include at least eight murder victims from the region - spanning from Yuba to Monterey County, but primarily centered around San Francisco - who died from numerous causes, but seemed to share many consistencies. Almost all (whose stories I detailed in part three of this series) were strangled or smothered to death and had their nude bodies dumped off of public roads - as had been the case in the Santa Rosa murders.

To this day, it remains unknown how many of these victims could be linked to the same offender or group of offenders. But if they were indeed linked, as surmised by federal investigators (who detailed their findings in a 1975 confidential report), this would bring the potential body count up to 19... not including any victims who hadn't been found or identified as of yet (which remained a very real possibility, in the absence of an ascertainable motive or suspect).

The discovery of three bodies in July of 1979 - after years of inactivity in this case - would bring about a new wave of speculation in the press. And despite investigators hoping that these discoveries could help provide answers for the numerous unsolved cases, all they did was end up creating even more questions... raising the possibility that the killer(s) had continued taking lives beyond the known timeline, potentially through December of 1978.

If so, where had they been in the years since? Had they moved on elsewhere, to commit other similar crimes? Or had they simply been biding their time?

These are questions that law enforcement agencies throughout California and the U.S. continue to ask themselves today, in 2021, decades after this supposed crime spree came to an end. After all, the culprit(s) responsible for these numerous crimes remain unknown to this day.

This is part five of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders.

Shortly after it became apparent to authorities that this was a crime spree targeting a select demographic of the population - in particular, young female hitchhikers - police began to theorize that one individual was behind it. They believed that this killer was targeting the victims because of their similar appearance: young and petite women with earrings and hair parted down the middle, who were in the disadvantageous position of hitching rides with strangers.

Eventually, this would lead investigators to begin theorizing that this case could be related to the largest unsolved murder spree from the region... that of the infamous Zodiac killer.

The unknown serial killer that called himself the Zodiac killed at least five people between December of 1968 and October of 1969, with his crimes spanning a large area of northern California: extending from the heart of San Francisco up to Lake Berryessa, about 90 miles north.

Whoever the Zodiac was, he seems to have specifically targeted young couples in isolated areas, although this would prove malleable in the final crime in 1969. David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were killed along a quiet lover's lane in Benicia, California in December of 1968, and were followed by an almost-identical crime the following July, in Vallejo. In that incident, the young man in the car (Michael Mageau) would survive, hinting at the women in the crimes being the main recipient of violence. That would prove true in September of that year (1969) when Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were targeted by the killer at scenic Lake Berryessa. Both were stabbed repeatedly, but Cecelia received the majority of the blows and would be the only fatality from that incident.

But just as soon as this killer seemed to be developing a pattern, he decided to shoot and kill cabbie Paul Stine in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco the following month (October 1969), in an isolated incident that would prove to be the end of the Zodiac's crimes... or did it?

Over the next few years, the individual calling himself the Zodiac would write to law enforcement sporadically, claiming to have killed as many as 37 people (none of whom would be confirmed over the subsequent decades). In these letters and postcards, the Zodiac asserted that he would begin varying his means of killing to avoid suspicion, writing in November of 1969:

"I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc."

On its face, this claim seemed like a boast but is now seen as an attempt by Zodiac to ensure a legacy for himself. With this claim, he was likely attempting to play games with investigators, who (he hoped) would begin to question whether or not every crime they investigated was potentially linked to the Bay Area's hooded psychopath. Regardless, the Zodiac would inevitably be linked to numerous crimes throughout California, including the murder of Cheri Jo Bates from Riverside, who was beaten and stabbed in October of 1966; the attempted abduction of Kathleen Johns, a woman whose car broke down near Modesto in March of 1970, and ended up accepted a ride from a strange man who threatened both Kathleen and her baby, and bore a striking resemblance to the sketch of the Zodiac killer; and most notably, the disappearance of Donna Lass of Stateline, Nevada in September 1970. Lass, who had previously lived in San Francisco, was mentioned specifically in one of the Zodiac's taunting postcards and has never been found.

As early as September of 1973 - amidst the rash of killings and disappearances plaguing the area around Santa Rosa - Sonoma County Sheriff Don Striepeke was asserting that the Zodiac killer was a feasible suspect. Perhaps not their primary suspect, but one that was at least worth evaluating as a potential match for the killer of young female hitchhikers.

However, starting in the Spring of 1975, Sheriff Striepeke would begin telling reporters that he believed Zodiac to be the killer of these young women. Speaking at a press conference on April 25th, 1975, Sheriff Striepeke would state:

"Call him the Zodiac - he may be the same man; call him the witchcraft killer if you like. There is a pattern here in these deaths that makes it seem one man is responsible.

"The last messages we got from the Zodiac indicated he was going to continue his killings, but vary them. And he bragged about collecting slaves for his use in the next world."

To back up his controversial allegations - which weren't supported by all of the police officials that worked alongside or under him - Sheriff Striepeke would claim that symbols of witchcraft had been found near a couple of the hitchhiking victims' bodies. In particular, he claimed that a symbol meant to symbolize the speeding of "the deceased to the afterlife" - two rectangles joined by a stick - was found near the body of Carolyn Davis. This was just one such example claimed by Striepeke, who stated that there were other similar omens found near the bodies of other victims, which bore similarly dark connotations (this included other murder victims from the San Francisco area).

Sheriff Striepeke cited the increasingly-sadistic means of killing - in terms of strangulation, binding, and even poisoning - as proof of what the Zodiac had promised in his letters to police: that he was planning to change up his methods of murder, to keep investigators guessing. He also believed that the Zodiac's sporadic communication with law enforcement and the press - numerous letters and postcards, where he claimed dozens of murder victims - happened to correspond with the crimes from not only Santa Rosa, but the surrounding area (the eight victims I detailed in part three). As proof of this, he offered up that the Zodiac's final (official) piece of correspondence to the press and law enforcement came in January of 1974, just weeks after the body of the last known hitchhiking victim was found in Santa Rosa, and came after three years of silence from the Zodiac. To Sheriff Striepeke, this was more than just a simple coincidence.

However, almost immediately, law enforcement officials in several other jurisdictions - those that were investigating crimes that Striepeke and others in Sonoma County were linking to their unsolved cases - began pushing back against his assertions that a single killer, presumably the Zodiac, had killed all of these victims simultaneously. Some believed that not only were their cases disconnected from the Santa Rosa crimes but that the murders themselves were unrelated to one another; perhaps perpetrating by numerous offenders in the same general area.

Dave Struve, a part of the special projects office in the Criminal Identification branch of the Justice Department, had helped create the 1975 report that linked the hitchhiking killings to other victims from the surrounding area. When speaking to the press in April of 1975, Struve would express doubts that the Zodiac was responsible for any of the murders, stating:

"I did think in terms of the Zodiac at the start. But I don't really think so now because in the past, the Zodiac wasn't a molestor of females... Some of these gals were raped, and that doesn't really fit his little profile."

Despite insisting that the Zodiac might have been responsible for the hitchhiking murders, Sheriff Don Striepeke would begin to walk back his assertion weeks later, when it became clear that the support for his claim was rather weak. He would end up being replaced by new Sonoma County Sheriff Roger McDermott in 1978, who would speak to the Press Democrat the following July, telling them:

"The Zodiac was claiming responsibility for a lot of things, but he didn't confess to any of the things we found. We believe these killings were separate."

In the April 28th, 1986 edition of the Press Democrat, an editor's note highlights one of the many mistakes in Robert Graysmith's book "Zodiac" (which has become one of the most popular true crime books of all-time, leading to the landmark 2007 film directed by David Fincher). One of these mistakes was Graysmith's insistence upon the symbol of "witchcraft" found near the body of Carolyn Davis; which, he had alleged, bore significance because of the Zodiac's usage of medieval and pagan symbols for his intricate codes. The editor notes that this wasn't an occult symbol at all, but rather, a simple stick figure made by children well before Carolyn Davis had been murdered. We can surmise from this that any other potential ties to "witchcraft" or the occult are just as loose and speculative.

Despite the police seeming to rule out the mysterious Zodiac killer as the murderer of young hitchhikers around Santa Rosa, that would not stop skeptics from speculating about one of the only named Zodiac suspects: a man whose name has become as synonymous with the Zodiac's story as Detective Dave Toschi or author Robert Graysmith.

I mentioned Arthur Leigh Allen a few years ago (when I covered the Zodiac case back in 2018). Allen has been suspected of involvement by many people over the years; namely Robert Graysmith, the author of "Zodiac," who spent decades researching Allen and his potential involvement to not only the unsolved crimes linked to the Zodiac but others throughout California.

Arthur Leigh Allen, born in December of 1933, grew up in Vallejo, California. A brief member of the U.S. Navy, Allen was dishonorably discharged in 1958 (for an unknown reason) and ended up becoming an elementary school teacher shortly thereafter. Over the next decade or so, long-term employment would prove to be a tricky endeavor for Allen, who was let go from at least two teaching jobs for several issues, including carrying a gun to school and molesting students.

At the time of the Santa Rosa crimes, however, Allen was living in the Sunset Trailer Park in Santa Rosa, and was a full-time student at Sonoma State University (which I mistakenly referred to as a junior college in part one), having struggled to find employment after getting fired for child molestation yet again.

Arthur Leigh Allen remains the only publicly named suspect in the Zodiac crimes, with investigators theorizing that he started to commit the violent acts shortly after being fired from his first teaching position in Valley Springs, California. As I mentioned minutes ago, the Zodiac's crimes took place between 1968 and 1969, but ended abruptly after the death of Paul Stine; during which, the killer was seen by a couple of children across the street, and narrowly avoided being stopped by a police cruiser en route to the crime scene.

Allen was interviewed by police on numerous occasions, including once in August of 1971, while at work; around which time, the correspondence from the Zodiac seemed to come to a sudden halt. This could be a simple coincidence, but at around the same time, Arthur Leigh Allen relocated to Santa Rosa, California, where he would live for the foreseeable future, and begin attending Sonoma State.

Police officials would later state that Allen was well-versed in the area where the hitchhiking crimes were carried out, which they had always indicated was a necessity for the killer, based on where the bodies had been dumped: rural, isolated areas outside of town that wouldn't attract a lot of attention. They believe this required intimate knowledge of the area, which Allen seemed to have in spades.

Another reason that Allen is oft-suspected of involvement in the hitchhiking murders is that he was arrested in September of 1974 for child molestation, with the victim being the young son of a family friend. Allen would plead guilty to the offense in March of 1975, and was imprisoned at Atascadero State Hospital through 1977 - during which time, not only were there no letters or postcards from the Zodiac, but the crimes in Santa Rosa seemed to come to a sudden end. This could explain not only the end of the crimes in 1974 but perhaps the re-emergence of the offender in 1978 when Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble were murdered just outside of Santa Rosa.

After his arrest in 1974 and subsequent release a few years later, Arthur Leigh Allen (often identified in the press as a "local sex offender") was often bandied about as a suspect in the press. During that time, several inquiries would be made in an attempt to link Allen to any of the Sonoma County crimes, but no feasible connection could be made. There just simply wasn't enough evidence to confirm the suspicions of investigators, no matter how hard they looked.

Despite Robert Graysmith asserting in his 1986 book "Zodiac," that several of the hitchhiking victims had been found with chipmunk hair on them - a species that Allen was interested in and personally researching at the same time as the murders - this information has never been proven. And based on Graysmith's tendency to either exaggerate or fabricate facts to fit his narrative - that Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac, and had even more victims - we can only assume this is similarly exaggerated or made up.

Speaking to the press in January of 1976, Sergeant Butch Carlstedt would state about Arthur Leigh Allen:

"... he wasn't Zodiac, and he wasn't our killer either. The polygraph tests over and over show that he was a child molester and nothing more."

Early on in this case, shortly after the Sonoma County slayings came to an end in 1973, officials there began corresponding with authorities in Washington state. Law enforcement agencies there had begun to notice an increase in similar disappearances and slayings in their neck of the woods - ranging from Oregon throughout the Seattle area - which seemed to begin almost immediately after the crimes in Sonoma County came to an end (January 1974). Similar crimes were also beginning to be noticed around Salt Lake City and throughout Colorado, with authorities in every jurisdiction theorizing a connection between them... believing that a single, traveling killer might be responsible for all.

Speaking to reporters with the Press Democrat in April of 1975, Sonoma County Sergeant Butch Carlstedt would state:

"Now, back in Colorado they have a young nurse on her way home from work, who drops out of sight and is found a few weeks later buried in a snowbank... We can't help but think there is a similarity."

When asked whether or not the cases from Washington state were identical to the ones from Sonoma County, Sergeant Carlstedt would state that there was "no doubt in my mind."

At the time, the assertion was being made that this killer was perhaps the Zodiac, who investigators noted - in a rather silly exhibition - was attempting to carve a large Z-shape over the western United States. But in reality, this was the early work of investigators in multiple states charting the path of another offender, who has become perhaps even more infamous than the Zodiac killer... that of Theodore Bundy.

The story of Ted Bundy is one of the most infamous in all of true crime, so I'll try to go through his backstory as quickly and efficiently as possible, while also discussing why his name is often bandied about in connection to this story.

Born into uncertain parentage, Theodore Robert Cowell was born in 1946 and would spend most of his youth in Washington state (in the same general area that I grew up in decades later, near Tacoma). After moving, his mother would meet and marry a man with the surname Bundy, which Ted later adopted as his own.

Unfortunately, decades after his death, many details about Ted Bundy's personal life are cloudy at best, due to his narcissistic personality (often rewriting things to make himself look better) and his willingness to lie about his life and backstory to virtually everyone he ever met. This included spouses and his loved ones, whose trust he wasn't above betraying to serve his own sadistic needs.

In early adulthood, Bundy began moving into politics and eventually entered into law school, despite not having the intellectual curiosity needed to achieve any kind of success in either field. It is unknown when, exactly, he began killing, but it's widely believed that he began killing young women near his home, the Seattle area, in 1971. However, skeptics believe he may have started killing as early as 1969 while visiting the east coast; with Bundy claiming at various times to have murdered women in Ocean City and Atlantic City, New Jersey, while visiting with his mother's family in Philadelphia.

Bundy would spend the next few years attending school and beginning his professional career, but is known to have begun killing young women with regularity during this period; in particular, young hitchhikers with long hair parted down the middle. These women reportedly reminded Ted of his first real girlfriend, who had rejected him just before the start of this killing spree. Over several months in 1974, more than a half-dozen women would disappear from the Seattle area, rumored to have last been seen in the company of a good-looking young man in a cast, driving a Volkswagen. In perhaps Bundy's most brazen crime, a double kidnapping from crowded Lake Sammamish in July of 1974, he reportedly introduced himself to numerous witnesses as "Ted" and an infamous police sketch would be commissioned, which captured his likeness shockingly well.

The following month, Ted Bundy would relocate to the region of Salt Lake City, as the bodies of his Pacific Northwest victims began to be discovered en masse. Here, in Utah, he would continue his killing spree throughout the region, taking an untold number of lives as investigators struggled to work through the available evidence with the means available to them at the time.

In August of 1975, Bundy was arrested by happenstance, after being spotted by a police officer lurking through a neighborhood. Afterward, he was fingered at the roving serial killer, who had committed crimes ranging up to Washington and Oregon but had claimed victims in several other states, including Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. While incarcerated, however, Bundy would perpetuate two separate escape attempts, proving more successful with each iteration; ultimately ending up in Florida, where he would commit a series of shocking brazen crimes through 1978, leading up to his re-capture that February, before standing trial for the Florida murders the following year.

The rest, they say, is history, with Bundy giving numerous interviews over the next decade, before eventually being executed by the state of Florida in January of 1989. In a last-ditch effort to prolong his own life, Bundy would admit to killing numerous unknown women all over the United States, which - according to Bundy, at least - including unknown crimes in California that authorities had been unable to attribute to him.

In the years that have passed since Bundy's execution, some have theorized that he might have been responsible for the murders in Sonoma County; in particular, because the victim profile of the hitchhiker killer seemed to be almost identical to Bundy's. Almost all of the victims in both sprees bore a striking resemblance to Ted Bundy's first girlfriend: young, petite women with hair parted down the middle, who happened to be in the same age range as Bundy's victims (15-25 years old).

In addition to the victim profile being almost identical, the actual crimes seemed to be shockingly similar, with most of Bundy's victims being strangled by hand or with household items. His crimes seemed to show an increasing level of planning and escalation, with the crimes growing in sadism and preparation with each iteration. These are both traits that are synonymous with the Santa Rosa murders, which seemed to become more and more depraved as time went on.

Bundy also made sure to dispose of his victims' bodies in isolated, rural locations - occasionally in bodies of water - without any clothing or belongings (none of which would ever be found). If that sounds familiar, it's because that's what I've been detailing throughout this entire series.

As if that wasn't enough, it was reported that Ted Bundy matched the description of a man seen during the commission of at least two of the Sonoma County murders. The first came from the disappearance of Jeannette Kamahele, who - if you'll recall from part one - was last seen getting into the truck of a white man with an afro-styled haircut. The description of this driver was surprisingly similar to Ted Bundy himself, who had a similar hairstyle at that point in 1972. Then there's the alleged abduction of Lori Kursa from November of 1972, during which, a similarly-described white man with an afro was seen waiting in the getaway van that Lori was thrown into. In that crime, however, the driver would have been one part of a three-man operation; whereas Bundy was always known to act alone.

After digging into his backstory, investigators would learn that Ted Bundy had been in California several times in the late 1960s and early 1970s, cementing that he did have a link to the region in which the hitchhiking murders happened. In addition to attending Stanford University in 1968, Bundy had visited Sonoma County while working on a political campaign in 1973 and had driven through the area numerous times between 1968 and 1974 while visiting with a girlfriend that lived in Palo Alto and San Francisco.

However, despite all of this - which seemed to paint Ted Bundy as an almost-perfect suspect in the hitchhiking crimes - investigators have never been able to put together a case for him being the culprit. That's because, while there is plenty of evidence pointing towards his involvement and/or guilt, there is almost just as much exculpatory evidence that points to him being elsewhere in the U.S. at the time they happened, and there existing several deviations from Bundy's crimes that point to someone else.

For starters, Ted Bundy was a sexual sadist, who enjoyed being able to revisit crime scenes to re-experience the crimes he committed. This would not have been possible with some of the hitchhiking victims, who were thrown off of steep embankments, and were nearly impossible to reach without being noticed. Now, it's possible that Bundy was developing his M.O. while committing these crimes, but that's just a guess on my part.

Another thing we know about Ted Bundy is that he enjoyed raping his victims repeatedly after their death, and was known to use brutality while killing or incapacitating them. Again, this could have been something that Bundy developed while carrying out the Sonoma County crimes, but in the absence of any proof, it's hard to say that with any degree of certainty.

Despite visiting California throughout 1973 (and perhaps 1972), Ted Bundy was not linked to any of the specific locations or victims from the Santa Rosa crimes. Investigators would find evidence putting him in Washington state either shortly before or after several of the crimes were carried out; which seemed to rule him out as a suspect. As reported by the Vallejo Times Herald in January of 1976, Sonoma County Sergeant Butch Carlstedt would state:

"I tried to tie [Bundy] to our cases but we found credit card receipts that put him in Seattle at the time of the murders here... He's definitely cleared as far as we're concerned."

Years later, however, investigators in Sonoma County would note that this was anything but definitive, with there being two-day gaps between many of the credit card receipts from Washington, allowing Bundy upwards of 48 hours to make the trip to/from California (which, as someone who's made that drive more than once, is very possible, even at a reasonable pace).

Speaking to the San Francisco Gate in 2011, retired Seattle detective Robert Keppel would state:

"One of the last times I talked to Bundy, I mentioned California, and he looked at me like, 'I can't talk about that right now.' I think he believed his execution would be stayed so he could talk for years about his crimes, but the governor had other ideas... Bundy is definitely a good suspect. The killings in Santa Rosa would fit his methods, he spent time in the area, and I'm sure he started killing well before 1974... it was an open market for Bundy."

Authorities have added Ted Bundy's blood to the federal DNA database, in the hopes of matching him up with any victims that haven't been linked to his spree as of yet. But because of his execution more than three decades ago, the ability to interview him in the hopes of learning more about his crimes was similarly put to rest at the same time. His involvement, in this case, remains a purely speculative one, but when speaking to the San Francisco Gate in 2011, Sonoma County Lieutenant Steve Brown would state:

"The feeling was that one person committed the killings, and Bundy was looked at. But I always thought it must have been a utility worker or a postal worker, someone familiar with the area."

On the evening of August 24th, 1976, a Volkswagen bus drifted across the freeway divider east of Merced Avenue, resulting in a "grinding head-on crash on Highway 12" (as reported by the following day's edition of the Press Democrat). The accident, which happened shortly after 8:00 PM, resulted in the death of the lone male occupant of the Volkswagen, and injuries to the driver of the other vehicle, a 24-year-old woman driving in the opposite direction, who thankfully survived.

The driver of the Volkswagen bus - a 41-year-old Santa Rosa man - died later that same night in the emergency room during surgery ("shock due to multiple traumatic lesions"). The man, who was a creative writing instructor at a local junior college, had no drugs or alcohol in his system but had been taking medication for epileptic seizures. It was believed that either that or him simply falling asleep at the wheel might have caused the tragic accident... but soon, investigators would have reason to believe that there was more to this English instructor than met the eye.

Fredric Manalli was born on March 7th, 1935, to a pair of Italian immigrants in Rockford, Illinois. Fred had one brother and one sister, who were both born more than ten years after him, and seemed to live a pretty noteless childhood - although his sister would later note that he had a lifelong stutter.

After spending time in the U.S. Army, Fred returned to the civilian world in 1959 after being given early release from the military after spending time overseas. He then graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelors Degree in English and would take his talents to the west coast, eventually graduating from San Francisco State College with a Master's Degree in English.

Despite being rather tall and handsome in his youth, Fred started to gain weight steadily in the decade before his death and was described as being rather portly at the time of his death (although very few pictures of him have survived, so it's impossible to tell whether this was just an exaggeration from those that knew him or an actual observation). Regardless, it's worth noting that Fred would marry and divorce his wife, Suzanne Carlson, twice; with the couple originally marrying in 1958, and then divorcing for the first time in August of 1970 (Sonoma County) and then again in December of 1973 (San Francisco). During that span, the two lived in both Santa Rosa and San Francisco, seeming to move back-and-forth depending on the jobs they were able to obtain, and Fred would teach English and creative writing at Santa Rosa Junior College at various points in the decade before his death.

After his death in August of 1976, investigators would find several items of intrigue in Fredric Manalli's possession. While none of this has been publicly disclosed by authorities, Robert Graysmith (author of "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked") wrote quite a bit about these discoveries, using information he supposedly obtained directly from those connected to the case. According to Graysmith, an unnamed investigator from Santa Rosa told him:

"When the teacher's widow was cataloguing his property, she came across drawings of people being whipped. The sketches suggested the husband had been involved in S & M. The instructor had drawn himself as a woman and labeled it with the female version of his own name. Chief Wayne Dunham felt the deceased man might have something to do with Kim Wendy Allen's death."

If you recall, Kim Allen was the third known victim of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Killer, who was last seen hitchhiking in San Rafael in March of 1972. Her body was found a day later outside of Santa Rosa, having been raped and strangled for upwards of 30 minutes. After Fred's death, investigators reportedly found obscene drawings he had made involving not only Kim - a former-student at Santa Rosa Junior College - but himself. Speaking to this, Sergeant Steve Brown reportedly told Graysmith in his book, "Zodiac Unmasked", about the drawings that law enforcement found in Manalli's possession:

"I've actually got a photocopy of two of the drawings they found. He drew Kim and he drew himself as 'Freda.' He drew this other girl and those two girls had classes with him. And he had this hair in his wallet. They tested it, but it wasn't Kim... He probably taught Kim, and when she shows up dead, he became really obsessed with her. A weird dude."

In Graysmith's book, it is also alleged that Fredric Manalli had one of the victim's backpacks in his possession - presumably Kim Allen's - which police then took into their custody. Despite this being a piece of evidence akin to a smoking gun, I have not found any confirmation of this in any other source, so it's hard to tell whether or not this is one of Graysmith's frequent exaggerations.

Over the years, Fredric Manalli has become a favorite suspect in not only this case, but the Zodiac killings, due to his ties to not only Santa Rosa, but San Francisco and the surrounding area. If you type in his name on a search engine, you're bound to discover dozens upon dozens of blog posts digging through Manalli's backstory, including newspaper clippings from his youth, handwriting analysis (in comparison to the Zodiac letters), and so much more. It's a truly breathtaking level of research conducted by these web sleuths, which makes it hard to try and dig in at any one spot in his life.

Unfortunately, based on what I've found, almost all of the evidence connecting Fredric Manalli to the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders - let alone the killings associated with the Zodiac - is circumstantial at best, and hearsay at worst. The only thing that seems to link Manalli to any of these crimes is a couple of weird drawings involving Kim Allen, who was just one of the eight known hitchhiking victims. But while Manalli may have had a bizarre obsession with her, there exists nothing else linking him to any of the other victims, nor anything particularly criminal. The drawings - as weird and creepy as they may be - may have just been a bizarre homage to a murdered student (after all, everyone grieves in their own way). Since Manalli was known to be an artistic personality, it's hard to ascribe any of this to malice.

Almost all of the other evidence - the allegation of a backpack being found in his possession, links to other victims, etc. - seems to have been spawned from Robert Graysmith's book "Zodiac Unmasked," which is anything but the most reliable accounting of either this case or the Zodiac story. So make of this suspect theory what you will.

In the decades since this crime spree unfolded, several other offenders from California have been loosely linked to this case. They have exhibited through their actions a willingness to commit nearly-identical crimes and seemed to live in the area at the same time that the hitchhiking victims lost their lives in the early 1970s.

Philip Joseph Hughes Jr. lived in Pleasanton, California, just east of San Francisco and north of San Jose. In 1980, Hughes was convicted for murdered three women in the early 1970s: 19-year-old Maureen Field of Moraga in 1972, 15-year-old Lisa Beery of Oakland in 1974, and 25-year-old Letitia Fagot of Walnut Creek in 1975. The first two victims were brutally stabbed to death, while the latter was strangled, stabbed, raped, and beaten to death with a hammer in a brutal home invasion.

All three of Hughes' victims were dumped alongside public roads, and Hughes managed to avoid suspicion for several years, until his wife and accomplice, Suzanne Perrin, turned him in to police in 1979 (having contributed to his final two known crimes). Hughes was known to stab his victims, so that may be a deterrent in linking him to the Santa Rosa crimes, but showed a willingness to not only commit brutal home invasions but abduct his victims from public places. Noted criminalist Paul Holes believes that Hughes has committed many more crimes in the region dating back to the 1960s, all the way through to his arrest in the late 1970s.

Another suspect that is hard to ignore is Roger Reece Kibbe, also known as the "I-5 Strangler," who found most of his victims broken down alongside Interstate 5 in the area surrounding Sacramento. After abducting these women, Kibbe would drive them to remote locations, where he would bind his victims with duct tape and parachute cord, before cutting off their clothing with scissors and then raping and suffocating them to death (occasionally garroting them with the parachute cord).

Kibbe wasn't convicted for any of his crimes until 1991, and despite confessing to his spree starting in 1983, he has been linked to deaths since at least 1977, when he would have been in his late 30's (an odd age for a serial killer to begin committing violent crime). In total, Kibbe murdered at least eight women over approximately a decade, but is believed to have committed other crimes that haven't been linked to him as of yet; with him accepting a plea deal to avoid the death penalty years ago, and thus remaining hesitant to admit to additional crimes (which would likely violate his plea agreement or open him up to further convictions).

Then there is Jackie Ray Hovarter, a suspect theorized by author Gray George in his book, "Lost Coast Highway." Hovarter was an independent trucker that regularly drove throughout northern California, and was later convicted for kidnapping, raping, and murdering 16-year-old Danna Walsh from Willits, California, in August of 1984. That December, Hovarter had kidnapped and raped another girl from Fortuna and attempted to kill her by shooting her in the head and dumping her body in the river. Much to his chagrin, however, she would ultimately survive and testified during Hovarter's trial. While he hasn't been convicted of other crimes in the years since, author Gray George theorizes that Hovarter is a good candidate for the murders of Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble from 1978, and I'm inclined to agree with him.

Finally, we have Joseph Naso, nicknamed "Crazy Joe" by those that knew him. Naso had a long history of petty crime (primarily shoplifting) but wasn't pegged as a violent offender until 2011 when he was 77 years old. That was when police discovered that Naso had committed at least six murders between 1977 and 1994, strangling and raping the women before dumping their bodies in public areas throughout California, ranging from San Francisco to north of Sacramento, as well as further east, near the Sierra Nevada mountains. It's worth noting that after police arrested Naso in 2010, they discovered a notebook containing the names of his numerous victims, which included six women that remain unidentified to this day.

Outside of these big-name, serial offenders, there are a couple of other small-time criminals that I discovered during my research into this case.

One is a man named Campo de Santos, who operated under the alias "Deyo". By 1975, "Deyo" was spending time on New Mexico's death row, having been convicted for a crime that was almost identical to the hitchhiking crimes. He was believed to have been in Sonoma County when at least some of the crimes were carried out, but it's unknown what kind of connection there may be if any. Speaking to the Press Democrat in 1976, Sonoma County sheriff's captain Jim Caulfield would state about this suspect:

"He could be our man in some of these, but he won't talk to us. It's entirely possible they'll send him to the gas chamber and we'll never know if he's the man... In fact, it's possible our killer is dead or locked up somewhere else on other charges."

Another is Joaquin Cordova, a 22-year-old bartender that was arrested by police in October of 1973 for physically and sexually assaulted a 29-year-old woman that followed him home. During the violent act, Cordova reportedly taunted the woman and told her that she was different from the "other girls" - indicating that other young women had fallen prey to his sexual violence. Cordova would be ruled out by investigators early on (deservedly so, considering that he was arrested two months before the final hitchhiking victim was killed), but is really indicative of something: just how many violent sexual offenders there were in the area at the time.

Honestly, I could end up making an entire episode about random suspects I found during the research of this episode: men arrested for sexually assaulted or brutalizing young women hitchhiking throughout Santa Rosa during this era. Perhaps this killer was one of them. Perhaps he was someone that wasn't on anyone's radar and has managed to avoid accountability for his actions for almost five decades.

Another theory that I have to broach before we conclude this series, is the unfortunate possibility that there is no simple answer to this saga. While several investigators believed these murders to be linked - due not only to the victim profile but the increasingly sadistic means by which they died - it's possible that they are not.

After all, the supposed victim profile of this killer happens to be young women put into a dangerous situation because of the time they lived in. The victims were young women who got into a stranger's car, and that, unfortunately, makes them the perfect victim for those looking to take advantage of the situation. Beyond that, however, there is not much that glues these victims together other than the general area they were in at the time of their death. Any other potential links - the parting of their hair down the middle, them being brutalized in specific ways, etc. - may just be a coincidence.

The fact that not all of the victims shared a forensic trait seems to point to this saga being a tragically confusing one. Other than a couple of the victims - namely, Therese Walsh and the unknown Sonoma County Jane Doe - they all seemed to have been killed by various methods. While comparisons can be drawn between where their bodies were dumped, that could also just be a coincidence... or simply link them together, and exclude the rest. Without knowing all of the details in their case, it's hard to make a definitive statement either way.

Maybe - just maybe - the idea of these women falling prey to a single killer is more comforting than the likely truth: that there were possibly several killers involved in the crimes I've detailed over the past five episodes. The harsh reality is that women always have - and always will - be targeted for violence by men. It's sad, and I hate it as much as you do, but the bitter reality - in my opinion - is that there is no "one answer fits all" for these crimes.

The sticky and uncomfortable truth is that the women from this saga were likely killed by several men, who targeted them for their own temporary pleasure - be it sexual or something else entirely. As much as I wish there was a perfect explanation to pin this all on one individual - or hell, even one small group - the possibility exists that several men murdered these women in the same general area and time frame, and got away with it. They never had to pay a cost for their violence, they just got away with it. They might be our coworkers, our neighbors, our brothers, our uncles, our fathers.

Whoever they were, they managed to escape culpability for decades, and are most likely dead at this point. At least, I hope so.

Nearly fifty years have passed since the first victims in this story originally went missing, and their family members have unfortunately had to live the past half-century with the uneasiness of that hanging over them. Family members and friends of the victims - parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, neighbors, etc. - have had to wade through life without knowing how or why their loved ones were chosen to be victimized. Many of these loved ones have gone to the grave without knowing who murdered their young women.

Sadly, we can't even be sure that there aren't more victims of this crime wave: women whose disappearance went unnoticed by the world around them, and whose bodies were dumped in isolated locations with little foot traffic, where they remain today. That is if they haven't fully decomposed in the decades since, or been destroyed by the regular wildfires that plague the region.

Law enforcement continues to investigate this case, but because of the time that has elapsed, they remain almost impossibly cold. The most recent updates from this case came in 2016 when the bodies of Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble were finally identified; but even then, their cases have yet to be officially linked to the murders from Santa Rosa.

In recent years, investigators have hinted at them more aggressively pursuing DNA testing, in the hopes of submitting DNA evidence found at the crime scenes to genealogical websites (which helped authorities track down the Golden State Killer, Joseph James Deangelo, after decades of inactivity). Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018, following Deangelo's arrest, Sonoma County Sheriff's Lieutenant Tim Duke would state:

"You never give up on these cases, but the fact there have been some new breaks in the technology and techniques around DNA is exciting. We had the hitchhikers case shelved for awhile, but now we're strongly working it again. We came across some evidence we thought was good enough to send out for testing. We're hoping for the best."

Nearly three years have passed since Duke spoke to reporters about the feasibility of this evidence, but as we've learned over the past few years, justice is rarely ever swift... but it is more than often exact. We can only hope that in due time, it will come for the person or persons responsible for the tragic loss of life I've described over the past five episodes. Until then, the stories of Lisa Smith, Maureen Sterling, Yvonne Weber, Kim Allen, Jeannette Kamahele, Lori Kursa, Carolyn Davis, Therese Walsh, Kerry Graham, Francine Trimble, and Sonoma County Jane Doe - as well as Rosa Vasquez, Yvonne Quilantang, Angela Thomas, Nancy Gidley, Nancy Feusi, Laura O'Dell, Brenda Merchant, and Donna Braun - will remain unresolved.

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on on January 24th, 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., Jennifer Henshaw, Elissa Hampton-Dutro, and Cherish Brady