Santa Rosa Murders ////// Hitchhiking Victims

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Thanks for listening.

I'm your host, Nick, and with me, as always, is a man who has the filter setting at no.

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That's the captain way.

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Let's talk some true crap.

Nearly two months after the discovery of Kim Allen's body, another beautiful young girl went missing from this same area with eerie similarities.

While sources reference Jeanette Kamahale as both a confirmed and unconfirmed victim of the Santa Rosa hitchhikers case, we are going to include the young Pacific Islander here in this telling, as her case is still open and should be discussed either way.

So, Jeanette, a young woman of Hawaiian descent, was 20 years old when she went missing from Santa Rosa.

Because of her father's naval career, Jeanette had grown up overseas in Japan.

After graduating from Yokohama American High School in 1970, she opted to live stateside.

Like Kim Allen, Jeanette was a student at Santa Rosa Junior College.

And just like Kim, Jeanette frequently got to where she was going by thumbing rides.

Jeanette was last seen hitchhiking on the Cotati on-ramp off Highway 101 in Santa Rosa, California.

This on April 25th, 1972.

So there's that highway again, Highway 101, mentioned another time in this story.

This was a Tuesday.

According to reports, she was picked up by a 20 to 30-year-old Caucasian man with an afro

who might have been driving a faded brown 1950 to 1952 Chevrolet pickup truck with a homemade camper.

So this is one of those cowboy campers I'm guessing that you put in the bed of the truck.

Yeah, the old creepy camper.

Witnesses further describe the driver as likely being tall with mutton chop sideburns.

I've also seen reports of stating that the man may have had a beard.

Either way, it seems that the detail here that is shared throughout most versions of the story is there's some form of facial hair on the driver of this vehicle.

Yeah, old Beardo Weirdo.

Beardo Weirdo.

Shave them and feel and cleanse yourself of the evil that could take you over.

Jeanette was wearing a dark brown blouse or sweater, Levi jeans, sandals, and gold post-type earrings when she vanished.

She had been carrying a brown leather purse as well.

Jeanette has black hair and brown eyes.

She stood five foot five inches tall and weighed 120 pounds.

Jeanette wears a dental bridge and has a large birthmark beneath her right breast.

If still living, Jeanette would be 73 years of age today.

But tragically, Jeanette has never been heard from since the day she was last seen in Santa Rosa and is classified as endangered and missing.

After Jeanette's disappearance, months ticked by.

Months ticked by mercifully without incident.

But in November of 1972, 13-year-old Lori Lee Kursa disappeared.

A habitual runaway, Lori was last seen by her mother while the two were grocery shopping at the USAVE Mart on November 11th before the girl decided to take off to visit some friends in Santa Rosa.

Now, despite her status, so she's only 13, but as reported by her family, she regularly would run away, would run off, would take off without permission.

This was something in her nature.

And despite her status as a frequent runaway, her mother did report the eighth grader, a student at Lawrence Cook Middle School, missing to the police the same day that she vanished.

She told them that when she ran off, Lori was wearing blue jeans, a brown leather jacket, and brown suede cowboy boots, and had wire earrings in her ears.

Lori was next reported as having been seen presumably safe in Santa Rosa.

This would have been on either November 20th or 21st.

This was when she was staying at a friend's house.

However, just a few days later, around November 30th, there's a witness that reported seeing Lori hitchhiking.

Several days after that, another witness said that they saw her on Parkhurst Drive, possibly being forced into a vehicle, forced into a van by two men, one of whom was a white man with an Afro.

So here again, we have Afro Man popping up in our true crime story.

A little warning, though, to the listeners out there.

I have reviewed several different versions of this story.

They are all slightly different.

They all come from credible sources, which makes it even more difficult to sift through and sort out.

The two consistent details, however, Captain, present in each version of this story

is the white dude with the afro and the van.

Yeah, but in 2025, white guy with afro, maybe not so common, but during the times of this abduction or these eyewitness accounts of abduction, a little more common for a white guy to have afro.

Yeah, some of the other versions say bushy hair.

Most versions say...

some type of afro.

The other thing that's aggravating to me with some of these older cases that we cover and some of the cases that are not from our region of the United States.

If you go back in time, other regions, the word van and truck are almost interchangeable in some areas of the country.

So remember the previous story where we had a victim tied to this Afro man

was a truck with the bed camper in it.

I also think that given the generic shape of the two vehicles, one might be confused somewhat easily for the other, and both would presumably have doors on the back.

Well, not to go down some crazy rabbit hole here, but when you have a truck with a camper van on the back, that obviously looks similar to like a camper van.

And there's all kinds of different van conversions back in the day, the ones where they had the extra headroom so you could stand up in the van.

So us tall guys could

just hang out in the van.

Here's the deal, right?

And I like playing within, I like coloring within the lines.

I like playing inside of the confines of the law.

But dude, I hate those cowboy campers.

I love the word cowboy, love cowboys, hate cowboy campers, state troopers, state police,

men and women who are guarding and protecting our highways and freeways in this country.

Just pull every one of those guys over.

I just don't believe any of them are up to any good at all.

We move on, right?

We got to move on.

Unless you're a teenager

driving your father's creepy camper, there's no excuse.

Because when you're a teenager, you'll essentially drive anything.

Yeah, so she's been seen by several different witnesses during the time of after leaving her mother.

And again, this is not her first time doing so.

So staying at a friend's house, that seems reasonable, seems believable, incredible.

And then we have these other witnesses that may have seen her.

Again, the one is

being forced by two men into a van.

Like in the other case, now we have these two individuals.

They can provide alibis for each other.

So I hate this.

Being forced into a van again because there's several versions of this story.

In one version, it's two ladies.

In one version, she's walking with the two men, not being forced into the vehicle.

So, I mean, take it for what it is.

It does, all of those different versions do play into

well into the series of cases that we're talking about here in the garage this week.

I have a hard time reading too much into this, but again, the seeing hearing the white dude with the afro again sets off alarm bells.

But when you have witnesses that cannot tell you what day

that this presumed abduction took place.

Right.

I mean, I don't know how many abductions you're used to seeing, but if I see one,

I'm going to remember what day it is.

And not just that, I'm going to go out of my way to report it to somebody.

Yeah, but again, in a lot of these cases, these eyewitnesses aren't being nefarious.

by nature, but they're just trying to help.

So some of this is just made-up bullshit.

so the best that I could trim this down to here captain is that this took place sometime between the 3rd of December and the 9th of December the witness here says that after she gets into the vehicle whether it was forced or not the vehicle did speed off heading north on Calistoga Road a second witness supported this claim describing seeing a girl resembling Lori in the company of a white male with bushy hair driving a pickup truck.

These reports were eerily similar to the eyewitness descriptions of the man who was last seen with Jeanette Kamahale, who had disappeared months earlier and hadn't been heard from since.

Tragically, in mid-December of that year, Lori Lee Kursa's naked body was found off of Calastoga Road in Santa Rosa, just minutes away from the downtown area.

Her frozen remains were located in a ravine about 50 feet off of the road northeast in Rincon Valley.

Her body had either fell or been pushed over an embankment at least 30 feet down to the bottom of the ravine.

So this is one detail within this particular story that is dramatically different than the other that we have discussed so far.

So the pathologists confirmed that the young teen had died a a week or two being discovered, right?

A week or two before the discovery of her body on December 14th, 1972.

The cause of death was a broken neck with compression and hemorrhage of the spinal cord.

So Lori was not raped.

It was theorized that after being abducted and then stripped naked, she may have either been pushed out from a moving van or vehicle by her captor or or captors

or leapt from the vehicle in order to escape her abductors and then breaking her neck as a result.

So if she was attempting to escape, either she was unaware

or maybe didn't care, was willing to chance it and jumped.

And

instead of hitting the side of the road, she's now falling down this ravine.

It's actually, her death is really horrible, though,

as all of these are, of course.

But it's a different level of violence, potentially a different type of violence here.

But this type of injury, so she breaks her neck as a result of this fall.

This type of injury would have immobilized her, preventing her from escaping the ravine where she eventually would perish.

So she likely laid there for a considerable amount of time.

I want to talk about secret witness.

We've had similar scenarios and other cases.

A lot of times you see a community will do something of this nature when they're starting to get fearful that, oh, we have, we really have something going on here.

We have people disappearing.

We have murder after murder.

We're finding body after body.

You will see a community get wise, band together, and do something of this nature.

Here, it appears it's the media that is attempting to help law enforcement and thus the community.

So shortly after Christmas, 1972, local media announced the launch of a tip-line program and reward for information related to the murders of Kim Allen, Yvonne Weber, Maureen Sterling, and Lori Kursa.

So, of course, this is after the time that Weber and Sterling were finally found.

An area newspaper, the Press Democrat that we've mentioned earlier, launched a secret witness program in conjunction with radio stations KSRO and KRVE.

This was, of course, endorsed by the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office,

particularly Sheriff Don Streipick,

who was leading the investigation.

So, what they did here, Captain, was they did a reward of $500 a piece that was offered up for information regarding to those responsible for the murders of the four girls, as well as information as to the whereabouts of a fifth, the still missing Jeanette Kamahale.

So the reward, I like the way they did this, though, because it's $500 a piece.

You can't confirm, nobody, no Stradamus wouldn't be able to sort this out if these were connected or not.

100%.

And so what you're, in a sense, asking the public to do is put your blinders on.

If you know something about this one case, this one missing girl, this one dead girl, don't concern yourself about the other cases.

If you know something about one of these cases, let us know.

We are starved for breadcrumbs.

We are looking for a breadcrumb trail, not in all of these murders, in each of these murders.

Yeah, question for you because it seems like the community, the public, and media are connecting all these cases.

But is law enforcement at the time saying, hey, it's most likely that some of these are connected?

Yeah.

So you, again, I would imagine you have a little bit of infighting behind closed doors, but Sheriff Don Streipick

did not shy away from the idea.

In fact, he openly...

postulated that they were connected.

And in some cases,

as these cases and investigations drug on without a conclusion, without a good result, he would openly say that he thought that they were connected.

I've heard his name pronounced multiple ways: Stripek, Stripek.

I'm going to go with Stripek for now.

Forgive me, my garage friends.

The reward fund totaled $2,500,

which doesn't seem like a lot, but again, $500 a piece for each case.

But $2,500 in 1972 is over $17,000 today.

Not bad.

Not bad.

And it's encouraging.

If you've seen something, let us know.

So, but the way that this secret witness program works, because at some point, Captain, when you have case after case after case, don't you, as law enforcement and anybody with a, with a level head and a brain here, they're starting to go, well, why isn't somebody coming forward?

Why aren't more people coming forward?

Somebody must have seen something.

These girls, every one of them, if the story is as it's been told, they were on the side of the road somewhere, presumably seen by several people, if not dozens of people.

You start to wonder, why don't we have more people coming forward?

So, this secret witness program was a mail-in tip line, a sort of precursor to Crime Stoppers tip line, if you will.

So, anyone with information about the a crime or the crimes was asked to mail in a letter to the secret witness program after typing up or writing out printing their information.

Tipsters were instructed to not include their name, to not sign the letter, but instead sign the last page with a code comprised of three numerals and three letters of their own choosing.

Okay, so you write this code, you come up with your own code.

NIC123 would would be a good example, or N1C2I3 would be another good example.

Three letters, three numbers.

You write this code on your information, and on the last page of the information that you are sending in, write the code again.

Then tear that corner off, the bottom right-hand corner.

as instructed, tear the bottom right-hand corner of the last page off and save that.

So

the people receiving your tip have the same code that you have.

And then you mail it to a P.O.

box in Santa Rosa.

Certainly, this is a noble attempt on the part of the media to assist law enforcement in gathering information.

I couldn't find any sources that reported whether this led to any viable leads that resulted from this program.

Also, you're asking these individuals to do too much work.

It's hard enough to get people to call in tips.

Agreed.

I think they're giving the public an anonymous option.

No, yeah, I understand what they're trying to do.

I just think sometimes you're putting too much

work, and if there's too much work, that maybe some people just go, ah, it's not worth my time.

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Talk hands in the air.

Cheers to you, Colonel.

Talk hands.

Way up high.

Way up high.

So by now, Captain, the police were pretty much convinced that the four

confirmed hitchhiking murder victims, along with the missing hitchhiker, Jeanette Kamahale, were linked.

As said previously, they were openly speculating about this with the media and the public and the community, but also in a lot of cases, pointing out that this very likely is the scenario that we are forced to deal with.

Now,

whether the murders were the result of a single perpetrator or multiple assailants, this they could not confirm nor 100% agree upon, which makes a lot of sense considering how and where you're finding the bodies, right?

We don't,

especially with the ones that were

fully decomposed, it gets really difficult to try to say, hey, somebody pulled up on the side of this ravine at the top of the ravine

on the side of the road and

got out,

drug the body out of their vehicle and simply rolled it down the hillside.

Or

where we have the scene where someone is saying,

we may have an injured perpetrator.

Are they carrying them down, making sure that they're away from the roadside, making sure that they are away from the old eyeballs that will be traveling those routes so that they won't be found for a considerable amount of time?

Well, it's difficult, though, too, because we have eyewitnesses that see one individual, one suspect, and then we have other eyewitnesses that possibly see two.

And then the first case, we have these eyewitnesses that probably have more details and probably know more about this possible suspect if these are all connected.

But we don't know if this individual at the skating rink, did he have a buddy in the van with him or a buddy in his truck with him?

We don't know that.

Yeah, and of course, it will be easier if there's more than one,

but here's the thing we got to be faced with.

All right.

Spoiler alert.

It's 2025.

We still don't know who committed these murders.

And it's not always the case, but often the case is if there's more than one perpetrator, eventually somebody talks.

And you're right, Captain.

You're absolutely right.

Based off of the eyewitness accounts, whether they are 100% factual or speculation or somewhere in between,

you have accounts where there's one person seen with the victim, or in other cases, more than one, two to three people seen with the person that's no longer with us.

In the press Democrat, there was this great article.

The Sonoma County Sheriff Don Streipick reiterated his belief that these unfortunate young women had fallen prey to the same killer or killers, citing the similarities between the victims.

One, all four were found nude.

Two, their bodies had been discovered at the bottom of steep embankments off of desolate country roads.

Three,

two of the girls were known to routinely hitchhike, and the other two were deemed likely to have accepted a ride.

Four, clothing and jewelry known to be worn by the victims were not recovered at the crime scene.

But in the case of Kim, Maureen, and Yvonne, a single earring was found at the scene.

While it was true that the causes of death varied, strangulation, a broken neck, and undetermined, that didn't necessarily rule out a connection in Sheriff Streipik's eyes.

While some law enforcement officials felt that the cases were unrelated, there simply wasn't enough evidence beyond gut instinct to make a determination one way or another.

Nevertheless, the investigation ramped up with a group of up to eight investigators tasked with focusing upon the hitchhiker murders, as well as sharing information with neighboring counties in an attempt to crack the case.

But that unfortunately is going to lead us, Captain, to victim number six.

So we have things that seem fairly quiet for a few months until 14-year-old Caroline Davis ran away from her home in Shasta County, California.

She runs away February 6th, 1973.

She left a note for her mother telling her not to worry, stating that she was leaving simply

to

get away and says something about trying to stay alive.

I'm leaving to simply try to stay alive.

And that may make a little more sense here as I get further into the telling of this part of the story.

So the note, as reported, reads, dear mom, don't worry too much about me.

The only thing I'm going to be doing is keeping myself alive.

Love Carolyn.

So she drifted for five months.

What we do learn ultimately is for a good portion of that time, she does stay with her sister.

So her sister lives, her adult sister lives in Garberville, California.

So she stays with the sister for a while.

The teen claimed to have been witness to some type of double homicide that she said took place in Shasta County.

And she says, tells the sister she's scared for her life.

Now, her sister, Judy, would say

that she was somewhat skeptical of her sister Carolyn's story about witnessing a murder, but she admitted her sister was clearly fearful and afraid of something or someone to the point that

Carolyn insisted upon sleeping on the floor of her older sister's bedroom closet.

So she's sleeping in the closet on the floor at night.

That's some evidence of truth.

Well, that's what her sister's saying.

Like,

I don't know that I fully believe her story, but she clearly was afraid of something.

Regardless, the older girl covered for her little sister with the mother, you know, not revealing the teen's whereabouts.

She felt that 14-year-old Carolyn was essentially mature, a good girl who had just gotten a bit lost and running a bit wild.

Now, Captain, let's fast-forward a few months.

So we're going to go to the summer of 1973.

Carolyn spent a couple of weeks with her grandmother in July before deciding to visit friends in Modesto, California.

On July 15th, 1973, her grandmother dropped her off in Garberville.

This is where she was last seen hitching a ride near the southbound highway 101 ramp.

Carolyn's body was found on July 31st, 1973 in Santa Rosa, callously abandoned down an embankment, only three feet.

Okay, so

let's not get too hung up on the details here again

different telling of this story this version has her body being found abandoned down an embankment only three feet some sources say less than 10 feet from where yvon weber and maureen sterling's remains had been found the prior december this look if it's the same killer or even if it's not i don't this can't be an accident right this can't be happenstance.

Well, what do we know about serial killers?

They

like to use the same areas as dumping grounds because they have, because news flash, you can be caught abducting the person, you can be caught killing the person, and then you can be caught disposing of the person.

Yeah, we will often see

serial offenders and, of course, serial killers,

they're working

often in times, and there's somebody out there shaking their head right now going, no, that's not true.

Yeah, of course, there are serial killers that travel the country, travel state to state, travel great distances, but the overwhelming majority of them work and operate within an area that they feel very comfortable moving in.

Yeah, or there's some rhyme or reason.

I mean, look at Rex Hiraman.

He, I think, one, dumped the bodies where he did because he was familiar with the area.

He felt like he couldn't get caught, but it was also,

or what they are speculating, is because there was something about it where he could just look over the water and go, Yep, that's where my victims are.

Yep.

And sometimes it comes down to trial and error, right?

Oh, I did it this way once before, and it worked.

Right.

I got away with it.

And that could be part of their fantasy, their sick fantasies.

But with this one, this, when, when, when I find a a detail like this, okay, and this is not

a detail that you can argue.

The only thing you can argue is the distance between

this body and the other two bodies.

And I think that you're going to get these natural discrepancies because there were two bodies that were previously found and they weren't side by side, right?

We discussed how

they were positioned when they were found.

So whether you read three feet, four feet, or less less than 10 feet, this body was right near where one of these other two bodies were found the prior December.

So, when I read this detail here, Captain, where my mind goes, it goes back to the checkbook of one of our previous victims that was mailed, dropped into a mailbox 19 days after her body is found, 20 days after she's abducted.

This, to me, is somebody doing this shit on purpose to play a game with the police.

You're not in charge here.

I'm going to do what I want.

And I might make things confusing for you or embarrassing for you along the way.

Right.

This is my show.

This is my show.

Not your guys' show.

So to further complicate things here, they figure out that poor Carolyn, she had been poisoned with strychnine.

likely about 10 to 14 days before her body was discovered.

It was unclear how the poison was administered to the victim, but there were no other drugs found in her system.

Regardless, it would have been a slow, torturous death, as strychnine poisoning would produce particularly painful muscle spasms, finally resulting in a complete shutdown of the organs and eventual asphyxiation.

The medical examiner determined Caroline had died on July 20th, only five days after her grandmother dropped her off.

Carolyn's right earlobe had sustained an injury as if someone had unsuccessfully tried to pierce her ear.

Her left earlobe was untouched.

They could not determine if she had been sexually assaulted.

So this play piece now with the earring,

this

purposely placing the body where previous bodies were found.

Again, you you go back and you want to look at things like the checkbook.

Now,

here's one part of the story that I hate,

but it is intriguing.

Some say an occult or witchcraft symbol was found near Carolyn's body.

We can discuss this more if you wish, Captain, after this next detail here.

So, one of Carolyn's sisters

later found a map

belonging to Carolyn in a hotel room in Anderson, California.

So

her sister worked at this hotel as a cleaning lady, housekeeping, and

finds this

map in one of the hotel rooms.

She knows that it belongs to her sister because one side is a map, you flip it over, and on the other side of the map, her sister had written all over it, notes and where she was going and things like that.

And if this young woman is hitchhiking on the daily,

it makes sense that she would carry a map with her.

So the sister does not hesitate.

She immediately gives the map to the local police, and she said that she also spoke with both the Shasta and the Sonoma County investigators regarding this detail and everything she thought she knew about her sister or what could have happened to her.

So tell me more about this symbol that was found.

Okay, so

forgive me, this is going to be a

bit of a winding road to get there, but this is a really complicated part of the story.

The reason why I said earlier that I hate this part of the story is because I believe this particular item is

really something that when you review the crime scene, it's just one of those items that it's completely left open to interpretation.

Really, it's anybody's guess what the hell this thing means, if it holds any actual meaning at all.

Or let's not forget, we also don't know who placed it there.

Okay, so what we do know, and what I think we can say with some level of certainty, this is not the first time that you're finding a body in this location, and there's no report of this with the, with the first findings in December.

But months later, when you find another body here, this item was found there.

All right, so I want to go to the newspapers for this so we don't misconstrue any of this information.

Let's let them do it if they did, right?

So, this comes from an article titled Another Slain Girl Found East of State Route.

This is by James E.

Reed.

And I'm only going to read the first two paragraphs of this article.

And it reads, The specter of a maniacal killer with an insane sense of humor loomed over Sonoma County this morning following the discovery of the body of a nude woman yesterday at the same spot off of Franz Valley Road where the remains of two girls were found last December.

Quote, she was lying face down, not four feet from the exact same spot, end quote, where the skeletal remains of Maureen Sterling, age 12, and Yvonne Weber, age 13, were found, said Sheriff Don Streipick.

So, this article does not mention hide nor hair of this so-called occult symbol.

But later, many, including some in law enforcement, would actually suggest a possible connection to the infamous Zodiac killer,

who nobody, you know, he's not been identified as of this story, of these true crime stories, but still not been identified to the telling of

this story here in the garage in 2025.

So maybe

he's still out there killing.

This from the Press Democrat.

If you want to follow this case, you want to do a deep dive.

The Press Democrat is a great source to go to, great resource to have here, as they are the local Santa Rosa, California newspaper.

Back in, this is an article from 75.

So we're going to fast forward a little bit to get the details that we want here on this particular item, evidence or otherwise, in this

one murder in the series.

This article, again by James E.

Reed, titled, Is Zodiac Slaying Young Women?

Question mark.

And I'll read just a bit of it here for you.

Bear with me here, Captain.

And it says: Does a cunning psychotic killer stalk the western United States, playing a cat and mouse game, leaving a trail of nude young girls' bodies for myopic homicide investigators in various various areas.

Sheriff Don Streipick is convinced a solitary loner killed six young girls whose remains were found in Sonoma County in 1972 and 1973.

But he now says the same killer may be responsible for the deaths of some 30 or more girls in the western states since 1969.

Streipik was quoted in a Bay Area newspaper today as saying the killer, quote, makes Juan Corona look like a piker.

Corona was sentenced to state prison in 1973 after being convicted of killing 25 farm laborers in Yoba City area.

And because the killer's diabolical, taunting attitude toward law enforcement, Streipik said, quote, I think he could definitely be the zodiac.

It goes on to say, here and in Washington, Washington state, they mean, the remains of 10 young women were found in three common grave sites as though the killer enjoyed rubbing the evidence of his murders in lawmen's faces.

The Zodiac uses references to astrology in his cryptic messages to Bay Area authorities, but he also refers to Gilbert and Sullivan operettes and talks of making slaves of his victims in the afterlife.

Strypick has released information on a witchcraft symbol made of sticks found at the spot near Devil's Kitchen in Franz Valley where the body of Carolyn Nadine Davis, age 15, was found July 31st, 1973.

The same place where the remains of Yvonne Weber, 13, and Maureen Sterling, 12, were found December 28, 1972.

The sign two crude rectangles joined by a stick is an old English witchcraft symbol, which Stripick says was used in connection with the death rituals, meaning to hurry the spirits on to the afterlife.

The last messages we got from the Zodiac indicated he was going to continue his killings,

but vary them and bragged about collecting slaves for his use in the next world, Strypeck said.

Two psychological profiles, based on information collected by sheriff's detectives, have been developed by a psychiatrist and behavioral scientist to give an insight into the killer's personality.

Strypick plans to release information on these studies at a news conference later, along with photographs and details on the Sonoma County homicides.

Dr.

Edward Shreve of San Francisco says the Sonoma County killer apparently slays his victims slowly for the necessary gratification and considers the young girls garbage to be dumped along the side of the road and not even receive a decent burial.

But he also seems compelled to keep items of clothing and jewelry from his victims, which Shreve says could be for purposes of worship or to display the notches on his gun.

The killer may regard himself as a kind of messiah, Shreve went on to say.

His personality similar to the religious fantasism of the Manson family type and believes he can resolve and cleanse the world of these fallen women, Shreve went on to say.

Both Shreve and Howard Tieton of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in Washington, D.C., believe the person responsible for the Sonoma County slayings lives in the area, or at least is quite familiar with its more remote areas where he has disposed of his victims.

Now, that's quite a bit to chew on there.

Yes, chew on that fact.

That is a little less than half of the news story that ran in the press Democrat.

It ran on page one, Wednesday, April 23rd, 1975.

So we're zooming ahead to 75 to get details about some of the murders, bodies being found in 72 and 73, along with the speculation and some of the insights of what the the police were working on or their speculation about the case and the perpetrator or perpetrators of these murders.

So we're six years in.

Do we have the full profile?

Has that been released to the public?

It has.

The profile was released, but it was released.

Keep in mind, it was released in 1975.

And I know that we zoomed ahead here real quick.

I'll get back to the profile in just a second.

But after this most recent victim, Carolyn's death, as much as we have the detectives, the sheriff, and others later saying that they're all connected, we have to keep in mind that at this time in the timeline in 73, Officially, they're kind of struggling to find an absolute connection between Carolyn's murder and that of the other victims, with the exception of the items that we mentioned.

You know, they're found nude and then her body with a couple of the other bodies.

They were attempting to definitively connect these cases, but to their frustration, it appears they were unable to do so.

And this is regardless of Sheriff Streipich's firm belief that the cases were related, perhaps even more than originally expected.

He further suspected connections between these killings and up to 13 other unsolved cases across the state of California and maybe even into other western states.

Despite the lack of a definite link, some similarities, including the location where the bodies were found, the fact that the victims were nude, like we said, and the lack of clothing, jewelry, except for a single earring at the scene.

I mean, that single earring, this guy's playing with you.

This is difficult to ignore.

So Carolyn Davis's murder was included in the list of the unfortunate Santa Rosa hitchhiker murder victims.

Several months after the terrible discovery of Carolyn Davis's remains, another California free spirit met a sad and similarly tragic end.

This is Teresa Diane Smith Walsh, nicknamed Terry.

She's 23 years old.

So she's a little older than some of our other victims here.

This takes us to the winter of 1973.

She's married, but recently separated.

She did have a two-year-old son with her ex-husband.

She's telling everybody she needed a break from the situation.

So she leaves her young son in the care of her mother in a familiar place that we've heard before in this story, Garberville, California.

So Terry left her home in Miranda, California, and headed south, seemingly unfazed by any danger or warning as to what was going on in the community with the bodies being found.

The young mother hitchhiked her way across the state, frequently catching rides off of Highway 101.

By late December, she was in Malibu, but by then she was ready to go back home.

Okay, so it's late December, 73.

She wants to go home.

She wants to spend Christmas with her mother and with her young son.

Before she could get there, however, she vanishes.

Terry was last seen on December 22nd, 1973, while hitchhiking from Zuma Beach in Malibu back to Northern California.

Again, specifically, her destination is Garberville, where she expected to spend Christmas.

Six days after she was last spotted, hitchhiking Captain, Terry's partially submerged body was discovered by kayakers in Mark West Creek near Michelle, way outside of Santa Rosa.

Teresa's death was particularly gruesome.

Her remains were found nude like the other victims.

Prior to death, she had been hogtied with a nylon clothesline rope.

This is very detailed stuff here.

This is when you find a body like this, and what was done to her prior to you finding, someone spent a good amount of time with this victim and went and took great efforts to make sure that she suffered.

And this is a unique scene, a unique way to find a victim.

And you can't look past any of these details.

So, prior to death, she had been hogtied with a nylon clothesline rope-type rope.

Her thumbs, this is very odd, bound tightly together.

She had an injury to the back of her head and a bruise to her left eye.

The rope that bound her was looped from her ankles to form a noose around her neck.

So, meaning she'd need to keep her body contorted in a way in order just to breathe.

But you have to do this in a way that it's unsustainable.

You can't keep doing that just to breathe.

So, the natural positioning of Terry's body would result in her being slowly, methodically, and agonizingly strangled to death as her muscles would be unable to remain flexed.

So, it was theorized that after

sexually assaulting Terry and watching her slowly strangle, her assailant or assailants dumped her body

a ways up the creek before it washed to its final location during a heavy rainstorm where it was eventually found.

Police would consider Terry to be the seventh confirmed victim, if you include Jeanette Kamahele,

which we are.

of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders case.

But there were multiple other victims that were possibly related to the same killer or killers.

Some that would go unidentified for long periods of time and maybe, but hopefully, not forever.

You asked about the suspect profile here, Captain.

So you're going to get it, my friend.

It's pretty detailed, too.

So it appears, while we zoomed ahead to 75, let's talk about 75.

Because in 1975, it does not appear that they were any closer to solving this case than they were in 72 or 73.

Sheriff Don Streipick Streipick speculated as to whether the Santa Rosa murders were the handiwork of a serial killer.

K-R-O-N-TV news footage from April 25th, 1975, featured scenes from the press conference held by the sheriff in Santa Rosa regarding the hitchhiker murders, where they said at least six or seven young women were confirmed victims who had been murdered while hitchhiking around Santa Rosa between 1972 and 1973.

Sheriff Streipick affirmed his belief that there were possible connections to 13 other unsolved California murders and possibly even in other western states.

A reporter explained that Streipick has been consulting with an investigator and a, quote, witchcraft teaching psychiatrist to produce a composite of the suspect.

This reporter stated that the sheriff is careful in his references to the zodiac as many lawmakers disagree that the zodiac killer is a possible suspect in the case, referencing the mystical symbol discovered by Carolyn Davis's remains.

Sheriff Strypick stated that the artifact related to medieval English witchcraft and, as we said, was meant to

speed the deceased to the afterlife.

The profile developed by the psychologist depicted a male offender.

who possessed at least a high school education, growing up as a loner, he had a passive father and a domineering mother, whom he likely deeply hated, as he did all women in general.

As a child, this offender tortured and killed animals and pets, perhaps by strangling or poisoning them.

He has long-standing mental problems and possesses a savior complex to the point he believes he is doing the world a favor by murdering these young women.

He may even have been responsible for creating his own religion, like the deranged leader of the Manson clan.

In all likelihood, the profile reads, the perpetrator is white, and he is apt to being proficient in mechanical pursuits.

Of the six female victims of the suspected Santa Rosa killer whose bodies have been recovered, all were under 30 years of age, between ages 12 and 24.

They were all found nude, their clothing missing, never to be found.

The women were all white, small to medium in stature, and had been wearing casual clothing when they disappeared.

All of the missing and murdered girls and women had long flowing hair, which may have initially caught the killer's eye.

The hair worn parted in the middle, and most had pierced ears.

Each of the girls came from what was then referred to as a broken home,

which

I don't know how much we read into that.

Some of these were young ladies that had a pretty regular upbringing and had gone off to college.

You know, they had successful parents and gone off to college.

And then two of the girls,

yeah, you can say a broken home because we have a stepfather, but

she had a stepfather because her biological father died in a tragic accident before she was born.

So,

I don't think victimology matters so much in cases like this because how is the murderer getting to the victim?

It's more random.

Exactly.

And so if this individual was going

to

a mall, let's say, to hunt for his prey, well, then he can pick and choose and go, well, I prefer women with brown hair.

as opposed to blonde.

But when you're getting your victims from women hitchhiking, you're basically just putting yourself in a situation so you can have a crime of opportunity.

So I don't think the victimology matters as much.

This is an interesting part of the profile because it will actually circle around into something that is very psychological regarding the likely killer later in the profile.

So let's just kind of put this on the back burner for now, the broken home thing.

Again, that I think that term is more loose than the way we're perceiving it to be, right?

Okay, so, and I'll continue on.

Each of the girls came from what was then referred to as a broken home, and of course, all were hitchhiking when they vanished from sight.

The victims were all known to have either hitchhiked extensively in the past or they had last been seen getting into an unknown vehicle.

Four of the girls, Teresa Smith-Walsh, Jeanette Kamahale, Carolyn Davis, and Kim Allen, were last spotted thumbing a ride along Highway 101.

So that,

regardless, this guy or these guys feel very comfortable with operating on Highway 101 and close to it

before they were all tragically murdered.

And of course, all the bodies had been discovered on lonely, isolated rural roads, typically at the foot of a steep embankment.

Okay, you and I already discussed discussed the obvious, the randomness with these victims when you look at the totality of victims here.

This part is very intriguing.

It says, police, this is outside of the profile, but they openly discuss this.

Police believe that the perpetrator or perpetrators of the Santa Rosa murders had interviewed, air quotes, interviewed potential victims before killing them, as mentioned in several news articles.

This is thought to mean

that after picking them up at random, they spoke with them and kind of assessed the victims.

Right.

And they were looking for certain characteristics, behaviors, or vulnerabilities before deciding to murder or rape and murder, torture these

girls and women.

And we have heard from like killers like.

Edmund Kemper and Bundy and other killers that have picked up victims, talked to them, and for whatever reason, through that conversation, decided she is not going to be a victim of mine, and they let them go.

Yeah, this is one commonality that we've seen across a batch of serial killers.

Like, we've recently talked about Edmund Kemper from our never-ending mind hunter coverage.

I think we'll just cover that until the garage closes for good,

whether it be Douglas's books, wrestlers' books, and Burgess's books, interviewing John Douglas,

interviewing Ann Burgess, talking about the TV show, what have you.

But Ed Kemper says, told the FBI, like, every time I took it a little bit further, I always had somebody in my car.

I was always talking to them.

I just took it a little further and a little further.

Now, let's take it

to another extreme.

There's been more than one serial killer that told the FBI, told detectives while confessing to crimes that sometimes they would make up scenarios to work themselves up into it.

I can't think of the particular killer.

I think he was in Poughkeepsie, but he would bring a woman back to his home and then accuse her of something

he knew that she didn't do.

So he could work himself up into like angry and to give himself a reason to start to kick the fantasy off.

You know, he would accuse her of stealing something.

or lying to him.

And so this could be the same thing thing that's going on here.

If this guy does hold some of the

ideologies that they believe he may have,

how messy and screwed up as they may be, that he's interviewing them.

He's talking with them.

And

some occasions, the girl or the woman gets to get out of the vehicle and walk away.

And on other occasions, she does not.

He is the one that gets to decide.

What's fascinating about this profile from an investigative standpoint, and I don't think they did a good job of this.

Maybe they did.

I wasn't alive in 75, so I can't say I shouldn't judge.

But what it sounds to me like, Captain, here is that they need to openly be telling people, we think that other women and girls got into this guy's car or with these guys in a vehicle.

talked to him, traveled, successfully made it from point A to point B after hitching a ride.

We want to talk to you.

We need to talk to you.

Tell us who picked you up, what kind of vehicle it was.

What was the person like?

Did they give you a name?

That's how you're going to find this guy.

And every serial killer, there is,

I'm yet to find one.

There is somebody that got away.

And that usually will lead you to the killer, if not, provide you with some detailed information about who the killer may be.

Want to thank everybody so much for joining us here in the garage.

So much more to get to.

Make sure you go to truecrimegarage.com and sign up on the mailing list.

And while you're there, go to the store page, pick you something up so you can look good, feel good, treat yourself.

Treat yourself.

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and our code is already up and rocking and rolling you can use our code tcg save yourself a little cash let crime con know that you love the captain and you kind of like the colonel but yeah that's our code for 2026 and until next episode be good be kind and don't litter

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