The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

In today’s world, most of us would never consider hitchhiking.  If you listen to this podcast or are into true crime at all, you’re hyper-aware of how dangerous it could be to hop in the car of a stranger.  Today, we use Uber and Lift which seems safer because they are kind of “accounted for,” and it’s a business.  Still not always safe. Those services weren’t available until recently though.  Santa Rosa is just above San Francisco and only about 20 miles from the coast.  In the 60s and 70’s it was too close for comfort to numerous unfortunate events in California at the time.  

1968: marked the beginning of the Zodiac’s reign of terror.

1969: Charles Manson was running his family of murderers.  

California was kind of a nightmare already.  Then……

On February 4th, 1972, 12-year-old Maureen Sterling and 13-year-old Yvonne Weber disappeared after they left Redwood Empire Ice Arena.  Yvonne had just turned 13 in January, and Maureen would have been 13 in 14 days.  The last time anyone saw them, it was around 9PM, and they were hitchhiking on Guerneville Road just northwest of Santa Rosa.  They were reported missing by one of their mothers when she came to pick them up around 11PM and couldn’t find them.  The witnesses who saw them hitchhiking were the only leads the police had for months.  

Then on December 28th, 1972, 17-year-old Glen Frost and 18-year-old David Brooner were hiking when they found skeletal remains at the bottom of a steep embankment about 60 feet off the side of Porter Creek Road.  The boys went home and told Glen’s father who called the coroner’s office.  When going through the scene, investigators found an earring and a gold cross necklace with a broken clasp.  However, they found no clothing and no hint of clothing ever being there.  There weren’t any buttons or zippers.  No stray fabric or buckles or clasps.  Nothing.

Other than the fact that they weren’t found with clothes, the fact that the girls had been dragged over a ditch and then tossed down the embankment led investigators to believe that the girls had been murdered.  Investigators were convinced that the murderer had to be pretty strong to have gotten both girls over the ditch, and then toss their bodies down the almost 70 foot embankment without any of the brush being damaged (the girls were not rolled down the embankment).  Or there was more than one person responsible.

Even more disturbing to the investigators was that their murders could be linked to other murders from the months after the girls disappeared.  This terrified them, because they realized they were dealing with a serial killer.  According to one newspaper article, Maureen and Yvonne were actually the 20th and 21st homicide victims that year in Sonoma County and this number was more than double the number of homicides from the year before, which was 9.

The Secret Witness program posted a $1,000 reward for information about the girls’ murderer.  According to the Butte County website, 

“The purpose of Secret Witness is to increase citizen participation and involve the public in assisting local law enforcement agencies in solving and curbing county crime.  This purpose is achieved by providing an outlet to those citizens who wish to relay information on crimes with complete anonymity and with the possibility of receiving a reward upon arrest and conviction of the crimes. Rewards and awards are offered for listed and unlisted crimes and are published in the newspapers, television stations, radio and other media forms.”

On March 4th of 1972 at around 5:20 pm, 19-years-old Kim Wendy Allen attempted to hitchhike on Enterprise Road from her job at a natural food store in Larkspur to her night class at Santa Rosa Junior College (about 40 minutes apart).  She was seen carrying a backpack and a soy sauce barrel with Chinese characters painted on the side.  This was the last time she was seen alive, and she did not make it to her class.

The next day (March 5th), 17-year-olds John Bly and Scott Bunting were riding motorcycles when they pulled over for a rest.  One boy was walking around when he saw a “mannequin.”  But all us true crime fanatics know…it’s never a mannequin.  He also realized it wasn’t a mannequin.  They reported their finding to the police at around 2 PM.

The body (at the time they didn’t know it was Kim) was face down with minimal apparent injuries.  Mostly scratches from rolling down the 20 foot embankment.  It was believed she had been dead for about 12 hours.  She was not wearing clothing or jewelry.  Police described her as between 18- and 26-years-old, about 5’ 5”, 135 lbs, blue eyes, light brown medium length hair.  She had pierced ears and a scar on her left shoulder.  They even released her measurements (38-31-38) and shoe size (6.5-7).

An autopsy would later determine that she had been bound at her wrists and ankles.  The coroner said Kim had been raped and tortured before she was strangled with a cord or wire.  In fact, it was determined that she had been strangled slowly for about a half-hour before she died.  Kim was identified by her sister a few days after her body was found.  Once she was identified, police found out that she lived on Guerneville Road.  The same road that Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber were hitchhiking on; though they didn’t know that at the time because Maureen and Yvonne were still missing.

A reward fund was set up in order to raise money as incentive for someone to come forward with information.  A scholarship fund was also set up so that another person could go to Santa Rosa Junior College and have the experience that Kim had enjoyed so much.  Kim was noted to be a constant source of happiness.  Kim’s sister said that she and Kim had, coincidentally, just recently discussed death.  She said that Kim thought that it shouldn’t be a sad event, but should be a happier event – “a beautiful ending to a beautiful life.”

A ten detective unit was put on Kim’s case and 12 Sonoma County police officers were in charge of retracing Kim’s steps the night she disappeared.  After her death, numerous girls called the police to report that they had also been raped while hitchhiking.  They hoped that by reporting their rape, they would help in finding Kim’s murderer.  Unfortunately, because it had been months in some cases, the police couldn’t act on most of these.  

Another month went by and another woman disappeared.  This time 20-year-old Jeanette Kamahele simply vanished in April of 1972 and was never seen again.  Jeanette was also a student at Santa Rosa Junior College.  Her roommate said Jeanette left their place at around 9:30 am and that Jeanette was not the kind of girl to skip classes .  She described Jeanette as “very stable” and “not at all flighty.”  She wasn’t the kind of girl to just leave her life.

When Jeanette didn’t return home, her roommate reported her missing at about midnight that night.  An all points bulletin (APB) went out with Jeanette’s description: 5’ 5”, 120 lbs, brown eyes, black hair and wearing jeans, a dark top and sandals.  While her body was never found, it was presumed that her disappearance was related to Kim Wendy Allen’s, because she was seen hitchhiking 20 miles from where Kim’s body was found.  Jeanette got in a truck with an unknown man.  The truck was described as a brown, 50s-style, Chevy pickup truck with a homemade wooden camper, and the driver was described as a white man with an afro.

A $500 reward was posted by the Silent Witness Program.

In response to the murders, students at Sonoma State College created the “Carpool Coordination Switchboard” in an attempt to connect students who need rides to drivers.  The students noted that the school was in a rural area without housing or public transportation and was not walking distance to or from anywhere, so there weren’t many options if you didn’t have a car of your own.

13-year-old Lori Lee Kursa was a runaway who had been living with friends since November 11th and was last seen hitchhiking on November 20th, 1972.  Her mother reported her missing on that same day.  Lori’s body was found by a young couple on December 14th in a deep ravine about 50 feet off the side of Calistoga Road in north Santa Rosa.  It appeared that she had been thrown about 30 feet before hitting trees.  She was partially frozen and nude.  

It was originally reported that the body they discovered was between 16 and 23-years-old.  When her body was found, Lori was wearing chipped red nail polish, and they said she had very light, blonde hair and pierced ears.  She was thought to have been dead for about 2 weeks. The coroner said she had likely died at the scene between December 1-8, but there had been extremely cold weather recently making it hard to nail down a more specific time.  Lori was identified by her dental records, and another $1,000 reward was posted for information.

While it appeared that Lori had not been raped, it was thought that her neck was intentionally and violently broken, as opposed to it breaking from the fall into the ravine.  This was also thought to be the possible cause of death.  It was also thought that Lori may have still been alive when she was thrown into the embankment.  An eyewitness came forward to say that they had seen Lori get dragged into a van by two men.  One of the men was described as a white man with an afro.  However, this account and the witness description didn’t turn up any suspects or evidence.

Then, Carolyn Nadine Davis was 14-years-old and also a runaway.  She was seen hitchhiking near Highway 101.  Carolyn had last been seen alive on July 15, 1973 when her grandmother dropped her off at a post office.  Not long before she disappeared, Carolyn wrote a letter to her parents explaining that she was running away and wouldn’t be coming back.  Her body was found lying face down almost 100 miles away on July 31st only feet from the location where the bodies of Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber were found just 2 months earlier.  She was also thought to have been dead for about 2 weeks, and again, no clothes were found anywhere. 

The then-unknown-body was described in the news as a female, 14 to 16-years-old, 5’ 7”, with medium length blondish-brown hair, similar to the other victims.  Officers also noted that, just like Maureen and Yvonne, the perpetrator must have been very strong or had a partner because Carolyn’s body was thrown over the tall brush and down the embankment.  An autopsy determined that her cause of death was strychnine poisoning which was different from the other victims.  The pathologist was unable to determine if Carolyn had been raped, and she would have to be identified using dental records due to decomposition.  They also commented that any dentist who had worked on her would recognize her teeth due to a significant crossbite.

Carolyn’s sister saw the description of the unidentified girl and contacted the sheriff’s office and provided Carolyn’s dental records.  Police also investigated the names that Carolyn mentioned in the last letter she sent to her parents, but nothing came of this.  The Silent Witness program posted a $2,500 reward for information that led to arrest and conviction.

Also unlike the Sterling and Weber murders and the other women who had been found, it was noted in a few sources that beside Carolyn’s body was a symbol made of twigs, two rectangles made from twigs connected by another stick.  The article said that the symbol was from witchcraft and was called “the Carrier of the Spirit” or that it was a symbol to help the spirit move on quickly.  Police were assuming at this time that the murderer must be familiar with the area based on the roads they had chosen to use.  Detectives said this was not an area where people would pull over generally and was a road that wasn’t even that familiar to Santa Rosa residents.  To have dumped bodies in this place more than once suggested to authorities that the murderer knew the area.

On December 22, 1973, in Malibu, 23-year-old Theresa Diane Walsh disappeared after she was seen hitchhiking in an attempt to get to her family, including her 2-year-old son Daron, for the holidays.  Six days later, a body was found by boaters in Mark West Creek.  She had been bound, raped, beaten, and then strangled to death.  Due to serious rain in the area, it was believed that the body was actually carried away from its original location and into the creek.  Detectives also hoped that the fact that her upper teeth were false and she had a gold crown on other teeth would help them identify her quickly.  This body was positively identified as Theresa Walsh.

Despite all these cases being linked, the police had no real suspects or leads.  The Secret Witness program’s rewards were totaling $5,500 by this time and another $1,000 was posted for information into Theresa’s murder as well. 

However, not long after Theresa’s body was identified, the reward amount was up to $9,500:

$1,000 for Theresa, $2,500 for Carolyn, $1,000 for Kim, $1,000 for Maureen and Yvonne, $1,000 for Lori, $500 for Jeanette, and more reward money was tacked on for anyone who could provide information into the manufacturing and distribution of drugs.

When considering suspects, authorities considered many possibilities.  The Zodiac was considered for a minute due to being active in the same time and place, but that was about all.  His letter on November 9th, 1969 to the San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed that he would no longer be announcing his murders and that he would be changing his MO.  On January 29, 1974, the Zodiac’s “Exorcist letter” to the Chronicle was published.  In this letter he claimed to have murdered 37 people, and he also included a character that looked like the design on Kim Wendy Allen’s soy sauce barrel she had been carrying when she vanished. 

The Zodiac theory only truly linked because the murders were without a motive, but in an article from the 70s, Lieutenant Charles Ellis said, “You could link Zodiac in theory with any unsolved murder in the state.  We have no evidence to link Zodiac with any unsolved murders of women in San Francisco.”

Ted Bundy was also considered briefly.  Bundy killed many women on the west coast and was known to rape his victims as well as strip them naked and strangle them.  He had also dumped bodies on the side of the road and claimed to kill between 1969 and 1978.  However, there wasn’t any real evidence that connected these murders to Ted Bundy, and he was officially ruled out when credit card records placed him in Washington state during the dates of most of these disappearances.

The investigators weren’t just hung up on these infamous serial killers.  They also had suspects that were more viable and probable.  One of these was the creative writing professor of Kim Wendy Allen, Professor Fredric Manali.  Manali, former Army guy, died in a car crash on August 24th, 1976 and afterward, it was discovered that he had a kind of dark crush on Kim Wendy Allen.  Among his things were BTK-style sexual drawings of Kim, BTK-style pictures of him dressed in women’s clothing as his alterego “Freda,” a lock of hair in his wallet he was just carrying around casually, as well as pages and pages of writings depicting sadomasochism and sexual torture/slavery.  Even though he was most definitely a creeper when it came to Kim and had some…interesting…sexual fantasies, there was no evidence to say that he killed Kim or any of the other women.

A man named Albert Richard Voorhes, 27, was questioned in reference to these murders as well.  Voorhes had been accused of the murder of Lawrence LeGrand whose body was found on June 7th of 1972 having been thrown down a steep cliff.  According to new paper articles from the time, Voorhes had been through Santa Rosa in July, but he refused to give any statements.

Another suspect that turned out to be nothing was Arthur Leigh Allen.  Allen was a convicted child molester who was from Vallejo, but owned a trailer in Santa Rosa.  Allen had recently been fired from his job at Valley Springs Elementary School where he had been a teacher.  He had been accused, and then charged and convicted, of molesting a boy in that trailer.  Allen had previously been considered a suspect in the Zodiac murders also, but there wasn’t evidence to prove this and in fact fingerprints, palm prints, handwriting samples, and, later, DNA evidence ruled him out in this instance.  There also wasn’t evidence to definitively connect him to the hitchhiker murders, but he was also never really ruled out.

The Los Angeles Hillside Stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr. were also considered suspects in these murders.

At least 8 other women were found dead and linked to these women/young girls who had been murdered.  The FBI determined that there were enough similarities between all of these cases that they had to be linked.

Other women assumed to be linked with the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders were included in an FBI report in 1975.  “Unsolved Female Homicides—An Analysis of a Series of Related Murders in California and Western America” described 14 cases that were believed to be related to one serial killer. :

• 20-year-old Rosa Vasquesz who was last seen on May 26th, 1973 was found strangled at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on May 29, 1973 less than 10 feet off the side of the road.
• 15-year-old Yvonne Quilantang was found strangled in a vacant lot in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco on June 10, 1973.  Yvonne was seven months pregnant. 
• 16-year-old Angela Thomas was found on July 2, 1973 smothered to death on the Benjamin Franklin Junior High School playground in Dale City, California.  She had last been seen just the day before in San Francisco.
• 24-year-old Nancy Patricia Gidley who was found strangled behind George Washington High School in Richmond District of San Francisco on July 15, 1973.  She had last been seen alive at a local hotel 3 day before her body was found.
• 22-year-old Nancy Feusi was found stabbed to death in Redding, California on July 22, 1973
• 22-year-old Laura O’Dell was found beaten to death behind a boathouse in Golden Gate Park on November 7, 1973.  Her hands had been tied behind her back and her cause of death was determined to be head injuries or strangulation.
• 19-year-old Brenda Merchant was found stabbed to death in Marysville, California on February 1, 1974 
• 14-year-old, Donna Braun was found strangled in the Salinas River near Monterey California on September 29, 1974.
• 17-year-old Lisa Smith disappeared after hitchhiking on March 28, 1971.  Her body has still not been found.

Another suspected link was when 15-year-old Kerry Graham and 14-year-old Francine Trimble disappeared in December of 1978.  They had gone to the mall to shop for Christmas presents when they vanished.  Oddly, Francine’s mother reported her missing in mid-December, but Kerry’s family didn’t report her missing until Christmas Eve despite the girls having disappeared the same day.  While police originally thought they were probably just runaways, Francine had recently had her appendix removed and was on medication.  That medication was found in her room.

The skeletal remains of two girls were discovered in a ravine in Jackson State Forest which is in Mendocino County, CA. Both had been bound (with duct tape, not rope) and buried in plastic bags, not tossed aside, buried.  It wasn’t until 2015 that the remains were positively identified as Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble.  The evidence is circumstantial, but the girls are suspected to be victims of the same serial killer.

In 1979, police thought they had found the remains of Jeanette Kamahele when skeletal remains were found about 300 feet from where Lori Lee Kursa’s body was found.  Her arms and legs had been bound and had a healed broken rib and broken arm as well as a rope around her neck.  She was also not wearing any clothing.  However, this body became a Jane Doe when dental records determined that they were not the remains of Jeanette and in 2009 DNA results further confirmed this.  This Jane Doe was determined to be about 19-years-old with auburn/red hair.  They were also able to tell that she had worn contact lenses.

As of the 80s, these cases became cold cases and have still never been solved.  Jeanette nor her remains have never been found, and the Jane Doe from 1979 has still not been identified.  The DNA recovered from the victims was entered into CODIS, but there have been no matches to date.