Victims of the Santa Rosa Hitch Hiker serial killer
Maureen Louise Sterling and Yvonne Lisa Weber, both 12-year-old
Herbert Slater Middle School students, disappeared around 9 pm on February 4, 1972, after visiting the
Redwood Empire Ice Arena. They were last seen hitchhiking on Guerneville Road, northwest of Santa Rosa. Their bodies were found December 28, 2.2 miles north of Porter Creek Road on Franz Valley Road, down a steep embankment approximately 66 feet off the east side of the roadway. A single earring, orange beads and a 14-carat gold necklace with cross were found at the scene. The cause of death could not be determined from the skeletal remains.
Kim Wendy Allen, 19, Santa Rosa Junior College art student, was given a ride by two men on March 4, 1972 from her job at
Larkspur Natural Food to
San Rafael. They last saw her at approximately 5:20 pm hitchhiking to school near the Bell Avenue entrance to
Highway 101, northbound, carrying a large wooden soy barrel with red
Chinese characters on it. Her body was found the following day down an embankment in a creek bed 20 feet off Enterprise Road in Santa Rosa. The victim had been bound at the ankles and wrists, raped and slowly strangled with a cord for an estimated thirty minutes. Semen was recovered from the body and a single gold loop earring was found at the site. Markings at the top of the embankment and a possible leg impression in the
loam indicated the assailant likely slipped or fell while throwing or transporting the body. The two men who gave her a ride, one of whom was given and passed a
polygraph test, were ruled out as suspects.
Lori Lee Kursa, 13, a
Lawrence Cook Middle School student, had been reported missing by her mother on November 11, 1972 after disappearing while they shopped at a
U-Save and was last seen on November 20 or 21 in Santa Rosa while visiting friends, having deliberately
run away. She had been known to hitchhike occasionally. Her frozen remains were located on December 14 in a
ravine approximately 50 feet off Calistoga Road, northeast of Rincon Valley in Santa Rosa. The killer had thrown the body at least 30 feet over an embankment.
The cause of her death was a broken neck with compression and hemorrhage of the spinal cord. The victim had not been raped and likely died one to two weeks prior to discovery. A possible witness to her abduction later came forward stating that on an evening somewhere between December 3 and 9, while on Parkhurst Drive, he saw two men push a girl fitting Kursa's description into the back of a van driven by a Caucasian man with an
Afro-type hairstyle. The vehicle then sped north on Calistoga Road.
Carolyn Nadine Davis, 14 years old, ran away from her home outside
Anderson in
Shasta County on February 6, 1973 but disappeared July 15 after being dropped off by her grandmother at the
Garberville Post Office. She was last seen hitchhiking that afternoon near the Highway 101 ramp, southbound, in Garberville. Her body was discovered on July 31 just 3 feet from where the remains of Sterling and Weber had been recovered seven months prior. Cause of death was
strychnine poisoning 10–14 days before discovery. It could not be determined if she had been raped. Investigators postulated that her body had been thrown from the road as the hillside brush appeared undisturbed. A witchcraft symbol meaning "carrier of spirits" was found by her body.
Theresa Diane Smith Walsh, 23, of
Miranda, was last seen on December 22, 1973, at
Zuma Beach in
Malibu, intent on hitchhiking to Garberville and joining her family for Christmas. Her partially submerged body was found six days later by kayakers in
Mark West Creek. She had been
hogtied with
clothesline rope, sexually assaulted, strangled and was determined to have been dead approximately one week. Due to recent heavy rains in the area,
high water marks suggested the body could have drifted several miles.
Unidentified Female Victim
On July 2, 1979, skeletal remains were found in a ravine off Calistoga Road approximately 100 yards from where the body of Lori Lee Kursa had been recovered seven years earlier. Due to the age of the remains, authorities initially believed them to be those of Jeannette Kamahele until a comparison of dental records later proved negative. The victim had been hogtied and her arm fractured around the time of her murder but there was no other evidence to establish a cause of death. It was determined that the unidentified victim was approximately 16 to 21 years old, wore contact lenses, had red, auburn, or brown hair, was about 5 feet tall and at one time had broken a rib which was healed by the time of the murder. She died approximately three years earlier (circa 1976).
Possible victims
Lisa Michelle Smith, 17, was last seen hitchhiking on Hearn Avenue in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California. She was last seen on March 16, 1971, she vanished months before the killings started but authorities suspect it is possible she was a victim of the killings. Her body was never recovered.
Jeannette Kamahele, 20, a Santa Rosa Junior College student, was last seen on April 25, 1972, hitchhiking near the
Cotati on-ramp of Highway 101. A friend witnessed her likely abduction and reported that she entered a faded brown
Chevrolet pickup truck fitted with a homemade wooden camper and driven by a 20- to 30-year-old Caucasian male with an Afro hairstyle. Her body has never been found.
Kerry Ann(e) Graham, 15 and
Francine Marie Trimble, 14 of Forestville, California disappeared in mid-December 1978. Skeletal remains were found the following July in Mendocino County where they were dumped off the side of a rural highway, but they weren't identified as belonging to Kerry and Francine until 2015 thanks to DNA analysis. A high school friend said the girls were going to hitchhike to a party in Santa Rosa however had no other information and did not know who they were meeting.
FBI report on additional victims (1975)
In 1975, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a report stating that fourteen unsolved homicides between 1972 and 1974 were committed by the same perpetrator. These consist of the six found victims (as of 1975) and the following:
- Yvonne Quilantang, 15, was found strangled in a vacant Bayview district lot on June 10, 1973. She was seven months pregnant.
- Angela Thomas, 16, was found July 2, 1973, smothered on the playground of Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in Daly City. She had last been seen the previous evening at the Presidio of San Francisco. A locket was recovered near the body.
- Nancy Feusi, 22, disappeared after going dancing at a club in the Sacramento area. Her remains were found on July 22, 1973, in Redding. She had been stabbed to death. In 2011, one of Feusi's five children, Angela Darlene Feusi McAnulty, was convicted of torturing, beating, and starving to death her 15-year-old daughter Jeanette Marie Maples. McAnulty became the second woman ever sentenced to die in Oregon and the first since the 1984 reinstatement of the death penalty.
- Laura A. O'Dell, 21, missing since November 4, 1973, was found three days later in bushes behind the boathouse at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. O'Dell's hands were tied behind her back, and the cause of death appeared to be from head injuries or strangulation.
- Brenda Kaye Merchant, 19, was found stabbed to death at her home February 1, 1974, in Marysville.
- Donna M. Braun, 14, whose strangled body was found on September 29, 1974 in the Salinas River near Monterey.
LINK:
Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders - Wikipedia