00:00:06
Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid. This is morbid. This is how we morbid.
00:00:31
Boom. [laughter] We'll get sued if we go on for too long. Yeah. I just wanted to do that quick
00:00:36
little thing. But I don't know because I feel like Montel Jordan might be uh my friend now.
00:00:41
Oh yeah. I got a cameo from him for John and he told John to have a powerful new year.
00:00:46
A powerful new year. That's what it was. It was one of the honestly one of the coolest cameos. I know this is very
00:00:52
random and very off [laughter] topic. you know us. But Montel Jordan does a cameo
00:00:59
and also he is handsome. He is so handsome and he he was so genuine and kind in the cameo.
00:01:07
It made him handsomemer. It really did. So he was a great one. So if you're ever looking for a cameo for
00:01:11
someone, Montel Jordan. And he'll say he'll give you a little this is how we do it and the voice is
00:01:16
still there and he goes right into the voice like singing from talking and you're just
00:01:20
like people that can do that like we were saying it the other day. Sheena she Yeah,
00:01:25
she just she can just be like, "Yeah, and then [laughter] but it doesn't it doesn't sound like how
00:01:30
I just sounded. It sounds like a [ __ ] goddess from above." Sheena can literally be talking to you
00:01:35
and in the middle of the sentence we'll just belt out a note and you're like and you just stand there and stare at
00:01:40
her. Stupid that skill that you have. Stop that. It's stupid. Sheena, [laughter]
00:01:44
remember when we like first like hung out with her and she sang for us and it was like the most insane thing.
00:01:50
I think she made us cry. She No, literally. Yeah, like Sheena Malwani for the win. Also,
00:01:56
go check out her music on Spotify. Go find it anywhere really to her and Trid's podcast together
00:02:02
called Sheena Interrupted [laughter] cuz she is. It's funny. Uh but yeah, so those pluggy plug plugs
00:02:09
for all the cool Montel Jordan if you know [laughter] our friends Montel say our friend Montel Jordan and our friend
00:02:16
Sheena Milwani. I'm just I'm counting him among friends at this point. Um but yeah. uh excite a
00:02:23
couple of exciting things. So, one exciting thing for my for my ghosties out there, my ghouls, my goulettes, my
00:02:29
goulets. Um I know you saw that announcement. I know you saw that ghost announcement.
00:02:35
I walked into the room and Alina just held up her phone at me and I was like, "What does that mean?
00:02:39
It's something's happening." And she told me everything in the world that it could possibly mean.
00:02:44
Something's happening. I saw somebody theorize cuz I if in case you didn't see it, which like go look. If you live
00:02:50
under a [laughter] [ __ ] rock. No, I'm just kidding. Ghost, they posted that because we've
00:02:54
all been waiting. We've all been waiting for anybody that doesn't know at this point. Yeah, it's a band.
00:02:59
It's a the band Ghost. I'd be shocked if you didn't know at this point because of like who Elena is
00:03:03
as a just joined now. Maybe uh the band Ghost posted this thing cuz we've all been
00:03:09
waiting to find out what happens to Papa there. [clears throat] Uh we're all worried. And so it's been
00:03:15
quiet and then we get this little video of him twirling around on stage which like
00:03:20
just being and in the middle of that video you see a little boop. You see sister in there
00:03:27
just a little flash. It is sister and we said huh what's that? And then I of course I looked cuz I know ghost fans
00:03:35
will always immediately start putting those pieces together for me which is I appreciate. So I looked and it is very
00:03:43
much a reference to the dream that the priest has in the exorcist um that kind of foreshadows his death, his demise.
00:03:50
Oh [ __ ] Yeah. So something's happening, guys. Something's happening. We got movement. We got He came up for air for
00:03:58
a minute. So like I don't know. You're just all in it with me. I know this. I was going to say I'm I just got the
00:04:04
lore from you. I'm not like a die hard by any stretch, but you tell me what I need to know.
00:04:11
Sitting here flipping and Mikey just went when it start when he he saw it first actually. Mikey was in the room
00:04:17
and you just went and then he I heard the music and I was like, "What is that?" I was like, "Show me that now."
00:04:22
And we both just sat on the couch and watched it and we're like, "Yeah, I don't know what I was doing."
00:04:27
So, something's happening. I think a you know, it says coming to cinemas. So, I'm
00:04:30
assuming it's like the Los Angeles tour. They did two nights in Los Angeles. I think it was. And they it was like very
00:04:37
secret, very very cool. So, I think that's probably going to be part of it. But I'm excited. So, what you're saying
00:04:43
is you're going to be dragging me to the movie soon. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I'm going to be dragging all
00:04:49
y'all to the movies. [laughter] Everybody's coming to the movies. Coming. We're all going together.
00:04:53
Everybody out here coming to the movies. And a funny little side note coming off
00:04:57
of that is um one of my twins was sick recently and we had to bring her to like you know the the pediatric like urgent
00:05:05
care or whatever. Little muffin and it was funny. It was just like a chesty kind of cold so we wanted to make
00:05:10
sure it wasn't like you know anything pneumonia. Yeah. It sounded foul. Yeah. Just suddenly, you know,
00:05:16
everything's going around. So, we were bringing her to the pediatric emer um urgent care and John brought her while I
00:05:22
stayed with the other ones and he said on the way there and on the way back cuz she was like a little she just wasn't
00:05:28
feeling good and she didn't want to go to the doctors you know little kid things and she asked he was like what
00:05:32
can I put on for you like in the car make you feel better on the way there and on the way back all
00:05:37
she wanted to listen to was ghost that's all she wanted to listen to and then it made her happy he was like she
00:05:42
was like giggling by the end of by the time I got there she was asking about certain lyrics. Like she was like
00:05:48
totally into it. See, that's the fun thing about like having kids is like you can show them
00:05:52
music and hope that they like it. Like and when they genuinely like it, that's when it like really hits, right? Cuz you
00:05:58
can show them it might not like it. I love this. I hope you do. You know what I mean? Like you don't want to like
00:06:04
them in that way. You want to just kind of show them and open it up to them. Be like,
00:06:08
and they've always heard me listening to it. And she is she loves it. My kid doesn't like
00:06:14
Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, and Mac Miller. I'd like a refund. [laughter] Like a return on investment, please.
00:06:20
It's fun. It's fun to see their like little personalities. Yeah. But that was fun. And
00:06:26
I think the only other thing that I've got to say before we start this case is um go to the butcherame.com and
00:06:33
[laughter] buy that bitch's book, the sequel to The Butcher and the Run. So go get it. Go pre-order it. It's
00:06:40
coming out September 17th. There's going to be all kinds of fun things up until September 17th. So, keep an eye out.
00:06:46
Keep an eye out after, you know, all of it. Oh, especially after, but even leading up. So, go
00:06:52
pre-order that [ __ ] because pre-orders are great and I love a pre-order and pre-order is a little hard to say. Um,
00:06:58
so I'm tripping over it a little bit, but you know, here last time. Yeah, it's hard. I said you should just
00:07:03
say pre-order, which is actually even harder to say. So, pre-order. Um, but also the people that
00:07:08
are that like got it right away and are getting the posters. I got to see the poster yesterday.
00:07:13
[ __ ] sick. They're really cool. You You have to sign all those. Yeah, I'm going to sign all those.
00:07:18
She just will just be like chilling in the day and she just is like signing stacks and stacks of [laughter]
00:07:23
different things from like so much signing, but happy to do it. All the books, all the random books.
00:07:31
But yeah, go to the butcherame.com and it will lead you to all the places that you can get it. Barnes & Noble, you
00:07:37
know, all the places. Uh, so go do that cuz that would be sick. And pre-orders really help me
00:07:42
the author. So, um, I hope you guys dig it. It's much more gnarly. Like I said, it's longer. So, you'll dig it. I think
00:07:49
I hope can't wait for it. So, do that, guys. You guys have been great. And I think that's really all the
00:07:57
the stuff we wanted to tap into. Montel, Ghost, Sheena, books, ghost, the importance.
00:08:03
Yeah. You know. All right. Now, on to the show. I today am going to be talking about the Santa
00:08:09
Rosa hitchhiker murders, which I will tell you off of the top is a very, very tragic tale.
00:08:15
Oh, no. And it is unsolved. Oh, no. But there was some uh like activity as recently as actually as recently as like
00:08:24
this past year really, but I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. And then there was before that
00:08:28
as recent as 2022. So, oh shoot there. And I'll tell you right up off of the I don't know at the at the
00:08:35
top here. Right up right right uh you know right here. Right on the side there. Right over here. I'll tell you that
00:08:42
there was DNA found on some of these bodies. So hopefully they might be able to do
00:08:48
something with it. I don't know if like I don't know. It's all it's all crazy. Who can be sure?
00:08:53
It all starts on the evening of February 4th, 1972 when middle school friends Moren Sterling and Ivonne Weber left
00:08:59
their homes. They were dropped off at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa, California, and they ended up
00:09:07
leaving the Ice Arena at some point in time. And there, it's believed that they tried to hitch a ride somewhere else.
00:09:13
Unfortunately, it was the last time that either girl would be seen alive. Oh, and they were middle schoolers.
00:09:18
Middle schoolers. Yeah. Nearly one year later, the bodies of Moren and Ivonne were discovered at the
00:09:24
foot of a steep embankment in a very rural part of Santa Rosa. and they were identifiable only by the jewelry that
00:09:31
Moren had been wearing the night that she left the house. By the time the remains of both of those
00:09:36
girls were found, actually three other young women from the Santa Rosa area had gone missing or been found murdered. And
00:09:44
all of those women were seen hitchhiking just prior to their disappearance. So, in time, law enforcement officials would
00:09:51
link Sterling and Weber's murders to three other women discovered in 1972 and then three others that occurred in
00:09:58
the year that followed. All believed probably to have been killed by the same man or men. They're not quite certain if
00:10:05
it was one person who did this or if it was multiple. Oh, that's even scarier. Yeah. So, the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker
00:10:12
murders, as they're informally known, they're one of California's most perplexing cold cases in the state's
00:10:17
history. In addition to the eight women who are believed to be victims of this same killer or killers, there are also
00:10:23
several others who disappeared under very similar circumstances and actually could be potential victims. There's been
00:10:30
many, many theories that we'll get into as we go through this, but let's start a
00:10:35
little bit backwards now and go to the afternoon of March 4th, 1972. This was when 19-year-old Kim Allen had
00:10:43
finished her shift at I think it's Larks Natural Foods. It's like a small grocery
00:10:48
store about three miles outside of San Raphael. That night, Kim, after she finished her uh shift there, was going
00:10:55
to be heading to class at the Santa Rosa Junior College. And that was about 45 minutes away. And because of the 70s of
00:11:02
it all, her plan was to hitchhike to get to class. Very It was something she did a lot,
00:11:06
like it was pretty normal. Yeah. So, a little after 5:00 p.m., she caught a ride with two men headed in the
00:11:12
direction of Santa Rosa, but they were actually only going a few miles down the road. They were like, "We can give you
00:11:17
we can get you a little bit of time off your commute here, but like we're not going super far."
00:11:23
Later, those two men would tell investigators that they dropped Kim off at the San Raphael exit from Highway uh
00:11:29
101, where they saw her continue hitchhiking as they made their way into town. The next day, unfortunately, two
00:11:36
high school students were taking a shortcut through the woods near Bennett Valley Road, not far from where Kim was
00:11:42
last seen, and they stumbled upon the nude dead body of a young woman at the bottom of a steep embankment. A lot of
00:11:49
these women are found at the bottom of an embankment. Yeah. So, these two students ran to get help,
00:11:56
and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department got to the scene just a few minutes later. They responded really
00:12:00
quickly. There, like I said, were no clothes. There was no other items found near the body. All they really had found
00:12:08
at the scene was a wire around the woman's neck that appeared to be the cause of death. Oh jeez.
00:12:14
So based on his cursory examination of the scene, Sonoma County Coroner Andrew Johnson concluded the young woman was
00:12:20
quote apparently tortured to death as the marks on her neck indicated that the cord had been slowly tightened over
00:12:27
time. That's awful. Yeah. He told reporters, and this is horrible, this is a quote. It took her
00:12:33
at least half an hour to die. [gasps] Oh, that is horrific to think about. Whoever did this did it slowly and
00:12:44
methodically. This one specific murder. Slowly and methodically. And you have to think about how long 30
00:12:53
minutes is. Oh my god. 30 minutes is a long time. That is a long time. Think about driving somewhere 30 minutes
00:13:01
away and like how much you like how many things you pass and and how long that feels like it takes.
00:13:06
But when you are fighting to live. Yeah. And the other thing was in addition to the wire around this woman's neck, there
00:13:13
were also wire or rope burns around her wrist and ankles and she had sustained a
00:13:18
minor injury to her collar bone. So the fact that she was like slowly choked was
00:13:23
not the only thing she had gone through. Oh my gosh. The coroner also found evidence of sexual assault indicated by
00:13:29
semen found on the body as well as an oily substance that would later be identified as a kind of lubricant common
00:13:36
in machine shops. This is awful. You would think that would be something to go off of, like the fact that they
00:13:42
found semen, but it just gets crazier. The only other evidence collected at the scene was a single gold earring, the
00:13:50
match for which was never recovered. Ah, now that's going to be a running theme in this case.
00:13:55
Really? Yes. But near the top of the embankment, investigators discovered an impression
00:14:00
in the soil about a foot long and 14 in deep. And they actually believed it could have been caused by the killer
00:14:08
when he slipped and fell while dumping the body. Oh. Mhm. Oh, that's so chilling.
00:14:13
It really is like picturing that in your head. Given the size of the hole and the
00:14:17
angle at which the killer would have fallen, they had reason to believe he quote may have broken his leg or
00:14:22
sustained an injury serious enough to require medical treatment. Wow. So, investigators released a description of
00:14:28
the woman to the press, which prompted a flurry of activity at the sheriff's office. There were tons of people with
00:14:34
missing loved ones showing up fearing that this woman might be their person and looking for answers,
00:14:40
which really tells you like what was going on in California at this time. It's just the fact that there were so
00:14:46
many people with missing loved ones. Seriously. And they were all thinking this could be theirs.
00:14:51
Yeah. But finally on March 9th, Kim's roommates made a tentative identification. And then that
00:14:56
identification was confirmed a few hours later by Kim's own sister, who had to go
00:15:01
identify her body. That's awful. In talking with friends and family, sheriff's detectives learned that Kim
00:15:06
was last seen leaving work on the evening of March 4th wearing a 3/4length coat and an aluminum frame backpack. Um,
00:15:13
she was also carrying a medium-sized wooden soy barrel with Chinese characters on it, but none of those
00:15:19
things were discovered with her body or ever found. Interesting, right? So, with very few clues or
00:15:26
evidence to work from, detectives on the case quickly reached a dead end after exhausting just the few leads that
00:15:32
they'd been given from her friends and family. So, the sheriff's department actually reached out to University of
00:15:38
California criminologist Peter Barnett for assistance. But unfortunately, while Barnett was able to provide some insight
00:15:45
into the type of person who would commit this kind of crime, his assistance didn't really bring them any closer to
00:15:52
identifying a suspect. He was like, "I can tell you who who your suspect would be like, but I can't
00:15:57
name any like I don't have grab you someone." Yeah. Right. So, after about a month,
00:16:01
investigators had run down every single lead they had, and the case looked as though it had gone cold. In late April,
00:16:09
Lieutenant Charles Kinsba told reporters that the investigation quote had become
00:16:13
a matter of routine as detectives began scanning any new case for similarities. He said it may turn out to be a lifelong
00:16:20
process, essentially indicating that the killer might never be caught. Oh, that's
00:16:25
awful. And especially after, you know, like these aren't these are like torture long periods of time. like this isn't,
00:16:35
you know, quick or, you know, crime of passion kind of things, you know what I mean? Like this is this person or these
00:16:44
people are taking like time with these victims and for them to just and and I understand they had nothing to go on,
00:16:51
but to just think of them saying like, "We're probably never going to catch this person or these people." Yeah.
00:16:56
Is like what? Like how can they get away with that? How can they get away with like spending that much time hurting
00:17:03
someone and then dumping them in like a place where they can be found? And we'll
00:17:08
see like people saw a couple weird things, but you're like, how did more people not see
00:17:15
Yeah. something going on. You know what I mean? There's definitely a few weird spotting. So, I don't think if this was
00:17:21
one person or if I tend to believe that it was multiple, at least two people. And I there are theories and I I wonder
00:17:29
if you'll agree with me who it possibly could have been. Okay. Um possibly. I'm not positive, but
00:17:36
you just wonder how more people didn't see stuff cuz I don't think these people were as careful as they
00:17:41
thought they were, but then obviously they were or they were. Yeah. Right. That's what's so interesting is like
00:17:48
you're like is it one person or is it multiple people? I think too. Really? I do think too.
00:17:54
I'll be interested to see what you think. Yeah. So, although they struggled to find evidence in the case, evidence
00:17:59
actually did seem to find its way to investigators. And this is weird. About 3 weeks after her body was discovered in
00:18:05
San Raphael, someone dropped Kim's checkbook into a mailbox in Kentfield, about 50 mi away. Huh. Then, at the end
00:18:13
of March, there did appear to be a break in the case when police arrested 38-year-old mechanic
00:18:20
Robert uh Bushan, I believe it is, for kidnapping and assaulting a hitchhiker. Interesting. He had picked up a
00:18:26
hitchhiker and held her at knife point while he bound her wrists and took her back to his apartment where he forced
00:18:32
her to spend the night. The young woman was actually able to escape the next morning and she called police at which
00:18:37
time Buchanan was arrested. But although he was eventually tried and convicting convicted, excuse me, of that particular
00:18:43
kidnapping, investigators actually determined he was not responsible for Kim's murder. Really?
00:18:49
I couldn't find the key piece that that got him away from like that got him off of it,
00:18:55
but they deemed him like they cleared him. Interesting. Yeah. H And I don't think it was him who did
00:19:03
this because as we'll see, bodies keep showing up in similar circumstances. Okay.
00:19:09
So, while they struggled to make any progress on the case, Kim's story obviously shined a light on growing
00:19:14
concerns around hitchhiking in the US. This was kind of the point where people were like, I don't think this is as safe
00:19:20
as we thought it was. Oh, no. Now, interestingly, sort of, hitchhiking really started during the depression of
00:19:27
the 20s and 30s. People were just doing it out of necessity. But by the mid 20th
00:19:31
century, people it actually like fell out of popularity once things stabilized after World War II. People just weren't
00:19:38
really doing it. Okay. But then for some reason by the 1960s this new generation of young
00:19:44
people had kind of revived the practice. I think they were looking for adventure
00:19:48
and freedom. Yeah. And obviously they didn't realize the inherent danger in getting into a car
00:19:53
with a stranger. Yeah. When you're young, you think you're invincible. We've all been there.
00:19:58
Kim's parents and teachers had actually warned her over and over like they really didn't want her hitchhiking, but
00:20:04
she insisted it was safe and she had evidence that it was safe. She had done it. so many times. So, of course, in her
00:20:12
mind, she felt Why would she think it's going to change? I've done this a million times. Why
00:20:15
would it be any different the next time? So sad. One of her teachers told reporters, "I
00:20:20
do believe she loved everyone and believed everyone to be good. I think that for my part, and in order to make
00:20:25
Kim's memory meaningful, I shall set about finding some way at our school to re-educate those to the fact that the
00:20:31
practice of hitchhiking can be deadly." So, just like a really sweet teacher that
00:20:36
Yeah. wanted to keep Kim's memory alive and protect other kids. Oh, that's so sad, though.
00:20:42
But despite the growing public concerns around hitchhiking, obviously people kept doing it. People People do it
00:20:47
today, even. I was going to say they still do it, you know. But unfortunately, it created
00:20:51
a very easy, unsuspecting pipeline for countless violent predators. So, the issue did come up again in April when
00:20:59
another Santa Rosa Junior College student went missing less than 2 months after Kim. On April 25th, a little after
00:21:06
9:00 a.m., Janette Kamahily left her home in Kotati, California, telling her roommate she was just headed for class,
00:21:13
but she never showed up to class and she never came back home. Her roommate later
00:21:18
told reporters this was completely out of character for Janette. She always communicated where she was going and she
00:21:25
just was not the kind of girl to just run away and go somewhere else and never. It wasn't one of those where they're
00:21:30
like, "Oh, she could have just took off." Exactly. Not at all. So, when Janette still hadn't returned by midnight, her
00:21:36
roommate did call the sheriff's office to report her missing. And a few days later, after the news of Janette's
00:21:42
disappearance had begun to circulate, one of her friends called the sheriff's department with some information. The
00:21:47
friend claimed that on the day Janette disappeared, he actually saw her hitchhiking on the off-ramp from Highway
00:21:54
101, not far from where Kim Allen was last seen. Huh. The friend was about to pull up and
00:22:00
offer Janette a ride, but before he could, the vehicle in front of him, which he described as a 1950s pickup
00:22:06
fitted with a homemade wooden camper, pulled over and Janette got in the passenger side. The friend described the
00:22:13
driver as a white man in his 20s or 30s, but he was unable to make out any other
00:22:18
distinct features. And unfortunately, Janette's remains were never found. And it's possible that she's still alive
00:22:25
somewhere, but she is generally considered a victim of the hitchhiker killer. Oh, that's awful.
00:22:31
Because of that last sighting of her and the proximity of where she was last seen
00:22:36
and where Kim Allen was last seen and as we know. But to not have any concrete answer to
00:22:44
that is like to I always that always kills me when it's like cuz cuz it could go either way.
00:22:50
It's like that family is sitting there holding out hope obviously but it's and you want you know like they
00:22:57
say in you know Sha Shank Redemption it's like hope is one of the best things. Yeah.
00:23:02
But you also think of like the the dark side of that of like but they don't have
00:23:09
the answer you know and it's like and what if it's what if it's a bad answer? And I think just knowing who Kim was,
00:23:16
they they assumed the worst. Like she wasn't just going to run away like I had said, you know,
00:23:21
that's the thing. So I think it's probably one of those things where they just want to know
00:23:24
and because then your mind fills in all the countless nightmarish possibilities.
00:23:29
Of course, I can't imagine. And I should have said this in the beginning, it is a bummer. There's not a
00:23:33
ton of personal information, like details about these women's lives. I tried my best to find anything I could,
00:23:39
but there's just not a ton about them. Yeah. So, I I put in what I could. Yeah. But like the Allen case, investigators
00:23:46
searching for Janette had nothing to go on. And again, the case quickly went cold. As months passed and there were no
00:23:53
new attacks on hitchhikers, law enforcement in Santa Rosa actually started to feel relieved, and they were
00:23:58
thinking that the Allen and Kamahil cases were possibly just random crimes. H. But then on December 14th, 1972, a
00:24:07
couple walking their dog found the nude body of a teenage girl at the bottom of a steep embankment on a road on the edge
00:24:14
of Santa Rosa. Like the Kim Allen case, there was no clothing, no personal effects at the scene, and the only
00:24:20
distinguishing feature was the girl's chipped red nail polish, which I think we said it in the Willie
00:24:27
Pton case. There was one victim who had her toenails painted red. And you just think of somebody taking the time to do
00:24:34
that in life. Yeah. Not knowing that it's going to be that's the last time they're going to
00:24:38
the last time. I used to think that during um autopsies a lot. If somebody had their nails painted, I
00:24:44
was always like, "Did you know that that was the color the last color you were going to wear?" Like
00:24:49
it's just one of those things like, you know, I used to think that with like hairstyles, too, or like
00:24:54
you know, a piece of jewelry that you put on. And I'm like, did you know that was the last time that you would put
00:24:58
that on? Like it's just it like makes you like gh. And for a lot of people, I'm sure no
00:25:02
like we didn't know that was going to be the last thing. So sad. It's haunting. But due to the cold weather, this body
00:25:09
was also frozen when it was discovered, making the exact time of death pretty impossible to determine. But the coroner
00:25:16
estimated she had been there for about a week or two. Okay. Within a few days, investigators
00:25:21
were able to use dental records to positively identify the body as that of 13-year-old
00:25:27
Oh, stop. 13-year-old Lorie Aursa, a Loc Junior High student who had run away from home
00:25:34
on November 11th. Just like the other victims, Lorie was last seen hitchhiking in the Santa Rosa
00:25:40
area on November 20th or 21st. After completing the autopsy, the pathologist estimated that Lori had died sometime
00:25:48
between December 1st and December 8th. So, she was out there hitchhiking for a while. Wow.
00:25:53
Which, like 13year-old girl, like that's a baby. Just out there like on the [ __ ] mean
00:26:00
streets by herself. It's breaks your heart. And this is really, really graphic and
00:26:07
intense. Just so everybody knows, the cause of death was listed as dislocation of the last and second cervical
00:26:15
vertebrae with compression and hemorrhage of the spinal cord due to trauma. Holy [ __ ]
00:26:21
So this young girl was brutalized. Truly brutalized. Brutalized. Like that second and last
00:26:30
and second vertebrae is like you were saying like up in your neck. Oh my gosh. And they were
00:26:36
they were dislocated. So you can only imagine what happened. A lot of trauma. Yeah. Like severely severely.
00:26:43
I can't get over the 13. I mean Oh jeez. It's horrible. Now unlike Kim Allen, there was no sign
00:26:49
of sexual assault and nothing to specifically indicate actually that Lorie had been murdered. In fact, at the
00:26:56
time of the discovery, detectives theorized that she might have actually sustained that fatal spine injury by
00:27:01
jumping or falling over the embankment. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And there is some that that's going to
00:27:10
come back. We're going to talk about that a little bit more. There's a theory. Interesting.
00:27:13
So, according to those who knew her, Lorie had a very quote unquote chaotic home life and she hitchhiked very
00:27:19
frequently while running away from home. This was not the first time she'd run away. Unfortunately, other than those
00:27:25
statements from her friends, there was little evidence or leads to guide the investigation. So, as a result, the
00:27:31
sheriff's office turned to the public for help, and a local newspaper offered a $500 reward for information leading to
00:27:37
an arrest. The request actually prompted a flurry of tips from the public that turned a case of suspicious
00:27:45
circumstances to one of murder because one caller claimed to have seen a quote white van with an offco door sometime
00:27:52
between December 3rd and December 9th near the area where Lorie's body was found. And the man said he was on his
00:27:58
way home from work and noticed the van at the side of the road with a white man behind the wheel. He this man said as he
00:28:04
turned the corner he looked in his rearview mirror and saw quote two other men walking on either side of a young
00:28:11
girl apparently holding her up and leading her. Oh. According to the caller, the men seemed to be hurrying
00:28:17
the girl. And when they reached the back door of the van, they pushed her inside.
00:28:22
And I was like, "Uh, sir, is this the first time you were telling authorities about this?
00:28:27
Did you just watch this?" Like, like come on. I don't know if he called in and reported it and for some reason
00:28:34
it was never recorded. Oh boy. But he called back and was like, "Just so he called and said, just so you know,
00:28:39
I saw this." That's awful. But a short time later, other witnesses came forward with similar tips. And
00:28:45
several callers claimed to have seen Lorie with a quote bushy-haired Caucasian man sitting in a truck parked
00:28:51
near the area where her body was found. So, based on these tips, investigators theorized that Lorie had been out
00:28:57
walking and was approached by the men in the van, who then pushed her into the back of the van and unfortunately
00:29:03
stripped her clothes off. And in an attempt to escape, investigators believe she likely jumped from the moving
00:29:10
vehicle, landing at the bottom of the embankment and injuring her neck in the fall, which caused her death. And they
00:29:16
felt like this would account for the fact that she had been discovered nude but had not been sexually assaulted and
00:29:23
suffered no other signs of physical trauma. That kind that makes sense. It does make sense cuz at first I was
00:29:29
like you thought she just fell down an embankment like nude. Like that doesn't make any sense.
00:29:34
That was the part that got me. I was like I was like yeah I'm sure she could have fallen but like nude like why
00:29:39
wasn't she wearing but that then you hear the whole theory and it's like she got away but that's awful then
00:29:45
fell down an embankment possibly and that's why there was no other or was like pushed down there to
00:29:51
incapacitate her. Exactly. Holy [ __ ] This is gnarly. It's really gnarly. Like that's awful.
00:30:00
That is awful. Yeah, it's awful. And and again, that makes sense. I can see why they put that
00:30:06
together. Exactly. So on December 26th, 1972, just one day after the press announced a
00:30:13
reward for information leading to an arrest in the Hitchhiker murders, two Santa Rosa teenagers discovered two sets
00:30:19
of skeletal remains at the foot of an embankment about 60 ft from the road. The remains were those of two teenage
00:30:26
girls. However, significant decomposition decomposition, excuse me, made identifying them next to
00:30:33
impossible. Neither appeared to have been wearing any clothes or carrying any personal items. And the only evidence at
00:30:39
the scene was one earring. Always one earring. If there's earrings, it's just one.
00:30:45
Yeah, there's something to that, I think. So, a set of orange beads and a gold cross necklace. H.
00:30:52
A few days later, investigators used dental records to identify the remains as those of 12year-old Moren Sterling
00:30:59
and her friend 12 years old. 12year-old Moren Sterling and her 13-year-old friend Ivonne Weber. And I
00:31:06
mentioned them at the beginning. Holy [ __ ] 11 months earlier. They had been missing
00:31:12
almost a year at this point. On February 4th, the girls mothers had dropped them
00:31:16
off around 7:30 at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. But neither girl was there when their moms returned to pick them up
00:31:23
around 11 p.m. Oh, and they're so little. So, the girl's disappearance was reported to the Santa Rosa police and
00:31:29
the sheriff's office who they they didn't really treat this the best. They treated the disappearance like these two
00:31:35
girls were just runaways. And they were not. Even though Ivonne Weber's stepfather
00:31:41
told reporters it was obvious that these girls were not runaways. But because the
00:31:45
ma the remains when they were found had been reduced to bones, the coroner wasn't able to determine the cause of
00:31:50
death. Oh, that's awful. I know. Especially like these are little girls. The literal girls.
00:31:57
It's children. Gut-wrenching. But although they couldn't say with certainty that either
00:32:02
girl had been murdered, the state in which the remains had been found was definitely suspicious. And the deaths
00:32:07
were investigated as homicides. Also, both girls were known to have hitchhiked from time to time, and a friend reported
00:32:14
seeing them get into a car at the side of the road near the ice arena the last night they were seen around 9:00 p.m. So
00:32:21
now there was a presumed link between the deaths of Moren, Ivonne, Kim Allen, and Lorie Corsa. So the district
00:32:28
attorney told reporters, although there is no direct evidence of a homicide, we're going to make a total and complete
00:32:34
investigation and it will be handled as if it were a homicide case. Good. So they didn't handle it fantastic
00:32:40
from the beginning when they did go missing, but at least they came around to the conclusion.
00:32:46
It was the It was so of the time, too. That kind of attitude in the place. So of the time. So of the place. A lot
00:32:54
of at that time. And again in that place. Mhm. When kids went missing, it just wasn't treated the same. No. It
00:33:02
was automatically assumed that they they'll come back. which luckily in most places it's different now.
00:33:09
Yeah. But investigators started combing through leads and information collected by a juvenile officer at uh both at the
00:33:15
time that both girls went missing and also started talking with Moren and Ivon's friends and family. In time they
00:33:22
would sift through every lead and talk to every witness they could find. They actually even did polygraph tests on
00:33:27
four teenagers, but they passed them. And after a few months, they were no closer to finding Moren and Ivon's
00:33:33
killers, or those responsible for the other deaths than they were when the bodies were discovered.
00:33:38
Jeez. Over the course of a year now, someone had murdered at least four young female
00:33:43
hitchhikers with one missing and presumed dead. And somehow they had left zero evidence. None.
00:33:50
That's what's baffling. Literally nothing. In the cases of Kim, Janette, Lorie, Moren, and Avon, there
00:33:56
was a very frustrating lack of clues. And again, almost nothing seemed certain. But there was one thing Santa
00:34:03
Rosa detectives had come to believe strongly. There was a serial killer or two operating in Soma County, and he'd
00:34:10
already killed five girls in brutal, horrible ways. Brutal, brutal murders. Like the other
00:34:17
investigations, detectives on the Sterling and Weber case quickly exhausted the few leads like that that
00:34:22
they had. And the most promising lead was provided by one of the girls school friends that involved uh Moren and
00:34:28
Ivonne having met a man from Russian River about an hour away. The friend believed that they had hitched a ride to
00:34:33
go meet this guy, but police were unable to confirm that such a man even existed.
00:34:38
So, there wasn't a lot to go off of here. And while the rewards offered for information had prompted a surprising
00:34:45
number of calls and tips, pretty much all of them were nothing calls and not much more than rumors that were just
00:34:52
circulating among the junior high and high school students. It was all just infuriating.
00:34:57
And I can't imagine being one of the family members being like, "Do you have anything solid to tell me about my young
00:35:04
child's death and them just having nothing?" Yeah. Like nothing. Damn. By March, leads had
00:35:12
started to dry up, and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and local law enforcement had begun to direct their
00:35:18
attention elsewhere. Someone had been killing college girls in Northern California, putting everyone on high
00:35:24
alert and distracting from these missing hitchhikers. In April 1973, law enforcement officials
00:35:30
arrested one Edmund Keer for the murders of several Anyone Anyone remember that name?
00:35:36
Anyone remember that? But it [ __ ] with our case that we're talking about right
00:35:41
now because for a time the Keer case dominated the news and all the resources of Northern California investigators.
00:35:48
I didn't even think about the time period there. Yep. It was going on like simultaneously.
00:35:53
Damn. And those who weren't occupied with the Keer case were consumed with the growing
00:35:57
number of drug arrests and busts involving the farms and manufacturing operations that would eventually become
00:36:03
a prominent part of the Northern California landscape. And with the growing problems of drugs and violent
00:36:08
crime in Northern California, the last thing Santa Rosa detectives wanted was another murdered hitchhiker.
00:36:13
Yeah. But in late July, that is exactly what they got. On July 31st, the nude body of
00:36:19
an unidentified young woman was discovered by a dirt bike rider down an embankment.
00:36:24
Huh. On France Valley Road about 4 feet actually from where the remains of Marine Sterling and Ivonne Weber were
00:36:30
discovered several months earlier. So this is Yeah. This is pretty clear. Yeah. In his statement to the press, Sheriff
00:36:37
Don, I think it's Stripe Strip Peak speculated that the the killer was quote unquote playing games and taunting
00:36:44
officials to catch him by disposing of the body in the same spot where his earlier victims were found. But just
00:36:50
like most of the other cases, there was virtually no evidence discovered at the scene and sadly no clues as to the
00:36:57
girl's identity. And also the brush and soil leading down to the embankment didn't appear to have been disturbed,
00:37:04
leading investigators to assume that the girl had actually been thrown over the embankment. Quote, either by a very
00:37:10
large man or by two men because it cleared tall brush. I think we have two men working here.
00:37:18
I am I am I think you're right. Just the fact that bodies now are found near next to undisturbed brush. Yeah.
00:37:28
You know what I mean? I'm inclined to to be on your side here. And I think you and I have the same.
00:37:33
Yeah. We looked at each other during one specific thing about a bushyhaired man.
00:37:38
And we'll get there. We will get there. All right. Good. So, upon completing the autopsy, the
00:37:43
coroner determined that the girl had been laying in the brush for about 10 to 12 days, placing her time of death
00:37:48
around mid July. Because of her exposure to the elements and the effects of decomposition, the examiner wasn't able
00:37:54
to determine whether or not she'd been sexually assaulted. But the only physical trauma on the body, and this is
00:38:00
[ __ ] weird, was a small wound on her right ear, as though somebody had tried to pierce her ear.
00:38:08
What? And that sticks out to me because three of the seven bodies found in connection with this case were found
00:38:15
with one earring beside them that was theirs, but the match was missing. Collecting one.
00:38:22
It's Yeah, they're like collecting one of the earrings. And it's like, had she recently tried to pierce her
00:38:28
ears and given up? Maybe. Like I've we've all been at sleepovers, I think, where we decided we were going to pierce
00:38:33
our ears. But still strange. And the fact that it's fresh, you know, like enough where
00:38:39
the coroner notices it. And the fact that earrings seem to play a role somewhat in this case.
00:38:45
That's what's like throwing me off a little. I'm like, what are the earrings thing?
00:38:49
The There's something about the earrings to me. Definitely. For sure. I don't think it's just a
00:38:53
coincidence that they're only finding one. I don't think so either. But perhaps more bewildering though was the cause of
00:38:59
death with this woman, which was identified as strict uh strict ne poisoning. Strick nine. Yeah. Is it strick nine or
00:39:07
strick nine? Strick nine. I thought it was strick nine, too, but when I looked it up, it said
00:39:10
nein. Yeah. But isn't that weird? Yeah. All of a sudden now we're like switching
00:39:17
what? Yeah. The the MMO here. It's almost It's like they're they're like trying different things or they're
00:39:24
Mhm. you know, which itself to my theory. Yeah. Again, we'll get there. But it took almost 2 weeks and eventually the
00:39:33
body was identified as that of a 15year-old girl, Carolyn Davis. She was a runaway from Anderson, a small town
00:39:40
about 200 miles north of Santa Rosa. In early February, Caroline had left for school in the morning, as she always
00:39:46
did, but she never actually arrived to school. When they searched her room, her parents found a note that read, "Dear
00:39:52
mom, don't worry too much about me. The only thing I'm going to be doing is keeping myself alive. Love, Caroline."
00:39:58
So, she had run away. This is so sad. She actually stayed with her sister for a while before moving on to live with
00:40:04
her grandmother in Garberville, just outside of Anderson. But around mid July, Caroline told her grandmother that
00:40:10
she planned to hitchhike down south to visit some friends in Modesto. So her grandmother actually gave her
00:40:16
granddaughter a ride to downtown uh Garberville where she was going to catch a ride. And that was the last time she
00:40:23
was seen hitchhiking a ride at the Highway 101 on-ramp. How awful. where many of these other
00:40:29
girls were seen clearly clearly related. The discovery of yet another murdered hitchhiker all but confirmed the
00:40:36
presence of a serial killer. So Soma County under Sheriff Robert Hayes told reporters, "There's a common
00:40:41
denominator, it seems. They were all fairly young, probably all hitchhiking. They weren't shot or stabbed. They were
00:40:47
all nude. And there were drugs found in at least four of the five victims." H interesting. right now. Unfortunately,
00:40:56
despite their best efforts, no further evidence surfaced and leads were sparse. Investigators thought that they'd caught
00:41:02
a break in the case in October when we Cordona, a 22-year-old Santa Rosa bartender, was arrested for a similar
00:41:10
sexual assault and made statements linking himself to the Hitchhiker murder. But the following day, he was
00:41:15
given a polygraph exam to determine his guilt, and he passed, which effectively ruled him out as a suspect at that point
00:41:22
in time. But we all know hot dog trench coat. You can't just go off of that. I have to assume that there was probably
00:41:30
a little bit more. I was gonna say there has to be something. But then again, it's like but
00:41:33
it was the time. Yeah. And it's like that could polygraphs can be interesting. Definitely
00:41:41
when used in conjunction with lots of other massive pieces of evidence or a full-blown confession.
00:41:49
That's exactly it. It has to be in hand in hand with a couple even like a couple
00:41:55
other things in my opinion. You know, it's a it's got to be a part of several pieces. It can't just be the only thing.
00:42:01
An amalgamation, if you will. Exactly. But after 6 months with no leads, investigators became even more
00:42:07
frustrated when in late December, another body of a young woman was discovered in the France Valley on
00:42:13
December 28th. The nude hog tied body of the young woman was discovered half submerged under a log by two teenagers
00:42:22
boating down the creek and the coroner estimated she'd been dead about a week. Unlike the previous bodies which were
00:42:28
left in a fairly accessible location, this location was very difficult to reach obviously and it took detectives
00:42:35
about 2 hours to make their way to where the body was discovered. Given that she'd been found half submerged, there
00:42:41
was no way to know whether her killer had actually put her in this location where she was found or if she had been
00:42:47
put in the creek and drifted down to where she was found. Okay. A preliminary autopsy showed that she
00:42:53
had been strangled. Strangled. Interesting. Okay. Interesting and horrible, but awful.
00:43:01
Interesting because of what we think what our what both of I believe both of our theories might lead to. I think so,
00:43:08
too. And this one, these are all so so sad, but this one is also, it just hits you in a different way. It took about
00:43:16
two weeks, but eventually the body was identified from fingerprints as Teresa Walsh, a 23-year-old single mother from
00:43:22
Humboldt, and she was hitching back home for Christmas to be with her two, I think,
00:43:28
her 2-year-old son. Oh, goodness. The identification was confirmed by a missing person's report filed by
00:43:33
Teresa's mother on New Year's Eve. According to her family, Teresa had left her home in Northern California a week
00:43:40
or so before Christmas, and she was just hitchhiking to Malibu to see some friends. She was last seen on December
00:43:46
22nd when she left her friends, saying she was planning to hitchhike back to her family's home in Garberville.
00:43:52
Interestingly enough, hoping to make it there by Christmas. The last time she spoke with her mother, Goldie, she told
00:43:58
her, "I'm coming home for Christmas." Oh, and just like the fact that she's a mother is so sad. And her baby was only
00:44:06
two, I believe. Two years old, never going to know their their mother. And that the fact that that family had
00:44:12
to spend Christmas without their daughter, without their mother, their sister, like
00:44:17
it's like right before too. I always think of that when these things happen like right before a major holiday.
00:44:22
Like how do you like a family holiday, you know, right? Like how do you ever celebrate that
00:44:28
holiday again? You have to you have to wake up Christmas morning for that baby and and be present for that baby and
00:44:36
make it the best. But are very impressive these like you know victims families that have to go through
00:44:41
that and then have to pull it together for like kids in the family or someone else in the family.
00:44:47
It's remarkable. I can't even fathom it. No, I can't either. I don't know that I'd be able to. And it's it's wild that
00:44:54
there's just like such I mean we always talk about what what [ __ ] monsters in the world, but it's like that they
00:44:59
choose like the holidays to take someone away from their family. Like not that it's ever a good time to take somebody
00:45:05
away from their family, but it's like that extra it's an extra horrible layer on top of it to do it
00:45:11
during like Christmas, you know? It's it's an added way to [ __ ] with people because these people are like you
00:45:17
just said, monsters. Yeah. You got to be deeply. You just go sit with your family knowing that you
00:45:22
just took someone away from theirs. Like that's heinous. So gross. Now, once again, investigators found
00:45:29
themselves at a loss for leads or evidence. But this time, they called the FBI for assistance.
00:45:34
Thank goodness. Hoping the organization could analyze the rope that was used to bind Teresa
00:45:38
and point them in a direction. Interesting. Now, unfortunately, the analysis of the
00:45:43
rope proved useless because according to the FBI, the rope was too common to be able to trace it.
00:45:50
I really thought I I know you said it was unsolved, but I was like, but you hope that they're going to like
00:45:55
there's something inside of me that's like, "No, tell me who it is." Because this isn't even one of those
00:45:59
cases like obviously we cover cases sometimes that are unsolved, but it's like clearly this person did it.
00:46:06
They don't have anybody in that. And we have a lot of theories realistically. Yeah.
00:46:11
But and I personally think that our shared one that I think we're sharing currently is the strongest. I think it's
00:46:18
a very interesting one and I think it's strong and obviously when we post I like I want
00:46:23
to hear your guys' theories like what do you think yeah because like we said this one is
00:46:28
wide open wide open so it would it would be interesting to hear what anybody else
00:46:31
thinks and who knows maybe you'll have a theory that I didn't cover here so by January 1974 the reward for
00:46:37
information leading to an arrest had actually reached about $6,500 which in 2024 would be $41,000
00:46:45
but it did little to encourage new leads or information. Weeks turned into months
00:46:50
and the story slipped from the front pages to the back. And eventually it just stopped appearing in the press
00:46:56
altogether. Wow. And by the end of the year, investigators had no new information.
00:47:01
They were no closer to catching the killer. But with no new bodies discovered, it appeared as though the
00:47:06
hitchhiker murders had finally come to a very sudden end. Huh. Because no one has
00:47:12
ever been arrested for the murders and there's never been a strong suspect, it's obviously impossible to say who is
00:47:17
and isn't a victim of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker killer or whether the seven previously identified young women were
00:47:25
even killed by the same person or people. Wow. Interesting. And what what year was
00:47:30
this last one? It was right at the end of 1973. It was like the last couple weeks of 1973.
00:47:37
Okay. Interesting. Mhm. Now, other cases like that of Ed Keer illustrated how killers and violent
00:47:43
predators frequently victimized hitchhikers since they were typically willing to get into a stranger's car
00:47:48
without hesitation. And really, that's exactly why it's entirely possible that there are other victims to the Santa
00:47:55
Rosa hitchhiker murders who because of lack of evidence or just the passage of time can't officially be linked to the
00:48:02
case. Yeah. In July 1979, hikers in I think it's Rinken Valley discovered the sk the
00:48:07
skeletal remains of a young woman in a duffel bag about 100 yards from where Lorie Kursa's body was discovered in
00:48:13
late 1972. The victim was described as being somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21
00:48:20
and uh 5' 3 in tall with red hair and wearing hard contact lenses. She'd been also hog tied. both of her
00:48:29
arms were fractured and she's actually believed to have died sometime between 1973 and 1975
00:48:36
and they arrived at that based actually on the fact that she wore those hard contact lenses. They had recently been
00:48:42
pushed out of favor and um phased out, excuse me, in favor of soft plastic lenses.
00:48:47
Okay. But other than the contact lenses, the clothes line uses bindings and the remnants of the bag itself, there was no
00:48:54
evidence at the scene, and she still remains unidentified to this day. Wow. Initially, investigators suspected that
00:49:02
the remains could have been those of Janette Kamahily, who's one of the only victims who was believed to be linked to
00:49:08
the Hitchhiker murders that has actually never been found. But once the race of this body was established to be white,
00:49:15
Janette was ruled out because she was Polynesian. Oh, okay. Now, because of the victim profile,
00:49:20
younger woman, and the circumstances and location in which the body was discovered, this specific Jane Doe is
00:49:27
assumed to be connected to the other victims. It was just that they found her much later. Then in December of 1978,
00:49:34
15-year-old Carrie Graham and 14-year-old Francine uh Trimble, two teenagers from Forestville, California,
00:49:41
they told friends that they were planning to hitchhike to Santa Rosa to attend a party, and they were last seen
00:49:47
hitchhiking a ride at a gas station in Forestville. Francine told her mom that they were just going to go Christmas
00:49:53
shopping, but when they didn't return, her mom became very concerned and filed a missing person's report. It took 6
00:50:00
months to find them, but 6 months later, the badly decomposed remains of the two
00:50:04
teenage girls were discovered in a wooded area of Willlets, which is a rural town about 80 miles uh north of
00:50:12
Santa Rosa. Interesting. The only evidence found at the scene was one earring shaped like a bird.
00:50:19
What the [ __ ] The earrings have something to do with this. If these girls had earrings in,
00:50:24
one was taken as a trophy always. So this whoever this is has earrings 100% or has or had
00:50:33
Yeah. In 2015 the remains were identified actually using modern methods and were
00:50:38
were confirmed to be the remains of Graham and Trimble and the earring was identified uh by Francine's sister as
00:50:44
jewelry that she herself had given Francine, but the match was never discovered.
00:50:49
Unfortunately, given how little evidence was collected in these cases and the already tenuous connection between the
00:50:55
victims, the list of other potential victims is very long and could reasonably include any young women who
00:51:02
disappeared while hitchhiking in the Santa Rosa and Sonoma County area between approximately 1970 and 1975,
00:51:11
they think. Yeah, I think potentially go beyond that. Yeah. Now, let's talk about suspects.
00:51:18
Although there have always been serial killers operating across the United States, obviously that's we're here
00:51:24
talking about them all the time. Unfortunately, the concept Yeah. Unfortunately, the
00:51:28
concept of the serial killer didn't enter the public consciousness until the 1970s. So, this was a very new concept
00:51:35
while this was all happening. And that was when law enforcement agencies started working with mental health
00:51:40
professionals to better understand the profiles of these psychotic killers. Mhm.
00:51:44
But Americans went from being pretty unaware of dangerous predators to then being thrust into a world where they
00:51:51
were seemingly surrounded by these deranged killers. And especially in California, this was a period of time
00:51:57
where some of the nation's most notorious serial killers were caught. Yeah. Bundy, Ed Keer, Charles Mansion,
00:52:03
Manson, excuse me. This is all to say when it came to who could be responsible for the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders,
00:52:11
Bay Area and Northern California residents had serial killers on the brain which may have heavily influenced
00:52:17
their theories, but I do still think serial killer. Yeah, I think so, too. I mean, there's
00:52:23
too many too many similarities. I feel like it's very similar. And of course, it's like a lot of these
00:52:29
unfortunate [ __ ] had similar had similar victim, you know, profiles that they went after,
00:52:39
a certain demographic that they went after. Like, absolutely, you could say 100% it could really go either way, but
00:52:46
I don't think it's crazy to look at serial killer here. No. And I think the way that some of these bodies were
00:52:52
found, where some of these bodies were found, the earrings, and the earrings, I can't get past the
00:52:58
earrings. It's so strange cuz it's too strange. It is. And you don't just lose one
00:53:03
earring. No. And like like over and over like that many people just losing an earring in the
00:53:09
and being found with one. Yeah. It it's too coincidental. I don't know what the like what the odds would be for that,
00:53:17
but it's got to be astronomical. Somebody do it. Yeah. But officially I could definitely not. But
00:53:22
officially there had never been a strong suspect for the killings. And like I was
00:53:25
just saying, investigators can't even conclusively say that all these victims were even killed by the same person. So,
00:53:31
of course, that has led to a great deal of speculation, mostly from amateur sleuths like ourselves, and included
00:53:39
various high-profile serial killers known to have been operating in the vicinity at the time. Among these are
00:53:45
the Zodiac Killer, Arthur Lee Allen, who was actually also one of the prime Zodiac suspects. Yep.
00:53:50
Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianke, and Angelo Buono are my top suspects for this. I fully It's so funny when you brought
00:53:59
that up because I thought it almost immediately. I was like, "Huh, the ages are what make me think this was their
00:54:06
beginning." Absolutely. Because I think they started it around like they quote unquote
00:54:11
started around 1979. Mhm. Or actually um 77. 77. Okay. So, could this It might have been even earlier than
00:54:19
that. I know 77 they were in the midst they were first identified victim happening at least. So, who's to say
00:54:27
that it didn't start earlier and they just didn't ever admit to these ones again because a lot of these are younger
00:54:35
girls. Well, what's interesting is they have a very wide birth of age like between
00:54:43
their v their victims go from like 12 to about 28. Our biggest here is 12 is 12 like um I two of the victims were
00:54:53
friends. One of them was 12-year-old um Dolores Dolly Sepita. She was 12. And then her friend was
00:55:01
Sonia Johnson. She was 14. And look at that. Moren and Ivonne 12 and 13 friends hitchhiking together.
00:55:08
Yep. It's very similar. The fact that many of these girls were strangled and obviously some of them it
00:55:14
was hard to say, but we can assume they may have been strangled, the ones that were not positive. And as we know about
00:55:19
the Hillside Stranglers, they were called that, but they did a lot of [ __ ] up [ __ ] to their victims. They
00:55:25
and they experimented a lot. They did a lot of like they were messy. They were unorganized. I mean, [clears throat]
00:55:33
the fact that they experimented a lot is interesting. And it feels like they were
00:55:37
kind of going after if this is if this theory did ever prove to be true, which obviously we're just speculating,
00:55:45
theorizing and speculating, of course. It it would it would seem like maybe they were going after younger victims
00:55:51
first to, you know, to see what works essentially, right? Like thinking it may have been
00:55:58
easier. Yeah. I think and then also think they drove around in a van, didn't they? So,
00:56:04
I think they I know they drove a car. I know that was generally it. I don't remember if there was a truck involved
00:56:10
or anything. And most of these women were spotted in vans. And but as we as we speak of this,
00:56:17
uh I don't think Kenneth I don't think Kenneth Bianke left Rochester, New York to come to Los
00:56:25
Angeles until like mid70s, like 7576. So, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, I don't think
00:56:32
he's not it's not as strong. Yeah, I don't I don't think it's as strong as we thought this whole way
00:56:37
through. But yeah, cuz I think they started out like now that I'm thinking of the timeline. I
00:56:44
was so sure at first, but I thought of the timeline. I was like, wait a second, that doesn't
00:56:48
Well, and then did they get their DNA at some point? Because DNA was found on some of these bodies. So, then you have
00:56:56
to think that if they were in the system, it would have been compared. Uh Kenneth Bianke is like still hanging out
00:57:01
in prison right now. So it's like they they got his DNA. They'd be able to have his DNA. Yeah.
00:57:05
So well live theorizing that doesn't [ __ ] Yeah. That was that was like live in real time. We were like wait through.
00:57:13
We're like well we what we went through the steps. We had a theory and we asked ourselves questions and said [ __ ] no.
00:57:20
We put it against the realities and it doesn't match up. Well, and the other thing is too, you you would assume that
00:57:26
when their [ __ ] was like gone through that they would have found these earrings because whoever
00:57:31
That's what I would imagine. Whoever this was kept those [ __ ] earrings, took those earrings.
00:57:36
And I agree like that was the thing that was sticking with me too was I was like,
00:57:40
"Where are those earrings?" Mhm. I don't. And that they didn't that wasn't part of their their exploits, you
00:57:47
know, like that they didn't take an earring. Like that was never something that was found at
00:57:53
their crime scenes. And so I was like, would they have stopped that? We were really going for that one. And
00:57:58
then all of a sudden, we were like, actually, no. When we when we weren't thinking of the
00:58:00
years, it made a lot of sense. But then thinking of the years and going through it, it's like the fact that he didn't
00:58:05
line up. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll go to our next one. Yeah. And I don't personally feel uh strongly
00:58:13
about this one, but the theory that the Zodiac Killer might be responsible for the murders was
00:58:18
first put forth by Sonoma County Sheriff Don. Again, I think it's Trapique Stiki
00:58:23
in 1975. He put this theory forward a few months after after the discovery of Theresa Walsh's body. He told reporters,
00:58:30
"The last messages we got from the Zodiac indicated he was going to continue his killings, but bury them."
00:58:35
and he bragged about collecting, and this is a quote, slaves for his use in the next world, which is heinous.
00:58:42
Ew. Yeah, he is a horrible human. The sheriff's statement about the Zodiac immediately received a great deal of
00:58:48
attention from the press, and the sheriff's office was flooded with phone calls and requests for comment, which
00:58:54
the sheriff happily provided. And during a subsequent press conference, he told reporters, "This evil is a lone killer,
00:59:01
perhaps a believer in witchcraft, claiming victims who will serve him." And again, he says, "As slaves in the
00:59:07
afterlife." Huh. However, while the press may have been excited for new information on the
00:59:13
Zodiac and the Santa Rosa killings, few other law enforcement officials agreed with the sheriff's assertion and
00:59:19
eventually he just abandoned that theory altogether. Yeah, that that one didn't hit.
00:59:23
That one Yeah, there was really nothing to it. It was just strange and [ __ ] up.
00:59:27
Didn't hit. Yeah. When it came to identifying a suspect or even putting together a
00:59:32
profile, things were incredibly complicated, though. The killer or killers as we know left very little
00:59:39
evidence at the scene. While some of the victims were seen getting into cars with
00:59:43
men, no one ever managed to get a good like a really good look at the drivers. And further complicating matters was
00:59:49
that as far as they could tell, investigators never found the murder sites. These were just where the bodies
00:59:55
were found. I was going to say and it and it's pretty clear that it wasn't happening where they were found. So
01:00:00
where the [ __ ] did this happen? Where were they killed? That's even more chilling.
01:00:04
Mhm. When they can't find the murder sites and they don't know where it happened
01:00:07
that for some reason that just gets me. No, that's very scary. Having no idea. Such an incomplete piece
01:00:13
of the puzzle that and a massive piece and I was just like the piece that you really need to finish or start start
01:00:20
putting other parts together, you know. Yeah. In total, sheriff's detectives and
01:00:24
investigators with the Santa Rosa police investigated over 300 possible suspects,
01:00:30
but none were ever very seriously considered to be viable. Damn. By the late 1990s and early 2000s,
01:00:38
investigation techniques had obviously changed considerably, offering new hopes to victim's family that the killer might
01:00:44
finally be caught. Killer or killers. Among those was Lorie Kursa's brother, Larry, who had come to believe that his
01:00:50
sister could have been a victim of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy confessed to killing obviously, as we
01:00:57
know, at least 27 women and girls and was known to have spent time in the Santa Rosa area in the early 1970s.
01:01:04
Robert Keell, one of the detectives who helped capture and interview Bundy in the 70s, said, "Bundy's definitely a
01:01:10
good suspect. The killings in Santa Rosa would fit his methods. He spent time in
01:01:14
the area and I'm sure he started killing well before. But local law enforcement on the other hand felt like the focus on
01:01:21
Bundy was misplaced. Lieutenant Steve Brown from the Desoma County Sheriff's Office said the feeling was that one
01:01:27
person committed the killings and Bundy was looked at, but I always thought it must have been a utility worker or a
01:01:32
postal worker, someone familiar with the area. Huh. Eventually, he was completely
01:01:37
ruled out because according to a spokesperson from the sheriff's office, and this is a quote, "All of Bundy's
01:01:43
girls heads were crushed. We didn't have anything like that," which is somewhat true. He was a blunt
01:01:50
force kind of guy. Yeah. Not necessarily a strangler, but it's like I don't know if you can abandon it
01:01:57
altogether cuz this would have been his very early days of operation. As we know, Bundy is capable of
01:02:07
anything really. And he's capable of killing someone as young as 12. 100%. Cuz he has a 12-year-old victim. So,
01:02:17
I don't know if that I don't know if I would discount. Yeah. I don't I'm not sold, but I'm not
01:02:24
I'm not not taking it seriously. That's where I sit pretty much. Yeah. Ted Bundy's one of his first
01:02:31
victims in Idaho was a hitchhiker. And then there are several because there's a lot of people who from that time period.
01:02:40
Obviously can't believe everybody, but no, of course not. A lot of people have stories about
01:02:43
coming in contact with Ted Bundy. Oh, yeah. Tons. And many of them line up with the right
01:02:48
time frame. They line up with the right space. You know, I'm sure a lot of people are telling the truth because
01:02:52
that he was everywhere. Yeah. But he was pretty much everywhere. Yeah. And a lot of people have
01:02:59
stories about like a couple of people have had stories about being picked up by him
01:03:03
like hitchhiking. So I mean it's not out of the realm of possibility and it is at that point it was the
01:03:09
easiest route for them to take. Yeah. You know it just it's like kind of a a convenience thing at that time.
01:03:19
Yeah, that does make sense. So I wouldn't I'm not I'm not totally out on that. We're not not sold on that one.
01:03:24
Yeah. Now, while theories about high-profile killers are most likely the result of their temporary spotlight in
01:03:30
the public eye, there have been at least two uh suspects who were decidedly more
01:03:34
compelling. In the mid1 1980s, Sonoma County coroner Tom Seb gave an interview with the Press Democrat in which he
01:03:41
indicated the most likely suspect to have already passed away. He didn't give the reporter a name, this is
01:03:47
interesting, but he described the individual as a quote middle-aged married man who died in a car accident
01:03:53
in the mid 1970s. He was referring to 41-year-old Santa Rosa Junior College creative writing
01:03:59
teacher Frederick Manali, I believe it is, who died in a head-on car crash in the summer of 1976,
01:04:07
right around the time that the killings completely stopped very abruptly. Okay? And remember, two of our victims were
01:04:16
students at the Santa Rosa Junior College. Okay? Following his death, several alarming
01:04:22
things were found among his possessions, including, and this is heinous, a stom masochistic drawing of his former
01:04:30
student, Kim Allen, our first victim. Okay. I Hello. Mhm. Now, as a result of this discovery and
01:04:42
his interest in very violent pornography and relationship with at least one victim, many have considered him a song
01:04:49
a strong suspect, including myself. [snorts] That's that's the guy as far as I'm
01:04:55
concerned. Like that just sold me. Like the fact that there's too much connection there.
01:04:59
That's a lot of connection. The drawing about a victim. Very, very interesting. Working at the place where some of the
01:05:07
victim victims went to school. I would be interested. Being into violent pornography, dying
01:05:14
the year that it all stopped. It's It's a lot. Go f Who the [ __ ] is related to this
01:05:18
guy? Go find those earrings. I know. Go find somewhere. Find familial DNA and find where this
01:05:25
dude lived. I want to This is the guy. That is my main thing and I've said it 4500 times throughout this.
01:05:32
It's the earrings. You will find those earrings and boom, it'll all come together.
01:05:38
They've got to be somewhere. Now, in 2022, I agree that's a I think that's the strongest one so far. But in 2022, it
01:05:47
seemed like there may have been some movement in the case when police were able to use DNA to link the 1996
01:05:53
unsolved murder of Michelle Marie V to a man named Jack Alexander Bokeen. Uh, unfortunately, Michelle was raped. She
01:06:00
suffered multiple skull fractures due to blunt force trauma and a broken neck. Oh jeez.
01:06:05
Her body was found alongside Stony Point Road near Kotati by construction workers.
01:06:10
Wow. During her attack though, she fought incredibly hard and actually that's how they were able to identify
01:06:16
her killer. There was one sample of scraping with his DNA inside of it. That's how they got him. He had a long,
01:06:24
very violent history that included, according to the Press Democrat, kidnapping, kidnap, kidnapping with the
01:06:31
intent to commit rape, rape of a victim incapable of consent, rape by force or fear, mayhem, aggravated mayhem, two
01:06:38
counts of oral culation with a person under 14 years of age, false imprisonment, and attempted murder.
01:06:45
Holy [ __ ] So, this [ __ ] is fully capable of all the evils that we just spoke
01:06:49
about. And a spokesperson for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office said they were looking into him in connection with the
01:06:55
hitchhiker murders because of his violent history and the fact that his parents owned a home near Santa Rosa
01:07:02
during the time of the killings. Okay, that's interesting, too. But aside from that announcement in 2022
01:07:09
that he was being looked into, I haven't seen any update. And unfortunately, we won't be getting a confession because he
01:07:16
died in prison in December of 22. See, and I'm still kind of stuck on the the coincidental
01:07:26
death of the uh the last guy. Um the the death happening the year that that everything stopped.
01:07:34
Yeah. I'm still That's always interesting to me when somebody who's been suspected dies the
01:07:39
year that everything stops. That's they highly suspect. They got put in prison or something that
01:07:44
year like for something else unrelated and it all stops. It's like, and it's [ __ ] absolutely bonkers.
01:07:50
Like, that would have to be very very wildly coincidental that he had a heinous drawing of one of the one of the
01:07:59
victims. That's the thing that's that's hard to get past. I can't get past that.
01:08:03
It's very hard to get again, someone do the odds for that. Like, that is I think that's the guy.
01:08:09
And you have to wonder like Kim Allen was holding a um it's called a soy barrel. I'm like, would you find that in
01:08:16
his belongings? And all of these women's clothing where where did all of these women's clothing end up? These women and
01:08:21
girls. Here's the thing. I'm like, where did this guy live at the time? Like, and you
01:08:26
may not know this. I just mean like someone figure out where this guy lived. I mean, he had to have lived in the area
01:08:32
if he's a teacher at the Santa Rosa Junior College. So, it's like where the hell did it did
01:08:35
he live? Has this thing been searched thoroughly? Are we looking for false floorboards? Are we listen Are we
01:08:41
looking for basement? Are we looking for attics? Are we looking for crawl spaces
01:08:45
in the walls where are you digging around that house trying to find something [ __ ] is there I'm telling you
01:08:51
if he did it. I think that's the problem. I think like these people are a little bit halfass
01:08:56
looking looked into. You know what I mean? Yeah. But our last suspect, finally, in
01:09:00
2024, documentary filmmaker Sky Borgman released a four-part series in which Sierra Barter, a young woman from
01:09:07
Northern California, comes to believe that her deceased stepgrandfather, Jim Morai, was the Santa Rosa hitchhiker
01:09:15
killer. According to the documentary, he had uh or she excuse me, she had heard many stories from family members about
01:09:23
her stepgrandfather being a violent predator who would physically, psychologically, and sexually abuse the
01:09:29
young women in the family. Oh. And was accused by other young women of similar assault and abuse. And moreover,
01:09:37
after speaking to many of the women in her family and going through some of his remaining affects, Barter comes to
01:09:44
suspect that he may have also been the Zodiac Killer, citing a sheriff's earlier theory to support her belief.
01:09:51
Sheriff Strip Key there. You might be losing me, but I'm but I'm still here. As soon as we get to the like, I think
01:09:55
he's also the Zodiac Killer, it gets a little murky. She claims to have turned the
01:10:00
information over to investigators with the sheriff's office, and nothing has come of her involvement as of yet.
01:10:05
Okay. But we have been fixated on those earrings. She says in his possession was
01:10:13
a jewelry box full of earrings, like mix matched earrings that nobody in the family could account for, but
01:10:23
unfortunately they gave them away. What? Where did they give them? I think like to a Goodwill or something.
01:10:33
Go back to that Goodwill. You got to find out what the [ __ ] going on. I literally have a microphone, but I'm
01:10:37
speaking into my water bottle right now. Go to the Goodwill and find those [ __ ] earrings.
01:10:45
She specifically sites one of the earrings. The um there was like an orange pair that was a single orange one
01:10:53
that was found and she specifically cites it. Come on, everybody. Like, please, I need those earrings.
01:11:01
I totally get it. I give [ __ ] to Goodwill all the time. Absolutely. You find something that sus, hold on to
01:11:07
that. Just hold on to that. Just for just for future reference, I'm not mad. Yeah. No, of course. It happens, you
01:11:12
know. H interesting. Interesting. Until I see those earrings until I need the earrings. I'm still on Frederick.
01:11:21
There is that Frederick. Yeah, I think Frederick is I think he's the strongest of the of the
01:11:26
[ __ ] the suspects listed. Definitely. But I need to see the earrings in his possession. Interesting. Now, despite
01:11:32
the many high-profile and no-name individuals that were connected to the case at one time or another, the murders
01:11:38
of Kim Allen, Lorie Kursa, Ivonne Weber, Carolyn Davis, Terresa Walsh, and potentially Janette Kamahily still
01:11:44
remain unsolved to this day. That's awful. According to the Sonoma County Sheriff's
01:11:48
Office, all cases are still active and under investigation. So, there's still some hope that the person or people
01:11:55
responsible for these brutal, brutal killings will be captured and prosecuted. I'm glad that it's still
01:12:02
actively under investigation cuz I feel like we can figure something out here. I totally think so. Like I said, many of
01:12:09
these bodies were found with DNA. I mean, one of them, they have semen that was found on the body.
01:12:14
It's like we can do something with this. That's huge. We have so much going on with familial DNA and like the genealogy
01:12:20
stuff. There's got to be some way to find some relative who who knows who this was or use their DNA in some way
01:12:28
or at least start like, you know, weeding through the potential suspects. Start start thinning that pile out a
01:12:34
little bit more than that. And look at Frederick. Look at like look at one of his
01:12:38
relatives. Take a look just to see the odds. Just take a look because he had some
01:12:42
stuff going on. I need to see this case solved. Just the amount of people that were killed, the
01:12:48
ages of the people killed. the fact that somebody was killed. Teresa was killed right before Christmas just on her way
01:12:54
back to see her baby and her mom. Brutal. I need to see this case solved and I think we could.
01:13:00
I think we could and I'm glad that we covered it because maybe it will stir up, you know. Yeah.
01:13:06
But in the meantime, we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that
01:13:13
when you find a bad series, you give it to Goodwill because that's totally sus. That's sus. Just keep them. I'm not bad.