Almost Trailside: A True Story (15 page)

Other hikers reported seeing a lone male, wearing glasses, who looked to be in his forties. He wore a raincoat despite the fact that it was not raining. Although no one knew it at the time, this man was more likely Barbara’s killer.

The pathologist estimated that Barbara Schwartz’s attacker had used a ten-inch knife. A few days later, some kids found a boning knife near the crime scene crusted with blood. It proved to have been purchased at a chain grocery store but the specific location could not be determined. Unfortunately a TV reporter handled the boning knife obliterating any fingerprints.

The bifocals found near Barbara’s body turned out to be prison issue so investigators checked lists of recently released convicts, especially those with a record of sex crimes who resembled the sketch a police artist had made from the witness report.

The FBI’s San Francisco field office got involved along with other agencies. However, the investigation did not turn up any good leads.

That same night in another jurisdiction, the police questioned a quiet mannered man who claimed to have been wounded in a convenience store attack. Having no
access to the Marin County all-points bulletin, they failed to put two-and-two together. Also, they neglected to find out that there had been a convenience store robbery in the area.

The next day the wounded man visited an optometrist to get a new pair of glasses. The optometrist never saw the flyer about the eye glasses found at the killing scene. That was unfortunate; for it’s likely he would have recognized the unique prescription. Instead, the killer of Barbara Schwartz was free to continue.

Victim Number Three: Anne Alderson

On October 18, 1980 Anne Alderson, a former Peace Corps volunteer, entered Mount Tamalpias State Park in Marin County alone to go jogging. The twenty-six year old young woman was seen by several people. The Park’s caretaker saw her sitting alone in the five-thousand seat amphitheater to watch the sunset. He considered warning her about the potential danger of being alone in the Park at dusk but decided not to disturb her.

Earlier that day, the caretaker had seen a lone male in the area, about age fifty, who was just standing around. Two other people reported seeing Anne Alderson near the area where Edda Kane had been killed over a year before.

That evening, Anne Alderson was shot through the right side of her head with a single bullet from a .38 caliber pistol. She had also been raped and then allowed to get dressed again. Her right earring was missing and she had been propped, face up, against a rock.

What linked this murder clearly to Edda Kane’s was her position. It appeared from her twisted arrangement, that she might have been forced to kneel before being killed.

What police did not yet know is that there were two other victims that weekend but only Anne Alderson had been found.

Not far away a double homicide around the same time provided a tentative lead on a suspect because the victims had both been shot by an apparently demented individual.

Victim Number Four: Shauna May

Victim Number Five: Diana O’Connell

Victim Number Six: Richard Stowers

Victim Number Seven: Cynthia Moreland

Late in November 1980 it became clear that the killer had been busier than the police realized. Four bodies were found on the same day. The victims appeared to have been killed in pairs, two recently and two at least six weeks earlier.

On November 28, 1980 a young woman, named Shauna May, planned to meet friends in Point Reyes National Seashore Park to go hiking. This Park is a few miles north of San Francisco. When Shauna May failed to show up, her worried friends alerted Park officials.

Two days later they found Shauna May’s nude body shoved into a shallow trench. She had been bound tightly with picture frame wire, shot three times in the head, and raped. It was a gruesome, violent, and disturbing crime scene as reported by police and other investigating agents.

Close by, and actually touching Shauna May, was the body of another young woman, twenty-two year old Diana O’Connell. She had been shot once in the head, was strangled with wire, and raped. A pair of panties was stuffed into her mouth. She, too, had gone missing while hiking with friends. One friend had been in front of her on the path, the other friend was some ways behind. Neither friend saw her slip away.

Shauna May and Diana O’Connell lay together face down. It seemed that Diana had been murdered at the same time as Shauna May since another hiker had heard four shots in that area at mid-afternoon. Their clothing was piled onto their knapsacks.

The police assumed that the killer had approached one of these women on the hiking trail with the intention of rape and the other woman had come along at the wrong time. As a witness, she had to be eliminated, too.

A later investigation found that Shauna May and Diana O’Connell did not know each other.

November 28, 1980 turned out to be worse than anyone had anticipated. During the search, two more bodies were discovered just half a mile away. Both victims had been shot in the head. For the first time, one victim was male.

They were identified as Richard Stowers, age nineteen, and Cynthia Moreland, age eighteen.

On October 11, 1980 Richard and Cynthia were reported missing. They were engaged to be married and had gone hiking together in an area that Cynthia reportedly knew well. Because so much time had gone by, Rick was considered AWOL from the Coast Guard.

An autopsy placed their time of death just a few days before that of Anne Alderson. Ballistics analysis confirmed that the killer of Anne Alderson had also shot Shauna May and Diana O’Connell.

Hikers were warned in both Mount Tamalpias State Park and Point Reyes National Seashore Park not to hike alone, although being with another person had not helped Richard Stowers and Cynthia Moreland.

Victim Number Eight: Ellen Marie Hansen

Victim Number Nine: Stephen Haertle

On March 29, 1981 Ellen Marie Hansen was shot to death and Stephen Haertle was shot and left for dead but did survive, while hiking in the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, about eighty miles south of San Francisco near Santa Cruz. Ellen and Stephen were both undergraduates at the University of California in Davis at the time.

Stephen said that while they were hiking, a man approached them, not far from an observation deck. The man had a pistol and threatened them with it, insisting that Ellen allow him to rape her. Ellen refused. Stephen begged the man to let them go, but the man lifted his gun and shot Stephen. The bullets burrowed through his neck, so he wasn’t killed but the man left him in the bushes thinking he was dead. When Stephen regained consciousness he found Ellen’s body. She had been shot point-blank, twice in the head and once in the shoulder. Stephen then sought help from other hikers.

Stephen recalled the man’s crooked yellow teeth and thought he was about fifty years old and balding. The man had a backpack. He wore dark glasses, a gold jacket
with lettering on back, and a baseball cap. He spoke in quick commanding sentences. Stephen estimated that the man weighed about one-hundred-seventy pounds and was between five feet ten inches to six feet tall.

Other people reported a man they had seen on the observation deck, running after the gunshots. Investigators also managed to get some good shoe print impressions from the damp trail surface.

Victim Number Ten: Heather Scaggs

On May 2, 1981 Heather Roxanne Scaggs told her boyfriend that she was going to see David Carpenter about a used car. Supposedly, a friend of Carpenter’s was selling a car and he was going to help Heather purchase it.

Heather, age twenty, was a student at Econo Quick Print in Hayward, where David Carpenter taught people how to use computer typesetter machines. On occasion, Carpenter had given Heather a ride home in a company car. Heather mentioned to Carpenter that she wanted a car of her own, so he told her about his friend’s car that was for sale and offered to loan her some money. Carpenter pressured Heather so much that she finally gave in and agreed to go see the car with him.

Before leaving her house that day, Heather gave her boyfriend the number and address where David Carpenter lived in San Francisco and a time when she expected to return.

Heather Skaggs did not return so her boyfriend went looking for her. He went to Carpenter’s home and confronted him. Carpenter told him that Heather never showed up that morning.

Now frantic, Heather’s boyfriend contacted the police. He knew Carpenter instructed Heather not to tell anyone where she was going and to bring four-hundred dollars with her for the car.

Heather’s disappearance brought up David Carpenter’s name again. He was already identified as resembling the composite drawing given by eye witnesses of the man seen at the trailside murder sites. Detectives interviewed Carpenter about Heather and thought he resembled the composite. During the investigation, they learned that he was a habitual sex offender.

On Sunday, May 24, 1981 the decomposed remains of a female were found in Big Basin Redwoods Park located in the mountains near Santa Cruz. Her naked body was found hidden under a pile of brush. She had been raped and shot once through the eye with a .38 caliber weapon. Similar to an earlier murder, only one of her earrings was left in place. Dental work analysis indicated that they had found the body of Heather Scaggs.

Victim Number Eleven: Kelly Menjivar

On June 16, 1981, in Castle Rock State Park, located along the crest of the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos about forty miles south of San Francisco, rock climbers stumbled across a human jaw bone. With further investigation, the jaw bone was identified as the partial remains of Anna K. Menjivar, a seventeen year old high school student, who had been missing since December 28, 1980. It was suspected that David Carpenter had something to do with her disappearance.

Kelly Menjivar worked part-time at the bank where David Carpenter was a regular client. It was reported that he often engaged in conversation with her. Bank employees were under the impression that she was the reason he came to the bank. But evidence against David Carpenter was slim. Even the cause of Kelly Menjivar’s death could not be established.

As of this date, authorities have been unable to identify her killer.

Victim Number Twelve: Mary Frances Bennett

On October 21, 1979 near the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a museum that sits on a buff at Lands End, overlooking San Francisco bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, the body of twenty-three year old Mary Frances Bennett was found. She had been stabbed at least twenty-five times in the neck, chest, and back. Her body was buried beneath a layer of dirt and branches. “It looked like she had been butchered,” said one police officer at the scene.

Mary Frances Bennett lived in San Francisco, in the Sunset District. She grew up in Montana and had recently graduated from an accounting school there before moving to San Francisco to take a position as an intern at a San Francisco accounting firm. Police believe she had been jogging at Lands End when she was killed.

David Carpenter had long been a suspect in the murder of Mary Frances Bennett but the police were never able to bring a case against him because of lack of evidence, even though the killing matched his exact style and demented preferences. For nearly thirty years the case lay dormant. But, finally the police got a break.

On February 23, 2010 the San Francisco police announced that their cold case crime lab technicians had recovered DNA evidence that matched a sample of David Carpenter’s DNA in a state database. Upon this finding, a confirmation sample was obtained from David Carpenter at San Quentin State Prison. His DNA sample matched the DNA evidence from the killing of Mary Frances Bennett in 1979.

Mary Frances Bennett’s siblings and family living in Montana were shocked by the call from the San Francisco Police with the news of the DNA findings. But they were relieved to know for sure and that David Carpenter was already incarcerated.

Victim Number Thirteen:

Who will turn up as victim number thirteen?

Criminologists continue to investigate unsolved murders and missing person’s reports. Maybe one day, through modern technology, dedicated investigators will be able to give other grieving families and loved ones some closure, by producing conclusive evidence.

It would not be surprising if any discoveries were linked directly to David Carpenter, the Trailside Killer and rapist.

Chapter XI

W
ho else has died at the shrewd twisted mind and hands of David Carpenter, the mixed lust murderer and rapist, known as the Trailside Killer?

How many cold cases and missing person’s files are sitting unsolved in city police departments in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, and possibly even other states, that are the direct result of David Carpenter’s demented calculations and wrath?