Other OC Crimes

[jjmcgr]

4 Assaults in 24 hours Stir Fear in Irvine.

By Steve Tripoli and Nancy Wride
Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1983, pg. OC-A1.

Police Task Force Formed and Patrols Beefed Up After Spree.
Responding to an outbreak of sexual assaults on women, Irvine, police officials increased patrols Wednesday in two neighborhoods of the normally serene suburban community, formed a special task force to investigate the attacks and dispatched volunteers on an unusual door-to-door effort to warn residents.
The campaign was organized after four attacks—two rapes, an attempted rape and a sexual assault—were reported between 11 a.m. Tuesday and 11 a.m. Wednesday. It appeared that two of the crimes might have been carried out by the same culprit, police said.
No arrests had been made in connection with any of the incidents by late Wednesday.
Police Bulletin
“At this time, these crimes do not appear to be connected to the recent escape of a (suspected) rapist from Orange County Jail., “a police bulletin said in a reference to the Monday morning jailbreak of Michael Eric Gonzalez, who was still at large late Wednesday.
Irvine Police Detective Lt. Robert Lennert said patrols in the University park and Woodbridge communities, where three of the crimes occurred were being increased to anywhere from four to 12 times their normal strength. Patrols would remain at regular strength in other parts of the city, he said.
A task force of four investigators—one concentrating on each case—plus a sergeant in charge was working to solve the crimes, Lennert said. “As leads come in, we’re basically turning the whole (detective) bureau loose on it,” he added.
Pamphlets Distributed
Finally, Explorer Scouts and other volunteers started distributing informational pamphlets at about 6 p.m. Wednesday in a community that still appeared to be largely unaware of the crimes. The volunteers were expected to complete distribution of a bulletin about the crimes and tips on how residents could protect themselves to about 6,000 Woodbridge homes sometime this morning.
Lennert said it is “definitely not usual” for the city to experience such a rash of assaults. Irvine recorded 18 rapes in 1982 and 10 in 1981, he said, adding that he could not recall any rapes in the Woodbridge area in the past two years. The two rapes in the city since Tuesday brought to 10 the number of rapes reported this year.
Lennert declined to speculate on what could cause such an outbreak. “There’s seldom any logic as to why in these things,” he said.
Irvine police Sgt. Ron Flathers cautioned residents against an overreaction. “The last thing we want is a panic in the city. [Rapes] kind of happen all over, we just seem to be taking care of it on the same day here. It’s just kind of our turn for it.”
Based on descriptions given by witnesses, Lennert said chances were “very, very slim” that any of the crimes were committed by Gonzales, the escapee accused of raping a Balboa island waitress.
Most Residents Unaware
Not many Irvine residents seemed aware of the crimes by Wednesday afternoon. Near the twin Woodbridge lakes, children frolicked about on bicycles as others strolled together, and it appeared the rash of attacks was having little impact on the planned city of 70,000 which boasts the slogan “Another Day in Paradise.”
An exception was Earlene Landesman, who sat with her husband Dennis Landesman on their lakeside porch. She had heard of the crimes from a co-worker at Saddleback Community Hospital in Laguna Hills on Wednesday morning.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I was shocked. This is crazy.”
She said she normally was a cautious person but had been getting lax about security lately. She added, “Now I’ll be keeping my (car) windows up and my doors locked.”
Mayor Larry Agran said he had not heard any upset constituents. “The police have advised me of these occurrences,” he said. “They apparently are unrelated, which makes it more of a freak thing . . . we’re all mystified and deeply concerned, and we hope (the rash of attacks) is over.
Jackie Sherman, an Irvine Police Department employee and coordinator of the UC Irvine rape prevention program, decried what she called the lack of facilitiesa to help rape victims.
The Irvine Community Against Rape (I CARE) shut down its operations earlier this year because it lacked funds, she said. “Not only is there no rape crisis center in this county, there is no exclusive rape hot line period,” Sherman said. “It’s not good for victims and it’s not good for the community.”
The first two crimes occurred in Woodbridge, both at about 10:55 a.m. Tuesday, according to police.
The first rape was committed in a neighborhood near Barranca Parkway and West Yale loop. A housewife in her mid-20s answered a knock on her door and was asked by a man dressed in work clothes if she needed any painting done. When she said no, the man pulled a sharp knifelike instrument, forced his way inside and attacked the woman, police said.
The second Woodbridge attack took place near West Yale Loop and Blue Lake North. Police said a 22-year-old live-in housekeeper opened the door to a man who forced his way inside, began to choke her and then produced a knife, which he held to the victim’s stomach. She broke free, however, and escaped. The case was being characterized by police as an attempted rape.
In both crimes the attacker was described as a Latino male in his early 20s with black hair and brown eyes, of short height and medium build, wearing tan pants. Lennert said there were some differences in the descriptions, but added the cases might be related.
Freeway Incident
The third crime occurred at about 6:35 p.m. Tuesday, on Interstate 5 southbound in Irvine just north of the Jeffrey Road exit, police said. They said a 22-year-old woman was sitting in her disabled auto next to the freeway when a motorcyclist stopped and offered assistance. The man leaned into the car’s open window, placed a knife at the throat of the woman, demanded her wallet, then attempted to sexually assault her. The woman managed to bolt free and flag down a passing car as her assailant fled.
The fourth incident took place at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Lennert said. A 22-year-old woman was walking along an undeveloped path in the William R. Mason Regional park, next to Jeffrey Road near the Parkview Center shopping area in the University Park neighborhood, when a teen-ager approached her. The attacker, wearing only a ski mask and pair of shorts, forced the woman into a culvert and raped her, Lennert said.

[jjmcgr]

Arrests Made in 2 Sexual Assault Cases. Rapes are Unrelated to Rash of Attacks in Irvine, Authorities Say.
By Nancy Wride
Los Angeles Times, 17 September 1983, p. OC A1

Arrests were made Friday morning in the unrelated kidnapping-rapes of a 14 year old Huntington Beach girl and a Costa Mesa woman, authorities said.
Neither of the two men arrested was considered a suspect in any of the five sexual assaults hat occurred in Irvine in a 48-hour period earlier this week, police said. There have been no arrests in those attacks, which authorities believe are unrelated, and investigators Friday said they had no suspects and no new leads.
“To be honest with you, we’re not getting anywhere,” said Irvine police Lt. Robert Lennert. “In some respects –although people become more paranoid and terrorized—its easier to have one suspect because you can put things together for a bigger picture of things. But we are dealing with at least four different (suspects) and probably five.”
‘Hard to Figure’
In attempting to explain the rash of sexual attacks, Lennert and an academic expert in rape suggested Friday that publicity surrounding the first “two or three” incidents and the escape Monday of a rape suspect from the Orange County Jail might have triggered the later assaults.
“When there’s more than one person involved, it’s pretty hard to figure, said Dr. Kaushal Sharma, former assistant director of the USC Institute of Psychiatry and the Law.
“The more publicity there is, (the more that) people who have fantasies about doing this to a woman but have been able to control them somehow allow themselves to let go,” said Sharma, who often testifies as an expert witness in rape cases for Los Angeles County.
Patrols Strengthened
“They’ve been on the borderline, hiding in the woodwork,” he added, “but with the publicity, the fear (of arrest) is outweighed by the excitement of the attention and knowing that other people are out there (getting away) with it.”
Four investigators and a sergeant were to work all weekend on solving the Irvine assaults, which occurred between 11 a.m. Monday and 11 a.m. Wednesday. Lennert said he and five other detectives will be on standby if there is a break in the investigation.
Patrols remain at extra strength in neighborhoods where the attacks occurred, Lennert said, and Explorer Scouts were to circulate warning bulletins to residents of Culverdale , site of the most recent Irvine assault. “We’ve got just about everyone out there,” Lennert said.
In the first rape arrest early Friday morning, sheriff’s deputies captured a 27-year-old salesman, who allegedly raped a `woman he met at a South Laguna restaurant, officials said.
Sheriff’s Lt. Wyatt Hart said the suspect entered the Crown House on Thursday afternoon and threatened to kill a 25-year-old Costa Mesa woman if she did not leave with him.
Hart said the man was armed. The woman was not identified. There were other patrons in the restaurant at the time, but Hart said the stranger ordered the woman to leave quietly with him.
The woman was driven around South Laguna sometime after #:30 p.m. before her assailant took her to his home, tied her up and raped her, Hart said. He drove the woman home later and she called authorities. She was examined at a nearby hospital and later released.
South Laguna Man Arrested
Officials said the woman and her assailant did not know each other before the encounter in the restaurant.
About nine hours later, deputies arrested John Greenwood Macleod near his south Laguna home, Hart said. He was booked into the orange county Jail on suspicion of kidnap and rape. Bail was set at $25,000.
In the second case, a machine shop owner was taken into custody about 5:45 a.m. in connection with the Thursday afternoon rape of a 14-year-old Huntington Beach girl who accepted a ride from a man who posed as an off-duty police officer, authorities said.
Ronald Dean Cantrell, 29, was arrested when he walked out of the Cypress home he shares with his wife and three children. He was booked into Huntington Beach City Jail on suspicion of kidnap and rape, said police Sgt. Ed McErlain. Bail was set at $25,000.
Displayed Badge
McErlain said the attacker told the girl, who was walking home from school, that a woman had been robbed by two gunmen still in the area. As he offered her a ride home, the man displayed a badge and had a C.B. radio inside his red van that apparently convinced the girl that he was to be trusted.
The man pulled a knife on the girl and ordered her to the back of the van, where the attack took place, McErlain said. Later, he drove off, and when the van turned a corner, the girl pushed open the cargo doors and jumped onto the busy street, police said.
There were several witnesses, including a woman who followed the van in her car long enough to get part of the license plate, which led special enforcement team detectives to Cantrell, McErlain said.
There doesn’t appear to be any connection with the Irvine cases,” McErlain said Friday. “The descriptions just don’t match at all.”
Causes Speculated
Authorities Friday said they could only guess as to what might have touched off the outburst of sexual violence. It could be “just a quirk,” Lennert said, or some sort of copycat spree fueled by media attention.
“We’re just brainstorming on this one, but the only thing we can really come up with this that it may be because of the coverage it’s getting and the excitement it generates,” Lennert said.
Sharma, who has psychiatric practices in Newport Beach and Los Angeles, said: “My feeling is that the first, second and third (attacks) were maybe coincidence, but more toward four, five and up, it’s no longer coincidence. (Beyong that), not uncommonly, will be the type to say, ‘A lot of other people are doing it.’
“But once there is an arrest,” he added, “the fear becomes more than the excitement and (the incidents) will go down.

[jjmcgr]

Opinion: Rapes in Irvine Shatter an Illusion
By Robert Scheer
Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1983, p. OC A14.

This morning I had to tell my mother not to go out of the house.
It is not an easy thing to tell a spirited 83-year-oldwoman who has survived the Czar’s Cossacks, the Bolshevik Revolution, the sweatshops of New york and the streets of the Bronx during that borough’s degenerative decades that she is now in danger in the streets of Irvine, but that unfortunately does seem to be the case.
The Irvine rapists have descended on the city, whose Chamber of commerce motto is Another Day in paradise, and the thin veneer protecting the sanctity of suburban life has been rent. The fear and violence of the big city life that one had sought to escape are very much in our midst.
The five sexual assaults in Irvine in two days have shattered, at least for me, the illusion that the planned communities of Irvine had fostered, the illusion that the sickness of society could somehow be avoided by buying a high-priced house and surrounding oneself with people who could afford high-priced houses. The assumption being that upper middle-class people don’t rob, rape or kill.
We don’t know if these rapists are outsiders, and the common prejudice is that they are. But it doesn’t matter, for criminals are mobile, and the hope that one could plan them out of existence has proven as absurd as the notion that one piece of American real estate could be declared paradise while others went spinning off into hell. But not even the Irvine Co. can build walls that high.
Planning has its limits, and suddenly all of the rules have changed. The winding lanes once so peaceful now seem ominously quiet. The walls around the houses no longer appear protective but rather potential hiding places for sinister men. And, most of all, one misses people.
The planned communities of Irvine were designed to keep the crowds out. That must have been the idea behind paucity of publicly accessible cultural and entertainment centers. Existing public facilities seem intended mostly for the convenience of those who live there and most of the streets are never unrolled.
Perhaps the underlying ideology of the planners equated empty green belts and other barely used social space with safety. You might have died from boredom, but that was better than the risks of the real world. The problem is that it doesn’t work. Crowds may b ring their problem types, but they also bring people who can hear a cry for help. Most of the women attacked in Woodbridge were alone in houses on empty streets. In any event, there is no simple technical planning solution to what ails society. And certainly flight to the suburbs, while defensible perhaps on other grounds such as love of cleaner air, trees, and backyards, does not insure personal safety.
None of this is intended to suggest that women, my mother included, are safer in Thr Bronx than in Irvine. They are not. Nor is it to suggest that Irvine is without considerable appeal as a very good place to live. It is a very attractive town, well laid out and with excellent schools and a civic-minded citizenry. The point is only that no amount of social planning, guarded gates, economic (and with it some racial) segregation on the part of one American city will for long prove effective in avoiding the reality that permeates the country at large.
What it means is that stopping rapes and other crimes requires action on a broader social and governmental level and the old frontier dream of escaping to some protected space of one’s own just doesn’t work in the modern world.

[jjmcgr]

This article is included for two reasons. First the two murders (Anderson and Neufeld) were originally thought to be Bedroom Basher crimes.Both crimes predate the bulk of the BB crimes which started right after the Anderson murder. The Anderson case is even presented on the Cold Case Files episode in a background newspaper clipping. That crime was later solved when a workman at the Anderson home was arrested and later convicted of the crime. The Neufeld case is still unsolved and in 2006 her family tried using a psychic to solve the case (see www.blinkx.com/burl?v=EqOx8fPCPSAXbX05Y63Oi4CVOtxUZ5-4Errurw ) and that effort was featured on a tv show on the Discovery Channel called Sensing Murder. That case shows that there were other OC home invasion bludgeon murders that are still unsolved.


Police Try to Link Bludgeon Murders
By Gary Jarlson
Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1979, pg. OC A6
Fountain Valley—A possible connection between the bludgeon murder of a 28-year-old Fountain Valley housewife and other, similar Orange County homicides is being investigated, police said Tuesday.
Capt. John Beddow of the Fountain Valley Police Department said his investigators are looking into several unsolved murders as they seek leads and possible suspects in the killing of Joan Virginia Anderson.
The pajama-top-clad body of Mrs. Anderson , the mother of two small children, was found last Thursday in the bedroom of her home at 16587 Hemlock Street. She had been killed by a blow to the back of the head, according to the coroner’s office.
One of the cases being compared to Mrs. Anderson’s murder involved Patricia Neufeld, 34, a garden Grove housewife who was beaten to death in her home a few days before Thanksgiving.
“There are similarities between the two cases (but) there also are several dissimilarities,” Beddow said.
Police believe Mrs. Anderson was killed Wednesday night while she and her 3-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter were alone in the home. The children were not harmed.
Mrs. Anderson’s body was discovered by neighbors after her son, Mark, was found wandering on a neighborhood street Thursday morning.
The vicitm’s husband, Mark Anderson, who was working in Northern California at the time of the murder, has since returned to Fountain Valley.
Beddow said the ten investigators on the case “have quite a few leads but no frm suspects so far.” A criminalist and a fingerprint expert were going over the house a second time, Beddow said, adding that the residence is to be fumigated with a special chemical that can enhance fingerprints.

[jjmcgr]

Woman Found Bludgeoned to Death in Her Apartment.
Los Angeles Times, 16 May 1979

Irvine—A 22-year old woman was found bludgeoned to death in her bedroom here, police said Friday.
The woman, Savannah Leigh Anderson, a secretary, had been dead a number of hours when her body was discovered early Monday evening. Police said she had been struck in the head and that there were signs of a struggle in the bedroom.
Investigator Gary Cain said Ms Anderson’s boyfriend, Gene Williams Mills, Jr., had gone to the dead woman’s apartment for a 6 p.m. date but got no answer at the door. Seeing her car parked nearby, he called the apartment and again received no answer, Cain said. Mills then called police.
A policeman responded to the call and entered the apartment. The woman’s nude body was found in her bedroom.
Cain said Ms. Anderson had lived in Orange County for about a year and originally was from Salt Lake City. He said she did not go to work on Monday. He would not reveal the name of the company where she had been employed.

[jjmcgr]

Slayings of 7 Women to Be Focus of Probe
By Gary Jarlson
Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1979, pg. OC A1.

Faced with the murders of seven women and attacks on another four, six police departments and the Sheriff’s Department will meet today with the aim of organizing a task force to investigate the crimes.
The cases, which date back more than two years, are similar in some aspects. The victims were mostly young women, they were alone at the time of the attack and they were severely beaten with some sort of blunt instrument.
Not all of the attacks follow the pattern exactly, but even those cases with dissimilarities will be reviewed by officers from Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Irvine, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Tustin, and the Sheriff’s Department.
The most recent case involved a 24-year-old Tustin woman, Debra Jean Kennedy, whose body was found Sunday night in a house she shared with her sister. Investigators said she was killed by a blow to the head.
This attack followed by one week an assault on another Tustin woman, 20-year-old Diana Green. Mrs. Green survived the attack and is critical condition, but her unborn baby died [note this was before her husband became the prime suspect- they got it right the first time but Green was charged within a month.]
The cases to be reviewed at today’s meeting include:
—Jane Bennington, 29, who was killed in her Newport Beach apartment in August 1977 [not the Bedroom Basher- still unsolved in 2007]
—Patricia Neufeld, 34, who was beaten to death in her Garden Grove home on Nov. 22, 1978. [still unsolved—Sensing Murder (Discovery Channel) covered this case in a 2006 episode, apparently making vague claims to links with the Bedroom Basher]
—Joan Anderson, 28, who was beaten to death last March 7 while she was home alone in Fountain Valley [solved but not a BB crime]
—Kimberley Rawlins, 21, whose body was discovered by her roommate in their Costa Mesa apartment, April 1. [Bedroom Basher crime]
—Savannah Anderson, 22, who was killed on May 14 at her apartment in Irvine. [not a Bb attacker- solved with killer arrested in 1984].
—Marolyn Carleton, 34, who was found dead Sept 14 by her 9-year-old son in their Costa Mesa apartment [BB crime].
In addition to Mrs. Green in Tustin, the victims who survived attacks live in Irvine, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana Heights. [I’ve never heard of this Irvine survivor case. I wonder if that’s where the bad sketch (showing a man who looked nothing like Gerald Parker) came from?]
Only one of the survivors, the woman in Irvine, has been able to help police. She described her attacker as a 5-foot-10 while male in his 20s with a slender build and medium-length blond hair. [for this sketch see www.jjmcgr.org/BK/BB%20sketch%2016%20Oct%2079.pdf]
The four Costa Mesa attacks, plus one that occurred there in 1977 but is not believed related to the others, happened within a four block area.

[jjmcgr]

The Bludgeon Slayer Takes the Weekend Off: Relief in Cities
By Gary Jarlson
Los Angeles Times, 29 October 1979, pg. OC A1.

Police, as well as residents, in several Orange County cities could breath a sigh of relief today after a weekend in which there was not another bludgeon attack on a young woman.
But that relief was tenuous at best because investigators admit they are not much closer to arresting a suspect or suspects in the attacks than they were several weeks ago.
Police say the evidence they have found is minimal and even the two survivors haven’t been able to provide much help.
One of the survivor’s injuries, psychological and physical, have left her greatly impaired as a witness. Another survivor saw little of her attacker because he struck while she was sleeping.
Police in Costa Mesa, where the majority of the assaults have occurred, seem to have the best lead to work with, a description of a man who was seen entering and leaving the apartment of one of the victims.
This description, along with a police artist’s drawing, has been circulated on leaflets throughout Cost Mesa’s several thousand apartments. And it has received wide exposure through the media.
The results have been hundreds of calls from people who say they have seen or know someone matching the description. The task has then fallen to investigators to check out each lead, but, so far, the results have been negative.
The man Costa Mesa police say they are seeking is 25 to 30 years old, 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 and weighs 165 pounds with a muscular build. He has dark hair and a mustache, dark eyes and an olive complexion with acne scars on his cheeks.
A task force of police from cities where attacks have occurred, say it appears the Costa Mesa suspect may also have been responsible for as many as four more cases outside of Costa Mesa, including three murders.
This assumption is open to question. “the Costa Mesa guy may or may not be whom we’re looking for,” said an investigator from another city.
“We don’t have any witnesses, so we don’t know what our killer looks like.”
But one fact that is not open to question is that the attacks have occurred, the killings and the injuries are real. Since 1976, there have been 11 murders and attacks on another five women. They are not all the work of one person, maybe only a few are, but there have been some striking similarities.
Most of the women, who ranged in age from 17 to 34 years old, were alone when they were attacked late at night. All but one of the victims were beaten in the head with a blunt instrument and many of them were raped. Police say they have no idea what sort of weapon was used.
The majority of the attacks have taken place from midnight Thursday until the very early hours of Monday, and the investigations have shown no signs of forced entry. The assailant got in through unlocked doors or windows.
The first murder occurred April 30, 1976, when the body of 20-year-old Rosalind Foster was found by her roommate in their Costa Mesa apartment. The killer was still there when the roommate came home and she was beaten also, but survived.
Robyn Cox, 20, of Costa Mesa was found drowned in her own bathtub on Jan. 12, 1977. According to the coroner’s report, she had been struck in the head several times before she was drowned.
Again in 1977, police were faced with a bludgeon murder in the slaying of jane Bennington, 29, of Corona del Mar. A former boy friend was questioned in the case, but was cleared.
Patricia Neufeld, 34, was a Garden Grove housewife who earned extra money baby-sitting. Her body was found Nov. 22, 1978, when her son returned home from school. Two infants in the house had not been harmed.
Last March 3, in Fountain Valley neighbors noticed that the 3-year-old son of Joan Anderson wandering in the street. Upon checking the house, the neighbors found Mrs. Anderson’s body. She had been raped and beaten to death with a hammer.
The second of the six attacks that have occurred in Costa Mesa came last April 1 with the murder of 21-year-old Kimberley Rawlins. A shipping clerk for a laboratory, Miss Rawlins also was beaten with a blunt instrument.
Irvine joined the growing list of cities with such murders on May 14. Savannah Anderson, 22, was found slain when co-workers at the firm where she was a secretary became concerned when she didn’t show up on Monday.
Just ten days later, Kim Whitecotton, a resident of Santa Ana Heights on the outskirts of Costa Mesa, was attacked while she slept. She was beaten but managed to fight off her assailant.
On July 19, 24-year-old Jane Pettengill of Costa Mesa was left for dead in her apartment. Her injuries put her in a coma for a month, and, police say, she has not been able to help very much.
Nearly two months passed before there was another attack, but with the murder of Marolyn Carleton, 34, of Costa Mesa on Sept. 14, there began a string of assaults that came almost every week.
A woman whose identity Irvine police never made public was beaten Sept 23, while on Sept. 30 Diana Green, a 20-year-old Tustin housewife who was expecting a baby, was attacked. Mrs. Green survived, but her baby was stillborn.
A week later, on Oct. 7, Tustin had its second case. The body of Debra Kennedy, 24, was found in the apartment she shared with her sister.
And then last week, Costa Mesa experienced its sixth attack. Debra Senior, 17 and a recent high school graduate, was killed after she returned from a Saturday night party. She had taken the precaution of locking her doors, but her slayer entered through a bathroom window.
The police task force, during its two-week existence, came to the conclusion that eight of the attacks—Bennington, Rawlins, Anderson, Carleton, Kennedy, Senior, Whitecotton and Pettengill—appear to have been committed by the same person.
Tustin Police Chief Charles Thayer, spokesman for the task force, did not say what, beyond the obvious similarities, had led investigators to this conclusion.
In both Costa Mesa and Tustin, police have distributed thousands of leaflets to residents warning them of the attacks. There have also been efforts to provide those residents with information on proper home security.
Additionally, Tustin has conducted a self-defense class for women and Costa Mesa will present seminars on rape awareness, home security and sel-defense this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
But these actions can only do so much to calm the fears. In Costa Mesa, where five of the attacks have occurred within a mile-square area near Harbor Blvd. And Wilson St., gun sales, particularly to young women, have risen sharply.
Naturally the situation has everyone—residents, police, and the media—on edge. When an 18-year-old Santa Ana youth, who somewhat resembled the suspect police are seeking, was arrested on a prowling charge last week, several Los Angeles radio stations jumped to the conclusion that the killer had been caught.
But investigators eliminated him as a suspect and went back to the task of sorting through the hundreds of leads provided by the public, hopeful that one of them will lead to the killer, or killers, before another woman’s name is added to the list of victims.

[jjmcgr]

Fear of Killer Grips Orange Coast: Sale of Guns and Locks Soar
By Joy Horowitz
Los Angeles Times, 1 November 1979, pg. OC A1, A25-6

A Tustin woman, who recently bought a .357-magnum revolver, fired at a shadow on her living room wall the other night and the bullet punctured her neighbor’s TV set.
At Golden West College in Huntington Beach, the weekly class that offers instruction on how to use tear gas is so oversubscribed that the next opening won’t be until sometime in December.
Handguns at Costa Mesa gun shops have been “selling like hotcakes,” says a police officer, who is concerned that women who don’t know how to handle guns are buying them, adding that he’d prefer that they learn how to use Mace rather than arm themselves with “home protection” pistols.
Dead-bolt locks are in such demand that at Kerm Rima Hardware on Harbor Blvd., store manager Dick Woldfelt says he can’t keep his stock supplied properly.
‘Pretty Spooky’
“We’re completely out of single-sided dead-bolts,” he says. “We had about 600 window locks last Saturday and we’re out of them now, too, even though we’ve filled them three times in the past two weeks. It’s 90% women who are coming in and buying them. People are really paranoid. It’s pretty spooky.”
The cause of the wave of suspicion and fear among residents of Costa Mesa and neighboring Orange County communities stems from the methodically vicious attacks by the so-called Orange Coast Killer, whose assaults against young women in the past six months have claimed the lives of five and scarred the lives of three survivors.
The killer’s most recent victim, 17-year-old Debra Lynn Senior, was bludgeoned to death and then raped in her Costa Mesa apartment Oct 21. ever since her body was discovered by her roommate, the mood of area residents seems to border on terror, evidenced by the empty residential streets by night and the tightly shuttered homes by day.
Common Link
The only common link among the victims, police say, is that they all lived in ground-floor apartments. Most of them were struck on the head with a blunt object and sexually assaulted.
Since none of the cases showed evidence of break-ins, police have concluded that the attacker managed to strike on weekends during the late-night or early-morning hours by entering through unlocked doors or windows.
Having mounted a door-to-door campaign during the past week to notify apartment dwellers of the violent assaults and to seek information on the killer, police in Costa mesa find themselves treading that fine line between warning residents to protect themselves and inciting panic.
“We’re hoping to alleviate the panic,” says Costa Mesa Police Lt. Jack Calnon, “but the thing that worries me is the gun sales. Somebody could overreact there’s a tense mood in this city now, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last.”
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Just about anywhere one goes in Costa mesa, conversation inevitably turns to the Orange Coast Killer. Local bars, restaurants, and business establishments all have posted a police bulletin with a sketch of the suspect, developed from descriptions by witnesses.
The suspect, who is presumed to be between 25 and 30 years old and stands about 5-foot-10, is said to weigh 165 pounds, have dark eyes, dark hair, a mustache, a light olive complexion and pockmarks on his cheeks.
Concerned that the suspect has changed his identity, last weekend the local newspaper—the Daily Pilot—offered readers an artist’s sketch of the killer minus the mustache and long hair.
Besides the most recent murder case of Debra Senior, police have tied the rapist to the cases of:
—Waitress Jane Ellen Bennington, 29, who was raped and murdered in her Corona del Mar apartment in August 1977.
—Kimberly Gaye Rawlins, a 21-year-old shipping clerk slain in her Costa Mesa apartment, April 1, 1979.
—Savannah Leigh Anderson, 22, accredit checking service employee who announced her engagement days before she was raped and murdered in her Irvine apartment May 14.
—Kim Whitecotton, 20, who was attacked in her Santa Ana Heights apartment in May, 1979. She survived.
—Jan Pettengill, 24, who survived her attack in July in her Costa Mesa apartment.
—Marolyn Carleton, 31, a widow, slain in her Costa Mesa apartment Sept. 14.
—Diana Green, 20, bludgeoned in her Tustin apartment sept 30. She survived, but her unborn infant daughter died.
—Debra Jean Kennedy, 24, raped and murdered in her Tustin apartment.
---
The red-and-yellow police seals bordering the doors and windows to the Maple St. apartment where Debra Senior was killed provide an eerie reminder to Maple St. residents, most of them young couples or single women living in small, two-story apartment buildings.
Like so many other residents of the area, machine operator Darlene Powell, 22, cautiously peeks out from behind her closed living room curtains before answering her door, lit even in the daylight by an outside lamp that rarely is switched off. She lives with her boyfriend in the apartment next door to where Debra senior was murdered.
Asked what she and her boyfriend have done since her neighbor was killed, she replies, “Nothing really. We got dead bots. We got a gun.”
She explains that she’d prefer not having a gun in her house, that buying it was the boyfriend’s idea, but she hastens to add that she’ll learn how to use it this weekend.
“Most people are just moving out,” she says. “They’re anxious to get away from here. My boyfriend—he wants to move. I don’t. This guy’s got to be watching everybody real close. He’s got to be all over. There’s no point in running.
“I don’t think I’m as scared as I should be. My boyfriend worries enough for both of us. But I’m never here by myself, ever, and when I come home, I honk the horm and he comes to get me.”
Across the street in an apartment complex filled with students and young women, Michelle Polich, a 22-year-old waitress, explains that the neighborhood looks like a ghost town at night when everyone holes up in apartments.
“What can I do?” she shrugs. “I’m not going to stay in the house and be totally petrified all the time. I’m not scared when I’m with somebody, but last night I was alone I kept hearing weird noises. I guess it was just the wind.
“My parents are freaking, and my grandfather wants me out of here, but everybody kind of looks out for each other around here. Everybody’s really friendly. Everybody’s always home, playing music. I think if anything happened, somebody would be around.”
Just across the courtyard, the attitudes of Claire Antista, 40, and her 19-year-old daughter are far less casual. Mrs. Antista explains to a reporter that she slept at her daughter’s`apartment the night before because she didn’t want to be alone in her apartment.
“The only thing that’s good that’s come out of this is people are more cautious now,” says Karen, who not only has three locks on her front door, but nailed on the screens in front of her windows sand put a makeshift broomstick in the bottom casing of the sliding glass window above her bed. “I used to sleep with my window open. I don’t think I ever will again. My biggest worry now is walking from my car to the apartment.”
“The only way to describe what people are going through here is fear,” adds her mother, who explains that she lived in West Covina few years ago when the “Azusa Rapist” broke into her apartment one weekend when she was out of town.
“The thing I stress most to my daughters is don’t think it can’t happen to you. Don’t think for one minute you won’t be next.”
---
From 6 to 10 p.m. every night since Debra Senior’s body was found, Costa Mesa police reserve officers and Explorers have combed the neighborhoods door-to-door, instructing apartment dwellers how to protect their homes and informing them of the recent assaults against women.
On a recent weeknight, reserve officer Tim Goodwin, holding a wad of police bulletins with the suspect’s sketch to be distributed, knocks on an apartment door of 20-year-old Susan McCrady, a bookkeeper who lives with her boyfriend.
”Who is it?,” she asks before opening the door.
“Police,” comes the reply.
Goodwin launches into his warnings about the kikller. He instructs McCrady that dead-bolt locks, which are not on her door, are a “must.” He tells her to be aware of possible persons watching her and to see if she can’t get license-plate numbers.
“OK, you’re making me nervous,” she says. “I’ve been watching around town for this guy. The people next door were broken into over the summer. I usually leave my door open, but now it’s locked and I keep the curtains closed. Thanks a lot.”
Despite the insistence of some people that their apartments are secure, Goodwin points out to a reporter screenless bathroom windows that are wide open.
On the next apartment, the home of Terrie and Joe Aridizzone. Before Goodwin utters a word, Mrs. Aridizzone says. “I don’t have bolts on my door, which is really bad . . . If this guy’s caught, I’ll kiss you guys. Would a frying pan help?”
After warning them to keep their doors and windows locked at all times, Goodwin adds, “I don’t mean to scare you.”
“You don’t need to scare us,” says Aridizzone. “We’re already petrified.”
Over on Avocado St., where two of the murders have taken place, 24-year-old housewife Evelyn Hodges mops her kitchen floor with her front door open.
“If my husband came home and saw the door open, he’d have a fit,” she says. “I think I’m too trusting.”
Pointing to the “for rent” signs across the street, she says that she and her husband plan on moving soon. “Anybody would be foolish to move into this neighborhood.” She says, “adding that at night people no longer walk to the nearby liquor store or take after-dinner strolls.
Now she no longer goes out at night or stays home alone. “I go next door when my husband goes to school,” she says. “I think it’s silly, but I do it.”
Down the street, a 60-year-old woman, who asks not to be identified, sits in her tiny apartment, watching a daytime soap opera and smoking cigarettes. She lives in the same apartment complex where Kimberley Rawlins was killed last April.
She shows a reporter the recently purchased red desk lamp that she shines on her bedroom window all night to protect herself.
“On the weekends, I’m really afraid of going to sleep,” she says. “I know the attacker is going after younger women, but it still frightens the heck out of me. I’m frightened of everyone when I go out. I go to the grocery store and if there’s men around outside, I’m scared to get into my car.
“I was scared before, but now I am terrified. It’s a paranoia. It’s not a normal fear. I’m disabled, so I can’t very well learn karate. It’s hell to be a woman and be so defenseless in this day and age. Damn!
---
In the hills above the Irvine Ranch, at the south coast Gun Club, 18-year-old college student Kathy Thompson stands with her legs straddled, her body stiffened and her arms outstretched with the $50 .22 caliber pistol her boyfriend bought her last weekend at a gun show held at the Orange County Fairgrounds.
Wearing earplugs, she fires off a round of bullets at a target more than 50 yards away. Her boyfriend, 21-year-old Tom Rost, sits beside her, giving her pointers on how to use the weapon.
“I never realized this murderer was so close to my home until I heard what happened in Costa Mesa,” she says, explaining that she lives in nearby Huntington Beach. “You just have to be prepared. My little fist can’t protect me.”
“I can’t believe this guy could be in the supermarket we shop at in Costa Mesa,”she says after picking up an M-71 replica of a machine gun and firing off a blast. “Last night I wanted to take a walk and he (Rost) said ‘No way.’ When he’s not around, I’m scared to death.
“But now I’m gonna keep this pistol by my bed or in the closet. I really wanted a little pearl-handled gun ‘cause they’re strictly ladies’ guns. This gun is just in case anything happens. You never know. You just never know.”

Captions (photos by Larry Armstrong and Bruce Hazelton)

Practice—Eighteen-year-old Kathy Thompson of Huntington Beach, fearful of assault, now owns revolver.

Who’s There? —A Costa Mesa woman, like others in the area, worries about strangers outside.

A Reminder—Police seals now border door to victim Lynn Senior’s Costa Mesa home.

Assignments—Costa Mesa police officers pick routes for neighborhood bulletin distribution.

[jjmcgr]

Police Draft Psychic’s Help in Murder Cases
By Gary Jarlson
Los Angeles Times, 16 October 1979, pg. OC A1, A4.

Tustin—With the aid of a psychic, a drawing of a man who may have murdered three Orange County women has been produced for a police task force investigating the crimes.
The psychic, a person who is supposedly sensitive to forces beyond the physical world, also may have identified the voice of the murder suspect.
The task force Monday released a drawing done from the psychic’s description. The overall description gained from the psychic is that the suspect may be 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 with a muscular build, nearly shoulder-length hair and possibility of Latin descent.
The voice identified by the psychic, came from a recording received by Tustin police at 2:32 a.m. Sunday. The psychic listened to a recording of the call and told police she believes it may well be from the man she has described.
Suring the telephone call, when the police dispatcher asked the man why he called, he said, “I got somethin’ to tell ya . . . It might involve your city here.”
“What do you need?” the dispatcher asked.
“It’s not somethin’ I need, maybe I better inform you of what might happen,” the man said.
“What do you mean?” the dispatcher asked.
“Tell you what, I’ll call you back in an hour and I’ll tell ya,” the man said. He did not call back, police said.
Tustin Police chief Charles Thayer, task force spokesman, said he “felt comfortable releasing this information” because this psychic had been successful in providing police with information in a previous case. The psychic has not been publicly identified.
The psychic’s description deals only with the person who bludgeoned 24-year-old Debra Kennedy to death in her Tustin apartment Oct. 7. However, last week police said this murder and two others in Costa Mesa appeared to have been committed by the same person.
In all, the task force is investigating the deaths of nine women and one infants, as well as attacks on five other women, dating back to 1976.
Most of the victims have been 20 to 30 years old, were alone when attacked and were struck in the head with a blunt instrument.
There have been four murders in Costa Mesa and one each in Tustin, Garden Grove, Newport Beach, Irvine and Fountain Valley. The women who survived the attacks lived in Santa Ana Heights, Tustin, Costa Mesa and Irvine.
One of the women who survived was pregnant and her baby girl was stillborn following the attack.
In addition to the psychic’s description and the information about the telephone call, Thayer Monday reiterated his appeal to women in his city not to arm themselves with guns.
To emphasize his appeal, Thayer Monday read from a police report about a woman who, upon entering her apartment alone, drew a .357 Magnum pistol as checked for intruders.
The woman was startled by her own shadow and fired at it. The bullet pierced the apartment wall, Thayer said, and “killed her neighbor’s television set.” No one was reported injured.

[jjmcgr]

Assault Victim: Bludgeoner is Eliminated in One Case
By J. Michael Kennedy
Los Angeles Times, 1 December 1979, pg. OC-A1

Tustin—The assault of a 20-year-old pregnant woman last September which caused the still birth of the child she was carrying, was eliminated Friday as the acto f the bludgeon murderer who has killed six Orange county women in the last two years.
Tustin police said they had charged Kevin Green, 21, with the assault of his wife Diana, and the murder of their unborn child. Green, a Marine Corps corporal, was arrested Friday afternoon.
The assault on Mrs. Green had previously been blamed on the bludgeon killer, but police working on the case had never been able to tell for sure.
The woman was found in her Tustin apartment Sept. 30, unconscious from a blow by a blunt instrument. Police said Friday they were unable to disclose more information about the case, including why it took so long to arrest Green and whether Mrs. Green had ever volunteered any information to them.
Police Sgt. Len Gardner said more details should be available early next week.
“However, it should be noted that Kevin Green is in no way implicated in the other bludgeonings here in Orange County,” Gardner said.
Five of the six killings attributed to the bludgeoner have occurred since April 1, and three of the victims lived within a mile-square area of Costa Mesa and Wilson St.
The man being sought is described as 25 to 30 years old, 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds with a muscular build. He has dark eyes, dark hair and mustache, an olive complexion and acne pockmarks on his cheeks, police theorize.

[jjmcgr]

2. Police Seek Man for Rape of Six Women in Five Cities
Los Angeles Times, 5 September 1981

Brea police are looking for a man in his early 30s suspected of raping six women in five cities during the past month.
The suspect is a white male, aged 30 to 35, 6 feet to 6 feet, 2 inches tall, with a muscular build, long brown hair, brown eyes and clean shaven except for a moustache, said Brea detective Douglas Dickerson.
The suspect is possibly an escaped convict with a history of sexual assaults, Dickerson said.
The man has attacked women in Tustin, Newport Beach, Upland, Brea and Fullerton, where there were two attacks, police said. The most recent attacks were Aug. 31 in Brea and Sept. 2 in Fullerton, Dickerson said.
The attacks have been linked by the suspect’s method of operation, Dickerson said. There is no evidence of forced entry into the women’s apartments and condominiums, he said. The suspect prevents the women from seeing him, threatens them with a weapon, rapes them and then takes some property, usually cash, Dickerson said.
Dickerson said people with information about the suspect should contact the Brea police or other authorities.

[jjmcgr]

Baby Sitter, 25, is Found Dead in Santa Ana
By Nancy Wride
Los Angeles Times, 17 November 1984, pg. OC A1, A8

A 25-year-old live-in baby sitter was bound, stabbed and bludgeoned to dead while caring for her daughter and four other children in their Santa Ana home, police said Friday.
The parents of the children told officers they discovered the woman dead in her bedroom when they returned Thursday from an evening at the movies, Santa Ana police Capt. James Dittman said.
Margaret and Kai Hendrickson had called their home at 8:45 p.m. to check in with their baby sitter, Linda Faye Rodgers., investigators said.
Rodgers, police said, assured the couple that “everything was fine.”
Three hours later, the couple returned to their West Wilshire Avenue home and found the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman dead, police said.
Children not Harmed
The four Hendrickson children—ages 21/2 to 6—were not harmed, nor was Rodgers’ 6-year-old daughter, police said. They declined comment on where the children were or what they might have witnessed when their baby sitter was slain.
“They were inside the house. They were unharmed, (but) I don’t want to comment on whether or not the kids saw anything,” Sgt. John McClain said Friday. “It was a very brutal, vicious crime.”
Police said Rodgers, a single mother who had worked for the Hendricksons the past two years, appeared to have been stabbed with a knife and beaten with a blunt instrument.
An autopsy Friday indicated that Rodgers died of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Mcclain said it was not known whether anything was missing from the one-story, tan stucco home. He said investigators knew of no motive for the slaying, adding that there was no sign of forced entry.
One neighbor, Sam Cruz, said that he heard a gunshot between 11 p.m. and midnight, but thought nothing of it. “You hear them all the time around here,” he added/ Police said the baby sitter had not been shot.
Thought She was Wife
Residents along the tree-lined, older neighborhood near Bristol Street and McFadden Avenue said Friday that the family had only recently moved into the ohme and that few of the neighbors knew either the baby sitter or her employers well.
Rodgers had lived with the Hendricksons in Buena Park before moving to the Santa Ana home three or four weeks ago, McClain said.
Because he had never seen another woman at the home, cruz said, he assumed that Rodgers was the mother of all five children and the wife of Kai Hendrickson., a 42-year-old Santa Ana tow truck driver. Police said Margaret Hendrickson, 31, is not employed.
“I thought she (Rodgers) was part of the family. I had no idea she was just a baby sitter,” said Cruz, a 24-year-old Santa Ana College business major who lives across the street.
“During the day, you’d see her and the kids, and at night, (Mr. Hendrickson would) come home and park his tow truck in front,” Cruz said. I never saw another woman (besides Rodgers) there.”
He said he thought a man had been staying at the Hendrickson home for the past few days but he did not know who the man was.
Cruz described Rodgers as a “jeans and T-shirt type” dark blonde who seemed to go about her daily duties like clockwork. He said she seemed to run the household.
“She had a routine,” said Cruz. “The garage door opened about 8 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. and you’d see her washing the clothes in the garage.”
Sometimes. Cruz said, the young mother would be gardening in the front yard.
All these chores were usually done after Rodgers had walked the children down the street to elementary school in the mornings, neighbors said.
“I saw her yesterday about 2 p.m. She took the kids to school and back every day,” said Javier Perez, 37, a neighbor who works at the Hunt-Wesson Foods Inc. plant in Fullerton.
Pushed Them in Cart
“Sometimes she would be taking them to the store . . . there was so many of them that she pushed them in the shopping cart,” Perez said, pointing to a metal market basket on the sidewalk across the street. “The little dog would follow them down the street . . . It was always very loud over there.”
By mid-morning Friday, the home that neighbors said usually bustled with the noise and activity of children was strangely quiet, with the exception of a small dog roaming the driveway. It appeared that no one was inside, but a light bulb glowed over the black garage door and a bathroom window was lighted as well.
A sign in a front window—picturing the barrel of a gun pointed straight ahead and a line made popular in a Clint Eastwood movie—cast an eerie mood. It read: “Make my day!”

Santa Ana Man Held in Torture and Murder of Disabled Baby Sitter
By Nancy Wride
Los Angeles Times (Orange County Edition), 25 January 1985, pg. 2
Article Abstract
Investigators, who called the killing “vicious, sadistic and brutal,” would not disclose how they linked Kenneth Clair to the slaying of Linda Faye Rodgers, 25, a cerebral palsy victim who “was almost totally defenseless.”
Clair, an unemployed cook and painter, was arrested at Jerome Park in Santa Ana late Wednesday on suspicion of burglary, murder and torture, and was being held at Orange County Jail without bail, Santa Ana police Sgt John McClain said. He added that Clair, who did not resist arrest, is expected to be arraigned on the charges early next week.
I will say that, in my opinion, the murder was extremely vicious, sadistic and brutal,” McClain said. He would not comment on whether Clair knew Rodgers or the family she worked for.

Murderer Gets Death Verdict in Santa Ana Case
By Jerry Hicks
Los Angeles Times (Orange County Edition), 7 August 1987, pg. 2

A death verdict was returned Thursday against a 28-year-old transient in the 1984 killing of a woman with cerebral palsy during a robbery at her home.
The jurors, who ordinarily would have been dismissed after the verdict, found their work wasn’t over. Orange County Superior Court Judge Mason Fenton interviewed them individually in his chambers about an evidentiary error in the trial, when jurors were mistakenly given access to a transcript they should not have been allowed to see.
Fenton ordered the defendant, Kenneth Clair, to return Sept. 18 for sentencing and said he would at that time consider a motion for a mistrial.
Clair was convicted a week ago of first-degree murder in the Nov. 15, 1984, strangulation of 25-year-old Linda Faye Rodgers. Rodgers, who was partially paralyzed, lived with a couple and cared for their four children and her own child.
She was found bound, gagged and partly nude. She had been stabbed twice and strangled.
The district attorney's office alleged special circumstances in an attempt to obtain a death sentence for Clair. The jurors rejected an allegation of attempted rape but did find the murder occurred during a robbery, so they had to decide between death and a life sentence without parole for Clair.
Before the jurors could hear the penalty phase of the case this week, however, court officials discovered that jurors had mistakenly been given an unedited transcript which mentioned the defendant's criminal record.
Clair's attorney, Julian W. Bailey, asked for a mistrial, and Fenton decided to consider it after the penalty phase.
During the penalty phase, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael A. Jacobs presented evidence of Clair's robbery conviction 11 years ago. He served five years in a Louisiana prison. Jacobs also introduced evidence that Clair had participated in a burglary after his release from prison. Those charges were later dismissed.
Bailey depicted Clair as a young man raised alone by his mother in New Orleans, who had never known his father. After his release from prison he learned that his father was living in Northern California and that his paternal grandmother, whom he had never known, wanted to see him. Bailey migrated to Southern California, where police say he was a transient.
Clair had been arrested on suspicion of breaking into the home where Rodgers lived eight days before the murder. Police said he returned there and killed the woman the day he was released from Orange County Jail.

[jjmcgr]

Man Held in Laguna Hills Nurse’s Death
By Bill Billiter
Los Angeles Times, 17 July 1984

A gardener who worked for a Laguna Hills nurse found murdered on July 4 was arrested Monday in connection with her death, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said.
Lt. Dick Olson said Timothy David Russell, 26, of El Toro, was booked into Orange Country Jail without bail on suspicion of murdering Marulyn Haugh Lyon in her house at 24962 Wilkes Place.
Russell’s arraignment is tentatively set for Wednesday in South County Municipal Court, Olson said.
Victim Lived Alone
Lyon, 49, lived alone. Her daughter went to her home and found her dead after Lyon’s co-workers at Saddleback Community Hospital became alarmed when she did not show up for her shift.
An autopsy found that Lyon died of asphyxiation due to head and neck injuries, and investigators said they found evidence of a struggle in the home.
Russell was called to the sheriff’s office in Santa Ana on Monday for questioning and was arrested there, Olson said.
“He (Russell) had worked for her (Lyon) at her place and she also knew him from his part-time work at Saddleback Hospital,” Olson said.
Olson would not disclose specifics of the evidence that led to Russell’s arrest.

[jjmcgr]

Psychics Aid Garden Grove Police in Cold Case

Television psychics attempt to crack a 28-year-old murder case, which has left Garden Grove police investigators baffled

By DEEPA BHARATH
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Thursday, October 12, 2006

GARDEN GROVE – It was a grisly killing that jolted a quiet family neighborhood 28 years ago.

On a rainy Tuesday morning in November, a 10-year-old boy walked through the bloodied door of his house to find his mother, Patricia Ann Neufeld, bludgeoned to death in a bedroom.

The case, which Garden Grove police officers at the time called the most gruesome killing they had come across, remains unsolved.

Enter Laurie Campbell and Pam Coronado.

The duo doesn't comb crime scenes for blood, hair or DNA samples. Campbell and Coronado, who say they are psychics, are trying to resuscitate cold cases through a new Discovery Channel series called "Sensing Murder."

The episode featuring the Neufeld case airs at 10 tonight.

Producers approached the Garden Grove Police Department earlier this year with the idea for the show, said Investigator Elaine Jordan, a 25-year veteran at the department.

"I didn't know what to expect," she said.

Sure, other investigators gave her a hard time about it, Jordan said.

"But if doing the show meant more attention to the case, it's worth it," she said. "If someone – anyone – comes forward with information, it's worth it."

Producers taped the show in April with Campbell, Coronado, Jordan and retired police detective Wallace Talbott, who worked on the case in 1978.

Campbell, an Irvine mother of two, says the victims always lead her.

"The dead know when we're coming," she said. "And they are always ready to show us the way."

Coronado, who lives in Ventura County and has been working with police departments for 10 years, called the Neufeld killing one of the most unsettling cases she has ever worked on.

"It was really disturbing to me – just the brutality of it," said Coronado, who also worked on the Washington, D.C., sniper case.

Neufeld, 34, was baby-sitting two infants in the Richmond Avenue house when her assailant struck. Campbell was able to say it was a baby boy and girl, Jordan said.

"She also said there was a 'k' connection to the case," the investigator said. "The victim was found by her son, Kirk."

So did Campbell and Coronado actually help crack the case?

They say yes. The detective says "not really."

Campbell said she and Coronado pointed in the direction of a serial killer. But Jordan says Garden Grove police investigators had already questioned Gerald Parker, known as the "bedroom basher" from the 1970s, who bludgeoned women to death and then raped their bodies.

Parker was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999, but only after Kevin Green had mistakenly served 16 years in prison for the killings, which were later proved by DNA evidence.

"We've interviewed Parker thrice about the Neufeld case even before the psychics got involved," Jordan said. "And all three times he's denied it."

Also, Neufeld was not raped, she said.

But that doesn't rule out other serial killers, Campbell says.

"Our job here was to breathe some fresh insight into the case," she said. "It's up to the police to follow the leads and solve the case."

Jordan said Coronado believed the killer had marked Neufeld as a victim at a grocery store and then followed her home for the kill.

Campbell said she had a vision of Neufeld on her knees, begging for her life.

"She knew what was coming," Campbell said. "She knew she wasn't getting out of this alive."

The experience can "freak out" the most seasoned psychics and move them to tears, Campbell said.

"I had nightmares about this one case we're working on where the killer tortured his victim with knives," she said.

But Jordan said the women's observations don't mean much.

"Maybe I expected too much," she said. "Maybe I thought there would be this huge revelation during our time together. I was waiting for it to happen. And it just didn't."

Terri Integlia, who now owns and lives in the house where Neufeld died, says she and her sister, who lives across the street, believe they've seen the dead woman's apparition.

"Stuff always gets moved around the house," Integlia said. "I feel this energy in the house that is very chaotic. I've never felt it's evil, but just tiresome and sometimes sad."

Staff writer Greg Hardesty and News Research Director Sharon Clairemont contributed to this story.

[jjmcgr]

Ex-Marine Pleads Guilty to Avoid 2nd Trail in ’79 Slaying
By Kevin O’Leary
Los Angeles Times (Orange County Edition), 17 May 1989

A former Marine whose murder conviction was overturned by an appeals court last August reversed himself Monday and pleaded guilty in the beating and strangling death of a 22-year-old Irvine woman in 1979.

Robert Lloyd Sellers' guilty plea-entered 10 years to the day after Savannah Leigh Anderson's naked, bruised and sexually molested body was discovered in her Woodbridge apartment-was only the latest twist in the bizarre murder case.

Defense attorney Jack Earley said Sellers decided to plead guilty to first-degree murder after prosecutors agreed to seek a sentence of 25 years to life, but with the possibility of parole. At trial, prosecutors had sought the death penalty and Sellers received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Earley said Sellers wanted to avoid "the risk involved in a new trial. This is an emotional case, and there is no telling what a jury could do. . . . The certainty of having the case over was peaceful to Mr. Sellers."

Sellers was a 22-year-old Marine and part-time security guard at Anderson's apartment complex. He subsequently admitted to police that he was obsessed with the woman and had broken into her apartment to confront her shortly after midnight on May 14, 1979. When Anderson rejected Sellers' advances, he went into a rage, beating her with his night stick and then strangling her with his belt. He returned to the apartment several hours later, dragged the woman's body to the bathtub, washed it and put it into bed, where he sexually molested the body.

For 5 years the case was an unsolved murder. Then in 1984 Irvine police officers Larry Montgomery and Scott Cade decided to recheck the bloody palm print left in the victim's bathroom and discovered it matched Sellers'. When the FBI verified the finding, Sellers was brought in for questioning and confessed to the crime.

The prosecution had argued that Anderson was raped twice-during her struggle with her killer and again after she was dead.

In August, 1988, the state's 4th District Court of Appeal found that there was evidence only that she was raped after her death. Ruling that rape can occur only while a victim is alive, the court overturned the life-without-parole sentence because the murder conviction lacked a legally required "special circumstance," such as rape. The court ordered a new trial, saying that while the bludgeoning and strangulation of Anderson was "a most heinous crime," jurors had been improperly instructed on the law regarding rape and that this had improperly influenced the verdict on the murder charge.

Sellers has been incarcerated at Folsom State Prison since his conviction.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King said that considering all the factors involved in the case-particularly the expense of a second trial-"it was in the interest of justice to accept the defendant's offer to plead guilty."

The victim's mother, Maxine Anderson of Salt Lake City, reacted to the plea agreement Tuesday by saying that "my emotions are mixed."

Maxine Anderson said that Sellers is a "cold-blooded killer" and she had worried that other young women might be harmed if he was released. But she said she was glad to have the case finally closed.

[Illustration]
PHOTO: Robert Lloyd Sellers after the jury's guilty verdict in 1986. / GLENN KOENIG / Los Angeles Times; PHOTO: Savannah Leigh Anderson, 7 months before 1979 murder.

[grx047]

Jul 13, 2007 9:07:22 GMT -5 jjmcgr said:

Psychics Aid Garden Grove Police in Cold Case

Television psychics attempt to crack a 28-year-old murder case, which has left Garden Grove police investigators baffled

By DEEPA BHARATH
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Thursday, October 12, 2006

GARDEN GROVE – It was a grisly killing that jolted a quiet family neighborhood 28 years ago.

On a rainy Tuesday morning in November, a 10-year-old boy walked through the bloodied door of his house to find his mother, Patricia Ann Neufeld, bludgeoned to death in a bedroom.

The case, which Garden Grove police officers at the time called the most gruesome killing they had come across, remains unsolved.

Enter Laurie Campbell and Pam Coronado.

The duo doesn't comb crime scenes for blood, hair or DNA samples. Campbell and Coronado, who say they are psychics, are trying to resuscitate cold cases through a new Discovery Channel series called "Sensing Murder."

The episode featuring the Neufeld case airs at 10 tonight.

Producers approached the Garden Grove Police Department earlier this year with the idea for the show, said Investigator Elaine Jordan, a 25-year veteran at the department.

"I didn't know what to expect," she said.

Sure, other investigators gave her a hard time about it, Jordan said.

"But if doing the show meant more attention to the case, it's worth it," she said. "If someone – anyone – comes forward with information, it's worth it."

Producers taped the show in April with Campbell, Coronado, Jordan and retired police detective Wallace Talbott, who worked on the case in 1978.

Campbell, an Irvine mother of two, says the victims always lead her.

"The dead know when we're coming," she said. "And they are always ready to show us the way."

Coronado, who lives in Ventura County and has been working with police departments for 10 years, called the Neufeld killing one of the most unsettling cases she has ever worked on.

"It was really disturbing to me – just the brutality of it," said Coronado, who also worked on the Washington, D.C., sniper case.

Neufeld, 34, was baby-sitting two infants in the Richmond Avenue house when her assailant struck. Campbell was able to say it was a baby boy and girl, Jordan said.

"She also said there was a 'k' connection to the case," the investigator said. "The victim was found by her son, Kirk."

So did Campbell and Coronado actually help crack the case?

They say yes. The detective says "not really."

Campbell said she and Coronado pointed in the direction of a serial killer. But Jordan says Garden Grove police investigators had already questioned Gerald Parker, known as the "bedroom basher" from the 1970s, who bludgeoned women to death and then raped their bodies.

Parker was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999, but only after Kevin Green had mistakenly served 16 years in prison for the killings, which were later proved by DNA evidence.

"We've interviewed Parker thrice about the Neufeld case even before the psychics got involved," Jordan said. "And all three times he's denied it."

Also, Neufeld was not raped, she said.

But that doesn't rule out other serial killers, Campbell says.

"Our job here was to breathe some fresh insight into the case," she said. "It's up to the police to follow the leads and solve the case."

Jordan said Coronado believed the killer had marked Neufeld as a victim at a grocery store and then followed her home for the kill.

Campbell said she had a vision of Neufeld on her knees, begging for her life.

"She knew what was coming," Campbell said. "She knew she wasn't getting out of this alive."

The experience can "freak out" the most seasoned psychics and move them to tears, Campbell said.

"I had nightmares about this one case we're working on where the killer tortured his victim with knives," she said.

But Jordan said the women's observations don't mean much.

"Maybe I expected too much," she said. "Maybe I thought there would be this huge revelation during our time together. I was waiting for it to happen. And it just didn't."

Terri Integlia, who now owns and lives in the house where Neufeld died, says she and her sister, who lives across the street, believe they've seen the dead woman's apparition.

"Stuff always gets moved around the house," Integlia said. "I feel this energy in the house that is very chaotic. I've never felt it's evil, but just tiresome and sometimes sad."

Staff writer Greg Hardesty and News Research Director Sharon Clairemont contributed to this story.

[Aw]

Jun 29, 2007 23:00:46 GMT -5 jjmcgr said:

This article is included for two reasons. First the two murders (Anderson and Neufeld) were originally thought to be Bedroom Basher crimes.Both crimes predate the bulk of the BB crimes which started right after the Anderson murder. The Anderson case is even presented on the Cold Case Files episode in a background newspaper clipping. That crime was later solved when a workman at the Anderson home was arrested and later convicted of the crime. The Neufeld case is still unsolved and in 2006 her family tried using a psychic to solve the case (see www.blinkx.com/burl?v=EqOx8fPCPSAXbX05Y63Oi4CVOtxUZ5-4Errurw ) and that effort was featured on a tv show on the Discovery Channel called Sensing Murder. That case shows that there were other OC home invasion bludgeon murders that are still unsolved.


Police Try to Link Bludgeon Murders
By Gary Jarlson
Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1979, pg. OC A6
Fountain Valley—A possible connection between the bludgeon murder of a 28-year-old Fountain Valley housewife and other, similar Orange County homicides is being investigated, police said Tuesday.
Capt. John Beddow of the Fountain Valley Police Department said his investigators are looking into several unsolved murders as they seek leads and possible suspects in the killing of Joan Virginia Anderson.
The pajama-top-clad body of Mrs. Anderson , the mother of two small children, was found last Thursday in the bedroom of her home at 16587 Hemlock Street. She had been killed by a blow to the back of the head, according to the coroner’s office.
One of the cases being compared to Mrs. Anderson’s murder involved Patricia Neufeld, 34, a garden Grove housewife who was beaten to death in her home a few days before Thanksgiving.
“There are similarities between the two cases (but) there also are several dissimilarities,” Beddow said.
Police believe Mrs. Anderson was killed Wednesday night while she and her 3-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter were alone in the home. The children were not harmed.
Mrs. Anderson’s body was discovered by neighbors after her son, Mark, was found wandering on a neighborhood street Thursday morning.
The vicitm’s husband, Mark Anderson, who was working in Northern California at the time of the murder, has since returned to Fountain Valley.
Beddow said the ten investigators on the case “have quite a few leads but no frm suspects so far.” A criminalist and a fingerprint expert were going over the house a second time, Beddow said, adding that the residence is to be fumigated with a special chemical that can enhance fingerprints.

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