The Terrifying Tale Of The Trailside Killer | Our Life

Between 1979 and 1981, the serial

killer

stalked the remote Mount Tamil Pius in Marin County, near San Francisco. The Trailside

killer

outwitted police for two years, claiming 10 victims, even after his arrest there was a desperate search for evidence to convict the killer that left no clues. The cop who followed him on the case was the biggest test of his career and the biggest murder hunt ever faced in the quiet rural county across the Golden Gate Bridge. He probably would have never found the place on my own because he wasn't familiar. I didn't have a map of that area with him.

He hadn't been to that mountain before, so instead of looking dumb and stupid I said, would you have rain to meet me in the parking lot? I came here and it's awkward because I'm going to be the lead investigator working on this homicide case and I'm not familiar with the terrain so I'm kind of the new kid on the block at the time, but you gotta try to sound professional. . I was dressed in a tie, you know, shoes and it seemed like we were walking forever and in total darkness and I thought, my God, who would be here to be murdered let alone come here to commit murder in the desert, you had to go . the trail uphill through the brush and then here is this lady's body so vivid because the lights are on from the flashlights and the little portable flashlights that the officers have, what do we have and all we have is a body, this It's a pair of socks on If it wasn't a violent scene with blood and chaos everywhere, if you were more than 15 or 20 feet away, you probably couldn't tell there was a hole or blood on the back of his head, she would look like she was sleeping and yet she had been violently murdered.

Etta Kane, 44, had been reported missing by her husband. The Nightfall Rangers had found her body five hours later. She had been murdered with clinical precision. The holes in the back of her head were what we called piggybacks. It was a whole, the two bullets from a 44 caliber gun which is very powerful and it was if there was boom boom one on top of the other they were practically the same hole that the mountains had witnessed their first recorded homicide I had always loved the mountains on that Sunday in August she was heading towards the highest point of East Peak Mount Tam she was dead before she got there the first victim of the Trailside killer there was nothing around her that was visible to the eye there was no camp there was no clothes or backpack or anything Another thing, my intuition was that they placed this woman there.

I was concerned whether or not she had been sexually assaulted and that whoever the perpetrator of this was had her face down with the gun to the back of her head and shot her almost as if a degradation and humiliation for the victim once they removed the Etta King's body, there was nothing else to do there that night, but you still walked away feeling helpless, like you had nothing to work with, here we have a lady who has been found dead. violent death by shooting none of his clothing available no personal effects nothing that would lead us at that moment to make an association with the suspect it was a feeling of emptiness that night when we left there was a chilling ritual quality to the crime scene the arrangement of the body, removing clothing, the blade in the victim's back, it was a pattern that would confront police again and again for the next two years.

The man who would become known as the Trailside Killer lived on the other side of the Golden Gate, 10 miles away. of Mount Tamil Pius Desert in the city of San Francisco David Carpenter was 50 years old and lived at home with his elderly parents. He had a chronic stutter that had plagued him since childhood. He also had a troubled past and had served two long years in prison. sentences for kidnapping and rape he was still on parole yes, he too knew Mount Tamil Pie and had joined one of the many hiking clubs there two months before Etta Kane's murder from his office.

Keaton had a view of the distant mountain seven months. He was no closer to solving the cane murder. No test. There are no witnesses. There are no clues. You would appreciate your help. Carpenter was a creature of chaos and he took his mother shopping every Saturday. On March 8, 1981, he was no exception. He left her that morning telling her that he was going to Mount Tam for a hike and would return in the evening. The Trailside killer claims his second victim. The sheriff's deputy says Barbara Barbara, 23 years old. We're assuming right now that she had died approximately five hours before we got the call from Marin County.

Sheriff's deputies have been here on Mount Tamil Pius all day investigating this murder. They have two excellent leads in the case through an eyewitness and now a composite portrait of the Killer. They are looking for a white male with dark, straight hair between 20 and 30 years old. Yesterday he was wearing a plaid shirt and murdered this woman. Barbara Schwartz, 23, had lived in Mill Valley for about a year and a half and worked at a San Rafael bakery. With this second murder, the sheriff's department was now under pressure to prove it. The results of the photography were her response.

Keaton had doubts about him. This determined the direction of the case, so to speak, at that time because we had nothing else to go on, so we had a witness, no matter how good or bad, who said that he saw someone we don't know. He didn't even know that someone he saw was involved in the homicide, whatever it was, that's a quantum leap in itself, the witness didn't see this man assaulting Barbara Schwartz, so he saw a man in the area, obviously, a good lead for researchers, if viable. It's a clue in the clue only that the department decided to publish the composite thinking that it is the only thing we have.

I think the evidence points to a young man who is really getting the emotions out of him, not particularly for a sexual assault perhaps to the victims, but he is dealing with the level of emotion that he is getting at the crime scene. The young man in the plaid shirt was never identified, but his face continued to dominate the investigation for the next year. There would be five more deaths before police realized they were chasing the wrong suspect. It was Columbus Day. for seven months the mountain had been peaceful until now thank you thank you it was unsettling very unsettling for me Deja Vu I had a walking stick and here we go again it was an uphill hike off the trail yes gentlemen what I What caught your attention was the The order of his clothes there were no fight marks on the floor as if you had your heels sunk in or a fight.

Is there an earring right here? Let me take a look. Yes, a small, round gold earring for the missing earring partner, but only for being in that scene. We get goosebumps knowing that we have someone who is on a mission and how many more before we catch them are going to be victims. Ann Alderson was a 26-year-old student visiting her parents at her home during holidays abroad where she had been shot once in the side. One of her earrings was missing the head and she had been raped. I will never be able to prove that, but I believe what happened at that particular crime scene because there was evidence that Ann Alderson was sexually assaulted and I remember she was fully clothed. is that she may have been sitting on the suspect's lap and while in that position and perhaps being assaulted, she was then shot in the back of the head face to face that Keaton was able to reconstruct the last hours of Anne's

life

.

The day after her disappearance, he had made an effort to go to the East Bay and visit his elderly grandmother and on the way home, he decided to stop at Mount Tahoma Pius and just relax, meditate and rest. ER foreigner who was working in That night, when he was on duty, he walked to the upper edge of the amphitheater, next to the hiking trail, noticed a young woman sitting alone and said that she was so deep in her own mind meditating that she did not want to disturb her, I didn't want to Interrupt her, that was the last time we know that Andrew Alderson was seen alive by anyone meanwhile, the Alderson family spent a quiet day at their home in Terra Linda, there are no funeral services planned, there is nothing more than say or words to express. her pain is just the remaining nagging question of why at Terra Linda I'm Hampton Pearson NewsCenter 4.

The first step in continuing your investigation is who our victim is, so before she's even had a service, we're in her room watching your personal effects. all under a microscope but also thinking that there might be someone close to her who was suspicious because she didn't fight, she got a little upset and a little emotional thinking what a waste and why does this have to happen as you looked around your room. You could see all the things she had done in school or the pictures she had of her family and her friends and the things that were important to her, her brother, but it sure makes you, as a researcher, Get in touch with the victim.

I can't speak right now and you have to speak for them and Alderson probably put us on the verge of getting everyone emotionally involved because now we had had a third party and we were frantically trying to solve this problem and there was no immediate suspect on the horizon it was very frustrating se gathered at the fire station in Mount Tamalpais early this morning. Each Posse member was given a map of the trails, a two-way radio, and a sketch and description of the murder suspect. His instructions were simple: talk to the hikers and runners to remind them to stick together if possible.

Sheriff Al Hohenstein joined the first Patrol. Well, what we hope to achieve today is to make people feel a sense of security on the mountain when they are up here and bring a return to the mountain. a bit of Solace at least six members of the Posse at a time will fan out across the mountain patrolling. They are all volunteers. Some of them are lawyers and pilots. Others are ranchers. They say they are more than happy to help whoever it is. By doing this he knew the park very well inside and out, he fired these shots in a park full of people on a holiday weekend and they didn't see him so he was planning to walk around, explore it like a vertebra, the police took hundreds of statements from witnesses from residents, hikers and park rangers, but search teams at Yale and in the park could not find any evidence, but while police remained focused on Mount Tam Carpenter shifted to another state park, Point Raise, 20 miles away. distance on the Pacific coast, was going to be the most frightening chapter yet. the Trailside story November 29 hikers discover the first two of four victims, all found in a remote area of ​​Point Reyes.

Search parties searching for two missing young women accidentally discover the bodies of a young couple buried in a shallow grave. I carried out my task and proceeded to Jesus, no more than 15 minutes along a not too covered ridge and came across a small shoe sticking out of some ferns and walked a little closer and found two bodies that a girl had been reported missing on a hiking trail and they We feared the worst and as we were driving we were notified that two bodies had been found. The result of the whole situation was that when we got to the park we not only had two, but we had four bodies, three women and one man, all found.

The murder was in this park, something unheard of. I was born and raised in this county. I have been with the sheriff's office for 20 or more years. Something unheard of and this was on federal park land where we now had four people murdered. Two young women had been murdered that day. They had both been shot, one had been raped and a blade was placed in his back. The bodies of the young couple were found just 200 meters away. They had been killed six weeks earlier and were very decomposed. Increase the perimeter by about 10 feet. Yes, let's get some more. record up here we didn't know if they were connected we didn't know if it was a homicide suicide with one couple and the other couple a sexual assault try to say what we have we don't know what the hell we have and it's dark and it's wet, we needed to be able to transport these bodies and take them to a place where we could examine them and discover if we have a common denominator.

There was a common denominator that pointed to a single murderer in the last five. The bullets from the murders that were recovered from the victims' heads had all been fired from the same gun, meaning that Point Raise four bodies and Alderson Mount Tamalpais and that the same gun was probably used by the same perpetrator and now we had two different crime scenes where the bodies were found, we had the travel distance and we had the distance in time of six weeks of the two children who had been missing for six weeks, so now we had this whole investigation opening up in one area much broader, butwas also focusing. to a gun, probably a perpetrator after Point Reyes occurred, the escalation of the investigation was phenomenal, we went from about a dozen people who were actively working on this to over 36 people and all the paper systems were done manually, there were no computers in those claims there was no central repository other than file cabinets after handwritten reports made by deputies on the street, so the chaos and confusion at the Marion County Sheriff's Office was incredible .

Eden's team received hundreds of calls, but no one called with David Carpenter's name. Of all the witness statements, none of them looked like him. He was on parole for sex crimes, but since he had been in federal prison, his name was not. appeared in police checks of California records and his license plate was also not seen in the area because after November 29 he bought a new car and moved his activities to another foreign county, but in March 1981 Keaton and his partner Chuck Prandy got his first big breakthrough. The killer had struck again a hundred miles away, in Santa Cruz.

On March 29, Henry Cowell State Park in Santa Cruz, the victim. Ellen Marie Hansen, 20, shot to death on a hiking trail. Her boyfriend survives the attack with a gunshot wound to the neck. I'm Lucy Ablin for Live on Four. The link to the Trailside case was ballistic. The same gun had been used again but this time there was a liver he is obviously young and seems to be a very good Witness where was he hiding uh the bullet entered his neck and lodged behind his breastbone so he passed out for a while I thought he did too he was dead and I left him there so we can get lucky with this guy surviving down here we finally have someone who has to look at this guy okay Stephen I want you to tell me again that you and Ellen were walking through the trail, tell me what you saw and what I thought about this guy when you first met him, he was about 25 feet in front of us, coming down the trail and he was grunting, like he was talking to himself, hi, hi, and we made eye contact with them, we smile and keep walking, okay, Stephen?

Tell me about the second time you and Alan met this guy on the road. Tell me what happened. We were near Redwoods and we started to go back and we saw him again and he was standing writing in front of the road and he said to us: we meet again, we meet again, but he lifted his jacket and inside it I could see the hilt of a gun and he had this, you know, kind of sinister look on his face and I was thinking. that he was going to rob us and that he wanted our money he didn't mean any harm you just want to rape her I just want to rape her that's what he said and he told us to get into the bushes okay, what else happened next?

We started backing into the bushes with our hands up and he told us to put them down, that he didn't want to attract too much attention, and when we started to back away, Ellen started saying that she wasn't going to do it. shoot us he's not going to shoot us get into the woods and then I heard three shots and then I went and she and she fell to the ground and I ran to her and then I heard two more shots and I remember lying there and when I got to Evelyn she was lying right next to me and I could see that she had been shot in the back of the head oh look and there was blood all over the place and I can see the two of them and she was dead The park in Santa Cruz was smaller and more crowded than Mount Tam and Carpenter was seen by witnesses walking away, tell me exactly what he looked at, and any details you can remember, yes, he was about six feet tall and Stephen Hartle was probably the most incredible.

One witness I have seen throughout my career remembers him describing this man in such detail that it was as if he had a movie running through his brain and saw it etched indelibly forever. Maybe he was around 50 years old. He had glasses and and a blue jacket, a windbreaker jacket, and Stephen Hartle's accurate description of a bald man in his 50s was a far cry from the young man in the plaid shirt who sued the wrong suspect for more than a year at the beginning. He was so angry that he could spit. nails I was furious to think that we were spending so much time on a fake composite drawing, but you didn't have time to sit and think about it to gloat or get angry or throw stones, now you had to go ahead and say Who is this guy in a positive way and how can we stop it before someone else dies?

But I couldn't act fast enough. It was May 2, 1981. A month after Ellen Hansen's murder, Carpenter's co-worker and friend, Heather Skaggs, wanted a used car. She had offered to take her to see an offer. A friend of his near Santa Cruz had first approached someone he knew quite well. How excited are you about the new car? A new used car. Hey? I'm saving up for a long time for this, thanks again, I really appreciate you bringing us all together oh, I'm glad I could help and we can go see some ferns later, oh, really, oh, that would be great, you know , I collect the ferns and your muscles, yes, in another place below. by um Santa Cruz Oh, that's wonderful.

I have never been to Santa Cruz. Alright. Heather's body would be found three weeks later, naked, shot and with a missing earring on the day of her death. Carpenter was back in San Francisco and it was time to go to the ballet and had just renewed a season ticket abroad and was reported missing by her boyfriend, who told local police in San Jose that she left with her partner. David Carpenter went to work to buy a used car the day he disappeared, Detectives Walt Robinson and Ken Womack got the case when they assigned him to us as a missing person.

The case had been thrown around the office because it was low profile. It's not significant to have a adult missing for 24 hours was a pretty precarious position to be in we had no one to be in We had no evidence of a crime all we had was this missing young girl that we desperately needed to find and what finally happened to that when Ken and I we find ourselves in this storm of a serial killer running down the ramp and in Marin and Santa County. Cruz, two police officers had made a routine visit to Carpenter's workplace and had seen her red car parked out back.

Ken Womack made a crucial connection to the red foreign car discovered after the Santa Cruz murder, now they wanted to meet Carpenter, there you go. Ken had contacted Richard. Wood Carpenter's probation officer in San Francisco I'm Walt Robinson, this is my partner Ken Womack David Carpenter we made an appointment for Friday at one in the afternoon thank you for taking the time to meet us, we appreciate you being here investigating a disappearance case of people, do you know Heather Skaggs? Yes, we wanted to approach David, but we didn't want to do it at work because he knew that he was on probation, he knew that the police visiting him at his workplace would probably be a bad thing when he was like that.

The last time you saw Heather on Friday afternoon, when I went home from work, it became common knowledge that the carpenter had an appointment to meet with Heather. Now we wanted to hear what Carpenter had to say. Is it true that you were going to help her find it? a car, yes, on Saturday morning, but I overslept, so I didn't see it on Saturday when we asked Carpenter about the cars he drove. Carpenter said I only have one car, no, no, I have a black Oldsmobile station, that's what he did. not admitting to being the owner of a red foreign car, that was important because his boss had pointed out that that was his car.

I thought there was no way this guy could be the killer in any of the Marin or Santa Cruz County cases, basically because our living witness in Santa Cruz had testified that Ellen Hansen's killer came out onto the road and spoke loudly. low, slow and deliberate, without any speech impediment, the ballet on Saturday night and went on to talk about how his mother was the cause of his problems in his

life

and he said that she made me take ballet and it really made me It bothered you that you liked ballet. I took ballet for a year when I was nine.

I took ballet for a year when I was nine. Did your mother force you to take lessons? She made me study ballet for a year, yeah, you didn't know that well. I regretted mentioning it in front of my partner because I never heard the end of it, but Mr. Carpenter got up excitedly and started dancing, doing these ballets. movements that left me completely baffled. He had opened a door and I had no idea that David Carpenter would walk right through it, but when it came time to do Romeo and Juliet for my parents tonight, the surprising part of this whole event was that Carpenter had stopped stuttering.

From that moment when we started with the ballet he gave me the feeling that this man has the same control when he has a gun in his hand as he does now when he talks about ballet or something, what you think. I'm the number one suspect in the murder investigation, right, we're investigating a missing person's case, not a homicide. I know I'm suspect number one. If I'm not, I should be David. Do you know who the Trailside killer is? If you tell us you're the Trailside killer, a normal person isn't going to throw that kind of information in the officer's face and say, come get me.

I dare you, that's the feeling or sensation I had about this character. and the more we talked to him, the deeper in my gut I felt the sickness that this man was going to walk out of here today and walk into the Redwood Forest in Santa Cruz and Marin County and take another innocent life. Thanks, I hope Heather didn't do it. He hasn't been a raped murderer, we hope not. When Carpenter left that meeting there was a sense of urgency beyond belief. Ken and I were panicking because we had just seen a serial killer walk out of this room, yeah okay, there's no doubt that Womack and Robinson did the right thing, any good investigator in your place isn't going to jump in prematurely and arrest someone without all the facts, without all the information and I'm sure they didn't want to put Santa Cruz County or Marin in danger.

The county homicide investigation did the right thing. Carpenter dropped Robinson and Womack off at 3 p.m. m. that Friday knowing that the police were after him. Keem received a call from Robinson at the same time and was moving to establish surveillance and warrants, but those few hours yielded carbon. a time to start removing evidence still one step ahead at 9 pm that night Keaton and Pratty had dug up his house under their own surveillance it's going to be a long night it would be 24 hours before the full surveillance team was ready so This is uh, his mom and dad live with his mom and dad, but we sat there until the wee hours of the morning knowing we had to get back to work on a regular task.

Next, check in, what were your sexual priorities? Yes, leave it. Take a look at this. We have its presentation about 10 years ago. He served some time for aggravated assault. It was difficult for the first time they read Carpenter's history. He had previous convictions for kidnapping, rape and attempted murder. They have spent almost 20 years in prison. Yeah, there's some kind of assault going on here using a hammer of all things, a nice guy sounds like our guy, although under surveillance, Carpenter managed to sneak in to get rid of the crucial evidence by making use of an old prison buddy, Shane Williams, Hi Shane, hey.

David, how are you okay? How are you, good? A long time, yeah, it's been a while, yeah, I get it, you got something for me, yeah, something you want, put in a little job you have in mind, oh yeah, perfect ammo in the bottom, good luck, oh yeah. thank you, i really appreciate it, no problem, take care, thank you. Carpenter thanked his friend that he had no idea he was in possession of a gun that had killed seven people. We were on a time slot, we didn't want this to drag on over a weekend or go on vacation and miss him.

We knew in our minds Carpenter was our suspect, he was responsible for all these murders, we had the warrants in hand, the district attorneys of both Santa Cruz and Marin counties said it was time to contact Mr. Carpenter, well, they say at 7:15 sharp or the methodical Stony Brook of Santa Cruz and I approached Mr. Carpenter at his residence in view of other officers for security reasons, we did not know at the time where the gun was, who is sure? My name is Tony Brooks Santa Cruz Police Department. I would like to apologize with a few questions.

Stoney began talking to Mr. Carpenter by observing his body language. You could see this man tense up almost like a cat backing away when the dog passes long ago. talk about this I have to go to work sir I have the disappearance of Heather Skaggs do you know anything about that murder? Well, at that moment Stony Brook reaches under his coat and pulls out an arrest warrant for murder for him, split them up, it's the carpenter you're under.arrest you have the right to remain silent anything you say I can put him against the adjacent building to search him get a lawyer the state will provide you with one please don't hurt me I've always been a model inmate and that just disgusted me here's this guy who now he has a murder warrant against him, now he is under arrest for murder and when he can't leave he begs and begs for it, he has always been a model in me and the only thing that shines in me Remember the scenes of those girls and boys that They were killed.

Here's this guy who says, "Don't hurt me and look what he did to you." Finally Carpenter was in custody, but so far the police had no hard evidence against him. Investigators were hanging their hopes on him. in the search of the house, but whatever evidence was there disappeared, this is the area, they found nothing to justify charging Carpenter with murder after the arrest in San Francisco. Carpenter was taken to the Santa Cruz County Jail, he will likely be held here after booking. Instead of transferring him to the old jail for security reasons, what we're trying to do is look at the evidence and see where it leads.

We have not charged anyone at this time and we have not done so because we have not completed the investigation, the investigation was ongoing simultaneously with Santa Cruz putting Mr. Carpenter in our lineup and doing it as quickly as possible and having Steve Hartle identify him number four turn left number four turn left all that day Carpenter was being transported to Santa Cruz to be put in line, everyone was on pins and needles, there was like an expectant father waiting for the baby to be born and everyone was at the phone, I mean, from secretaries to receptionists, janitors and everyone, how about it? number five with his glasses on if hartle had put on his glasses uncertain or somehow not been positive, that would have been the most horrendous thing for us in the world number three with his glasses on, very good number three, put on your glasses, that's he's the one there, number three, yes, Keaton, thank you for the positive identification, yes, we may have been very relieved and very positive about the identification of Mr.

Hurdle, but a defense attorney only has than contaminate the mind of a juror, only one in 12. and if there is no doubt they may not get a conviction, so our priority right now was to find the gun, where is the gun ? But what the police found next was not the gun, but the decomposed remains of Heather Skaggs authorities. I now believe that Heather Skaggs was murdered in this wooded location near a large Basin Redwood State Park, where she was found murdered like others Trailside victims. Two hikers found her naked body and her clothing missing from the scene.

Like three other victims, she was dead from a gunshot wound. Lead investigators from the State Department of Justice will now do ballistic testing of the bullet to see if it matches the evidence and other Trailside murders. The weapon used was a .38 caliber revolver and so far it has not been recovered and the Trailside investigators were about to have their best chance, but hey, that's our guy who got it. My name is not Shane. Shane Williams was wanted on charges of bank robbery and probation violations. A hapless thief. He had left his girlfriend's student ID on the hotel bill at the bank counter.

After the heist, so you're not saying why it's a shame, okay, okay, just come with us after Carpenter's arrest. Williams realized that the gun Carpenter had given him was probably related to the murders, perhaps even the murder weapon, so he hid it. I'll give it back to you as a bargaining chip if you ever need it oh I have something you guys might want if you're interested let me know. I'm back here ready to talk. He told police where he was in exchange for lenient treatment in the charges against him. Shane Williams told the lieutenant that he had given the gun to Carpenter, that he had folded it into newspapers and hit it under the asphalt in the lot. , under the asphalt wrapped in newspaper was the gun.

The lieutenant took the gun to the Sheriff's office. Office and we were all amazed, it was a little bit of luck, finally a little bit of luck, the biggest sigh of relief was when the lab called his office and told him that we had the gun that matches all the homicides, if you remember, when he I shot and killed Miss Hanson and then I shot Stephen Hartle. My three shots went off and then I went and she and she fell to the ground and I ran towards her and then I heard two more shots, that's five bullets and he had a revolver. but he was a five-shooter, if he had one more bullet we wouldn't have Stephen Hartle as a witness and we might still be looking for the Trailside killer.

Carpenter was tried twice, first for the Santa Cruz murders and then for the marina fences in both cases. At trial he pleaded not guilty, but both juries reached unanimous verdicts finding him guilty of three counts of rape, one attempted murder, and seven first-degree murders. On July 19, 1988, he was sentenced to death, but the case remains under abrogation and David Carpenter remains free. He is alive, now the oldest man sentenced to death in San Quentin Prison, just a few miles from Mount Tamil Pius, to this day he continues to claim that he is innocent. The denial that only he can answer.

The evidence is overwhelming and you would think that if he had done it. any kind of decency could perhaps speak to us. Enlighten us and tell us what happened if not that these victims could be others. That day will never happen again. Back here 22 years after all those investigations began. It's very difficult to explain to people. families why why so long 22 years after his loved ones were murdered and disappeared, he is still alive