In February 1975, California's Department of Justice issued a confidential report stating that fourteen unsolved murders in the past three years had been committed by a single man. Six victims had been found near Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County; five were found in San Francisco, with one each in Redding, Marysville, and Monterey. The murders were distinguished from a host of other unsolved homicides by similar disposal of the bodies and the killer's fondness for retaining souvenirs . The chain of homicides began on February 4, 1972, when Maureen Strong and Yvonne Weber, both twelve years old, vanished on their way home from a Santa Rosa skating rink. Their skeletons were found December 28, on an embankment near a rural road in eastern Sonoma County. The killer had removed the clothing and a single gold earring from each victim. On March 4, 1972, Kim Allen, a l9-year-old co-ed, vanished while hitchhiking in Santa Rosa. Her nude body, strangled with clothesline, was found in a creek bed; there were superficial cuts on her chest, rope burns on her wrists and ankles. Once again, the clothing, handbag, and one gold earring were missing. On November 21, 1972, 13-year-old Lori Kursa vanished from a Santa Rosa market. She was nude upon discovery, three weeks later, and the cause of death was listed as a broken neck. She still had wire loops in her ear lobes, but her earrings had been removed. The killer shifted to San Francisco with spring, strangling Rosa Vasquez and dumping her nude body on May 29, 1973. Fifteen-year-old Yvonne Quilantang received similar treatment on June 9. Angela Thomas was found naked and dead July 2, but she had been smothered. On July 13, Nancy Gidley was snatched from a local motel and strangled, her nude body dumped in a high school parking lot. The "occult" angle surfaced that same month, after Caroline Davis was kidnapped on July 15. A runaway from Shasta County, she was last seen thumbing for rides on Highway 101, near Santa Rosa. Poisoned with strychnine, she was found on July 31, at the precise spot where the first two victims were discovered seven months earlier. On the bank above her body, searchers found a strange design arranged from twigs form two interlocking squares. An unnamed described the sculpture as a witchy symbol understood to designate "the carrier of spirits." On July 22, 1973, the nearly-nude body of Nancy Feusi was found near Redding, California, the cause of death obscured by decomposition. On November 4, the scene shifted back to San Francisco with discovery of Laura O'Dell's nude, strangled body. Therese Walsh, age 22, was hitching rides from Malibu to Garberville when she met her killer on December 22, 1973. Raped , hog-tied and strangled, she was dumped near the spot where Kim Allen was found in March 1972. According to police, the same man murdered Brenda Merchant, at Marysville, by stabbing her to death on February 1, 1974, discarding her semi-nude corpse beside a rural road. On September 29, 14-year-old Donna Braun, nude and strangled, was found floating in the Salinas River near Monterey. And so, presumedly, the murders ceased. A fifteenth victim, inadvertently omitted from the government's report, was Jeannette Kamahele, age 20, a co-ed who disappeared on April 25, 1972, while hitchhiking near Santa Rosa. Her skeletal remains were finally unearthed on July 6, 1979, hog-tied in a shallow grave within 100 yards of Lori Kursa's final resting place. The "occult" theory's chief proponent was Sergeant Erwin Carlstedt, of Sonoma County. Impressed by the sticks found at one murder scene, he also found significance in victims being dumped along the east side of a road. In passing, Carlstedt told associates that seven women killed in Washington, between January and July 1974, had been abducted in the waning (sacrificial) phase of the moon. The 1975 report suggested that the killer was "familiar with witchcraft or the occult , because of a witchcraft symbol found during the Caroline Davis case and the possible occult involvement in the missing females in the states of Oregon and Washington." Unfortunately for the Carlstedt thesis, all the victims killed in Washington were ultimately linked to the "Ted" case, credited to Theodore Bundy. (Research into Bundy's movements has exonerated him from all involvement in the California murders.) Likewise, the reputed "witchcraft symbol" proved to be a piece of childish art, constructed by a small boy on vacation as a likeness of his family's car and trailer. Slayer Harvey Carignan has been suggested as a suspect in the unsolved murders, based upon a traffic ticket he collected in Solano County, east of Santa Rosa, on June 20, 1973. Again, no solid evidence exists, and one week later Carignan was claiming victims in the state of Minnesota, leading to his ultimate arrest in September 1974. He was in jail when Donna Braun was murdered, and the other bodies showed no evidence of Carignan's traditional resort to beating with a hammer. An intriguing theory published during 1986, by author Robert Graysmith, credits the elusive "Zodiac" with these and many other unsolved homicides. The point is moot, until such time as a solution is discovered. In the meantime, we can only say that one or more sadistic killers may be still at large within the Golden State.