Thanks Seagull – you must be sick of looking through microfiche (or the digital equivalent)! The Nancy Gidley article is very strange and certainly makes the hair stand up in the way Z has a habit of doing.
What jumped out at me was the apparently ‘fake’ wedding and Chronicle job. I am positive there is a similar aspect to another unsolved case but I’ve looked at so many over the past few weeks I don’t know if I simply heard about this one elsewhere (but I don’t think so). Do you have any ideas?
The military connection is probably not too relevant, it seems a bit of a stretch to me – SF looks to have had a decent military presence in the 60s/70s so connections are going to spring up more than in cities with no such links,

This is so creepy. It gives me visions of a Jack the Ripper type of person lurking around San Francisco in the fog.
These could all be very easily Zodiac. I wonder if anyone ever tried to run any DNA evidence off of these crime scenes.
It looks like no sexual assualt on the victims? Remember… SFPD=0 Zodiac=37

Seagull (or anyone that wants to opine), do you think there’s any connection between this string of homicides in SF and the SRHM? What are the theories, if any, on these SF murders?

Thanks!

truthandsoul I would not be shocked if there was a connection. The murder of Nancy Gidley apparently happened on July 15, 1973 which is the same day that Carolyn Davis was last seen by her grandmother hitchhiking south on Highway 101 from Garberville. But because of the condition of Carolyn’s body when she was found July 31st it was thought she did not die on the 15th but a few days later.

I suppose the big difference in each set of crimes is that the Santa Rosa victims were all found in remote areas of the county days to months after their deaths, whereas the San Francisco victims were all found relatively quick in public places. One suspect in the SRHM had close ties to San Francisco.

truthandsoul I would not be shocked if there was a connection. The murder of Nancy Gidley apparently happened on July 15, 1973 which is the same day that Carolyn Davis was last seen by her grandmother hitchhiking south on Highway 101 from Garberville. But because of the condition of Carolyn’s body when she was found July 31st it was thought she did not die on the 15th but a few days later.

I suppose the big difference in each set of crimes is that the Santa Rosa victims were all found in remote areas of the county days to months after their deaths, whereas the San Francisco victims were all found relatively quick in public places. One suspect in the SRHM had close ties to San Francisco.

Thanks for that, Seagull.

With regards to Carolyn Davis (sorry, if this isn’t the best thread to discuss her), her cause of death I’ve seen listed as "strychnine poisoning". Do you have any conclusions/theories behind that?

From what I’ve read, Kim Wendy Allen and Theresa Walsh were strangled, like the above 4 SF victims, but the exact cause of the death of the others isn’t known. I guess what I’m getting at, is there something to the MOs that ties the murders together more closely? The jewelry/earring remnants? Sounds like Vasquez was thrown, like Allen, Kursa and Davis (i.e. the perp was strong/large?)? Those that were strangled? Two killers operating in the same (SR) area?

There have been a lot of theories about the SRHM victims, both from LE and people on forums, like us. I’ve heard any where from two to four different killers acting apart from each other could have committed the murders.

There was no shortage of strong guys back then so that makes it hard to narrow down. There wasn’t a shortage of serial killers either and many of them had similar MO’s. Edmund Kemper, Karl Werner, Phillip Hughes , Darryl Kemp, Charles Jackson, Roger Kibbe, Phillip Thompson, all operating in or having close ties to the Bay Area in the 70’s.

^^ And those are just the ones we know about!

Yes, I agree there’s an overwhelming number of murderer-rapists in the area at that time.

What are the odds of two young women Rosa Vasquez and Donna Lass, killed and taken (likely murdered) on Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend inside of three years and both had worked at the Letterman General Hospital. Vasquez was a keypunch operator (A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator), something the Zodiac demonstrated in his 13 Hole Postcard and Pines Card earlier. Could the killer have known both victims!

What are the odds of two young women Rosa Vasquez and Donna Lass, killed and taken (likely murdered) on Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend inside of three years and both had worked at the Letterman General Hospital. Vasquez was a keypunch operator (A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator), something the Zodiac demonstrated in his 13 Hole Postcard and Pines Card earlier. Could the killer have known both victims!

Assuming Z sent that(I think he did, but some do not). Interesting point however. Maybe Z had ties to Letterman?

Just a quick question regarding the Letterman General Hospital, back in the 60/70’s did the Hospital have an actual address, say if you looked it up in the Telephone directory? From what I have read the majority of the complex is now gone but from the marker placer on Wikipedia/GPS, the closest street to it was Chestnut st. If anyone has an old Telephone book and can check it out it would be much appreciated. Also whilst I’m asking favours , do we know EXACTLY where Yvonne Quilintang’s body was found (street name etc)? All I can find is ‘Body found in a vacant lot in the Bayview district’.

I have been doing a fair bit of hunting into the two artifacts found on Rosa’s body and i’m close to 95% sure they are the following A) A St BRENDAN religious medal (the Patron St of Sailors/Navigation) and B) A set of PEARL earings. If anyone thinks differently I would love their ideas or even guesses. I will be posting how these two items fit into my POI in the DGH thread – Cheers Def

To deal with the sudden influx of returning wounded, East Hospital, an orderly array of 21 frame buildings which more than doubled the patient facilities, was built east of the (since built over) O’Reilly Avenue parade ground. By 1921, Letterman hospital had 56 permanent buildings and 29 temporary ones staffed by 41 medical officers, 58 nurses, and 484 enlisted men.

In 1960, the Army began planning for a more modern hospital. The East Hospital complex was demolished and in 1969 a 10-story, 550-bed, reinforced concrete facility opened on the site. The new Letterman Army Medical Center trained a quarter of the Army’s medical specialists. It served the wounded and POWs returning from Vietnam in the 1970s.
@37.7937666,-122.4655729,3783m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m22!4m21!1m5!1m1!1s0x808587301b6b6cc5:0x8ad56b1d3e042f1!2m2!1d-122.4572353!2d37.7886851!1m1!4e1!1m5!1m1!1s0x808586d59b46677f:0x19d708b9270f1b05!2m2!1d-122.4502926!2d37.80104!1m5!1m1!1s0x8085872bae708037:0xd6ba2f934f0f0ac4!2m2!1d-122.450259!2d37.798092!3e2?hl=en”>https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Washington+St+and+Cherry+St,+San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/37.78976,-122.45583/O’Reilly+Ave,+San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Letterman+Digital+Arts+Center,+San+Francisco,+CA,+United+States/@37.7937666,-122.4655729,3783m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m22!4m21!1m5!1m1!1s0x808587301b6b6cc5:0x8ad56b1d3e042f1!2m2!1d-122.4572353!2d37.7886851!1m1!4e1!1m5!1m1!1s0x808586d59b46677f:0x19d708b9270f1b05!2m2!1d-122.4502926!2d37.80104!1m5!1m1!1s0x8085872bae708037:0xd6ba2f934f0f0ac4!2m2!1d-122.450259!2d37.798092!3e2?hl=en

Letterman General Hospital, Presidio of San Francisco, Cal

Would anyone be able to research what brand of computers if any were in use at Letterman back then? Wondering if they were in process of implementing computerized system or updating one they had. If so, what brands were being considered?

Zodiac certainly could have been attracted to anything named "Letterman!"

Well they did use Keypunches as Rosa Vasquez was a Keypunch Operator, used in data processing , but were eventually phased out by the availability of inexpensive CRT computer terminals during the 1970’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer# … g_language