I don’t recall where I read it but I remember that the person who said they heard the screams was gauging the time by what they were watching on TV. If that is truly the case then what their clock was set at wouldn’t matter. Does anyone else remember that detail?

If they’d already done it, then technically it would have been 10:30.

But if they hadn’t done it yet, and looked at the clock and saw it was 10:30, then technically, it would be 9:30pm. Fall back…

I’m not even sure I’m right at this stage, I’m getting dizzy …..Technically the clock does not go back until 12, so any adjustment before that leaves the time out by an hour.
If the witness looked at the clock when she heard the scream and had not made the adjustment,then the time was 10:30.(As normal)
If for some reason the person had already adjusted the hour and the clock read 10:30,then technically it was 11:30.

If Seagull is correct (thanks) it doesn’t matter anyway. But also the scream is still eliminated as being unrelated to the murder, if Cheri ate before 5. The Coroner says she died 2 but not more than 4 hours after she ate. (unless he’s wrong or she ate later) which puts time of death between 7 but not later than 9.

I must go back to bed!

Did it go back at 12 though? It goes back these days at 2am here. What time does it go back at in the States? and what time did it go back at in 1966?

Did it go back at 12 though? It goes back these days at 2am here. What time does it go back at in the States? and what time did it go back at in 1966?

Daylight savings time WAS in effect in 66

During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time, called "War Time," from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. [See law] From 1945 to 1966, there was no federal law regarding Daylight Saving Time, so states and localities were free to choose whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time and could choose when it began and ended. This understandably caused confusion, especially for the broadcasting industry, as well as for railways, airlines, and bus companies. Because of the different local customs and laws, radio and TV stations and the transportation companies had to publish new schedules every time a state or town began or ended Daylight Saving Time.

On January 4, 1974, President Nixon signed into law the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973. Then, beginning on January 6, 1974, implementing the Daylight Saving Time Energy Act, clocks were set ahead. On October 5, 1974, Congress amended the Act, and Standard Time returned on October 27, 1974. Daylight Saving Time resumed on February 23, 1975 and ended on October 26, 1975.

I think CA observed it in 66. From a CA website:
"The American law by which we turn our clock forward in the spring and back in the fall is known as the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The law does not require that anyone observe Daylight Saving Time; all the law says is that if we are going to observe Daylight Saving Time, it must be done uniformly"

And from another site:
"Order finally came in 1966 with the enactment of the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, although states had the option of remaining on standard time year-round"

Lastly, found a person on the next that asked this,and got the following answer:
Q-"I’m interested in whether Eureka CA had daylight saving time prior to 1966? If someone can tell me I would love to hear it. I tried looking on the Internet and didn’t find any info for CA. Thanks "
A-"The answer is no.
In 1966, the U.S. Congress, tired of the patchwork daylight
savings time zones across the country, passed a law that
pre-empted state law and made daylight savings, which runs from
the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, uniform.
The only two states I found who went out of there way to "do their own thing" with daylight savings time prior to congress passing the law were Missouri and Indiana"

FWIW…..I’ve been checking around and according to a few places(including the crime library) there were actually two witnesses who reported hearing a scream.
One was a local resident who reports hearing an "awful scream" between 10:15 and 10:45, before 2 minutes of silence, followed by an old car starting up ( I do seem to recall something along the lines as Seagull reports at to timing but haven’t found the source yet)
The second was a man returning to the area, who reported hearing a scream at 10:30.

I may be simplistic, but 9:30 PM seems the logical time Cheri was murdered. Unless her killer was a BSer extraordinaire, there was no logical reason for Cheri to hang around a dark alley for an hour-and-a-half.

I do not believe and never have believed that she spent any major time in that alley. I think she was dead minutes after entering. This whole case is complicated because we are missing something in the timing. I think there is merit in ignoring ( at least to begin with) the Confession letter and all things Z and just concentrating on the available evidence to see where it leads.

Good digging at this subject. Two witnesses reported hearing a scream at about the same time, 10:30ish? Safe to say, they likely both heard the same scream, and it may very well have been from Bates. They mentioned 10:30, but was that including adjusment for daylight savings? Was it really 9:30? The way it is now, you set your clock back on the Saturday night, so the time adjust for your body on Sunday when most people are off. You set the clocks back at what,after 1am?? We are actually going to fall back next week. In 1966, could it be that they set their clocks back after1am on Sunday night(early Monday morning)? Techincally if this was the case, the people may have heard the scream at 10:30, but when they went to bed,they may have turned their clocks back

Here’s the poop on when the time was turned back in 1966.

When local daylight time was about to reach
Sunday, October 30, 1966 at 2:00:00 AM clocks were turned backward 1 hour to
Sunday, October 30, 1966 at 1:00:00 AM local standard time instead

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/c … &year=1966

Cheri was killed Sunday night so the clocks should have already been turned back.

I’d love to have the transcripts from the meeting LE set up when they invited all the people who were at the Library that night and see what each actually stated. I’ve read that the Librarian didn’t recall Cheri Jo being in the Library that night, yet books were found in Cheri Jo’s VW that had been checked out that evening. I’ve also read there were 3 young men (friends), who were at the Library that night, knew Cheri Jo from Ramona HS, and said they saw her in the Library around 7pm, but didn’t see her again after that. I’ve always had a hard time believing that her killer abducted her at around 7pm right in front of the Library, walked her over to the alleyway and killed her and there she laid until she was found in the morning, some 11 hours later. I also have never believed that she was in the Library until closing time and no one saw her. Her goal was to go to the Library, check out some books she needed for research for a paper that was due the following day, and come home, use those books and write up her paper.
So the killer has disabled her car, he comes up to her, offers to help and somehow convinces her she has to go with him in his car. She has to know him. She has to have a level of trust with this person. so for the next few hours they drive around?, ala Katherine John’s, and maybe it’s all non-threatening to her. They come back to her car, he tells her he will now fix it and she can be on her way, and as they’re walking towards her car around 10:30pm, they get to the alleyway and he attacks her.
When the killer wrote about that evening there was a word he used that always has bothered me, I’m paraphrasing here what he said but basically he says, "NOW it’s time", supposedely Cheri Jo says "Time for what", and he replies "Time for you to die", then he attacks her. The word he uses is now, to me that says that they’ve been together for a while that evening. It wasn’t time before then, but it was time now.

by Seagull » Sat Oct 26, 2013 12:17 am

Here’s the poop on when the time was turned back in 1966.

When local daylight time was about to reach
Sunday, October 30, 1966 at 2:00:00 AM clocks were turned backward 1 hour to
Sunday, October 30, 1966 at 1:00:00 AM local standard time instead

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/c … &year=1966

Cheri was killed Sunday night so the clocks should have already been turned back.

Great, thanks Seagull…..that would appear to confirm that the time the scream was heard was 10:30….apart from the clocks being already back, it’s highly unlikely that two different witnesses would be in error.

So we have this scream and the Coroners estimate on lividity in support of a 10:30 ish time of death.
And on the other hand, the Coroners estimate based on stomach contents that she died not after 9pm.(latest)

Other evidence does suggest that Cheri did eat before 5…….It would appear ( not that it’s correct) it "only" takes the Coroner being wrong re digestion and all is right. But is it that simple?
On the other hand I suspect that estimates based on Digestion would be more accurate than the Lividity estimate.

http://www.practicalhomicide.com/Research/LOmar2007.htm

by Seagull » Sat Oct 26, 2013 12:17 am

Here’s the poop on when the time was turned back in 1966.

When local daylight time was about to reach
Sunday, October 30, 1966 at 2:00:00 AM clocks were turned backward 1 hour to
Sunday, October 30, 1966 at 1:00:00 AM local standard time instead

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/c … &year=1966

Cheri was killed Sunday night so the clocks should have already been turned back.

Great, thanks Seagull…..that would appear to confirm that the time the scream was heard was 10:30….apart from the clocks being already back, it’s highly unlikely that two different witnesses would be in error.

So we have this scream and the Coroners estimate on lividity in support of a 10:30 ish time of death.
And on the other hand, the Coroners estimate based on stomach contents that she died not after 9pm.(latest)

Other evidence does suggest that Cheri did eat before 5…….It would appear ( not that it’s correct) it "only" takes the Coroner being wrong re digestion and all is right. But is it that simple?
On the other hand I suspect that estimates based on Digestion would be more accurate than the Lividity estimate.

Unfortunately there is no way to validate that two people heard screams, or that they were in fact screams. And while people SHOULD set their clocks back, unless there was confirmation the one we know who said they heard a scream were asked and actually did set their clock back, or confirmation they DID base it off a TV show….we just don’t know. Many, many times fellow employees (and students as a kid), including myself, were later (or early) to work or school because we didn’t remember to change our clocks.

When you consider the time change, autopsy, library closure, etc. 9:30 does make more sense.

But overall, I cannot figure out why she’d be there that late anyway and why no one saw her car.

With "falling back" it would be dark much earlier, so maybe she was killed earlier when she left the library and it just so happened to be nobody saw her in the dark alley.

Another thing that bugs me re the Bates murder. Where were the other students, and the librarians? I should imagine the librarians took, say, a half hour to secure the library. When they came out, Cheri and her killer-to-be should have been occupied with her car. Alternatively, the librarians should have been on the premises, and heard Cheri’s screams. Is there any info re when the librarians left the premises?