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Old 10-27-2008, 02:11 PM
 
6 posts, read 37,967 times
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Does anyone remember this serial killer from the San Bruno/Pacifica area in the early to mid 1970's?

I've looked for archived news articles with no luck - I remember that the victims were generally teenaged girls with long, brown hair who were last seen hitchhiking or walking on Skyline Blvd. between Manor Drive and the San Bruno area. A friend from elementary school was believed to be one of his victims or I probably wouldn't remember so much about it.

The lack of history available is intriguing and I've thought it would make an interesting book, but I can't piece any more together.
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Old 10-27-2008, 07:07 PM
 
15,633 posts, read 26,134,497 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jcobc View Post
Does anyone remember this serial killer from the San Bruno/Pacifica area in the early to mid 1970's?

I've looked for archived news articles with no luck - I remember that the victims were generally teenaged girls with long, brown hair who were last seen hitchhiking or walking on Skyline Blvd. between Manor Drive and the San Bruno area. A friend from elementary school was believed to be one of his victims or I probably wouldn't remember so much about it.

The lack of history available is intriguing and I've thought it would make an interesting book, but I can't piece any more together.
Years ago, I remember there was a set of periodical reference books that libraries had that listed articles and where they could be found. I believe newspapers had their own set of books or were included in the periodicals.

Online archived news materials are probably very hit and miss; you might actually have to log in some serious time at your local library and the microfiche and film.

Your memory of your school friend would be a good starting point at a date to look for in the paper.

I have one of those intrigues, too, from where I grew up... but mine involves a huge old home where the husband hired out a hit on his wife -- the hit was carried out, and all the people were caught. The house became a very successful restaurant that was close to us, but my parents never went there, because it creeped them out too much.
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Old 10-27-2008, 09:23 PM
 
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I'd love to hear more about this if you can figure out the guy's name. I looked it up on that crime website that has a special section on serial killers and I couldn't find anything.
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Old 11-07-2008, 11:21 AM
 
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Thanks for the suggestion, Tallysmom - I'm planning a trip back to the Bay Area soon and will look around the libraries. Pacifica Tribune archives don't go back that far, at least not online. I vividly remember the front page articles, though.

Tangodoodles, I'll definitely post any information I find here.
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Old 11-07-2008, 01:27 PM
 
15,633 posts, read 26,134,497 times
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Originally Posted by jcobc View Post
Thanks for the suggestion, Tallysmom - I'm planning a trip back to the Bay Area soon and will look around the libraries. Pacifica Tribune archives don't go back that far, at least not online. I vividly remember the front page articles, though.

Tangodoodles, I'll definitely post any information I find here.
You don't have to come here -- check your local library. A good reference librarian is worth WAY more than they pay her. She (or he) might be able to help you find where the material is, AND help you get your hands on it, via interlibrary loan.

A small rant here -- there is tons and tons of information out there on every subject you can imagine. Tons and tons of books written, but since the advent of the internet, people expect everything to be at the touch of their fingertips.

While Ted Stephens was wrong about the internet being a series of tubes, he was sort of right about there being really is too much stuff out there for the internet to hold it all -- mainly because people have to feed it into the internet first.

Don't be afraid to walk into your library and ask -- that's what they are there for, and a good challenge has to be far more exciting than finding the same books for the same reports for the same schoolkids.
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Old 11-08-2008, 04:38 PM
 
Location: In the Redwoods
30,286 posts, read 51,763,161 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallysmom View Post
You don't have to come here -- check your local library. A good reference librarian is worth WAY more than they pay her.
Aw shucks... you do know I'm a reference librarian, right? I appreciate your comments immensely, since we are SO undervalued and under-appreciated. I swear, people think we read books and stamp due dates all day, neither of which am I lucky enough to do.

Quote:
Don't be afraid to walk into your library and ask -- that's what they are there for, and a good challenge has to be far more exciting than finding the same books for the same reports for the same schoolkids.
LMAO... you betcha! I would LOVE a reference question like this, and in fact I might do some research on it next week. I'll post anything I find here, and if you (the OP) come to the Bay Area, I will tell you where I work... so you can get personal one-on-one reference assistance from the branch manager - which would be myself.
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Old 11-08-2008, 05:09 PM
 
6 posts, read 37,967 times
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I confess, I haven't visited a library in a number of years, with the exception of the History Center here in Sacramento where I've done a lot of genealogical research. I'm sure I'm just one of many who've been spoiled by the wealth of information available on the web. We forget that the information doesn't just magically appear - someone has to put it there! Boy, if I could find a job like that, uploading books and historical information, I'd be in heaven!

Gizmo, I'll take you up on that during my next visit to the area. I can't tell you the number of hours I spent at the Pacifica Library as a kid - I'd have my dad deposit me there while he played golf at Sharp Park - and at the Anza Branch in SF when I was even younger. Sadly, I don't have that kind of free time anymore.
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Old 11-08-2008, 05:46 PM
 
Location: In the Redwoods
30,286 posts, read 51,763,161 times
Reputation: 23658
Quote:
Originally Posted by jcobc View Post
I confess, I haven't visited a library in a number of years, with the exception of the History Center here in Sacramento where I've done a lot of genealogical research. I'm sure I'm just one of many who've been spoiled by the wealth of information available on the web. We forget that the information doesn't just magically appear - someone has to put it there! Boy, if I could find a job like that, uploading books and historical information, I'd be in heaven!
Not only does it have to be entered, but somebody has to find & verify the legitimacy of said information - which is where librarians/archivists come into play. We also know how to evaluate information on the web, since many "civilians" forget that just because it's online, doesn't mean it is accurate. You can do a Google search and get 1,000,000 results, but only MAYBE 5-10% are of any value... if you let a librarian do the work for you, especially if they're using subscription databases (not available through Google), it guarantees you are getting good information. I can get you that info in no time at all, and have actually done similar searches in the past. I'm thinking a microfilm search would be my first step, which is something I love to do!

Quote:
Gizmo, I'll take you up on that during my next visit to the area. I can't tell you the number of hours I spent at the Pacifica Library as a kid - I'd have my dad deposit me there while he played golf at Sharp Park - and at the Anza Branch in SF when I was even younger. Sadly, I don't have that kind of free time anymore.
Awesome! I used to live in Pacifica, and that is a beautiful little library. I work at a small branch in the East Bay, but also at a large branch on Fridays/Saturdays... either way I can do it for you, so let me know when you're here. And if our library doesn't have enough resources (which is highly possible), I can refer you to somebody good at San Francisco Public - where I used to work.
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Old 11-08-2008, 10:23 PM
 
15,633 posts, read 26,134,497 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gizmo980 View Post
Aw shucks... you do know I'm a reference librarian, right? I appreciate your comments immensely, since we are SO undervalued and under-appreciated. I swear, people think we read books and stamp due dates all day, neither of which am I lucky enough to do.
I did not know that -- my mom worked in local library for several years -- doing the book stamping and shelf reading. They actually called them "paid volunteers" for the longest time, because that's what they were. They were volunteers they ended up paying because that was the only way they could count on them!

Libraries are very important!!!!
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Old 07-09-2009, 08:46 PM
 
1 posts, read 8,962 times
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Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 23:37:53 -0700 (PDT)
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: elvision@mayhem.net
Subject: missing unsolved killing

Hi Antonio, In 1976, a friend of mine, Veronica Cascio, was murdered in Pacifica, California, during a serial killing spree in Northern San Mateo County. I have never forgotten my friend's death and hope someday we will know who committed her murder. I have read nearly all of your pages looking for some other killer who may have also killed my friend. I am typing excerpts from an article in the San Mateo County Times from July 3, 1996, titled "North County Killing Spree is Again Unsolved" written by Dave Murphy. The article was written after George Franklin was proven not to be the killer. (George Franklin was the guy who's daughter Eileen had a repressed memory emerge of her father of killing her friend. She later said she also remembered her father killing Veronica Cascio, but DNA tests proved her wrong). Please add these killings to the list of unsolved murders, and if you know of any suspects among your information, please tell me what you think. But, please don't include my name or e-mail address anywhere on your page! The following are excerpts from the Times Article....

Police believe that Veronica was the first of 5 slayings in 3 months that terrorized northern San Mateo County. All the victims were young women who were stabbed to death. All had long brown hair parted in the middle. No one has been arrested for the murders. The only development in the last decade was that the county collected the evidence a few years ago and shipped it to the FBI crime lab. Detective Doug McCool of the South San Franciso Police Department investigated the slayings. The victims were:

Veronica Cascio, last seen 6:10 pm, Jan 7, 1976, at a bus stop in Pacifica. She was sexually assaulted, stabbed 32 times and dumped in a creek bed at the Sharp Park Golf Course, where she was found the next morning. Tanya Blackwell, 14, of Pacifica, who never returned home after visiting a 7-Eleven Jan. 24. Two boys found her body June 6, covered with leaves, in the Gypsy Hills area near the summit of Sharp Park Road.

Paula Baxter, a 17 year old Millbrae resident last seen at 8:15 pm, Feb 4 as she left Capuchino High School in San Bruno. Her body was found two days later, covered with leaves, in a grove behind a Millbrae church. Carol Booth, 26, a South San Francisco housewife who could have passed for a teen-ager. She disappeared March 15 on her way home from work, and was found May 4 in a shallow grave near the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in South San Francisco.

Denise Lampe, 19 of Broadmoor, stabbed to death shorly before 10pm April 1 in the parking lot of the Serramonte Shopping Center in Daly City. One of the original detectives, Bob Robinson of Pacifica, said he did have a strog suspect. Robinson said in a 1986 interview that police took hair samples from 256 potential suspects, trying to match those found in the Cascio and Baxter cases. They did. The suspect was convicted of a sex crime involving a teen-age girl in another Bay Area county- a crime that ocurred less than a week after Lampe was killed. Unlike fingerprints, however, hair samples are not considered conclusive evidence. In 1976, the FBI crime lab could tell Robinson only that fewer than one out of 4000 people had the same type of hair.

Robinson, who believed the suspect could have been involved in several Bay Area slayings, moved to Southern California in 1981. One of the many loose ends he left behind was any explanation for why the suspect- who lived and worked in other counties- would have chosen victims in Northern San Mateo County.

In a story 10 years after the slayings, however, The Times found a connection. The suspect's brother lived here, and had been in jail for more than two months. He was released shortly after Cascio was killed. The county jail keeps records of an inmates visitors, but destroys them after a few years. By 1986, the records for 1976 visitors were gone. In the mid-1980's, Texas serial killer Henry Lee Lucas claimed to have murdered 360 people, including some in California. He was brought to San Mateo County to see if he could convince police he had committed the 1976 murders, but he couldn't. Lucas was the wrong man.
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