On October 30, 1966, California’s Riverside City College (RCC) and the town that surrounds it lost their innocence when 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates was found murdered on campus. Her case was widely publicized due to the heinous nature of her attack and the possibility that she had been the first victim of the Zodiac Killer, though a connection to the latter has never been confirmed.
Cheri Jo Bates may have been killed by the Zodiac Killer
Detectives in the case believe her attacker disabled the ignition wire and distributor cap wires on her green 1960 Volkswagen Beetle to strand her outside the college library where she had been studying.
Earlier that morning, Cheri and her father had gone to mass services at their church and then eaten breakfast at a local restaurant. By early afternoon, they had parted company and Cheri was in the library on campus, studying and working on a research paper for one of her classes. She had invited one of her friends to come with her, but the offer had been turned down, so Cheri went alone.
Later that evening, Cheri’s father found a note on the refrigerator letting him know that is where she had gone. It is believed she left between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. This is based on a phone call to a co-worker at Riverside National Bank, where Cheri was a part-time employee, asking if they had seen a misplaced bibliography and bemoaning having to start over on her note cards for the term paper she was working on.
A witness provided a statement to investigators that they had seen her car driving in the direction of the library around 6:10 p.m., followed closely by a bronze 1965 or 1966 model Oldsmobile.
After Cheri’s arrival at the library, witnesses place her studying there until 9:00 pm. One claims that she saw a man who appeared to be around nineteen or twenty and roughly five feet eleven inches tall hanging around across the street from Cheri’s vehicle. The witness told detectives that he was in a shadowy area and appeared to be watching Cheri’s car around the time the library closed. The witness remembered him only because she had exchanged polite greetings with him as she passed by.
Cheri’s body was found by groundskeeper
When Cheri didn’t return home that night, her father filed a missing person report with Riverside police. His report was filed at 5:43 a.m. after phoning Cheri’s closest friend, Stephanie, to inquire whether Cheri might have merely fallen asleep studying at her house instead of going to the library.
Cleophus Martin, the groundskeeper at RCC, found Cheri’s body on campus less than an hour later at 6:28 a.m. She was face down on a gravel path that ran between two empty houses on Terracina Drive, not far from where her car was still parked. She was still dressed and her handbag lay nearby, still containing her identification. Her clothes were saturated in blood from multiple stab wounds to the chest and left shoulder. There were also several deep slashes on her face and neck.
Not far from Cheri’s body lay an inexpensive Timex watch with paint splatters on it. There was also a footprint from a boot made by Leavenworth prisoners, sold only by military outlets. The imprint measured about eight to ten inches.
An examination of her vehicle showed that both windows were at least partly rolled down and library books were lying in the front passenger seat. Her key was still in the ignition. In addition to the wires that had been removed, there were greasy palm prints and fingerprints that could not be matched to any of her family and friends. They are believed to be those of her murderer.
Cheri Jo Bates put up a fight before she was killed
It was evident from the scene that Cheri had put up a hellacious fight. Her autopsy revealed that she had managed to scratch her attacker’s arms, face, and head in addition to ripping off his wristwatch. Still, her injuries had been horrific. She had been repeatedly kicked in the head and stabbed twice in the chest with a knife estimated to have a one and a half to three and a half-inch blade.
Her left cheek, upper lip, and arms had also received cuts, along with three slash wounds to her throat that had severed her jugular vein and larynx. They were so deep, she had nearly been decapitated. It was concluded that she was already prone on the ground when she received the wounds to her shoulder and neck.
There were no signs of sexual assault or robbery. It was also evident that she had been still very much fighting off her attacker while she lay on the ground her autopsy includes a comment that the ground surrounding her body looked like “a freshly plowed field.”
Police interviewed dozens of witnesses
Detectives were fast at work on the case, interviewing over 75 people within 24 hours of the discovery of Cheri’s body. Witnesses and suspects included many RCC students and military personnel stationed at nearby March Air Force Base. By November 6, all but two of the people known to be on the RCC campus at the time of the murder had been eliminated as suspects.
Screams heard in the area on the night of the murder were reported by two witnesses during the interviews. These accounts led police to believe that the murder had taken place around 10:15 p.m. but no motive could be found for the crime. Cheri had no history to make the police believe she was murdered for revenge, a crime of passion by a jealous or jilted suitor, or someone who would have been targeted for random non-sexual violence.
The detectives theorize that Cheri’s vehicle had been disabled and someone offering assistance when her car wouldn’t start had lured her away and attacked her in the less public location where she was found. The path where she was murdered, is less well lit and shrubs are blocking the view from any potential witnesses.
Detective Sergeant David Bonine staged a re-enactment of the scene
In an attempt to resolve the case, Detective Sergeant David Bonine staged a re-enactment of the scene about a week or so after her funeral. About five dozen students, two librarians, and a custodian who had been present at the library that evening were asked to sit or stand where they had been that evening in hopes it might bring about some forgotten detail that might help the case. They were asked to park their vehicles exactly where they had been that night and even wear the same clothing they had been wearing on the evening in question.
Though many leads were generated through this process, including several individuals claiming that they saw a tan or grey Studebaker in the vicinity that evening, nothing useful was gained. The Studebaker could never be traced to anyone, despite public police appeals and local press coverage asking for help.
Police wrote off letters as hoaxes
A month after Cheri’s death, two identical letters were sent to the Riverside police department. The type-written correspondence described how Cheri had been lured from her car and murdered. He claimed that he disabled her car and watched her try to start it repeatedly until the battery went dead. Offering her assistance by claiming his vehicle was just down the street, he lured Cheri to a less public area. The anonymous writer claimed that once they were a short distance away, he told her “It’s about time.” When Cheri had replied, “About time for what?” he had responded, “About time for you to die.”
The writer claims that he then clamped his hand over her mouth and forced her to walk to a dimly lit area where he beat and kicked her before stabbing and slashing her until she was dead. He said his reason for murdering her was that he had known her and was “making her pay for the brush-offs that she had given me during the years prior.”The letter was believed to be from the actual murderer in the case due to the author having referenced details not publicly revealed by police. However, forensic studies done in later years show that the DNA retrieved from the crime scene and DNA from the letters, do not match.
A review of the letters done in July 1967, led the Chief Psychologist of Patton State Hospital to conclude that the killer was “obsessed and pathologically preoccupied with intense hatred against female figures — all the more so if he sees the young woman as attractive.” He added that there was a significant chance this wouldn’t be the killer’s only homicide.
Police and Cheri Jo Bates amily received anonymous letters
On April 30, 1967, an update on the case was printed by The Press-Enterprise. The day after it was released, both police and Bate’s father received handwritten letters from someone who had written “Bates had to die. There will be more”. It was not taken seriously by police, who believed it to be just a tasteless hoax, but the bottom of each letter included either the number “2” or the letter “z” — which led to later suggestions that this might have been an early Zodiac murder.
Detective Jim Simons refuted this notion in 2013, saying that detectives still involved with this cold case have no reason to believed Cheri’s murder is tied to the Zodiac killer. They currently believe it was more likely an acquaintance or rejected love interest, contrary to early suppositions.
Still some believe the Zodiac theory
Still, some cling to the Zodiac theory based on the letters and another piece of evidence discovered in 1967. There was a rather dark poem carved into a library desk at RCC, which was signed with the lowercase initials “rh”. The prose references repeated assaults on young women with a bladed weapon in graphic terms. Though the discovery was made by a custodian while the desk was in storage, he claimed that it would have been out on the library floor at the time of Cheri’s murder, It was photographed and placed in the case file as possible circumstantial evidence in the case.
The belief that this was, in fact, an early Zodiac killing is further bolstered by the letters sent to the police and the press containing details that would only have been known by the killer and those involved in the case. Even the police noted that the attack itself was eerily similar to the Zodiac’s attack on a couple at Lake Berryessa in September 1969.
In 1970, while San Francisco Chronicle journalist Paul Avery was following the Zodiac Killer’s case, he received an anonymous letter telling him to check into the similarities of the Cheri Jo Bates case and the other Zodiac murders. Avery and handwriting expert, Sherwood Morrill were convinced that the handwriting found on the library desk and the letters sent to The Press-Enterprise and Bates father all matched the handwriting found in the Zodiac letters that were sent later.
The Zodiac Killer was claiming to have killed 14 victims
By this time, the Zodiac Killer was claiming he had killed fourteen victims, even though only five murders and two attempted murders that had occurred between December 1968 and October 1969 could be definitively linked to him. In a March 13, 1971 letter sent to the Los Angeles Times, the Zodiac Killer claimed to be responsible for Cheri’s death, stating:
“I do have to give credit for stumbling across my Riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones. There is a hell of a lot more down there.”
Former Los Angeles police investigator Steve Hodel, in his book Most Evil also claimed that his father, George Hodel, was responsible for Cheri’s murder. Hodel is best known for his theory that his father was the killer in the infamous 1947 murder of the Black Dahlia.
Riverside police still have not solved the murder case
Even with all the theories, this case remains unsolved from an official standpoint. The Riverside police have rejected the idea that Cheri was a victim of the Zodiac Killer or George Hodel. Though they have eliminated several suspects over the years, the current detective in the case, Detective Jim Simons, has indicated that there is still one individual who remains a person of interest in the murder, but none of the forensic evidence has tied this individual to the crime. The only thing that they have been able to determine conclusively is that her killer is a white male.
With more than 54 years having passed since young Cheri Jo Bates’ life was taken in such a brutal manner, we may never know the truth and the killer will most likely never be punished for their heinous deed, but detectives continue to review the evidence and pursue any new leads in an attempt to close a case that will forever haunt the Riverside community.
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