It was a great morning for a run. The sky was clear, no hiker had been found for a long time until, suddenly, he heard heartbreaking screams. The young woman looked up and, in the distance, she saw an individual with a knife in his hand attacking a woman. The witness decided to call for help, but when she returned with several officers, the victim was lying dead in a large pool of blood.
Thanks to the hiker, investigators were able to sketch a profile of the murderer. However, he was nothing like the real author. That clue led the police to a tunnel with no exit. They already had nine unsolved crimes and three more in a few months. A dangerous serial killer was loose in the woods of California and seemed unstoppable.
David Joseph Carpenter was born on May 6, 1930 in San Francisco, in the middle of a family environment that was as toxic as it was harmful. His father had alcohol problems and his mother was severe, domineering and strict. And, between them, they gave our protagonist a series of physical corrective measures that caused him to stutter severely well into puberty.
These mistreatments also translated, between three and eleven years of age, into two other key indicators: enuresis - urinary incontinence problems - and cruelty to animals. Precisely these two factors together with pyromania make up what is known as the MacDonald triad or sociopathy triad. That is, they are the traits that define a sociopath.
From the age of fourteen, David reproduced violent and aggressive behavior, mainly in the area of sexual crimes. For example, three years later he was admitted to a juvenile center for sexually abusing two of his cousins, ages 3 and 8 respectively. Once back home, he continued with his normal life; he married Ellen Heattle, 19, and had three children - Michael David, Gabrielle Louise and Circe Anne.
Fatherhood did not change David's behavior, who continued to reproduce a violent behavioral pattern in sexual relations. Her wife even expressed that her husband was addicted to sex and that he required her to have sexual relations at least three times a day. This, added to her aggressive and threatening nature, led Ellen to ask for a divorce.
The first attacks began in July 1960, when David was still married and had just become the father of his last daughter. In fact, his victim was someone close to him, a co-worker named Lois DeAndrade, now known as Lois Rinna and whose daughter, Lisa Rinna, would become an American television star.
According to the victim, David picked her up at a bus stop to introduce her to his new daughter. However, when they were on their way in the car, he turned onto a deserted road and attacked her.
He first tried to rape her and then kill her. In fact, he went so far as to stab her in the hand and hit her on the head several times with a hammer. “I thought that was it. He is straddling me. “He had a hammer in one hand and a knife in the other,” she stated.
Fortunately, a military police officer, Wayne Hicks, had noticed the car's previous maneuver when entering that isolated area and thought that something strange was happening. When Wayne tried to stop David, the killer shot him, although he missed him. For his part, Wayne took the opportunity to hit him in the stomach and leg until he was reduced.
David was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for the crimes of kidnapping, rape and attempted murder, but he was provisionally released after serving seven and a half years. A few days later, he returned to his old ways and committed a new robbery, kidnapping and rape, for which he spent another seven years in prison.
During that time, a psychiatrist conducted an examination and assessment of the prisoner and his conclusion left a disturbing clue about David's future: “Since he was eight years old, every time he was subjected to significant stress, he committed a sexual crime. The only way for him to think clearly… is to rape the closest woman.”
He wasn't wrong. After being released in May 1979 and until October 1980, David returned to his old ways and chose the forests of California to commit his crimes. Hence, researchers named him The Trailside Killer.
This individual committed up to twelve murders, eleven of them against women. Most were savagely raped, although the way their lives were taken was something different. Some were stabbed up to twenty times, almost to the point of mutilation; others ended up on their knees while the murderer shot them in the back; and there were those who died from strangulation. Of course, they were all violent deaths and especially cruel and agonizing.
The sadism exercised by the criminal was overwhelming and this was stated by the investigators in their reports. They also included, among other evidence: traces of semen found on some of the victims, a 25-centimeter boning knife, bifocal glasses belonging to a state prison and which, therefore, suggested that the murderer had been a former inmate, shell casings from a matching .38 caliber pistol at the scenes of several crimes and a physical description of the killer.
In fact, there were several thanks to some witnesses. But the only accurate one was the one provided by one of the survivors. It was Steve Haertle, who had gone for a walk with his girlfriend, Ellen Hansen, on March 29, 1981. After attacking and killing his girlfriend with several shots, the young man was able to escape after being shot in the neck.
The profile provided helped create a robotic portrait of this serial killer and Steve was able to identify him in a lineup: a man, about 50 years old, around 1.80cm tall, with yellow, crooked teeth and receding hairlines (he was going bald). Additionally, he was wearing a backpack, dark glasses, a gold jacket with letters on the back, and a baseball cap.
On the other hand, a girl, about ten years old, also confirmed to the police that she had seen a red car. Shortly afterwards it would be discovered that the murderer had a Fiat of that same color.
The seriousness of the events led authorities to warn citizens of the danger of using the hiking routes in the California Bay Area. To do this, he placed posters with a clear message: “Do not walk alone.” Although this was aimed especially at the female population.
Although the forest trails emptied of frightened hikers who stayed home, the trail killer continued to kill. His next victim was a colleague from his last job, a small printing press. It was Heather Scaggs, 20, whom he had harassed since her arrival and whose “disgusting” behavior was known to the victim's boyfriend, Dan Piggle.
For that reason, when the young woman disappeared and her body was found naked, shot dead in a submissive position, with signs of sexual assault and with traces of semen, Dan alerted the police about David. The girl had told her that her partner was planning to drive her over to do some errands. Therefore, he was the last person to see her alive and became her main suspect.
From there, the investigators checked David's sexual history, linked the shell casings found at the last crime scene with previous ones and these with the weapon that the criminal possessed, confirmed that he was driving a red car and that his appearance was identical to that provided by the survivor. Finally, three anonymous calls pointed him out as the murderer.
Until then, David Carpenter had not been among the more than 160 suspects in the Trailside Killer case, but there was enough evidence to incriminate him. Thus, the agents proceeded to arrest him on July 31, 1981 and, three years later, in October 1983, the first trial against him was held.
“I was the logical suspect. Everyone was convinced I was the trail killer long before I was accused of any of those murders. Even the investigators knew that I was innocent,” he said in a 2013 interview.
Despite defending his innocence, the Los Angeles Court was clear and sentenced him to five counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Richard Stowers, Cynthia Moreland, Shauna May, Diane O'Connell and Anne Alderson.
Additionally, he was found guilty of raping two of the women and attempting to rape a third. His sentence: the death penalty in the gas chamber. He later received a second trial in Marin County for the murders of Ellen Hansen and Heather Scaggs and he was sentenced to twenty years for each crime.
Years later, in 2010, new DNA technology definitively linked David Carpenter to the crimes of those who had only obtained genetic traces of the killer. The evidence spoke and it once again pointed to the murderer on the trail.
Currently, David remains on death row at San Quentin Prison awaiting execution, being the oldest prisoner to be sentenced to capital punishment in that state. Next May he will turn 94 years old.
