David Carpenter

David Carpenter, a native of San Francisco, was physically abused as a child by his alcoholic father and domineering mother. As a boy he had a severe stutter, a persistent bed-wetting problem and exhibited cruelty to animals. At age 13, Carpenter was incarcerated for molesting two of his cousins.[3]

Carpenter’s first attempted murder occurred in 1960, for which he spent seven years in prison. This was committed against Lois Rinna, the mother of future television personality Lisa Rinna.[8] He was arrested for kidnapping in 1970 and spent another seven years behind bars. After his release, Carpenter became a suspect in the Zodiac murders, although he was eventually cleared.[7]

From 1979 to 1981, Carpenter raped and murdered five women in Santa Cruz County and Marin County. On May 10, 1988, a San Diego jury convicted him on five counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Richard Stowers, Cynthia Moreland, Shauna May, Diane O'Connell, and Anne Alderson. He also was found guilty of raping two of the women and attempting to rape a third.[9] Carpenter was sentenced to die in the gas chamber and remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison.[10]

Following his conviction for the Marin County murders, Carpenter was tried, and subsequently convicted, by a Santa Cruz jury for the murders of Ellen Hansen and Heather Scaggs.[11] The same jury also found him guilty of the attempted murder of Hansen's hiking companion, Steven Haertle; the attempted rape of Hansen; and the rape of Scaggs.[11] Hansen, who was a University of California-Davis student, has a memorial scholarship created in honor of her courage during the attack, which allowed Haertle to escape alive.[12] In 1995, the Santa Cruz convictions were overturned due to juror misconduct. The California Supreme Court later reinstated the Santa Cruz convictions.[13]

In December 2009, the San Francisco Police Department reexamined evidence from October 21, 1979, murder of Mary Frances Bennett, who was jogging at Lands End when she was attacked and stabbed to death. A DNA sample obtained from the evidence was matched to Carpenter through state Department of Justice files. In February 2010, police confirmed the match with a recently obtained sample from Carpenter.[14] Carpenter is still a suspect in the murders of Edda Kane and Barbara Schwartz.[15]

The Trailside killings provide the context for Joyce Maynard's 2013 novel After Her.[16] On television, both The New Detectives and Born to Kill? made an episode about the case.

• List of death row inmates in the United States
• List of serial killers by number of victims
• List of serial killers in the United States

• Schechter, Harold (2003), The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers, Ballantine Books, ISBN 978-0-345-46566-5

• Graysmith, Robert (April 3, 1991), The Sleeping Lady: The Trailside Murders Above the Golden Gate, Onyx, ISBN 978-0451402554