Crime & Safety

Trailside Killer Inquiry Spooks Woman

Travelers asked about David Carpenter, currently on Death Row for five murders in Marin.

A woman walking along Cascade Drive at 6pm last Monday got quite a scare when two men in a white van with tinted windows stopped her to ask about the Trailside Killer. The woman became very frightened and called police immediately.

Police later contacted the two men at Cascade Falls. The men said that they were visiting from Italy and looking into the tale of David Carpenter, who is sitting on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison for a string of murders he committed in 1980 and 1981, several of which occurred in Mount Tamalpais State Park. Police determined that the inquiry by the two men was not suspicious.

It is unclear if the woman had heard of the Trailside Killer, but few who lived in Mill Valley 30 years ago will ever forget him. Carpenter was arrested in 1981 on the heels of a string of horrific murders that sent shockwaves around the Bay Area.

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Carpenter, a slight, balding man with glasses and a severe stutter, shot five people to death with a .38-caliber pistol during a six-week period in 1980 at Point Reyes National Seashore and on the slopes of Mt. Tam. His victims included two Mill Valley residents.

In February, Carpenter was linked by DNA evidence to the 1979 murder of 23-year-old Mary Bennett near the Palace of the Legion of Honor at Lands End in San Francisco, police said Tuesday.

Find out what's happening in Mill Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The so-called Trailside Killer sparked a media frenzy, and the string of murders were the subject of the book, "The Sleeping Lady," by Robert Graysmith. John Douglas, an FBI profiler who got involved in the case when it appeared that a serial killer was on the loose, wrote a book about it called "Mindhunter."


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