Cheri Josephine Bates, an 18-year-old Riverside City College freshman, was stabbed and slashed to death on the college grounds in Riverside, California, on 1966-10-30. It remains one of Riverside’s most infamous cold cases.
Method
Police determined the assailant had disabled the ignition wiring and distributor of Bates’s Volkswagen Beetle, apparently to strand her and lure her from the vehicle as she studied at the campus library.
Discovery
Bates’s father waited overnight for her return and filed a missing-person report with the Riverside Police Department at 5:43 a.m. on 1966-10-31, after learning from Stephanie Guttman that his daughter was not at her residence. At about 6:28 a.m. that morning, a groundskeeper named Cleophus Martin discovered her body on the RCC grounds, near Terracina Drive.
Witness account
A female RCC student told investigators that a young man — estimated to be 19 or 20 years old — had been lurking in shadows across the street from Bates’s vehicle around the time the library closed, staring toward her car. The witness said she exchanged brief pleasantries with him as she passed.
Investigation outcome
The case remains officially unsolved. Several suspects have been investigated and eliminated since 1966. DNA profiling reportedly indicated a Caucasian male, but mitochondrial DNA tests did not match the surviving person of interest. A 2016 Press-Enterprise report stated the RPD believes it knows the killer’s identity but lacked sufficient evidence to charge anyone.
Possible Zodiac connection
The murder has been theorized to be an early or first killing by the Zodiac Killer, a connection the RPD strongly rejects. See Cheri Jo Bates desk poem, Cheri Jo Bates confession letters, and the Cheri Jo Bates 1967 letters.