Cheri Josephine Bates was an 18-year-old freshman at Riverside City College who was stabbed and slashed to death on the college grounds on 1966-10-30. Her body was discovered the following morning by a groundskeeper.
Background
Bates was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the younger of two children of Joseph and Irene Bates. The family moved to California in 1957, where her father worked as a machinist at the Corona Naval Ordnance Laboratory. She graduated from Ramona High School in Riverside, where she had been a varsity cheerleader, an honor student, and active in student government. She enrolled at Riverside City College and worked part-time at the Riverside National Bank, savings from which helped pay for the 1960 lime green Volkswagen Beetle she owned. After her parents’ 1965 divorce, she lived with her father on Via San Jose. Her older brother Michael served in the U.S. Navy.
Day of the murder
On the morning of 1966-10-30, Bates attended Mass with her father and the two shared breakfast. In the early afternoon she went to the college library to study and work on a research paper. She twice phoned a friend, Stephanie Guttman, to ask her to come along; on the second call Guttman declined. Bates left her home in the late afternoon or early evening, leaving a note for her father reading that she had gone to the RCC library.
An eyewitness reported seeing her drive toward the college around 6:10 p.m., allegedly followed closely by a bronze 1965 or 1966 Oldsmobile. Witnesses said she studied until the library’s normal 9:00 p.m. closing.
Significance to the Zodiac case
Some investigators have hypothesized that Bates was an early — possibly the first — victim of the Zodiac Killer. The Riverside Police Department has strongly rejected this connection. The case remains officially unsolved.
DNA profiling reportedly determined the killer was a Caucasian male, but mitochondrial DNA from hair and blood at the scene did not match the surviving person of interest, leaving insufficient physical evidence to charge anyone.
A memorial scholarship, the Cheri Jo Bates Memorial Endowed Scholarship, was established in her name at RCC.