The 1979 trail death that started a two-year hunt across California's mountains

The body was found in September 1979, near Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

She was a 22-year-old nursing student.

The death was treated as a separate, isolated incident.

Not connected to any pattern. Not connected to anything at all.

No suspect was named at the time.

The case went cold.

What was the cause of death? What did the initial evidence show?

The record does not specify.

It was a single death in the mountains. One body, one file, one closed road.

The investigation notes describe it as separate.

Months would pass before other bodies were found in those same hills.

But that came later. In September 1979, there was only this one.

She was on a trail. She was found there. That is what the record establishes.

It is a quiet beginning. It is also the start of something the detectives did not yet see.

THE TRAIL OF VICTIMS

The months after that first discovery brought more bodies.

More bodies in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The victims were hikers and joggers, mostly women, attacked on remote trails.

The case summary names two of them: a nursing student and another woman.

The exact number of victims attributed to the Trailside Killer is not specified in the record.

Detectives began noticing similarities as the body count grew, according to investigation notes.

Similarities in how the victims were found.

Similarities in where they were found.

Similarities in the absence of witnesses.

It is a slow realization, not a sudden one.

A pattern emerging from what had looked like separate tragedies.

The first death had been treated as an isolated case.

Now the isolated cases began to look like one case.

The case became known as the Trailside Killer case.

Not because a name was known.

Because the trails were the common ground.

The investigation spanned multiple counties, according to investigation notes.

Santa Cruz County had its bodies.

Marin County had its bodies.

Coordination between the two was complicated.

Each county held its own pieces of the pattern.

A handgun was used in some of the murders, though reports vary on the specific type.

What the record does not establish is a single, unified count of the dead.

What the record does establish is that the trail kept growing.

The detectives did not yet have a name.

They had a shape.

A shape that moved along the trails, leaving bodies behind.

That would require evidence, and evidence was still months away.