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The shoe wasn't found five months later. It was found the same day, and documented in the police reports. A friend of mine - Laura Brand is writing a book about the Bittaker Norris murders and she has copies of the entire collection of police reports. Laura has interviewed Bittaker and Norris prior to their recent deaths. And she had interviewed Bittaker numerous times over a five year period both in person at San Quentin and by telephone.Cindy arrives in the area on June 5, 1979 with her mother. Her mother leaves for Mexico on June 19.
Five days later, on June 24, Cindy is missing. Supposedly her shoe is deposited on the street on that day. Roy Norris is arrested Nov 23. Five plus months later investigators find her shoe on the side of the road? This doesn’t seem reasonable. Ave A and Prospect are well travelled roads and there is weekly mechanical street sweeping. If a shoe was found it’s difficult to believe it was left there 5-6 months prior.
She’s in the area a total of 19 days.
Norris led police to the location where the bones of Leah Lamp and Jackie Gilliam were found, and the tape of Lynette Ledford pretty much proves their involvement in those three murders. I traveled up to that location with Laura and Andrea's sister.
She has also interviewed two women whom Bittaker and Norris attempted to abduct, and their stories jibe with Bittaker's account perfectly.
With the exception of Lynette Ledford, all of the other abductions and attempted abductions took place in that time window of several months in the Redondo Beach / Torrance area. Norris lived in a house on 313 Garnet Street - about a mile from where Cindy was last seen. Police arrested Norris at that location on November 21, and subsequently arrested Bittaker in Burbank at a motel where he was living. If you google street map that location of Norris' home, you can see a big picture window above the garage. While running surveillance on his home, they were able to see him sitting at a dining room table right in front of that window, packaging a large quantity of Marijuana. That was the pretext they needed to arrest him.
Most of what was known previously about the case was based on Norris' account. Bittaker never cooperated with law enforcement but Laura was able to develop enough of a rapport with Bittaker that she was able to get him to talk openly about the murders, including Cindy and Andrea.
He even drew a map for Laura, showing exactly where they originally saw Cindy at Avenue A and PCH, how they circled around the block to the west of PCH, and then approached her just after she had turned east on Avenue A (on the south side of the street. They stopped and asked her if she wanted to smoke some marijuana with them, and she declined and continued on, crossing to the left side of the street at about Juanita Avenue, They drove up to Prospect Avenue, made a U-turn, and parked facing west on the north side of Avenue A, just west of Prospect. As Cindy was passing the van, Norris grabbed Cindy and dragged her into the van.
The police reports, which Laura has copies of, state that the shoe was found in that exact spot on the day of her disappearance.
Most of what I had thought I knew about the case was based on news stories and documentaries about the case is wrong. But Laura has collected an enormous amount of information about the case. I had thought (and had stated on this thread) that she had walked up Avenue D to Prospect and was picked up on Avenue A - east of Prospect. I have since edited my earlier comment to indicate that she walked north on PCH to Avenue A and was abducted west of Prospect.