CA - Kerry Graham, 15, & Francine Trimble, 14, Forestville, 16 Dec 1978

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Francine's poor mother that died not knowing her child had been found... what a tragedy :(
 
Schoolmates, neighbors never told Forestville girls vanished 36 years ago

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5197689-181/schoolmates-neighbors-never-told-forestville?ref=menu&artslide=0

Goetz, who was a schoolmate of Graham’s and hung out with both girls, remains troubled that no one at the time asked her whether she’d seen them and no one in authority told her or other students they were even missing.

“What breaks my heart is no one ever asked,” said Goetz, 53, whose maiden name was O’Halloran and who now lives in Santa Rosa. She said she may have had information that could have helped find the girls.

Other former schoolmates who knew the girls more casually first found out they’d gone missing this month when the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office revealed Feb. 2 their remains had finally been identified, found in the woods near a pullout along Highway 20 west of Willits. They were stunned they had not heard of the case sooner.

“How did we not know about this disappearance of two girls from very small schools and a very small town?” asked Kathy Culley, a Santa Rosa resident and classmate of Graham’s at El Molino.
Click to expand...

But Margaret Graham thinks sheriff’s investigators believed at the time the girls left voluntarily.

“If a child didn’t come back, they assumed they ran away,” she said. “You have to remember how long ago that was. Kids were doing their own thing.”

Graham, 77, doesn’t think that was the case because her daughter was recovering from having her appendix removed and was still taking antibiotics. Trimble’s aunt earlier this month recalled in an interview her sister telling her at the time that Graham’s antibiotics were left on a dresser at her home, something she considered suspicious.
Click to expand...

Goetz said she last saw the girls at El Molino High School one day that December. They had joined her and some other students that morning to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot near the tennis courts. Graham was a student at the high school while Trimble was in eighth grade at Forestville School. Neither attended school that day, Goetz said.

“They came to school. They didn’t go to class,” she said. “That was the last time we saw them.”

The girls said they were going to hitchhike to a party in Santa Rosa, Goetz said. She said she didn’t know who they were meeting up with.
Click to expand...
 
This same article quoted just above also reported that Goetz was invited by Trimble and Graham to join their road trip, but Goetz declined. She was close enough to them to hang out at school, as well as to invite her to come jaunting with them. My personal reaction is to wonder if she might not still have useful information. And some classmates were not even aware Francine and Kerry Ann were missing. It seems they might be useful for background, if nothing else.

As a local, I am struck by the fact that the route the two girls traveled from Forestville to where they were discovered is in several instances quite literally Main Street for towns en route. In Cloverdale, Hopland, and Willits Hwy 101 is still Main Street. I am uncertain of the date of realignment, but if the old Redwood Highway alignment was still in use in 1978, Healdsburg and Geyserville may also been on the two teens' route because 101 ran through town. In 1978, we are talking genuine old timey small towns here--you know, the boring ones where the locals notice the extraordinary....

At any rate, I stumbled across a Wikipedia photo of the site where Kerry and Francine's bones were found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murde...rimble#/media/File:Mendocino_Crime_Scene2.jpg

Gave me chills. I have stopped at that very pull-off upon occasion.
 
I have just emailed Dustin Driscoll at NamUS, notifying them that Francine and Kerry Ann had been identified. As I write, he has a phone call in to Mendocino County Sheriff's County to verify their identity so he can remove their listing from their Unidentified Persons data base.
 
burblestein said:
I have just emailed Dustin Driscoll at NamUS, notifying them that Francine and Kerry Ann had been identified. As I write, he has a phone call in to Mendocino County Sheriff's County to verify their identity so he can remove their listing from their Unidentified Persons data base.
Click to expand...

Hopefully he'll do something because Carrie surely didn't and knew about it because I emailed her
 
I'm a bit confused. This is a thread for the unidentified photos in Rodney Alcala's storage locker. I tried to read back, but not sure who these others are.
 
norest4thewicked, you are in a Cold Case thread whose subject is the disappearance of two teen girls. It has nothing to do with Alcala. However, in an Alcala thread, these girls were mentioned as possible victims of his.
 
With Kerry and Francine finally identified, it is time to focus on them as a cold case homicide.Although they disappeared in 1978, they only became a cold case when they were finally identified in November 2016.

The following series of three videosserves as an excellent introduction to the case: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine...es-bodies-exhumed-in-search-for-serial-killer

A narrative cold case summary follows in the next posts.
 
The following facts are known about the girls' disappearance:

Francine was reported missing on 16 December 1978; Kerry was reported somewhat later.

Makeup that the girls had been applying was found left out as though it was going to be used again.

They were reputedly maturing into being interested in boys.

The girls showed up at El Molino HighSchool and joined a group of cigarette smokers in the parking lot near the tennis courts.

Their classmate reported they had been invited to a party.

Alternatively, they were said to be headed for Coddingtown Mall in nearby Santa Rosa, and were reportedly going Christmas shopping.

Kerry was still recovering from appendix surgery. She left her antibiotics at home.

Forestville then was a “five block town”. Most of its inhabitants knew one another, at least by sight.

The traditional hitchhiking spot for Forestville was a gas station that is presently a package goods store.

LE believed they were voluntary runaways.


Now let's try to arrange these factoids into a reasonable scenario. I'll begin with this.

The date Kerry was reported missing, 16 December 1978, was a Saturday. That means she cut school during the previous week. With Christmas holidays pending, I suggest Friday the15[SUP]th[/SUP] as the most likely date for their hitchhike.

Given that they were becoming interested in boys, and might have been invited to a party, it seems most likely they tinkered with the makeup before they went to school, where both boys and other girls might admire them.

Makeup in place, they went to El Molino High School to join their friends in smoking cigarettes. They told a classmate they were going to cut school and hitchhike to a party, and invited her along. She declined. This report can be verified by the classmate's mention of the denim jacket Francine was wearing.

Other reports claim they were headed for Coddingtown Mall and/or going Christmas shopping.

Forestville was small enough that the girls were noticed hitchhiking from the filling station. Or so says the classmate.

At this point, I queried Google maps for package goods stores in Forestville. Lo and behold, the following pops up in street view, half a mile down the street from the school.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.473...4!1sHy_2wY6o5VZVHJG0LSOwOA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

This is obviously a repurposed filling station. If you click the arrow for a spin to the left, you are looking down the road that leads to Coddingtown Mall. I submit that this store was the start of their journey into oblivion. According to the classmate, they would probably be picked up by someone they knew.

There is an alternate route from Forestville to Santa Rosa, along River Road. However, it presents problems for hitchhiking to Coddingtown Mall. River Road joinsHighway 101 well north of Santa Rosa; hitchhikers then have to find aride south to Coddingtown Mall. Laid out atop an old railroad right-of-way, River Road is a highway of sweeping turns; drivers move right along, with little impediment to speed. River Road grazes the north edge of Forestville, and is a major thoroughfare for the denizens of Guerneville, Monte Rio, Jenner, and vicinity. There is little likelihood of being picked up by an inhabitant of Forestville. FWIW, in the mid-1980s, I used to regularly commute along River Road out to Monte Rio, and cannot ever recall seeing a hitchhiker. River Road, then, was an unlikely route for the girls.

LE assumed the girls had run away. Much less attention was paid to missing children back then. If the local deputies knew of other Graham children running away, it may have seemed to be more of the same. However, the makeup kit was left out, and Kerry did not have her antibiotics with her when she left. Then too, Christmas was nigh. What kid wants to miss Christmas?

Sources:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Kerry_Graham_and_Francine_Trimble

Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 15 February 2016: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5...rs-never-told-forestville?ref=menu&artslide=0
 
The following facts are known about the girls' disappearance:

Francine was reported missing on 16 December 1978; Kerry was reported somewhat later.

Makeup that the girls had been applying was found left out as though it was going to be used again.

They were reputedly maturing into being interested in boys.

The girls showed up at El Molino HighSchool and joined a group of cigarette smokers in the parking lot near the tennis courts.

Their classmate reported they had been invited to a party.

Alternatively, they were said to be headed for Coddingtown Mall in nearby Santa Rosa, and were reportedly going Christmas shopping.

Kerry was still recovering from appendix surgery. She left her antibiotics at home.

Forestville then was a “five block town”. Most of its inhabitants knew one another, at least by sight.

The traditional hitchhiking spot for Forestville was a gas station that is presently a package goods store.

LE believed they were voluntary runaways.


Now let's try to arrange these factoids into a reasonable scenario. I'll begin with this.

The date Kerry was reported missing, 16 December 1978, was a Saturday. That means she cut school during the previous week. With Christmas holidays pending, I suggest Friday the15[SUP]th[/SUP] as the most likely date for their hitchhike.

Given that they were becoming interested in boys, and might have been invited to a party, it seems most likely they tinkered with the makeup before they went to school, where both boys and other girls might admire them.

Makeup in place, they went to El Molino High School to join their friends in smoking cigarettes. They told a classmate they were going to cut school and hitchhike to a party, and invited her along. She declined. This report can be verified by the classmate's mention of the denim jacket Francine was wearing.

Other reports claim they were headed for Coddingtown Mall and/or going Christmas shopping.

Forestville was small enough that the girls were noticed hitchhiking from the filling station. Or so says the classmate.

At this point, I queried Google maps for package goods stores in Forestville. Lo and behold, the following pops up in street view, half a mile down the street from the school.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.473...4!1sHy_2wY6o5VZVHJG0LSOwOA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

This is obviously a repurposed filling station. If you click the arrow for a spin to the left, you are looking down the road that leads to Coddingtown Mall. I submit that this store was the start of their journey into oblivion. According to the classmate, they would probably be picked up by someone they knew.

There is an alternate route from Forestville to Santa Rosa, along River Road. However, it presents problems for hitchhiking to Coddingtown Mall. River Road joinsHighway 101 well north of Santa Rosa; hitchhikers then have to find aride south to Coddingtown Mall. Laid out atop an old railroad right-of-way, River Road is a highway of sweeping turns; drivers move right along, with little impediment to speed. River Road grazes the north edge of Forestville, and is a major thoroughfare for the denizens of Guerneville, Monte Rio, Jenner, and vicinity. There is little likelihood of being picked up by an inhabitant of Forestville. FWIW, in the mid-1980s, I used to regularly commute along River Road out to Monte Rio, and cannot ever recall seeing a hitchhiker. River Road, then, was an unlikely route for the girls.

LE assumed the girls had run away. Much less attention was paid to missing children back then. If the local deputies knew of other Graham children running away, it may have seemed to be more of the same. However, the makeup kit was left out, and Kerry did not have her antibiotics with her when she left. Then too, Christmas was nigh. What kid wants to miss Christmas?

Sources:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Kerry_Graham_and_Francine_Trimble

Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 15 February 2016: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5...rs-never-told-forestville?ref=menu&artslide=0
 
On 9 July 1979, a couple from Sacramento were traversing Highway 20 in Mendocino County between Willits and Fort Bragg. They were arguing. They pulled over and the man stomped off into the woods to walk off his anger. They were in the vicinity of James Creek, about 12 miles west of Willits.

The angry man discovered a human skull.He marked the spot with a soft drink can so LE could find it, before he reported his find. The skeletons of Kerry and Francine were recovered from the steep slope. Duct tape and garbage bags found at the location seemed to indicate the girls had been restrained before being discarded in the bags. Their bones had been scattered by feral animals.

An earring of a bird was found with them. A tooth that apparently belongs to a third party was also found during the LE search. It is purportedly an odd shape characteristic of Native American denture. It is unknown whether it belongs to a third victim, or to a murderer.

About 90 percent of the children's bones were collected. The remains were originally mistakenly identified as a boy and girl. Without a pair of children reported missing in Mendocino County, the investigation fell into obscurity until they were identified in November 2016.

Sources:

The highway pullout where Kerry and Francine were found:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Mendocino_Crime_Scene2.jpg

As can be seen, little notice was givento their discovery: https://www.newspapers.com/images/1358786

The Fort Bragg Advocate-News, 4 February 2016

The Ukiah Daily Journal, 3 February 2016
 
On prior posts for this case, it was noted that the girls' bodies were found only 80 miles away from home. The remark was made that the distance can be covered in little over an hour. I strongly suspect someone forgot to reset their Mapquest to 1978. Route 101 has been realigned and widened since then. Most notably, a twisty stretch through the Russian River Canyon was moved westward up onto a ridge. In 1978, the 80 miles was probably a two hour drive.

The former Route 101 (now denoted as the Old Redwood Highway) used to run right through towns en route, as Main Street. In the case of Hopland (and until recently) Willits, 101 is still Main Street.

Now, consider. If you have abducted two teen girls, do you parade them alive and protesting down Main Street?I don't think so. I think the girls were restrained and/or dead before the kidnapper(s) hit the first Main Street town of Healdsburg.

So where were the girls murdered? And by whom?
 
What a sad case. Poor girls and their families and friends. What an amazing example of how missing persons information can be very incorrect. I admire the people here on Websleuths who work hard at identifying missing persons and who don't give up even if some of the information doesn't match up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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