CA CA - Eileen Hynson, 19, Napa, 1 June 1976

[rosesfromangels]

It is rare that I have so many instant red flags with a case, but I do with this one. All over the place. All. over.
I have so many questions, but likely the only ones that could answer them to some degree would be her brother or cousin, whom I believe are both still living. Maybe with a little luck, one or both will join this thread some day.

In the interim, anyone know whether Eileen was going to drive to the bridal fitting(?) party(?) in Benicia?
Soooooo many red flags at multiple levels. This one smells really rotten.

Amateur opinion and speculation

 

[Bit of hope]

TDLR: New lead: a creepy french guy named Stéphane Bourgoin, claimed knowing the killer of Eileen in California. Where should I start ?


Long version :
Hi everyone. I am new here (first post). I just want to say that I think I have a lead to suggest about this case.

There is a guy in France, Stéphane Bourgoin, which is famous because he is a con artist, he pretended for years to be acquainted with serial killers whereas he had no specific training (not a cop, not a psychologist, nothing). He was on tv and everything, sold books, considered by many as an expert. BUT he was finally debunked - it was mostly all false.
What is super weird about this, is that he was super-fascinated, even creepy, when talking about serial killers. He went all the way to claim on facebook that he had the body of a serial killer in a box, and said that he sold body parts (teeth, ears, etc).

So to me, that guy was more than a mythomaniac con-artist, but actually he might be dangerous.

The reason I am posting this here is because he claims that he was in the US, from 1975 to the 90s (?), and in California specifically in the 70s. He claims that the first murder case he was drawn to was a "friend" he was dating, that got brutally murdered. But he never explained properly who was the serial killer (details don't match to anything on record), the only info he did not change, for years, was that this friend name was Eileen, and that she was killed in 1976, in California (!!!). He claims (but that part was debunked by journalists in France) that the serial killer that killed her was arrested in 1978 and that the sheriff allowed him to meet the killer for his own grieving.

I looked online and quickly found this Eileen. My point is : could this Eileen know this French guy? Can we get any detail that could support or deny that claim? Could he have killed, kidnapped, or be involved in her case? Honestly, I thought that he might be telling the truth about "Eileen in California" because the guilt/trauma of doing something bad to her could have made him insane, becoming mythomaniac or something ? Idk, just hypotheses...

I can start getting info if possible, but I guess you guys know better how to deal with this kind of lead (and I'm super busy these days but I couldnt just sit while having this question).

So ... What can I / can we do to investigate that lead?

Hi and welcome @Karare. I found this about this claim on wikipedia. (I know not a real source)
Stéphane Bourgoin - Wikipedia

Bourgoin claimed to have moved to the United States in the early 1970s, where he allegedly found his then-girlfriend murdered, raped and mutilated by a serial killer in 1976 in Los Angeles. He said that the event led him to try to understand what goes on in the mind of serial killers, but in 2020, Bourgoin confessed that the story was in fact an invention drawn from the case of Susan Bickrest, murdered at age 24 by serial killer Gerald Stano in 1975.[5][6]

This is a publication from May 2020, talking about the lies about his past.
French serial-killer expert admits serial lies, including murder of imaginary wife

Bourgoin is the author of more than 40 books and is widely viewed as a leading expert on murderers, having hosted a number of French television documentaries on the subject. He has claimed to have interviewed more than 70 serial killers, trained at the FBI’s base in Quantico, Virginia, and that his own wife was murdered in 1976, by a man who confessed to a dozen murders on his arrest two years later.

But in January, anonymous collective the 4ème Oeil Corporation accused him of lying about his past, and Bourgoin has now admitted to the French press that the wife never existed. He also acknowledged that he never trained with the FBI, never interviewed Charles Manson, met far fewer killers than he has previously claimed, and never worked as a professional footballer – another claim he had made.

The wife he had said was murdered never existed, he admitted, saying that she was drawn from a young woman called Susan Bickrest, who he briefly met in a Florida bar. In 1975, 24-year-old Bickrest was murdered by the serial killer Gerald Stano, who later admitted to killing 41 women and was executed in 1998.

“It was that I took on,” Bourgoin told Le Parisien. “I didn’t want people to know the real identity of someone who was not my partner, but someone who I had met five or six times in Daytona Beach, and who I liked.”

This is a picture of Susan Bickrest. She died in 1975 in Volusia County, Florida
Susan Lynn Bickrest (1951-1975) - Find A Grave....

ETA

 

[Karare]

Hi and welcome @Karare. I found this about this claim on wikipedia. (I know not a real source)

The wife he had said was murdered never existed, he admitted, saying that she was drawn from a young woman called Susan Bickrest, who he briefly met in a Florida bar. In 1975, 24-year-old Bickrest was murdered by the serial killer Gerald Stano, who later admitted to killing 41 women and was executed in 1998.

“It was ******** that I took on,” Bourgoin told Le Parisien. “I didn’t want people to know the real identity of someone who was not my partner, but someone who I had met five or six times in Daytona Beach, and who I liked.”

This is a picture of Susan Bickrest. She died in 1975 in Volusia County, Florida
Susan Lynn Bickrest (1951-1975) - Find A Grave....

ETA

Hi, yes I know all this claim about Susan Bickrest. However, his claim that the lady he called "Eileen" was actually Susan, and that he knew Susan, was debunked too ! Indeed, a French youtuber re-used 4eme oeil corporation work and made some digging, making a great documentary. In this documentary, they claim that they contacted Susan family that denied she ever knew Stéphane Bourgoin, and that everything he claimed about her was most likely false (he claimed she needed money for her studies, and slept with him to get his support, but she did not have such struggles according to the family).

Therefore, I still wonder : what about his original claim of a lady named Eileen in California and killed in 1976 ?

Again, whereas most of his claims are changing a lot from one interview to the other, he was always repeating "Eileen" and "1976", like a fixation, before being exposed... I am still very much intersted in knowing how to dig more the Eileen hypothesis...

 

[MadMcGoo]

For reference, I received an email from Doe Network regarding a possible match I submitted for comparison with Eileen. It contains some additional info.

RULED OUT: Oregon State Police From LE: "This is an unlikely match, as both the MP and UP have DNA uploaded into the national DNA database. However, we cannot exclude the MP officially because only the biological brother has been tested; we've been told by the University of North Texas not to add exclusions if only one relative is in the database. So, it's possible but unlikely."

 

[Bit of hope]

For reference, I received an email from Doe Network regarding a possible match I submitted for comparison with Eileen. It contains some additional info.

RULED OUT: Oregon State Police From LE: "This is an unlikely match, as both the MP and UP have DNA uploaded into the national DNA database. However, we cannot exclude the MP officially because only the biological brother has been tested; we've been told by the University of North Texas not to add exclusions if only one relative is in the database. So, it's possible but unlikely."

As I read this inconclusive....so not ruled out

 

[Richard]

Eileen Francis Hynson, 19
Missing since 1 June 1976

 

[heartanium]

Could she be this Doe? Namus UP15590

D.B.F: April 17, 1983
Location Found: Benicia, Solano County, California
Sex: Female
Estimated Age Group: Adult - Pre 30's
Estimated PMI: Unknown
Circumstances of Recovery: A portion of human skull belonging to a female in likely her early twenties was recovered from a beach south of Ryer Island in Benicia.

There's no PMI but the oldest ruleout that is listed is Winifred Long from 1962.

 

[heartanium]

Gwendolyn Hynson's full obituary from 1973 (15 February 1973, The San Francisco Examiner)

Thomas Hynson's full obituary from 1997 (April 23 1997, The Napa Valley Register)

 

[Caring1]

15 Unidentified Person Exclusions

 

[ifindedout]

Interesting that his obituary lists Eileen as deceased. Was she declared legally dead (probably no earlier than 1983), or was it a presumption? MOO
BTW, rule-out #2 is now known to be Joyce Meyer Sommers, formerly Annandale Jane Doe.

 

[Diane Redfern]

 

[FlyOfDragons]

Eileen Hynson's NamUs page was updated on June 26, 2025. While NamUs states that she now has 17 UID exclusions, one of them — UP6583, who was already on Eileen's exclusion list prior to 6/26/25 — is actually a repeat/duplicate, so in reality she now has 16 distinct rule-outs.

in essence, Eileen now has two new exclusions as of late June 2025: UP7184, found in Chambers County, TX, and San Fernando Jane Doe (UP4452)

 

[jackornaught]

I have a list of about 50 women who appear to have been abducted and murdered by sexual predators in the greater SF Bay Area during the 1970's. Eileen Hynson is one of them but I can find very little information about her case. The big question is her activities on the day she was last seen. We do not know if she actually left for Benitia. (The issue of her suitcase being left at home suggests some doubt). If she did, what was her mode of transportation? We would then need to know where near Lake Berryessa did she actually live. There are different routes she might have taken.

Lake Berryessa is rather remote with no population centers very close. It is at lest 25 miles (45 minute drive) from Napa and much further to Santa Rosa. There is no reason to link her case to the Santa Rosa cases. I am unaware of any other similar cases that occurred near the Lake. Closer to Benita, she would be in the East Bay suburbs where a number of similar cases occurred.

The picture does look a lot like the Bradford photo but he lived in Los Angeles and that would have been over 400 miles away. Is there anything in either of their known histories that would place them in the same general vicinity?

Hi Kemo,
Actually we are all linked together out here. Lake Berryessa is a very common area for people from Napa, Santa Rosa and the entire Bay Area really. It is fairly close to us here, yet remote enough to feel like you're in the wild west. I live in the bay area and used to be a delivery driver in Santa Rosa and Lake Berryessa was on my route. Plus, if you drive west from lake Berryessa, you are going through the Santa Rosa area to get to Hwy 101. From there you can get almost anywhere.