This is the area and probably the trail
that my sister was hiking on.
Over the hill there you could see San Francisco,
the Golden Gate Bridge.
And she would have come up here to come look at the sunset
late in the afternoon.
The next morning, my mother called and told me
that Annie's missing.
My sister really took to hiking.
For her, the worst thing that's going to happen to you
was getting attacked by a bear.
She was not used to predators in her own backyard.
This is the story of a serial killer who hunted
his prey, human beings, specifically women,
in the most beautiful places you can imagine.
You never know what or who
is hiding just off trail.
To this day, people are still haunted
by the Trailside Killer.
The damage and the trauma done to the victims, the survivors,
and their families is immeasurable.
It lives on.
My mom survived a serial killer
and literally lived to tell the tale.
The Trailside Killer was baffling the authorities
and terrorizing the public.
It was a very traumatizing time for people
in Northern California.
They didn't feel safe anywhere now.
He had this insatiable
appetite to hurt women.
It's always the bear.
100%, it's always the bear.
People are so unpredictable.
And that's what's scary.
The Trailside Killer
would find people hiking in the woods,
and he would stalk them and then murder them.
The shock waves hadn't even
settled when the Bay Area was rocked by the Trailside Killer
again.
She was in the wrong place, wrong time.
He was looking for young females.
His objective was to rape and murder and get away with it.
To him, that was the ultimate crime.
That's his nature, to plot and scheme
and kill.
You wanted them to catch that person
because you wanted it to stop.
We have, on our hands, a killer
with severe psychological problems.
And if he had had the opportunity,
he would have tried to kill me.
And the question is, could there
be more victims out there?
San Francisco, you
have the city and the outdoors right at your doorstep.
The natural landscape of Marin County
is rolling hills that roll down into the Pacific Ocean.
One of the dominant features in the area is Mount Tamalpais.
And Northern California has
the best of everything here.
There's very little crime, so it was very safe.
And when these killings started happening on the trails--
killings of women, rapes, and murders--
it shattered everything.
Nobody felt safe anymore.
The Trailside Killer was a man who stalked
and murdered women and couples on Northern California hiking
trails between 1979 and 1981.
He would be nameless and faceless for years.
This all happened in the early '80s.
We didn't have cell phone technology then.
In these remote areas, there really is not help close by.
I think the wilderness makes
a great crime scene, unfortunately,
because evidence is lost in it.
These were women who felt that they were going
to be out communing with nature, and they ended up
communing with a serial killer.
So the series of murders
that would be known as the Trailside Killings
began in August of 1979.
A 44-year-old woman named Edda Kane decided to go
hiking on Mount Tamalpais.
It marked the first murder
in memory on the mountain.
No one could know then that it would be the beginning
of a gruesome pattern.
She was shot execution-style.
She was nude, except for a pair of socks.
She had been shot with a large-caliber weapon,
a 44 caliber gun.
What investigators believe is that the gun was too noisy.
So he realized that that was a good way to get caught.
So he starts using a knife, and he stabs his next victims.
Seven months after the first murder,
the Trailside Killer struck again.
23-year-old Barbara Schwartz was stabbed to death.
It was a really, really horrific
crime scene to come across.
It was where they found his glasses that they
were able to link to a prison.
They were looking for an ex-convict.
So that was a clue.
Sheriff's deputies only have one clue tonight.
They found a 10-inch knife about half a mile
in along the Matt Davis Trail.
All women and even other single male hikers
travel with companions on the mountain.
Barbara Schwartz was not the only victim
who was stabbed by the Trailside Killer, according to police.
Mary Frances Bennett was murdered October 21, 1979.
Investigators would say
that she had been butchered.
And she was dragged to the-- into these woods
and found there.
Police say the Trailside Killer
changed his method of killing.
So he switches to a gun, and police say his favorite gun
ends up being a 38.
The scientist and daughter
of a prominent Marin doctor was found shot to death
by a high-powered weapon.
On October 13, Anne Alderson
met her death in the same way as Edda Kane, ambushed on a trail.
My sister was Anne Evelyn Alderson.
She was the victim in the Trailside Murder saga.
She was 26.
I would say she was beginning the prime of her life.
She had a lot of freedom to say, gee, you know,
the world is my oyster.
I'm really excited about what comes next.
My sister Anne was a somewhat quiet person on the outside.
But on the inside, she was a person
of very strong convictions.
She really believed that the world could be a better place.
She really, really loved being outside in the forest.
She worked as a forest ranger.
This was something that was so far beyond our imaginations
at the time.
My sister went off abroad and was
working with the Peace Corps.
And so when she came back, she was
not updated on that there had been
a couple murders in the area.
Annie had no idea of the Trailside Killings.
I think what my sister found in nature is she found peace.
She found a place where she could meditate.
Sorry.
On the night she died, by the reports of hikers
and so forth in the area, she was spotted up in the Mount
Tamalpais mountain theater.
She was just kind of up there, watching the sunset
and enjoying the evening.
And two people thought that they should warn her about that there
was a predator around.
But they saw her kind of in such deep meditation,
so they kind of just let her be.
I heard about it the next morning
when my mother called and told me that Annie's missing.
We knew something was wrong.
My sister Anne's car was just up the trail from here,
oh, maybe 100 yards or so.
It was in the parking lot.
This became ground zero for the search for my sister.
Anne Alderson's killing was found to be committed
with a 38 caliber weapon.
She had been shot execution-style,
in the back of the head.
There was evidence that she had been raped and then redressed.
What was most frustrating about not knowing
who murdered my sister, I think, was the fact
that the worry that other people were
going to be fall victim to him.
So when it did happen again and again,
you're just-- your heart broke.
The shock waves hadn't even
settled when the Bay Area was rocked by the Trailside Killer
again.
About a month after Anne's murder,
Shauna May and Diane O'Connell went on a hike
on the very same day, who, by the way, are not friends.
They're just random hikers on the same trail.
Both of them disappeared.
And now there is this massive search
that's being done.
And pretty quickly, they do find victims,
but it's not Diane O'Connell and Shauna May.
While police are searching for Shauna and Diane,
they come across the bodies of two more people.
It's a young man and a woman.
They had been missing for weeks.
So Richard and Cynthia were a young couple.
They had plans of getting married,
and they were just on a camping trip together.
And they were discovered severely
decomposing side by side.
They were the first shooting victims
that were found to be connected to that 38 caliber weapon.
And then, not far from these two bodies,
police find their two missing hikers from that day, nude
and shot to death.
Doesn't that tell you what a psycho he is?
He is like an animal that keeps bringing his prey
back to the same little spot.
He is a killer who kills on instinct.
Not one, but four victims this time at Point
Reyes National Seashore.
Now, as the bodies are starting to mount up,
he is not just going after individuals.
He's going after couples.
Are you linking the decomposed bodies
with the fresh bodies with the mountain killing, all of them
together?
We are at this time, yes.
And it was after finding these people that they realized
they had a serial killer.
This individual is very capable of striking again.
Previously, we suggested that women should not hike alone.
I am now cautioning even women traveling in pairs.
Always looked behind my shoulder
every once in a while.
You feel like someone's, like, watching you.
Yeah.
One of the things I personally love the most about the outdoors
is the refuge that it offers from the busyness
of everyday life.
You can go out and explore, find yourself again,
tune out everything else.
I actually make it a point to say
hello to the person passing me and make eye contact with them.
I want to make sure you know that I see you.
I will carry bear spray with me
to use as a self-defense.
Overwhelmingly, I have felt safe in the outdoors.
But I have definitely had moments where I have not.
It is quiet and ever so lonely
along the hiking trails on Mount Tam,
but no one is out here tonight, knowing
that the savage Marin killer may be lurking along these trails.
So people in Northern California at this time,
by November of 1980, were just terrified.
Rangers were actually coming up to hikers,
letting them know what had happened, to be aware,
let them know if they saw anything that was suspicious.
There started to be warning
signs where they would put out-- they would say,
don't hike alone.
For the longest time, no one knew what the Trailside
Killer looked like.
The composite made us think that he was a tall, skinny guy
with a long nose.
The physical description, medium build,
medium-length brown hair.
That's the thing with eyewitness testimony,
right, is it's unreliable.
And in this case, unfortunately, it was.
It kind of misdirected the investigation
for a really long time.
So the killer now moves to Santa Cruz County.
This is about 70 miles south of Marin County.
I believe that his killing urges
were getting stronger and stronger,
to the point to where he couldn't control it anymore.
So in March 1981, Ellen Hansen and her boyfriend
Steven Haertle had decided to go camping
in Henry Cowell State Park.
20-year-old Ellen Hansen and her friend Steve Haertle had
left their campsite, and they were headed up the trail
for the observation deck.
But they never got that far.
Steve and Ellen are college students at UC Davis.
And they go for a hike.
They run into this man who becomes kind of aggressive
with them.
And so Steve thinks this is a hold-up.
The assailant doesn't want his wallet.
He wants his girlfriend, and he tells him so.
He says, no, I'm gonna rape your girlfriend,
and you're gonna watch.
And he proceeds to shoot them.
It's heartbreaking
that Steve saw his girlfriend be killed right in front of him.
The unbelievable thing is that Steve
is shot in the throat.
He survives, and it is in this moment that so much
is revealed about the killer.
Steve was not the only eyewitness to this crime,
and other people were able to give police an ID of the killer.
A full color composite drawing of the Trailside
Killer suspect is now out.
Law enforcement agencies think this is the most accurate
and latest likeness so far.
Based on the second composite,
the killer looked like a very average man,
not necessarily like a smooth-talking, Ted Bundy-type.
One of the breaks in the case is when someone
thought she recognized him.
I know it's David Carpenter.
I can tell by his chin and the horn-rimmed glasses.
Did you notify authorities?
Right away.
His name is David Carpenter.
David Carpenter.
Now, police are being directed toward David Carpenter.
All of a sudden, he's a suspect.
David Carpenter was a really
ordinary-looking person.
He was in his 50s.
And he was kind of dumpy and bald.
Nothing about him stood out.
He had horn-rimmed glasses.
Looked like a respectable kind of a nerdy guy.
Nothing scary about him.
He also had a very severe stutter.
When he was in that killing zone,
he stopped stuttering.
It's like he was either completely in control
or completely out of control.
It was pure evil in action.
David Carpenter was born in 1930 to Frances
and Elwood Carpenter.
His father and mother did not get along.
They fought constantly.
He was severely abused by his parents.
By the time he was 17, he was incarcerated,
and that was crimes against children.
David Carpenter was a serious predator.
And we know this based on his records.
And nothing ever changed.
If anything, he got worse.
He was sent to California Youth Authority,
but he only could stay there until he was 18.
And then he was released.
It's 1960 in San Francisco,
and David Carpenter appears to have
his criminal ways behind him.
He's now married, has three children.
He's working, and one of his colleagues, Lois DeAndrade,
is someone that he has his eye on.
I think part of the reason why Lois has been such a focus
of David Carpenter's case is because of her daughter, Lisa
Rinna, who has brought a lot of light to her story
and has kept it alive.
Lisa Rinna is a Hollywood actress.
She is best known for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Her mother, Lois DeAndrade, was an early victim
of David Carpenter.
I think my mom was positive and never played a victim,
never felt sorry for herself.
And she could have been the most miserable, fucked up,
traumatized human being, and I never saw that.
I've seen clips of Lisa Rinna
talking about her mother on The Housewives of Beverly Hills
before.
He's straddling me,
and he had a hammer in one hand, a knife in another.
I was the first one that he went to jail for.
And so one morning, she was waiting at the bus stop
to go to the dentist, and he came by the bus stop
and said, Lois, I want you to meet my new baby.
She was like, no, I have to go to the dentist.
And he said, I'll drive you.
And she got in the car with him.
He started talking to her, and he was not stuttering.
That was the first sign.
He was driving in a weird direction.
And then she said, David, what's going on with you?
You're-- you're not stuttering.
You're speaking clearly.
And he said, I don't know, Lois.
Something just comes over me.
And that's when she knew she was fucked.
But then he starts driving, instead of
towards their house, through the Presidio, which
is an Army base here, right at the foot
of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Now, it's maybe 10:00 in the morning.
Luckily, a military policeman saw
this car drive down a deserted road that no one
should be driving on.
So he followed them.
And as David Carpenter parked the car,
he literally straddled my mom, grabbed
a knife out of the glove box, takes the knife, goes at my mom.
My mom grabs it with her hand, and it severs these two fingers.
So her fingers are, like, dangling.
And then David starts to freak out
because he sees the car coming.
And so he reaches in the back, grabs a hammer,
and starts smashing my mom over the head with a hammer.
He starts hammering at her head.
If that police officer had not shown up when he did,
Lois would be dead.
The MP shoots David Carpenter in the stomach.
Doesn't kill him.
My mom, she's in the hospital for three months.
She had to have a big metal plate put in her head.
David Carpenter then pleads guilty.
Then he goes on to become the Trailside Killer.
She had no idea that she was one of the first victims
of a serial killer.
And had that police officer not been there,
she likely would have been his first murder victim.
My mom lived in fear, for sure,
but she's very lucky that she survived it.
David Carpenter received 14 years in federal prison
for the attack on Lois DeAndrade.
He ended up serving nine.
The idea that David Carpenter was let out for good behavior,
it seems a little bit ludicrous.
And he was back on the streets of San Francisco in 1969.
It really underscores how much crimes against women
are not taken seriously enough.
A year after David Carpenter was released
from federal prison, he went on a crime spree over about a week.
According to police, he sexually
assaults multiple women.
And he serves almost nine years for this.
And some might say, is that really enough?
He was a convicted sex offender,
and somehow, he wasn't on the list.
Once he got out, he was just a predator.
In the late '70s and early
'80s, California had gone through a little
bit of a transformation.
The Summer of Love was long past over,
and we were moving into a new time.
It was, you know, the golden age of serial killers.
I don't know what was going on in California at the time,
but there were multiple serial killers
all killing at the same time.
I mean, police had their hands full.
There was the Freeway Killer, the Hillside
Strangler, who got confused with the Trailside Killer sometimes.
They had gone through the Zodiac killings.
That was in the late '60s.
The elusive killer who taunted
police with cryptic messages signed Zodiac.
We were dealing with somebody who would later be known
as the Golden State Killer.
People have their doors and windows open,
but the police are saying lock up tight.
Sacramento's infamous East Area Rapist may still be in town.
So it was a very scary time.
After the attack on Steve and his girlfriend Ellen,
police are hoping the new composite sketch
might help catch the Trailside Killer before he kills again.
Authorities have their eyes on David Carpenter,
but he still continues his killing spree.
This time, David Carpenter chooses
a victim within his own orbit.
Heather Scaggs was a young woman
who worked with David Carpenter at the printing company
where he was employed.
She told her boyfriend
that she was going with David Carpenter to look at a car,
and she never came back.
She had reservations about it, about going because of the way
this guy acted.
I don't know why she went.
Shortly after 7:00 AM, the silence this neighborhood is
accustomed to was broken when Department of Justice agents,
the FBI, and members of the Marin County Task Force
converged in a home at 38 Sussex,
arresting 51-year-old David Joseph
Carpenter as the suspected Trailside Killer.
The case of the Trailside Killer
finally reaches a pinnacle.
They have arrested a man they suspect of killing seven
people in less than two years.
David Carpenter was arrested May 15, 1981.
There were, I would say,
something like 25 different law enforcement agencies.
The feds were involved, the FBI, all kinds of local agencies.
At this point, there is a lot of evidence
pointing to David Carpenter.
There are the witnesses.
There's the composite.
There are the leads that are coming in through the tip line.
There's David Carpenter's history
as a convicted sex offender with a long history
of violence against women.
And then there is the similarity of the weapon.
They were all killed with a 38 caliber pistol.
Soon after David Carpenter's arrest,
Heather Scaggs' body was found in Big Basin State Park.
The small poster describes
her as a missing person.
Unfortunately, she now is a murder victim.
It was also determined that she had been
killed with a 38 caliber weapon, and there was evidence of rape.
The link between the two sets of cases is a firearms link.
All the bullets came from the same gun, which
meant the crimes were all committed by the same man, hence
the Trailside Killer case.
But the question is, where is the murder weapon?
That will be the ultimate evidence against him.
I was barely 18 when I met David Carpenter.
And at that time, my husband, Shane, was robbing banks,
and he was a drug addict.
He would rob banks to keep his habit up.
I did not know anything that Carpenter had done wrong, other
than he had been in jail with Shane, and I didn't know why.
Shane was interested in getting a gun.
And Dave was saying, well, I can get you a gun.
Why do I think he gave the gun to Shane?
I think that he planned on setting Shane up to take
the fall for the murders.
My husband Shane and I found out that David Carpenter was
a murderer when someone started beating on our door,
and it was the police.
They said they arrested him this morning for murder.
And of course, we were completely shocked.
Now, we had that gun right in the middle of our floor.
We were messy.
And the police searched our apartment and didn't find it.
We both decided to leave that apartment.
Shane took the gun with us.
We basically carried it around for a couple of days.
So Shane buried it in a vacant lot in San Francisco
where they had torn a building up.
Shane went on and did another robbery and got arrested.
I said, we have to tell them where that gun is.
And so he did it.
He told them where the gun was.
And that resulted in Carpenter being tied to all the murders.
Finally, the terror on the trails is over.
The courtroom battle to prove he is the Trailside Killer
has just begun.
But there's so much more to do.
Now come the trials.
Can they prove it?
Now that people feel more comfortable to leave
their homes and go hiking and running again,
prosecutors are working really hard to build their cases
against David Carpenter.
David Carpenter says, oh, I'm innocent,
and I'm about to fight this.
And he does.
There would actually be two trials
for the Trailside Killing case.
You had the Santa Cruz County murders and then
the Marin County murders.
Because of how much publicity there
was in Northern California, they actually moved the trials.
Carpenter, who claims he is innocent,
watched today as 24 jurors filed into the courtroom.
Prosecutors are asking for the death penalty.
This was the costliest trial in California history,
up to that point.
So the first trial in Los Angeles County
was a very solid case because you had the witness, Steven
Haertle, who took the stand and was able to vividly describe
the entire crime from beginning to end,
and also, David Carpenter.
Would you point him out for all of us?
He came closer.
We all moved closer.
And he said that he wanted to rape Ellen.
I heard two shots and didn't feel anything.
And then I felt like somebody hit my neck with a sledgehammer.
And he's the one person that says, yes,
I saw the guy that shot me.
That man is right over there in the courtroom.
We, the jury, in the above entitled action,
find the defendant, David Joseph Carpenter,
guilty of the crime of murder.
David Joseph Carpenter shall suffer the death penalty.
If ever there was a case in which the death penalty was
appropriate, this is that case.
I saw him.
You know, I went to the death penalty trial when I was 21.
It's very hard to see someone who
has tried to kill your mother.
He had every opportunity to speak, apologize,
show remorse, and he didn't.
If anything, he doubled down on his claims of innocence.
David Carpenter still faces trial in five more cases,
more rapes and murders, this time on hiking
trails in Marin County.
That trial is held in San Diego.
It lasted for a little over four months.
My mother went into the courtroom every day
because she wanted the jury to see
that her daughter, Anne, had a face
and that she was somebody who mattered to a family.
I joined my mother in San Diego, and I sat across the courtroom
from David Carpenter.
In the San Diego trial, David Carpenter would take
the stand in his own defense.
He thought that he could persuade
a jury that he was not guilty.
When David Carpenter takes the stand, he claims he's innocent.
He claims that he has alibis for every murder.
As of the first week in October, after I got my Ch--
Chevy stationwagon, I began taking my father's Ch--
Chevy.
To be clear, Mr. Carpenter has never admitted being guilty.
The defense conceded there was one Trailside Killer.
Our defense just was that it wasn't David Carpenter.
They decided he was guilty of everything,
and they sentenced him to death on everything.
We, the jury, in the above entitled cause,
determine that the penalty shall be death, dated June 27, 1988.
When the jury came back, justice was served.
David Carpenter, as of date, is still alive.
He's 95 years old.
He was convicted and sentenced to death.
David Carpenter is moved
to San Quentin's Death Row.
Also housed at San Quentin, Charles Manson,
Sirhan Sirhan, William Bonin, another serial killer.
But as of last year, he is unable to walk.
He's very frail.
He's very elderly.
He was moved to a California prison hospital facility
where he still resides.
A number of years ago, our governor, Gavin Newsom,
declared a moratorium on all executions,
but he's about to have his term expire.
The next governor can change that.
To this day, David Carpenter claims his innocence.
David Carpenter was interviewed by KTVU Fox 2.
What you're talking about is something that was in the report
that's 25 you know, something
that I did 25 years ago.
And that doesn't describe you now?
No.
Steven Haertle thinks that I'm the Trailside Ki--
Ki-- Killer.
But the thing is this.
The most imperfect evidence that there is,
is eyewitness testimony.
I think the only thing that I would request of David Carpenter
is that give closure.
If there are other victims out there, it's time.
Take accountability.
Most investigators believe that there are still victims
of David Carpenter that haven't been identified
or conclusively tied to him.
There are several.
It took three decades to link Mary Frances Bennett's
death to David Carpenter.
DNA evidence would conclusively link
him to that murder as well.
Which makes you think, could there
be other victims out there?
I honestly don't have anything
I would say to David Carpenter.
I don't wish him pain in his situation,
but I certainly don't wish him well either.
I don't know if I could look him in the eye,
and I don't know if I could speak
to him, to be honest with you.
Fuck off, you shitty old man.
I hope you rot.
I hope it's been miserable.
After my sister was killed,
my family and I and others felt that it
was important to get back out on the trails
and reclaim the mountain.
He had stolen my sister and my life with her from me,
and I wasn't gonna let him steal anything else from my life.
Right now, we're headed up to a set of picnic benches
that are by the parking lot.
I've been told-- I've not seen it,
but there's a plaque in memory of all
the women that were victims of the Trailside Killer.
And so I thought I'd come up here and have a look for it.
The plaque here reads "Forever on the mountain,"
and then it names the three women that died in this area.
Anne Alderson, age 26, from Terra Linda.
"Love is never ending."
I think that's a really nice thing.
I'm very proud, proud that people would remember her.
And it's a lovely setting.
And people always will remember and enjoy this spot.