Episode 19 Cheri Jo Bates
On October 30, 1966, 18 year old college Freshman Cheri Jo Bates was brutally murdered on her college campus at Riverside City College in Riverside, CA. She was savagely stabbed and her throat slashed. Her murder shocked the quiet Southern CA city. Residents wondered who would kill the pretty and popular cheerleader. Police theorized that Cheri's killer disabled her VW Bug while Cheri was in the college library and when she came out to leave and found her car disabled, the killer came along acting as a good samaritan and offering help. After gaining Cheri's trust, he led her to a dimly lit alley between two abandoned homes on school property and initiated his attack. 30 days after Cheri Jo was killed, an anonymous typed letter was sent to police & the local press claiming responsibility for Cheri Jo's murder. Police initially believed that the confession letter contained details only the killer could know, but in reality, much of what was in the letter was published in AP news stories about the case. Additional letters would come in Cheri Jo's case 6 months after her murder. This time the hand scrawled letters were sent to not only to police and the press, but cruelly, also to Cheri Jo's father.
The Riverside Police locked onto a suspect that they felt was a jilted suitor of Cheri Jo's. He was never identified publicly, but was given the moniker 'Bob Barnett' in online discussions of the case. For years, police were interested in this suspect, but did not have enough to build a case against him. Complicating matters, he moved out of the country. When the suspect returned to the US for a visit, police swooped in and obtained his DNA for comparison against DNA in Cheri Jo's case. It seems that the DNA collected from the suspect did not match DNA in the Bates case. But that did not stop Riverside PD from pursuing a case against their favorite suspect.
In 1970, a tipster in Riverside read a story about the infamous Zodiac Killer attacks and letters happening in the SF Bay area over 400 miles North of Riverside. Feeling that Cheri's case may be connected to the Zodiac crimes, the tipster reached out to SF Chronicle reporter Paul Avery asking him to see if the cases may be connected. Avery came away convinced that Cheri Jo's case was connected to the Zodiac case. The state's top handwriting expert Sherwood Morrill agreed that writing on letters in the Bates case matched writing in the Zodiac case. Police however were split on the conclusion. While investigators in the Zodiac case were open to the possibility that Cheri Jo Bates was an early Zodiac victim, Riverside PS dismissed the idea, instead focusing on their favorite suspect. Decades later, Cheri Jo's case and the Zodiac case remain hopelessly intertwined, and both are still unsolved.
Was Cheri Jo an early Zodiac victim? Or was she the victim of a jilted suitor as Riverside PD suspects? In this episode, the team dives into the clues and evidence; evidence which contains DNA that's half a century old. Can this case be solved, or is it destined to remain a mystery? Tune in to this episode to find out.