It was the first day of February, 1979, and twenty-year-old waitress Julia Woodward had decided to make a new start in life. She said goodbye to her mother and left her home in San Rafael, California, after which a friend dropped her off at the San Francisco Airport. Julia was planning to fly to Lake Tahoe in order to look for a new job.
Whether she ever made it to her destination is unknown. What is known for certain is that several weeks later, she would turn up dead.
On March 25th, a set of remains would be discovered by a motorcyclist in a remote area of Hungry Valley, near Reno, Nevada. The victim had been killed by a blow to the back of the head, and was later identified as twenty-year-old Julia Woodward, last seen alive at the San Francisco Airport on February 1st.
Julia was discovered face down, with tape around her legs, bandages over her eyes, and a scarf around her neck that appeared to have been used to gag her. An autopsy also uncovered evidence of sexual assault.
The case bore an eerie resemblance to the disappearance and murder of fifteen-year-old Gloria Crummett, who had run away from home in July of 1971 was found dead ten days later, also the victim of blunt force trauma to the back of the head.
Though several years separated the two crimes, some investigators did find it worthwhile to pursue a link between the murders, and they may have been correct to do so, for there would be yet a third, very similar crime that occurred before 1979 was over, and some later researchers have put forth the thesis that a serial killer may have been stalking the Lemmon Valley area of Nevada during the entire decade of the 1970s.
On November 2nd, 1979, in fact, there would be a third body found whose fate seemed to mirror that of two previous victims in the area.
Two hunters in Lemmon Valley came across the skeletal remains, which had been partially exposed by animals worrying at the bones. Shortly after the find, detectives identified the body as that of seventeen-year-old Jeannie Smith, who had last been seen leaving the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino with a blond man on October 27th, 1978. She had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head.
Though little information is available about her case, it is often linked with the earlier murder of fifteen-year-old Gloria Crummett from July 1971, and that of twenty-year-old Julia Woodward from March of 1979. An additional homicide in the possible series—that of sixteen-year-old Cindy Cook—took place in 1981.
The four women may or may not have fallen victim to an as-yet-unidentified serial killer stalking the streets of Lemmon Valley, just north of Reno.
Crime Immemorial 