(From the San Francisco Chronicle)
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
David Joseph Carpenter, the “Trailside Killer” of the early 1980s whose murders spread fear in the Bay Area’s parklands and open spaces, has been tied by DNA evidence to a San Francisco slaying in which he had long been a suspect, police said Tuesday.
Carpenter was gray-haired, bespectacled and spoke with a severe stutter when he moved in with his parents on Sussex Street in Glen Park in 1979. He had a record of sex crimes stretching back to 1947, and had just finished his most recent nine-year stint in prison for rape and parole violations.
During a six-week period in 1980, Carpenter shot five people to death with a .38-caliber pistol at Point Reyes National Seashore and on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. They were Richard Stowers, 19, of Petaluma; his fiancee, Cynthia Moreland, 18, of Cotati; Anne Alderson, 26, San Rafael; Diane O’Connell, 22, San Jose; and Shauna May, 25, San Francisco.
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