Arrest in ’04 killings relieves town
Sonoma County community breathes easier with jailing of man accused of shooting pair
A day after the Sonoma County sheriff announced he had a man in custody for the shocking 2004 slaying of two young people on a beach near the remote coastal community of Jenner, the town’s 107 residents were breathing a collective sigh of relief.
The senseless rifle attack on the young couple as they lay in sleeping bags on a secluded beach rocked the tourist-driven beach town known for abalone diving, hiking, camping and kayaking. With the arrest of Shaun Gallon, 38 of Forestville for the killings, residents of the sleepy town, which doesn’t even have cell phone service, feel they can finally put the brutal incident that had plagued their community behind them.
Lindsay Cutshall, 22, of Fresno, Ohio, and her 26-year-old fiance, Jason Allen, of Zeeland, Mich., were found dead in August 2004 on Fish Head Beach near the mouth of the Russian River, shot at close range with a .45caliber rifle, said Sheriff Steve Freitas.
Larry Sandhu, owner of the Jenner Sea Store, a gas station and sandwich shop with the town’s lone pay phone, said he moved to Jenner two years after the slayings.
When Sandhu saw Gallon’s mug shot in the news, he recognized the man as someone who had been a regular customer several years ago.
“He would get a soda, put it here,” Sandhu said, pointing to the store counter that was cluttered with tobacco products, energy drinks and lighters, with fishing rods hanging from the ceiling. “Pay and leave. He wouldn’t say a word. Kind of an oddball.”
At the time, Sandhu didn’t think anything more of Gallon’s strange presence. But when the man’s photo was released, Sandhu said he wasn’t surprised to see Gallon’s face.
What surprised him, though, was why someone would think to go to the beach in the middle of the night and kill two innocent people, he said.
Gallon, described as a survivalist, was already in jail on murder charges when he was linked to the Jenner slayings. He was arrested in March in connection with the shooting death of his younger brother.
Though Jenner is technically a 20-mile stretch of land, most of the residents, including Sandhu, consider the actual town to be a small enclave that includes a cafe, Sandhu’s store, a restaurant and the winding road that leads up to cottages, summer homes and an abandoned school.
Since the slayings, rumors have run rampant along the 9 miles between the Russian River town of Monte Rio and Jenner as to who could have been responsible.
Trina Peterson, 48, of Monte Rio said many residents wondered whether a serial killer lived among them or if it was just someone driving up and down the road between their small, quiet towns, looking for victims.
The beach where Cutshall and Allen were killed is usually busy with people, Peterson added.
There’s “many of us hanging out on that beach, rocking,” Peterson said, adding that people often have small bonfires and camp “if it’s not foggy.”
It could have happened to anyone, she said inside Jenner’s white-painted post office, where she works, barely 10 feet from the beach.
Jenner doesn’t get crowded until the summer, but for some people, like 24-year-old Charlie Kain of Point Reyes, Jenner is the place to go when it’s time to dive for abalone.
Jenner can be a creepy place, Kain said from the driver’s seat of his white Ford pickup, the bed of the truck stuffed with diving gear, including swim fins, wet suits and spearguns.
“Even when you go into the stores, it’s empty. Creepy,” Kain said, shuddering.
Kain said he comes to Jenner “plenty of times,” either to fish or to meet with his friends when they go on camping trips. When it’s not tourist season, Jenner feels like a “ghost town, a horror movie.”
Aron Parks opened Cafe Aquatica 11 years ago and said Jenner has had its share of tragedies over the years.
“There’s already a lot of heavy energy out here,” Parks said. “Just a lot of accidents, people drive off the road quite a bit.”
In August, a woman was driving her two young daughters, ages 4 and 6, to school in Monte Rio from their Jenner home when she lost control of the wheel on Highway 1 and plummeted 40 feet down into the Russian River. The mother swam to safety, but the two children died, leaving the townspeople stunned.
On Saturday morning, residents talked of Gallon’s capture in hushed voices.
“They caught the guy,” locals said at the Cafe Aquatica, directly across from Sandhu’s shop.
For 62-year-old Thomas Yeates, that meant it was finally time to move on. He announced to the cafe patrons that the “Jennerators” would be playing that night at the Jenner Community Center where he planned to debut a song criticizing President Trump.
Yeates moved to Jenner from New Jersey in 1983. And when the slayings happened, Yeates said he remembers suspecting everyone.
“You start looking at people sideways. Who was it?” Yeates said.
But to Yeates, Jenner shouldn’t be remembered for the killings. It should be known for its scenic landscape and the group of environmental and political activists or “agitators,” he said with a smile, sipping from a small coffee cup on the cafe patio by the Russian River.
Yeates was part of a core group of Jenner and Monte Rio residents in the late 1990s who stood up to logging companies that threatened to cut down the tunnel of redwood trees that line the road to Jenner and developers who wanted to transform their peaceful rural community into an upscale mix of golf courses and expensive homes.
“People here fight to preserve their community,” Yeates said.
While Gallon’s most recent residence was 20 miles east of Jenner in Forestville, he lived for a time in Guerneville, where his parents rented an apartment.
The Gallons’ former landlord, who didn’t want his name used for fear of upsetting the family, said he was sad to learn one of his tenants was linked to the killings but not entirely surprised.
“Shaun was a big kid. He scared me to death,” the landlord said, noting that he suspected the man was up to no good, sometimes shooting his crossbow or just lurking around town.
Gallon has a history of violence. In 2009 he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for attacking a man in Guerneville and spent three years in state prison.
The landlord said Shaun and his brother didn’t appear to have regular jobs and seemed to hang around the family’s apartment a lot, relying on their parents to support them.
“It’s entirely possible that Shaun just came upon those kids and for no reason at all killed them,” the landlord said.
Down the road from Gallon’s Forestville home, at tiny Sam’s Market, longtime resident Evan Pigott, 41, said Gallon looked familiar but he didn’t know the suspected killer.
“This is crazy,” Pigott said. “For a long time we’ve been wondering if there’s been someone hiding in the mountains since those kids were killed. I guess this does bring some closure.”