Unsolved killings:
FBI links 1976 slayings to Reno case.
New evidence linking a series of unsolved slayings of women in San Mateo County to a case in Reno has reinvigorated the investigation, the FBI said Thursday.
The FBI announced the launch of a task force looking into the grisly killings of five young women on the Peninsula in the first four months of 1976, and their connection to the murder of a 19-year-old University of Nevada student during that same time period.
Investigators believe the San Mateo County killer was an accomplice in the Reno case.
The spree began on Jan. 8, 1976, when the body of 18-year-old Ronnie Cascio was discovered at the Sharp Park Golf Course in her hometown of Pacifica. She had been stabbed 30 times, The Chronicle reported at the time.
A few weeks later, 14-year-old Tanya Blackwell was reported missing after leaving her home in Pacifica. Her body was discovered on Gypsy Hill Road in the city a few months later.
The body of 17-year-old Paula Baxter was found a few weeks after that in Millbrae, where she lived. And in April, 19year-old Denise Lampe of Broadmoor was slain in her car in the lot of the Serramonte mall in Daly City.
Carol Lee Booth, 26, who was reported missing in March, was found dead in South San Francisco one month later.
In the Cascio, Baxter and Booth slayings, police found signs of sexual assault.
At the time, investigators connected some of the homicides to each other, but not to a killing hundreds of miles away — that of Reno resident Michelle Mitchell, 19. She had her throat slit shortly after she was left stranded near the University of Nevada because her car broke down.
In 1979, Cathy Woods, a psychiatric patient at the Louisiana State University Medical Center, told hospital staff that she had killed a girl named Michelle in Reno. She was ultimately convicted of murder.
But about two months ago, Woods asked for a review of the evidence. That effort turned up the link to the San Mateo County murders, said FBI spokesman Peter Lee. The agency would not elaborate on what was found.
Though investigators believe the San Mateo County killer was an accomplice in the Reno case, they do not consider Woods a suspect in the other deaths.
The task force’s first initiative will be to canvass neighborhoods near the crime scenes in hopes of jogging the memory of neighbors who may have seen something in 1976.
“We ask that all members of the public take a moment to think back and reflect on your memories of that time in 1976 and if anything comes to mind, to please notify us,” said Gerald Bessette, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge in San Francisco.
Investigators do not believe the assailant in the six cases committed any more murders, but aren’t ruling out the possibility, Bessette said.
Each of the victims died in “crimes of opportunity,” said Lee.
“We believe that this suspect was driving by and saw someone who was helpless and took advantage of that situation,” Lee said, citing the car troubles and transportation woes that isolated the victims in several of the cases.
Although the person behind the killings fits the criteria of a serial killer, Lee said, investigators are reluctant to use that term because “it limits the scope of who you may suspect as a possible killer.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at (415) 553-7400. Tips can also be submitted at http:// tips.fbi.gov.