Herbert Mullin, who died Thursday evening in a California prison facility, was convicted of 11 murders in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties and confessed to two others.
Mullin, 75, died of natural causes in a Stockton health care facility, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said. He was serving multiple life sentences for the murders, committed in 1972 and 1973. At the time he was convicted, California had no death penalty.
The map above shows the approximate locations of the crimes, with numbers keyed to the descriptions below.
1 / Lawrence “Whitey” White, 55; Oct. 13, 1972. Clubbed with a baseball bat at a pullout on Highway 9 south of Felton. His body was found in the woods the next day.
2 / Mary Margaret Guilfoyle, 24; Oct. 24, 1972. Stabbed after being picked up hitchhiking near Cabrillo College. Her body was found in the Santa Cruz Mountains almost four months later.
3 / Father Henri Tomei, 64; Nov. 2, 1972. Stabbed in the confessional booth at St. Mary’s Catholic church in Los Gatos.
4 / Jim Gianera, 25, and Joan Gianera, 21; Jan. 25, 1973. Shot at their home on Western Drive in Santa Cruz. Jim Gianera was an acquaintance of Mullin’s.
5 / Kathy Francis, 29; David Hughes, 9; Daemon Francis, 4; Jan. 25, 1973. Mullin had initially gone to their Mystery Spot Road home looking for Gianera, who had formerly lived there. After he killed the Gianeras, he returned and fatally shot Kathy Francis and her two sons.
6 / Brian Scott Card, 19; David Oliker, 18; Robert Spector, 18; Mark Dreibelbis, 15; Feb. 10, 1973. Mullin ran across the four teens camping in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. He pretended to be a park ranger as he spoke to them, then later returned and fatally shot them.
7 / Fred Abbie Perez, 72; Feb. 13, 1973. Shot with a rifle as he worked outside his Santa Cruz home. A neighbor saw the shooting and gave police the license number of the assailant’s car. Shortly afterward, Mullin was pulled over and arrested.
Mullin had lived in Boulder Creek and Felton as a teenager and attended San Lorenzo Valley High School, later going on to Cabrillo College and, very briefly, what was then known as San Jose State College.
His crimes were among three sprees that led to Santa Cruz’s reputation as the nation’s “Murder Capital” in the 1970s and early ’80s. Edmund Kemper, “the Co-Ed Killer,” murdered six female college students, his mother and his mother’s friend in 1972 and 1973. David Carpenter, “the Trailside Killer,” was suspected of 10 homicides from 1979 to 1981.
Kemper, 73, and Carpenter, 92, are still living in California prison facilities.
