Original subtitles

[eerie music playing]

[gunshot]

[theme music playing]

Welcome to Very Scary People,

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

The mountain trails of Northern California

have always been a refuge

for those seeking peace and tranquility.

But from 1979 to 1981,

this pristine setting

became the backdrop to a terrifying mystery.

Women were being targeted and killed

as they hiked the wilderness paths in California parks.

The cold-blooded attacks stunned the community.

Who was committing these evil acts?

This is part one of "The Trailside Killer."

[Robert Graysmith] Edda Kane was a very athletic person.

She loved to hike the trails of Mount Tamalpais.

[Greg Keraghosian] Edda Kane was 44 years old.

She was a Bank of America executive

living in Mill Valley.

She was known as an avid hiker

who hiked Mount Tam regularly.

[Esther Ludlow] Mount Tamalpais is the highest peak in Marin County.

It's known as Mount Tam to the locals.

[Keraghosian] It's a very popular destination

throughout the week, especially on the weekends.

[Graysmith] The mountain overlooks the Golden Gate.

[Lt. Donald Besse] On a day that's a little bit cloudy,

it's like looking out on an ocean of clouds.

I mean it's, it's beautiful.

It's so peaceful, it is a wonderful place to be.

[Ludlow] Edda Kane had planned

on a four-hour hike on Mount Tam on her own.

[Graysmith] Her husband was an older man, 20 years older.

He was suffering from arthritis in his knees.

Very, very serious, so he stayed home.

[Ludlow] When Edda didn't return home and it started to get dark,

her husband called the sheriff's department

to report his wife missing.

He pretty much assumed

Edda Kane had gotten on a wrong trail

and gotten lost in the dark

or had sprained an ankle and just needed assistance.

[Graysmith] They, in the dark, had a search party looking for her.

And it was unsuccessful.

They tried again the next day.

[Ludlow] But it wasn't until the next night

that searchers found the body of Edda Kane

about 60 feet off the main trail, up a hill side.

She was found completely nude except for one sock.

The killer took everything but one sock.

And that was strange.

[Ludlow] There was cash and credit cards missing from her belongings,

but she still was wearing her jewelry, including her wedding ring.

[Graysmith] There was no sexual assault.

None at all. It just made no sense.

Edda was killed with a .44 caliber gun which was really loud.

It was a big gun, it made a big loud bang and it had a big kick to it.

[Ludlow] To find a woman who was so brutally murdered

in this place was just shocking.

Nobody really knew what to make of it.

[Robinson] That was out of character for Marin County.

That's a high rent, very, very good area.

[Keraghosian] Marin County was a place where people went

to get away from crime or the bustle of the city.

It was pretty much where you went to live a boring, safe, happy life.

[Besse] That's a first recorded homicide on the mountain.

It was a big deal.

Who knew the murder on the mountain?

When I saw that come across the news,

I'm thinking to myself, "This is just unbelievable, what's going on."

But it was just starting.

[reporter] He came to be known as the Trailside Killer.

His victims, usually women,

were assaulted on remote hiking trails at Mount Tam in Marin County.

If you mention the Trailside case to anybody,

they would know it immediately.

[Elaine Kendall] It was the biggest news there was.

This went on for years with the trailside killer, who was he?

Are they gonna catch him soon?

What's this all about?

For a period of roughly 22 months,

that really destroyed the desire of many

in the Bay Area to wanna go up in those mountains.

[Graysmith] This murder made all the papers...

It shook the visitors that went to the mountains

to hike and enjoy peaceful times.

It cast a shadow over that mountain.

For the first time people stopped going.

But gradually as time went on, they began to come back again.

[Keraghosian] Ask anybody in the Bay Area,

what's your favorite thing about living here

and nine times out of 10

the answer will be the outdoors.

It's what belongs to all of us.

[Besse] 70% of Marin County is parks.

Either city, state, county or federal park land.

So it's really the kind of country everybody wants to visit.

[Graysmith] I've always thought it's nature at its rawest.

It's welcoming you.

[Besse] Mount Tamalpais is like a holy place.

The Indians treated it that way.

[Graysmith] The gentle tribes that clustered at the base

all those years before the gold hunters came,

never ventured there. It was a place of reverence,

of danger even.

Mount Tam, it's one of the most scenic parks

you can come up with in the Bay Area.

[Reno Taini] Once you got into nature,

you take a deep breath, you get refreshed...

Physically but also mentally. Emotionally it was, like...

[breathing deeply]

I can take a rest here.

That's nature.

And you kind of let your guard down.

You kind of just let it be.

You let yourself be.

[Graysmith] Barbara Schwartz was an organic bread maker.

This free spirit, walking the mountain trails with her dog.

[Keraghosian] Barbara Schwartz was 23 years old.

She had just moved

to Marin County from Baltimore.

She was a baker.

She was described as a tireless worker.

She was said to work 14, 16 hours a day,

six days a week.

That day Barbara was probably just looking for a getaway,

like all of us are when we hit that trail.

[Besse] She took off to run on the trail.

She was in no fear out there.

[Ludlow] She ended up resting in a clearing,

a redwood grove,

and she was sitting on a rock, her dog was next to her

and there was another hiker just above this redwood grove

and she saw a man emerge

from behind where Barbara was sitting...

[Besse] She heard Barbara scream.

She looked across and saw him with a knife making stabbing motions.

[Ludlow] Her dog started barking frantically

and the man just continued to stab her.

[Besse] Now this lady really has courage because

instead of running away,

she ran up the trail

toward them shouting to stop that.

That stopped the suspect, who panicked and ran.

And the woman ran off and called for help.

[Ludlow] But it was too late.

Barbara had been stabbed

multiple times in the throat and the chest

and she was pronounced dead.

[Graysmith] Barbara Schwartz's murder

was very close to where Edda Kane had been murdered.

They found at the scene

a pair of glasses that the killer had lost.

[Besse] Heavy black frames.

They began to check with the little serial numbers on the glasses.

[Besse] The frames were tracked back

to the California correctional system.

That was a clue.

[Besse] The prison people had no way to track by prescription.

We sent out flyers to parole officers all around the area

to see if they had a probationer,

a parolee, that had glasses like this.

And we... we came up empty-handed.

[Keraghosian] Later, there was an 11-inch knife found

not far from where Barbara's body was found.

Two kids found it.

[Graysmith] And of course they know about this terrible knife murder.

They know enough. Don't touch the knife.

There's a TV crew, they pick it up.

One of the best clues is gone.

The news crew picked up the knife.

It kind of contaminated the evidence.

We all thought that there's too much coincidence here.

Two murders on the mountain

in a relatively short span of time.

Even though they're completely different,

we had to kick around the idea

that there's one person responsible.

[Ludlow] The police produced a composite sketch

based on the witness's description of the man.

[reporter] A hiker who had come across the killer

gave the Sheriff, under hypnosis,

the first description of the suspect.

A white male between 5'10" and 6',

170 pounds in his 30s or 40s,

clean shaven with black hair.

There was heavy shadows over the trail from the trees

so it was kind of a darkened area.

She saw him just for a moment as she ran up there.

He had, like, a lumberjack shirt,

it was green and black plaid

and slicked back hair,

kind of a beak of a nose, sharp nose.

[Graysmith] He's tall, he's thin, he's young and vigorous.

She was some distance away when she saw this image

on which they based their entire case for the longest time.

[Besse] There were a lot of people interviewed

just because of that composite.

[Robinson] From my experience, people that stab with knives,

a good portion of the time

they end up cutting themselves in the process.

[Besse] We didn't know it at the time,

but the man went to an emergency care place.

[Ludlow] It's about 30 miles away

from where the attack occurred.

He had a deep cut on his thumb and hand

and he told a story about having been at a convenience store

and that he had been stabbed

trying to thwart a hold-up.

Because his injury happened

during the commission of a crime,

the doctor was required to report this to the police.

The police did come and interview him

but they just took the report and left.

And they believed him.

He had lost his glasses and went to an optometrist

to get a new pair

which coincidentally turned out to be

the optometrist for the victim.

[Graysmith] The most overwhelming coincidence.

It's beyond belief.

He said, "I've got to have these glasses now.

I can't function without them."

[Besse] We sent out information

on that particular pair of glasses.

Had a picture of 'em and an unusual prescription.

[Graysmith] They put out a bulletin and they asked optometrists

to be on the watch out for someone that needed this particular prescription.

For some reason, all these optometrists got it,

but not Barbara's.

[Graysmith] Lot of the people never got the flyer.

It was a great idea

but it didn't have the follow through

that they really needed for it to succeed.

[Henry Ingwersen] It's frustrating in a sense that we have

a great many investigative leads to try to follow down.

It's like looking for the needle in the haystack.

We've got a lot of hay

but we haven't found that needle yet.

[Besse] After those two first ones,

nobody was going on Mount Tam to hike.

The sheriff's department had a mounted posse

as a volunteer group.

Just checking people that were suspicious and stuff.

I think that the visualness of our people on the mountain,

the alertness of private citizens

will reduce the impetus of someone to commit a crime.

At this point, no one knew anything. None of the pieces fit.

[Ludlow] David Carpenter was born in 1930

and was raised in San Francisco.

David had this crippling stutter.

He's got an alcoholic father, an abusive mom...

[Besse] She would just beat the heck out of him.

He would come to school just covered with bruises.

[Brook] He was wetting the bed,

he stuttered, he got bullied by the other kids

so he then would take that out on younger kids.

[Ludlow] At the age of 14, he was committed

to the Napa State Hospital for sexual offences.

We don't have details of that because he was a minor

and because that is a record that they keep sealed.

[Keraghosian] By the time he was 17,

he was already charged

with molesting a three-year-old girl.

[Ludlow] At that point, he was sent to the California Youth Authority

where he would remain until the age of 18.

And when he aged out at 18,

they put him in California State Hospital

for the mentally ill for an evaluation.

[Brook] He gets married in 1955 for the first time

to Ellen who's aged 19.

They have three kids.

The marriage had one aspect

that made it impossible to succeed.

He demanded sex three times a night.

Later the doctor said this man had an overwhelming desire,

but it couldn't stay bottled up.

It had to come out.

There's a woman that works

in the same office, an advertising agency,

where he gets a job delivering office mail.

[Ludlow] In 1960, Lois DeAndrade was in her early 30s

and she was acquainted with David Carpenter and his wife.

Lois' daughter is Lisa Rinna

who was a actress most well known for her roles on Melrose Place

andThe Real Housewives.

[Graysmith] Lois had been standing at a bus stop and she sees a car.

It turns out it's David Carpenter

and he's offering her a ride.

"How did you find me?" she says.

"I just drove around and around.

I knew you lived around here somewhere.

Come see the new baby. Come see the wife."

"Um, no. I've got to get to work."

"I'll drive you to work."

[Ludlow] He said, "You know, she'd really love to see you.

You won't be late."

So reluctantly she agreed to go with him.

But he said that his wife was staying with a friend at the Presidio.

[Graysmith] The Presidio, the oldest military base in San Francisco.

He pretends to be lost.

Goes around and around.

And they get deeper into an area

sort of a wooded area, where other people aren't.

[Ludlow] And she said, "All of the sudden he became very strange."

He got very quiet.

He seemed to have this intense look on his face.

Now she's getting anxious and panicking.

And she says, "I really gotta..." You know, she gets out, tries to get out.

[Ludlow] At this point Lois,

she reaches for the door handle

and starts to run out of the car.

He takes off after her and drags her back.

[Graysmith] He's reached into the glove compartment,

out comes ropes and a knife!

And out comes a hammer.

She says, "You're my friend David. What's wrong with you?"

And he says, "I've got this quirk.

I've gotta have sex."

[Ludlow] She notices a movement out of the corner of her eye

and there's a military police vehicle

that's driving in the road.

Just as the officer pulls near the car,

Lois is able to break free

and starts running.

[Graysmith] But he's after her. He's on her.

[Ludlow] He hits Lois on the head.

She falls to the ground.

There's a military policeman. His name is Jewell Hicks.

And he can't really see what's going on.

Lois is down.

She's being beaten with a hammer

over and over and over.

But the next thing, out comes something from Carpenter's pocket.

Carpenter has a pen that fires a gas-operated pellet.

[Ludlow] And he shoots at the officer.

Just grazes him in the face.

But then the officer shoots back at Carpenter

and hits him in the leg and the stomach.

And he's now taken into custody.

[Graysmith] He did tremendous damage to Lois.

They had to reconstruct bones and have brain operation.

I should not even be here. You shouldn't even be here.

I know.

[Ludlow] Lois knew that Carpenter had this persistent stutter,

but what she noticed that was odd

was as soon as he started the attack on her,

he didn't stutter at all.

It was almost like it calmed him.

He was charged with assault and kidnapping

on a military base which is a federal crime.

He is sentenced to 14 years.

And what happens to his marriage?

Instant divorce.

And he's gonna be gone for a long, long time.

But in the end it was not a full 14 years.

He keeps chipping away at this.

He knew how to work the system.

[Keraghosian] The psychologist who examined Carpenter

right as he was being released,

said that whenever this man's under a significant stress,

the only way for him to relieve his stress is to rape the nearest female.

David Carpenter goes on a crime spree.

[Brook] David was raping and burglarizing homes

and kidnapping people and stealing cars...

Total of five women were victimized.

He goes again to prison for another seven years.

[Keraghosian] At this point, you have

not only a previous horrid crime on a woman in 1960,

you had a second spree of sex crimes.

There should have been alarm bells going off.

[Ludlow] He's transferred to Vacaville State Prison

for more mental evaluation.

He's being counselled about sexual problems.

He got help with his stutter...

[Ludlow] He's able to convince his therapist

that he no longer has hostility towards women.

After he was paroled from the state prison,

he was still facing charges

of violating his parole from the original 1960 federal conviction.

So he was then transferred to a federal prison

to serve out that portion of the sentence.

[Graysmith] And he got out of federal prison in 1979.

[Ludlow] Because he actually was paroled from the federal prison,

not the state program.

[Keraghosian] He slipped through the cracks of tracking him.

There were 58,000 people I believe, on the state sex offender registry.

And Carpenter's name was not on that list.

[eerie music playing]

[Graysmith] When Carpenter was released,

it was not really your standard parole.

[Ludlow] He's paroled to a halfway house in San Francisco.

He could pretty much come and go as he pleased.

[Keraghosian] You're allowed to live a pretty ordinary life in lot of ways.

[Ludlow] One of the first things he does is he decides to join the Sierra Club.

And he starts going on hikes with the Sierra Club members.

And Edda Kane was found dead right around this time.

He learned from the prior two incidences

where he kidnapped and raped women.

-Kill your victim. -[gun fires]

Chances of you getting caught are a lot less.

And that's what he did.

[Graysmith] These mistakes, they taught him something.

Don't leave any witnesses.

[sinister music playing]

Welcome back to Very Scary People.

After his release from prison in May of 1979,

David Carpenter spent three months in a halfway house

known as Reality House West.

Then he moved back in with his elderly parents in San Francisco.

Carpenter had everyone convinced

that he had turned his life around.

But the truth was,

he was just getting started.

[Richard T. Wood] When he was released from Reality House,

that's when I assumed authority.

He was assigned to me.

He had a pretty thick file

because it had been documented for the Presidio case,

but not much after that.

[Wood] There was a juvenile record

and there was some sexual stuff in it.

But no details of what the offences were.

He was a really non-descript beige kinda guy

with a terrible stutter.

He's not somebody you noticed.

He came across as somebody who was just sort of a bumbling guy.

But because of his priors,

he was high supervision, so I had to see him once a month.

But I saw him a lot more than that.

Now, some of these meetings, he initiated.

Some I initiated by saying, "David, it's time."

And he never missed a meeting.

[Ludlow] When he first gets out of prison, he gets a job

with a company called Gems of the Golden West.

What they do is, they distribute and sell

souvenir items.

Anything from keys chains to, you know, buttons and things like that.

[Wood] His concern from early on was his future.

Because here he was in his early 50s.

He had no social security,

he had no retirement,

he had no skills.

I never had a problem with this guy.

Unlike many of the other people I supervised.

[eerie music playing]

[Ludlow] The amphitheater on Mt. Tam, it's a clearing

that's ringed by redwood trees.

[Besse] It was really a place where people visited

all during the year,

have picnics up there.

A wonderful mountain home theater

where plays were held.

[Ludlow] And it had these big stone seats that you could sit on

and from there you had a view.

[Keraghosian] Anne Alderson was 26.

She was an animal scientist.

Born and raised in Marin County.

She had just gotten back from some time with the Peace Corps.

And she was just visiting to see her family.

[Ludlow] On this day she decided to go visit her grandmother

who was in a convalescent hospital.

On her way home, she realized it was almost sunset.

And she decided that she was gonna make a quick stop

before heading back home for dinner.

She wanted to go and sit in her favorite spot

and do this meditation.

[Besse] She had hiking clothes in the car,

but she still had her street clothes on.

[Ludlow] Anne was seen by a jogger

who remembered the young blonde woman sitting on the stone seat,

facing the sunset with her eyes closed.

He had thought about warning her.

About the attacks on the mountain

'cause he saw her sitting alone

and she looked pretty vulnerable sitting there with her eyes closed.

But he decided against it.

He didn't want to intrude on her peace.

[Graysmith] And of course, she vanishes.

Then the next thing you know, they're searching.

[Ludlow] It was two days before Anne's body was discovered.

She was found about a quarter mile up a steep craggy slope

from the amphitheater.

She was fully dressed.

[Graysmith] They found her propped up against a grey rock.

She'd been shot in the head.

[Graysmith] She was shot on the side of the temple.

[cameras flashing]

[Ludlow] The investigators determined that she had been

sexually assaulted and then redressed.

She's one half mile from where Edda Kane was murdered.

[eerie music playing]

[Besse] That was the first time we had a homicide with a .38 caliber.

The other gun that had been used on Edda Kane was a .44 caliber.

Normally, a person wouldn't use both kinds of guns.

The .44 was too much,

the knife wasn't working out,

went to the .38.

.38 fired in the woods...

[gun fires]

...it's not that loud.

It's pretty easy to conceal that.

[Besse] He was developing his technique.

He learned from every mistake.

[Ludlow] Investigators determined that all of the murders

had occurred on a weekend,

or it was on a holiday,

like Columbus Day.

And of course the suggestion is that this man had a job,

but when he had a holiday,

he was able to go and do his thing.

[reporter] Rangers and the sheriff's department

closed Mt. Tam State Park to comb the trails for clues.

[Graysmith] The Marin officers, they were stressed.

They had very little manpower.

But, uh, I think at some point,

they actually frightened the Trailside Killer.

And he left Mt. Tam. He went somewhere else

where he wasn't say, so hot.

[soft music playing]

I would say where Mt. Tam is your scenic beauty,

Point Reyes is your rugged beauty.

If you're going to Mt. Tam you simply have to stay on Highway 1

and then keep on going

to Point Reyes.

It's another 20 to 30 minute drive.

It's a very scenic road

traveled by people all the time just for the view.

[Keraghosian] They received two million visitors that year.

This was no remote destination, this was very popular.

[Taini] The ocean is right there.

And that's the fun part about getting up there.

You can see all that.

Puts you in another spot where you wonder, "Who am I on this place called earth?"

[soft music playing]

It was just a gorgeous day.

It was one of the best days you could ever want.

It was one of those days where you could see forever.

[Ludlow] Diane O'Connell was a 22-year-old student.

She had just graduated from Cornell.

And she was visiting friends in Oakland

when they decided to go on a Thanksgiving week hike.

[Keraghosian] Diane O'Connell was hiking with two of her friends

on the Sky Trail at Point Reyes.

But they weren't hiking together.

They were hiking about 100 yards apart in a single file.

The Sky Trail has these really narrow switchbacks.

So one of her friends was in the lead,

Diane was in the middle position

and then the third woman brought up the rear.

They couldn't really see each other,

but they had planned to meet up at the end.

One of Diane's friends encountered this man in the bushes.

[sinister music playing]

[Ludlow] And her first thought was that maybe he was urinating in the bushes,

which she found very odd.

[Keraghosian] And she quickly got away from him

and kept going.

[Ludlow] When they got to the trailhead,

the first girl got there first of course.

Diane was in the middle so she should have gotten there second.

But instead the friend who was in third position

reached the trailhead before Diane.

"Where's Diane?"

"She's not here."

"Well, you must've passed her."

They go back looking for her.

They reported her missing to the park ranger about 5:00 p.m.

Also on the trail that day was a 25-year-old woman named Shauna May.

And she was walking in the opposite direction

of Diane and her friends. So she would have passed the trio of hikers.

Shauna was also to meet a friend at the end of the trailhead

when she finished her hike.

[music increases in tempo]

So now park rangers were searching for two women who had gone missing.

[Besse] I was at home and I got paged.

So I called back and they told me we've got these two missing girls

at Point Reyes.

And we're gonna call out all the search teams.

The next morning when I arrived at that parking lot,

I could hardly find a parking place.

they had a search and rescue group, the rangers had called them out.

We had 50 people or more

going through all those trails.

[Taini] We were given a briefing.

We were told as much as they could tell us,

that they knew about where were they on this trail.

We wanted to get out there and get it done, you know, save them.

Everyone knows time is of the essence.

The connection to the Marin County killings

wasn't in my mind. I mean, that was... that's a different place,

millions of people over there.

This was understandably easy to get lost.

I figured we'd find them pretty quickly.

So we divided up,

and we did what was called a hasty search.

The trick is to move the line

at the same time more or less. I walked about

maybe 15 minutes at the most.

And, uh, I just saw a strip of white pretty far off.

And I said,

"Oh, that's something. I mean, maybe that's some litter or something like that."

You know, so I went closer and closer and closer and closer.

And it was off the trail, 50 yards maybe.

And it was the, uh, the edge of these tennis shoes.

I got close enough, I saw it and smelt it.

Two people are dead, down.

I flagged it really quickly,

ran to my buddy

and called it in.

I said, "Yeah, two people.

And they're not the ones we're looking for."

[sinister music playing]

They were dead

for a long time.

They were decomposed pretty badly.

[Taini] This was a crime.

It looked like they were executed.

The only thing that I could tell was that size wise

looked like it was a male and female.

I didn't see any backpacks around.

I didn't see any other stuff.

Who did this? Why?

It stunned everybody because they weren't even aware

that these two were missing.

[reporter] The coroner released the names of the couple.

18-year-old Cynthia Moreland of Cotati, California,

and 19-year-old Richard Stowers,

a coastguardsman stationed in Marin County.

They left for the park on October 11th and were never seen alive again.

This couple had been reported missing by their families six weeks earlier.

[Besse] They were killed a couple of days before Anne Alderson.

[Taini] Meanwhile there was some activity happening down below the same trail.

They discovered the bodies.

Fresh bodies.

[Graysmith] Shauna May and Diane O'Connell

were shot.

That one to me was probably one of the most,

powerful crime scenes.

You realize, here's these two women

probably one was captured

and the other one walks into it and gets taken prisoner.

[Besse] Shauna May just happened on the scene,

probably maybe heard O'Connell scream and went to her assistance.

And she became the second victim.

The two women were found nude, side by side, face down.

Their clothes were in a little pile.

[Besse] We believe that he strangled O'Connell

with a wire.

He let May watch him do this.

And then he raped May

and shot her in the back of the head.

[gun fires]

I just can't begin to articulate the kind of terror

that must have struck in her heart.

And then he shot Diane O'Connell...

[gun fires]

...to make sure she was dead.

This was so deliberate.

Just... [exhales]

This is beyond belief.

That's four bodies

on the same trail.

This is like a predator.

[reporter] Deputies plan to conduct an aerial search

using infrared photography

to locate any other bodies that might be in the area.

This is where the alarm bells really rang.

That we have a crisis on our hands here.

[reporter] The Marin County sheriff's department

has reissued its strong warning

for hikers to use extreme caution

in the Point Reyes and Mt. Tamalpais Parks north of San Francisco.

Of course, all the bodies were taken for autopsy.

They found .38 caliber bullets in all of them.

All the bullets and ballistics matched.

The same gun was also linked to Anne Alderson.

[Besse] That really made it a serial murder case,

the only serial murderer Marin has ever had.

[new anchor] Northern California authorities are still searching

for the man believed responsible for seven brutal murders

in remote wilderness areas.

The fear level in Marin County now is through the roof.

[Besse] After the four homicides at Point Reyes,

instead of the parking lot being filled every weekend,

I mean, there was hardly anybody there.

People were scared to death to go into the camp grounds.

[Keraghosian] There were signs posted on trails

in bright orange saying, "Please do not hike alone."

And it really sent a chill through the area.

[reporter] A large contingent of volunteer deputies

will be patrolling the trails this weekend.

[Graysmith] It completely changed the region.

Where will he go next? What's gonna happen?

[Keraghosian] He'd shown that he was clearly targeting women,

but he was not afraid to kill a man

if he happens to be accompanying one.

[gun fires]

This was a demented individual.

[reporter] Sheriff's deputies had feared they might find

still more victims in this rugged wilderness north of San Francisco.

But no bodies were discovered in the Wednesday search.

We established the 24-hour hotline for tips.

And we got a lot of tips that way.

[phone ringing]

The FBI told us, "We'll give you all help you need."

And they did.

My division went from 12 people

to 32 people within a week.

We had more people than space.

John Douglas was one of the original FBI profilers,

and he was brought in.

[Besse] At that time, profiling was relatively new.

And Douglas spent a couple of days with us going over all the reports.

[Douglas] I told them it would come down to having low self-esteem.

The low self esteem is there's something about him,

there's something wrong with him.

It's some crippling problem in his life.

[Besse] And one of the key things that he said

was that this guy probably stutters.

[Keraghosian] There was a team of three psychologists

who provided a profile for authorities.

[reporter] Here's what the psychologists theorize about the Marin County killer.

The suspect is believed to be deteriorating physically and mentally.

He feels unclean and is suffering from hyperventilation.

Hot flashes, small anxiety attacks,

and his hands may tremble.

[Wood] When he was working for Gems of the Golden West

we'd go have lunch together.

"Anything going on, David?" "No."

"How's Mom and Dad? Things going okay?

Anything you wanna talk about?" "No." "Okay." Bam! That was it.

I'd met the people at the Gems of the Golden West.

They liked David a great deal.

And he was a good worker.

I had been in his home.

I had met his parents numerous times.

He felt some responsibility

to take care of his elderly parents.

"David, you sure you wanna live there?

I mean, this is like, lot of ghosts here."

"Oh, no, I need to do this."

He said, "I've resolved all this stuff in therapy."

He says, "I got my therapy and I never felt better in my life."

[Wood] Part of his parole conditions

were he had to stay within the jurisdiction

of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Which is like 13 California counties

stretching from Monterey

up the coast to Del Norte at the top of California.

He had the opportunity to work in a lot of different areas

and meet a lot of different people.

[Besse] The parole people said

he should not work around women.

So what's the first job he gets?

Gems of the Golden West.

Where there's only a couple of guys working there, the rest are all women.

[Wood] This was a guy who had a stable

living situation,

stable job,

always made his appointments.

And I saw this guy over 50 times

in the year that I supervised him.

I was spending a lot of time with this guy.

And he was compliant.

On the surface.

But I saw what he wanted me to see.

[Graysmith] He was extremely clever.

To everybody, including his parole officer,

he was doing great.

He was a tremendous success.

These hideous crimes were being committed.

[gun fires]

There was no telling what he might do next.

He had this secret life.

He just had a way of playing people.

[Wood] He used the stuttering to manipulate

to get people to sympathize with him.

Physically he seemed non-threatening,

that was his biggest weapon.

This power that he's after, it's a hatred...

of women.

[Besse] We always said, if he ever kills someone he's connected with,

we'll have something to go on.

[Wood] At some point, I looked at him, he looked at me,

I knew and he knew that I knew.

I'm looking into the eyes of someone who has done really horrible things.

[gunshots]

[Graysmith] This guy knew how to make people do what he wanted them to do.

He's a very brilliant madman.

[gun fires]

David Carpenter appeared to be an awkward, mild-mannered, middle-aged man,

incapable of committing the brutal crimes he would later be accused of.

But that all changed when one of the Trailside victims survived.

And a clear picture of the killer emerged.

That's in part two of "The Trailside Killer."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg. Thanks for watching.

Good night.

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