A Serial Killer Known As 'The Doodler' Is Likely Still At Large

The telephone call to the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) came in about 1:30 a.m. on January 27, 1974. “I believe there might be a dead person … on the beach,” the young man said before hanging up.

That call marked the beginning of one of the most challenging and long-lasting serial killer investigations in American history. The case has never been solved, though police have one suspect who’s still alive and living in the Bay Area. 

The SFPD’s failure to charge anyone in the series of at least six brutal murders may be partly due to the homophobic tenor of the era: Even in liberal San Francisco, gay men lived in fear of violent gangs, police harassment and social ostracism. 

Three prominent victims—including a famous entertainer—who survived the suspected killer’s attack have thus far refused to testify because they still fear being outed as gay. They all came to know the suspect by his nickname, “the Doodler,” for his habit of sketching portraits of his victims before attacking them, usually by stabbing them repeatedly with a knife. 

Minutes after the January 1974 phone call to police, the body of 50-year-old Gerald Cavanagh was discovered on Ocean Beach with 16 stab wounds in what police described as a “rage killing.” 

Cavanagh was a closeted gay man living alone in the Haight-Ashbury district. His gruesome murder wasn’t widely reported in local newspapers, and observers believe his death wasn’t thoroughly investigated because police often dismissed crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. This was in the early days of the gay liberation movement, when cops routinely raided gay bars, and cross-dressing was illegal. 

That didn’t change much even after a second victim, Joseph Stevens, 27, was discovered five months later in Golden Gate Park. Locally famous as a drag performer named “Jae” Stevens, his lifeless body was found with multiple stab wounds and a face beaten so badly his family was barely able to recognize him.

Two months later, the corpse of Claus Christmann, 31, was discovered on Ocean Beach near where Cavanagh’s body had been found. Once again, a rage killing had resulted in 15 stab wounds and a nearly decapitated victim. Police believed the spot was chosen because tall sand dunes and noisy ocean surf would muffle any screams. 

Another reason this string of murders perhaps wasn’t a police priority was because the Bay Area at the time was the epicenter for a number of crimes at least as shocking as those of the Doodler. The Zodiac Killer had by the 1970s murdered at least five (and likely more) people, primarily in the Bay Area. 

In 1974, heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which engaged in a bloody shootout with police that left six people dead that same year. And a San Francisco group known as the “Zebra Killers” were stalking and murdering people in a racially motivated crime spree that resulted in 15 deaths and eight wounded victims until their arrests in 1974. 

Additionally, “[t]he very concept of serial murder originates in the ’70s,” criminologist Mike Rustigan told the San Francisco Chronicle. Most murders were committed by people who knew their victims, but starting in the late 1960s, he explained, “suddenly you have killers…who are targeting victims for no apparent motivation. I mean, in other words, total strangers.”

By the summer of 1974, gay men were becoming aware that someone was stalking their community with murderous intent. Men in the Castro district started warning each other to be on the lookout for a man who liked to doodle portraits of men on cocktail napkins as a way of introducing himself. 

The SFPD homicide investigators turned their evidence over to a couple of street-savvy cops, Rotea Gilford and Earl Sanders, who had helped bust the Zebra Killers in May 1974.

In May 1975, the body of Navy veteran Fredrick Capin, 32, was found on Ocean Beach. He had been seen earlier at Bojangles, a popular gay club. The following month, Harald Gullberg’s mutilated corpse was discovered at Lands End, another oceanfront spot known as a site for gay hookups. His body, the fifth linked to the Doodler, had been severely battered and was covered with flies and maggots.

The next victim of the Doodler was luckier than most: He survived his stabbing. But “the diplomat,” as he became known, was a member of the Swedish diplomatic corps. Even as recently as 2021, he remained fearful of being associated with a murderer of gay men. He was able, however, to provide police with an accurate description of his attacker.

Two other men were able to provide police with descriptions that matched the one given by the diplomat, but they were similarly reluctant to go on record as potential victims. Based on the men’s descriptions, police developed a composite sketch showing a young Black man wearing a dark Navy-style knit cap.

Police now believe the Doodler struck a sixth victim who was not originally linked to the serial killer. Warren Andrews was found badly beaten at Lands End in April 1975; the 52-year-old lawyer died of his injuries seven weeks later. 

Police—including Gilford and Sanders—and amateur investigators have continued to chase leads since the 1970s, but despite their best efforts, even their leading suspect is living freely in the Bay Area. This is due in large part to the reluctance of the diplomat, the well-known entertainer and the third survivor to testify against their attacker in court, despite all three identifying the same suspect in a police lineup. 

Many gay men, like activist and politician Harvey Milk, who lived through the homophobic abuse that was common in the 1970s, appreciate the victims’ reluctance to testify. Before his 1978 assassination, Milk once stated, “I understand their position. I respect the pressure society has put on them.” 

In 2023, the SFPD released an updated sketch of what the Doodler would look like today. Additionally, the reward for information leading to an arrest, originally set at $100,000, has been increased to $250,000. The case remains an open investigation; police have refused to release the name of the primary suspect due to concerns that it may hinder their ongoing investigation. The Doodler, it seems, is still out there.