The Murder of Rosa Linda Zuniga, July 1971

Rosa Linda Zuniga was born on January 22, 1953 in San Antonio, TX, the oldest of four children born to parents Leonardo Cortez Zuniga and Maria Yrenia "Irene" Cantu. Her first name(s) may have been Linda Rosa, Rosalinda, or Rosalind; I am using the most common version I could find, which was also used in the TX birth index on Ancestry.

Both sides of the Mexican-American family had deep roots in Texas, spanning all the way back to when the land was still a part of the Republic of Mexico. By 1959, the Zuniga family moved to Watsonville, Santa Cruz County, CA. The parents split up sometime afterward, with Leonardo moving to Ohio and all four children living with their mother. Soon afterward Irene remarried to a man named Jose "Joe" Gamez (occasionally misspelled as Gomez).

Rosa Linda graduated from Watsonville High School in June 1971. By July of that year she was taking classes at Cabrillo College, a community college in Aptos, Santa Cruz County, while also working as a live-in housekeeper in San Jose. According to a very brief and blunt police case summary from 1974, Rosa Linda's school friends were interviewed after her death, and they "characterized her as a non-virgin, frequent hitchhiker who often attended parties where alcohol and drugs were used."

At the time of her death Rosa Linda was 18 years old, 5'1, and 135 lbs. She had black hair and brown eyes. The aforementioned 1974 report described her as "MFA," meaning Mexican female adult. 

Disappearance

Rosa Linda had Saturdays and Sundays off from work. She called her parents on the night of Friday, July 9, 1971. She told them that she couldn't afford a bus ticket home, and didn't want to borrow money from her employers. At the time she was working as a live-in housekeeper for Mrs Lola Bell Jarvis, a fifty-year-old white woman, and Lola's husband at their home at 1300 East Williams in San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA.

Rosa Linda was last seen alive by her employer, Lola Jarvis, at the latter's residence on Saturday, July 10, 1971 between 9:15 and 10:00am. She was planning to hitchhike to her home in Watsonville. While most newspaper reports list the Zuniga-Gamezes' address as 29 Ninth St, a 1974 case summary indicates that they instead lived at 23 Ninth St. Rosa Linda never arrived at her intended destination. 

A few hours later, two children found Rosa Linda's wallet while bicycling on a dirt road near the intersection of Highway 1 and Larkin Valley Rd in Santa Cruz. The wallet was found on a hill, and still contained Rosa Linda's drivers license. While contemporary newspaper articles report that the wallet was found only 75 yd from where Rosa Linda's body was later discovered, the aforementioned 1974 case summary states that it was found "several miles from the scene."

Using the information on Rosa Linda's drivers license, the two children were able to return the wallet to her parents' home in Watsonville that same day. 

Rosa Linda was reported missing to San Jose Police on Tuesday, July 13, 1971. The reason for the lapse in time was never indicated; it is possible that her family believed they had to wait more than 48 hours to make a report.

The missing person report was dropped by SJPD when it was learned that Rosa Linda was 18; at the time, the department would not accept reports for missing adults until after five days had elapsed unless there was reason to suspect foul play. Another report was never filed. Authorities in Watsonville and Santa Cruz were never notified of her disappearance. The original San Jose PD Missing Persons Report was number M43666.

Discovery

On Monday, July 26, 1971, a nineteen or twenty-year-old white man from Aptos named Steven Laffrenzen Smith was training his pet falcon in a field about 0.5 mi from the intersection of Highway 1 and Larkin Valley Rd, near San Andreas Rd, in Santa Cruz. At either approximately 5:45pm or about 6:30pm, the bird perched in a dense pine tree and refused to return to its owner. One clipping indicates that the bird was distracted by a nest of mice in or near the tree.

When Steven went to investigate, he discovered a sheet lying on the ground beneath overhanging branches of the tree where the falcon was perched. To his horror, Steven noticed a bare human foot sticking out from underneath the sheet. He quickly alerted authorities to his discovery.

Investigators arrived at the scene, which was in a rugged, hilly field in the area of La Selva Beach, about halfway between Aptos and Watsonville. The scene has also been described by sources as being in a rural area gully approximately 275 yds off of Larkin Valley Rd between the highway and San Andreas Rd, "which parallel in this area," near a flood control dam.

When detectives removed the sheet, they discovered the body of a female teenage murder victim. Exposed portions of the corpse were in advanced stages of decomposition. The body was swiftly identified as that of Rosa Linda.

She was fully clothed, wearing white Levi's and a white blouse. The red shoes that she was wearing when last seen were either missing, or were laying near — but not on — the body; sources differ. Her blue overnight case/bag and its contents were found strewn near the body. Her brown leather suede-like purse, as well as any money she may have had with her, could not be found.

Rosa Linda was found lying face-up. Her hands were tied behind her back with a multi-colored scarf or bandana that was believed to belong to her. According to the 1974 case summary, "Each hand was independently tied with the ends of the bandana, rather than the bandana wrapped around the hands and the ends secured together." 

There was a large wound on the left side of her neck; an autopsy on July 27th determined that she had been stabbed, possibly with a pocket knife. Both her jugular and her trachea had been cut. The stab wound was approximately 0.75 to 1 inch in length and 3 inches deep. She died from hemorrhage and asphyxia.

On July 28th newspapers reported that later that same week further medical examination would be performed in order to determine if Rosa Linda had been sexually assaulted. However, the results of this were never made public. According to the 1974 case summary, whether or not Rosa Linda had been sexually assaulted was "Undetermined, but suspected by [the] pathologist." 

The 1974 case summary also states that, "Examination of the victim's blood showed an ethyl alcohol concentration of 0.12%." For reference, the current legal limit for blood alcohol content is 0.08. Furthermore, investigators believe that Rosa Linda died on July 10th, the day she was last seen. 

According to contemporary articles, it was further established that she was murdered at the location where she was found. However, the 1974 case summary states that the scene of death was "Undetermined, [but] believed killed elsewhere and left where found." 

It was reported by the press that on Wednesday, July 28, 1971, LE were in San Jose, where Rosa Linda worked, talking to her friends and acquaintances. That same day, investigators learned of the discovery of her wallet on July 10th and its return to her family.

Rosa Linda's murder was investigated by the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Department, case number 71-7222. The Santa Cruz District Attorney case number is/was 74-828. 

Rosa Linda was buried in Watsonville Catholic Cemetery. Her funeral was held on Friday, July 30, 1971. There were no further newspaper articles about her or her case for almost two years.

The Kemper connection

In the spring of 1973, several newspapers reported a possible connection between Rosa Linda Zuniga's murder and those perpetrated by Edmund Kemper, the then-newly-caught "Coed Killer." Kemper killed ten victims total, four of whom he knew personally: his paternal grandparents in August 1964, and his mother and her best friend in April 1973. The other six victims were killed from May 1972 to February 1973.

Kemper lived with his mother — an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) — in Aptos, Santa Cruz County, CA in 1971 before eventually moving in with a friend in Alameda. All of his 1972-1973 murders occurred in the counties of Santa Cruz and Alameda. One of the victims, Aiko Koo, was a 15-year-old female high school student, while the remaining five were female college students ranging from 18 to 23 years old. Of the college students, two were picked up together in Berkeley, Alameda County, one on the Cabrillo College campus, and two together on the UCSC campus.

Rosa Linda's murder is similar to those committed by Kemper in that the victim was an 18-year-old female attending Cabrillo College who was seemingly randomly murdered in Santa Cruz County. Kemper also employed various modes of killing, including stabbing. If Rosa Linda was in fact a victim of his, then she would have been his first since the murder of his grandparents in 1964.

However, there are far more differences than similarities. All but one of the aforementioned victims was picked up by Kemper on a college campus; Rosa Linda was not. Rosa Linda's killer did not decapitate her, and Kemper did not tie up his victims. It should also be noted that of Kemper's student victims, two were East Asian, while the remaining four were white and non-Hispanic. Rosa Linda was Mexican-American.

Furthermore, Kemper's 1972-3 murders always involved four separate locations: (1) where the victim was picked up, (2) the location of the murder itself, often remote, (3) Kemper's apartment or his mother's residence, where he would decapitate and commit necrophilic acts with the corpses, and (4) dump site(s) where the bodies were disposed of. Rosa Linda, on the other hand, had made it most of the way home from San Jose when she was taken to the field where she was murdered and left there.

After confessing and turning himself in to the police, Kemper was — and always has been — very forthright when interviewed by authorities, freely sharing details of all of his murders. In early May 1973, newspapers reported that, upon questioning, Kemper told investigators that "he had nothing to do with the death of [...] Rosalinda [sic] Zuniga."

Since then, Rosa Linda's case has been absent from newspapers and public discussion. It seems that Kemper has not been questioned specifically about Rosa Linda since the spring of 1973.

Conclusion

I found out about this case from a post in the Zodiac Killer Ciphers forum from August 2013, in which a user posited Rosa Linda as a possible victim of the Zodiac, noting the similarities to other potential victims. For this reason I tagged this post as "Connection"; this decision was solidified by my later discovery of the suspicion on Kemper.

Rosa Linda's case has also been mentioned in a 2020 post from another amateur sleuth-run site that I use to find related cases: the Murder Incorp. blog, which compiles sources about crimes in CA from the 1960s and 70s that either have been recently confirmed to still be, or the blogger suspects to be, unsolved. Special focus is put on cases that bear resemblance and/or occurred somewhat in proximity to confirmed and possible EARONS and Zodiac crimes.

Rosa Linda is not featured on the City of Santa Cruz Cold Cases website nor the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department’s Unsolved Homicides page. The last time her murder was reported by the press to be unsolved was in May 1973 when Ed Kemper was ruled out as a suspect.

In 1974 Detective Robert Koppel of the Seattle PD was in communication with various LE agencies in California — including the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and the Santa Cruz County District Attorney — regarding unsolved female homicides and disappearances. Within these communications, Rosa Linda's murder is referred to as unsolved, both on June 21, 1974 and on August 7, 1974. This latter date is the last time that I could find where Rosa Linda's murder is officially reported to be unsolved. Furthermore, in a report among the communications from June 19, 1974, it is stated that there were no suspects in Rosa Linda's murder at the time.

On February 2, 2013, a Facebook account titled "Photos by Sam Vestal" — chronicling the work of the aforementioned Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay Area newspaper photographer — posted about the Santa Cruz County murders of the early 1970s perpetrated by serial killers Ed Kemper and Herbert Mullin, as well as mass murderer John Linley Frazier (perpetrator of the Ohta family massacre); photos from the Mullin case were included. Among other comments, a user named Ellen Scurich commented on that post, "That was a scary & sad time. Did they even find who murdered Rosie Zuniga in 1973 ?" 

Ellen was a student at Watsonville High School who was the same age as Rosa Linda's younger sister Maria. It should be noted that Rosa Linda actually died in 1971, not 1973, though it is likely that the Facebook user simply misremembered. Either way, it seems to imply that her murder was never solved.

Sources

FindAGrave

Santa Cruz Sentinel 7/27/71, 7/28/71, 7/29/71

San Francisco Examiner 7/27/71

Porterville Recorder 7/27/71

Solano Napa-News Chronicle 7/28/71

Santa Rosa Press Democrat 5/1/73

Santa Cruz County DA files sent to King County PD, pages 1-2 and 5-6  

Edmund Kemper Wikipedia

ZK Ciphers forum post, + two mentions

Facebook post

Murder Incorp. blog