The Murder of Rosa Maria Vasquez, May 1973

Rosa Vasquez was born on August 14, 1952 in Texas. According to one contemporary source, she may have grown up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

By 1973, Rosa, a 20-year-old Latina woman, was living at 834 Bush St in San Francisco, California along with at least one female roommate. She was working as a keypunch operator at the Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco.

Rosa was white and Hispanic. According to one source, at the time of her death she was 4'9 and 106 lbs, with brown eyes, medium-length black hair, and pierced ears. It is unknown what she was wearing when she was last seen alive.

Rosa was last seen by her roommate, Frances Almazan, when she left their residence on Saturday, May 26, 1973 for the Memorial Day weekend. One source — an SFPD bulletin published in August of that year — indicated that Rosa was last seen alive on May 28th.

Photo from the 1975 CA DOJ report.

On the morning of Tuesday, May 29, 1973, the nude body of a young woman was found in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The corpse was found either in or sprawled on top of some bushes about 200 ft into the park from Arguello Blvd. Investigators believed that she had been thrown from a car into the bushes about seven or twelve feet off of Conservatory Drive, behind the Fuchsia Garden.

At the time the body was described as that of a white girl in her early 20s with brown hair and dark eyes. COD and identification were not immediately established. A postmortem photo was published in the San Francisco Examiner on May 30th in hopes of identifying the young woman.

That same day, Rosa's roommate Frances called police to report her missing. She was put in touch with homicide inspector Dave Toschi, who then had Frances come in to identify the body. On June 1st, it was announced that the body was officially identified as Rosa's.

Rosa was nude when she was discovered, and there was no clothing found nearby. The only personal item of Rosa's to be at the scene was her bra, which was wrapped around her neck. She had been strangled to death. Initial reports indicated that she had been dead "overnight or longer" when she was found. Rosa had also been sexually molested: "semen was located in her vagina, rectum, and mouth."

In 1975, Inspector John McKenna of San Francisco's homicide bureau, "described in awe the finding of" Rosa's body:

"The thing that hit me about Vasquez was that the guy must have been an awfully powerful person to have thrust her this far into the shrubs. She was seven feet off the road and it was as if she had sailed through the air and just came sprawling down."

Rosa's murder was investigated by SFPD, case number 73042926.

A Possible Series

After Rosa's murder, three other girls young women were found strangled and dumped in public locations in San Francisco: Yvonne Quilantang, Angela Thomas, and Nancy Gidley. After Nancy's death, a spokesman for police stated at the time, "We're treating these cases as individuals. However, the similarities are sufficient that we cannot exclude the possibility we have one person involved."

All four victims — Rosa Vasquez, Yvonne Quilantang, Angela Thomas, and Nancy Gidley — were young women and girls who were found in public places in San Francisco, nude and strangled or smothered. There were no clothing articles at any of the scenes, and LE believed they had all been killed at a different location before being dumped where they were found. Several of them had "signs of minor injuries seemingly approximal to the time of death." All four also had connections to the military: in Rosa's case, it was her employment at Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio.

On August 8, 1973, Chief of Police Donald M Scott of the San Francisco PD published an information bulletin regarding the four homicides, listing the similarities and summaries of each. The bulletin ordered that "All patrol units should pay particular attention to schoolyard areas during night watches and special attention given during weekends and holidays." It also provided contact info for anyone with information.

By November 1973, the head of the homicide detail stated that no suspects had been apprehended in any of the four cases, which were believed to be related at the time. None of the four San Francisco cases were ever solved, including Rosa's.

1975 CA DOJ Report

In February 1975 the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ) issued a special report titled "Unsolved Female Homicides: An Analysis of a Series of Related Murders in California and Western America." The report indicated that, "After evaluating more than one hundred murder cases involving female victims, it appears that thirteen of these crimes" — with fourteen victims total — "were committed by the same person. Each of the thirteen cases occurred in Northern California within the past five years. As of this writing, the suspect remains unknown and the cases unsolved" (pp4 of pdf).

The report summarized all of the murders, noted observations and similarities, created a suspect profile, and included a map of all of the cases. The murders were:

The six then-known cases — with seven victims — of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders (1972-1973): Maureen Sterling & Yvonne Weber, Kim Wendy Allen, Lori Lee Kursa, Carolyn Davis, and Theresa Walsh.
The four 1973 San Francisco victims: Rosa Vasquez, Yvonne Quilantang, Angela Thomas, and Nancy Gidley.
The 1969 murder of Leona LaRell Roberts
The 1970 murder of Marie Antoinette Anstey
The 1974 murder of Donna Maria Braun
And the 1971 murder of Linda Susan Dudley

It should be noted that all fourteen California victims indicated in the report were white, with the exception of Yvonne Quilantang, who was Filipina. San Francisco victim Rosa Vasquez was the only Hispanic victim.

The report's summary of Rosa's case is as follows:

"On May 29 1973, the nude body of Rosa Vasquez was discovered lying in some shrubbery in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. She had apparently been murdered elsewhere and dumped at the location where she was found. All of the victim's clothing was missing except for her bra, which was found around her neck. She had been sexually molested, as semen was found in her vagina, rectum, and mouth. The cause of death was listed as strangulation."

Also included in the report was a possible out-of-state connection involving the disappearances of eight young women in Washington and Oregon since January 1974. All of the out-of-state victims are either confirmed or suspected victims of serial killer Ted Bundy.