By David in TN
Fri, Apr 1, 2022 4:36 p.m.
1972 Victim of Zebra Killers Identified
A small California newspaper (Half Moon Bay Review) had an article a few days ago about the March 1972 murder of 19-year-old Linda Diane Uhlig.
After mentioning another cold case solved, it said:
“Those with an even longer memory hope to one day hear similar success in solving the riddle of the death of Linda Diane Uhlig, who was brutally killed and dumped in a Coastside drainage ditch 50 years ago this week.”
“Uhlig was 19 at the time of her murder. She had been an honor roll student at Colby High School, in Colby, Wis., before moving to an apartment on 29th Street in San Francisco where she was able to live on her own upon graduation. She landed a job with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.”
“Her new life in the Bay Area didn’t last long. Her mutilated body was found by a worker on March 28, 1972, on the side of Purisima Creek Road, south of Half Moon Bay.”
“Upon arrival, investigators found Uhlig’s remains in a ditch alongside the rural road. Her skull had been smashed and, according to press reports at the time, it appeared the assailant tried and failed to decapitate her, perhaps with a machete or ax. Just as macabre, newspaper reports say that her torso had been cut deeply, perhaps with a pocketknife, in what a Sheriff’s official at the time said might be an attempt to cut her in half.”
“Investigators noted that a pool of blood was found about 30 yards away. They theorized she was killed elsewhere, perhaps dragged from a vehicle and left by the side of the road.”
“They noted that she had $180 with her when she left for her brother’s house three days earlier. The money was gone.”
[N.S.: Their clean-cut-murderers reputation notwithstanding, the noi killers also engaged in robbery, burglary, and rape.]
“The San Francisco Examiner noted similarities between the murder of Uhlig and 21-year-old Kenneth Alan Holden, of Mountain View, who was killed with an ax two months earlier. His ‘badly hacked body’ was found near the Almaden Dam in San Jose. The Holden murder was later blamed on the perpetrators of the California Zebra killings, which were racially motivated serial killings. Four men were convicted of 15 deaths, but some, including former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto, were convinced the group was responsible for as many as 73 murders, including that of Holden, in the early 1970s.”
[N.S.: Mayor Alioto was working from a list put together by California State law enforcement official Dick Whalley, which a family member of an early “Zebra” victim who was not cited as an noi victim at the time or later, was kind enough to hunt down and send this writer.]
“There was never an arrest for the murder of Linda Uhlig. Current San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said one of his inspectors reviewed the case file with a Sheriff’s sergeant after receiving an inquiry from the Review.”
“‘There was never any suspect arrested and the case was hence never prosecuted,’ Wagstaffe said in an email to the Review. He added that the new questions had caused the Sheriff’s Office cold cases unit to take a renewed interest in the case.”
“‘Murder victims should never be forgotten,’ he said.”
“‘Uhlig wasn’t. At her five-year high school reunion, Colby classmates held a moment of silence and placed a plant on her grave in the Green Grove Cemetery in Colby. A family member declined to speak about the case for this story.”
David in TN: No major news outlet picked up this story. Linda Uhlig was living in San Francisco. Her mutilated body was found 25 miles to the south. It was the standard MO. Abduct a victim off the street, torture and murder, followed by dumping the body somewhere.
Kenneth Holden was on the list of victims previously posted at NSU/WEJB. These killings took place a year-and-a-half before the 1973-74 San Francisco Zebra Murders.
>Almaden Dam
ReplyDelete>Kenneth Alan Holden
As a kid I hiked in the park and around the dam many times, including with my dog -- I do not recall the Holden case.
>Diane Uhlig
Or the Uhlig case.
I remember the Zebra killings.
But I remember even more so the Zodiac killings, which cast an eerie pall over the SFBA -- a guy who was the office manager at a company I worked for (in Richmond CA), Gareth Penn, wrote a book about the Zodiac killings:
Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981
Gareth has his own Wikipedia page:
Gareth Penn
I talked to him about the case and his (rather abstruse) findings/theories a number of times -- I still have a like-new copy of his book -- per the AMZN link above, it seems to be a rarity, selling for hundreds of dollars today -- maybe I should try to sell my copy on Ebay.
She had been an honor roll student at Colby High School, in Colby, Wis., before moving to an apartment on 29th Street in San Francisco where she was able to live on her own upon graduation.
Wow, that would be absolutely impossible today of course: SF is far too expensive -- although when I was working in Richmond I had friends/colleagues who lived in Haight-Ashbury, so I spent time there, although I was never a fan of big cities (I grew up in the suburbs).
The city, state, and whole country have all changed so much since then -- thinking about what has been lost, it is an absolute tragedy.
Correct. The bloodier and more gory the crime the more approving it was to the NOI. It showed you had "balls" and the guts to do what was necessary. Killing a woman or a small child in particular got you extra points. Cutting off a head or making an attempt to as was done with Quita Hague.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87829022/quita-hague
Never forgotten.