Add The California Post on Google A Bay Area cold case chief investigator said he thinks he’s identified the 1970s killer of six gay men known as “The Doodler,” and believes the man could still be arrested.
Daniel Cunningham, the leader of San Francisco’s Police Department’s cold case unit told the San Francisco Standard he believes the suspected serial killer is living in East Bay as the department offers $250,000 for tips leading to his arrest fifty years later.
Police believe at least six gay men were killed by “The Doodler” in or near Ocean Beach in the 1970s.
The victims, Warren Andrews, Frederick Capin, Gerald Cavanaugh, Klaus Christmann, Harald Gullberg and Joseph Stevens were killed by the suspected serial killer between 1974 and 1975.
Investigators named the suspect after discovering the killer lured his victims by promising to sketch them at gay bars and then inviting them to isolated places for a hookup where he would stab them in “rage killings,” the Standard reported.
As part of the investigation, police found two more victims who survived a stabbing by “The Doodler” in 1975 at the Fox Plaza apartment where they lived.
One of the victims told police the suspect-who said he was a cartoonist-was doodling while conversing with him in a late-night diner. The victim ended up inviting the suspect back to his apartment where he was stabbed, per SFPD.
The victim never returned to his apartment. He and other surviving victims were able to give a description to police that led to a forensic sketch of the suspect that was developed in 1975.
“Investigators believed all the victims were targeted because they were gay, white adult males, and the victims met the suspect shortly before they were killed in isolated coastal locations,” police said in a recent statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Victims described the alleged attacker as a handsome black man in his 20’s. One of the survivors identified his attacker and police brought a man in for questioning.
“Once this person was made aware that they were a suspect in these murders, the murders stopped,” Cunningham told the outlet.
Now, fifty years later, police said the same man that was questioned in 1975 is still a person of interest in the multiple killings. Police believe the prime suspect is still alive, in his 70s and living in the East Bay.
Cunningham believes he spoke to this suspected killer when he reopened the case in 2018 and brought him in for questioning. Sometime later, the two men once again were face to face on an unrelated case.
“He came out of his residence and looked at me, recognized me,” Cunningham said.
He said the two made eye contact and he’s never seen the person again.
“I can tell you for sure, I feel pretty confident that he is one and the same person who attacked two men at the Fox Plaza,” the investigator told the outlet.
In 2023, SFPD announced it had increased the reward for information leading to The Doodler’s arrest from $200,000 to $250,000, the maximum the department can offer.
The California Post reached out to the department for further comment.
