mar 24, 1972 - Linda Diane Uhlig HOMICIDE & ROBBERY

Description:

Linda Diane Uhlig was born on November 12, 1952, in Colby, Clark County, Wisconsin. She was one of seven living children at the time. Soon after graduating high school in 1970, Linda got a job at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. in San Francisco. At the time of her death she was living in an apartment at 528 29th Ave in San Francisco. One of her siblings also lived in CA, while the rest, along with their parents, still lived in WI.

On the afternoon of Friday, March 24, 1972, Linda cashed her paycheck of about $180 in SF, and then was expected to arrive at her brother Wilbert's home in Millbrae, San Mateo County, CA that evening. Millbrae is about 10mi south of Linda's apartment. Linda didn't own a car, though her brother told authorities that she normally did not hitchhike. She was last seen alive by friends in SF that afternoon or evening.

On the morning of Tuesday, March 28, 1972, the body of a then-unidentified teenage girl was found by a man from Menlo Park named Ronald G Chapman, a transient laborer. Chapman briefly left his vehicle while looking for farm work in the area when he spotted the body in the area 5-6mi south of Half Moon Bay, San Mateo County, CA. Chapman then drove to the Half Moon Bay police station to report the body; sheriff's deputies were called at 8:40am, according to two sources. Other clippings state that the body was found at about 9am.

The body was found in a drainage ditch next to a turnoff of Purisima Creek Road; the spot on Purisima Creek Rd is about 1.1mi from the Coast Highway (i.e. California State Route 1). Another clipping described the location as "on Purisima Creek Rd between Half Moon Bay and Hatchet Mill." One clipping mistakenly calls the street "Purissima Canyon Rd." The location of the body is about 12mi south of Millbrae, Linda's intended location.

The body was lying face-down in the wooded site. Investigators estimated the body to be that of a 16-18 year old white female who was slender, about 5'5, and had brown hair. She had no identification on her. The woman was wearing light blue denim pants "with a thin Indian design down each side"; a blue cotton sleeveless sweater/blouse/halter top; a brown lined suede leather jacket; a multicolored bra; red underwear; and brown leather Cuban heel cowboy boots.

Linda's niece, Sue, recognized the description of the clothing found on the body that was published March 28. Sue reportedly occasionally borrowed the blue sleeveless blouse that Linda was wearing. The next day, Wilbert Uhlig — Linda's brother and Sue's father — officially identified the body as Linda's.

Prior to her identification, it was determined that Linda had been dead for less than 48 hrs at the time of discovery. None of the later clippings — i.e., March 29 1972 and later — mentioned this PMI estimate, only stating that Linda was last seen on Friday evening. It's possible that, after identification of the body, the PMI estimate was amended/realized to be incorrect, and that she was instead killed soon after she was last seen. However, that is speculation. If Linda truly did die less than 48 hrs before she was found as originally estimated, then that would mean that her death occurred sometime later than about 9am on Sunday, March 26. If this is true, then her whereabouts between Friday evening and Sunday morning are unknown.

It was determined that Linda was killed by a massive blow (or blows) that had caved in and/or split open the back of her head; the massive skull fracture was determined to be caused by a blunt instrument, which LE reportedly believed to have possibly been an axe or machete. One source skewed this finding, mistakenly reporting that her face had been bashed in. That same contemporary newspaper article stated that her, "face was hacked by a cutting instrument." Yet another clipping reported that she had been "apparently beaten to death," which has the connotations of being beaten with fists or a club/bat instead of with a sharp instrument, but I digress.

All but one of the contemporary mentions that I could find were from March 28 and 29, 1972. The latest contemporary article, from the 4/6/72 edition of the Half Moon Bay Review, added one fact that does not appear in any of the earlier articles: according to that source, "[Asst. Sheriff] Stewart said the assailant attempted to decapitate the girl's body, and cut it in half diagonally, apparently with a pocket knife, but the knife could not cut through the girl's spine." This article is a near word-for-word copy of the 3/29/72 Peninsula Times Tribune article on the topic, only with the above quote inserted into it.

It is believed that Linda was not killed at the exact site that she was found. There was a pool of blood 30 ft away from the body, "in the road turnoff where the drainage ditch runs." One of the earlier clippings, from the San Mateo Times, stated that the pool of blood, "indicated that she had been killed there and dragged to the ditch." The SF Examiner from that same day (3/28/72) also stated that, "there were signs the girl had been dragged 30 ft from a lonely road and thrown into the ditch"; this short clipping does not mention the pool of blood and doesn't give the name of Purisima Creek Rd anywhere in it.

The clippings from the following day are less clear about whether or not the "other location" where Linda was killed was the spot of the pool of blood. According to the SF Examiner, "Investigators believe she was murdered elsewhere and taken to the wooded site near HMB. A pool of blood was found about 30 ft from the body." The Santa Rosa Press Democrat states that, "her skull had been smashed with a sharp instrument and she had apparently been dragged from a car"; it does not mention the pool of blood. It should also be noted that the SR Press Democrat mistakenly stated that Linda was found on Monday instead of Tuesday. Lastly, the Peninsula Times Tribune states that, "[Asst. Sheriff] Stewart said it is believed [she] was slain elsewhere and her body dumped on the Coastside."

After Linda's body was identified, it was posited by several sources that a potential motive for her murder could have been robbery, as the $180 she was carrying with her was missing. One contemporary clipping further noted that Linda, "may have been sexually assaulted"; no other source indicates this. Authorities at the time were also investigating a potential connection between Linda's case and the murder of Kenneth Allen Holden on Jan. 16 of that year; Kenneth's body was found at the base of the Almaden Dam in San Jose. Like Linda, he was young, white, and had been hacked to death for seemingly no reason. For some time, Kenneth's case was attributed to the "Death's Angels"/Zebra Killers; however, he is not one of their confirmed victims, and whether or not this is still (or was at any time) believed by LE is unclear.

Linda is listed in Robert Graysmith's book as a potential victim of the Zodiac. In that book he misspelled her surname as "Ohlig"; this spelling is sometimes mistakenly repeated in online circles. According to Wikipedia, she may be included in a series of cases that Graysmith calls the "Astrological Murders."

Because of her inclusion in Graysmith's book, Linda has been brought up in Zodiac forums. In one such thread, some users have noted that Linda's murder seems a lot more similar to the MO of Edmund Kemper, "the Coed Killer," than the Zodiac. Kemper's confirmed killings from the early 70s began in May 1972, two months after Linda was murdered.

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WRITE-UP COMPLETION DATE: March 2025

Cases mentioned above that are also/will be present on this timeline:
Kenneth Holden
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MARCH 24
LUNAR PHASE: waxing gibbous
ZODIAC SIGN: aries
DAY OF WEEK: Friday
EVENTS: Mar. 20 = Spring Equinox (4 days earlier); Mar. 26 = Palm Sunday (2 days later)

MARCH 28
LUNAR PHASE: waning gibbous
ZODIAC SIGN: aries
DAY OF WEEK: Tuesday
EVENTS: Mar. 26 = Palm Sunday (2 days earlier); Mar. 20 = Spring Equinox (8 days earlier)

Added to timeline:

Date: