1 dic 1969 anni - Elaine Louise Davis

Descrizione:

17yo; Elaine was a senior at Pleasant Hill High School at the time. She lived with her family at 158 Pioneer Ave in Walnut Creek, CA, and was planning on attending UC Davis. Elaine's parents are James and Gretchen Davis, and she has two siblings: older brother Gene, who was 21yo and studying criminology at Sacramento State College at the time, and younger sister Heidi, who was 3yo at the time.

Elaine was 4'11.5 and 100lb, with blue eyes and sandy blonde hair that was shoulder-length. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing brown corduroy jeans, size 9; a navy-blue peacoat with gold buttons; brown loafers with gold buckles; a pearl ring with a gold band on her right ring finger; and a gold necklace with a small heart.

On Monday, December 1, Elaine and her mother arrived home from a shopping trip at about 10pm. Her mother, Gretchen, last saw Elaine at 10:30pm when she left to pick up her husband, the manager of a service station in Concord, from work. She left Elaine home alone to watch over Heidi; Elaine was reloading the dishwasher when Gretchen Davis left, and she had told her mother that she planned on sewing a button on her coat after doing the dishes. The house was well-lit with the exception of the front bedroom, where Heidi was asleep at the time.

The trip to Concord and back usually took about 20min, however Elaine's parents had errands to run, so they returned home at either 11:05, 11:10, or 11:15pm (sources vary). When Mr & Mrs Davis returned home, the dishwasher was closed but not turned on. Elaine's glasses, which she constantly kept on her because of her nearsightedness, were lying on top of the dishwasher. Her purse, which contained $4, was in the living room, but the coat she was planning on working on seemed to be gone. All the doors were closed but unlocked when they arrived home. While most contemporary clippings state that Heidi was still asleep when her parents came home, one from Dec. 4 stated that Heidi was crying and repeatedly told her parents, "They took her away. She didn't want to go." Mrs Davis also stated that Heidi also said that "There was a Volkswagen."

A neighbor reported seeing a Volkswagen parked, "nearly hidden," beneath the drooping branches of a tall weeping willow tree within 100ft of the front door of the house. During a search using bloodhounds within the first 36hrs of Elaine's disappearance, the bloodhounds, "completely ignored the one-third acre rear yard and the unlocked rear door, leading police, instead, out the front door and directly to the willow tree, where the scent was lost."

According to Mr Davis, a neighbor with property adjoining to the house's rear had, "flushed a prowler out of the Davis backyard" ten (10) nights prior, i.e. on the night of about November 21. The family had also been receiving, "anonymous and obscene telephone calls" some months before Elaine's disappearance, so the family had their telephone disconnected.

According to newspaper clippings from the week of Elaine's disappearance, a surveyor for the Forest Service, Richard Constan Jr (31yo) told Plumas County sheriff's deputies that he had been hitchhiking on Thursday, December 4, when he was picked up in East Quincy, CA at about 10:30pm by a young man (about 19-20yo) driving a green sedan. The young man asked where he could find a gas station. Constan said that when he got in the car, he saw a young blonde-haired girl crying in the back seat; he asked her what was wrong, but received no answer. The owner of the car told Constan that he was headed for Reno, NV. When they stopped at a gas station in Quincy, the driver sped off before Constan could return to the car.

That same day, Thursday, December 4, at 10am, a Danville housewife first spotted a shoe -- a brown loafer with a gold buckle -- in a gutter along northbound Stone Valley Rd on-ramp to Freeway 68 in Alamo, CA. After reading about Elaine's disappearance in the paper, the woman had her teenage son go back and retrieve the shoe. On Friday, December 5, the woman called the police and turned the shoe in.

Elaine's parents confirmed that the shoe was the size and style worn by Elaine.

According to the Walnut Creek PD's cold case page, Elaine disappeared at about 11pm that night, and is thought to have been abducted from a rear sliding glass window of her home.

On Friday, December 19 1969, the body of a white female was found floating off of Light House Point near Santa Cruz. Due to the state of decomposition, the COD could not be determined, though there were some indications of strangulation. The body was initially estimated to be that of a young woman in her mid-20s; because of this, Elaine was not considered until a review of the case in 2000; in 2001, it was announced that Jane Doe was identified as Elaine Louise Davis.

In 1986, Robert Graysmith published a list of 49 confirmed & possible Zodiac victims. The list includes SRHM victims, and murders with some similarties to the SRHM crimes; this includes Elaine's murder. She is also mentioned on various Zodiac sites, and on Wikipedia she is listed as the earliest victim of the suspected AM killer.
























Elaine's case has also been mentioned in a 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.

As of 2025, Elaine's murder is still unsolved and featured on the Walnut Creek Police Department's Cold Case page.

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LAST UPDATED: pre-March 2025
WRITE-UP COMPLETION DATE: incomplete
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DECEMBER 1
LUNAR PHASE: last quarter
ZODIAC SIGN: sagittarius
DAY OF WEEK: Monday
Venus 13.1*W
EVENTS: Dec. 5 = first day of Hannukah (4 days later)

DECEMBER 19
LUNAR PHASE: waxing gibbous
ZODIAC SIGN: sagittarius
DAY OF WEEK: Friday
EVENTS: Dec. 21 = Winter Solstice (2 days later); Dec. 25 = Christmas (6 days later)

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