Convicted serial killer Wesley Shermantine, one half of the duo dubbed The Speed-Freak Killers for their meth-fueled killing spree in the 80s and 90s, has been opening up to investigators about the whereabouts of victims' remains. He even drew them a map, leading to an abandoned well on a piece of property his family used to own where authorities have now dug up about 300 bones, representing the remains of at least ten different victims. more ›

It's no surprise that a Marin judge Monday ordered accused serial killer Joseph Naso to stand trial for the murders of four women in Northern California, given all the scary photographic evidence of his crimes uncovered in searches of his home and safe-deposit boxes. But today we get news that cold-case investigators are now trying to link Naso to a couple of other murders, including one close to home here in S.F. more ›

Accused serial killer Joseph Naso, who's currently in a pre-trial hearing and being his own attorney up in Marin County, is a scary bastard. In yesterday's proceedings, we heard from Detective Ryan Petersen of the Marin County Sheriff's Office who says that Naso got defensive after his arrest last April regarding the contents of two bank deposit boxes in Reno. They contained post-mortem photographs of two of his alleged victims — 38-year-old Pamela Parsons and 31-year-old Tracy Tafoya, both murdered in Yuba County in the 90s — as well as photos of two other unidentified women, items belonging to a fifth missing woman, and $152,400 in cash. Naso dismissed the photos in speaking to investigators, saying, "It's kind of like my dark side." more ›

Like we said yesterday, the preliminary hearing of accused serial killer (and winner of the Grim Reaper costume contest) Joseph Naso was bound to reveal some disturbing evidence in the case right out of the gate. We in the press had already heard that police who searched Naso's South Lake Tahoe home in April 2011 (the Chron misprints it today as April 2010) discovered a trove of photographs of what appeared to be victims. And during the first day of evidence in Marin County court, investigators discussed the nature of the photos. The women in the photographs appeared dead and were posed naked in "various unnatural positions," that were further described by prosecutors as "uncomfortable and unsustainable." more ›

Joseph Naso, the scary-looking man who stands accused of multiple murders of young women with double-initials in Northern California from the 1970s to the 1990s, returns to a Marin courtroom today for a preliminary hearing in which prosecutors will lay out their case. This will be the first the public has heard details of the evidence against the 78-year-old Naso in this death-penalty case, and it's sure to be pretty gruesome. more ›

A series of unsolved murders in Sonoma County, all involving women who were hitchhiking on country roads during the trusting, hippie era of 1972 to 1973, has a new suspect in the mix: Ted Bundy. The executed serial killer admitted to having committed a number of murders in an undisclosed area of California. He admitted to investigators, prior to his electrocution in 1989, to having murdered over 100 women, and that he started raping and strangling women in 1969. But the first actual murder to which he confessed was in 1974. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Department began looking back into the unsolved Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders, which totaled seven unsolved cases, last year, and they're now trying to match Ted Bundy's DNA to old evidence in the cases, believing there's reason to believe that Bundy may have been in the area. All the murders match Bundy's M.O., which was raping, strangling, and dumping bodies near roadsides. more ›

Confirming what everyone already suspects about the scary, lunatic-seeming man who's about to stand trial for the murders of four women in Northern California between 1977 and the mid-1990s, Joseph Naso has refused to hire an attorney to defend him, and will instead mount his own defense. A judge ruled today that Naso appears to be competent to decide this matter, and that he is choosing to act pro se "knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily." Therefore the trial will go forward with Naso acting as his own attorney, and Naso will reappear in court on May 27. more ›

What with Joseph Naso so close to the Bay Area zeitgeist right now, SFist thought we'd look back at one a serial killer from back in the day, one who police failed to apprehend. SFGate/CBS 5 writer Beth Spotswood (with whom your editor shares a chronic interest in true crime/mass murderers) brought "The Doodler" to our attention. Who was he? Well, he was/is a San Francisco killer who would sketch his male partners before having sex with and then stabbing them to death. Very little is known about The Doodler, other than the fact that a couple of his survivors refused to testify against him, even after a police lineup, since they were not "out" yet. Wikipedia has more: more ›

The former home of notorious Sacramento serial killer (and onetime brothel owner) Dorothea Puente, behind which Puente buried seven of her victims, sold for $215,000 this past weekend at auction. Bay Area natives and longtime residents may recall the story of Puente, who ran a boarding house at the 1426 F Street property for elderly tenants. more ›

We want to like the ACLU, really we do, but sometimes they have to take difficult positions in order to secure legal precedents like privacy rights, as in the case they're arguing now to stop the state of California from doing their mandatory collection of DNA samples from all felony arrestees, even if they're later exonerated. Such DNA collection did, of course, lead to the capture of the Grim Sleeper which our pals down at LAist have been quite excited about. A judge at the 9th Circuit yesterday asked the ACLU how this process was different than collecting fingerprints, and they argue that a swab inside the mouth constitutes an illegal search and seizure. more ›

This week, please join SF Appeal editor Eve Batey and your very single SFist editor as we chat with Beth Spotswood about high profile Bay Area killers. David Carpenter, Cary Stayner, Zodiac Killer, the Zebra Murders and more of your favorite real-life boogymen will be discussed. more ›

As if you needed further proof to confirm that Pisces are batshit insane, leap year babies cum serial killers Aileen Wuornos (who would have been 52) and Richard "the Night Stalker" Ramirez (who turns 48) both share a birthday today. Aw. more ›