A $50,000 reward has been offered for information leading to a conviction in a 55-year-old homicide cold case with links to the notorious Zodiac Killer, according to the Riverside Police Department.
On Halloween morning in 1966, Joseph Bates called Riverside police to report that his daughter, Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year-old freshman at Riverside City College, was missing. He told police that Cheri Jo left a note the night before saying she was headed to the college library for a study session. She never returned.
Later that morning, a campus groundskeeper discovered Cheri Jo’s body in an alley off Terracina Drive. Responding officers ruled her death a homicide on the scene.
An autopsy later revealed Cheri Jo was repeatedly kicked in the head in addition to receiving two stab wounds in her chest from a knife estimated to be just over three inches in length. Her face, hands, arms and throat had also been slashed.
Forensic analysts concluded Cheri Jo had not been subjected to sexual assault, nor had she been robbed. They keys to her lime green 1960 Volkswagen Beetle, parked a short way from the crime scene, were in the ignition. Both front windows were rolled down.
Though they were able to determine a time of death at or around 10:15 p.m. the night before, investigators were unable to deduce an obvious motive for the killing, even after interviewing more than 75 individuals—classmates and a number of military personnel stationed at a nearby Air Force base.
In November of that year, still unable to identify a perpetrator, police and reporters at the local newspaper received carbon copies of a disturbing, type-written letter. It contained a confession to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates, capitalized throughout and littered with misspellings and grammatical errors.
The letter included information the police had not yet released to the public, such as a working theory that the killer had disabled Cheri Jo’s car, and approached her to assist when she could not start the engine.
Most chillingly of all, it contained a warning that the killer’s exploits were far from finished. “BEWARE … I AM STALKING YOUR GIRLS NOW,” it read.
The following month, employees of the Riverside City College library discovered a disturbing poem written on a desk in a ballpoint pen. It appeared to describe in graphic detail the stabbing of a young woman, according to crime author Derek J. Sherwood, who has written extensively on campus murders.
Five months later, Cheri Jo’s father received a second letter—this one handwritten, and much shorter than its predecessor.
“BATES HAD TO DIE,” it read. “THERE WILL BE MORE.”
At the bottom of the letter the author had scribbled a symbol some say resembles a letter “Z.” Police subsequently began exploring possible connections between Cheri Jo's death and the Zodiac Killer—a notorious serial murderer active in Northern California at the time.
That theory was bolstered by a letter supposedly sent by the Zodiac Killer in 1970 to the editors of The Los Angeles Times. In it, the author seemed to take responsibility for the killing of Cheri Jo Bates.
“I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my [R]iverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones,” it read. There were “a lot more down there,” the author added.
In 2016, after more than five decades of little progress on the case, investigators received an unsigned letter in which the writer confessed to sending the 1966 note as a “sick joke.” He or she was not the Zodiac Killer, they said.
In 2020, a joint taskforce of Riverside police officers and FBI investigators were able to confirm that the 1966 letter was indeed a hoax—written by a “troubled youth who was seeking out attention in his teenage years,” Officer Ryan Railsback, a Riverside police spokesperson told The Press-Enterprise.
Investigators subsequently ruled out any connection to the Zodiac Killer, but the case remains unsolved. Critics of the investigation say police have been too quick and not sufficiently transparent in their reasoning for eliminating the Zodiac Killer as a suspect.
Over the years, investigators have zeroed in on a number of alternative suspects, some overlapping with the Zodiac Killer theory.
These include Ross Sullivan, an employee of the Riverside City College library who is sometimes floated as the possible identity of the Zodiac Killer. Sullivan was mysteriously absent from work in the six days following Cheri Jo’s death.
Sullivan relocated to Northern California in 1967, shortly after Cheri Jo’s father received the handwritten letter possibly signed by “Z.” Sullivan was reportedly hospitalized several times for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia until his death in 1977.
Police believe Sullivan had a solid alibi at the time of Cheri Jo’s death, but they declined to share details with the press.
Police also suspected a man believed to be Cheri Jo’s ex-fiance, but DNA evidence ruled out his involvement in 1998.
Earlier this year, an anonymous party contacted Riverside police to put up the $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of any person responsible for Cheri’s death.
The offer is valid through January 31, 2022.
Anyone with information relating to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates may contact the Riverside Police Department’s Cold Case Unit at cjb@riversideca.gov.