Nearly 40 years after five girls on the Peninsula were raped, stabbed and terrorized, prosecutors announced the alleged killer has been successfully extradited from Oregon State Prison to San Mateo County, where he will face charges of murdering and raping two of the girls.
Flanked by police, the sheriff and the FBI, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe on Thursday detailed some of the case against 66-year-old Rodney Halbower, a lifelong criminal, who has been in and out of prisons across the country since the 1970s.
DNA links Halblower to the rapes and murders of two teenage girls, both killed in 1976, Wagstaffe said, though he wouldn't disclose much more than that. The girls are: 18-year-old Veronica "Ronnie" Cascio, whose body was discovered in a creek on a Pacifica golf course and 17-year-old Paula Baxter, whose body was found behind the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints in Millbrae. Neither of the girls' families attended the news conference.
"I am real happy," said Leonard Cascio, 81, of South San Francisco, Cascio's uncle. "The only thing I'm disappointed in is that he can't get the death penalty." He said, at the time of his niece's death, many family members, including his brother, were under a cloud of suspicion.
At his arraignment on Thursday, Halbower didn't enter a plea because he hasn't been assigned a lawyer. He is due back in court on Monday.
Halbower is being held in San Mateo County jail without bail.
The Peninsula girls were killed between January and April 1976, all near Gypsy Hill Road in Pacifica, a beach town 15 miles south of San Francisco, and hence the reason behind the notorious nickname of the "Gypsy Hill Murders."
The deaths terrorized the area, typically a quiet and safe place to live. A website, GypsyHillMurders.com was created to document all the coverage of the grisly stabbing deaths, often preceded by sexual assault.
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Halblower will be formally charged Thursday on two counts of murder and the special circumstance of murder during the course of rape. But he is not eligible for the death penalty, Wagstaffe said, because California ruled capital punishment unconstitutional at the time of the killings. If convicted, the harshest sentence Halblower could receive is life in prison.
Wagstaffe called Halblower a "serial killer" who "finally" will be "brought to justice." He cited the "remarkable" turn of events where modern DNA testing shows Halblower is repsonsible for at least two of the handful of Peninsula deaths in 1976. And he vowed that his lead prosecutor, Sean Gallagher, will win a conviction in court.
"It's time to bring this man to justice for the murders we can prove," Wagstaffe said.
Halblower was arrested Wednesday at the Two Rivers Correctional Institute in Oregon, where he had been serving a 30-year sentence on unrelated attempted murder charges, according to Rebecca Rosenblatt, spokeswoman for the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office. Before that, Halblower had been serving another lengthy sentence in Nevada.
Despite the DNA links to the two teens, Wagstaffe said at this point Halblower is not being charged with the other three "Gypsy Hill" murders.
There is no DNA evidence to prove that Halblower killed 14-year-old Tanya Blackwell of Pacifica whose body was found off Gypsy Hill Road and 26-year-old Carol Lee Booth, whose body was found in a shallow grave near Colma Creek. The investigation into their deaths, is ongoing, Wagstaffe said.
And, despite being originally linked to the "Gypsy Hill" murders, Wagstaffe said prosecutors have definitively excluded Halblower as a murder suspect in the 1976 death of 19-year-old Denise Lampe, who was raped, killed and left in the Serramonte Shopping Center in Daly City.
However, Wagstaffe said DNA does link Halblower to the Feb. 24, 1976, death of Michelle Mitchell, whose throat was slit near the University of Nevada-Reno. But that case, he said, will not be tried along with the other two "Gypsy Hill" cases.
Halblower became a "person of interest" in the "Gypsy Hill" murders in September 2014, when the San Mateo County Crime Lab linked his DNA to the murders. At the time, Halblower was behind bars in Oregon.
In March, the FBI launched a "Gypsy Hill" operation to help solve the cold case, by forming a regional task force to canvass neighborhoods in the hopes of jogging memories about the deaths.
The investigation into the remainder of the Gypsy Hill Murders is still ongoing and as such the FBI Tip Line (415-553-7400) will remain open and active for anyone who feels they may have information to share regarding this investigation. Callers to the FBI Tip Line should press 0 and advise it is in regard to the Gypsy Hill cases. All calls are confidential.
