IN MY VIEW, UNIMPEACHABLE EVIDENCE PROVING HAPPY FACE DID NOT murder Cynthia Lynn Wilcox can be found in the autopsy report. I don’t like to argue with science. After receiving that document, there was no question in my mind Wilcox had died of an overdose.
Jesperson told me he kept at least three logbooks (I only saw one). From a stop in Oregon on August 1, 1992, Jesperson traveled to San Jose (stopping at the Blueberry Hill Café along the way), San Francisco, Stockdale, Phoenix, back up to Yoncalla, Oregon (August 22), Portland, Wallula (Washington), and then down to Fresno (on August 27) via Highway 99. The trip to Fresno became the link that kept me up at night wondering if what I believed and what science seemed to prove was wrong. I kept going back to the obvious: a serial killer admitting to a murder, admitting to dumping her body at a location where law enforcement uncovered a body, and that same serial killer admitting he was in the exact location where the victim went missing—all on the same day, within hours. It seemed ridiculous not to make the connection.
Complicating matters even further, I asked a retired ME, a woman I’ve known for years, to take a look at the autopsy report. I gave her no other details other than asking, “How did this woman die?”
“It appears to be a mixed drug toxicity case, but the condition of the clothing is suspicious.... In opiate overdoses, respiratory depression and cessation is the mechanism of death, which manifests as pulmonary edema (which she has).”
Because of the autopsy results, the MCSO labeled Wilcox’s death—from 1992 until 1995, when Jesperson started talking—a drug overdose and publicly stated as much. The Associated Press reported Cynthia Wilcox’s death in the same manner. The police report detailing the intense investigation into her death seized on the notion of a trucker from Livingston named Charlie, a regular Cynthia Wilcox customer, who might have killed her, but he was ruled out after the autopsy proved otherwise and his alibi checked out. Even her husband was looked at as a potential suspect, but then also was ruled out. The husband claimed it was August 27, about 1:30 A.M., when he’d dropped his wife off at the southbound Turlock rest stop. He watched her exit the vehicle and walk near a “light blue van,” which he considered “suspicious.” It was the last time he saw his wife.
Cynthia Wilcox and her husband had been camping at Oakdale Lake, in Eugene, California, about forty miles east, an hour outside Livingston, for three weeks leading up to that early August morning. They’d lived in Modesto with someone she called “Grandpa.” Since June 3, 1992, every day up to her death, her husband drove her to Modesto, where, between 6:30 and 8:00 A.M., a clinic provided her with a daily dose of methadone. She’d never missed a day. Her husband believed she was off heroin; but after she went missing and he questioned friends, they told him she was “back on . . . and getting loaded.” She’d failed three drug screens given by the clinic: June 3, July 4, and August 6.
On August 26, she phoned Charlie. The first call she made was at 6:00 P.M. from a pay phone near the Oakdale Lake campground restrooms. Charlie wasn’t home. She left a message: “I want you to meet me at the rest area.”
Charlie knew that meant Turlock. Charlie, who drove a white cab-over truck, had been meeting her for years at the same Turlock rest stop. She sought Charlie out on this night because she needed money to give to her husband, who was involved in a green card immigration issue. She knew Charlie to be good for “thirty to forty dollars” whenever they met. All they ever did “was talk,” the report claimed.
She and her husband went back to the campsite, ate, and slept. They awoke near 11:00 P.M. on the twenty-sixth and drove into Turlock. At 1:00/1:15 A.M. on the twenty-seventh, according to the husband, they parked at the AM/PM on Taylor Road in town, where she called Charlie a second time. Taylor Road ran underneath Highway 99, not far from the rest stop.
Charlie didn’t answer.
“Charlie, this is Baby Doll. I’m at the rest area on the southbound side,” Charlie’s answering machine recorded. “Baby Doll” was Cynthia Wilcox’s CB handle many of the truckers passing through the region knew her by.
“No,” Jesperson told me. “I have never heard that name. Nor would I ever communicate over my CB with one of the girls who worked the radio.”
Baby Doll and her husband arrived at the Turlock southbound-side rest stop moments later. After parking, she turned to her husband: “I’ll be back in fifteen to twenty minutes.”
It was near 1:30 A.M. She was expected back by two o’clock, at the latest.
She got out. Her husband leaned back, tipped his cap down over his eyes, and fell asleep.
He woke up at 2:30 A.M. She had not returned. So he walked around the lot to see if he could find her. He searched for hours. He ran into a friend of his wife’s, another “working girl,” who said, “No, I have not seen her.”
As he stood near his vehicle, he thought he heard “someone calling his name from a distance.” This made him think his wife had walked across the interstate and was trying to get his attention from the northbound-side rest area.
He looked across the freeway and didn’t see much. So he drove from the southbound to the northbound side. By 6:30 A.M., he still had no idea where his wife had gone off to or whom she was with. He then drove to the methadone clinic in Modesto to see if Cynthia had shown up for her daily dose. After speaking with several people in line, however, he was at a great loss, because no one claimed to have seen her.
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JESPERSON WAS IN BIGGS Junction, Oregon, on August 26; he drove “all night” to Fresno, into early the next morning, August 27, purchasing fuel in the amount of $180.05 at the Grantland Exxon in Fresno, hustling on a tight schedule to deliver meat. He made it to the southbound-side (Highway 99) Turlock rest stop at 4:00 A.M., a few hours after Cynthia reportedly went missing.
The time line rules him out of being involved in Cynthia Wilcox’s disappearance—that is, if it’s accurate. Even more compelling evidence against Happy Face’s involvement is that detectives proved Cynthia Wilcox was still alive later that day, past 8:00 A.M., because the methadone clinic claimed she came for her methadone maintenance after the prescribed time frame (6:30 to 8:00 A.M.), and arrived alone to take the dose. Even more convincing, she was heard throughout the night and into the morning of August 27 on the CB by several other girls: “This is Baby Doll. . . .”
Still, to be certain I wasn’t missing anything, I asked Jesperson for a detailed account of killing his Turlock victim, who, by his account, should still be buried behind the Blueberry Hill Café, a woman whose identity is a mystery. I also wanted to see how consistent he was with his previous statements to law enforcement (which he did not know I had).