Anita Piteau: Huntington Beach Jane Doe, Part 2
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I'm Kristen Sevey. This is Murder, She Told. This is part two of the Anita Pitu story. If you haven't listened to part one, I suggest going back and starting with that one first.

Though it was still winter in Maine on March 14, 1968, it was yet another sunny, warm day in Southern California. 68 degrees. A little cool for thin-blooded Angelenos. Just outside of Los Angeles, in the growing suburb of Huntington Beach, three boys were playing near their homes after school. Their shrill, childish voices carried across the vast expanse of dirt roads and tilled fields.

The area was only partially developed, with large empty fields adjacent to newly built tract housing. For these boys, that meant a wide open play area to run and yell as much as they wanted. Today, the normally dusty ground was packed from the rain earlier that day. When they got close to the drainage ditch alongside the road, they slipped on damp, muddy patches. Suddenly, their game ended, and they threw their bicycles down in a heap.

One of the boys yelled for the others to come over and look at something. At first, they thought it was a scarecrow that had fallen from its positions guarding the fields. Instead, it was the body of a woman lying face down. They didn't know who she was, but they could tell that she was dead. This experience made a deep impression on the boys, and one of them, Steve Fulmer, later became a police officer in his hometown.

But in 1968, Steve was just a 10-year-old boy. He and the other boys ran to a nearby home and entrusted the matter to the nearest adult. Steve watched from a distance as a cloud of dust sprang up behind the wheels of a police cruiser rapidly approaching the woman's location. Uniformed men got out and walked along the ditch, peering over the edge of the road until they saw what the boys had.

The woman was dark-haired and wore a black faux leather jacket. Carefully, they turned her over. They saw that she was young and average-sized. They guessed that she hadn't been there for long. She wore purple capri pants and black loafers that were covered in mud.

Her multicolored floral blouse had been ripped open and was missing a button. She wore a flashy but inexpensive ring. Its central stone was a pale-colored diamond-cut aquamarine, the birthstone for March. She didn't have any identification, and if she had been carrying a purse, her killer had taken it. All they knew was that they had a murder victim in front of them. Her throat was slit and her face was bruised.

The body was Anita's, but to the Huntington Beach police, she was Jane Doe, and she would remain unidentified for 52 years. On that spring day in 1968, however, they were confident that they would soon discover who she was. The crime scene was brightly lit by the California sun, and detectives crouched down to examine the tire tracks the killer had left in the dirt.

Rain had obscured the details of the tread, but they could tell it was a late-model American car. A cigarette butt, half-smoked with a tiny column of gray ash leading to its filter, was left near the tire track. After photographing it, they carefully wrapped the cigarette for storage. They also photographed the tire tracks and footprints.

The track suggested to detectives that the killer had turned around on the dirt road, pushed the woman out of the car, and then driven back toward the main road, which was paved. There were no houses next to where the body was placed, only a dusty field slated for development but used for agriculture. The police went door-to-door in the nearby housing developments and questioned local residents. One said they heard a woman scream around 2 a.m.,

They also questioned local businesses that Jane Doe or her killer may have visited, and they got a hit. From a Polaroid, a bartender thought he had seen the woman in his bar, but then she turned up again the next night. On the same afternoon the body was found, two other boys playing in a nearby oil field found a white purse containing several black and white photographs, but no identification. The police figured that it may belong to Jane Doe.

At the morgue, the body was examined more closely. They carefully removed the woman's clothing and photographed it against a brown craft paper. Everything was muddy and dirty.

The attack was brutal. Jane Doe had been stabbed and beaten, and her throat was slit so deeply that her trachea was cut, and she had died by, quote, aspiration of blood. In other words, she suffocated, inhaling her own blood, as if she were drowning in it. The police captain said, she was killed the way one would slaughter an animal. The police called the murder a sexually motivated crime.

Her black bra and yellow underwear were both ripped. According to the case file, the Orange County Crime Lab had found evidence of semen on the victim's body and clothing. She had bruises on the side of her head and possible teeth marks upon her breast. Although rape kits were not in use until the 1970s, and DNA wouldn't play a role until the 80s, even in 1968, police found semen useful evidence.

Not only did it indicate a possible sexual assault, it could be used to determine the perpetrator's blood type. According to Lori's book, The Last Letter, the medical examiner ordered a toxicology test, which proved that Jane Doe had no drugs or alcohol in her system. The ME estimated that she had died in the early morning hours of March 14th, the day she was found, which suggested that the scream reportedly heard around 2 a.m. might have been hers.

The state of her teeth was out of place in California, the home of the American smile. Flawless whites gleamed on Hollywood sets and television sets across the country.

According to the Orange County Register, quote, a forensic dentist told police that the victim's dental work was shoddy and had probably been done in Mexico. She had one silver filling and several missing or rotten teeth. Some of her molars were missing, which meant that she could probably only afford to have them pulled. But a tooth-colored silicate cement filling in her bottom front teeth suggested that at one time she did have the means for more sophisticated dental work.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Jane Doe's dental chart, description, photograph, and fingerprints had been sent to every police department and sheriff's office in the country, though that strains credibility.

There are around 1,800 departments in existence today, and a sizable fraction of them were in existence in 1968. Without computers, it's unclear how they would have sent the details out except by Teletype, a system that had just rolled out in 1966. Aside from her teeth, she appeared to be in good health. Her deep tan and dark hair and eyes inclined investigators to believe that she may have been from Mexico.

Laurie later explained that Anita had taken Rena's French-Canadian side, which included a darker complexion. Jane Doe had been found soon after she was killed. It's possible that no one in her life was missing her just yet. But as the days went on, her absence would have raised concern. She might have missed a Saturday night date to go out dancing. She might not have shown up for work or even to pick up her paycheck.

Anita's roommate had to have noticed her absence immediately and might have tried to file a report. She even had recent photographs of her and months of experience to understand her habits. But since they had only known each other for a brief time and they weren't related, police may not have taken her concern seriously. The memos that police distributed might have yielded results if Anita had been reported as a missing person in any jurisdiction.

Two months after her disappearance, Whittier PD got a call from Anita's brother-in-law, Archie, long distance from Maine. Why didn't they connect the dots? Whittier was only 16 miles away from Huntington Beach. Her body had been waiting in the morgue, burial forestalled, authorities awaiting someone to come forward and identify her. Was Whittier unaware of the Jane Doe that needed help just 30 minutes away?

Jane Doe's fingerprints were collected for Huntington Beach's records in 1968. In years earlier, Anita's fingerprints were collected for Augusta's records because of her juvenile offenses and her time at the reform school. If only someone had known to look, to compare these records, she could have been conclusively identified. Huntington Beach sent her fingerprints to the FBI for comparison to their national files.

After searching for three days, they threw in the towel. There were no matches. The ring that she was found with was unique, so Huntington Beach put an ad in a jewelry trade magazine in hopes that they could discover its source. And it worked. They were able to locate the jeweler who had sold the ring to the woman, and he was able to date the purchase. It was bought March 5th, nine days before she was killed.

The jewelry store was in Woodland, a small town in Northern California, 20 miles northwest of Sacramento. Police also received a tip that the woman had been seen with an unidentified man in a Woodland motel. In her letter to her mother, Anita said that she was, quote, going to San Francisco for a weekend pretty soon. This motel and the jeweler were about 70 miles inland from San Francisco. Perhaps this was the trip that she alluded to in her letter.

Three weeks after finding Jane Doe's body, Huntington Beach police were already grappling with another murder case. Police determined the two murders were unrelated, but they were working around the clock, straining the limited resources of their department.

The lead detective on the Jane Doe case, Captain Earl Robitaille, told a reporter in exasperation, We're hoping some dense landlord around here finally calls the office and says that the woman he rented a room to hasn't been around for a month and that she's left all her stuff in the room. If she'd been on a lease and lived in Huntington Beach, his wish might have come true.

Anita was probably subletting from the woman she was living with, and the landlord might not have even known she existed. While police struggled to uncover Jane Doe's identity, her mystique inflamed the public's imagination. Anita might have rolled her eyes at one overdramatic reporter who called her black jacket a shroud and wrote that Jane Doe found darkness and death, perhaps the only peace she had ever known.

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The funeral was delayed by 10 months as police got one person after another asking to see the body with stories of who she could be. Many people came to view the body, but no one claimed her. Some may have been morbidly curious, but many of Jane Doe's visitors were in earnest. A lot of people went missing in LA and the surrounding areas, especially those who had come from other parts of the country to make a new start.

To accommodate these viewings, the morgue held onto the body as it decayed, and its interment was delayed again and again. Finally, in early 1969, a funeral and a burial were scheduled. The people of Huntington Beach came together to take care of the woman who had died in their town. Local morticians offered a reduced fee, paid by the county welfare department, and florists donated flowers.

Two local women attended her burial because they said simply that she shouldn't be alone.

Reverend Russell Shaw of the Huntington Beach First Methodist Church gave a eulogy describing the unknown woman as loved and valued by her family and God. He also added strong indictment of her murderer, which he explained was an attempt to draw out guilt if the killer were listening. The police were thinking along the same lines, and as he spoke, they took photographs of the attendees, just in case the killer were among them.

The service ended at Smith's Mortuary Chapel, and the coffin was about to be transported to a nearby cemetery and finally lowered into the ground when a woman appeared at the 11th hour with an urgent plea. Jacqueline Smay, a petite young woman with a dark pixie cut and cat eye glasses, claimed she knew the deceased, and the box was opened as Jane Doe was presented for one last time for identification. Jacqueline was quiet.

The Los Angeles Times reported that she approached the open casket and, close to tears, nodded wordlessly when asked if she could make a positive identification.

Jane Doe had been dead for almost a year, and despite all the preservation technology available, she was slowly decaying. Her eyes were closed. Her expressionless face had become bloated. The morticians had done their best with her tangled, muddy locks, styling her hair in a way that Jane Doe never actually wore in real life. She hardly looked like herself anymore, whoever she was.

Jacqueline, however, was ready for the limelight. A photograph of the young woman, whose dramatic entrance delayed the burial, appeared in the LA Times. Her eyes stared out of their dark frames. She looked shyly at the camera, her face half-hidden by her hand as she nervously bit a nail. She told a compelling, dramatic story of a woman from Georgia and a whirlwind friendship between two thrill-seekers in Hollywood.

Jacqueline claimed that she and the woman she called Rhonda had partied together a few years back. She said, "A couple of years ago, we were both pretty wild. We used to hang around a place on Sunset Boulevard called the Strip Comber. I used to be the wild type, and that's how I met Rhonda. She used to ride with the Hells Angels. Rhonda would give you the shirt off her back, and she did a lot for me. I don't know why she wanted to hang out with people like the Angels, but anyway, that's how I met her."

The bespectacled 21-year-old nurse's aide didn't look like she'd been the wild type as a teenager. Her story was something out of a movie and was either fabricated or simply a case of mistaken identity. Once again, the burial was delayed as police sought information about Rhonda. They kept the body above ground for another eight months as they tried to confirm Jacqueline's identification.

But when police investigated Jacqueline's claims, they found Rhonda, alive. They were right back where they started. The police ended the episode by announcing, we think we found the person Ms. May thought had died. Almost two years after she'd been found, Jane Doe was finally laid to rest near Huntington Beach in a Newport Beach cemetery.

The police kept x-rays and photographs of the body for what they believed would eventually happen, the identification of Jane Doe. But for now, the case languished and grew cold. Jane Doe would rest undisturbed for half a century. When DNA technology became a factor in solving cold cases, the Huntington Beach PD's hope was renewed.

In 2001, the Orange County Crime Lab created a DNA profile for Jane Doe's killer from the semen that was found on her body. They submitted the DNA profile to CODIS, the National Database of DNA of Violent Offenders. But it was still in its infancy. Police were confident that a man this violent must have had a criminal record. But the killer's DNA wasn't yet in CODIS.

Police assumed that the killer could have been incarcerated before inmates were required to submit DNA. State laws mandating DNA collection only came into effect between 1997 and 2002. In 2010, a new sketch of Jane Doe was released on the Doe Network, a nonprofit organization that maintains a website with information about missing persons and a few other sites.

He was more realistic than the previous sketches. And incredibly, soon after it was posted, Anita's grandniece, Dakota, found it and recognized the resemblance. But when Dakota and her mother called in the tip to police in Whittier, it was dismissed and ignored.

I mean, if you're going to put out a statewide website for missing people, Jane Doe's, I would think that that would be something that you would look into for somebody who calls and says, I think this is my relative we're looking for. Not to say, I don't have time for that. Get a private investigator. The picture we saw on the website was her.

My mother would have known what happened to her at that point because my mother didn't pass away until 2016. And that was in 2010. So she would have known before she passed away what happened to her sister. The sketch artist had done an excellent job, and the family had managed to find their work. But they found it as difficult to communicate with police in 2010 as it had been in 1968, when they were unable to file a missing persons report.

Meanwhile, Huntington Beach PD, unaware of this lead, had more DNA testing done. They were able to get a partial DNA profile from the cigarette butt they'd collected and found that it matched the full profile they were able to extract from the semen. They also tested the blood on the victim's clothing and were able to create a partial DNA profile for her.

Huntington Beach PD entered this profile into the National Law Enforcement Database, so if anyone else looked, they would find it. They also added Jane Doe's fingerprints.

In 2011, America's Most Wanted featured the new composite sketch and information about Jane Doe on their website. Over a decade earlier, Laurie had contacted the same program about telling the story of her missing aunt, although the website feature hadn't been available when Laurie contacted the show years before. Once again, Jane Doe gained a level of visibility that Anita had not.

When she'd gone missing, police were unconcerned. When she turned up dead, police wanted to know who she was.

Huntington Beach PD decided to use Facebook to aid in their search. They posted the new sketch on their page along with the photographs from the purse that was found a quarter mile from the body. Almost immediately, the public recognized people in the photos and contacted the police. But it turned out that the photos were just stock images of models that had been used in retail picture frames.

The photos were unrelated to Jane Doe, which suggested that the purse hadn't been hers either.

The Facebook page also led police to another tip. Someone said that the sketch resembled a woman they had known as Rosie in Long Beach, which was close to Huntington Beach. Although it had been 43 years, the elderly tipster remembered a friend who had disappeared. Rosie was an Italian New Yorker who had failed to show up for work around the same time Jane Doe was discovered. The tipster remembered little about her missing friend. It

except for her first name, and that she had a strong New York accent, a small son, and an Italian-sounding last name that they couldn't recall. For the next 10 years, police believed that Jane Doe could in fact be Rosie and sought information about the missing New Yorker.

Rosie's description also matched some of the information they had about Jane Doe. She looked like she could be Italian, and her shoes were made by a company called Owego, which was based in upstate New York. When they received the tip about Rosie, a historian with information on the Owego company suggested that Jane Doe may even have worked for the shoe factory. Although the shoes were likely widely distributed and could turn up in thrift stores anywhere, police

Police were getting warmer. They had tracked Jane Doe to the right coast. In 2016, the Orange County Cold Case Homicide Task Force, which also had jurisdiction over the case, released the post-mortem photos of Jane Doe in hopes that somebody would recognize her. Although detectives on the case remained hopeful, they must have wondered if it would ever be solved.

The little boy who had found Jane Doe's body had grown up, become a police officer, and retired, still not knowing who she was. In 2017, Huntington Beach police were visited by a volunteer known as a search angel, someone who looks for missing family members or an adoptee's birth parents. They often began honing their skills by searching for their own families. This was the case for angel Amy Spanfeller, who was looking for a missing relative.

She thought that Jane Doe might be the woman she was looking for and contacted Huntington Beach police. Amy wanted to test Jane Doe's DNA, but the police didn't know if their partial profile was sufficient enough for comparison. Amy was more up-to-date with advancements in genetic genealogy and suggested new possibilities. After testing was complete, it was determined that Jane Doe was not Amy's relative. But she did give police new hope.

Based on Amy's recommendations, police retested the DNA found on Jane Doe's clothing. The partial profile produced in 2001 couldn't be used for genetic genealogy, but the new partial profile could be. They then turned to forensic scientist Colleen Fitzpatrick, who was able to identify Jane Doe and her killer.

This was a difficult task that took a few years and some lucky breaks. First, she zeroed in on the perpetrator. Although his specific DNA wasn't in CODIS, available DNA records from GEDmatch made it possible to narrow down a list of suspects. GEDmatch is a database of DNA profiles of the general public, and it's available for law enforcement to search.

Anyone who has had their DNA tested by a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company, like 23andMe, can opt in and add their DNA to GEDmatch. And if you do an at-home kit, I highly recommend opting in to law enforcement databases. Genetic similarities are measured in centimorgans. These units can tell scientists how closely someone is related to another.

Though not as useful as a full profile, even a partial DNA profile can be used to narrow down a match to certain families. Still, the pool of potential matches can be overwhelmingly large, and old-fashioned police work, like looking at where people lived when the crime was committed, is also necessary.

Colleen analyzed all of the DNA from the evidence that had been collected in 1968 that, through the decades of careful storage from generations of custodians, had been well-preserved.

She started with the suspect, for whom they had developed a full DNA profile. Colleen, using the profile to search on GEDmatch, found four brothers from California. Three out of the four had died. Only one was still alive. He agreed to give a DNA sample.

It wasn't an exact match, which proved he was innocent, but it confirmed that one of his brothers had been guilty. That left three possible suspects. Lori explained what happened next in her book.

They found out that one of the brothers had died of lung cancer. They could check the lab from where he had his biopsy done. If the biopsy sample were preserved, it would contain his DNA. This idea had been a long shot because it had been many years since the biopsy was completed and samples were usually destroyed after a certain amount of time. They contacted the facility anyway and, to their surprise, the sample was still there and was adequate for them to run the test.

There was only a one out of three chance that they had found the right brother, but they lucked out. It was a match. The killer was Johnny Monroe Crisco. Have you made the switch to NYX? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from NYX. That's K-N-I-X. Period panties from NYX are like no other, making them the number one leak-proof underwear brand in North America.

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The Huntington Beach police did have a 1971 booking photo of him from when he did time in the Orange County Jail, but they had no paperwork to explain why he'd been booked. Whatever the reason, he wasn't there long. A year later, he caused a drunk driving accident that killed his own son. There were a lot more questions than answers about Johnny, and the identity of the woman he had killed in 1968 was still a mystery.

Because the body was so old and decomposed, and buried in a pauper's grave, it would be difficult to obtain DNA from her remains. Soft tissues would be all but disintegrated. But sometimes it is possible to extract DNA from bones. A piece of her leg bone was sent overseas to a sophisticated DNA lab in Denmark. Simultaneously in California, Colleen used the partial DNA profile from the bloody shirt to do some genetic genealogy herself.

In 2020, a genetic link was made to a man who had enough centimorgans in common with Jane Doe that he might be a cousin. Police contacted him successfully, but he didn't know of a missing relative. He did a little research, though, and learned of a cousin that he had never met, Anita Pitu, and suggested her name to police. The police then contacted Anita's youngest sister, Anne, who was nine years her junior.

They sent Ann and her brother Raymond DNA kits and photos of Jane Doe, including the sketch that Dakota had identified years earlier. Lori remembered getting the call from Ann.

That was a shock of all shocks. I thought she was having a moment. I was like, are you sure? She's like, yes. They found her? I don't know. I was in shock, really. I just couldn't believe that after all this time, we had hope that she was found. So once they did the DNA and it came back as, yes, definitely a sibling, it had to be her. There was nobody else.

It was a big lift off our shoulders that we finally found her, we knew what happened, and we could stop wondering where she was. Despite the difficulties they faced, Huntington Beach Police had taken the advice of the original detective on the case, Earl Robitaille, who said he taught every detective he brought into the Bureau to have bulldog tenacity, to never give up and to never give in.

In 2016, Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy echoed those sentiments and praised the team who never stopped working this case for more than five decades. The difference between the response of the Whittier PD and the Huntington Beach PD could just be statistical noise. That depending on the case, cops sometimes don't treat missing persons cases with the same seriousness that they do a Jane Doe case.

There's just something different about having a body, murder victim no less, and not being able to identify them or get justice for them. Ironically, the thousands of dollars and massive amounts of time spent trying to identify Jane Doe with cutting-edge science could have been saved by taking a missing persons report that would have cost almost nothing.

Detective David Deerking, formerly with the Huntington Beach PD, was the one who called Anita's sister Anne and put to rest a mystery that had haunted both coasts. In July of 2020, Anita came home. Several Huntington Beach police officers, including David, traveled to Maine with Anita's remains and attended the memorial service.

That was exciting. They were so nice. They came to bring her back. They didn't want her to get flown home by herself. They wanted to make sure that she got to us and didn't get lost somewhere. So I was very appreciative of that. They're wonderful people, I mean, and that's how I look at them.

They tried to solve her case for 52 years and they never let up. And I just think that that's amazing that someone that didn't even know her, wasn't family, was that dedicated to trying to find out who she was and could never thank them enough that they chose her case to do that with. Because if they had chosen somebody else, we still would not know.

Lori gave the officers maple syrup and other snacks and souvenirs from Maine. She described the memorial as lively and remembered this moment in particular. She wrote, "'While giving them gifts and taking pictures, I noticed my oldest daughter, Julie, was giving a weird look to the back of Trent's neck.'

Knowing my daughter, I expected her to do something weird. So I was only mildly surprised when she all of a sudden leaned over and smacked the back of his neck. He turned around and gave her a shocked expression and she told him, "I'm sorry but you had a mosquito on you." Then she added, "I saved your life." Everyone burst out laughing and someone jokingly told Julie that she could get charged with assaulting an officer.

This was the sort of joke that Anita would have enjoyed. And perhaps the lively atmosphere Lori described was the spirit of Anita returning home.

I think it was something she would have really liked.

Once again, her burial was delayed, this time because of the backlog of funerals caused by COVID. But she now rests in the St. Francis Catholic Cemetery in Waterville. She is buried in a plot next to my mom and dad, and her youngest brother will be there when he passes away with her as well. Anita's gravestone reads, We Miss You. Anita's last words to her mother were, I miss you.

Finally, her family was able to answer her last letter. The Huntington Beach police returned the hospitality and invited Lori to visit California. She decided to take them up on the offer. They showed Lori and her daughter Julie the places that Anita had been buried and took them on a helicopter ride. This was an important experience for Lori.

She felt connected to everyone who worked on the case. And at the same time, she connected with her aunt by seeing the places she had been before she died. To commemorate her aunt, Lori, with the help of her daughters Dakota and Marissa, wrote a book about Anita's life and how her disappearance affected the family. If you'd like to know more about Anita or the investigation, this book is available online, and it's linked in the show notes.

With the mystery of Anita's identity put to rest, the police turned their eyes to the killer, Johnny Crisco. Johnny Crisco had a history of juvenile delinquency, but unlike Anita, his crimes were violent and continued throughout his life. At 17, Johnny was charged with statutory rape. This apparently had few consequences attached to it, as he immediately joined the army.

Little is known about this initial rape charge, but it likely involved his future wife, Frances. It was five years his junior. The age of consent in California was 18, and Frances would have only have been 11 or 12. Soon after, Frances gave birth to a son who only lived for about 20 days and died of a mysterious intestinal infection.

Two years later in 1962, Frances gave birth to their second son when she was no older than 14. In 1963, when this son was almost a year old, Johnny was discharged from the army. His specific discharge status wasn't reported, but it had something to do with his mental condition and personality.

A psychological evaluation described him as quick to anger, quick to feel unjustly treated, chronically resentful, immature, and impulsive. He was diagnosed as having positive aggressive reaction. Today, he might be called an injustice collector with anger management issues.

Johnny was enlisted for about three or four years, but was never deployed. Yet, for the rest of his life, he would brag about his service in Vietnam, which he never did. He fabricated his entire identity out of this lie, and everyone who knew him later in life assumed his erratic behavior was a result of PTSD, which afflicted so many actual veterans who saw unimaginable horror.

In 1965, Frances and Johnny married. Despite still being under the age of consent, Frances, then 16, was legally able to marry if her parents approved. Whatever their opinion of Johnny, marriage was still thought to be a better option than living as an unwed mother. Johnny and Frances lived in Imperial Beach near San Diego, right next to the Mexican border, which was almost two hours from Huntington Beach where Anita's body was found.

We don't know whether Johnny and Frances continued to live in their hometown of Imperial Beach, or if they moved during those early years of marriage. In 1968, Johnny was 24 years old. He was good-looking with dark hair and a thick mustache. He was average-sized and usually quiet and unassuming. Except when he drank or something angered him. Somehow, Johnny and Anita crossed paths.

We know Anita needed transportation and could have gotten a ride with him. We also know she dated. Though we only have one photo, Johnny does appear to be handsome as a young man. And from accounts, he could appear charming for a short time. She might have gone with him willingly at first, and then been unable to leave. He has been arrested for kidnapping before.

Johnny had a lot of jobs, but as far as we know, he wasn't musical, so he likely wasn't the, quote, very nice nightclub singer that she mentioned dating. But he had worked as a long-haul driver. Was he Anita's Mexican truck driver? He wasn't Mexican, but he was known to lie about himself. Perhaps her roommate had dated him, and Anita met him that way. She had told her mother that she and her roommate were planning to travel to San Francisco.

Did we include Johnny? Was he the mystery man that Anita was seen with at the motel in Woodland, California? Perhaps he was a customer at a restaurant she worked at. Or maybe he was a complete stranger, and Anita simply ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the question that haunts me is why she was in that car with him.

Did she know him? We don't know. Did he kidnap her? I don't know. He just didn't seem like the type of person that she would get into the car with, but maybe she did. Somehow, Anita found herself trapped with this madman on a lonely dirt road in Huntington Beach sometime after midnight. Whether he had planned it all along or he just lashed out in spontaneous violence is unknown.

He may have first intended to rape her, but when she resisted, he became more violent. She may have had a bad feeling about him for a while, or maybe she only knew he was dangerous in the moments before he stopped the car. We know she fought him, but he was stronger, and he had a knife.

If Anita's identity had been determined at the time, her residence would have been investigated, her employer would have been contacted, and her friends would have been questioned. Police would have built a picture of her life. With all of this information, they might have even been able to trace her movements, discover when and where she came into contact with the killer, and possibly apprehended him.

If Anita had been identified back then, perhaps her killer would not have been free to harm others. But that didn't happen. Johnny Crisco was never a suspect. Without DNA evidence, his guilt would have never have been uncovered.

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When Johnny attacked Anita in 1968, he was married and had a young son. Given his anger problems and the power imbalance in their relationship, it's unlikely that his wife would have felt able to report any suspicious activity, even if she had noticed. If there had been blood in the car, or he had brought home bloody clothes to wash, or if one of his shirts went missing, she hadn't said anything. Johnny was used to coming and going as he wished.

Over the years, police thought that it was a good chance her killer was already in jail because they figured that a man so violent couldn't possibly be free. He would have likely been incarcerated for other crimes. But Johnny would remain free for the rest of his life. Though he had already had some legal trouble by the time he was 24, most of the charges against him were filed after he had murdered Anita.

In 1971, he was booked for an unknown offense by Huntington Beach PD. The booking photo remained in the police files, but there was no information on why he had been booked. This is one of the only publicly available photos of Johnny Crisco. In 1972, his drunk driving caused a car accident that killed his 10-year-old son and left his wife, his friend, and him injured.

It's unclear if Johnny was held criminally responsible, and despite the tragedy, he continued to drink heavily and drive while drunk. When they investigated this history in 2020, Huntington Beach police were astonished to learn that despite the charges against him, nothing had stuck. The paper trail was thin.

Despite a history of domestic violence and charges of assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, and child molestation, Johnny had only had a few slaps on the wrist. At some point, Johnny and Frances parted ways. An ex-girlfriend said he had been married a few times, and the New York Times reported that he was married three times. But we know nothing about these marriages.

Two women who had dated him near the end of his life, Cynthia and Karen, found him abusive. By that time, he was living in Kitsap County in Washington State. Johnny dated Cynthia for a few years in the 90s. The physically abusive relationship ended in 1995 with an order of protection. Cynthia was not surprised that Johnny had committed the murder. He had threatened her life and the lives of her children. He had threatened to burn down their house.

A lifelong alcoholic, he continued to drink and drive until Cynthia reported him. His threats of violence only escalated when she left. After Cynthia, he dated a woman named Karen from 1997 until her death in 2014. That relationship ended when she died of natural causes. He died the following year, making this his last known relationship.

Although Karen's daughter was surprised to learn that he'd committed a murder, she also said, "...he had a temper. He talked about slashing throats when he was irritated, and he never went anywhere without packing two pistols. He would talk about how, if someone pissed him off, he would just kill them, just as well slit their throat or shoot them rather than deal with them."

Despite these red flags, she noted his charm and ability to make people like him. When she was with him, he was elderly and failing health, so he was less intimidating. At that point, his dark hair had turned gray, and he wore it long and greasy. Years of alcohol abuse had taken its toll, and he had lost his teeth. His stepdaughter described him as a shrunken little man, which led her to dismiss his boasts.

At times, he behaved in a helpful, fatherly way, but she also described him as a controlling man and recalled a time she asked for a welfare check when Johnny refused to allow her mother access to medical care. Although her mother reportedly died a natural death, could Johnny have hastened her demise? His infant son had apparently died of natural causes as well.

The fact that he was never caught in his lifetime for Anita's murder, and perhaps others, is frustrating. Lori wondered how things might have turned out differently if Anita's roommate would have reported her missing. What I don't understand is when my aunt left for the day or whatever, if she was living with her and she never came back, why she did not report her missing. She never comes back and get her stuff.

She reflected, "...the fact that her killer never faced justice for what he did to her will always haunt me. Why should he have gotten to live out the rest of his life however he wanted, when he ripped all of Anita's experiences, plans, and dreams away from her? It just seems so unfair."

If there's any consolation, Johnny Crisco died alone, missed by no one. Since no one wanted to claim his body from the Kitsap County Coroner's Office, the military covered his funeral expenses, and in his final con, he was, quote, buried with veterans' honors at the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington.

Although he had not served in Vietnam, he might have qualified for a military burial on the grounds of having completed a full term of enlistment with a general discharge. But if he had been found guilty of Anita's murder before he died, he would have certainly been ineligible for military burial.

Detective Robitaille, who originally worked the case, was also disappointed that Johnny escaped justice, but mused, he died of throat cancer. That's a fairly good punishment. There isn't much left of Anita. Of her six siblings, four have passed and one has severe dementia. Her mother has been gone for 28 years. Anita had no children. What's left of Anita is teased out of photographs and family memories.

In one shot, she looks comfortable and happy, lounging on a futon-style sofa. She wears gingham shorts, socks and a sweater, her legs stretched out on the futon's cushion, her dark hair curly with bangs that frame her face. She's wearing light makeup and a big costume ring on her engagement finger, perhaps to avoid unwanted male attention. Anita looks beautiful.

There's another story that could have been told, if things had turned out differently. If Anita had a few seconds to run away, if someone had come down that lonely dirt road and noticed Johnny's car, if one small chance occurrence had kept Anita away from Johnny at the right time, it might have been yet another one of those stories many women tell, the time they got away.

One Christmas, when Lori was a teenager, she might have heard Anita, back from one of her trips, tell the story of how she escaped. She'd recount the moment she realized he was no good, the look in his eyes, the fear that engulfed her body, and how she made her getaway, vowing to never hitchhike again.

Her family would listen intently as she explained how, unexpectedly, headlights had flashed in his eyes, and she had bolted, running and panicked in the nearest house. Though it left an indelible impression, it had all worked out. Anita was safe. She could laugh about these things now. She would have traveled all over the country and to other countries too, and she would always come back with stories to tell.

The detective who originally worked her case, delighted the young woman had finally been identified, said that she was "starstruck and had come to California to make it in the movies." This cinema version of Anita also appeared in a Reddit post that described her as "styling her dark hair in glamorous curls like a Hollywood starlet."

The Post is one of the few public acknowledgements of Anita as a full person, and she might have found it flattering, never mind that her hair was naturally wavy. But Anita had never shown any ambition to become an actress. She just wanted to see the place, and maybe enjoy some of the nightlife. She did say they sure have nice places to dance here. In the absence of her true story, people instinctively paint over her with their own stories.

But the fact is, Anita's story was cut short. Had she lived, maybe she would have gone to see Elvis Presley that one time he came to Maine. She would have been there when her brother Bobby and his wife started their taxi business. Anita might have been a good dispatcher. She would have continued to share good times with Monique and Archie. And although they were opposites in many ways, Connie would have appreciated having her around, especially when her kids got older.

Anita understood teenagers. Reena would have been comforted in her old age instead of tormented by her loss. Anita might have been happy to see the reform school closed and its campus remodeled into University of Maine dormitories. It sure is a lot nicer than when I was here, she might have said, before launching into another story about her time at the reform school. One thing is certain, though. No one would have known what Anita would have done next.

But chances are, she would have, yet again, surprised us all.

Thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you're here. Find Murder, She Told on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. A detailed list of sources and photos from this episode can be found at MurderSheTold.com. Thank you so much to Lori for sharing her memories with us. Thank you to Anne Young for her writing, Byron Willis for his research and writing support, and to Samantha Colthart, Bridget Rowley, and Sarah LaFortune for their research support.

If you want to suggest a case, you can email me at hello at murdershetold.com. I'm Kristen Sevey. Thank you for listening.