Sonoma County murder suspect named in 2004 Jenner beach slayings
A Forestville man with a violent criminal history and extensive knowledge of the Sonoma Coast was named the lone suspect Friday in the 2004 slayings of a young Midwestern couple on a beach near Jenner, marking an extraordinary turn in one of the Bay Area’s most mysterious and unsettling crimes.
Shaun Michael Gallon, 38, shot and killed Lindsay Cutshall, 22, and her fiance, Jason Allen, 26, as the couple lay in sleeping bags on the remote beach 13 years ago, Sonoma County Sheriff Steve Freitas said at a morning news conference.
Gallon, who had been interviewed by detectives early on in the case and later served time in prison, has been held in Sonoma County Jail since late March on suspicion of killing his younger brother in their home. After his arrest, he provided detectives with information about the slayings of Cutshall and Allen that “no other person could have known,” Freitas said.
“We have located evidence corroborating his statements,” Freitas said. “We are confident we have Jason and Lindsay’s killer.”
Gallon was a stranger to the couple and had no apparent motive, authorities said.
“There doesn’t appear to be a struggle leading up to the shooting - no fighting, no indication of robbery or sexual motive. So all we have is a random act of violence,” said ?Sgt. Spencer Crum, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
The announcement re-opened a notorious Sonoma County cold case in chilling fashion, juxtaposing a jailhouse photo of Gallon with images of the smiling couple overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge shortly before they were killed. The wrenching crime, coming at the end of the couple’s summer stint as Christian camp counselors in the Sierra Nevada foothills, pitched two deeply religious families from Ohio and Michigan into a prolonged nightmare and stamped an iconic stretch of the coast with a deep sense of loss and insecurity.
Detectives for years searched far and wide for the killer, but in the end, say they found their man in a familiar place. Gallon, who was 25 at the time of the Jenner slayings, grew up and went to high school in Forestville. His extensive criminal history made him well known to authorities even before he went to prison in 2010 after shooting an arrow into an occupied car in Guerneville, sparking an intense manhunt that unnerved the town for days.
Speaking by phone Friday from the Ohio church where he serves as pastor, Chris Cutshall, Lindsay’s father, said sheriff’s officials called him several days ago to relay they had new evidence pointing to Gallon in the slayings. He said it confirmed his long-held suspicions that Gallon was the killer. Cutshall said he and his wife, Kathy, have been hit with a wave of emotions, from sadness to relief.
“We’ve believed that all along, that it was random and senseless,” Cutshall said.
His daughter and Allen were visiting the North Coast on their final weekend in California in August 2004 before returning home to be married.
Gallon was a person of interest early in the investigation after residents reported he “might be a person capable of doing that,” Crum said Friday.
“He was definitely on our radar from early on,” said Crum.
Gallon was arrested six days after the killings on an unrelated case of possession of stolen property and a weapons charge. Crum said Gallon was interviewed by homicide detectives but never detained.
Over the years, detectives explored possible links between the Jenner slayings and other unsolved cases, particularly a half-dozen slayings of couples in remote locations from the Pacific Northwest to Arizona.
Their known list of interviews in the Jenner case included a Wisconsin drifter, a Bodega Bay surf shop owner, a former counselor at the camp where Cutshall and Allen worked that summer and a Petaluma man whose devil-like drawings on driftwood, combined with the couple’s openly devout religious beliefs, fueled speculation that they were targeted for those convictions.
Sheriff’s detectives also focused on Joseph Henry Burgess, a drifter who was wanted in connection with the 1972 slayings of a young couple on a beach in Canada - a case that bore many similarities with the Jenner slayings. Burgess was killed in 2009 in a gun battle with New Mexico sheriff’s deputies that left a deputy dead.
But detectives also left open the possibility that whoever killed Cutshall and Allen was someone closer to home, based on the simple fact that the beach where the couple were slain is not easily found or accessible. Its remoteness also is part of its charm.
The spot, known to locals as “Fish Head” or “Driftwood” beach, would have made for an alluring place to bunk down on a late summer night. The couple, who were directed to the beach by the Bodega Bay surf shop owner, described the beauty they witnessed in a visitor’s journal later recovered as evidence.
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