Jailing of 2004 Jenner slayings suspect renews pain and offers relief

When he steps up to the pulpit today at his Ohio church, Chris Cutshall will for the first time in more than a dozen years bring a certainty about who shot and killed his daughter and her fiancé as the couple slept on a beach near Jenner on the Sonoma Coast in 2004.

It will have been several days since Cutshall received a phone call from Sonoma County Sheriff Steve Freitas, telling him about a break in one of the North Coast's most impenetrable crimes. A Forestville man already in custody, suspected of killing his brother six weeks ago, made jailhouse statements that detectives believe only the gunman who shot Lindsay Cutshall, 22, and Jason Allen, 26, in August 2004 would know, according to Freitas.

The 38-year-old man's name - Shaun Michael Gallon, who was interviewed by detectives early on in the case - was familiar to Cutshall. He had long suspected he was the person responsible for Lindsay and Jason's deaths, a belief he had held close and not shared publicly until Friday.

“We're very pleased that the killer is finally captured, and we have the delight and the joy of knowing he's off the streets,” said Chris Cutshall, speaking by phone from the Fresno Bible Church where he is a pastor. “Our greatest fears were that he would kill again if he could kill as senselessly as he did our children.”

Freitas shared the news with the public Friday at a press conference, rekindling the sorrow that has gripped two Midwestern families - the Cutshalls in Ohio and the Allens in Michigan - who have bonded in their loss through their steadfast Christian faith.

For the tiny town of Jenner and scores of people touched by the case, the announcement brought back the pain of that discovery of two bodies on the beach and the long, baffling search for the killer.

“That whole community was wounded, and it persisted,” said Dave Edmonds, a retired sheriff's captain who was the investigations lieutenant at the time. “They owned this tragedy together.”

It was Freitas who walked onto the sand at Fish Head Beach as the sergeant overseeing the homicide team the day the bodies were found in 2004. The case has profoundly marked his career and life, forging a newfound Christian faith that has kept him close with the two families.

On Friday, he stood behind a podium at the Sheriff's Office and announced the break in the case. “We are confident we have Jason and Lindsay's killer,” Freitas said.

In an interview Saturday, he reflected on the complexity of investigating a crime with no obvious motive and with victims who had only been in Sonoma County a few hours.

“Jason and Lindsay were purely innocent, there was no connection,” Freitas said. “Detectives take all homicides personally, but obviously with a case like this there's an added layer of urgency.”

Clues came early on

West county residents shared Gallon's name with detectives early on in the investigation. They said he might be capable of such a crime, according to the Sheriff's Office.

He was 25 years old at the time, and was arrested six days after the killings in an unrelated case involving stolen property and weapons. He was interviewed by homicide detectives but never detained.

It was the Sonoma County sheriff's helicopter crew that spotted two people in sleeping bags early on Aug. 18, 2004, on the sand at Fish Head Beach, about a mile north of Jenner. The crew flew over the shoreline again hours later, and saw they had not moved.

A park ranger hiked down to the isolated beach and found two gunshot victims, setting in motion a yearslong investigation that led detectives to suspects living in Sonoma County and others out of state.

There were few potential clues: A bottle from an uncommon Wisconsin beer. Etchings in the driftwood. A distinct hat.

Their belongings and their bodies appeared otherwise untouched. Cutshall still wore a diamond cross necklace.

Investigators would eventually fill a dozen 4-inch binders with tips, research and interviews.

The case hung over Jenner residents as the investigation dragged on, casting suspicion on familiar faces and dimming the allure of a popular coastline that is a lifeblood of the community.

“You're waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen again,” longtime Jenner resident Cal Ares said Saturday. “That's always there in the back deep recesses of the mind, that there is a danger out there.”

One week after Lindsay and Jason's bodies were found, the Jenner community center was packed with residents and reporters. Bill Cogbill, the sheriff at the time, tried to reassure people they were doing everything possible to keep them safe and identify the killer.

The room felt like it would burst under the pressure of residents' concerns, Edmonds recalled.

“It was palpable,” he said. “That community came out to that little hall, and they were really expressive of their pain and anxiety and their hurt over what happened.”

Couple's future cut short

Cutshall and Allen had planned to spend their lives together ministering to Christian youth.

Cutshall grew up in Fresno, Ohio, on the edge of Amish country, the youngest daughter of Chris and Kathy Cutshall. Allen grew up in Zeeland, Michigan, in a family committed to their Baptist faith.

The couple met at Appalachian Bible College in West Virginia, and they were in California for summer jobs as counselors at Rock-N-Water, a Christian youth adventure camp in El Dorado County in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Invitations to their September wedding in Ohio had already been sent.

A work break brought the couple to the Bay Area and up the coast to Sonoma County. They stopped at a Sebastopol surf shop where the owner, who later endured scrutiny as a suspect, gave Cutshall a necklace with a blue stone. His camping advice led them to Fish Head Beach.

The couple found their way to a pullout near a hairpin turn on Highway 1, and hiked down to the sand. They wrote in a visitor's journal kept in a small wooden hutch.

“The sun is going down in the horizon,” Lindsay wrote. “All I see is the beams shining on the cliff face. And I know that God is awsome (sic). I look around and I see his creation all around me.”

Jason wrote: “Can life ever be so perfect. Only with a person who is so great. God gives me this privilege in life and He has given me a wonderful woman to enjoy it.”

Their bodies were found four days later.

The closest oceanside cottage to Fish Head Beach is home to Elinor Twohy, now 95, who has been watching the sea and its wildlife for decades.

“There they were on this pristine beach, quite remote from everything,” Twohy said. “There was a great deal of sadness that it happened.”

Gallon knew the Sonoma Coast, where he hunted abalone not far from where he grew up along the Russian River. He went to high school in Forestville and later became infatuated with weapons, according to those who know him. He was seen walking around town with a homemade bow and arrow, shooting squirrels and birds.

Some said he became withdrawn over the years and showed signs of mental illnesses. One longtime acquaintance, Scotty Redman of Guerneville, said Gallon “had no humanity in his eyes.”

He has been repeatedly jailed over the past two decades and was sentenced to prison in 2010 after a bizarre attack with a bow and arrow on two men in a car.

On the night of March 24, sheriff's officials said, Gallon shot and killed his younger brother, 36-year-old Shamus Gallon, at their mother's home on River Road in Forestville. Their mother was home at the time and called 911. Gallon had driven away and deputies arrested him at a Guerneville gas station.

While in custody, he told detectives something about the Jenner case that “no other person could have known,” Freitas said on Friday.

Gripped by ‘mixed emotions'

Sheriff's officials have not elaborated on what Gallon shared, but said he pointed detectives to “articles of evidence” tying him to the Jenner slayings. Confident in their findings, the lead investigators asked Freitas to call the Allen and Cutshall families to break the news. He was had been among the sheriff's officials who traveled to the El Dorado County summer camp in 2004 to tell Lindsay's and Jason's parents their children had been killed. The way they relied on their Christian faith made a lasting impression on him.

“They knew I was familiar with the families, that they would be comfortable hearing from me,” Freitas said.

In days since that phone call last week from Freitas, Cutshall said he has grappled with “mixed emotions” over the news that Gallon was now the lone suspect in the killings.

Cutshall said he years ago gave the killer “over to the Lord because he was too much for me to handle.”

“I haven't forgiven him because he hasn't confessed or truly repented,” Cutshall said of Gallon, who has yet to be arrested in the slayings. “If he asked us, we would forgive him.”

For Freitas, some closure came in the Sheriff's Office briefing room on Friday, where dozens of his employees lined the walls of the room as he made the announcement about the breakthrough.

Their presence “really helped me,” Freitas said.

It will be up to the District Attorney's Office to charge Gallon with the murders. Still, Freitas, who last month announced he will retire at the end of his second term in December 2018, said he is proud of the detectives who pushed the case forward and grateful a suspect has finally been named.

“I would have felt like something was undone, if I had finished my term with this open,” he said.

The Allen family could not be reached last week.

Chris Cutshall said today's sermon will not be the first in which he will mention his daughter's killing, but it will be more joyful and focused on prayer for justice, at last.

“We still pray for him,” he said of his daughter's killer. “If anybody needs the Lord he does, and if anybody needs forgiveness, he does.”

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.