500 TEENS TARGETED FOR DEATH?: OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER, FEBRUARY 16, 1980

The number in the headline was 500, and it came from a sheriff. On Friday, February 15, 1980, Peter Pitchess told reporters in Los Angeles that searches of property belonging to two men had turned up snapshots of more than 500 teenage girls. "We have reason to believe that those girls were all potential victims," he said. The men were Roy Lewis Norris, 32, and Lawrence Bittaker, 39, and they were being questioned in the rape and torture killings of five girls. The Ogden Standard-Examiner ran the Associated Press story down the left side of its front page the next morning.

Read past the headline and the claim shrinks. Fifty or sixty of the girls in the photographs had already been found alive. Another thirty to forty names in the department's missing persons files were being checked, and asked whether they were dead, Pitchess answered, "I sincerely hope not, but we just don't know for sure at this time." Neither man had been charged with murder. Both had been arrested on November 20 on kidnap and rape charges since dropped; Norris was out of Atascadero State Mental Hospital, where he had been treated after a rape conviction, and Bittaker was held for violating his parole. "We will bring charges immediately (in the five killings) if they try to make bail," the sheriff warned.

The story's last paragraph held the news that mattered. Norris was cooperating, and the Saturday before he had led investigators into the San Gabriel Mountains above San Dimas, where they found the skulls, ribs and jawbones of Jacqueline Leah Lamp, 13, and Jacqueline Gilliam, 15, last seen hitchhiking together on September 2. A piece of an ice pick was still lodged in Gilliam's skull. The story names no other victims. They were Lucinda Schaefer, called Cindy, sixteen; Andrea Joy Hall, eighteen; and Shirley Lynette Ledford, killed on Halloween night, 1979. The bodies of Cindy Schaefer and Andrea Hall have never been found.

The headline is the paper's own, and it goes further than the story beneath it: the sheriff said the girls in the photographs were potential victims, and nothing ever showed that any of them had been marked for death. The AP calls Gilliam "Jackie Doris Gilliam" and puts her in Redondo Beach; she was Jacqueline Doris Gilliam, of Long Beach. It says Hermosa Beach police arrested both men; Bittaker was taken by Burbank officers on a Hermosa Beach warrant. On February 17, 1981, a jury convicted Bittaker on all 26 counts, five of them murder, and he was sentenced to death. He died on San Quentin's death row in 2019, never executed. Norris pleaded guilty to five murders, testified against him, and got 45 years to life.

Associated Press wire copy, printed without a byline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on February 16, 1980. The scan is from Utah Digital Newspapers, held by the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library, which rates the issue In Copyright. No copyright notice was found on the story or on the issue's news matter. The citation and the library's rights rating are given under the scan.

The column is printed in clear type and was transcribed word for word, without a single illegible mark. The wire's spellings are kept: "Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker," where Sigmund is the usual form, "Jaqueline Leah Lamp," "teen-age" and "Mental Hospital" for the Atascadero facility. The headline, the subhead LED TO SITE and the dashes around Norris's name in the sheriff's quotation are the paper's own.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

500 Teens Targeted For Death?

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Snapshots of more than 500 teen-age girls have come to light in the investigation of five grisly rape-torture slayings — and authorities say all 500 young women may have been targeted for death.

The photographs were found in searches of property owned by Roy Lewis Norris and Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker, who are being questioned in the slayings of the five girls, Sheriff Peter Pitchess told reporters Friday.

"We have reason to believe that those girls were all potential victims," Pitchess said of the subjects in the photographs. But he said 50 or 60 of the girls have been tracked down and are alive.

Pitchess said another 30 to 40 girls whose names are in his department's missing persons files are being investigated as possible victims in the case.

Asked if they were presumed dead, he replied: "I sincerely hope not, but we just don't know for sure at this time."

Norris, 32, and Bittaker, 39, were arrested by Hermosa Beach police Nov. 20 on unrelated kidnap and rape charges that have since been dropped. They remain in custody on an unrelated assault charge, and Pitchess warned, "We will bring charges immediately (in the five killings) if they try to make bail."

Norris, who was released last June from Atascadero State Mental Hospital, where he was treated after a rape conviction, was being held in lieu of $10,000 bail. Bittaker, paroled in November 1978 on a conviction of assault with a deadly weapon, was being held without bail for parole violation.

Pitchess said evidence linking the pair to the five slayings developed after they were first jailed.

LED TO SITE

"One of the suspects — Norris — is cooperating," he said.

The case has been under investigation for three months by a special task force of sheriff's deputies, three police departments and district attorney's investigators.

Last Saturday, Pitchess said, Norris led investigators to sites in the San Gabriel Mountains above San Dimas where they found the skulls, ribs and jawbones of two victims, Jaqueline Leah Lamp, 13, and Jackie Doris Gilliam, 15, both of Redondo Beach. The girls were last seen hitchhiking on Sept. 2.

Notes: Kept as printed: "Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker" (usually Sigmund); "Jaqueline Leah Lamp". The story runs as a single column down the left of the front page. The "500" figure is the paper's own headline claim; the article says only that the girls in the photographs were being checked. No words were illegible.