On April 18, 1979, a young man in Los Angeles offered Lydia Preston, twenty-four, a ride. Minutes later he shot her in the ear. She jumped out of the car and got herself to a hospital, where the bullet was removed, and she recovered. On July 11 she saw the man again, in a bar in Hollywood, and called the investigators. On July 27, police arrested Thor Nis Christiansen, twenty-one, of Solvang, and he was held in the Santa Barbara County jail on $500,000 bond, charged not with Preston's shooting but with three murders from Isla Vista, the student town beside the University of California at Santa Barbara, that had gone unsolved for more than two years.
The Isla Vista killings had been called the look-alike murders, because the young women had long, straight hair, dressed alike and were of much the same build. Jacqueline Rook, twenty-one, was last seen on November 20, 1976, and was found on January 20, 1977, shot in the head, in Refugio Canyon near Santa Barbara. Mary Ann Sarris, nineteen, went missing on December 6, 1976; her remains were found on May 22, 1977, in a remote area near Los Alamos Canyon. Patricia Laney, twenty-one, was reported missing and was found shot to death in Refugio Canyon the next day, January 19, 1977. Christiansen's method was to pick up hitchhikers, shoot them in the head with a .22 pistol and sexually assault them after death.
The killings brought large demonstrations in Isla Vista against violence toward women and for better transportation for the young people who lived there and relied on hitchhiking. Investigators interviewed more than 115 people over two years. Christiansen had crossed their path in February 1977, when he was cited as a minor in possession of liquor and police confiscated a .22 caliber pistol from his car, but it was Preston's call that led to his arrest.
He was born in Denmark on December 28, 1957, and came to the United States with his parents at five. The family lived first in Inglewood and then in Solvang, where his father, Nis, ran a restaurant. He was a good student until his junior year of high school, when he let his work go, moved out of his parents' house, dropped out and took a job as a gas station attendant. He put on a great deal of weight, at one point reaching 275 pounds.
After his arrest he was also charged, on August 20, 1979, with the murder of Laura Sue Benjamin, twenty-two, whose decomposed body had been found on May 26 in a drainage culvert near Big Tujunga Dam. She had been shot twice in the head sometime in April. The next day he was charged with the attempted murder of Lydia Preston. On December 26 he added a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity; in March 1980 he dropped it in favor of a diminished capacity defense. A psychiatric evaluation described an intermittent explosive disorder, a paranoid personality, chronic drug use and necrophilia, and he said he had taken his victims to secluded places, undressed them and sexually explored their bodies. On April 16, 1980, after a psychiatrist testified to a degree of what he called provisional planning, a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and assault. On May 14 he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life for Benjamin and nine years for Preston.
His Santa Barbara trial opened on May 28, 1980, and to the prosecution's surprise he pleaded guilty to all three murders; six of at least seven psychiatrists in Los Angeles had found him sane. On June 18 he was sentenced to life. On March 30, 1981, walking in the exercise yard at Folsom State Prison, he was stabbed once in the chest and died. His killer was never identified.
Patricia Laney had volunteered with groups working against violence toward women, and she became a symbol for them in Santa Barbara, Goleta and Isla Vista. The Isla Vista Juggling Festival has been held in her memory every year since 1977.