SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- Suspected 'trailside killer' David Joseph Carpenter was charged Friday with shooting to death five hikers, two of them women who were first raped, along popular trails in Marin County.
Carpenter, 51, awaiting trial for the killing of two young women in Santa Cruz County, was accused in the new charges of 13 counts of 'special circumstances' which could send him to the gas chamber if convicted.
Marin County District Attorney Jerry Herman, under a gag order not to reveal details of the case, said Carpenter would be charged with using a gun in the five murders, the raping of two of the victims and attempted rape of another.
Four of the victims were found within a half mile of each other at the Point Reyes National Seashore last Nov. 28. Searchers looking for two missing women accidentally found the decomposed bodies of a young couple in a shallow grave.
The pair, missing since Oct. 11, were Cynthia Moreland, 18, Cotati, Calif., and Richard Stowers, 19, stationed at the Coast Guard training base at Two Rock near Petaluma, Calif. Both had been shot in the head.
Shortly afterwards, the searchers found the nude bodies of Diana O'Connell, 22, New York City, a former Cornell Unversity student and Shana May, 23, a San Francisco woman formerly of Pullman, Wash.
Carpenter was charged with forcibly raping Miss May and attempting to rape Miss O'Connell before killing them.
He was also charged with slaying and raping 26-year-old Anne Alderson of San Rafael, whose body was found in the outdoor Mountain Theater on Mount Tamalpais on Oct. 15, 1980.
The suspect had been described by authorities a possible woman hater 'lying in wait' for his victims and then torturing them before shooting them execution style.
Carpenter, employee of a Hayward, Calif., printer trade school, was arrested by a task force of officers in San Francisco in May and taken to the Santa Cruz County jail, where he was charged with the March 29 slaying of University of California at Davis student Ellen Marie Hansen, 20, and the May 2 killing of Heather Skaggs, 21.
Miss Skaggs was a co-worker of Carpenter and disappeared the morning she had an appointment to meet him.
Still under investigation in Marin County were the slayings of Barbara Schwartz, 23, a Mill Valley baker, who was knifed to death on Mount Tamalpais on March 8, 1980, and Edda Kane, 44, Mill Valley, who was shot with a high-powered weapon on Aug. 20, 1979.
Carpenter served time at San Quentin and Folsom prisons for 1970 convictions of robbery, kidnap and rape. He was paroled in February 1977.
