Crime Adjacent

Tommy Coulet left home at 9 p.m. on Dec. 23, 1995 and would never return. His body was discovered the next morning in a known lovers’ lane spot on the western edge of Ridgewood just off Interstate 80.

Investigators wouldn’t know it at the time, but Tommy Coulet would be the first known victim of the most prolific serial killer in American history.

This is the story of how it all began.

Crime Adjacent is the never-...

With no leads, no clues, and no suspects, Tommy’s case went cold, almost instantly. But as more men were abducted in Ridgewood, investigators reached out to the FBI for a profile.

The profile has never been publicly released.

Until now.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling readi...

Exactly two weeks after the discovery of Tommy Coulet, another man was found on the outskirts of Ridgewood.

Same valley. Same injuries. Same horrible manner of death.

This is the story of Bobby Calvin, who would soon become known as Bobby #1.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling...

Bobby Calvin had everything going for him. 

Smart, handsome, a former D1 star quarterback at Stanford, where he almost led the team to a national title in the 1980s. An actor with big dreams of Hollywood. An early adopter of the Internet.

So how did he cross paths with a killer on a lonely night just after the new year in 1996? 

Detective Jones has spent her entire career trying to answer this question,...

Detective Ida Jones had seen this before. Gay men were being murdered while the police and the entire town looked the other way. 

Like a nightmare she couldn’t escape, she couldn’t stop this from happening in Ridgewood. 

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group ...

With the discovery of a third body in the valley just off Interstate 80 in Ridgewood, police realized the killer emerged every other Saturday night. Only this time, instead of abducting a man at Hunter Hill rest stop, he was in Ridgewood.

Anyone, it seemed, was fair game now.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our t...

The similarities between the abduction of Bobby Briggs and one Zodiac survivor were so striking that Detective Jones had to check it out. 

Briggs was kidnapped in the middle of Ridgewood, on a busy thoroughfare. And yet, there were no witnesses or signs of a struggle. It was as if he simply vanished.

When Detective Jones inspected his truck, she knew what happened. She had seen this before. With the Zodiac kille...

After the abduction and murder of Bobby Briggs on Jan. 20, 1996, Ridgewood exploded. There was a killer among them, taking men. Off busy streets. Stomping them to death.

Just as it has done all over the country for ages, panic set in. And Ridgewood would never be the same.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true ...

One man built a flamethrower and patrolled the town’s sewer system, positive the killer lurked underground. A posse of women formed an armed vigilante group and roamed the streets at night. Neighbors reported other neighbors to police. Kids called the tip line on their teachers. 

As Ridgewood waited for the killer to strike again, mass hysteria settled over the entire town. But then, just as suddenly as they began,...

Three Ridgewood men have been abducted and murdered, their bodies found in a valley on the outskirts of town. And the same man found two of them. This is Daniel Palmer Jr., a millionaire housing developer who owns the valley land.

On the nights of each murder, Palmer said he was home, hosting fund-raisers for local politicians. People saw him each night, vouched for him. But are his alibis as airtight as he claims? Is i...

When Len Macy arrived in San Francisco in 1967 for the Summer of Love, he was immediately tempted by the cults and charismatic narcissists who preyed on young people at the time. 

Charles Manson. Jim Jones. Synanon. They were everywhere.

But it was Mitch "Moon" McDaniel that would lure Len to Ridgewood, where he would soon find himself alone and forgotten. Until a killer started dumping bodies just yards from hi...

The killer disappeared for nearly 30 years. Police thought he moved or was caught or just decided to call it quits, which happens occasionally with serial killers.

Then Gary Pugh was abducted from a quiet street in Ridgewood on December 11, 2023, and discovered dead in the valley just hours later.

The Rest Stop Killer had never left. 

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. 

Curiosity is a dangerous thing. Kingscreek is a weekly horror semi-anthology podcast, with weekly episodes. Follow Damien Bachman as he reads through his late uncle's old research, centered around the strange and paranormal occurrences in Kingscreek, Washington.

Case A-95: Serial Roadside Phenomena (Fall 1997)

Recording Date: 09/16/08

Content Warnings:

- Animal Death

- Animal Body Horror

Starring Thomas S Dennis as D...

It was Mollie Miller who alerted me to the death of Gary Pugh. It was Mollie Miller who said the Rest Stop Killer was back, who said the Palmer family was involved somehow, and that the police were covering for them. 

And yet, she now refused to talk. 

Something was happening in Ridgewood, and on Thursday Dec. 14, 2023, I went home for the first time in nearly 30 years to figure it out. 

Crime Adjac...

The disappearance of Michelle Diaz happened at the worst possible time in a small town with limited resources and in a media environment desperate for information about a different case altogether. 

So although her death would eventually lead to uncovering the true volume of horror committed by the Rest Stop Killer, she would, sadly, become a footnote in the larger story. 

Michelle Diaz was anything but a f...

On Sept. 27, 1969, the Zodiac killer donned a black hood and approached a young couple on the shores of Lake Berryessa — just a few miles north of Ridgewood.

Once he tied up the couple, he stabbed them mercilessly. 

I told you the Zodiac kept appearing in strange ways in the case of the Rest Stop Killer, and it happened again here, at Lake Berryessa. 

Because this exact spot where the Zodiac struck back ...

Margie Miller spent her life trying to escape Ridgewood. But a series of unfortunate events always pulled her back home, and right back into the heart of this case.

At 18, she was accepted into the University of Chicago, but her family just couldn't afford it, and so she stayed home. At 22, she was offered a job in San Francisco, but her father suddenly died and she remained home to help her mother.

After a few years...

True Crime stories are riddled with serial killers and their crimes. But how do they get started? 

From BTK to The Nightstalker to the Rest Stop Killer, many serial killers begin with what forensic psychologists call rehearsal fantasy. 

That's the term for the young teen or young man outside, in the bushes, watching. Eventually, for some, these voyeuristic, Peeping Tom fantasies evolve into something far, f...

On Dec. 13, 2023, Ridgewood resident Mollie Miller came to one of the Crime Adjacent live shows in San Francisco. She had a message for us: The Rest Stop Killer had returned to Ridgewood. 

But more than that, she knew exactly who the killer was.

So why, then, when I returned to Ridgewood to investigate, did I find her in her main suspect's home?

I needed answers. Fast. Because during that cold winter week in ...