True Crime in the Great Outdoors
The most shocking crimes from national parks, camping trips, backpacker murders, and hiking incidents
The mysterious death of Carol Laughlin in Yosemite National Park
CAROL LAUGHLIN, DISAPPEARED SEPTEMBER 1979, CURRY VILLAGE, REMAINS FOUND APRIL 1980, COOKIE CLIFF, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA
Revised November 2024
Carol Laughlin, 19, worked in the Curry Village gift shop in Yosemite National Park. She lived in tent 51 in Curry Camp 6.
In September 1979, she mysteriously vanished, and her remains were found at the base of a tunnel near Cookie Cliff some months later.
The Cookie is a classic Yosemite crack area. It contains some of the world's best crack climbs, including "Outer Limits", "Meat Grinder", "Red Zinger", "Butterfingers", "Wheat Thin", "Waverly Wafer" and "Crack-A-Go-Go". It is about 1/2 mile down the canyon from the Cascade Creek bridge.
The body was discovered by two men descending Castaneda Wall near Big Oak Flat Road on April 28, 1980. The remains were scattered four hundred feet below the longest tunnel on the road. Rangers found bones scattered in a 15 feet radius, beer cans and other trash in the area. The tunnel itself is 75 feet long.
Austin Laughlin, the father of Carol, said that the authorities had told him that there was no way she could have fallen down the shaft; she must have been pushed.
David Joseph Carpenter (born May 6, 1930), a.k.a. the Trailside Killer, is an American serial killer known for stalking and murdering his victims in State Parks in California. Carpenter at least ten people, with one attempted victim, Steven Haertle, surviving. Carpenter used a .38 caliber handgun in all but one of the killings, with a .44 caliber handgun being used in the killing of Edna Kane on Mount Tamalpais.
Carpenter worked as a travelling salesman for Gems of the Golden West, a firm supplying Yosemite gift shops. However, records show he had not joined the firm until two months after Carol’s disappearance. Her supervisor at the store, Larry Lopez, never recalled Carpenter visiting the store, but he had talked to him a couple of times on the phone.
Could the Carpenter, the Trailside Killer, have murdered Carol? The frightening case of the Trailside Killer David Carpenter
David Joseph Carpenter
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