The Doodler: Art, Desire, and Murder in 1970s San Francisco

Between January 1974 and the summer of 1975, a serial killer moved through the fog-shrouded beaches and parks of San Francisco’s western edge, drawing quick portraits of his targets in late-night diners before walking with them into the dark. He killed at least six men and attacked three others. He was never charged.

The Doodler is the definitive account of one of America’s most haunting unsolved serial murder cases – and of the social forces that made it possible. Drawing on investigative records, forensic analysis, the landmark journalism of the San Francisco Chronicle, and the history of a community under siege, Kiel Poole reconstructs not only the killings but the world that enabled them: the closet, the vice squad raids, the nocturnal geography of a city that had already decided its gay citizens were expendable.

The perpetrator exploited a community’s necessary secrecy with terrifying precision. When investigators finally identified a suspect, the surviving victims faced an impossible choice – testify publicly and lose everything, or stay silent and watch the case collapse. They chose silence. The case went cold.

Fifty years later, forensic genetic genealogy has reopened the question. The answer may finally be within reach. But first, the dead deserve to be known.