[BREAKING] Shock breakthrough on serial killer ‘The Doodler’ after horrid string of murdering gay men: investigator

A Bay Area cold case investigator said he believes he has identified the killer of six gay men in the 1970s, known as "The Doodler," and believes the man could still be arrested.

Daniel Cunningham, leader of the San Francisco Police Department's cold case unit, told the San Francisco Standard that he believes the alleged serial killer lives in the East Bay, as the department is offering $250,000 for tips leading to his arrest fifty years later.

Police believe that at least six gay men were murdered by “The Doodler” in or around Ocean Beach in the 1970s.

The victims, Warren Andrews, Frederick Capin, Gerald Cavanaugh, Klaus Christmann, Harald Gullberg and Joseph Stevens, were murdered by the suspected serial killer between 1974 and 1975.

Investigators named the suspect after discovering that the killer lured his victims by promising to draw them in gay bars and then inviting them to isolated locations for a hookup where he would stab them in “rage murders,” the Standard reported.

As part of the investigation, police found two more victims who survived a stabbing by “The Doodler” in 1975 in the Fox Plaza apartment where they lived.

One of the victims told police that the suspect, who said he was a cartoonist, was doodling while chatting with him at a late-night restaurant.

The victim ended up inviting the suspect to her apartment where he was stabbed, according to SFPD.

The victim never returned to his apartment.

He and other surviving victims were able to give a description to police that led to a forensic sketch of the suspect that was developed in 1975.

“Investigators believed that all of the victims were targeted because they were white, gay, adult men, and the victims met the suspect shortly before they were killed at secluded coastal locations,” police said in a recent statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The victims described the alleged attacker as a handsome black man in his 20s. One of the survivors identified his attacker and police brought in a man for questioning.

"Once this person learned that he was a suspect in these murders, the murders stopped," Cunningham told the outlet.

Now, fifty years later, police said the same man who was questioned in 1975 remains a person of interest in the multiple murders.

Police believe the main suspect is still alive, in his 70s and living in the East Bay.

Cunningham believes he spoke to this alleged killer when he reopened the case in 2018 and brought him in for questioning.

Some time later, the two men met face to face again in an unrelated case.

“He came out of his residence, looked at me and recognized me,” Cunningham said.

He said the two made eye contact and he never saw the person again.

"I can be sure, I'm pretty sure that he is the same person who attacked two men at Fox Plaza," the investigator told the outlet.

In 2023, the SFPD announced that it had increased the reward for information leading to the arrest of The Doodler from $200,000 to $250,000, the maximum the department can offer.

The California Post has reached out to the department for further comment.

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