Double Murder in Sonoma County
Posted by Tiffany Burkes on Aug 27, 2004 - 11:02:00 PM
The quaint town of Jenner, California had its peace disrupted by a tragic double murder last week. The bodies of Lindsay Cutshall, 23, of Fresno, Ohio and her fiancé Jason Allen, 26, of Zeeland, Michigan were found Wednesday, August 18 on the remote Fish Head Beach in Sonoma County. No suspects have been named. Police did question a man from Wisconsin who had turned himself in after hearing his name in relation to the case. The man has since been cleared.
The couple was believed to be spending the weekend visiting friends. The pair was supposed to return back to work Sunday, August 15. When the two did not report back by Monday, camp officials filed a missing person’s report.
Cutshall and Allen were missionaries who were spending their summer as whitewater rafting guides at Rock-N-Water, a Christian outdoor adventure camp, in the Sierra Foothills town of Coloma, which is just 40 miles east of Sacramento.
Autopsies were completed Friday, August 20. The tests concluded that the victims who were found side by side in their sleeping bags and had been shot in the head at a close range.
Due to the fact that no murder weapon was found, authorities have ruled out a murder suicide. There was also no evidence of sexual assault, trauma or robbery.
Rock-N-Water has closed for the summer as a result of these unusual occurrences. All campers were relocated to nearby camps in the local area.
Cutshall and Allen had planned to be married in September. They were planning to spend their honeymoon camping in West Virginia on the Gauley River, one of the nation’s wildest whitewater rivers.
Local authorities are still searching for clues and are looking into a possible connection to past cases in Northern California and Arizona that have similarities and are unsolved.
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