Jae Stevens (1947-1974) performer, murdered

Stevens was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but raised in Concord in the East Bay across from San Francisco. He came out as gay when he was called to the draft board.

In 1966 Jae started a professional career in San Francisco as a female impersonator and comedian, dancer and singer at THE FAN-TASY on Mason Street as part of "Jack & The Giants". He continued to work in the showroom of the P.S. Lounge, appeared on The Cabaret circuit in San Francisco and Los Angeles as one-half of the team of Stevens & [Steve] Miller. Jae also performed in a trio act with his sister, Melissa Stevens, and Miller. They were known as the "Wonder Sisters”.

In 1970, Jae was performing with The New Faces, and appeared at a charity premiere of the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, IMDB, as Jean Harlow and, taken as a cis woman, was acclaimed best female by audience applause. She then revealed that she was an impersonator – which was to the chagrin of the socially prominent judges.

Jae in The Laughing Policeman

Jae had an uncredited cameo in the 1973 film The Laughing Policeman. IMDB.

June 1974 Jae, age 27, had been performing at Finocchio’s night club. He (in mufti) was seen later on the night of the 24^th in the Cabaret Club in the North Beach, but it was not noticed that he left with anybody. He was feeling good as the next morning the Wonder Sisters were to fly to Boston for a gig. However, on the morning of June 25 Jae's body was found near Spreckels Lake in Golden Gate Park having been stabbed five times, three directly in the heart. It so happened that at 5 am the same morning the police had attempted to pull over a suspicious car in the Hayward area, but the driver raced away, was chased and crashed. The young driver, described as blond with shoulder-length hair, ran and escaped. The car was later identified as that of Jae Stevens.

The crime scene was a secluded area of the park sometimes used for gay encounters. The police assumed that Jae and his killer had gone there together after meeting in a bar.

There had been a similar murder of a gay man five months earlier, and then another on July 7. All were stabbed multiple times. Based on this modus apparandi, mainly the multiple stabbing and secluded locations, the SFPD assumed that they were looking for a homophobic serial killer.

Jae’s murder was, of course, a shock to the family. The youngest sister, Alma, 18, who had a history of instability, sought psychiatric help in late September, but was turned away. In October, she and her mother Mary Stevens, visited family in Texas. They returned late on Thursday 10 October. The father, a real estate agent, was not there as, while they were away, he had been sleeping at his office. After arriving home, Alma attacked and killed her mother with a hammer, dismembered the body and partially destroyed it by burning in the fireplace. The older sister, Melissa, the family member who had also performed as a Wonder Sister, and who had identified Jae’s body for the police, arrived, and was also attacked. She survived and went immediately to the local police, who arrested Alma. 

At her trial in February 1975, Alma was found innocent by reason of insanity, based on psychiatric reports, and she was committed to Napa State Hospital for an indefinite period.

Shortly afterwards, the father died in fire at his office. Melissa trained as a nurse and left the Bay Area. She returned only after Alma’s death in 2004.

We should also mention that San Francisco police at that time recently had dealt with the Zodiac (1968-9) and the Zebra (also 1971-4) serial killings of straight persons, and the overall homicide rate in San Francisco was more than double what it is today. Despite this there were apparently only four San Francisco murders in 1974 that can be designated as homophobic, the three later attributed to what became called the Doodler, and another killed in his apartment. In 1975 there was a surge in the number of such murders, including that of two trans women, Barbella and Yancy both killed in their own apartments. There was a gay community meeting in April concerned about the murders, but they continued. 

Three men, including a well-known entertainer and a diplomat, had survived a stabbing encounter in Fox Plaza and described the suspect, a black man, who was mentioned as making contact by sketching his mark. The police suspected that this ‘doodler’ could be the person who did the stabbing murders the year before. They put out a police sketch based on the three witness statements. The police listed five murders, 1974-5, as done by the Doodler, and suggested that the black man wanted for the Fox Plaza stabbing might be the Doodler.

A few months later there was a gruesome murder, again at the Fox Plaza, and in December-January two murders on Turk Street including one of a trans woman, Demott.

In late 1975, a psychiatrist phoned the police and claimed that one of his patients had confessed to the murderers during therapy. The police did not get the name of the psychiatrist straight, and never called him back. The therapy patient named was brought in for questioning in 1976, several times. The three men who had survived being stabbed identified the suspect. However, as homosexuality was still illegal at that time and San Francisco, like most US cities, had a police unit whose sole pupose was to entrap and arrest gay men, and to be outed as gay would destroy their lives and careers, the three survivors refused to testify against him. The suspect did not confess, charges were not pressed, and he was released. Murders of gay men in San Francisco continued, but no further murders were said to be done by the Doodler.

A rumor was put about that the Doodler had fled to New Orleans.

• Bill Kane & Jerry Carpenter. “Show Bars” California Scene, October 1971: 12. Online.
• “News”, Drag Magazine, 1,1, 1971: 16, 31. Online.
• Donald McLean. “Entertainer Jae Stevens Slain!”. Bay Area Reporter, 4, 13, 6/26/1974. Reprinted as “In Memoriam: Jay Stevens 1947-1974”. Drag Magazine, 4, 16, 1974: 34. Online.
• Wendy Heard. “The Doodler”. com. Online.
• Kevin Fagan. “The Doodler”. Com, March 16, 2021. Online.
• Gian J Quaser. “The DOODLER Serial Killer Theory”. Questersite, August 30, 2021. Online.
• Gian J Quaser. “Murder By Forgotten: The Gay Murders of San Francisco 1968-1982”. Questersite, February 6, 2022. Online.
• The Doodler: Unsolved, But Not Forgotten”. The Bloody Truth, December 17, 2023. Online.

Alma Stevens:

• “Body found in Concord fireplace: Mother missing, daughter held”. Concord Transcript, Oct 11, 1974:1.
• “A tragic psychiatric rejection”. The San Francisco Examiner, Oct 16, 1974:46.
• “Alma Stevens committed to a hospital”, Concord Transcript, Feb 26, 1975:1.

En.Wikipedia(Doodler) Find a Grave

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Jian J Quaser questions whether there was indeed a Doodler. The murders, of course were real, and significantly more than the five or six attributed to the Doodler. One of the Doodler victims was not stabbed, but beaten with a rock. Also, the man who stole Jae’s car and then ran off was described as ‘blond’ not black. 

Quaser:

The DOODLER concept then goes public in 1976, but the concept was presented to us vaguely. I have repeated it a number of times on here. To belabor the point, we are basically told there possibly had been some black guy known now as The DOODLER who might be connected with 14 other murders, names unspecified, over 1974-1975. In retrospect we are given five names of potential victims: they are, of course, Gerald Cavanaugh (January 1974), Jae Stevens (June 1974), Klaus Christmann (July 1974), Fred Capin (May 1975), and Harald Gullberg (May/June 1975). After this, The DOODLER concept rather fizzles away.

From our point of view today, however, there is a problem. A closer look at these cases, for the most part, doesn’t reveal much of a connection except they occurred out-of-doors and in the western districts of San Francisco. In retrospect there seems little reason these 5 were made tokens. Poor Harald Gullberg probably wasn’t even murdered. He certainly wasn’t knifed, and the coroner wasn’t sure if his death was an accident. Why then were these 5 names presented to the public in 1976 and strung to a black guy who had attacked in Mid Market and whose known victims had survived?

Quaser is almost alone in questioning the Doodler as a police construction. I am however inclined to go with his interpretation. The search for a mythical Doodler resulted in the murders not being properly investigated, and the real murderers not being apprehended.