In June of 1981, the Burroughs Corporation announced it was shutting down its Santa Barbara division. Sanchez planned a trip to the East Coast to explore job opportunities at their Florida branch. The following month, while Debbi was living at the Klein Bottle shelter, Greg got in touch and invited her out to lunch.
Greg and Debbi had been close. He was like family. Not quite a father figure, as his age fell somewhere in the middle between Cheri’s and Debbi’s, he was something in the realm of an older brother. He was fun and he treated her well. He liked to call her Debra D.
“Greg, my name’s not Debra,” she’d remind him.
“That’s alright, Debra D,” he’d tease. “Don’t worry about it.”
Over hamburgers that afternoon in mid-July, Greg broke the news to Debbi that he was moving to Florida. He explained that he wanted her to hear it from him, rather than learning about it after the fact—which he knew would shatter her. She was not much less crestfallen hearing it directly from the source.
“I’ve proposed to your mom so many times,” he said resignedly. “She’ll never marry me.” Cheri felt she was too old for Greg, a rationale Debbi thought was ridiculous.
What Debbi didn’t know was that Greg was already seeing someone else.
He had met Tabitha Silver* in May. Both lived in the same apartment complex, and Greg had dated her close friend Cynthia.* Cynthia remained friends with Greg and ultimately introduced him to Tabitha. They began going out, and their relationship deepened quickly. Not even three weeks in, Greg was marveling— with some degree of alarm—at the speed with which things had turned serious.
But the timing was off. Both their lives were in states of flux. Tabitha was starting dental school at UCLA in the fall, and in the interim, she’d left Santa Barbara and moved back home to San Diego for the summer. Greg’s job status was in limbo and he was considering relocating to Florida.
“This is not the time in my life to get involved,” Greg told her.
“When is the time going to be?” Tabitha retorted. “When you’re six feet under?”
Greg returned from Florida on July 23 and immediately phoned Tabitha. He was going to remain in California after all, he’d decided. Florida was too far away from his friends and family. With her birthday only days away, he invited her to Santa Barbara for the weekend.
She drove up that Saturday and they spent the day together. He hinted at a marriage proposal. The following night, she appeared at the door of his apartment. He surprised her with a last-minute change of plans: he was going to spend the evening with a friend instead.
That friend was Cheri Domingo.
A NEIGHBOR OF CHERI DOMINGO’S HEARD A GUNSHOT, FOLLOWED by a voice in the middle of the night—a woman speaking to someone in a controlled, unemotional way, something along the lines of “Take it easy.” That was probably the last thing Domingo ever said.
Investigators later theorized that the conspicuous scraping sound the bedroom door made against the shag rug had alerted Sanchez to an intruder. It appeared he’d fought with the killer.
One detective familiar with the case recalled the woman’s voice, steadying and deflective, overheard by the neighbor. “She pissed him off,” he said.
This time the killer took the ligatures with him. He was adapting, eliminating evidence.
* * *
ON MONDAY MORNING, A REALTOR ARRIVED AT 449 TOLTEC WAY to show the property to a prospective buyer and his family. He let himself into the house and, upon entering the master bedroom, discovered the bodies of a male and a female. He immediately whisked his clients out of the house and called the police.
Both victims were nude. Sanchez’s body was half inside the closet in a prone position. The killer had covered his head with a pile of clothing pulled down from the rack above. Near the body was a flashlight—the batteries had Sanchez’s fingerprints on them, indicating it came from the house.
Sanchez had been shot in the cheek, probably while struggling with or resisting the perpetrator. That wound was not fatal. The twenty-four blunt-force wounds, inflicted by an unknown instrument, were. Domingo was face down on the bed in a pool of blood. She had been bludgeoned to death with the same instrument. Draped over her was a bedspread that matched the wallpaper. Her hands were crossed behind her back as though they’d been bound. Ligature marks on her wrists supported this notion.
Investigators found a small window open in the downstairs guest bathroom. The window screen had been removed and hidden in the bushes behind a juniper tree. Though the window was too small for an adult male to enter, they deduced that the perpetrator had reached through the window and unlocked the outside bathroom door.
Officers processing the crime scene noticed outlines of two tools that had been recently removed from a dusty gardening shelf in the hallway. One clearly belonged to a pipe wrench. The missing tool responsible for the other outline was later identified by Cheri’s ex-husband as likely having been a gardening instrument called a turf plugger. Neither the turf plugger nor the pipe wrench was ever located.
The police went door to door, canvassing the neighborhood. The next-door neighbor reported having been awakened at approximately two fifteen a.m. by barking dogs. He and his wife looked out the window. They observed nothing of concern and returned to bed.
Two thirteen-year-old boys told police they had been walking in the neighborhood at about nine forty-five p.m. when they saw someone standing behind a large tree a block over from the crime scene. They thought the individual was male, but couldn’t be sure; in the shadows, it was merely a blank silhouette.
Len and Carol Goldschein* reported that they’d gone out for a walk that night and had a strange encounter. At approximately ten thirty p.m., as they were heading westward on University Drive, they noticed that an unfamiliar man appeared to be following them, and was gaining on them. As they turned onto Berkeley Road, the subject crossed the street and continued walking parallel to them.
The man was white, in his late teens or maybe early twenties, about five eleven, with a slender build and very blond, straight hair that reached his neck. He was clean-shaven. He was wearing an Ocean Pacific–type shirt with light blue trousers, corduroy or maybe denim.
At around eleven p.m. that same night, Tammy Straub* and her daughter Carla* were jogging on Merida Way when they spotted a suspicious young male with a German shepherd gazing toward the garage of one of the houses. He stood completely still, his back to them, as though he were frozen. The man appeared to be in his twenties or early thirties, five ten and well built. His hair was blond, and he was wearing white or beige tennis shorts and a light-colored T-shirt. A composite sketch was later made.
Detectives learned that, on the afternoon before the murders, Realtor Cami Bardo* had been conducting an open house at the big red barn. While she was engaged with another party, a white male between thirty-five and forty years old walked in and, without saying a word, began exploring the house. Before she was able to break free from her conversation, the man left.
When the viewing was over, Bardo inspected the house and noticed some metal fragments in the kitchen. In retrospect, she realized that they looked consistent with a locking device from the rear door of the house.
Bardo described the strange open-house visitor as having bright blue eyes and short, light-brown hair that was curly and sun-streaked. He was tan, stood about five nine, and was wearing a green alligator shirt and faded Levi’s. She met with the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s sketch artist and a composite was drawn.