The Murder of Claude Snelling

Background

The night of September 10th, 1975, was fairly normal for the daughter of Claude Snelling. She was a 16-year-old student at Mt. Whitney High School, spending an evening at home with her family and her boyfriend. The windows were open because the air conditioner had been acting up. Her boyfriend left around 10:00 PM, and the rest of the family went to bed shortly afterward.

Pre-Attack Events

February 5th, 1975 10:00 PM: Prowler

Over six months before the murder, Claude Snelling arrived home one night to find a prowler at his daughter's window. He chased after the man, but lost him in the darkness.

The only description that Claude was able to give was that the prowler was that he was a white male between 5'10" and 6' tall, had collar-length hair, and that he was wearing a dark plaid long-sleeve shirt.

The police checked the yard and under the girl's window, and they identified shoe prints. The shoe prints matched those found at Visalia Ransacker burglaries.

August 31st, 1975: Miroku Revolver Stolen

A Miroku revolver was stolen during a ransacking committed by the VR. This would be the weapon that killed Claude Snelling.

September 6th through September 11th, 1975

Various prowling incidents occurred on Whitney and nearby streets. A week or two before, someone had prowled the Snelling residence and broken into Claude's vehicles.

September 10th, 1975 Approximately 7:00 PM

The teenage daughter heard a noise outside her bedroom window. She looked outside but didn't see anything — it was too dark outside.

The Homicide

September 11th, 1975 2:17 AM

The Snelling's teenage girl woke up from a sound sleep to immense pressure on her body and the feeling of being suffocated. She realized that someone was laying prone on top of her, with his right hand covering her nose and mouth and his left hand holding down her right arm. Her brother had done this to her before as a joke, and she thought that it was him until she noticed the angry eyes inches away from her face.

She struggled to remove the hand away from her mouth so that she could breath. One of the braces that held up her bed snapped. As she resisted, the man growled "Don't scream or I'll stab you." She didn't see a knife, but she believed his threat. He removed his hand from her face.

"You're coming with me," he said. With his left hand, he reached back and removed a gun from the back pocket on his left. Then he got off the bed and grabbed her left arm with his right hand and pulled her up.

"Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?" the girl asked. He didn't answer as he pulled her out of the bedroom and into the dining room area. She began pulling at him, trying to slow him down. She started crying and jerking back violently, trying to break free from his grip. His hold was too strong.

He continued to hold the gun in his left hand as he dragged her through the house toward the back door. Afraid of being shot but even more afraid of being taken away by the intruder, she dug her heels into the floor as hard as she could, which made a loud noise. The noise woke up her father and one of her brothers.

The kidnapper and his victim arrived at the back door, which the girl noticed had been left open when he made entry. She noticed that the porch light was still on.

"Don't scream or I'll shoot you," he told her as they exited the residence. She could barely hear him because she was still crying.

He led her about a dozen feet through the yard, through the back gate which he had also left open, and under the carport. It was at this moment that she heard her father's voice.

"Hey! What's going on? What are you doing? Where are you going with my daughter?"

Her father running through the house. He paused a moment and his eyes met his daughter's.

The kidnapper immediately let go of her, and she fell to the ground halfway because she had been resisting him and halfway because she was exhausted from the struggle. Rather than fleeing the scene, the kidnapper waited for Claude to come outside.

Claude continued questioning the subject as he stepped out onto the back steps. "Hey! What do you want? Where are you going with my daughter?"

The offender raised the gun as Claude walked down the steps and toward the fence. He had an angry look on his face as he raised his arms to scale the short fence and confront the offender.

The kidnapper answered his questions with a gunshot. The bullet hit Claude in the shoulder and spun him around. The kidnapper quickly fired another one, which also hit its mark.

Blood covering his pajamas, Claude staggered back and then purposefully made his way to the back door and into the house.

The shooter then trained his gun directly at the teenage girl's face. Crying, she turned away. She caught a glimpse of him lowering his weapon as she did. He kicked her squarely in the face two or three times and then took off at a medium jogging pace down the driveway.

The girl got up and ran into the house by way of the back door.

Immediate Aftermath

Mrs. Snelling called for an ambulance and for police. The teenage girl had now reentered the residence and she spotted her father near the front door. Her mother handed her to phone and then went back to tend to Claude. An officer arrived quickly, and an ambulance a few minutes later. Claude Snelling was transported to Kaweah Delta Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Evidence

Bicycle

A few minutes after the murder, a man living on Redwood heard some creaking sounds in his yard. He investigated, and found that someone had opened his front door, but whomever had done it seemed to be gone. The intruder had seemingly deposited a bicycle in his front yard though. The bicycle was found to have been stolen from a woman's backyard on West Tulare sometime after September 9th. Two other witnesses saw a man in the area, and shoe impressions matching Visalia Ransacker scenes were found.

Purse

Mrs. Snelling's purse was located on a brick planter in the backyard of the Snelling residence. The only thing stolen from it was a couple of one dollar bills. Officers determined that he had taken her purse off of the counter and looked through it before waking up his victim.

Bottle

A clear bottle of liquid, determined to most likely be alcohol, was found outside the residence next-door to the Snellings.

Badminton Net

The residents of a home on Gist Drive noticed that the badminton net that they'd set up in their backyard had been knocked down. Responding officers felt that because of the height of the net and its position in the yard, it had probably been knocked down by someone running quickly through their yard in the dark — possibly Claude's killer. This helped officers trace the killer's possible escape route.

Window Screen

The window screen that the killer had removed from the back window was found across the street on top of a travel trailer. The offender had apparently removed it, went across the street, placed it there, and then made his way back to the residence.

Ladder

A resident living on the northernmost portion of Whitney contacted the police and told them that someone had stolen an aluminum ladder that they typically kept hanging on their back fence. Responding officers found the ladder a short distance away near the freeway.

Flashlight

A flashlight was found in the backyard of a residence on Redwood. It was determined that it had been stolen by the Visalia Ransacker on August 30th, 1975, from a residence two doors down.

Screwdriver

A screwdriver was found wrapped in a clear plastic raincoat in a nearby ditch. It's unknown if this is related to the Visalia Ransacker.

The Murder Weapon

Through ballistics analysis, the police were able to determine that the weapon used to kill Claude snelling was a 38-caliber Miroku four-inch barrel revolver. This information reminded investigators of a recent Visalia Ransack burglary that had taken place less than two weeks before the murder.

On August 31st, 1975, the Visalia Ransacker had entered a home on West Royal Oaks Drive and had stolen a 38-caliber six-shot, blue steel Miroku revolver with a four and a half inch barrel. Along with the gun, the Ransacker stole two hundred 38-caliber wadcutter bullets (a special type of ammunition with a flat front primarily used on paper targets).

The owner remembered taking the gun out for target practice a couple weeks before it was stolen, and the police told him that if he could identify the place where he had shot the weapon and they could recover any rounds that he had fired, then they might be able to compare the ballistic evidence and match the weapons.

The man led officers to an area of the St. John's River, close to where Road 204 runs into it. Officers scoured the area and were able to collect over seventy bullets believed to be fired from the gun. They brought it back to the lab for analysis.

Analysis was completed quickly, and the result was positive. The weapon that killed Claude Snelling had been stolen by the Visalia Ransacker less than two weeks before the murder. The police believed that the Visalia Ransacker was the killer.

Descriptions

Claude's daughter was interviewed a total of five times by Visalia police - once at the scene, later on that day, and three times in October (the last of which was a hypnosis session). At each interview, she tried her best to recall any physical characteristics of the killer. Unfortunately, she was unable to commit to very many descriptors.

She generally described him as a white male with light skin, between 5'8" and 5'11", possibly in his late twenties, medium to stocky build, angry eyes, strong hands, and a "masculine," low, raspy voice that sounded more like a growl. His mask was a dark ski mask with some kind of white, zig-zag stripes (though at one interview she said they might have been multi-colored). He wore dark clothing and soft shoes that squeaked, possibly tennis shoes.

She felt that his hair was a lighter color, either brown or blonde (basing this n the color of the hair on his hands, his eyebrows, and his complexion).

Investigators asked her at each interview if she could commit to a weight estimate, and she insisted that she was unable to guess his weight at each one. Nevertheless, they forced her to provide a number, and the numbers she provided ranged from 150 lbs to over 170 lbs.

The ski mask may have had the eyes, nose, and mouth cut out. The white zig-zag stripes were near the mouth and may have gone all the way around the mask. The mask seemed to come down to mid-neck level.

She consistently described his hands as having no odor, no jewelry (rings or watches), and no identifying marks (like a scar). In one interview she stated that they were wet, like he was perspiring.

She noted that his actions seemed deliberate and effortless, like he had planned the kidnapping step-by-step.

At a hypnosis session in Los Angeles on October 23rd, she described his face as very round, and described his jaw as being large. Her description of his clothing was more detailed too: he wore a dark windbreaker that was zipped up all the way to his neck and didn't go past his waist, and the windbreaker had cuffs that were tight around his wrists. He wore dark pants (probably slacks, not jeans) that had no breaks or cuffs.

The Victim: Claude Snelling

Claude Snelling was a journalism professor at College of the Sequoias. This man, taken away in the prime of his life, was well-liked by everyone who knew him. A devoted husband and father, active in his church, and dedicated to his students, the loss of a man like Claude was a tragedy mourned by the entire town.