A summer evening bike ride through the orchards of Fresno County, California, turned into a nightmare for two teenage cousins on August 20, 1980. Mary Helen Booher, a 15-year-old girl visiting from Hawthorne, was with her cousin, 15-year-old Mark Hatcher, near his family’s rural home in Fowler. As they pedaled along an access road beside a tangerine orchard around 7:30 p.m., their paths crossed with a man in an orange pickup truck, a man who would irrevocably shatter their lives and the lives
of their families.
The man was Fernando Eros Caro, a 30-year-old former Marine and plant watchman with a hidden history of violence. He confronted the cousins, and without warning, drew a.357-caliber revolver and shot Mark Hatcher in the face at close range, killing him instantly. As Mark’s mother and grandmother walked to meet the teens, they heard a single gunshot and saw a pickup truck speeding away from the orchard. Minutes later, they made the horrific discovery of Mark's body. Mary Helen was gone, abducted by Caro, who had thrown her and the bicycles into his truck before fleeing the scene.
The terror of that night was not yet over. Shortly after the murder and kidnapping, Caro was involved in a minor hit-and-run collision in a nearby bar's parking lot. The two men from the car he struck, Rick Donner and Jack Lucchesi, pursued him. When they confronted him, Caro opened fire, wounding Donner and killing Lucchesi. This violent encounter, however, would prove to be his undoing. The surviving victim provided police with a crucial description of the assailant and his distinctive truck.
Five days after she was taken, on August 25, 1980, Mary Helen Booher's body was found in an orange grove several miles from where her cousin was killed. She had been shot once in the head, execution-style. That same day, a supervisor at the FMC Corporation chemical plant in Fresno recognized a police sketch of the suspect as his employee, Fernando Caro. When authorities approached Caro at his job, he attempted to flee but was quickly apprehended. A search of his apartment uncovered a gun that ballistics would match to a bullet fragment from Mark Hatcher’s body.
Caro was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Mary and Mark, the kidnapping of Mary, and the assault and murder of the two men from the traffic incident. He denied his involvement, but the evidence was overwhelming. His trial revealed a deeply disturbed individual. The oldest of eight children born to migrant farm workers, Caro had a childhood marked by poverty and abuse. Despite this, he had been an honors student, a college engineering major, and a Marine lieutenant who flew attack helicopters. But a darker side had emerged years earlier; he had a prior conviction for kidnapping and raping a law clerk in 1976, for which he was paroled in 1978.
A jury found Fernando Eros Caro guilty of the murders of Mary Helen Booher and Mark Hatcher, the kidnapping of Mary, and the assaults. In 1981, he was sentenced to death. Caro was later identified as a serial killer, linked by DNA to the 1979 murder of 8-year-old Victoria DeSantiago and suspected in the 1980 slayings of two other teenage girls, Charlena Simon and Robin Snead. He spent decades on death row at San Quentin State Prison, filing numerous appeals that cited his abusive childhood and exposure to pesticides as contributing to his mental state. His death sentence was overturned in 2002 and commuted to life imprisonment.
Mary Helen Booher was buried in Fowler Cemetery, laid to rest next to her cousin, Mark. The senseless act of a vicious killer cut short the life of a young girl who was simply enjoying a summer visit with her family. Fernando Eros Caro died in prison on January 28, 2017, at the age of 67, closing the final chapter on a reign of terror that left a trail of shattered families and stolen lives.
