Terry Childs: Serial Killer and the Santa Cruz Cold Cases
Terry Childs was an American serial killer whose known crimes stretched from Nevada to California between 1979 and 1985. Over the course of decades, he was convicted of five murders, but the full extent of his violence remains uncertain. Long after his original imprisonment, Childs began confessing to additional killings, reopening cold cases that had frustrated investigators and victims' families for years. Some of those confessions proved credible enough to result in new murder convictions, while other claims could not be substantiated and were rejected or remained unresolved.
Childs was born on September 22, 1955, in Santa Clara County, California, and grew up in the Santa Cruz County area. He accumulated a lengthy criminal record before his murder convictions and spent significant periods of his adult life involved with drugs, burglaries, robberies and other criminal activity. By the middle of the 1980s, he was moving through the Santa Cruz-area criminal and drug scene. His eventual arrest in 1985 exposed only one murder at first. It would take more than three additional decades for authorities to establish the broader pattern of killings connected to him.
The Murder of Rulan McGill
One of the earliest murders conclusively attributed to Childs was the killing of 32-year-old Rulan McGill in Nevada. On July 10, 1979, McGill traveled to the Reno area for a dental appointment, shopping and other errands. She never returned home. Her disappearance triggered a search, but investigators initially had no meaningful suspect.
McGill's vehicle was discovered behind a warehouse two days after she disappeared. The following morning, relatives searching the area found her body in an irrigation ditch in Sparks. She had been stabbed and strangled. The murder remained unsolved for nearly two decades.
The break in the case came only after Childs was already imprisoned in California. During his later series of confessions, he gave investigators information about McGill's killing that authorities considered significant enough to pursue charges. A Washoe County grand jury eventually indicted him. In June 1998, Childs pleaded guilty to McGill's murder, openly admitting in court that he had killed her. He was sentenced on July 10, 1998, exactly nineteen years after the day McGill disappeared and was murdered.
The Murder of Linda Ann Jozovich
Only a few months after McGill's death, another young woman vanished in California. Nineteen-year-old Linda Ann Jozovich was working at a Mervyn's department store in Santa Clara on November 7, 1979. At approximately 7:00 p.m., she went outside during a break and disappeared.
According to Childs' eventual confession, he encountered Jozovich near the store after becoming enraged following an argument with his mother. He admitted attacking her, forcing her into her vehicle and driving her toward the Lexington Reservoir and Santa Cruz Mountains. There he beat her, strangled her with a belt and stabbed her. He abandoned her body in the mountainous area and moved her vehicle elsewhere. Childs later acknowledged returning to the remains and attempting to further conceal them.
For years Jozovich's family did not know what had happened to her. Human remains discovered in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1995 were eventually identified as hers, with additional remains found years later. Even the discovery did not immediately identify her killer.
In 2007, while already serving lengthy prison sentences, Childs confessed to murdering Jozovich. Investigators said his account contained details supporting his involvement. He was subsequently held responsible for the killing and received another life sentence without the possibility of parole.
The Murder of Joan Leslie Mack
Another case eventually solved by Childs' confession was that of 28-year-old Joan Leslie Mack. On October 11, 1984, Mack's body was discovered at Beer Can Beach in the Aptos area of Santa Cruz County. She had suffered multiple stab wounds.
The homicide went unsolved for more than thirty years. Childs later admitted that he had murdered Mack. His confession was investigated by Santa Cruz County authorities, and prosecutors ultimately accepted it as sufficient to prosecute him for the killing. Public prosecutor records identify October 11, 1984 as the date Mack's body was found; the exact time of her death was not separately established in the later public announcement, so the discovery date should not be confused with a precisely documented time of death.
In April 2017, Childs pleaded guilty to Mack's murder. The conviction finally provided a legal resolution to a homicide that had remained open since the 1980s.
The Murder of Christopher Hall
Christopher Hall was found dead on February 3, 1985, in the San Lorenzo Park area of Santa Cruz. He had been killed by a single gunshot. Investigators at the time believed the homicide was connected to drugs, but the identity of the killer remained unresolved for decades.
Childs eventually admitted that he had killed Hall. Accounts of his confession described Hall as an associate from the local drug environment and indicated that Childs claimed the killing was connected with a drug debt. As with the Mack case, investigators revisited the decades-old evidence after Childs spoke to law enforcement.
Childs pleaded guilty to Hall's murder in April 2017 at the same proceeding in which he accepted responsibility for killing Joan Mack. He received two additional terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, ordered to run consecutively to one another and to his previous murder sentences.
The Murder of Lois "Jeanine" Sigala
The murder that originally put Childs behind bars for homicide was that of 17-year-old Lois Lynette Sigala, who was commonly known as "Jeanine." Sigala had been associated with Childs and his girlfriend during the summer of 1985. Her body was discovered near Scotts Valley on August 10, 1985. Contemporary accounts of the autopsy indicated that she had been dead for approximately five days when discovered, placing her killing in approximately early August 1985 rather than establishing August 10 as a certain date of death.
Sigala had been repeatedly shot with a 9mm weapon. Prosecutors later argued that Childs believed the teenager might provide police with information about criminal activity involving him. According to testimony from Childs' girlfriend, Childs took Sigala to an isolated area outside Scotts Valley and killed her there. The girlfriend described being present and said Childs ordered efforts to remove or conceal evidence afterward.
Investigators developed additional evidence connecting Childs to the crime. Witness information connected Sigala to a vehicle similar to Childs' Ford Mustang, and investigators traced a 9mm Luger to Childs through an acquaintance. Shell casings recovered from an area where Childs had previously fired the weapon became part of the ballistic investigation. Although the murder weapon itself was not recovered during a search of his residence, prosecutors assembled a circumstantial case supported by witness testimony and firearms evidence.
Childs' trial began in January 1987. Prosecutors presented evidence that Sigala had been shot numerous times and that some of the wounds were inflicted before the final fatal shot. Childs challenged the prosecution's witnesses and raised issues concerning his mental condition and long-term drug abuse, but the jury rejected the defense. On February 4, 1987, he was found guilty of Sigala's murder. He received a life sentence that required him to serve decades before becoming eligible for parole.
Confirmed Victims
- Rulan McGill, 32 - Murdered July 10, 1979, in the Reno/Sparks, Nevada area. McGill disappeared while visiting Reno for errands and a dental appointment. Her body was later found in an irrigation ditch in Sparks. She had been stabbed and strangled. Childs pleaded guilty to her murder in 1998.
- Linda Ann Jozovich, 19 - Murdered November 7, 1979, after disappearing during a break from her job at a Mervyn's department store in Santa Clara, California. Childs confessed that he abducted her and drove her toward the Lexington Reservoir/Santa Cruz Mountains area, where he beat, strangled and stabbed her. Her remains were not discovered until many years later.
- Joan Leslie Mack, 28 - Her body was found October 11, 1984, at Beer Can Beach in the Aptos area of Santa Cruz County, California. She had suffered multiple stab wounds. The publicly released prosecutor information identifies October 11 as the discovery date rather than independently establishing an exact time of death. Childs pleaded guilty to her murder in 2017.
- Christopher Hall - Found dead February 3, 1985, in the San Lorenzo Park area of Santa Cruz, California. Hall had been killed by a single gunshot. The investigation initially suggested that the homicide was drug-related. Childs later confessed and pleaded guilty to Hall's murder in 2017.
- Lois Lynette "Jeanine" Sigala, 17 - Killed in approximately early August 1985 near Scotts Valley, California. Her body was discovered August 10, 1985, and reports of the autopsy placed her death approximately five days before she was found. She had been repeatedly shot with a 9mm weapon. Childs was convicted of her murder on February 4, 1987.
Penny Rickenbaker and a Suspected Earlier Murder
Childs also claimed responsibility for the death of Penny Rickenbaker, the 30-year-old fiancée of his father. Rickenbaker died from a gunshot wound on June 11, 1974, at the Childs residence in the Aptos area. At the time, her death was not prosecuted as a murder. Childs, his father and two of his brothers were reportedly in the residence when she died.
Many years later Childs claimed that Rickenbaker had actually been one of his victims. Unlike the five murders for which Childs was convicted, however, this allegation was never established through a murder prosecution. Because of the age of the case and the absence of sufficient supporting evidence, Childs was not charged with killing her. Rickenbaker therefore should be classified as a claimed or suspected victim rather than one of his five legally confirmed victims.
Suspected or Claimed Victims
- Penny Rickenbaker, 30 - Died June 11, 1974, from a gunshot wound in the Aptos/Santa Cruz area of California. Childs later claimed responsibility, but he was never prosecuted or convicted for her death.
- Additional unidentified or unconfirmed victims - While imprisoned, Childs claimed responsibility for numerous other murders. At various times he claimed a total victim count as high as twelve and described killings in several locations, including Santa Cruz County, Santa Clara County, the Tracy area of California, Nevada and Washington. Investigators were able to connect some of his statements to genuine unsolved cases, but other assertions could not be corroborated and some were reportedly disproved. Without sufficient evidence or reliably identified victims, these claims should not be counted as confirmed murders.
Confessions From Prison
Childs' transformation from a man convicted of one known murder into a recognized serial killer occurred largely because of statements he made while incarcerated. During the 1990s he began telling authorities that Sigala was only one of many people he had killed. He offered information about approximately eleven additional homicides and indicated that the crimes had occurred across several jurisdictions.
Investigators did not simply accept the claims. Serial offenders have sometimes falsely confessed to murders, exaggerated their victim totals or attempted to attach themselves to notorious unsolved cases. Authorities therefore compared Childs' descriptions with evidence from actual cold cases. Some of his claims failed that examination. Others proved far more significant.
The McGill investigation in Nevada became one of the clearest demonstrations that at least part of Childs' confession was genuine. Information he supplied led investigators to treat him as a viable suspect in the 1979 homicide and ultimately resulted in his guilty plea. The Jozovich confession likewise supplied an answer to a disappearance and murder that had remained unresolved since 1979. Decades later, his admissions concerning Mack and Hall produced two additional convictions.
Five Murder Convictions
By the end of the legal proceedings against him, Terry Childs had been convicted of five murders: Rulan McGill, Linda Ann Jozovich, Joan Leslie Mack, Christopher Hall and Lois "Jeanine" Sigala. The cases covered a period of approximately six years, from July 1979 through August 1985, and demonstrated that his victims were not selected through one rigid method. His confirmed murders involved shootings, stabbing and strangulation, and the victims ranged from people he encountered opportunistically to individuals connected to his social or criminal environment.
The convictions also illustrate how long a serial offender's crimes can remain disconnected. When Childs was convicted of murdering Sigala in 1987, investigators had not yet successfully tied him to the unsolved deaths from 1979 or the Santa Cruz County homicides of 1984 and 1985. Only his later statements, combined with renewed investigative work, allowed authorities to connect those separate cases.
Final Years and Death
Childs ultimately accumulated multiple life sentences, including several terms without the possibility of parole. The 2017 sentences for Joan Mack and Christopher Hall were specifically ordered to run consecutively, ensuring that there was no realistic possibility that he would ever be released.
Terry Childs remained imprisoned in California for the remainder of his life. He died on February 11, 2023, while in the California prison system. He was 67 years old.
Unanswered Questions
Although five murders were conclusively resolved through convictions, the exact number of people killed by Terry Childs may never be known. His own estimates were substantially higher, but a confession by itself is not proof. Investigators were able to corroborate enough of his admissions to solve several long-dormant cases, while other stories lacked the evidence necessary to establish that a murder had even occurred as he described it or that Childs was responsible.
For that reason, the most accurate description of Childs' record is five confirmed murder victims, with Penny Rickenbaker and additional unnamed or unidentified people remaining suspected or claimed victims. His case became unusual not simply because of the number of killings, but because several of the murders were solved decades after they occurred. Families who had spent years without answers finally learned who was responsible, while the unverified portion of Childs' confession left open the possibility that other crimes attributed to him may remain unresolved.
