Jacqueline Ann Rook was 21 and a University of California, Santa Barbara student and resident advisor at Francisco Torres dormitory when she disappeared from the Isla Vista area on November 20, 1976. She was originally from Del Mar, California. Her body was found on January 20, 1977, in Refugio Canyon, a remote area north of Santa Barbara. The autopsy showed she had been sexually assaulted and fatally shot in the head with a small-caliber pistol.

Investigators tied Jacqueline’s death to a series of similar killings in the region. Thor Nis Christiansen, a Danish-American later identified as the perpetrator, targeted young female hitchhikers, offered them rides, then shot them and committed post-mortem sexual assault. The victims shared physical similarities, and the murders were called the look-alike killings. Christiansen was arrested in July 1979, charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life in June 1980; he was stabbed to death by another inmate in Folsom State Prison on March 30, 1981.