Susan McLaughlin was 19 and a UC Berkeley student when she vanished after taking a Greyhound from Berkeley to Sacramento on March 2, 1973. She planned a weekend visit to family in El Dorado County; her backpack was later found abandoned alongside Highway 50 between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe. When she did not arrive, her mother and her boyfriend reported her missing on March 5.

On March 10, 1973, tourists found McLaughlin’s half-naked body about 100 yards off Highway 50 near Kyburz. Investigators determined she had been brutally attacked, sexually assaulted, and murdered, and the secluded location prompted detectives to conclude she’d likely been targeted soon after arriving in El Dorado County. Bryan Lee Gelenaw, known as the Bus Stop Rapist, became a person of interest; he had been arrested for kidnapping and raping three women in El Dorado County days after McLaughlin’s body was found. Cold case investigators later collected Gelenaw’s DNA in 2017 to compare with evidence from McLaughlin’s clothing, but the test outcome has not been released. The case remains unsolved.

Did anyone who lived or traveled along Highway 50 near Kyburz in March 1973 see or hear anything that could help investigators?