Robin Samsoe was 12 when she disappeared from Huntington Beach, California, on June 20, 1979. She was last seen leaving a friend’s apartment to ride her yellow Schwinn 24-inch bike to a 4 p.m. ballet lesson; she never arrived. That afternoon Robin and her friend had been on the cliffs above the beach when a man claiming to be taking photographs for a school contest approached them and asked to photograph the girls.

Robin’s mutilated body was found five days later, on June 25, 1979, in a remote mountain ravine above Sierra Madre. Witnesses, including her friend Bridget Wilvert and neighbor Jackelyn Young, later identified the photographer as Rodney Alcala. A City of Huntington Beach survey-party chief and an amateur photographer, Richard Sillett, also linked Alcala to the scene and identified him from a composite sketch and at trial. A search of Alcala’s belongings produced a receipt for a Seattle storage locker rented shortly after the body was found; the locker contained hundreds of photographs and a pair of gold-coated earrings Robin’s mother identified as her daughter’s.

Alcala was arrested on July 24, 1979, and tried beginning in February 1980; testimony and physical evidence presented at trial led to a conviction for first-degree murder with a kidnapping-murder special circumstance. Does anyone have information about Robin’s last known route or saw her on June 20, 1979?