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The 27-year-old was the Doodler's second victim.
Stevens, born in Texas, was a popular female impersonator and had been named the summer replacement at Finocchio's. Finocchio's was an old-time club that had been around since the early thirties. It had once been a hot spot for the military and celebrities, wrote James Smith, but by the seventies "the high tourist attendance and...hands-off rules discouraged the gay crowd and they largely went elsewhere."
"When Stevens first appeared on stage eight years ago, he made a sensation in San Francisco as a stunning impersonator," said the Advocate. "Over the years, however, he had moved away from the role of impersonating beautiful women and concentrated more on gay comedy."
The woman who found the body called to Warner Jepson, an avant-garde composer, who in turn called the police. "My God," said his wife, Andrea, when speaking to a reporter. "I remember this now. He was in the bushes. Oh my God, I'd totally forgotten. [Mr. Jepson] was walking with the dogs in the park. We had two little kids. He didn't know him."
By 1974, the Castro was for gay men a beautiful refuge from everywhere else. "A clarion call went out in the underground network that San Francisco was the place to be," said Ron Huberman, the first openly gay investigator in San Francisco's district attorney's office, who arrived in 1975. The bar and bathhouse scenes were jumping. Harvey Milk had just opened his camera shop. It was a pre-AIDS wonderland.
But the San Francisco Police Department would not leave well enough alone. Officers Cornelius Lucy and William Gay, for example, practiced a creative form of entrapment. Officer Gay, as the Advocate put it, would "drive slowly through [Golden Gate Park] in a pickup truck and stop near a strolling male. Then he would stretch out...and show a bulging 'basket' in his tight Levis." Once an advance was made, Officer Gay would make an arrest.
Or worse. Lucy and Gay dragged Lawrence Candler from his car after a minor traffic incident and beat him so badly he suffered brain damage. Neither Lucy nor Gay were charged in the beating because Candler declined to file a formal complaint. However, a San Francisco jury eventually awarded Candler $264,500.
3. Claus A. Christmann, a 31-year-old German national and employee of Michelin, was the Doodler's third victim. He was last seen alive at Bojangles.
Christmann was found on July 7, 1974 at the foot of Lincoln Way, by the beach. Tauba Weiss, now 88, was walking her dog, Moondance, and discovered the body. "The dog was running and I followed him," she said. "I knew something was wrong. I saw a man laying there and he wasn't moving. I knew he was dead." She returned home and called the police.
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