Karl Francis Warner (born 1950) is an American serial killer. He was active in Santa Clara County, at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area, in Northern California. He was convicted of the murder of three teenaged girls during his period of activity from 1969-1971.

Furlong/Snoozy slayings

On August 3, 1969, the bodies of Deborah Gay Furlong, 14, and Kathy Snoozy, 15, were found on a hillside in San Jose's southern Almaden Valley. According to Santa Clara County Medical Examiner Dr. John E. Hauser, the girls died in a "frenzied flurry of knife wounds," totaling nearly 300.

Bilek slaying

On Sunday, April 11, 1971, Kathy Bilek, 18, visited Villa Montalvo, in Saratoga, with the intent to read and engage in birdwatching in the seclusion of a remote, wooded portion of the park, near a small stream. Her body was found the next day by her father, Charles, while Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies searched nearby. She'd been stabbed 49 times.

Aftermath

Bilek was murdered in the Villa Montalvo park in Saratoga. A park maintenance man who had seen him there and who knew him to be "a little odd" was able to give police the name of Oak Grove High School graduate and San Jose City College student Karl F. Warner of San Jose. Warner was a student and classmate of the first two victims. According to a girl who dated him he was "accomplished in mathematics" and not a "weird, skulking guy that we picture as a serial killer".

Warner had previously been a suspect in an unsolved knife assault on another woman. A search warrant was obtained, and the knife used in the Bilek murder was located on the premises of the Warner residence. The local authorities had already drawn a connection between the 1969 Furlong/Snoozy slayings and the Bilek murder, calling the latter "a carbon-copy killing". In September, Karl F. Warner confessed to the murders of Furlong, Snoozy, and Bilek, and received a life sentence.

Initially, San Francisco police Inspector Dave Toschi suspected the Zodiac Killer may have perpetrated the Furlong/Snoozy murders. At the time of his arrest, there was consideration given to the possibility that Karl F. Warner was the infamous Zodiac; however, it was subsequently determined that Warner had been residing in Marlborough, Massachusetts at the time of some of the earlier Zodiac slayings. Warner is currently incarcerated at California Medical Facility, in Vacaville.

Wikipedia.org

Karl F. Wagner

On August 3, 1969, schoolmates Deborah Furlong, 14, and Kathy Snoozy, 15, rode their bikes to a wooded knoll overlooking their homes in the rugged Alameda Valley section of South San Jose, California. 

They brought a picnic lunch and meant to spend a quiet afternoon alone, unconscious of the fact that they had trespassed on a killer's private hunting ground. When neither girl came home for supper, Debby Furlong's father started scouring the woods. He found a crowd of gawkers and police around the mutilated bodies of his daughter and her friend, laid out within a grove of trees from which their homes were visible. 

The medical examiner stopped counting at 300 stab wounds, all above the waist; in statements to the press, he would declare that "The Nazi sex mutilations during World War II were nothing compared to what was done to these young girls." Infuriated parents launched patrols in San Jose, without result, while homicide investigators searched for clues. 

One theory linked the murders with an offshoot of the Manson "family"; another speculated on connections with the "Zodiac," an unidentified serial slayer whose latest mocking letter, on November 8, claimed seven victims rather than the five accounted for by solid evidence. It all came down to nothing in the end; the killer would remain at large for nearly two more years. before a new attack produced the necessary leads. 

On April 11, 1971, 18-year-old Kathy Bilek chose the San Jose murder site as a prime spot for birdwatching. The killer found her there, using his favorite knife to stab her seventeen times in the back, thirty-two times in the chest and stomach, carefully avoiding contact with her breasts. Discovered early next morning, Bilek's wounds connected her murder with the previous killings, and police redoubled their efforts. 

Two weeks later, armed with fresh descriptions of a suspicious man seen prowling the area, detectives focused their attention on Karl Warner, a former classmate of victims Furlong and Snoozy at Oak Grove High School. Warner lived with his parents, three blocks from the homes of the earliest victims, and he was also suspected in the stabbing of a woman who survived her wounds.

Police secured a warrant and surprised their suspect in the midst of-preparation for a college physics test. Their search turned up the murder knife, and Warner pled guilty on all counts in September 1971, receiving a sentence of life imprisonment. 

A background check eliminated him as a potential "Zodiac," since he had moved to California from Marlborough, Massachusetts, in early 1969, two and a half years after the first Zodiac murder.

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: T MOTIVE: Sex./Sad.

MO: Mutilation-slayer of girls age 14-18.

DISPOSITION: Life sentence, Sept. 1971.