McClish: Ties to Boulder Creek, Cindy Sue Fawcett

I probably should be concentrating more on the writing of Ravine (a lot of things have been interfering with my writing, including Thistle being off for vacation) and will be doing that in the next few days.  The new chapter, No Stranger to Lost Women, will be one of the hardest I think I will write.

I would like to say that any conjectures or connections I make in this blog regarding missing or murdered women and Michael McClish's potential involvement or non-involvement with any of them, are all matters of my own speculation.  he has been charged with no other crimes than the ones for which he has been convicted and for which he is now serving consecutive life sentences.

My book's focus will be on the crime he committed against Asha Veil and her daughter.
To a lesser extent, it will have some dealings with my friend Anne Swanke, and some of the missing women in Santa Cruz.  The speculations of McClish's involvement with any crime are purely mine.

That said, I will continue to speculate from time to time about the two unsolved murders of women in Santa Cruz, Juanita Nelson and Cindy Sue Fawcett.

About Juanita Nelson, I don't feel I need to further speculate about whether McClish had ties to Boulder Creek; one of his relatives is the chief of the fire department there (no secret about that one).  Juanita Nelson also went to San Lorenzo Valley High School when she disappeared in 1998.  In the court records I have (which are public and accessible to anyone), I have descriptions of McClish standing in his doorway of his house, quite close to the school, watching kids run during track and P.E., and telling the stragglers to come to parties at his house on the weekend.

In 1988, well before Juanita disappeared, McClish phoned in a literal death threat to a young woman who worked at a restaurant in Boulder Creek.  His literal words were, "You know, at one time I said I would never kill a woman, but now I've changed my mind."  He was investigated for his and admitted he made the call to this young woman, but nobody ever did anything about it.  Even though Juanita disappeared ten years after this (1998), I know that McClish tried to access many young girls at the high school, certainly invited them to his parties, and had some viable ties with the Boulder Creek area, and because of the circumstances of Junita's death (pregnant, and allegedly dumped in a ravine somewhere), I cannot dismiss a tie to McClish in any way.

Cindy Sue Fawcett is more problematic.  She worked as a bartender at a long-time watering hole, the Friendly Fox, which was up on the slightly more (at night, at least), less-traversed part of Scotts Valley (which is a short drive from the San Lorenzo Valley).  McClish worked at the Scotts Valley Safeway around that time, though I do not know exactly when he was terminated from that job.  However, on the day and evening before her disappearance (late that night), she took a motorcycle ride with her boyfriend (who apparently lived in the San Lorenzo Valley, btw) through the San Lorenzo Valley and went to several bars, played pool, etc.  She thus definitely had some ties to this area, and if she were a partying sort, would have probably come across McClish either that way or through her work (it's a relatively small area and people who attend parties in the Valley tend to be regulars of that scene).  She was a bit older than his usual preference (she was 32 when she disappeared) and the ties to him are less definite than Juanita, but there are some.

There are other missing women in the county, but those are the most local ones.

The reason I consider these is because I am convinced, given his years of death threats and violence towards women, and violence towards himself, that McClish is likely guilty of other crimes of violence we might never discover.  My hairdresser, whose shop is two doors down from the Ben Lomond Market, said that when Asha was found, the FBI came to the area and searched with methane probes on Love Creek Road and elsewhere, convinced that the area might have been McClish's dumping ground for other bodies, but nothing was ever found.

Still, speculation is just that, and I need to get back to focusing on the book.  I find I have to take a break tomorrow, as this material casts such a shadow.  Still: no nightmares.  I sleep like a baby, and wake to tackle the project again the next day.