# 2 Disturbing Solved True Crime Cases: Karen Percifield and Jeff Surtel

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 25 Aug 2025, 19 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6739693118.mp3

Join me as we discussed these two cracked cases. Chapters: 0:00 Karen Percifield 7:44 Jeff Surtel 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 true crime podcast, solved true crime cases, disturbing true crime, Karen Percifield case, Jeff Surtel case, shocking murders, solved murder mysteries, solved cold cases, justice served, true crime stories, chilling solved cases, crime podcast episodes, brutal true crime cases, eerie true crime, murder investigations, solved homicide cases, shocking true crime stories, chilling true crime podcast, disturbing solved murders, solved crime podcast

## Transcript

[0:00] Karen Persifield was just 25 years old when she traveled from
[0:03] Ohio to Aptos, CA in the spring of 1976 to visit her sister.
[0:10] A young mother, Karen was known for her warm personality.
[0:14] In fact, she was so pleasant, her family affectionately called
[0:18] her Cookie because, in the words of her sister, she was just that
[0:22] sweet. During her visit on a late May
[0:25] evening, Karen joined her mother and sister for drinks at the
[0:28] Bayview Hotel, a local Tavern in Aptus Village.
[0:33] That night, an argument erupted between Karen and her mother and
[0:38] a frustrated Karen decided to step out and cool off.
[0:42] She walked off into the darkness alone.
[0:45] It was the last time her family would see her.
[0:48] Several days passed with no sign of Karen.
[0:51] Then on May 28th, 1976, a horrifying discovery was made
[0:57] near the edge of the Forest of Nessine Mark State Park in
[1:00] Aptos. Sheriff's deputies, responding
[1:03] to a call about a possible body, found the remains of a young
[1:07] woman in a ravine not far from the village park.
[1:11] The death was quickly ruled A slaying, and she was noted to
[1:14] have been stabbed twice in the chest.
[1:17] Investigators soon identified the victim as Karen Persifield,
[1:22] who had been missing for days. The grim news shook Karen's
[1:26] family and the quiet seaside community.
[1:29] A fun night out had ended in unspeakable tragedy, and the
[1:33] hunt for the perp was about to begin.
[1:37] Santa Cruz County detectives launched an intensive
[1:40] investigation into Karen's slaying.
[1:42] They combed the ravine crime scene for clues and collected
[1:46] forensic evidence available with the technology of the time.
[1:50] Officers interviewed locals and pursued numerous leads, hoping
[1:54] to find who had crossed her path that night.
[1:58] Despite these efforts, no suspects could be definitively
[2:01] linked to the crime, and critical evidence like blood or
[2:04] fingerprints failed to point to anyone.
[2:08] The case began to stall with no arrest insight, and a disturbing
[2:12] pattern of violence soon emerged in the area.
[2:15] Just a few months after Karen's death, two more women were found
[2:18] brutally slain in Santa Cruz County.
[2:21] In August 1976, 31 year old Vicki Bizarre and 21 year old
[2:27] Mary Gorman were discovered stabbed with their bodies dumped
[2:31] off a remote highway. When a 29 year old local man
[2:35] named Richard Somerhalter was arrested in September 1976 and
[2:40] charged with those offenses, detectives couldn't ignore the
[2:43] parallels to Karen Persifield's case.
[2:46] According to reports at the time, he had been considered a
[2:49] person of interest in her case, but there wasn't enough evidence
[2:53] to charge him. With no physical proof tying him
[2:57] to the ravine where Karen was found, the investigation hit a
[3:01] dead end, and by the end of the 1970s, Karen Percyfield's case
[3:06] had officially gone cold. For nearly the next 5 decades,
[3:11] Karen's slaying remained an unsolved cold case.
[3:15] Her family was left to endure an agonizing limbo with no justice
[3:19] and no answers. Karen's daughter Meadow had been
[3:22] only six years old when her mother was taken from her, and
[3:26] she grew up haunted by the mystery.
[3:29] In later interviews, she described it as a lifelong
[3:31] obsession to find out what happened and why.
[3:36] Many who remembered the crime believed they knew who was
[3:38] responsible, even if the law had yet to catch up.
[3:43] Somerhalter was convicted of the two other slayings, but under
[3:46] the laws of the era, he served only 8 1/2 years in prison
[3:50] before being paroled in the mid 1980s.
[3:54] And no, you don't have to replay that section because you heard
[3:57] me correctly. Two people, 8 1/2 years.
[4:02] Knowing he had spent so little time behind bars was hard for
[4:05] Karen's family to accept. Still, they held on to hope that
[4:10] one day the truth about Karen's death would be proven.
[4:15] The case gathered dust in the sheriff's files, occasionally
[4:18] revisited but never yielding new evidence by the 20 tens.
[4:24] However, advances in DNA technology offered a glimmer of
[4:28] hope that the mystery could still be solved.
[4:33] In 2019, cold case investigators decided to re examine the
[4:38] evidence from 1976 with modern methods.
[4:42] Several items from the crime scene were sent to the
[4:44] California Department of Justice forensic lab for DNA testing.
[4:49] That testing yielded A crucial clue.
[4:52] A male DNA profile was successfully developed from the
[4:55] old evidence. At last, detectives had a
[4:59] genetic fingerprint of the killer, but when they ran it
[5:03] through criminal databases, no match turned up.
[5:07] The unknown man's DNA was not in any law enforcement database.
[5:12] It was a frustrating roadblock, so they pursued another Ave.
[5:16] The team turned to a cutting edge technique known as forensic
[5:19] genetic genealogy. By the fall of 2023, detectives
[5:25] had partnered with Othrum, a private lab specializing in
[5:28] advanced DNA analysis, to dig deeper into the mystery.
[5:33] Othrum scientists used forensic grade genome sequencing to build
[5:37] a comprehensive genetic profile from the decades old evidence
[5:41] and then compared it against genealogy databases.
[5:45] This effort pinpointed a single name that fit the DNA and the
[5:48] clues. Richard Somerhalter, a man whose
[5:52] DNA for some reason wasn't on file despite his convictions.
[5:57] In early 2025, the authorities publicly confirmed that
[6:02] Somerhalter had been responsible for Karen's slaying.
[6:05] However, there would be no final act of justice for this
[6:08] perpetrator. Somerhalter, it turned out, had
[6:12] died in 1994, so he would never face trial.
[6:17] But the decades long question over who was responsible for the
[6:20] untimely death of Karen Persifield had finally been
[6:24] answered. And sometimes it really is the
[6:27] one you most suspect. The identification of the
[6:32] perpetrator in 2025 brought a rush of both relief and
[6:35] heartache to those who loved her.
[6:38] After 49 years of not knowing, Karen's family could finally put
[6:42] a name to the horror that had changed their lives.
[6:46] Her daughter Meadow called the outcome A bittersweet justice.
[6:51] Others were deeply disheartened as to how this man who had taken
[6:55] at least three lives could have gotten away with serving such
[6:57] little time behind bars. The case file has now been
[7:01] closed, and the exact circumstances of what happened
[7:05] to Karen and why Karen was targeted will almost certainly
[7:09] never be known. Notably, some have speculated
[7:13] that Richard Somerhalter may be responsible for more acts of
[7:16] violence throughout the 1970s and perhaps even the 80s and
[7:20] 90s. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here.
[7:25] Just reminding you to like, subscribe and hit that
[7:28] notification bell and turn on all notifications.
[7:32] Also remember to check out my channel Lazy Chill Zone for
[7:35] unsolved mysteries and Lazy Chill History for historical
[7:39] facts and historical mysteries. On a summer day in 2008, a
[7:47] beachcomber made a startling and horrific find on the shores of
[7:51] Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Near the old Silver King Resort
[7:55] West of Port Angeles, the traveler spotted a single shoe
[7:59] that had washed ashore. Inside were a sock and the
[8:03] remains of a human foot. Forensic specialists at the King
[8:07] County Medical Examiner's Office determined it was indeed human,
[8:11] likely from a young male, but they had no clue whose it was.
[8:17] Investigators scoured missing person databases and DNA
[8:20] profiles in the United States hoping for a match, but came up
[8:25] empty. This lone foot became an
[8:28] anonymous mystery, a John Doe with no name, no story and no
[8:33] answers for nearly 17 years. Unbeknownst to the Washington
[8:38] authorities, across the border in Canada, a family was living a
[8:42] nightmare that started one year before the foots discovery.
[8:46] In Mission, BC, a small city along the Fraser River, 17 year
[8:52] old Jeff Surtell disappeared without a trace in the spring of
[8:55] 2007. On April 29th, 2007, Jeff's
[9:01] parents awoke to find their son gone and his bed empty.
[9:05] They later realized he had slipped out around midnight,
[9:09] likely riding away on his Blue Mountain bike.
[9:11] While the household slept, Jeff left most of his personal
[9:15] belongings behind, a sign that something was amiss.
[9:19] It was completely out of character for him to run off and
[9:23] alarm bells rang immediately. His family reported him missing
[9:27] that same day, sparking an urgent search for the tall,
[9:30] brown haired teen who had simply vanished into the night.
[9:35] Local RCMP and mission responded swiftly.
[9:38] Investigators, alongside search and rescue teams, combed the
[9:42] area for any sign of Jeff. A large contingent of friends,
[9:46] classmates and neighbors volunteered to help, fanning out
[9:50] across nearby streets, wooded trails and even the banks of the
[9:55] Fraser River in hopes of finding him.
[9:58] Police received dozens of tips and reported sightings from the
[10:01] public stretching across the lower Mainland of British
[10:04] Columbia and beyond. Each lead kindled hope, yet none
[10:09] panned out. Every reported sighting turned
[10:12] out to be someone else. Every clue led to a dead end.
[10:16] It was as if Jeff Surtell had disappeared into thin air.
[10:20] For Jeff's parents, Gary and Don Surtell, the uncertainty was
[10:25] agony. Not a day goes by that we don't
[10:28] think of Jeff, his father said in an interview.
[10:31] Five years after the disappearance, the family lived
[10:34] in limbo, torn between hope and grief.
[10:37] As weeks turned into months and then years without answers.
[10:41] The RCMP continued to treat Jeff's case as an open
[10:44] investigation, periodically revisiting it.
[10:48] But as time wore on with no new evidence, the trail grew cold.
[10:54] Jeff's bicycle was never found, and no witnesses ever came
[10:58] forward to explain what happened that night.
[11:01] His mother and father remained stuck in what they called any
[11:05] parent's worst nightmare, unable to mourn or move on without
[11:09] knowing their son's fate. By the late 2010's, Jeff
[11:15] Surtell's disappearance had become a stubborn cold case.
[11:19] The police file sat open with precious little information.
[11:22] Foul play was considered but not substantiated.
[11:26] An accident was possible, but no body was ever recovered.
[11:30] Divers had searched the Fraser River, and even sonar was used
[11:34] under the Mission Bridge where he might have fallen, but
[11:37] nothing was found. As the years passed, the mission
[11:41] community refused to forget the quiet teenager who had biked off
[11:46] Into Darkness one April night. His parents organized
[11:49] anniversaries and kept his story alive and local media.
[11:53] In 2018, they enlisted the help of a volunteer organization
[11:58] called Please Bring Me Home, which works to generate
[12:02] anonymous tips and cold cases. A dedicated volunteer
[12:06] investigator, Angela Heino, took on Jeff's case in 2023, her
[12:11] first assignment with the group. She painstakingly reviewed old
[12:15] files and spoke with anyone who might shed light on Jeff's fate,
[12:19] hoping that with time and a fresh perspective, a new lead
[12:23] might surface. Still, no breakthrough came in a
[12:28] 2023 interview, Heino said. It's so complex, there's been
[12:34] really nothing that substantial to indicate what happened to
[12:36] him. Echoing the family's continued
[12:39] frustration. Meanwhile, that single severed
[12:42] foot discovered in Washington remained in storage at the
[12:45] Callum County Sheriff's Evidence Facility, labeled only as
[12:49] belonging to Callum County Doe 2008.
[12:54] No one in Mission knew about the foot, and American investigators
[12:58] didn't know about Jeff. The two pieces of the puzzle, a
[13:02] missing Canadian teen and an unidentified human foot, stayed
[13:07] tragically unconnected. The cross-border nature of the
[13:11] mystery meant that crucial clues slipped through the cracks.
[13:15] It would take new technology and international cooperation to
[13:19] finally link them together. Over the long years of
[13:24] uncertainty, the public's interest in Jeff Surtell's case
[13:28] and the enigmatic foot discovery never fully waned In Mission.
[13:33] Community members kept Jeff's memory alive on Facebook groups
[13:36] and forums, sharing updates or simply offering support to the
[13:40] Sertel family. Each time a set of unidentified
[13:44] remains turned up anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, there was
[13:48] a flurry of speculation, and people always questioned whether
[13:51] it could be Jeff. Online sleuths discussed his
[13:55] case, and some noted an eerie trend unfolding along the coasts
[13:59] of British Columbia and Washington.
[14:02] Severed human feet were washing ashore with unsettling
[14:05] regularity. Beginning in 2007, at least a
[14:09] dozen detached feet were found on beaches around the Salish Sea
[14:13] region. The foot, discovered near Port
[14:16] Angeles in August 2008, was part of this macabre series.
[14:21] Early on, wild theories spread in the media about these finds.
[14:26] Some wondered if a serial predator was at work dumping
[14:29] dismembered victims at sea. Others claimed a major disaster,
[14:34] maybe even the 2004 Asian tsunami, had swept the victims
[14:38] across the ocean. In the absence of answers,
[14:42] imagination filled the void with every theory you could imagine.
[14:47] Within Jeff's community, theories about his fate were
[14:50] more grounded but no less painful for his family.
[14:53] One prevalent idea was that Jeff might have suffered an accident
[14:57] and fallen into the Fraser River that night.
[15:01] The river runs swift and deep through mission, and tragically,
[15:06] drowning victims are sometimes carried long distances by its
[15:09] powerful current. This theory could explain why
[15:14] intensive searches near home turned up nothing, as Jeff's
[15:17] remains may have traveled silently downstream and out to
[15:21] sea. At the time, however, it was
[15:24] only speculation. Other locals feared Jeff might
[15:28] have met with foul play after sneaking out that night.
[15:33] By 2023, the Callum County Sheriff's Office was willing to
[15:37] try something new to crack the case.
[15:40] Traditional forensic methods had failed to identify the lone
[15:44] foot, but DNA technology had advanced dramatically.
[15:49] Callum County authorities partnered with Othrum to use
[15:52] genetic genealogy to crack the cold case of the severed foot.
[15:57] Funding was a hurdle. This specialized testing is
[16:00] expensive, so the Sheriff's Office turned to the public for
[16:04] help. In 2024, they launched A
[16:06] crowdfunding campaign and contributors raised
[16:09] approximately $7500 to fund the advanced DNA analysis.
[16:15] With money in hand, scientists extracted every bit of genetic
[16:19] information they could from the weathered foot bones.
[16:22] In early 2025, the lab compared the unknown profile against
[16:26] genealogical databases, searching for relatives.
[16:30] It was a long shot, but the result was remarkable.
[16:34] The DNA matched to an extended family tree and pointed to a
[16:38] specific family in Canada. In fact, the sample matched one
[16:42] of Jeff Surtell's uncle's. Nearly 18 years after Jeff
[16:46] vanished, the investigators finally had a name for the
[16:49] Washington remains and Jeff had been found.
[16:53] The breakthrough was confirmed through a joint effort by US and
[16:56] Canadian authorities. Mission RCMP worked with the BC
[17:01] Coroner's Service to verify the genetic findings against Jeff's
[17:04] family DNA, conclusively identifying the foot as Jeffrey
[17:08] Surtell's. On March 11th, 2025, Mission
[17:14] RCMP Inspector Ted Levko made the public announcement that
[17:18] many had lost hope of ever hearing.
[17:21] For Gary and Don Surtell, the confirmation of their son's
[17:25] death was devastating yet important.
[17:28] They finally knew what happened to Jeff, or at least part of the
[17:32] story. There were no signs of trauma on
[17:35] the remains, and police found no indication of criminality in his
[17:39] death. The most likely scenario is that
[17:43] Jeff did tragically end up in the Fraser River that night in
[17:46] 2007, succumbing to a fatal accident that carried him far
[17:51] from home as hypothesized. Still, the case isn't completely
[17:55] closed. The exact circumstances of his
[17:58] disappearance remain a mystery. Investigators say there are no
[18:02] further leads to pursue unless someone with new information
[18:05] comes forward. They made a public appeal in
[18:08] 2025, urging anyone who knows more about Jeff's last night to
[18:13] speak up so that even the final unanswered questions might be
[18:17] resolved. Back in Mission, the community
[18:20] that rallied for Jeff over the years came together once more.
[18:25] The Sertel family organized a memorial service to honor the
[18:28] boy they lost and to finally say their final goodbyes.
[18:33] The family expressed heartfelt thanks to all those who had
[18:36] supported them, the friends, volunteers, classmates,
[18:41] teachers, officers, and even strangers who never stopped
[18:46] caring. Still, the investigation into
[18:49] what actually happened to Jeff Surtell does remain ongoing, and
[18:53] it's hoped that at some point, his loved ones may know the full
[18:57] truth of what happened.

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