On Aug. 14, 1988, Douglas and Rozina Anderson were camping at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in Northern California when they encountered a man who would ultimately take both of their lives. The couple had traveled south from their home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, looking to spend time among the massive redwoods with their dog, but their trip would end in one of the area’s most disturbing unsolved murder cases. John William Kelley would disappear from the investigation almost as quickly as he appeared, leaving the Anderson family without answers for 27 years.
Kelley was born in Placerville, California, on March 9, 1963, although relatively little reliable information is available about his childhood or family upbringing. His documented criminal history begins in adulthood, and by 1986, Kelley had already been convicted of statutory rape in Santa Clara County. He was 23 years old at the time, married and living in Ben Lomond, and received a sentence of 90 days in jail followed by three years of probation. That conviction would become an important piece of the larger criminal history that investigators would eventually uncover, because only months later, another young woman would become the victim of Kelley’s violence.
Seventeen year old Annette Thur was hitchhiking home after attending a party in Boulder Creek on Dec. 6, 1986, when Kelley picked her up. Instead of taking Thur home, he drove her to his residence in Ben Lomond, where prosecutors later determined that he sexually assaulted her before killing her. Thur’s body was transported to a remote location along Skyline Boulevard in San Mateo County and dumped down an embankment, where it was eventually discovered by a passerby. The investigation into her death went cold, leaving her family without an explanation for what had happened to the teenager.
The case would sit dormant for decades until investigators returned to the evidence in 2012 and submitted DNA recovered from the crime scene to the national CODIS database. The resulting match identified Kelley, who was living in Placerville at the time. Investigators arrested him in August 2012, more than 25 years after Thur’s death, and the arrest finally gave authorities the opportunity to confront a man whose name had remained outside the investigation for years. Kelley eventually pleaded no contest to first-degree murder and admitted killing Thur during a sexual assault. He received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
By then, Kelley was already behind bars when another case began moving forward.
The murders of Douglas and Rozina Anderson had remained unsolved since that August day in 1988. Douglas was 26 years old and Rozina was 31, and the couple lived in Lake Oswego, where they had built a life together and enjoyed traveling and camping. They had brought their black cocker spaniel with them when they headed to Northern California, and nothing about their trip suggested that they were walking into danger.
At some point on Aug. 14, Kelley approached the Andersons’ dark green 1974 Dodge van at the campground. According to the account he later provided investigators, Kelley began banging on the vehicle before forcing the couple out. Douglas was shot three times, while Kelley sexually assaulted Rozina before shooting her. The couple were left dead at the campsite, and Kelley fled the area, leaving behind a crime scene that would puzzle investigators for years.
The Andersons were not immediately found. Their dog was discovered tied outside the van, and concern grew when Rozina failed to return to work. Investigators eventually located the couple and found evidence of the shootings, including bullet holes and broken glass around the van. There was no obvious explanation for why the Andersons had been targeted, and investigators had no clear suspect to pursue. Their deaths became a cold case, while their family was left to live with the uncertainty surrounding the final moments of their lives.
For the next 27 years, the Anderson murders remained unresolved.
The investigation finally changed when Kelley began talking about the crime. While serving his sentence for Thur’s murder, Kelley admitted that he was responsible for the Anderson killings. He provided investigators with details about the crime that had never been released publicly, giving authorities information that only someone with direct knowledge of the murders could reasonably have known. His confession established what investigators had spent nearly three decades trying to determine: the man responsible for the deaths of Douglas and Rozina Anderson was already sitting in prison.
Kelley reportedly told investigators that he had been angry following a confrontation with another person and wanted to “blow off steam.” The Andersons were strangers to him and had no known personal connection to whatever had happened before the killings. Their presence at the campground placed them in the path of a man who had already demonstrated a pattern of sexual violence and would later be identified as responsible for multiple murders.
Kelley agreed to plead guilty to the Anderson murders after prosecutors agreed that they would not seek the death penalty. In December 2015, he received two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for killing Douglas and Rozina Anderson. Combined with his sentence for the murder of Annette Thur, Kelley would spend the remainder of his life behind bars.
For the Anderson family, the confession finally answered the question that had followed them since 1988, although the resolution did not erase the pain left behind by the murders. After nearly three decades, they finally knew who had killed Douglas and Rozina and what had happened to them during their final hours. The family had spent years waiting for an answer, and the truth eventually came from the killer himself.
The case also left investigators with a grim reminder of how long a violent offender can remain hidden when a murder investigation reaches a dead end. Kelley had already been convicted of a sex offense before Thur was killed, and he would later face another rape conviction, yet the connection between him and the Anderson murders remained undiscovered until years after the crimes had been committed. It was the investigation into Thur’s murder and the eventual DNA identification of Kelley that finally brought the Redwood killings back into focus.
The redwoods where Douglas and Rozina had gone camping were never responsible for what happened there, but the remote setting made it possible for their killer to disappear and leave investigators with little to work from. For almost three decades, their murders existed as an unanswered question for their family and as another cold case buried among California’s long list of unsolved crimes. The answer eventually came from a different murder investigation, a DNA match and a confession that finally connected John William Kelley to the deaths.
HERE’S A GREAT DEEP DIVE INTO THE CASE
Douglas and Rozina Anderson went to Northern California for a camping trip in August 1988 and never returned home.
Their killer remained unidentified for 27 years, while the people who loved them were left waiting for an explanation.
John William Kelley eventually provided it from behind prison walls, admitting that he had been responsible for the murders and ensuring that the case that had haunted the Anderson family for decades would finally have an ending.