This is footage of a parade in Riverside circa 1966. Of note, Ramona High School’s Band participated in the parade.
Here is a screen capture around 13 seconds in:
Note the woman in the red pants and the man sitting next to her.
The video is not high quality but here is a blown up screenshot of that photo.
(EDIT 10/27/24 – Some CJB photos for comparison)
At the time I discovered this video on YouTube and posted a link on zodiackillersite about 6 months back I declared the footage too grainy for identifying a person but that the guy on the right looked like a “Ross shaped blob”. Here is a comparison photo.
The jacket on the left photo above looks similar to the man in the parade. Here is a blow up of the collar for comparison.
In the above photo he is looking to the right or talking to her. Body language is him inclined toward her and her leaning away. She has her elbow resting on her knee and her hand holding up her chin, making it hard to talk. (ALTENATIVELY: Her left hand could be straight, resting on the right side of her face.)
For what it’s worth, I don’t think a positive identification can be made here with the tools I have. I’d say it’s plausible that that is Ross but far from a sure thing.
Now for her, and this is where it gets interesting. Way back I entertained the notion that might be Cheri Jo Bates. Beside from general shape, this girl has red capri’s that look like the one’s she had on when she died. (Alternatively that’s a red dress but I’ve enhanced several screen shots and I’d say I’m fairly certain they are capri’s)
(UPDATE: A note that seems pertinent here. According to the newspaper article ‘Death on a dirt driveway: A life that ended too soon’ Cheri made the capri’s she wore the night she was killed. You can read that article here: http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=73)
(EDIT 10/27/24 – Just want to note that her prized car was light green like the jacket in this picture. I wonder if Green was her favorite color.)
However, Cheri in the photos provided wears her hair generally hanging to the left of her face rather than the right and she had blonde highlights around this time. (EDIT 10/27/24 – the new photos above of her show her with hairstyles that could work with what is seen in the video) It’s possible it’s a pony tail, wind is blowing it that way, or it’s just short and symmetrical but the shadows and poor quality of the footage are distorting an accurate idea of what it actually looks like. No matter what, the footage is such low quality that very little detail of the face is possible to see. I abandoned the idea.
Relooking over the photo now it struck me: where is this girl’s purse?
I played with filters …
Look closely in-between them where his hands are resting. You’ll likely have to expand the pic a good bit to see it so I’ve added some pictures below.
A striped bag is resting behind them. That bag looked familiar.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT NEXT CONTAINING CRIME SCENE PHOTO OF CHERI JO
Very similar purse. Very similar pants as well. Similar outfit and body shape in general. Is that Cheri Jo at the parade?
It appears she is with a boy on her right in the shadows next to a pillar. The face is clearer for the child in some of the screenshots than these two. Is that her brother, another relative, or a child she babysat? I’ve never seen a pic of her brother or if he’s even younger than her but that would be pretty big to identifying if it’s her or not.
(UPDATE: Apparently her brother was 20 at the time according to the article I linked above so that’s definitely not him next to the mystery girl in this video. There is a quote in that article from her friend Kathy Sites in that article that stuck out to me. “Cheri had a lot of friends. When we went to parties I was amazed at the number of kids from other schools that knew her.”)
(UPDATE 2022: Because of the blood stains I couldn’t tell but today i saw a crime scene photo from the opposite angle and it appears that the sweater/jacket Cheri Jo was wearing on the night of the murder was green just like the one in this video. (EDIT 2024 – Apparently it was a long sleeved pale yellow blouse with a ribbon tied at the throat according to Inside Detective. Cheri’s car, though, was the color green of her car so that’s something to think about) Crazy, but this may very well be Cheri Jo Bates. The same red capri pants, green coat, and black striped straw purse – it’s the same outfit. Cheri Jo was pictured with dark hair in some photos and went to Ramona which was on parade (and I think she was a cheerleader so she had extra reasons to be there). The “Ross shaped blob” is impossible to ID but that guy has a coat very very similar to the one Ross had on in the Deja Vive photo and is the same general look and body shape of Ross Sullivan.)
Please Rush to Editor 
If she had a lot of friends at other schools is nuts. In 1966 there were only two High Schools in Riverside, Ramona and Riverside Poly High which up until the spring of 1966 was located in the Quad at RCC. The fall of 1966 they had built 2 new High Schools The New Poly High School and John North High School. They split old Poly High into both schools and took part of Ramona into Poly.
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Nobody saw Cheri in the Library except the Hispanic student and one Librarian who might have seen her. How about this when she checked out 2 books that person must have seen her. Also don’t most Library’s time and date stamp a book when it is taken out? I just read the other day of someone returning a book that was 76 YEARS overdue, they waived the fee.
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I hate to pour water on some of the articles but here go’s. First off the man in the Air Force saw CJB at apx 6:15 turning into the alley behind Shelly Lynn Apts followed by a Bronze 65-66 Olds Cutlass yet fails to mention weather it was driven by Male or Female. He also said he lived nearby, there is no nearby. RCC owned all of the homes from Terracina south to the North side of Ramona so he had to live in Shelly Lynn. The main reason CJB went up this alley is because when she came off of Magnolia on to Terracina she could see that there was no parking on Terracina and went to the dirt parking lots that were West of the Quad on Fairfax. The alley ran between them. Some have posted on the thousands of posts that she arrived at 6:15 and parked on Terracina, wrong. The Library opened at 6:00 and where are the first people who got there going to park well? in front of the Library. The report by RPD that the car was in front of the Library 75 feet from the driveway where she was murdered. I think RPD put this Red Herring out to trip up the killer. When they rolled her over at 9:20 and found her ID they put out an APB for the car, Explain to me how at least 6 LEO cars parked there and no one saw the car 25 feet away. because it was parked in the dirt lot that you can access from the alley or Fairfax. The Press Enterprise would have gotten the news of the death before God yet there are no pictures of the car parked on Terracina only ones taken at Police Station. they probably took them but were told not to publish so the killer would not know where they found the car.
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I hate to break it but the photos of the Library in which you ask could she have sat here for 3 hours and nobody noticed. There is another room where she could have sat and nobody noticed. In the West Wing of the Quad next door to the Library is the College English Classroom which is open on Sunday for people to study. She was probably in here with back to door and head down studying unless you went in looking for her you would not have noticed.
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Marshall,
Don’t hate to break anything to me about true things! I want the case solved for the victim.
That being said, I read in one of the school newspaper articles about this room but I believe it was the year before and I couldn’t substantiate if it was still open or open that late. Can you point me to more info on that particular point? It’s been awhile since I read about it. It seems to me that the cops restaged the scene and that room wasn’t part of it so I gathered it wasn’t open that night.
Outside of the re-staging, a possible issue with that is that CJ had a well known car and friends of hers came in but didn’t see her. I work at a college and the first thing most of them do when they come into a place is check for their friends or good looking dating candidates. It’s just primal instinct. Also, the library was very small and with a lot of people wanting solitude it’s hard to imagine at least one of them didn’t look in that room if it was known it was open. 70 or so people came in that night, if I recall. And that doesn’t cover that she had to check out books and was one of the first people to come in when it opened – how did the librarian not notice her? There was a self check out policy that I don’t know how it works so maybe that covers it. The head librarian Bach was a stickler for night usage statistics so there was some kind of count happening which still leaves me puzzled why the librarian was unsure.
And we still have to figure out why she was killed so far after the library closed. Again, the librarian looks suspicious because you have to go around and make sure no one is left when you lock up. Surely someone had to lock that room up if it was open, why would they not have seen her? She would have been extremely noticeable in that situation.
Anyway, I’m not throwing out what you said, the timeline of it all feels very fishy to me. And I guess not just me because I think RPD early on horned in on her being with a boy somewhere else.
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I just read your email. I have about 15 places bookmarked about CJB in one of those it talks about the Library Staff and hours it is one of these WordPress articles. Here is something to think about. The reenactment. First how did RPD find the name and address of the 70 to 80 people that were in the Library that night? Put an add in the paper? not everyone takes the paper. When you go in the Library you don’t have to give out that info if you did then that person would have seen CJB. Another point the reenactment took place either 9 days per Wikipedia or 12 days according to the P.E. Can you remember what you wore 9 days ago let alone 12 and wherever you work remember what they wore? The biggest problem is having them park in the same spot. Really hard, night school 6 til 10 but that is when class ends most people are not gone by 10:30 which means you are not going to find a parking spot, I have a lot more that seems like a big reach by RPD but I have to go and cook.
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I just posted some info on WordPress.
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Did you read my post on the reenactment of the library? I have more comments about how the murder took place but just my opinion. 4 things RPD needs Opportunity,Motive, Murder Weapon and Eye Witness. They only have one. When they were searching for the Knife I wonder if they thought of looking on the roof of the Quad and also over the hillside of Terracina.
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Link the post. Having trouble finding it.
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