The State - News from Oct. 26, 1988

Robert Carlson killed four people before taking his own life because he feared being placed behind bars, authorities said. Carlson’s body was found last week in a Humboldt County forest, half a mile from where one of his victims--Danielle Zumbrun, 27, a Humboldt State University student, who was killed in March--was found, sheriff’s deputies said. Two weeks before Zumbrun’s slaying, three teen-agers from Hoopa were killed. Investigators said the three went into an area where Carlson had been hiding for six to nine months. The deputies said Carlson, 29, feared going to jail because of a 1984 arrest in San Francisco, where he was picked up with a machine gun near Gary Hart’s presidential campaign headquarters. The officers based their belief on information in a journal found near his body and a confession he made to friends about the deaths of the Hoopa youths.