Long-missing California teen may be buried in Yosemite

On Aug. 15, almost four decades after Susan went missing, Raymond Lewis Stafford was arrested on suspicion of the 15-year-old’s murder. Susan was last seen at the Modesto Greyhound station on April 25, 1986. The girl had plans to take a bus to Carmel to visit with friends. While waiting, she ran into an acquaintance who saw Susan making a call at the depot pay phone. About 10 minutes later, a green van pulled up, and Susan got in, seemingly without the driver forcing her.

Detectives suspected foul play — and even had a suspect nearly from the start. According to court records filed in Stanislaus County, investigators at the time traced the green van to Stafford after he was arrested on suspicion of an unrelated burglary a month after Susan vanished. In the course of their investigation, they allegedly learned that Stafford had briefly worked with Susan’s mother Patricia Chupco; Chupco told the Modesto Bee that she believed Stafford may have formed a relationship with Susan after calling their home phone.

To make matters even stranger, newspaper archives show Stafford ran for Modesto City Council the same year police say he killed Susan. In a July 1985 article in the Modesto Bee, Stafford, then 38, defended his criminal record as a product of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The article details numerous arrests, among them allegations of soliciting an undercover officer for sex, operating an unlicensed private investigator business and carrying a badge saying he was a PI.  

When asked about his campaign platform, Stafford responded, “We don’t spend any time getting the people who are molesting our children.”

He lost the election. The next year, Stafford was convicted of setting a business on fire and pleaded guilty to making a false police report; he reportedly faked a kidnapping to avoid appearing in court. According to the Texas Public Sex Offender Registry, Stafford, who is also listed under the alias Gregg Tunningley, was required to register as a sex offender after he allegedly abused a 13-year-old girl in California in 1994. 

In 1999, Chupco told the Bee that detectives found Susan’s clothes and diary in the possession of a man who went unnamed in the press because police had not publicly identified him as a suspect. Recent court records allege that the individual was Stafford. In addition, investigators say that a woman who lived with Stafford in the 1980s said he confessed that he had killed a “female” and driven to a campground near the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite National Park, where he buried her body. 

The sudden arrest after decades of suspicion came after the cold case was reopened several years ago. Modesto police secured an arrest warrant in early August, and Stafford was taken into custody in Van Zandt County, Texas, where he lived. Van Zandt County inmate records show Stafford is still being held there on a murder charge. He is expected to be extradited to California to face trial.