Survivalist accused of 2004 Jenner killings of couple sleeping on beach

On August 18th, 2004 the bodies of 22-year-old Lindsay Cutshall and 26-year-old Jason Allen were located on a beach just north of Jenner, California. On August 18th, 2004 the bodies of 22-year-old Lindsay Cutshall and 26-year-old Jason Allen were located on a beach just north of Jenner, California. Photo: Courtesy Cutshall And Allen Families Photo: Courtesy Cutshall And Allen Families Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Survivalist accused of 2004 Jenner killings of couple sleeping on beach 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

One of Northern California’s most enduring crime mysteries was declared solved Friday when a survivalist with a history of violence was accused of gunning down a young engaged couple in August 2004 as they lay in sleeping bags on a beach in Jenner.

For more than a dozen years, Sonoma County sheriff’s investigators searched for suspects across the state and well beyond, combing beaches and gun records, scrutinizing coastal drifters and serial killers. But in the end they pointed to a familiar face, 38-year-old Shaun Michael Gallon of Forestville, whose trips in and out of county jail were so frequent that he was long considered a “person of interest” in the double homicide.

The break in the case arrived March 24, tragically, when Gallon allegedly killed his younger brother in Forestville, shooting him multiple times. After his swift arrest, investigators said, he confessed enough to tie him to the cold-case killings of Lindsay Cutshall, 22, of Fresno, Ohio, and her 26-year-old fiance, Jason Allen of Zeeland, Mich.

Gallon, who was 25 at the time, shot the pair with a .45-caliber Marlin rifle at close range as they slept on secluded Fish Head Beach near the mouth of the Russian River, said Sheriff Steve Freitas.

The couple had been working that summer at a Christian youth camp along the American River in El Dorado County, and had gone on a three-day sightseeing trip up the coast that would have taken them through Forestville. Investigators said Cutshall and Allen didn’t know Gallon, though it’s unclear whether they might have had an interaction with him hours before their deaths.

“We believe this is a random crime and there is no connection between them,” said Freitas, whose office plans to turn the case over to county prosecutors next week and ask for murder charges to be filed.

He did not discuss a possible motive in the beach killings, nor in the shooting of Gallon’s brother. On that day, the mother of the two men called for help, saying 36-year-old Shamus Gallon had been shot with a rifle at the home where the family lived on the 9800 block of River Road. The family had moved to the home from Guerneville after the brothers’ father killed himself in 2013.

The mother reported that Shaun Gallon had left the house with the rifle and driven away in his minivan, officials said. Shaun Gallon was apprehended that day, accused of a slate of charges including murder and booked into Sonoma County Jail, where he remained Friday without bail.

It wasn’t Gallon’s first serious brush with the law. He was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for shooting an arrow at a man in Guerneville, just west of Forestville, on Jan. 27, 2009. Gallon, described by investigators in that case as a survivalist, served a three-year sentence — spending some of his time at San Quentin State Prison — after wounding James McNeil of Monte Rio.

McNeil was sitting in a parked convertible on Mill Street when an arrow came through the soft top of the car and grazed his head. After deputies determined the arrow had been shot from the balcony of a nearby home, a SWAT team went inside, but Gallon had fled. He surrendered a little more than a month later, after taking to the dense woods of west Sonoma County.

County court records reveal that Gallon amassed a long and varied rap sheet, with convictions in his 20s for resisting arrest, weapons possession, theft, drunken driving and hunting abalone without proper paperwork. The Sonoma County public defender’s office, which is representing Gallon, declined to comment Friday.

On his Facebook page, Gallon posted about world conflict, weapons, martial arts, protests and conspiracy theories. On Feb. 27, he posed in camouflage with a homemade spear, writing, “Check out this nice spear I made.”

No one appeared to be home Friday at the Forestville house where Gallon had lived, which sits on stilts on an isolated stretch of River Road in the shadows of towering redwoods. Around noon, a team of sheriff’s deputies ordered a reporter off the property and put up crime-scene tape, but didn’t say what they were looking for.

At Gallon’s former residence in Guerneville, an apartment above a thrift store, neighbors said Friday that they remembered two men living there with their mother. But the family didn’t interact much beyond casual greetings, and Gallon seemed pretty quiet, they said.

“I’d see him wandering in town,” said Andrea Hill, 35, who used to live next door to the family and now resides in their apartment and runs the shop downstairs. While she didn’t often engage with Gallon, she said he had a strange manner about him — his looks, his reclusiveness.

“You could kind of feel something heavy here when I moved in,” she said.

Though Gallon was a “person of interest” in the early investigation of the Jenner case, he could never be definitively linked to it, Freitas said. But he said that after Gallon allegedly killed his brother, he made statements that indicated “he had information on the (Jenner) killing that no other person could have known” besides the killer.

“We have located evidence corroborating his statements,” Freitas said. “We are confident we have Jason and Lindsay’s killer.”

The sheriff said the rifle used in the killing of Shamus Gallon had not been used in the Jenner homicides.

After Freitas spoke at a news conference in Santa Rosa, the parents of the slain couple released a statement saying they were “extremely pleased that our children’s murderer is in custody where he belongs. We praise the Lord for his capture.

“When we at times wondered whether this day would ever come, the detectives in particular wouldn’t allow us to lose hope,” they said. “We want to thank our Lord and savior Jesus Christ for sustaining us and our families throughout this journey. We know we have miles to go before this case is closed.”

The two were killed sometime after nightfall on Aug. 14, 2004, and before sunrise Aug. 16, officials said. Their bodies were found in their sleeping bags Aug. 18. Both were shot in the head. Cutshall and Allen were killed just weeks before they were to return to the Midwest to get married.

Detectives on the case have pursued a number of possible motives in the killings — from sexual assault to murder-suicide, all of which were ruled out.

A timeline of the couple’s last days was established based on sightings of the two victims and photographs from their camera. Police said that on Aug. 13, 2004, Cutshall and Allen left the Christian youth camp, Rock-N-Water in Coloma (El Dorado County), where they were working as river guides for the summer. They visited San Francisco the next day, where photos showed them on the Golden Gate Bridge and on Alcatraz. Then they headed north for the Sonoma coast.

“I think there’s a lot of joy and happiness that it’s been resolved,” Freitas said. “This shocked the community of Jenner and Sonoma County.”