On the 30th anniversary of the Cheri Jo Bates murder in Riverside, the Riverside Press-Enterprise ran a story on the still unsolved case. It is widely believed that Cheri Jo Bates was the first victim of Zodiac. However, retired Riverside Police Detective Bud Kelly is convinced that the killer is not Zodiac but is in fact the "local boy" the police originally thought was the killer before the Zodiac connection surfaced. Kelly spent 17 years working on building up a case against the local man he believed killed Bates. He sent the case to the Riverside District Attorney, who declined to prosecute due to lack of hard evidence. Whether or not Cheri Jo Bates was indeed a Zodiac victim remains contested to this day.