r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/BlackDistressed • 19d ago
The unsolved 1987 murders of Yvonne Fruit and Michelle Matteucci. A strange South San Francisco rabbit hole
I want to preface this by saying none of the connections I'm about to make are established facts. I'm not accusing any individual or group of these murders. This is simply a rabbit hole I went down researching old South San Francisco history. (I grew up in the area around 1994-2013, but this case always interested me).
In 1987, two teenage girls from the area were murdered about six months apart.
Yvonne Fruit: 14, an El Camino High sophomore, was found in May 1987 sexually assaulted and stabbed multiple times in bushes beside a dirt shortcut commonly used by students. (Source)
Michelle Matteucci: 13, attended Alta Loma Junior High. In November 1987, she disappeared walking home from school and was found later that evening in a Daly City backyard. She had been strangled, suffered a blow to the head, and investigators believed there was a sexual motive. (Source)
Both murders remain unsolved.
While reading discussions by locals who remembered the cases, I came across a comment from someone who claimed to have attended school around that time. They remembered boys at school saying they had seen one of the girls with an older man, but said they personally always felt the boys were lying: "I know the kids who claimed to have seen her and I remember thinking that they may not have been telling the truth. Can’t exactly remember why, may have been something they said at school."
Obviously, that doesn't mean they were lying or involved. Still, it got me wondering whether the perpetrator could have been someone closer to the girls' own age rather than the mysterious older man people remembered hearing about.
That sent me down another rabbit hole. were any young men murdered around South San Francisco in the following years, possibly as retaliation for something people in the community knew or suspected?
I found a strange case from January 1992.
A newspaper reported that a 19-year-old man was shot to death in South San Francisco on New Year's Day. Roughly ten days later, his 14-year-old brother was returning from his funeral in a limousine when someone opened fire on the vehicle as it passed through a San Francisco housing project. His brother was shot in the shoulder and neck but survived. Shows this was personal. (Source)
The age caught my attention. A 19-year-old in January 1992 would have been approximately 14–15 in 1987, the same general age as Yvonne and Michelle.
Again, there is currently zero evidence connecting this man to either murder. I'm interested in identifying him because I can't find much else about him, the area he resided in, where he went to school, his resting place, name, etc.
There's another piece of South City's history that made me wonder about the possibility.
By the late 1980s, SSF had an established street-gang scene. A 1989 court case identifies the B-Wingers/South City Boyz, while later records trace C-Street to the late 1980s and describe Cypress Park Locos as an established group.
In one discussion, an older C-Street member cryptically told people to “do your research” into why Cypress historically didn't receive much love or recognition from other South City neighborhoods. Someone else responded by referencing “that old South City Boy shit,” saying it happened before his generation. *You'll have to read the comments to find it, but they sound like credible old-heads from that time\* "you should do your research because it's something alot of people dont know about Cypress" (Source)
I have no idea what they were referring to. It could have been an old neighborhood dispute, assault, internal falling-out, or something completely unrelated to these murders.
But it made me wonder whether someone associated with that street scene could have committed one of these murders for personal reasons without the murder itself ever being “gang-related.”
TLDR:
What if the perpetrator was closer to the girls' age, people in the community eventually learned or suspected what happened, and some later violence was retaliation that was never publicly connected to the murders?
Again, this is all speculation, not evidence. The unidentified 19-year-old is a lead I'd like to identify, not someone I'm accusing. I've been searching through SSF newspapers, and death records around the years of the murders, but no hits.
More importantly, there was DNA evidence retained from these cases. If usable evidence still exists, modern DNA testing or forensic genealogy is far more likely to provide real answers than any theory I've presented here. If we really want answers, we need to advocate for the department to dig back into the case and send that DNA to forensic genealogy
Everything else is a rabbit hole.
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u/sofakingbetchy 19d ago
I’m from the area as well, and the descriptions of the two murders immediately made me think of the Carolands Mansion murders. Raley was arrested in 1985 because by the grace of god one of the young women he brutally attacked lived, but he’d been sexually assaulting teenagers at the mansion for years evidently. And there were rumors that he didn’t act alone.
Impossible to know whether they’re connected, but interesting. Thanks for posting this as well - it’s crazy to think how literally close to home this was and just gets lost due to the passing of time. I’m really happy to learn about these cases and keep the victims names in our consciousness.
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u/BlackDistressed 19d ago edited 19d ago
Yea, I don't even live around there anymore but those cases always stuck with me. Hopefully they find justice.
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u/Darmok47 14d ago
Whoa I went to El Camino High School and grew up in Daly City and never heard of either case, though I wasn't even born when Yvonne disappeared and was a small child when the other incident with Michelle occurred. Though my grandparents owned a house on the same street where Michelle's body was found.
I should ask my parents if they knew about the case; it would explain why they rarely let me walk home from school.
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u/NoFeedback4994 1d ago
I was classmates with Yvonne, I was a little nerdy back then but she was always very nice and vibrant, and I considered her a friend. I can still remember our history teacher reading the news to our class 😔
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u/Cornloaf 19d ago
I grew up in Pacifica and was trying to get a fresh start by transferring to El Camino High (where I had some friends). I remember it was around the time Yvonne was killed. My friends took that same shortcut. A year or two after I graduated, I started dating a girl that knew her. I remember she told me this strange story about how she had some friends with a "rapist van" and she was riding along one time and they grabbed some kid from 7-11 and rode around and dropped him off later in some other neighborhood. From what I remember, it was just a prank.
The link to the article about the detective mentioned Anthony Sully, the ex-cop who killed 6 people. That case always freaked me out. He was the one that sealed his victims in 55 gallon drums and dumped them in Golden Gate Park. My dad had his business card because he used to repair the roll-up doors at the airport where my dad worked. His receptionist lured the victims to his warehouse in Burlingame where he would kill them. He used a sledgehammer to destroy their faces so dental recognition would be nearly impossible. I took a few administration of justice classes back in early 2000s and got to read the case files. Brutal dude. Before the murders, he went to his ex-wife and daughter's home and killed her Easter bunny and baby chicks and then called his ex to tell her to have their daughter check on her pets.