While driving along the freeway just outside of San Diego, Thomas Pendergast stopped beside a awkward, sickly-looking, young man. It was November 2, 1958, a time when it was common to pick up hitchhikers.
The disheveled youth called himself Charlie Harrison, but his real name was Carl Eder. The sixteen-year-old had hitchhiked across the country after running away from his Irondequoit, New York, home. Thomas gave the lost lad a lifeline, saying he would take him in until he was back on his feet. He believed the lanky pimple-ridden boy was harmless. He could not have been more wrong.
Carl Eder
Thirty-four-year-old Thomas Pendergast and his thirty-eight-year-old wife, Lois, lived in El Cajon, California, fifteen miles northeast of San Diego.
Thomas worked for a local aircraft plant.
Lois and Thomas Pendergast
Thomas and Lois had four children: nine-year-old David, six-year-old Thomas Jr., four-year-old Diane, and two-year-old Alan.
The Pendergasts were a close-knit family.
The Children Left To Right: Diane, David, Thomas, Jr. and Alan
With Dad as Santa Claus
In contrast, Carl Eder had left home following a falling out with his family. He hitchhiked his way across America, eventually arriving in California.
The kind-hearted Thomas Pendergast provided a temporary home for the troubled teen. Eder repaid the kindness with carnage.
A Troubled Teen
When Thomas came home from work on December 12, 1958, the house guest he called a “friend of the family,” was outside. The boy’s demeanor was far different from that of the meek lad Thomas had taken in six weeks earlier. Eder had a look of ire in his eyes.
Armed with a .22 rifle, the “family friend,” entered the car and ordered Thomas to drive toward San Diego. After approximately ten miles, Eder told Thomas to pull into a service station on the city’s outskirts. He then commanded Thomas into the restroom so they could exchange clothing.
As they were doing so, Thomas wrestled the gun from Eder, but the youth was able to get away and disappear down an alley.
Eder’s Ire
Thomas raced back home and encountered a horror: His family’s blood-soaked bodies lay scattered across the floor.
The husband and father of four was a husband and father no more.
Thomas Finds His Family Wiped Out
Eder was located three days later in Mission Beach, a few miles north of San Diego. He confessed to the murders, simply saying, “I just flipped my lid.”
The youth described, in gruesome detail, how he had slaughtered the Pendergast family.
Captured Carl
Eder said his rampage began because he was irritated with four-year-old Diane’s crying. He said he stormed into her bedroom and threw her on the floor, cutting her head in the process. Lois then came to the room and saw Diane bleeding and lying on the floor. He told Lois she had fallen.
As Lois rushed Diane into the bathroom to bandage her, she told Eder to call the doctor. Instead of grabbing the phone, Eder grabbed Thomas’s gun and shot Lois to death.
Lois Is Slain First . . .
Eder then proceeded to slash the throats of Diane and the youngest child, Alan. He did the same to the older children, David and Thomas Jr., when they arrived home from school. An autopsy showed they had also been stabbed in their stomachs and disemboweled.
When asked why he spared the elder Thomas’s life, Eder said “I didn’t want to kill him. He’s been real good to me.”
. . . And Then the Children
Carl Eder was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was spared the death penalty because he was a minor.
For fifteen years, Eder served his sentence and was deemed a “model prisoner.” Just as Thomas Pendergast had deemed Carl Eder a low risk to his family, the state of California deemed him a low risk for escape. Like Thomas Pendergast, the state of California would regret its decision.
Convicted
While working outside the prison grounds of the minimum security California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi in October 1974, inmate Carl Eder simply walked away and vanished.
Prison officials found a note in Eder’s cell reading “I’ve done enough time and am leaving.” Nearly half-a-century later, he has not been returned.
“I’ve Done Enough Time”
Few leads have surfaced regarding the whereabouts of Carl Eder since his escape. He was last seen in 1976 in the Calistoga and St. Helena areas of California, during which an associate said he had threatened the life of then-President Gerald Ford.
Eder had ties to motorcycle gangs and extremist left-wing groups including the Venceremos Brigade and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Authorities believe the most likely explanation for the lack of sightings of Eder is that he was taken out by members of one of those groups who were nervous about his bringing unwanted attention to them.
A Fugitive for Nearly Fifty Years
Carl Alfred Eder has been convicted of five counts of murder and is wanted for escaping from prison. At the time of his escape in 1974, he stood six-feet-two-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. He had brown hair which is now probably gray, and his hairline is likely receding. Eder had blue eyes, scars on his left hand and abdomen, and a mole under his left eye.
Carl Eder would today be eighty-one-years-old. A $20,000 reward is still offered for information leading to his arrest or to proof that he is deceased. If you have any information on his whereabouts, dead or alive, please contact the San Diego FBI office at (858) 320-1800.
Aged-Enhanced Images of Carl Eder
Thomas Pendergast died in 2012 at age eighty-seven.
Thomas Moved On
The Thomas Pendergast whose family was slaughtered by Carl Eder is not to be confused with the more noted Thomas Pendergast who was the political boss of Kansas City, Missouri, in the 1920s and ’30s.
The two Thomas Pendergasts were not related.
The Other Thomas Pendergast
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113681529/lois-jane-pendergast#
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113681547/david-alexander-pendergast
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113681567/thomas-james-pendergast
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113681614/diane-lois-pendergast
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113681583/alan-davis-pendergast
SOURCES:
- America’s Most Wanted
- Independent Press-Telegram, Long Beach, California
- Los Angeles Times
- New York Times
- Schenectady, New York Gazette
- St. Helena, Star (California)
I think the theory about his being killed to not bring attention is probably right. With no sightings of him in all this time, he probably was killed shortly after his escape. That said, he will probably turn up tomorrow.