Michael A. Garfinkle, a 20-year-old from Tarzana, California, was found dead beside a railroad track in Emeryville on August 2, 1994. A recent Pierce College graduate, Garfinkle was reportedly riding freight trains with a friend en route to Santa Cruz when he was brutally bludgeoned to death and left near Shell Mound Street.

Investigators linked the killing to Robert Joseph Silveria Jr., a transient known as The Boxcar Killer, who rode freight trains for years and confessed to numerous rail-related murders after his arrest on March 2, 1996. Emeryville detectives said Silveria demonstrated intimate knowledge of Garfinkle’s crime scene and circumstances, and local authorities moved to pursue murder charges through the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Silveria’s confessions tied him to at least 28 murders across multiple states; he was later extradited to Oregon on a separate homicide charge and is serving multiple life sentences. Did anyone who rode the rails through Emeryville in 1994 recognize Michael or recall seeing him that summer?