The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office announced Monday that an investigation into claims that an 86-year-old resident of the Sherwood Oak skilled nursing facility is a serial killer has yielded no evidence to substantiate the allegations.
The accusations were made by Galina Trefil, a self-described writer, who alleged that her father, John Trefil a retired psychiatrist from Albion suffering from Parkinson’s disease, committed multiple murders between the 1970s and 1990s. According to the sheriff’s office, Galina Trefil first brought the allegations to law enforcement in January 2023.
Trefil’s mother, Kande Trefil, a retired teacher who taught at Fort Bragg's Dana Gray Elementary School and a local high school, dismissed the claims as baseless. Speaking from her home in Albion, she said she first became aware of her daughter's beliefs a decade ago during a visit to Reno, Nevada, following the birth of Galina’s second child. Kande Trefil recalled that her daughter contacted law enforcement during the visit but said she did not understand why the accusations were being made then or why they persist today.
“She kind of beaded this together like a necklace,” Kande Trefil said. “This one did it there and then was there and then we’re gonna get another one, and she put them all together.”
In a lengthy Facebook post last Thursday, Galina Trefil claimed her father had admitted to being a serial killer, stating that he had murdered more than a dozen people. She alleged that he had repeatedly asked for authorities to take him to the locations where he disposed of the bodies but that law enforcement had refused to do so.
“He wants to tell a story,” she wrote. “He actually wants to go public with his crimes. He’s given his blessing for me to do so in his stead.”
Galina Trefil claims that bodies of undiscovered victims are located at several places on the "13 Curves" stretch of Highway 20 between the 4.5 to 5 mile marker, A Comptche-Ukiah Road, on the family's property in Albion, and at a "murder cabin" in Comptche.
Sheriff’s investigators reviewed recordings, journals, and other materials as part of their inquiry. Detectives noted some consistencies between Galina Trefil’s claims and an unsolved homicide from the 1970s.
However, Captain Quincy Cromer, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said no forensic evidence linked John Trefil to any crimes. (John Trefil has sometimes spelled his name "Jon," according to online records.)
“A warrant was requested and granted to obtain this person’s DNA, which was submitted to the Department of Justice,” Cromer said. “A one-to-one comparison was conducted with numerous items of evidence from the scene, and there was no match. His genetic profile was also uploaded to CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, and we have received no hits.”
Authorities also searched a property in Comptche that had been identified as a potential burial site but found no evidence to support the allegations.
“We have to base all of our decisions on probable cause,” Cromer said. “Just because someone may admit or even confess to something, we have to have evidence to support that statement before we can legally take action.”
Despite Galina Trefil's claims of possessing a recorded confession, Cromer said investigators who reviewed the provided materials found no outright admission of guilt.
“As far as what has been alleged on social media, we’ve investigated everything,” Cromer said. “Without new information, I don’t know what else there is to investigate.” Cromer said investigators did not question Trefil due to his fragile medical state.
Kande Trefil said she did speak with detectives, sometime ago, but she could not remember exactly when. Trefil admits to struggling with memory issues.
While Kande Trefil laughs at the allegations, she admits that the situation has been painful. Kande Trefil spends her time traveling between Albion and Sherwood Oaks to care for her husband.
Trefil said that for a period of time, her husband lost his ability to speak, but that they are now able to communicate.
She said she rarely interacts with friends and neighbors anymore, but she'd like them to think of her as a teacher who gave her all to her students.
“The most painful thing was how people thought of me because I was a really good teacher,” she said. “That makes it difficult.”
