Help find location in USA from hand-drawn map, possibly by murderer

General talk
1

This is part of the EAR/ONS rapes/murders which occured years ago in California.

During a search for the suspect, some papers were found on the ground which may have belonged to the murderer. One of these papers is a map.

On this map, you can see some specific features:
Commercial buildings
Residential buildings
Highway overpass
Lake
Creeks
Tennis courts

I have been using JSON queries on the overpass website looking for the features with approximate distance ranges between features. No luck.

I personally believe, but have no proof, that the commercial buildings in the upper left of the map were copied from an aerial photo or similar image. My reason for believing that is the AC units on the roof are laid out in an accurate way that a kid would not know how to figure out on his own. Also, the lines for the outlines of the commercial buildings are drawn quite confidently without any sketching.

So, I’d appreciate any help in finding this location via queries or any other techniques a more advanced user may be able to offer. I have limited time for solving this problem but I continue searching for this specific location in the United States.

Thanks,
Beherit

2

The EAR/ONS reference would also specify roads that existed near the 1976-1986 era.

3

Maybe you could download the OSM data for CA and use the Atlas feature in QGIS to export images around all highway exits? I think there are about 6000 exits in CA and I reckon you could eyeball the images at about 100/minute so potentially one hour to do 6000.

4

Sounds good, I’ll look into this. Thanks.

5

But keep in mind that the map might not point north and that there might have been substantial development in the area since the 70s.

6

Yes, I’ve considered those things. Also, it is quite possibly from a state other than California. I am hoping the commercial buildings in the upper left corner still exist near the overpass.

I’ve considered downloading the shapefile for California and compare the drawn building in the upper left to each of the commercial buildings in the shapefile. Not sure how I’m going to do that…