It's just over 100 miles from where the mother was found and where the 2 abandoned children were found. No one made any connection?
Think back to 1989. We had small town local newspapers. No internet communications. Maybe a big urban daily paper picked the story up for a few days on an inside page, but it faded away as all such stories do.
The mother was murdered in Mohave County, Arizona, and the children were found in a park restroom in Oxnard, California. That’s about 400 miles.
An unknown woman is found dead, no reason to think she had kids. Several days later a couple of kids are abandoned 100 miles away in another town.
Might as well try to connect the dots to the bank robbery 5 days before she was found dead.
Police departments in separate cities have so many calls that would shock you, there is no way to connect the dots. That is an effect of modern TV cop shows.