by Mark Hewitt
When the officers questioned 16-year-old Debbie Faraday, she informed them that she heard from David that he and Jensen were headed out to Lake Herman Road because a bunch of kids were going to rendezvous there that night. She stated that she knew who some of the kids were, but was unable to contact them by phone for the officers. She promised that she would get in touch with the kids and subsequently let the officers know the details of her conversations.
The officers caught up with David’s friend, Daniel, at 9:30 Sunday night. The 16-year-old who attended Hogan High School acknowledged knowing David and Betty Lou, and hosting them at his house the previous Friday. He had seen David drive Betty Lou in the station wagon 4 or 5 times in the previous two weeks. He said that on Friday they were at his home from 5:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon, listening to songs from his record collection. Neither David nor Betty Lou had said where they were going when they left.
Daniel expressed his dislike for Ricky, complaining of the boy’s big mouth. He tried to avoid him where possible, he admitted. He told the officers that he was walking by Ricky’s house on Friday, December 20 while Ricky was at the curb washing his mother’s car, a maroon Pontiac Grand Prix. The radio was playing. At that time Ricky had said that he was going to go out in his mother’s car on Friday night, flashing the keys as evidence that he both could and would. Daniel was not aware of any firearms in Ricky’s possession. He had never seen him drive a car, but had seen him the previous summer riding around with a friend named Scott in a green Ford pick-up, a model from a year between 1951 and 1954. He suggested that the investigators speak with Scott, who now lived in a large brown house at the end of Falcon Drive.
The officers took note of what they heard and departed.
***
Earlier that afternoon, Lundblad received a telephone call from Officer Warner of the BPD. Warner had been contacted on the phone by Mrs. Peggy Your, a woman who lived with her husband, Homer, on West “L” street in Benicia and worked at Mr. Ed’s Drive-In Restaurant. (A July 1969 VPD report identified Peggy Your’s home as a pink house on the frontage road, a mile north of Lake Herman Road, between Benicia and Cordelia.) Your had told Warner that her husband was employed by the Frederickson Pipe Company, which had a contract to lay new underground pipes in the Lake Herman Road area. That contract brought the couple to Lake Herman Road on the evening of December 20.
Your reported that on the night of the murders she and her husband, with their children, upon returning from Sacramento, were checking on pipes and equipment at the construction site along Lake Herman Road. At about 11:00 p.m., with Homer at the wheel of their 1967 gold Pontiac Grand Prix, they arrived near the scene of the pumping station, continued along Lake Herman Road down to the bottom of the hill, turned into the Marshall Ranch to make a U-turn to go back to Benicia, and passed the pumping station area once more.
Both times that the Yours passed the spot that would in just a few minutes become the site of a grisly double murder they spotted a Rambler which was parked to the left of the gate pointing east toward the field. It did not move between sightings. A young couple nestled in the front seat. The boy sat in the driver’s seat, the girl resting her head on the boy’s shoulder. When the lights of the Your’s car first illuminated the Rambler, the boy immediately put his hands on the steering wheel of the car as though he feared that the police were approaching.
Peggy added that they were not the only ones present in the area that night. After they had turned around at the entrance to the Marshall Ranch, she and her husband had seen a red pick-up truck with wooden sideboards parked in the field about 25 feet in from the road. Two Caucasian adult men were in the truck, one about 25 to 30 years of age, wearing a hunting jacket and a stocking-type hat or cap over his head and carrying a three-cell flashlight. Peggy reported that they did not pass any cars as they drove along Lake Herman Road, and only the Rambler was present at the entrance to the pumping station at 11:00 p.m.
The investigation was starting to develop. The officers now had some promising leads and some useful information about some residents’ activities on the night of the attack. Lundblad checked the times and distances reported by the Yours, and sketched out a preliminary timeline of their movements. The two men who the Yours had seen at the entrance to the Marshall Ranch had already been identified as two raccoon hunters by Deputy Villarreal. Lundblad and Butterbach had interviewed them at 9:22 on the evening after the attack in the hopes that they had seen something useful to the investigation. There was also the very real possibility that they were responsible for the shooting.
Frank Gasser, the older of the two at 69 years, lived at the Gasser ranch, north of the Goodyear station. He and his friend, 27-year-old Robert Connelly, an employee of Pacific Gas & Electric, had been looking for raccoons the previous evening—the night of the attack—from 9:00 p.m. until about 11:00 p.m. At approximately eleven o’clock, the younger man looked at his watch—it may have been five or ten minutes before the hour—and decided to head back to the truck, a trek along the creek that would have taken them three to four, or possibly five, more minutes. They were just about to depart in the truck when a gold Grand Prix appeared.
The hunters estimated that they left the Marshall Ranch at 11:05 p.m., or a few minutes after the other car departed. They too noted the light-colored Rambler parked in the entrance way to the pump house, but believed that its location was to the southwest of where it was eventually found. They added that they observed a white, 4-door hardtop 1959 or 1960 Chevy Impala parked in that lot at around 9:00 p.m. when they first arrived. Also at that time they saw a truck emerge from beyond the gate. This addendum would corroborate the statement given by Bingo Wesner, who was in that white truck, and had reported seeing the parked Impala and the red truck transporting the raccoon hunters.
Butterbach and Lundblad met again with Connelly five days later. Because there was a discrepancy, possibly just a misunderstanding, arising from the first interview, he was asked to provide a more detailed explanation of his activities that night. His description of the location of the Faraday vehicle did not agree with that of the Yours. Additionally, being present in the area that night while in possession of a weapon made him more than a witness. He was now a suspect. Thursday afternoon, he retold his story with added detail.
He explained that he had gone to Frank Gasser’s ranch that evening about 6:00 p.m., departing several hours later with Frank. They passed the pumping station entrance about 9:00 p.m., and parked inside the Marshall Ranch area. Once out of their red truck, the two men followed the creek toward the pump station. As they approached the Dotta ranch, still from a distance, they noticed some commotion. All the lights were on, but they could not determine the cause of the noise. Then the dogs treed a raccoon in an oak tree near the pump station. He said they shot the animal with a .22 long barrel revolver, but never shared what happened to the creature.
Connelly stated that he recalled looking at his watch at this point and noticing that it was close to eleven o’clock, possibly 5 or 10 minutes before eleven. He and Frank made the ten-minute trek back to their truck. They were only at the truck for about 5 minutes when a vehicle approached (evidently the Yours) and then turned around and headed back toward Benicia. Approximately 5 minutes later, they departed in his truck, a 1959 red pick-up with white wood sideboards—actually, cattle guards. They drove back to the Gasser ranch, heading toward Benicia. They passed only one car along the route.
Connelly insisted that the Rambler had been parked on the south side of the pump house entrance area. It had to have been between 11:00 and 11:15 p.m., he estimated. He explained that he spent the next hour at the Gasser’s, and then left the area on Highway 21, through Jamison Canyon, heading home. He estimated his arrival at his house at about 12:30 a.m.
He then reluctantly admitted to having an automatic rifle on the evening of the attack. The officers advised him of his Constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment because he was in the area of the murder and had in his
possession at the time an automatic rifle which he previously denied having with him.
Though his firearm was confiscated in exchange for a receipt, it was not the gun the officers were seeking. Rifle testing in the Sheriff’s Office by Range Master George Parks would in time eliminate it as a suspect weapon. Connelly noted that Gasser also owned an automatic rifle, but that he did not have it at the house. Gasser apparently did not leave guns at the ranch because of recent thefts in the area. Connelly suggested that the detective speak with Harlan, a friend of Frank’s, who may have had possession of it.
The detectives quickly became aware of some differences between the details given by the Yours and those offered by the raccoon hunters that required some clarification.
On Friday afternoon, December 27, Lundblad telephoned Peggy Your to establish the time of her departure from Sacramento and her time of arrival in Vallejo. With no direct witnesses to the crime, he hoped that he could more firmly establish the time of the attack through careful scrutiny of the people who were in the area that evening. Your maintained that she had left Sacramento between 10:00 and 10:15 p.m. Her husband was driving which meant that they drove the speed limit or slower; he always obeyed the traffic laws. She estimated the time of arrival in the Benicia area, off Highway 21, to be approximately 11:00 p.m. They then drove the three to four miles of Lake Herman Road at a slow pace as he checked the pipes and equipment carefully laid out along the side of the road. To clarify her earlier statement, she noted that the Rambler at the entrance to the pump house was facing the fence, the rear section facing directly west toward Vallejo. A check of her clock’s accuracy revealed that it was in fact 7 minutes fast. Lundblad reasoned that, as a result, her time of arrival at the pump house entrance would be closer to 11:00 p.m. than 11:15 p.m.
The following spring, on March 22, Butterbach re-interviewed the Yours. Possibly some additional information, or a closer examination of the timeline, raised some suspicions about what the couple had previously told the officers. There seemed to be some discrepancies between witnesses—or some misunderstandings—so the couple was separated and interviewed individually. Maybe nothing would come from another look, but as leads in the case were thinning out by this time, it was worth a try.
Homer was questioned first, at twenty past five in the afternoon. He told Butterbach that on December 20, between 11:00 and 11:20 p.m., he was driving west on Lake Herman Road. He turned into the path that led to the Marshall Ranch. Once off the road, he spotted a red pick-up truck with wooden sides about 30 feet in from the road. A man standing by the truck shined a flashlight into their vehicle. Because Peggy had spotted another man with a gun, she shouted to her husband, “Let’s get out of here!”
Homer was adamant that his wife had not spoken to the man with the gun. That night, she had in her possession an unloaded .38 special, he maintained. The shells were in his pocket. He proceeded to show the officer the guns he owned: a 2-inch .38 special Smith & Wesson, serial #55246, and a Remington 12-gauge automatic shotgun, serial #248011.
Peggy was interviewed at 7:15 p.m. Her information did not contradict her husband’s story, but did contain more detail than her first statement given the previous December. She again told Butterbach that they had been returning from Sacramento between 11:00 and 11:20 p.m. Because her husband was employed by a construction company doing work in the Lake Herman area, he wanted to check on the pipes which had been laid out in preparation for installing and burying them in the side of the road. The couple was driving west on Lake Herman Road and noticed two Caucasians, a male and a female, seated in a Rambler, facing east, at the entrance to the Lake Herman pumping station. When the headlights hit the Rambler, the male sat up. This, the officer noted, was different than what she had said in December when she stated that he put his hands on the wheel. Despite the fact that it was a very cold night, there was no frost on the station wagon that Peggy could observe that might have obscured her view.
Continuing with a more elaborate version of essentially the same story she had told in December, Peggy explained that her husband had driven past the pump house entrance and turned right into the Marshall Ranch. As the car approached the ranch gate, she observed a tall, white male adult who was dressed in dark clothing. He was standing by the left side of their car (where her husband was sitting in the driver’s seat) about six feet away. He was holding a long-barreled weapon. A red pick-up with white wooden sides was parked about 40 feet ahead of their car. An old man exited the pick-up and shined a flashlight into the Your’s vehicle. At the sight of the man dressed in black, and particularly his weapon, she told her husband that there was a man with a gun standing by the car and to get the hell out of there. Peggy stated that the man stood motionless. He did not point the gun, but he stared at them. They turned the vehicle around and escaped east on Lake Herman Road.
When they passed the pump station entrance again, she continued, at about 11:15 or 11:18 p.m., the Rambler was still parked in the same spot. She kept looking back, she explained, as they drove slowly along Lake Herman Road because she was afraid of the two men near the red pick-up truck. They saw no lights behind them, not from the pick-up or from any other vehicle.
They did encounter another vehicle, farther along Lake Herman Road, at the entrance to the Humble Oil property, Peggy added: a long, dark-colored car. A security guard was leaning over talking to the driver. The dark car had a long speedometer indicator light that emitted a greenish glow and gave the men an alien appearance.
Butterbach asked Peggy if she had a gun in the car that night, and whether she or her husband had pointed it at the man near the red pick-up, saying, “My gun is bigger than yours.” Peggy admitted that she had a .38 special with a small barrel in her possession that night. It was lying on the rear seat of their car. It was not loaded, however, as Homer had the shells in his pocket. She insisted that they did not point the gun at the man, nor say anything to him.
***
On Monday December 23, at 2:00 in the afternoon, a funeral for David Faraday was held at the First Presbyterian Church of Vallejo, the Reverend James O. Hulin officiating. A private internment of David’s cremated remains followed at Tulocay Cemetery in Napa. Friends were invited to call at Colonial Chapels.
Betty Lou’s funeral, a Christian Science service, had been held at the Colonial Chapels at 11:00 that morning. The reader was High Martin Niemoller. Jensen’s classmates served as pallbearers. She was privately entombed at Abbey Memorial Gardens.
***
The Yours and the raccoon hunters were not the only people to drive past gate 10 that evening. On December 23, Lundblad took a statement from Helen, a young Vallejo woman. She and her boyfriend, a sailor, driving in a brown and white 1956 Ford station wagon, covered the length of Lake Herman Road and spotted the victim’s car at the pump house entrance at approximately 10:15 p.m. Helen immediately recognized Jensen, a former classmate. She noted that the station wagon was parked facing the gate. When Helen and her boyfriend passed by the pump house entrance a second time, having driven to the end of the road and back, she again saw the Rambler. It was facing the field this time, its front a little to the side. Helen also reported seeing a bright yellow foreign car parked near the area where the attack occurred. There were two Caucasians within, a male driver and an unknown passenger.
Even as the venerable Lundblad carefully took the statement, there was a problem. The first time Helen had spoken with him, she had claimed that the Rambler was backed into the pump house entrance, facing neither the field nor the gate. When he later realized this discrepancy and wondered about it, Lundblad telephoned her, and arranged that on December 28 she would bring her boyfriend down to the station to clarify the exact position of the Faraday vehicle that evening.
Late afternoon on Monday, December 23, Butterbach sat down to record important statements received through several phone conversations that day. In one, a man named Louis called to report information he had received from his wife. According to Louis,
his wife’s girlfriend was dating a volatile “Latin-type man.” The girlfriend split up with the man to return to her former boyfriend, who drove a Nash station wagon that roughly fit the description of the Faraday’s Rambler. Butterbach was told third-hand that the Latin-type man was a very jealous person, and could be responsible for the attack through a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps he believed the driver of the Rambler was dating his former girlfriend, and was responsible for the end of his relationship with her.
On the afternoon of December 24 at 1:15 p.m., Lundblad and Butterbach met with Sharon’s mother, the close friend of Betty Lou’s. Sharon’s mother reported to the detectives something she had heard about David, something that may be related to his killing, and something she had to get off her chest. She had heard from her daughter that a boy named Mark was speaking about an incident at the Pancake House on Tennessee Street. She recounted the second-hand story that Faraday was about to turn someone in to the authorities for “pushing grass” (selling marijuana), and that that someone had threatened Faraday.
In an unrelated point, she heard from her daughter that Betty Lou had mentioned plans to go to San Francisco on the night of December 20. The officers immediately discounted this. The distance to San Francisco, and the time required to drive there and back, most likely excluded the possibility. Nevertheless, the detectives committed themselves to checking out the details of all the information they received.
In the initial days of the investigation, the officers remained upbeat about their prospects for solving the case. Lundblad was quoted on December 24, “We expect to have an answer before very much longer.”
