Cheri Jo was small but athletic, and she put up a hell of a fight. One report compared the area where she died to “a freshly plowed field.” She had human hair and skin under her fingernails. A wristwatch, thought to belong to the UNSUB, was found ten feet from her body. The band had been completely torn away from the face on one side, ripped off in Cheri Jo’s desperate struggle.
The timing of the murder, however, was confusing. Two people in the area that night reported hearing screams between 10:15 and 10:45 P.M., but the library closed at 9 P.M. on Sunday nights. Did Cheri Jo and her murderer talk for more than an hour before he killed her?
Even more important, there was no apparent motive. The victim’s purse was found next to her body, with her identification intact and less than a dollar in change. The MO—disabling her car and lying in wait—was too complicated for a robbery, and a young college student off for an afternoon or evening of studying hardly made a worthy target for that. There was no sign of sexual assault, and nothing in the young woman’s background suggested she was a high-risk victim. At Cheri Jo’s funeral five days later, investigators scanned the crowd as her bereaved father collapsed in his grief. Like Joseph Bates, they were no closer to understanding why she had died.
An answer of sorts arrived by mail the next month in a letter to the Riverside police. The author was clever, typing the document in all-caps through perhaps a dozen or so pages of carbon paper, then mailing one taken from the bottom of the stack, rendering it so full of smudges that while its message was legible, it would be next to impossible to trace it to a specific typewriter. Of course, there were no fingerprints. And the writer was not only cunning in avoiding identification, he knew to include enough details of Cheri Jo’s murder to gain credibility as her killer.
He began with a taunting lead-in: the word BY with nothing but empty space following. The document read:
SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL
BUT NOW SHE IS BATTERED AND
DEAD. SHE IS NOT THE FIRST
AND SHE WILL NOT BE THE LAST
I LAY AWAKE NIGHTS THINKING ABOUT MY
NEXT VICTIM. MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE
BEAUTIFUL BLOND THAT BABYSITS NEAR
THE LITTLE STORE AND WALKS DOWN THE
DARK ALLEY EACH EVENING ABOUT SEVEN.
OR MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE SHAPELY BLUE
EYED BRUNETT THAT SAID NO WHEN I
ASKED HER FOR A DATE IN HIGH SCHOOL.
BUT MAYBE IT WILL NOT BE EITHER. BUT I
SHALL CUT OFF HER FEMALE PARTS AND
DEPOSIT THEM FOR THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE.
SO DON’T MAKE IT SO EASY FOR ME. KEEP
YOUR SISTERS, DAUGHTERS, AND WIVES OFF
THE STREETS AND ALLEYS . . .
The author went on to describe in precise detail how he removed “THE MIDDLE WIRE FROM THE DISTRIBUTOR.” The police had not released this information publicly. The next section of the letter was a grotesque description of Cheri Jo’s death, including the moment the UNSUB abruptly turned from Good Samaritan to ruthless killer:
. . . WHEN WE WERE AWAY FROM
THE LIBRARY WALKING, I SAID IT WAS ABOUT
TIME. SHE ASKED ME, ‘ABOUT TIME FOR WHAT?’
I SAID IT WAS ABOUT TIME FOR YOU TO
DIE. I GRABBED HER AROUND THE NECK WITH
MY HAND OVER HER MOUTH AND MY OTHER HAND
WITH A SMALL KNIFE AT HER THROAT . . .
At one point, the author alluded to a possible motive: “ONLY ONE THING WAS ON MY MIND. MAKING HER PAY FOR THE BRUSH OFFS THAT SHE HAD GIVEN ME DURING THE YEARS PRIOR.”
Police did find a young man who knew Cheri Jo and could be linked circumstantially to the crime. Even years later some investigators considered him the strongest suspect, but there was never enough to bring him to trial.
From my experience, I would suggest that this citation, like the one to the “SHAPELY BLUE EYED BRUNETT” before it, refers more to what the killer sees as female rejection in general than to a specific woman. I say this because of the letter’s larger theme, echoed in his closing section:
. . . I AM NOT SICK.
I AM INSANE. BUT THAT WILL NOT STOP
THE GAME. THIS LETTER SHOULD BE PUBLISHED
FOR ALL TO READ IT. IT JUST MIGHT SAVE THAT
GIRL IN THE ALLEY. BUT THAT’S UP TO YOU.
IT WILL BE ON YOUR CONSCIENCE. NOT
MINE . . .
BEWARE . . . I
AM STALKING YOUR GIRLS NOW.
It was probably at least somewhat truthful when the killer wrote of his next possible victim. Despite his reference to the brush-offs, Cheri Jo’s killer was probably out on the hunt that night, spotted the pretty young girl in her car and followed her, then set his trap and waited. She could have been a blond in a dark alley; any victim would do. With this letter, her killer set in motion what he really wanted: to put the fear of God in the community that any woman or girl could be next. It was all a game to him. What further supports this as his motive is that, while police remained fearful of another attack, none came. The UNSUB was happy with what he’d accomplished; he didn’t need to kill again in the near future. He could just watch and wait.
This ability to wait for the right time to strike again was clear from the crime, which bore the marks of a highly organized offender. Despite what he wrote, this crime was not the work of an insane person, but a methodical and cunning one, capable of hunting for just the right victim, preferably a stranger. This UNSUB was able to set his trap (the disabled automobile), seem normal and helpful enough in behavior and appearance to win his victim’s trust, lure her into an area where it would be safe for him to attack, and then get away without attracting attention.
There are a few disorganized elements, such as that Cheri Jo was left where she was killed, with no real effort to hide her body. Also, the UNSUB appeared to have more trouble controlling his victim than he expected, as shown by the presence of the watch as well as the physical evidence under her nails. But these seem to be the marks of a youthful and/or criminally unsophisticated offender, rather than an indication that a true disorganized personality is involved. And certainly we have no indication that more than one UNSUB committed this crime. Indeed, this is the type of offender we’d expect to learn from this experience and “correct” the disorganized elements his next time out.
Months went by and police found no evidence the killer had made good on his threats against another woman. Unfortunately, there was also no real progress in the investigation. The only development in the case was the discovery by a custodian of vandalism on the top of a desk that had been in the RCC library at the time of Cheri Jo’s murder. Five months had passed, but the words, etched into the wood in blue pen, stood out for their disturbing message. It was a poem of sorts:
Sick of living/unwilling to die
cut.
clean.
if red/
clean.
blood spurting,
dripping,
spilling;
all over her new
dress.
oh well,
it was red
anyway.
life draining into an
uncertain death.
she won’t
die.
this time
someone ll find her.
just wait till
next time.
rh
The police could not conclusively link the strange writings to the murder, but they filed away a photocopy of the desktop along with the rest of the Bates materials.
I’ve often found that anniversaries are good opportunities to lay traps for offenders of unsolved crimes; these dates are important to them for a variety of reasons. The local paper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, carried a story on the unsolved crime on April 30, 1967, the six-month anniversary of the murder.
Someone made contact the next day. This time there were three recipients: the police, the Press-Enterprise, and Joseph Bates. Each received a short, penciled message on a
piece of loose-leaf paper that read simply, “BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE.” The notes were signed with what looked like the letter Z or the number 2. Since there was nothing to compare the handwriting to (the earlier letter had been typed), and no credibility-sealing details, police considered these notes a hoax generated by publicity from the newspaper article.
“Stranger crimes”—those with no known connection between the victim and the offender—are the most difficult to solve, because unless there is a witness or the UNSUB leaves some evidence to link himself to his victim, forensic or behavioral, police have no reason to look in his direction.
It would be four years before this terrible crime was seen in the context of an even greater horror.
LOVERS’ LANE
December 20, 1968, was a Friday, and teenagers David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen had plans for a date that night. Faraday, seventeen years of age, was an excellent student and athlete at Vallejo High School in Vallejo, California, and an Eagle Scout. Because she lived on another side of town, Jensen attended a different school, Hogan High, where the pretty sixteen-year-old was also known as a good student. Although they apparently misled their parents about where they were going—her parents thought they were going to a concert at school and then to a party, but they skipped the concert altogether—they were known as good kids. Neither would be considered a high-risk victim.
David picked up Betty Lou in his mother’s 1961 Rambler station wagon, and they left her parents’ house around 8:30 P.M. The two first went to visit a friend until about 9:00, then to Mr. Ed’s drive-in for a Coke before heading out to Lake Herman Road, known as a local lovers’ lane. They parked off the road in a gravel strip just outside an entrance to the Lake Herman pumping station. It was an ideal place for young lovers to spend some time alone, but its isolation also proved dangerous.
Around 11:15, a woman who lived on Lake Herman Road a couple of miles from where the teens had parked came upon the site while going to pick up her son from a show. The passenger door of Faraday’s car was open. David lay on his back in a pool of blood, his feet toward the rear wheel. Betty Lou Jensen was nearly thirty feet from the back of the car, apparently as far as she could run before someone shot her dead. The horrified woman drove off for help and flagged down a Benicia police car. Captain Daniel Pitta and Officer William T. Warner rushed to the scene. When they got there, Faraday was still breathing. They summoned an ambulance.
The Rambler’s motor was warm, the ignition still on, presumably to keep the car’s heater running. Although the front passenger door was open, the three other doors and tailgate were locked. This, plus the location of the bodies, seemed to indicate that the killer somehow herded his victims out the one door so they couldn’t flee in different directions. A trail of blood led from the car to where Betty Lou had fallen, and more blood from her nose and mouth pooled around her body. She had been shot five times in her upper back. All the shots were on the right side in a close pattern, quite a feat of marksmanship given that the girl was running for her life in the darkness. David had been shot in the head at closer range, the bullet traveling forward from behind his left ear. Betty Lou was dead at the scene. David was rushed by ambulance to Vallejo General Hospital.
We’ve discussed in earlier chapters how investigations can get complicated, even, in some instances, compromised, when multiple jurisdictions are involved. In this case, the two Benicia officers were there first because the woman who’d found the crime scene had spotted them. The crime actually occurred, however, outside Benicia’s jurisdiction. So when Captain Pitta called in the county coroner, he also got in touch with the Solano County’s Sheriff ’s Office so they could send investigators out to the scene. Around midnight, representatives from both jurisdictions were present to investigate. They were joined by Detective Sergeant Les Lundblad of the sheriff ’s office. Ultimately, all the work Benicia police did on the case was handed over to the sheriff ’s office.
While Lundblad investigated the crime scene, he sent two of his officers to get a statement from the surviving victim, but when they got to the ICU, they learned David Faraday had been declared DOA at 12:05.
So what had happened?
A number of witnesses had seen David’s car parked at what would later become the crime scene, including a couple who passed by twice between 10:15 and 10:30 P.M., and two hunters who noticed the Rambler just after 11:00. Although David apparently turned the car around after parking it, possibly to provide more privacy, there was nothing inherently suspicious about the scene.
But investigators uncovered one odd, possibly related incident in the area that night. Two other young people on a date had stopped on the side of the road to check their vehicle’s engine. They reported being passed by a car, described tentatively as a blue Plymouth Valiant, which first slowed and then backed up toward them. Something about the situation spooked the couple, and they hurriedly drove off, only to be followed by the mysterious car until they exited to head toward Benicia. This occurred around 9:30 P.M. Several of the people who’d seen David’s car also reported seeing a white, four-door Chevrolet Impala at the entrance to the pumping station around the same time. These vehicles could provide clues to what had happened or they could be red herrings. The only witnesses to the crime, other than the UNSUB, were dead.
There was also little in the way of physical evidence: no fingerprints, no tire tracks, no signs of a struggle. There were light shoe prints in front of the car, and one heel print nearby. The offender did expend ammunition in his rampage and investigators gathered that evidence: empty shell casings from a .22 were found in the car on the floorboard and outside, and several slugs were recovered from the car and the victims’ bodies. The murder weapon was gauged to be a J.C. Higgins, model 80 automatic, or a High Standard model 101 semiautomatic, using a type of copper-coated Super-X bullet produced by Winchester since October 1967.
With no signs of robbery or sexual assault, police looked to victimology, hoping for a clue as to the UNSUB’s motive. The Jensens told investigators that Betty Lou had been bothered by a boy whose romantic intentions she did not return. They said he even threatened David at one point. When the sheriff ’s office followed up on these leads, however, they found the boy had a solid alibi for the night of the murder. Betty Lou had also told her sister she thought someone was spying on her, and her mother found the side yard gate open a couple of times, but nothing was found to connect these incidents to the murders.
This type of crime is emotionally difficult to investigate. Nothing in the victimology indicated why these two young people had been killed and the motive was unclear.
“I WANT TO REPORT A DOUBLE MURDER”
Darlene Ferrin was a gregarious, sociable young lady, twenty-two, who lived in Vallejo with her husband, Dean, and their baby daughter, Dena. Shortly after the murders at the pumping station, she told one of her coworkers at Terry’s Restaurant that she knew the victims—or at least knew of them—from having attended Hogan High School, located about a block from where Betty Lou Jensen lived. Darlene found their murders so frightening she said she wouldn’t be going back to that area again.
About six months after the Jensen-Faraday murders, on the afternoon of the Fourth of July, Darlene called a friend, Mike Mageau, to see about getting together that evening. Then, leaving Dena at home with baby-sitters, Darlene stopped by the Italian restaurant where Dean worked (not the same one where Darlene was employed) to tell him that she and a younger sister, Christina, were heading off to a parade of boats at nearby Mare Island. Dean told her he’d invited some of his coworkers over for a party after work and asked her to pick up fireworks on her way home. She and Christina went to Terry’s Restaurant to invite friends to the party before going to the parade. She also called Mike again. After the parade, they stopped by Dean’s work. By now it was after 10:00 P.M. Darlene called to check on her daughter and was told someone at Terry’s was trying to get in touch with her, so she went back to the restaurant. T
hen she drove Christina home and returned to her own house.
Originally, her plan was to take her baby-sitters home and then clean up her house for the party, but after a phone call she instead asked the sitters, two young girls, if they could stay while she went out to get fireworks. They agreed, and Darlene drove to Mike Mageau’s house, where Mike was so anxious to see her that he ran out of the house without turning off the TV or lights, leaving the door open. As they left his house, they quickly realized they were being followed by another car, light in color. They tried to lose it and ended up on Columbus Parkway, a route that headed away from town. They turned into Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, not quite as isolated as the Lake Herman Road pumping station but also known as a lovers’ lane. As Darlene pulled into the parking lot, her Chevy Corvair stalled out as the other vehicle pulled up. It parked nearby before speeding off, only to return minutes later. As Mike would later recall, the other car pulled into position behind them almost as a police car would, cutting them off and shining its lights into Darlene’s car. The next thing he knew, he heard something against the car window, then saw a flash of light as he was shot. The bullets kept coming. Darlene fell onto the steering wheel, struck nine times altogether: two in each arm and five in the back, hitting a lung and her heart.
Mike tried to escape but was unable to find the door handle. As he struggled, he saw the shooter returning to his car. At one point the man turned and Mike got a good look at him: in his late twenties, he was stocky—maybe two hundred pounds, about five feet eight—with light brown hair, curly, cut in a crew cut. He wore a windbreaker, like those worn by people in the navy, and pleated pants, which didn’t hide a slight paunch. As his attacker seemed to be leaving, Mike let out a cry of pain, and the man changed direction, going back to Darlene’s car. He shot Mike twice more as his desperate victim jumped into the backseat. Then he shot twice more at Darlene, walked back to his car, and left.
The Cases That Haunt Us Page 24
