Like the Jensen-Faraday case, the Berryessa attacks occurred on a site with overlapping jurisdictions. So while park rangers rushed to the scene and stayed with the victims, the Napa County Sheriff ’s Office spearheaded the investigation. Detective Sergeant Kenneth Narlow arrived to find someone had already “cleaned up” the crime scene, packing away for him the couple’s blanket and the clothesline used to tie them. We’ve made the case in other chapters, too, that the more people you have working a crime scene, the more confusing it is for the people who end up with ultimate responsibility for the case.
One aspect of the scene, however, was completely undisturbed, although highly disturbing to Narlow. Before he’d left, the UNSUB left a message on the door of Bryan Hartnell’s car in black marker:
Vallejo
12-20-68
7-4-69
Sept 27-69-6:30
by knife
The first two dates marked the murders of Jensen/Faraday and Ferrin. Above the words appeared the crossed-circle symbol the Zodiac used as his signature in the letters mailed to the press in early August. This UNSUB wanted to make sure the police realized they were dealing with a serial killer.
At first glance, it might seem obvious that these attacks were related. After all, we’re dealing with a subject who targets young couples in remote areas at night or evening and for whom typical motives such as robbery or sexual assault do not apply. But there are critical differences between this case and the others, and I don’t mean just the bizarre, apparently homemade costume. Without his hint, given the change in jurisdiction and location, investigators might not have immediately linked this case to the ones in Vallejo. In a sense, the subject was almost giving police a break by telling them to look for one offender.
Back at Quantico, my unit saw many cases of linkage blindness. That is, a serial offender would change and perfect his MO, move to other jurisdictions, or escalate in violence as a typical progression, so police would think several criminals were at work when it was really all done by the same one. Here’s an example: A rapist-murderer starts out assaulting and strangling a prostitute, leaving her body in the alley where the crime took place. He realizes afterward that next time it’ll be less risky if he transports his victim to another location where he won’t face the danger of someone walking in on him. So he picks up his next victim and takes her out to a remote site and leaves her body there. And since he has more time with her, he doesn’t have to rape and kill her as quickly, so maybe this time he’ll torture her a little. With practice, this same guy could be picking up lonely, vulnerable women in bars, holding them for a few days of torture before killing them, and disposing of their bodies in places where they might never be found. Without behavioral or forensic clues to link the crimes, especially if they’re committed in different jurisdictions so investigators in one place never hear about the others, police might never make the connection. And my example isn’t such a stretch. I testified as an expert witness to help secure the conviction of serial murderer George Russell Jr., where the linkage was based on the signature element of posing.
Now let’s consider the differences between the Lake Berryessa attack and the previous ones in Vallejo. First, there’s a big difference between shooting at people in a car and stabbing them. In the first case, you get away clean. You’re watching it unfold before you, but you’re not really coming in contact with your victims. And at Lake Berryessa, we’re talking about spending time talking to the victims, hearing their voices, developing something of a rapport with them. Then, after the subject gets what he is ostensibly after—the victims freely complied with his demands for their money and car keys, remember—he brutally attacks anyway. With each thrust of his knife, he was getting more and more of their blood on him, hearing them screaming and moaning in pain. Remember, too, that he had a gun with him, meaning he didn’t have to use his knife. If it was fear or control he was after, he could have used the knife and his words effectively for that, resorting to the gun when it came time to finish them off. He chose to use the knife. And since it was dusk, rather than midnight, he got a good look at the horrible scene before him.
This brings us to the next point: the earlier timing and location of the attack indicates the subject’s willingness to take greater risks. It was midafternoon when the three college students and the dentist and his son spotted the suspicious man. The self-styled killing uniform Bryan Hartnell described was good for hiding the killer’s face and hair, but would only have attracted attention if he had tried to wear it the whole time he was in the park. Although no one was likely to stumble upon the scene as the killer stabbed Bryan and Cecelia, it was possible. And although a knife makes no noise compared to a gunshot, the victims’ screams could certainly attract attention. If someone had seen them from a boat, the UNSUB had no way to keep them from reporting the attack. The best he’d be able to do would be to beat a hasty retreat, possibly leaving several witnesses able to give police a description. He furthered his risks by spending so much time talking to the victims; and murder by stabbing takes longer than a couple of quick gunshots.
There was also the disturbing trend of the shortening time between the murders. Seven months had passed between the Jensen/Faraday murders and the assault on Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau. The Lake Berryessa attack came less than three months later. In all aspects, then, this crime clearly represented a progression from the other murders. Successful offenders such as this don’t just stop committing crimes, and as they continue, they only get bolder and, typically, more violent and deadly. One could only expect the Zodiac to continue on this course.
TAXI DRIVER
It was 9:30 P.M., October 11, when cabdriver Paul Lee Stine picked up a fare on Geary Street in San Francisco. Stine was actually already answering a call from a fare on Ninth Avenue, but was stuck in the crush of people milling about the theater district on a foggy Saturday night. When the lone man approached his cab for a ride, he requested a location that was on the way to the Ninth Avenue call, so Stine picked him up. He wrote the destination, Washington and Maple, in his log and headed west toward the residential area near the Presidio.
Although Stine’s trip sheet said Washington and Maple, the cab eventually stopped one block farther at Washington and Cherry. At this location, instead of paying his fare and exiting the cab, the rider shot Paul Stine in the right side of his face at close range. He then moved into the front seat and took the cabbie’s wallet. He also ripped off part of Stine’s shirt. He left Stine’s Timex watch, checkbook, a ring, and a little over $4 in change in the cabdriver’s pocket. When he was done, he got out of the cab and wiped down sections of the driver’s door and the left rear passenger door. He then leaned against the divider between the front and back windows of the car as he opened the driver’s door and wiped off the dashboard before he closed the door and walked off into the night.
What he didn’t know was that virtually the entire event had been witnessed by a fourteen-year-old girl at a party just across the street. She was looking out a second-story window about fifty feet from the cab. When she realized what she was seeing, she summoned her two brothers to the window. By the time the stocky, white man was wiping down the cab, a crowd of people were gathered around, with a clear view out the window. They didn’t stop watching until he’d disappeared from their view, turning the corner. He simply walked from the scene.
While this was unfolding, people at the party called the police. At 9:58 P.M., the operator taking details of the crime in progress somehow ended up describing the suspect as a black man. So when the dispatcher put out the all points bulletin, units on the street were given the proper direction the suspect was headed, but an incorrect physical description.
What happened next has been subject to different interpretations. By several accounts—including the Zodiac’s, given in a later letter—the first officers responding to the call in a patrol car got to the intersection of Cherry Street and Jackson within minutes and saw a stocky white man wa
lking in the direction of the Presidio. Had there been more light, they might have seen blood on his dark clothing. And had they known the UNSUB was white, this story might have gone in any of a number of different directions. But since they were looking for a black man, they just asked him if he’d seen anything suspicious. He reported seeing a man with a gun running along Washington Street, heading east. So off they went. The patrolmen realized about a week later that they’d likely seen the killer and worked with an artist to develop a composite sketch. When Robert Graysmith researched this miscommunication, he found their report had been filed away as confidential, and the official statement from the San Francisco police was that none of their officers had ever seen the suspect. But that position does not explain the existence of the composite sketch, which was actually the second one prepared, since a police artist drew one the morning after the murder with input from the witnesses at the party.
This near miss could have afforded a great opportunity, unrecognized at the time, to get the Zodiac to come forward. A statement could have been released stating that the police were seeking assistance from the community following this heinous crime. The announcement would make it clear that several people other than the suspect had been seen in the area at the time and were now being identified. Police would like to speak to anyone who was there to see if they’d seen anything. If it worked, the subject would come forward with a story that would legitimately place him in the area and cover his butt in case anyone else had seen him.
When they arrived, police found Paul Stine slumped over onto the passenger side of the front seat, with his head on the floor of the cab. There was much blood, and although the keys were missing, the meter, eerily, was still running. The officers summoned an ambulance and also put out word that the suspect in question was actually a white male. In addition to the first two officers who responded, Inspector Walter Kracke, a homicide detective on his way home, heard the call and got quickly to the crime scene. His experience would prove valuable as he helped the other officers secure the scene. By the time homicide inspectors Dave Toschi and partner Bill Armstrong, the team on duty that night, got there, the ambulance had already arrived and Stine been declared dead. Kracke had notified the coroner and requested all available canine units and a spotlight vehicle from the fire department to assist in the search.
While investigators worked the scene, the search fanned out using dogs, patrolmen on foot, and military police from the nearby base. The Presidio was just a couple of blocks from where the murder took place, and neighbors told police they’d seen a person matching the general description of the UNSUB rushing across a nearby playground and into the wooded base. For the next few hours, it must have seemed almost daylight as floodlights and flashlights illuminated the area. The search was called off at 2 A.M., about four hours after Stine was declared dead from a gunshot wound to the brain. A badly damaged, copper-covered bullet from a nine-millimeter was recovered at autopsy. The killer had fired only the one shot from his semiautomatic pistol. It was an uncommon type—under 150 were sold in the entire Bay Area over the previous three years. Damage to the skin of Stine’s right cheek indicated the gun had been held right up to his head. Defense wounds were on the cabdriver’s left hand.
Looking at the victimology, Paul Stine, twenty-nine, was married and working toward a doctorate in English from San Francisco State College. To pay for school, in addition to driving the cab at night he worked as an insurance salesman. At five feet nine and 180 pounds, he wasn’t a small man. In his personal life, with his interests, nothing would have labeled him a possible victim of violent crime, except that cabdrivers are highrisk victims by profession. Their job calls for them to pick up strangers and take them wherever they want to go at all hours of the day and night. Because they carry cash, they are frequent targets of robberies . . . and worse. Not even two weeks before Stine’s murder, another driver from his cab company was robbed, and just over a month earlier Stine himself had been held up by two gunmen.
Indeed, at first this looked like a botched robbery committed by a criminally unsophisticated subject. The offender would have fled with blood all over him, and he left valuables behind. When police reconstructed Stine’s earlier fares, they estimated the most the killer could have walked away with was about $25. On top of that, he left evidence: on the side of the car where the UNSUB rested his right hand to balance as he reached in to wipe off the dash, he’d left two fingerprints in blood.
And then there were the witnesses. The kids at the party described Paul Stine’s killer as white, in his midtwenties to thirty years of age, with reddish blond hair cut short, like a crew cut. He wore glasses and darkcolored pants and a parka. He was stocky, maybe five foot eight. The description and the composite sketch were circulated among cab companies throughout San Francisco, warning of the killer’s MO.
Almost as quickly as the police bulletin made its rounds, a development in the case proved Stine’s murder was more than the standard cab robbery gone bad. In October, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter on which the return address was simply a symbol: a circle with extended cross-hairs. It began as another had before it: “This is the Zodiac speaking . . .”
The author claimed credit for Stine’s murder and offered graphic evidence as proof, actually enclosing a piece of the victim’s bloody shirt. Then he referenced “the people in the north bay area,” taking credit for them as well. The lab confirmed that the swatch was from the cabdriver’s shirt, and when Toschi and Armstrong met with Detective Sergeant Narlow in Napa, he thought the handwriting matched their guy’s, a finding later confirmed by Sherwood Morrill, head of California’s questioned documents department in Sacramento.
The police were getting no credit for their hard work from the Zodiac, however. In this latest letter, he mocked their efforts to find him following Stine’s murder.
The S.F. Police could have caught
me last night if they had
searched the park properly
instead of holding road races
with their motorcicles seeing who
could make the most noise. The
car drivers should have just
parked their cars & sat there
quietly waiting for me to come
out of cover . . .
His message seemed to have an effect. San Francisco’s Chief of Inspectors Marty Lee put up a brave face before the press, saying that if the Zodiac had really been just outside police grasp that night, he would have mentioned the dogs and the floodlights used in the search. I suggest that if the killer had been the man the patrolmen spoke to, that would explain the level of scorn here. He almost got caught and he got scared, but he couldn’t admit that to law enforcement or himself. So he had to get cocky. We expect an offender like this to overcompensate for his feelings of inferiority by putting down those he actually secretly envies. He got lucky, but he had to perceive that he had outsmarted the police.
Another way for this type to prove his superiority is to once again find a way to get more control, more power. This one accomplished that by closing his letter with a terrifying threat:
School children make nice targ
ets, I think I shall wipe out
a school bus some morning. Just
shoot out the front tire & then
pick off the kiddies as they come
bouncing out.
In cooperation with SFPD, the Chronicle did not release news of this threat for several days, after having released other portions of the letter and the composite sketch. This resulted only in a slight delay of the ensuing panic. Throughout San Francisco, Napa, and surrounding jurisdictions, steps were taken to protect schoolchildren: extra drivers were assigned to buses to watch for trouble and to take over in case a driver was shot; in some cases, armed police guards were on the buses. Pickup trucks from the forestry department and ranger stations at Lake Berryessa were put into service. Airplanes even monitored bus routes from the sky.
You have
to be careful with a threat like this. Obviously, this guy is capable of killing people and you have to take precautions. But I find the actual threat more designed to, once again, put the fear of God in the community and manipulate public emotions. If the Lake Berryessa and San Francisco attacks were high risk, you really couldn’t get much riskier than shooting at a bus full of kids in broad daylight. From the offender’s point of view, this would be almost a suicide mission. But all the police activity generated by this threat becomes the ideal face-saving scenario: he would have carried out his threat, but the heat was just too great.
Some attempts were made to proactively reach the Zodiac via the media. California attorney general Thomas Lynch issued a formal statement in which he assured the killer he would receive help and his legal rights would be fully protected if he turned himself in. Lynch tried to appeal to the Zodiac’s vanity, saying that as an “intelligent individual” the killer realized he would eventually be caught and would recognize surrender as the best course. The Examiner also tried, but neither approach brought the killer to the police.
In another approach, Dr. D. C. B. Marsh, who headed the American Cryptogram Association, issued a challenge to the killer. Using the Zodiac’s own code, Marsh composed a message providing a phone number for the Zodiac to call when he had a coded message that did actually contain his identity. Dr. Marsh’s challenge, published in the San Francisco Examiner, went unanswered. Despite this, I would still consider it a great idea and the type of technique I advise, as it was tailored to the personality of the UNSUB.
Less than two weeks after the Stine murder, a major meeting was convened at the San Francisco Hall of Justice. Investigators from Vallejo, Napa, Benicia, Solano, San Mateo, and Marin met with representatives of the FBI, the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, Naval Intelligence, the California Highway Patrol, U.S. Postal Inspectors, anyone who had a hand in the case. The seminar covered each crime known to be linked thus far and a comparison of all the evidence available.
The Cases That Haunt Us Page 27
