by Steve Hodel
Without warning, the stranger raised a handgun and fired. Bullets ripped into Michael’s face and chest. In an effort to avoid further damage, the wounded teenager hurled his body into the backseat. Darlene, seated behind the steering wheel, was shot in both arms and in the back.
Without saying a word, the shooter turned and walked back to his car. Hearing Mageau cry out in pain, he did an about-face and coolly fired two more bullets into both Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau.
Mageau, bleeding profusely from multiple gunshot wounds, managed to open the passenger door and fall to the ground. As he looked up, he saw the suspect turn his car around and, as he later told police, the suspect “peeled tires and sped off toward the town of Vallejo at a high rate of speed.”
Fifteen minutes later, passing motorists discovered the wounded couple and called the police. Darlene Ferrin died in an ambulance enroute to the hospital. Michael Mageau was rushed into surgery and despite his multiple wounds and heavy loss of blood, managed to survive.
He gave police a vague initial description of the shooter. “He was a white male. It was dark and I only saw his profile. I never saw his face from the front.” When pressed for a further description Mageau said he “was unable to judge his age real well.” His impression was of a man in his late twenties or early thirties, five foot nine, 195 pounds, “stocky, but not blubbery fat.”
Investigators from the Vallejo Police Department determined that after leaving both victims for dead, the suspect drove directly to downtown Vallejo, where he used a pay telephone located at a Mobil gas station, just two blocks from the Vallejo Police Department, to call the police. The call was received at 12:40 a.m. on July 5, 1969, by a civilian police employee named Nancy Slover. According to Ms. Slover, the caller said:
I want to report a double murder. If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park you will find the kids in a brown car. They were shot with a nine-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Good-bye.
Ms. Slover, in her official Vallejo police report, also characterized the suspect’s demeanor:
I could distinguish no trace of accent in his voice. He seemed to be reading or had rehearsed what he was saying. He spoke with an even, consistent voice (rather soft but forceful). When I attempted to get information from him, his voice became louder, covering [up] what I was trying to say. He did not stop talking until his statement was complete. His voice was mature. The only real change in his voice was when he said, “good-bye.” At that point his voice deepened and became taunting.
Vallejo police officers quickly confirmed that the weapon used was a 9mm handgun. They also learned that Darlene Ferrin had a husband and had worked as a waitress at Terry’s Restaurant. Investigators questioned Dean Ferrin but eliminated him as a suspect when they established that he was working as a cook at Caesar’s Restaurant at the time of the murder.
The similarities to the Jensen-Faraday double murder were striking. But after three weeks of searching for clues and interviewing the victims’ families and friends, the trail to the killer turned cold.
Then on July 31, 1969, the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner received hand-printed confessions and sections of a cryptogram. While the confession letters contained the same basic information, each section of the cryptogram was different. The killer informed the newspapers that the three parts had to be reassembled and, if deciphered, would reveal his identity.
Reproduced below are the letter and envelope with double postage, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. While the suspect had yet to use the name “Zodiac,” he did, for the first time, include his soon-to-be-infamous symbol of the cross and circle:
I have maintained the exact wording of the killer’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, along with his punctuation and misspellings, with misspelled and unusual words bolded for easier identification:
10.3 Two-page letter and envelope received by the San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 1969
Dear Editor
This is the murderer of the 2 teenag-rs last Christmass at Lake He-man & the girl on the 4th of July near the golf course in Vallejo to Prove I killed them I shall state some facts which only I & the police know.
Christmass
1. Brand name of ammo Super X
2. 10 shots were fired
3. the boy was on his back with his feet to the car
4. the girl was on her right side feet to the west 4th July
1. girl was wearing patterned slacks
2. The boy was also shot in the knee.
3. Brand name of ammo was Western Over
Here is part of a cipher the other 2 parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo times & S F Examiner. I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper. In this cipher is my idenity. If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Fry. 1st of Aug 69, I will go on a kill ram-Page Fry. night. I will cruse around all weekend killing lone People in the night then move on to kill again, untill I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.
On August 2, the Chronicle printed their section of the cryptogram. The following day, all three sections were released to the public, as shown in Figure 10.4.
10.4 Three-part cryptogram published by the San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1969
Vallejo police chief Jack E. Stiltz rushed the coded message to a nearby navy base for analysis. In a ploy to elicit additional information from the suspect, Chief Stiltz announced that he wasn’t sure that the correspondence came from the actual killer, and needed more proof.
The killer took the bait and immediately fired back a three-page handwritten response, introducing himself by saying, “This is the Zodiac speaking . . .” Received by the San Francisco Examiner on August 4, 1969, the letter is reproduced below as Figure 10.5, with all of its misspellings bolded for emphasis.
10.5 Three-page handwritten Zodiac letter received by the San Francisco Examiner, August 4, 1969
Zodiac’s letter reads as follows:
Dear Editor
This is the Zodiac speaking. In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I have had in Vallejo,I shall be very happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police haveing a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up; when they do crack it they will have me. On the 4th of July: I did not open the car door. The window was rolled down all ready. The boy was origionaly sitting in the front seat when I began fireing. When I fired the first shot at his head, he leaped backwards at the same time thus spoiling my aim. He ended up on the back seat then the floor in Back thrashing out very violently with his legs; that’s how I shot him in the knee. I did not leave the cene of the killing with squealing tires & raceing engine as described in the Vallejo paper. I drove away quite slowly so as not to draw attention to my car. The man who told the police that my car was brown was a negro about 40-45 rather shabbly dressed. I was at this phone booth haveing some fun with the Vallejo cop when he was walking by. When I hung the phone up the dam X Othing began to ring & that drew his attention to me & my car. Last Christmass In that epasode the police were wondering as to how I could shoot & hit my victoms in the dark. They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well lit night & I could see the silowets on the horizon. Bullshit that area is suronded by high hills & trees. What I did was tape a small pencel flash light to the barrel of my gun. If you notice, in the center of the beam of light if you aim it at a wall or celling you will see a black or darck spot in the center of the circle of light about 3 to 6 in. across. When taped to a gun barrel, the bu llet will strike exactly in the center of the black dot in the light. All I had to do was spray them as if it was a water hose; there was no need to use the gun sights. I was not happy to see that I did not get front page cover age.
No Address
Military and civilian experts were unable to decipher Zodiac’s cryptogram. But a high-school teacher named Donald Harden and his wife, B
ettye, did. Working together over a long weekend, they broke most of the coded message and mailed their results to the San Francisco Chronicle , which printed Zodiac’s deciphered message. I have bolded the un-deciphered or misspelled words. It read:
I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FOREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST HONGERTUE ANIMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING ERYETHEYC A THRILLING EXPERIENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT I ATHAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND ALL THE I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRS TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTING OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE EBEO RIET EMETH HPITI
A few days later a professor at the Stanford Research Center in Menlo Park contacted Vallejo detectives and advised them that the references in the Zodiac’s message of “collecting slaves for the afterlife” was a concept that originated in Southeast Asia, particularly in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. The professor advised that the “suspect could possibly be of Southeast Asian extraction, or be someone familiar with the area.”
In the 1950s and ’60s my stepmother, Hortensia Hodel Starke, owned a large sugar plantation in the Southern Philippines known as Haciendo Bino. In 1959-60, while stationed at Subic Bay, I visited and toured the plantation with my father. I believe the land remains in Hortensia’s name and ownership to this day.
The next six weeks passed uneventfully as Vallejo County deputies and city police sifted through hundreds of tips and potential leads. Then, on September 27, 1969, Zodiac struck again.
Chapter Eleven
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.
Zodiac, October 13, 1969
On a peaceful Saturday afternoon in late September 1969, two young college students lay on a blanket admiring the pristine beauty of Lake Berryessa, fifty miles northeast of San Francisco, near Napa Valley.
11.1 Cecelia Shepard, age twenty-two; Bryan Hartnell, age twenty
Cecelia Shepard, age twenty-two, and Bryan Hartnell, age twenty, had driven to the secluded spot in Bryan’s Karmann Ghia. They’d parked just off the road, walked several hundred yards down a dirt path that led to the peninsula, and spread their blanket under a tree at the water’s edge. While talking about the future and waiting for the sun to set, Cecelia noticed a man watching them from behind a tree. A few seconds later, she saw him move closer and gasped, “Oh my God. He’s got a gun.”
The terrified students turned to face a man wearing what appeared to be a black cloth executioner’s hood and tunic, with eyeholes cut out of the hood and clip-on sunglasses attached to further conceal his identity. A strange white cross and circle about three inches in diameter had been sewn or drawn on the tunic, and a bayonet-style knife hung from the stranger’s left side inside a homemade sheath, which was wrapped with white tape.
11.2
Pointing a large blue-steel automatic at Bryan’s head, the masked man said, “I want your car keys and money. My car is hot.”
The man then removed precut lengths of clothesline from his back pocket and ordered Cecelia to tie her boyfriend. She complied. Next, the masked man bound Cecelia’s hands and feet. Bryan, hoping to keep the man calm, attempted to engage him in conversation. According to Bryan, the stranger said:
I just escaped from prison in Montana. I had to kill a guard breaking out. Don’t try and grab my gun, you don’t want to try and be a hero. I’m flat broke and I’m heading for Mexico.
The masked man forced Bryan onto his stomach and hogtied his hands and feet. A second later, without warning, Bryan felt a knife blade plunge into his back. The attacker thrust his knife into him again and again; five more times. One stab punctured a lung.
Then the attacker turned on a horrified Cecelia, stabbing her ferociously, first perforating the front of her body, then the back.
A bleeding Bryan lay still and feigned death. He watched the masked man slowly walk away and disappear.
Five to ten minutes passed before Bryan heard a boat engine on the lake and shouted, “Get help!” He received no response. Bleeding profusely from multiple wounds, the young man managed to untie himself and crawl up the path to look for aid.
Nearly an hour elapsed before the wounded couple was found. Emergency workers rushed Bryan and Cecelia to Napa Queen of the Valley Hospital in critical condition, where both underwent emergency surgery. Cecelia died forty-eight hours later. Bryan miraculously survived.
Just as he had done in the Ferrin/Mageau Blue Rock Springs assault, the attacker drove downtown and telephoned police headquarters. Officer Dave Slaight received the call at 7:40 p.m. Printed below is his verbatim recollection of their conversation:
Slaight: Napa Police Department, Officer Slaight.
Caller: I want to report a murder—no, a double murder. They are two miles north of Park Headquarters [actually about only a half mile]. They were in a white Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
[There is a long pause.]
Slaight: Where are you?
Caller: I’m the one that did it.
Napa County police traced the call to a booth outside the Napa Car Wash, four and a half blocks from the station.
A day after the attack, Bryan Hartnell, though sedated and weak, told detectives that he’d only been able to catch a glimpse of the attacker’s face, in profile, through the eyehole of the mask. Though unsure of his age, height, and weight, Bryan provided the following description based on the masked man’s profile and sound of his voice:
Male, white, 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet, possibly 20 to 30, possibly 225 (unable to determine weight due to loose clothing), dark brown hair, dark blue or black lightweight windbreaker jacket, dark blue or black pleated slacks (“old-fashioned type”), moderate voice, neither high or low-pitched. Unsure if he was wearing gloves or not.
An examination of the Lake Berryessa crime scene produced some significant discoveries. As lead detective Sergeant Kenneth Narlow of the Napa County Sheriff’s Office approached Bryan Hartnell’s white 1956 Karmann Ghia, he noticed writing on the right front door panel. Pointing his flashlight at it, he read:
11.3 Right front door panel of victim’s 1956 Karmann Ghia
The macabre message had been printed in large bold letters, using a black felt-tip pen. At the top, the attacker had drawn a replica of the cross and circle the victims had seen sewn on his tunic. It was the same symbol that had been included in the letter to the San Francisco Examiner following the Vallejo crime.
Under the symbol, the suspect had written the dates of the attacks in Vallejo and Lake Herman Road, as well as the date and time of his most recent murder “by knife.”
The following day, detectives studying the crime scene discovered clearly defined shoeprints (measuring “approximately 13 inches in length, 4½ inches at the widest point of the sole”), which they believed had been left by the suspect. They speculated that the imprint could have been created by a military-style wing-walker boot, which was available for purchase by either military or civilians in sizes 10½ R (military) or 10½ D (civilian). After canvassing a dozen shoe stores, detectives determined that “the imprint could have also been made by a shoe or boot of foreign import.”
Based on their investigation, Napa sheriffs were convinced that this crime was connected to the vicious killer who called himself “Zodiac.” Further evidence supporting this belief arrived nine days later, when on October 7, 1969, Sherwood Morrill, questioned document examiner and court-certified expert in the field of handwriting comparison, rendered his expert opinion:
The person who hand printed the message on the victim’s vehicle at Lake Berryessa was the same individual who had sent the hand-printed letters to the Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner claiming to have murdered three persons in Solano County.
As investigators searched for further evidence and panic spread throughou
t the Bay Area, Zodiac struck again.
On Saturday evening, October 11, 1969, a twenty-nine-year-old San Francisco State graduate student named Paul Stine waited in the Yellow Cab he drove part-time.12 He’d parked in front of the St. Francis Hotel near Union Square in downtown San Francisco.
11.4 Paul Lee Stine
After receiving a call for a fare on nearby Ninth Avenue, Stine turned from Powell Street onto Geary, where he had to slow for a crowd pouring out of the Curran Theatre’s hit production of Hair. A man hailed his cab and got in. Paul Stine logged the destination address as “Washington Street and Maple” in Presidio Heights.
As the cab entered the upscale neighborhood, the passenger in the backseat instructed Stine to proceed up Washington another block to Cherry Street. Stine braked the car to a stop between two trees on the corner, directly in front of 3898 Washington.
