On December 20, 1968, young lovers David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen sat parked along a secluded rural road near Vallejo, California. Their romantic evening was soon savagely interrupted when they were each shot dead by an unknown gunman wielding a .22 calibre pistol. A white vehicle had been reported as being parked at the same spot earlier in the night but other than some shell casings police had little clues to build upon. They could not have imagined that it would the beginning of one of the most mysterious criminal cases of all time.
Michael Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22, pulled into a golf course parking lot on July 4, 1969, in Vallejo when they thought they were being followed by another vehicle. They were correct. The car pulled up behind them, drove away, and then returned a moment later. A stocky man emerged and blinded the pair with a bright hand-held light, firing through the passenger window. By morning Ferrin was dead and Mageau Seriously injured with several gunshot wounds, including one to the neck and face.
It was shortly after this murder that Zodiac would make himself known. On August 1 the San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, and The Vallejo Times-Herald each recieved an unusual letter claiming responsibility for the two attacks and a coded message comprised of seemingly random symbols. The author of the odd letter demanded the papers print the letters and cyphers, which they did that same weekend, or more deaths would result. The code was eventually broken by a schoolteacher and his wife. Uncoded, it talked of "collecting of slaves for afterlife' and referred to man as "the most dangerous game of all to kill" but gave no clues to the writer's identity. Six days later the killer wrote again in response toa public police plea for more specific information regarding the attacks. He obliged, leaving no doubt that the writer of the letters and the killer were the same man. Also, in this latest letter the shooter named himself "the Zodiac".
It was not long before Zodiac struck again. On September 27 Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Ann Shepard lay stretched out on a blanket in an out-of-the-way spot at Lake Beryessa when they were apprached by a bizarre figure. The man was dressed in black boots and gloves with a stragne box-shaped hood that draped from his head down to his shoulders and chest, shielding his face completely. On his chest was drawn the symbol that would become synonymous with The Zodiac, a simple a cross/circle (pictured above left). After chatting with the bound couple and intimidating them with a gun, the man stabbed both Hartnell and Shepard several times. Hartnell survived his wounds but Shepard died a short time later. Before leaving Zodiac too the time to scrawl a message on the passenger door of Hartnell's vehicle that listed the dates of the first two killings and that day's date along with the word's "by knife".
Cabbie Paul Stine was the next and last positive Zodiac victim. He was shot in the head at point-blank range on October 11 after driving a fare to Washington St. in San Francisco. After shooting Stine, Zodiac took the time to wipe down the cab except for some strangely obvious prints on the dashboard in blood, and then tore off a piece of Stine's shirt. Two officers racing to the scene may have spoken to Zodiac but did not realize it becuase the description of their suspect was erroneously relayed to them as a black male instead of white.
Three days later Zodiac wrote claiming responsibility for the Stine shooting and included a chunk of of the victim's shirt as proof. Though it is not known whether Zodiac ever killed again, he continued to write letters to newspapers for years, mostly to The Chronicle. He later mailed another cipher and sometimes alternated between sending humorous greeting cards and threat-filled scrawlings on paper, at one time sending the Bay Area into panic when he wrote of a plan to shoot or blow up a bus full of schoolchildren. Zodiac also enjoyed keeping score with his letters which by the time of is last one in 1974 claimed "me=37, SFPD=0".
Despite at least one excellent suspect in the case, Zodiac was never apprehended and disappeared by 1975. He is suspect in a number of crimes such as the 1966 Riverside killing of Cheri Jo Bates and the disappearance of Donna Lass in 1970. Unfortunately it may never be known for sure how many he killed or what ever happened to The Zodiac.
12/23/2002-DNA evidence recovered from some of the stamps and envelopes sent by Zodiac appear to rule out Arthur Leigh Allen, widely regarded as the top Zodiac suspect, as the person who sent the taunting letters. Investigators looking into the cold case are not completely ruling Allen out as the main suspect, however. It is possible that the person who wrote the letters and the person who actually committed the slayings were working together. Allen died in 1992.