Criminology - A Killer Deciphered

Episode Date: August 19, 2017

An unknown killer has attacked two couples in lover's lane situations. 3 of the 4 victims involved died. The 1 surviving victim gave limited details. The killer had initial communications to police taking credit for both attacks. In this episode, we focus on additional communications made by the killer. This time the communication goes to various newspapers and includes ciphers that the killer says will reveal his true identity. A third attack on a couple occurs but the location and the MO are somewhat different this time. However, the killer does leave a clue at the scene to let investigators know there is a serial killer on the loose. And soon the killer will give police the name that he wants to be called. Join Mike Ferguson and Mike "Morf" Morford as they walk through the evolution of this infamous serial killer. Dive into the ciphers in detail as well as the 3rd attack. Upcoming episodes will include some great insight from experts. You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology Social Media information: Facebook - Criminology Podcast Twitter - @criminologypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices   ©2017 Emash Digital- All rights reserved. This content is the sole property of Emash Digital. Any unauthorized use, re-selling, re-purposing, or re-distribution, is strictly prohibited, and will be subject to legal action.   

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode two of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Morf, Mike Morford. Morph, how are you?

I'm doing good. How about you, Mike? I'm doing great, man. I was so excited to get episode one out. You and I have worked so hard. We've put so many hours into this podcast and especially episode one. And the feedback has been unbelievable. Yeah, I've definitely been just blown away by the amount of people that are telling us how great it was and how well researched it was.

And, you know, so I just want to say thanks to all the listeners out there that have said great things so far. You know, we're really proud of it. And it is a labor of love so far. And I hope that it continues to be good for it. everybody. Morphan, I think you make a great point about wanting to thank everybody because, like I said, the support is amazing. The number of downloads was, it just blew us away. And you have to thank everyone for giving criminology a chance. And our hope is each episode is going to get better and better as we get through this case. So Morif we talked about episode one. And I can't

stress enough. If you've stumbled on this episode two and have not listened to episode one yet, definitely stop, go back, download episode one, listen to that first. This thing goes in order and you don't want to start listening out of order. All right, that being said, in episode one, we covered the first attacks of a burgeoning killer. Two different attacks, three of them died. Right? Quick recap. We learn. in episode one that the killer likes to reach out to police. And that initial communication, it's just going to be the start. And we're going to get into it pretty quick here in episode two.

This is going to be an unbelievably central theme to this case. All that stuff that you just mentioned had Vallejo on Edge and with good reason. And unfortunately, it was going to get worse for them. All right. Morf, as we start this episode, we have to talk about how we ended episode one because we tease the fact that there were three letters mailed to three different newspapers at the end of July. And in the beginning of August, the three Bay Area newspapers all received similar letters that appeared to be related to each other. So you have the Vallejo Times Herald, you have the San Francisco Examiner,

and the San Francisco Chronicle, all receiving letters that were postmarked Thursday, July 31st, 1969. And these all came from San Francisco. Now, one thing that was very interesting about each of the three letters is that they all contained more postage than was needed. And all three had the same notice written on it that said, please rush to editor. Inside each one of these envelopes was a letter, and each letter was addressed to the corresponding newspaper that it was mailed to. Dear editor, I am the murderer of the two teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman and 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 and the police know. Christmas. 1. Brand of ammo, Super X. Two, ten shots were fired. Three, the boy was on his back with his feet to the car. Four, the girl was on her right side, feet to the west. Fourth of July.

One, the girl was wearing patterned slacks. Two, the boy was also shot in the knee. Three, brand name of ammo was western. He was part of a cipher. The other two parts of the cipher. are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo Times in the San Francisco Examiner. I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper. In this cipher is my identity.

If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Friday, 1st of August 69, I will go on a kill rampage Friday night. I will cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night, then move on to kill again until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend. So that was a voiceover reading of the actual letter that was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. And Morph, I think we have to talk a little bit about the letter itself. You could spend hours examining this letter, dissecting it. It's fascinating.

So first of all, the letter is printed. And as it goes along, it starts to get a slant. And the slant becomes more pronounced. as the letter goes along, at the very bottom of the first page is the word over. So right away, you know there's something on the back of this. And then again, more slant. And at the very end of the letter is a symbol. And this symbol is a circle with what is essentially crosshairs in the middle of it.

And actually extending out, you know, the arm. are extending out past the circle. So in addition to what Mike was mentioning, a couple of things I noticed were odd spacing in the words, some misspellings. We're going to put that up on our criminology podcast Facebook page so that the listeners out there can see the things that we're actually talking about. And I think it's important more because listeners are going to have a couple different options, right?

They can wait till the episode is over. They may want to go to the Facebook page right now and see. what we're talking about as we talk about it. So in addition to the taunting letters, as if that's not enough, these newspapers also each have one part of a mysterious three-part cipher. And the author claims his identity is included in this cipher. So if the cipher can be solved, the killer might be able to be caught. At the time, the newspapers didn't really know what to think. They thought that these letters might be some kind of hoax. And they pretty much wrestled with whether to publish these letters or not. If they publish these letters and they're not legit, then they were providing

a soapbox for someone to get attention. But if the letters really were from the killer, publishing them might help to identify them. And that might keep additional victims from being killed. In the end, the papers did decide to publish these letters. So you heard in the reading of the letter that the writer wanted front page coverage. But none of the papers are going to run either the letter or the ciphers on their front page. Now, they would all three publish and the Vallejo Times Herald actually published their part of the cipher on Friday, August 1st, 1969 in the evening edition. So they were the only ones that even complied with the day. But there again, they wouldn't even publish it on the front page. The San Francisco Chronicle would wait until the next

day and they would publish their portion of the code on Saturday, August 2nd. And then what the San Francisco Examiner does, they actually take all three parts and publish it in the Sunday edition August 3rd. So more if it was almost like you had somebody went out first, but the other two were waiting to see. And as soon as they saw that the Vallejo Times Harold published, then they followed soon. in consecutive days. So one thing that happens after these ciphers are published is that you have a whole bunch of agencies that jump all over it.

You have naval intelligence. You have the FBI, other agencies and their code breakers taking part in trying to solve this coded message. A married couple in Salinas, California, Donald and Betty Hardin read about the letters and ciphers and became interested in them. Donald, a school teacher, who had an interest in ciphers and codes, decided to take a stab at decoding the ciphers, and he invited his wife Betty to join in. Although Betty didn't have the same interest in cipher, she agreed to help. They spent the better part of the weekend working on the cipher, and by August 8th, they solved the 408 character cipher that was constructed with odd-looking shapes and symbols.

I think this is incredible that a civilian couple was able to crack this code when you had the FBI, intelligence and a slew of other agencies with their expert codebreakers couldn't solve it. Now, we're going to get much deeper into the cipher aspect of this case in a later episode. But for now, it turns out that Betty, although not an expert in ciphers, was instrumental in solving it. She felt from reading these letters that the writer had such an ego that he would start off the cipher with the phrase, I like killing. And it turns out she was right.

what Betty does is really kind of amazing because using that phrase I like killing as a starting point, the hardens are able to start to see other characters fall into place. And they're going to be able to tell that what they're dealing with is a substitution cipher. And this is when the letters of the alphabet correspond to symbols in a cipher. and from Betty figuring out that the cipher started out with the phrase, I like killing, they were able to solve the substitution cipher and the author's message starts to fall into place. When they finish and they're sure that they've broken the code, Don Hardin calls the San Francisco Chronicle and tells them that they've solved it.

By the time that Don Hardin makes this call, the paper had already gotten a bunch of calls from other people who claimed to have solved it as well. So what they end up doing is just taking down Hardin's info and saying that they'll follow up and pass it on to police. So the Hardens really did solve it, but it kind of got lost for a little while because the paper was receiving so many phone calls. They didn't know which ones were real and which ones were people just claiming to have solved it.

So eventually the police do reach out to the Hardens. And by August 10th, you know, just two days later after they've solved it, there is an article in the newspaper quoting Sergeant John Lynch of Vallejo as saying that he believed that the Hardin's translation of the cipher was accurate. So after the Hardin solved the cipher, it turns out that the portion of the cipher that the Vallejo Times Herald received was the first part of the cipher. The portion that the San Francisco Examiner received was the second part, and what the San Francisco Chronicle received was the third part of the cipher.

When the three separate decoded sections were put together, the message from the writer was crystal clear. 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 dangerous animal of all. To kill something gives me the most thrilling experience. It is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl. The best part of it is that when I die,

I will be reborn in paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife. So morph, to me, the cipher is extremely fascinating. Not only how it was sent, but you have how it was solved and then you have the content of the cipher and we have to get

into that a little bit you've got the author of this cipher saying I like killing people because it is so much fun it doesn't get a whole lot creepier than that I thought the slaves in the afterlife

comment was pretty out there is that something that the writer believed or something he had read about or is he just putting it in there for effect, almost like to shock. And one of the lines in the cipher, the most dangerous animal, was believed to have been stolen from a short story called The Most Dangerous Game. In the story published in 1924, a character named General Zorov lived on an island

and he would put fake marker lights out to lure ships towards the island. When the boats and ships would get shipwrecked after crashing into the rocks, Zorov would hunt the people for sport. And more, if I think you have to wonder if the author of the letters is indeed the same person that murdered David Faraday and Betty Jensen and attacked Mike Mujo and Darlene Farron killing her, was he inspired by this short story, the most dangerous game? Was he playing a game? Was he hunting these people for sport? Now, on the day after the hardened solution of the cipher was published in area papers, a card was mailed anonymously to Sergeant John Lynch at the Vallejo PD.

And the card read, Dear Sergeant Lynch, I hope the enclosed key will prove to be beneficial to you in connection with the cipher letter writer. Working puzzles, cryptograms, and word puzzles is one of my pleasures. Please forgive the absence of my signature or name as I do not wish to have my name in the papers. And it could be mentioned by a slip of the tongue with best wishes concerned citizen. So that's how the card was signed and it was accompanied by a sheet of paper laying out the cipher solution. but the fact is the cipher solution had already been published in the paper before this code key was mailed. The code key with no return address was postmarked from San Francisco, just like the letters and ciphers that were mailed to the papers. Now, there's a couple ways to approach this code key when considering it.

One possibility is it was simply copied from the San Francisco News article and sent to Sergeant Lynch by somebody trying to be helped. The second possibility is that somebody had actually solved it on their own as the Hardens did and mailed their solution directly to Sergeant Lynch. A third possibility was that the cipher author himself couldn't wait for the police to solve the cipher. So he sent the code to help them. The author of this code key has never been identified. So while you have all of the news headlines being dominated by the fact that this cipher has been solved, it turns out that the author, of the letters and ciphers had mailed another letter to the San Francisco Examiner, and this letter was postmarked August 4th, 1969 from San Francisco.

In the letter, the author would officially introduce himself, and from this point forward, the letter writer and this case would become infamous in true crime history. Dear editor, this is the Zodiac speaking. In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I've had in Vallejo, I shall be very happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police having a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up. When they crack it, they will have me.

On the 4th of July, I did not open the car door. The window was rolled down already. The boy was originally sitting in the front seat when I began firing. 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 and back thrashing out very violently with his legs. That's how I shot him in the knee. I did not leave the scene of the killing with squealing tires and racing engines 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 the way. 40 to 45, rather shabbily dressed. I was at the phone booth having some fun with the Vallejo cops when he was walking by. When I hung the phone up, the damn thing began to ring and that drew his attention to me in my car. Last Christmas. In that episode, the police were wondering as to how I could shoot and hit my victims in the dark.

They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well-lit night and I could see the silhouettes on the horizon. Bullshit. That area is surrounded by high hills and trees. What I did was tape a small pencil flashlight 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 a ceiling, you will see a black or dark spot in the center of the circle of light approximately three to six inches across. When taped to a gun barrel, the bullet 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 sites. I was not happy to see that I did not get front page coverage. So I know that was a long letter, but I think it's important to hear it in its entirety. One very important thing about that letter is this is when the killer names himself the zodiac. And we've kind of been waiting on this. If you think about it, we didn't say the word zodiac. at all in episode one.

And it was hard for me not to, to be honest. But there was a reason for that. And the reason is up until this point in the story, nobody knew who or what the Zodiac even was. It wasn't a thing yet. It wouldn't become a household name or even known to the police until the killer sends this letter. Yeah.

So the name Zodiac. sounds sinister. And this is a case where the killer named him. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved

until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Himself gave himself a moniker. And I think, Morf, that's extremely rare because I cover a lot of true crime cases. And it's usually the media that gives a killer or a serial killer their name, their nickname. But the Zodiac chooses his own.

And there's going to be some theories that we're going to talk about in later episodes. about why Zodiac chose this name for himself. The motivation for Zodiac sending this letter was in response to law enforcement, publicly asking for the letter and cipher author to provide more details. In this letter, the Zodiac, as he now called himself, wrote that if police were having a hard time solving his cipher, that they should cheer up because once they solved it, they would have his identity. Now, this, of course, was a lie because by the time the letter made its way to the

police, the cipher had already been solved by the Hardens, and he did not give his name. Now, this won't be the last time that this killer would lie in this case. In the letter, the Zodiac mentions a man that supposedly witnessed him at the phone booth and identified his car as being brown. But there's no mention in any police reports that such a witness came forward in this case, claiming to have seen Zodiac in a phone booth. So it does make you wonder, Morp, whether this actually took place. or if this is just something that the Zodiac put in the letter to make it more interesting.

But either way, it's interesting that he mentions the car as being brown. Because we know that's the color of the car that Mike Mijot told police he saw the night that he and Darlene were attacked. So at this point, in mid-August of 1969, the Vallejo and the Solano County police departments, they're starting to take Zodiac seriously. Because with all the details that come out in these letters, they realize they've got a serious killer on the loose. And you have to imagine that the people in Solano County are scared at this point. They're starting to wonder, is this guy going to pop up again? And if so, when and where is it going to be?

And it turns out that he would strike again. But when he does, it's going to turn out to be in a completely different county. Early last Saturday evening, Celia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell, both in their early 20s, were sitting on this knoll of land overlooking part of Lake Beriaessa. They thought they were alone. But there was a third man on this knoll, a man who wore a medieval-style executioner's hood, carried a knife and gun and intended to use them. On September 27, 1969, two college students, 20-year-old Brian Hartnell,

and 22-year-old Cecilia Shepard decided to spend the day together. The couple had once dated briefly, and they were still good friends. Brian was a student in Pacific Union College in Anguon, California, in Napa County, about 40 miles from Belayo where he was studying pre-law. He planned to become an attorney. Cecilia was a student at UC Riverside in Southern California, over 400 miles away. Cecilia had recently transferred from Pacific Union College

down to UC Riverside, and she was a music major. Now remember that town, Riverside, because that's going to come up again in this case in a big way. So just a quick background. Pacific Union College is a seventh-day Adventist college, And Seventh Day Adventist are a pretty religious group of people that closely follow the Bible. So it seems like these two young college students were for all intents and purposes, good young kids from religious families. So that day, Brian and Cecilia met up with some friends.

They went to a rummage sale, and then they spent a typical day just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. their ultimate plan was to go to San Francisco, which was about 75 miles away from Anguin. But it got to be late in the day. And at one point, the pair decided instead to go to Lake Beriasa, relax, and have a small picnic. Now, Lake Beresa is in Napa County, and it was an area that the couple had been to together previously. Yeah, Mike, Lake Beriasa is a huge lake. It's the biggest lake in Napa County. The lake itself is about 20,000 acres in size.

It's in rural Napa County, about 25 miles from the city of Napa. To get to this lake, you have to drive very curvy and winding roads. It's not an easy drive to get to the lake, but it's a very popular place for campers, fishermen, hunters, etc. It's a very scenic and peaceful area. Brian and Cecilia drive out to the lake, and this is a Saturday. So there's a lot of other cars. There's a lot of people out enjoying the area on the weekend. But the couple wants a nice, quiet, private place.

So they drive around looking for a location along the lake where they can be alone. And they finally find this type of place. They park in a spot and then they walk down towards the lake. Now, one thing to point out is that the roads that wind around, Lake Beriasa, they're not very close to the lake. And the spot where Brian chooses to park, it's about several hundred yards down to the lake. So they have to walk away from their car to get to their picnic spot. Brian's car was a very distinctive white, 1956 Volkswagen Carman Gia, a two-door sporty type of model.

Brian and Cecilia brought their stuff down to the lake and they got comfortable. They picked a nice spot next to a big tree and set up their picnic. It was after 5 p.m. at this point. They had a blanket out and they were lying down. Brian was facing towards the lake and Cecilia was lying with her head on Brian's shoulder, facing towards the road away from the water. Now, it's not very long until Cecilia sees something very unusual. And she tells Brian that there's a man walking down the footpath from the road,

towards them. At this point, Brian's not too worried about it. He's looking at the lake, enjoying his time with Cecilia, but she's not brushing this off. She keeps her eyes on this man as he walks down towards the couple. And as the man gets closer, he steps behind a tree, essentially disappearing. Cecilia is starting to get concerned at this point and she relayed those concerns to Brian. But he kind of brushes it off. At this point, he just thinks it's probably a guy taking a leak behind a tree, nothing to worry about. But when the man emerges from behind the tree, Cecilia witnesses him pulling down a hood over his face and he starts to walk towards the couple. At this point, she becomes very nervous. And Brian takes notice of this. The man is

is getting closer and closer to Cecilia and Brian. And as he does, Cecilia is able to see that the man has a gun in his hand. And this is the point when she yells out to Brian that the man has a gun. It was really then that Brian became very alarmed. So Brian and Cecilia jumped up, but the hooded man was only a few feet in front of them now. And they could clearly see the gun visible in his hand. Before they could do anything, the man ordered them. not to move. Brian would later describe that the hood seemed like a mid-eval executioner's hood,

black in color with a white cross circle on the chest. I think it's pretty safe to say that the couple was shocked and surprised at this point. The man spoke out to them and said that he was desperate and that he needed Brian's car. He went on to tell them that if they just cooperated, everything would be okay. The man also explained that he was on the run after killing a guard in Deer Lodge, Montana, and that he had to get to Mexico. Brian and Cecilia are thinking that this was simply a robbery. And since the man told them that he had killed a guard, they figured that they had better cooperate.

So Brian and Cecilia do decide to cooperate. And at this point, the hooded man is in complete control. He tells the couple that he's going to tie them up, and he pulls some pre-cut links of hollow plastic clothesline from his belt and he hands them to Cecilia and orders her to tie up Brian. She's very nervous, but she complies. And she ties Brian's hands behind his back. And then she is ordered down on her stomach and the man ties her hands behind her back

before going over and making sure that Brian's hands are tied securely. The man quickly figures out that Cecilia didn't tie Brian's hands. hands very tightly. So he reties them very tight. And then the man proceeds to hog tie both Brian and Cecilia, they're face down on their stomachs. And Brian would later say that he could see that the man's hands were shaking as he tied Cecilia's hands. And it's going to come out that the attacker as he's making small talk with the couple. Now, mind you, they're hog tied. And this guy is making small talk.

And he actually says that he was a little bit nervous. After the couple was fully secured, the attacker put his gun in a holster that he had hanging from his belt. This entire incident took several minutes. And Brian continued to engage the man in small talk. Brian figured that he would try and ask the man some questions. One of the things he asked was if the gun was really loaded. The assailant pulled the gun out of its holster, pulled the clip out of his gun, and Brian could see that the clip was fully loaded with bullets.

The gun appeared to be a semi-automatic 45. The masked man reholsters his gun. And at this point, Brian is thinking, we're tied up. We've been robbed. We gave the man all the cash we had. He's going to take my car and leave. But this is not what happens because the attacker reaches to his belt and this time he's not pulling out rope. He's not pulling out a gun.

He pulls out a very long knife from a she. And at this point, he's talking to Cecilia. He's trying to keep her calm, but he's still keeping an eye out on the man out of the corner of his eye. And what he sees next is almost unimaginable. Because Brian sees the man come up behind him, bring his arm down with the knife in his hand, and then Brian feels the knife go directly into his back. And I mentioned that this was a long knife, close to 12 inches long. And Brian would end up being stabbed in the back with this knife six times.

So Mike, Cecilia at this point is hysterical. She can see what's happening to Brian. and she's screaming and crying. The attacker turned his attention towards Cecilia, and unlike Brian, she's trying to roll away, and she's moving around. The man leaned down over her and started stabbing her too.

Now, the difference was she's being stabbed in more spots because she's moving all around. She was stabbed in the front and the back. It turns out she was stabbed five times in the back and five times in the front. At some point, Cecilia passes out, and she stopped screaming altogether, and the attacker, and the man stops his attack. Brian realized that the man might come back and stab him again, and he would later recount

that he kept his head down, he stayed perfectly still, and about a minute later, he heard the attacker walk off. At this point in time, it's just a little bit after 6.30 p.m. This was a brutal and sadistic attack. The good news was that Brian and Cecilia were both still alive, but the bad news was they were both severely injured and bleeding badly. They were still tied up and there were miles away from a hospital. The pair battled to stay conscious and after a few minutes, Cecilia had managed to get a hand free and work to free Brian from his bindings.

So, Mor, if you have to imagine this scene in your head, you've just been savagely stabbed by a man wearing an executioner's hood and left for dead. And now you have to fight to survive and somehow try to get help. While Brian and Cecilia are freeing themselves from the bindings, they hear a boat motor on the water. It's in the distance, but they can see this boat cruising by. And the boat seemed to slow down almost as if it was checking them out. And so they scream out as loud as they can for help. But they get no response from the boat.

And all they can do is watch the boat drive away. Brian knew that he had to try and get help. And he told Cecilia to hold on that he was going to go for help. And Brian started to walk back up the dirt road that led to where they had parked. And it was so hard for him. He was falling down. he had to crawl much of the way. As Brian made his way back up towards his car,

it must have seemed like hours to him, but it was really just a matter of minutes. Brian had thought that he finally got to the dirt road and saw a vehicle pull up. In reality, he had only made it a short distance from Cecilia. He thought to himself, what if this is the attacker coming back? Now, it turns out it wasn't their attacker.

It was actually a park ranger. The man in the boat that had passed them, as they called out for help, although not responding to the couple, had made a beeline straight to Rancho Monticello Resort to get help. Rancho Monticello Resort was only about a half mile up the lake from the crime scene. The resort was like a big camp area for RVs, boaters, and they had a lodge there. The resort owners, Archie and Betty White, contacted the park headquarters to get help. Park Ranger William White, accompanied by the man that reported the attorney,

attack, and this was the boater. His name was Ronald Fong. They both raced to the scene of the crime by boat. The two men were also joined in the boat by the whites who owned the resort. At the same time that this group left in the boat, another park ranger, Dennis Land, he got a call over the radio and he also responded driving to the scene in his truck. So it would be Dennis Land that would arrive on the crime scene first, and he immediately finds Brian Hartnell. Very soon after, the boat arrives at the scene as well. And everyone immediately goes into action to try to help comfort the victims. Everyone goes into action to provide comfort to the victims. The Rangers call out to Napa County Sheriff's Office to alert them of the stabbings. At 7.13 p.m. And

This is about 45 minutes after the attack, Napa County Sheriff's Officers, Dave Collins and Ray Land, get the call and take off towards the crime scene. Now, Ray Land just happens to be the brother of Ranger Dennis Land who's already on the scene. It's going to take Dave Collins and Ray Land about 30 minutes to get there. And they arrive around 7.40 p.m. This is already over an hour. after the attacks. So it takes some 30 minutes to get there more. It just goes to show you how remote of an area this really is. Yeah, Mike, as you alluded to by 7.45 p.m., there's a good amount of people at the scene trying to help. Now, there's not a whole lot they can do for the couple besides trying to administer first aid and help keep them comfortable while they awaited the ambulance and medical

personnel to arrive. Now, remember, this lake was in an out-of-the-way area. So it would take almost an hour for an ambulance to get there. And once they got them loaded, another hour to get to the hospital. Brian and Cecilia are in a great deal of pain at this point. At the same time, the Rangers and officers are talking to Brian and Cecilia trying to ask them what happened. They wanted to find out what the attacker looked like and any other clues that might help catch this man. So even though Dave and Cecilia are in unbelievable pain at this point, they are able to provide police with a description of their attacker. Their description included the attacker as being hooded, about 5'10 to 6

foot tall, well over 200 pounds. They said he was heavy, bulky, overweight, with a belly that hung over his belt. They described the hood with the white cross circle, said that the attacker was wearing clip-on sunglasses that were actually attached to the hood. but added that they thought he was wearing glasses underneath the hood as well. He was wearing dark colored pants with a white belt. Now, there were a couple of things they weren't as sure about, but they thought that the man had brown, greasy hair that they could actually see poking out from the cut out eye holes in the hood.

Brian would say that he thought the man sounded pretty young, almost like a student, probably not much older than Brian himself. And they both said that the attacker had some type of drawl. It wasn't like a southern draw, more like a cadence, a slow and steady delivery. Now, the one thing that they thought was that this was not someone that either one of them knew. And the guy told him to take the money. He said, I don't want it. It says, I want to do all I want to do is kill you.

people I have to kill you the boy asked him said you really mean that he said yes I mean it says well he said you're gonna say kill me first because I can't stand to see the girl be stabbed they said well I'll do that so he started stabbing the kid in the back he told me 10 12 times but he had some of his blow to him I couldn't tell I know he was stabbed several times and then he stabbed the girl so uh boy was conscious enough to give you a description of the man oh yes they They'd go out and come back and I was taking some 35 minutes for the ambulance to get from Napa up here, which is 20 miles, 25 miles away from this place. So they did a lot of talking. The boy thought he was going to, wasn't going to make it.

He wanted to tell, give a description to the guy best he could. About the best he could give us that he had a hood over his face. And it was a big guy, six foot of better, over 200 pounds. What was your reaction when you saw them? Well, I've been patrolling this lake now 11 years, and I've seen a lot of people that have been cut up by boats and this and that, and for no reason at all. That's about the worst I ever seen that kids just chopped up, real nice college kids, just stabbed for no reason at all. I never witnessed anything like it before. So that was an interview from 1969 with Park Ranger William White, and he was one of the Rangers that we talked about responding to the scene.

and I think when you hear him talk, it really gives you a good understanding of just how bad this was. So one thing that happens while they're waiting for the ambulance to arrive is that somebody at the scene gets the bright idea that the crime scene needs to be preserved. And they decided the best way to do it is to take up the blanket and pull it up along with everything that's on it. Obviously, this is not the way that you want to handle a crime scene and potential clues or evidence. At about 7.55 p.m., the ambulance and medical personnel finally get to the scene, and they load Brian and Cecilia up to take them to the Queen of the Valley Hospital, which is still a good distance from the lake. And it would take almost an hour to get the injured couple to the hospital. So while all this chaos is going on at the Lake Berry Esa crime scene, a phone call comes into the Napa Police Department at about 7.40 p.m. A young Napa police officer by the name of Dave Slate answers the call.

Napa Police Department. I want to report a murder. No. A double murder. They're two miles north of park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen car. I'm the one who did it. So Morf, here we go again. Another creepy call following a brutal attack.

And this one goes to the Napa Police Department. And what you have to realize is that this call comes into the Napa City Police. But it's the Napa County police that are out investigating the crime scene. And up to this point in the attack on Cecilia Shepard, and Brian Hartnell, there's nothing to indicate that their attacker was Zodiac. Not one time did he tell either Cecilia or Brian that he was Zodiac. The caller, as he's talking to Napa police, he doesn't say he's a Zodiac, but it's pretty easy to tell that this call is mirroring closely what the Zodiac had done before.

Now we talked about the cross circle on the hood of the attacker, but Cecilia Shepard and Brian Hartnell didn't know enough about the Zodiac case at this point. They hadn't followed it enough to know who the Zodiac was or that he used this cross circle. Because you have to think, these are two college-aged kids. They're probably not closely following crimes that are happening in another town. At about 8.20 p.m., Napa County Sheriff's Detective's Ken Narlow and Richard Lonegren are notified that they have a double stabbing at Lake Beriesa and that the victims had been taken to the hospital. The pair head to the hospital to start the official investigation of the case. At around 8.35 p.m., Narlow got word that the phone called to Napa police had been placed from a pay phone located in the city of Napa at the Napa car wash. This car wash was on the corner of Maine and Clinton streets.

When the caller had placed the call, he dropped the phone and left it hanging, and Officer Slate could hear the sound of traffic in the background. Napa police broadcasted on the radio that they needed to keep an eye out for any phone booths nearby that might have the receiver off the hook. A reporter who heard the discussion on his police scanner started driving around and after a short time discovered the car wash pay phone with the receiver off the hook. When he picked it up, he heard Dave Slate on the other end of the phone. And that's how they identified where the call was made from. Napa County Sheriff's Detective Hal Snook was dispatched to the phone booth to investigate and to see if he could obtain prints. So it's about 8.50 p.m. when the ambulance carrying Cecilia Shepard and Brian Hartnell

arrives at the hospital. Both are in critical condition. detectives Narlow and Lonegren try to get in to talk to Cecilia and Brian, but they're turned away by the emergency room staff. They're not going to be able to talk to the pair until they're in a more stable condition. And that makes perfect sense to me, Morph. These two are in critical condition. At this point, they're in no state to be talking to detectives. Yeah, Mike, you're right. Since they couldn't get any information from Brian or Cecilia, the two detectives left the hospital and headed to Lake Beriasa, arriving there shortly before midnight.

The crime scene had been secured through the night by uniformed officers and was under the control of officers Collins and Land. Upon arriving, Narlow and Lonegren were briefed by Collins and Land about what had taken place. The officers had found Hartnell's white V.W. Carmen Gia with a black vinyl top up on the edge of the road where he had parked it a few hundred yards from the crime scene. They discovered tire tracks from a vehicle that had been parked in front of Bryant. They noted that the two front tires were both badly worn and did not match each other. This would lead investigators to believe that the vehicle that had been parked there likely belonged to the attacker, and since the tires were badly worn and didn't match, that he likely didn't have much money. They also found footprints in the dirt area

that led to and from the crime scene. Detective Hal Snowe, who had earlier handled the phone booth investigation, was now at the scene, and he was tasked with handling this crime scene evidence. So after looking at all the evidence that they found, the officers could tell that the killer had walked down to the lake from where he had parked right in front of Bryant's car and committed the attack.

Then he had walked back up to his car before leaving the scene. So the attacker, before he left the crime scene, knelt down next to the passenger side of Brian's car. And this was the side facing away from the road. He took a black marker and wrote on the passenger door. And what police would find in black marker was the cross circle that had become the calling card of the Zodiac. And underneath it, he wrote, Vallejo. and the dates 122068 and 7469, followed by that day's date, September 27, 1969,

and he wrote the time of 6.30. He finished it off with a hand-scrawled note with the words, by knife. Yeah, Mike, so there's little doubt at this point that the man who attacked Brian and Cecilia was the Zodiac, who had already murdered three other people and seriously wounded another, and he wanted to make sure that he got credit for all of the attacks. Two days later, on September 29, 1969, while Hartnell struggled to recover from his wounds,

Cecilo Shepard died from hers at Queen of the Valley Hospital. The Zodiac had now claimed four lives and seriously wounded two more people. I considered him a robber. I had absolutely no thought that he was anything but that. And when we're at this robbery stage, I didn't consider any real threat to my life or to or to the girl or anything. I really didn't consider this, but I really wanted to help him. And he didn't.

Did he seem as though he would like your help at all? No, he didn't. And he didn't even end up taking the money. But he, I, there no grudge. Well, of course not. I don't,

I don't think that he was acting under his total complete, total complete consciousness. And, uh, when a man is, if you, if you,

the word is sick, uh, you can't, You can't hold this against them. But the real concern that I have is that he doesn't do this again. I would like I, I, uh, I'd like to see some people save this, this experience. So that was Brian Hartnell being interviewed in his hospital room, not that long after the attacks. And what's so amazing to me about this interview is how Brian Hartnell talks about Zodiac, the man that,

that stabbed him repeatedly, and you can hear him say that he really doesn't hold a lot of ill will towards this man. I think what Brian recognizes is that whoever this man is, and he calls him sick, he knows he's not in his right mind. But I don't know, Morph, I don't know if that quickly after such a vicious attack that I would be able to be that calm and almost forgiving. Yeah, I agree, Mike. To forgive somebody that quickly for that kind of an attack is pretty amazing.

So more if we have to wrap up this episode, but in doing so, we have to talk about what's coming up because we're going to find out in the next episode that during the investigation of the Lake Beriesa attack, detectives would uncover some major clobes. clues. And the Zodiac is not going to slow down. He's going to continue to terrorize and shock the entire San Francisco Bay Area. You can subscribe to the show on either iTunes or your favorite Android app to make sure that you don't miss next Saturday night's episode. In the meantime, be sure to check out our Facebook page. We will have some photos posted about some of the stuff we talked about in this episode. And if you like the show,

please take a minute to go out and rate and review. And I just want to say thanks to all the people on Twitter and Facebook with all the great comments and reviews they've been leaving for us. You guys rock. You've been taking the time to tell us how great you think the podcast is so far. That's important to us and we want to thank you. No, I agree, Morf. It really means a lot when you see those type of positive comments about something, you know,

like this podcast that you and I have worked so hard on. I don't think people realize what it means to get that type of positive feedback. It is amazing. So just to give out our social media contact information, you can find us on Twitter at Criminology Pod and on Facebook. Just search Criminology Podcast. So Morph, I want to leave everybody with this. And that's the fact that I'm really excited about the episodes that are to come. I mean, we've got some experts that are going to be coming on the podcast to weigh in on the

Zodiac to talk about ciphers, to talk about victimology, to talk about all the interesting stuff that makes up this case. Yeah, you're really not going to want to miss the stuff that's coming up. So that's it for episode two of criminology, the Zodiac for Mike Ferguson and Morp, Mike Morford. We'll catch you on the next episode. Take care, everybody.