Hunted: The Zodiac Murders (The Zodiac Serial Killer Book 1) Read online

  HUNTED

  The Zodiac Murders

  The Zodiac Serial Killer—Book One

  Mark Hewitt, DBA

  HUNTED—Book One—The Zodiac Murders

  By Mark Hewitt, DBA

  Copyright © 2016 Mark G. Hewitt

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the publisher, except for short passages used in critical reviews.

  Unless otherwise noted, all images used in this book are in the public domain. All maps used in this book are copyright © 2016 Genius Book Publishing.

  Published By:

  Genius Book Publishing

  PO Box 17752

  Encino, CA 91416

  www.GeniusBookPublishing.com

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  Note to the reader: The author and publisher have done their utmost to ensure the accuracy of the information presented herein. However, as with any human endeavor, there may be errors in fact within these pages. Please submit errata to: [email protected]

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  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  1 | RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA

  2 | SOLANO COUNTY

  3 | BLUE ROCK SPRINGS PARK

  4 | THE CIPHER SLAYER

  5 | LAKE BERRYESSA

  6 | PRESIDIO HEIGHTS

  7 | TRANSFORMATION

  8 | MELVIN BELLI

  9 | MODESTO, CALIFORNIA

  10 | LAKE TAHOE

  11 | THE END

  12 | EPILOGUE

  Appendix A: Zodiac Attacks

  Appendix B: Zodiac Victims

  Appendix C: Zodiac Letters

  Appendix D: Zodiac Timeline

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the creation and publication of this book, I am indebted to many. I therefore gratefully acknowledge the hard work of each individual who assisted me in researching, writing, and editing of these pages.

  My publisher, Steven Booth of Genius Book Company, labored night and day to get this to print. He and his team worked to fine tune my words, clarify my ideas, and offer you this book.

  My family and friends have been my incomparable inspiration. Without their love and support this project would never have been completed.

  Other select individuals served to impel, direct, or challenge me. These include Soren Korsgaard of Denmark, Ricardo Gomez of San Francisco, and the elusive and enigmatic Kevin DeWeerd.

  Above all, glory to God in the Highest, the giver of life and the creator and solver of all mystery.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to Cheri Jo, David, Betty Lou, Darlene, Cecelia, and Paul. I would have liked you, and I have come to respect and admire you all. In your own way, you have each exuded your personality as engaging, vibrant, warm human beings. Typical Americans, if there is such a thing, pursuing typical American activities, you were guilty only of crossing paths with a sociopathic killer. Your tragic loss has deprived the world of so much.

  Your murderer is a heinous fiend with no conscience. While future revelations may usher us toward a clearer understanding of his experience and personality, even offering up mitigating circumstances, nothing will ever justify these appalling, senseless crimes that cut short the precious lives of you who were so alive.

  PROLOGUE

  “This is the murderer…”

  September 27, 1969

  The man dressed in black betrayed no emotion as he ascended from the expansive reservoir. He knew it would be dark soon, and the heat of the day would give way to a cool, dry night. The sun continued to wane behind the tree-covered hills he was climbing. Still, he was in no hurry. He carefully made his way toward his car which was parked nearly 200 yards from the shoreline. He maneuvered his sturdy, black leather boots across the rugged terrain. Behind him, he left a horrific crime scene of senseless brutality that would haunt generations to come. It is possible he suspected—even hoped—that his actions would be discussed and debated for the next four decades and beyond.

  As the man put distance between himself and the water, a young couple struggled to survive. Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard fought against the agony of a combined 16 stab wounds to their torsos. They wrestled at the water’s edge with the hollow, plastic cords that bound them. When they felt it was safe, they screamed for help. They could feel their lives ebbing away in a torrential gush of blood.

  Their assailant continued in a measured stride. The foot-long knife back in its wooden scabbard on his belt and a menacing handgun returned to its smooth, black holster on his other side, he trudged up the hill at a chillingly calm pace. He had just completed what would become his signature attack. He was concealed from view behind a dark, rectangular hood with eye holes that was pulled down to cover part of his chest. Across his front in white, an ominous gun-sight symbol bore silent witness to the threat posed by his weapon. Before the day was over, he would scrawl on the car door of his victims, then drive to the nearby town of Napa and boast of his carnage in a telephone call to the Napa Police Department. Before he would complete his criminal career, there would be other crimes—and other victims.

  His many attacks would leave at least five dead and two critically injured across a three-year span of unprovoked violence. The assailant—who gave himself the terrifying and cryptic name, the “Zodiac”—captured the attention of the American public and the law enforcement community by claiming credit for his deeds in telephone calls, by writing missives to area newspapers, and by creating and sending ciphers that would evade decryption for decades. He wanted “front page coverage” from the papers, and gave ample evidence that he was eager to spread fear. His motivating force, the reason for the murders, appeared to be a quest to make a name for himself. He demanded fame. In his apparent aim, he was only partially successful.

  For a killer who desired publicity and infamy, he could scarcely have chosen a more ill-advised time and place to ply his trade than Northern California in the year 1969. International events and local news would both conspire against the Zodiac serial killer to deny him the attention he seemed so desperate to acquire. Though he may have begun his appalling career in 1966, and killed again in December of 1968, he did not garner nationwide interest or international curiosity until the summer of 1969 with his creation of ciphers, his claim to an iconic moniker, and his use of a personal symbol.

  As newsworthy as his macabre and horrific killings were, the Zodiac’s deadly actions were overshadowed by the wanton and seemingly random carnage of the Manson Family in the Los Angeles area of Southern California. On two nights of bloody mayhem in mid-August, a band of antisocial and psychopathic cult members—led by the soon-to-be infamous cultural icon Charles Manson—invaded the quiet homes of two carefree families and slaughtered everyone they found. They used knives, guns, rope, and a barbeque fork. Their conscience provided no restraint. They capped their evil work with cryptic words splashed across surfaces in the fresh blood of one of their victims. Regardless of the many headlines claimed by the Zodiac, he was always the neglected younger step-brother to his media-savvy rival to the south. The scandalous scenes of horror that the Manson Family left behind could never be equaled in gore, nev
er eclipsed in evoking the dread of a community, and never be bested in manipulating the media to spread a palpable message of fear.

  The Zodiac also suffered from geography. Northern California has always seemed to play second fiddle to the southern half of its state. Maybe it was the weather. Northern California’s gray, rainy winters encouraged rueful depression in some, while Los Angeles and San Diego enjoyed year-round sun and some of the most pleasant climatic patterns the planet has to offer. And publicity followed the sun. The north, with its earthy business people and pensive wine connoisseurs, appeared content to remain outside of the glow of the limelight. Instead, public attention focused its beam on Hollywood’s celebrities, Malibu’s pricey homes, and the tanned beach bodies to the south. If Southern California was where you went to find excitement, glamor, and a fast-paced life, Northern California was your destination for an easy retirement, a relaxing vacation, or a slow, casual lifestyle.

  The Manson Family was not the only one snatching headlines from the Zodiac in the summer of 1969. National and international wires were buzzing with the interplanetary news of Neil Armstrong’s first human boot prints on the moon, a story that united a nation and captured the imagination of everyone who had access to a radio or a television set. Man had left the bonds of earth. All eyes tilted skyward as Apollo 11 lifted off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral on July 16, 1969. Two of its three astronauts maneuvered the Lunar Excursion Module onto the gray pumice of the moon four days later. The very next morning, July 21, Armstrong planted the boot of his spacesuit onto the surface of earth’s only natural satellite—the first time a human had found footing on a heavenly body—and declared, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  Closer to home, a Utopian sociological experiment erupted on the East Coast. The Woodstock Festival in upstate New York played host to hundreds of thousands of youngsters who flocked there to watch their prized musicians. The muddy fields and availability of communal marijuana provided a counterstroke to the nerds who reveled in their space adventures and had ruled the drab 1950s. Opening less than a week after the Manson murders, the musical lollapalooza was reported on near and far. Love and peace were in the air with the fragrant scent of flowers and pot.

  The year 1969 had something for everyone. The Manson Family, the Woodstock experiment, and the Apollo 11 voyage dazzled a people who had already borne witness to so much: the violence and incomprehensible death of the Vietnam War and the Kent State riots, the rise of counterculture hippies with their anti-war demonstrations and their LSD, and the assassinations of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

  With the backdrop of a new age—the cultural changes shocking even the most open minded—the Zodiac serial killer could not be expected to compete for attention. No matter how hard he tried, his failure was predestined.

  Yet these same forces at work in time and geography that prevented him from achieving global media dominance may have also saved him from capture. So many other serial killers, both before and since, have been identified, apprehended, and imprisoned, if not executed. His bad luck in the pursuit of infamy may have been the boon that enabled him to remain hidden for so long, and ironically, provide him the notoriety and lasting legacy of being America’s most enigmatic serial killer.

  Worldwide, only Jack the Ripper, London’s notorious prostitute slasher of 1888, has done more to electrify the public’s imagination. American serial killers Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Ed Gein have each in their own way startled the public with their gruesome, macabre practices. But what little remains unknown in these and other high-profile cases pales in comparison to the mysteries present in the person of the Zodiac. Following their capture, and the public’s initial appetite for details, serial killers find that interest in their story eventually subsides. Once fleshed out, their motives, their bizarre actions, and the specifics of their inevitable capture become passé. By contrast, the Zodiac remains fresh for speculation. Since he was never caught, never even identified, he continues to tantalize public sensibility.

  The Zodiac’s clever evasion of justice was carried out despite a prolonged and concerted effort on the part of a united law enforcement community that struggled in the face of the killer’s constant needling.

  The investigation started out with humble beginnings, small police task force meetings that would grow over time. On Tuesday, October 14, 1969, at 9:00 p.m., Officers Ken Narlow and Richard Lonergan of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department gathered with Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) at the Napa County Sheriff’s Office to discuss similarities between murders the two departments were independently investigating. It was only one of many information-sharing sessions.

  Six days later, at 1:00 in the afternoon, another event was convened at the SFPD. The investigating detectives shared what they had with each of the departments that were pursuing the murderer of cab driver Paul Stine. Soon, an office full of investigators working the case would be laboring around the clock and reaching for leads across the country.

  A month later, on November 20, the Attorney General of California, Thomas C. Lynch, arranged a meeting—labeled “the Zodiac Conference” by the press—in San Francisco for 27 detectives from seven agencies to exchange information about the serial killer operating within the jurisdictions represented. This latest gathering was the most comprehensive of any previously held. As the participants proceeded to discuss each of the attacks—a couple murdered in Solano County, a woman killed on the outskirts of Vallejo, the couple stabbed on the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County, and a San Francisco cabby executed with a bullet through his skull—each detective and each department gave with open arms to all the others present.

  A common thread running through these law enforcement summits—apart from a desperate desire to know the name and identity of the perpetrator who called himself the “Zodiac”—was an enthusiastic optimism. With each meeting, the agents were more hopeful than ever that enough information had been collected and disseminated that a capture would be inevitable. They may not have felt any closer to a resolution, but they moved forward in confidence.

  What none of the participants could have known at the time was that four decades would quickly pass without the identification of the perpetrator. The case files would grow as more than 2,500 men were investigated. Theories would emerge, flourish, and then branch into multiple permutations. Officers would come and go in normal departmental turnover. All with no resolution to the case.

  The initial meetings revealed that there were no shortage of clues from which to identify their quarry. Often in unsolved crimes, the only clue that investigators possess is a single crime scene—sometimes none—the evidence of unlawful behavior, and possibly a vague idea of a motive. Eyewitnesses may be uncooperative or never located. The few items of forensic value must be collected with the possibility that other investigative avenues will develop. All too frequently, even the few leads that are discovered quickly dry up, and the file goes cold.

  For the case of the Zodiac serial killer, there was an abundance of evidence. But evidence of what? The files bulged with information covering multiple crime scenes, several eyewitnesses, and forensic material. It was all easily accessible. Evidence would be collected, tests run, and copious leads followed—all to no avail.

  For better or worse, citizens involved themselves throughout the process, sometimes helping but more often interfering. As detectives moved through the evidence, a supportive public offered up hundreds of suspects. Each proposed perpetrator was considered, many were interviewed, but all would eventually be dismissed. Some were followed for a time—one for many years. A few didn’t fit for obvious reasons, but all would defy investigators due to their dissimilar handwriting, non-matching stature, or iron-clad alibi that eliminated all suspicions.

  And then the Zodiac stopped.

  This raised nearly as many q
uestions as the crime spree itself. It is thought that serial killers almost without exception continue to murder until they are apprehended, incarcerated for other crimes, or killed. Was he a rare example of a killer who reformed his ways or merely lost interest? A curious public and a duty-bound law enforcement community demanded to know who he was and why he killed.

  Nearly five decades later, the police are no closer than they were in 1969 to identifying this most mysterious criminal, a serial killer who brutally murdered and then wrote taunting and threatening letters—sometimes accompanied by a curious telephone call to terrorize an already fearful public—before disappearing into the ether.

  This is the story of the Zodiac serial killer and law enforcement’s quest to identify and capture him.

  These events could have occurred in any town or any city. Solano County, the City of Vallejo, and metropolitan San Francisco reflect America in all its forms: rural, small town, and urban, respectively. They are anywhere, or everywhere, USA. The attacks therefore could have happened to anyone or anyone’s children.

  For over forty years, the investigation has proceeded with no resolution. Justice has had to wait in silence, longing to have the final word. Investigators and armchair enthusiasts alike continue to seek the answers to all the relevant questions in the minutia of the crimes—for it is in the details that the murderer remains hidden.

  Mark Hewitt

  Santa Rosa, California

  1 | RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA

  “SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL”

  Cheri Jo drove herself to the library. It would be the last ride of her life.