Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily represent those of iHeartMedia, How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: or its employees.
Speaker 2: Christmas Time, nineteen sixty eight, All was not calm, All
Speaker 2: was not bright.
Speaker 3: Sorry, could you briefly describe what apparently happened last night?
Speaker 3: We had a devil homicide that took place out on
Speaker 3: a county road sometime after eleven o'clock.
Speaker 4: Sixteen year old girl and a seventeen year old boy.
Speaker 1: How did this incident occur?
Speaker 5: Apparently well, they were shot.
Speaker 2: Photographer Tom Balmer arrived on the scene.
Speaker 6: The night of December twenty was an interesting one. Photographers
Speaker 6: back then were ambulance chasers. We had radios with the
Speaker 6: local police and fire frequencies and we followed what was
Speaker 6: going on. I remember a dispatch to Lake Herman Road
Speaker 6: in Benetia and they said that there were two victims
Speaker 6: there and they thought it was a murder suicide. The
Speaker 6: woman there that was shot was fairly small in size,
Speaker 6: and they were thinking it was an adult and a child.
Speaker 6: That was what the original dispatch was, as I recall it.
Speaker 6: So I headed out that way. It was dark that
Speaker 6: night out in the Boonies. There it was along the side.
Speaker 2: Of the road.
Speaker 6: Who's fairly quiet, no traffic going by, as I recall,
Speaker 6: really not a sense of place there other than just
Speaker 6: out in the open. As it turned out, there was
Speaker 6: one person. His name was David Faraday. He had been
Speaker 6: shot and his girlfriend, Betty Lujensen, had also been shot.
Speaker 6: She was dead at the scene and they had taken
Speaker 6: him by ambulance. He had died en route. The woman's
Speaker 6: body remained under a blanket, and the investigators came out.
Speaker 6: The blanket was between me and the investigators. They lifted
Speaker 6: the blanket with them behind it and looking, so I
Speaker 6: never got to see, but I shot a pictures of
Speaker 6: the investigators looking. The newspaper then ran the pictures on Sunday.
Speaker 6: The one thing a photographer learns to do right away
Speaker 6: is go into a work mode. Just start recording and
Speaker 6: not experiencing. If you started to get emotional over everything
Speaker 6: you saw, you could never do anything.
Speaker 7: Do you have any idea what the possible motive might
Speaker 7: be for this killing?
Speaker 4: We have no motive at this time.
Speaker 6: Every time I see the word zodiac, I flashed back
Speaker 6: for the moment. Wow, I was there. You can say
Speaker 6: I photographed what then was thought to be the first
Speaker 6: victims of the Zodiac Killer. That's something that not everybody
Speaker 6: has done.
Speaker 2: The Boogieyman a monster, a scare tactic, a mythical creature
Speaker 2: dating back to as early as the Middle Ages. If
Speaker 2: there's one thing I've learned from our first season Atlanta Monster,
Speaker 2: it's that sometimes there's more fact than fiction to this
Speaker 2: elusive nightcrawler. After all, what's the difference between the Boogeyman
Speaker 2: and a rampant killer unidentified after nearly fifty years. The
Speaker 2: Zodiac Killer is one of the most notorious serial killers
Speaker 2: to date. He's a dark mark on San Francisco's Era
Speaker 2: of Love. He wears his signature on his chest like
Speaker 2: Superman gone horribly wrong. It's the infamous crosshair symbol, a
Speaker 2: circle intersected with perpendicular lines. A target. The Boogeyman may
Speaker 2: not be under your bed, but it can't exist, and
Speaker 2: even more frighteningly, there's more than one to examine this
Speaker 2: demon properly. It's important to understand what societal and psychological
Speaker 2: elements allowed this evil to exist. This is our new
Speaker 2: exploration the Zodiac Killer. I'm payin Lindsay. Last year, I
Speaker 2: worked with the team at how Stuff Works to create
Speaker 2: Atlanta Monster. Matt Frederick was one of those people. You
Speaker 2: may remember Matt from last season.
Speaker 1: A police officer who didn't know what a railroad trestle
Speaker 1: was became the Achilles heel of a murder investigation that
Speaker 1: cost more than nine million dollars.
Speaker 2: For any Avid House Stuff Works listeners, you may know
Speaker 2: Matt from Stuff they Don't want you to know. It's
Speaker 2: a podcast about conspiracy theories, from the bizarre to the possible.
Speaker 2: Matt's a questioner and an information junkie. This makes him
Speaker 2: the perfect person to guide you through this story, presenting
Speaker 2: the facts and the follies that riddle this case. Take
Speaker 2: it away, man.
Speaker 1: I've been researching unsolved mysteries for over ten years now,
Speaker 1: separating the truth from the noise. I first became aware
Speaker 1: of this case in two thousand and seven when David
Speaker 1: Fincher's film Zodiac was released in theaters. I was hooked
Speaker 1: and I needed to know more, so I read the
Speaker 1: book from Robert Graysmith. It's also titled Zodiac. I started
Speaker 1: scouring websites and message boards, and I quickly realized that
Speaker 1: the book and movie had only scratched the surface. The
Speaker 1: story of the Zodiac is about much more than just
Speaker 1: a serial killer. It's about a country experiencing tremendous changes.
Speaker 1: In the late sixties, a perfect storm was brewing and
Speaker 1: the eye was squarely centered around San Francisco.
Speaker 3: The Summer of Love is an expression of this awakening.
Speaker 3: We call upon the world to help.
Speaker 7: Us celebrate the infinite holiness of life.
Speaker 5: The Summer of Love is the summer of nineteen sixty
Speaker 5: seven when something like one hundred thousand young people flock
Speaker 5: to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: This is Peter Richardson. He's a historian and lecturer at
Speaker 1: San Francisco State University.
Speaker 5: They're told not to come by city officials, which is
Speaker 5: the best way to get people to come, and they
Speaker 5: do come.
Speaker 4: You know, you know, America is so obsessed with bad
Speaker 4: breath and with underarmed deodorant.
Speaker 8: These are the biggest problems in the world.
Speaker 4: If you watch television, I think that a generation of
Speaker 4: kids which says we don't.
Speaker 8: Care about your concepts of friendliness is a revolutionary generation.
Speaker 5: When the LSC hits the streets, it really kind of changes,
Speaker 5: kind of morphs into the hippie counterculture that people are
Speaker 5: so aware it turns San Francisco into kind of a
Speaker 5: global rock capital.
Speaker 7: San Francisco police say that nine persons have been arrested
Speaker 7: and a narcotics trade on the headquarters of the Grateful Dead,
Speaker 7: a widely popular singing group.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of bands. They're very creative and
Speaker 5: innovative and influential. What was happening in San Francisco is
Speaker 5: something much more improvisational, exploratory. It was part of a
Speaker 5: larger art scene that included psychedelic posters and light shows,
Speaker 5: and even the hippies didn't realize how many of them
Speaker 5: there were, and they start getting publicity, national publicity.
Speaker 2: Were all children in the nineteen sixties Offense of America,
Speaker 2: Children of Blood Pole.
Speaker 5: The scene kind of unravels fairly quickly. Despite its utopian aspirations.
Speaker 5: The San Francisco counterculture is surrounded by all these other
Speaker 5: forms of strife, so it's not a peaceful place to live.
Speaker 7: The new Communist campaign in Vietnam continues. Just after midnight
Speaker 7: their time, a band of Vietcong readers blew up a
Speaker 7: power installation and attack two police stations in Saigon.
Speaker 5: It's a really kind of heady mix. By the end
Speaker 5: of the nineteen sixties, there's a larger backdrop of real
Speaker 5: problems political violence against to emerge.
Speaker 8: Doctor Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the
Speaker 8: civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.
Speaker 5: And that segues into what author David Talbat calls the
Speaker 5: season of the Witch, where you get the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 8: It would sound like a cliche Hollywood script if it
Speaker 8: weren't true. A serial killer stalking victims, taunting police, even
Speaker 8: keeping bloody mementos from his slayings, and boasting about his
Speaker 8: deeds to the news media.
Speaker 5: The randomness and the tone of the Zodiac Killer was very,
Speaker 5: very traveling for people. We think of the Zodiac crimes
Speaker 5: as being urban crimes, an associated with San Francisco, but
Speaker 5: most of the confirmed killings actually happen farther north, pretty
Speaker 5: far out there, and I think that adds to the creepiness.
Speaker 5: The places are so isolated, and there is a kind
Speaker 5: of theme in American cinema history where they really crazy
Speaker 5: stuff happens out in the country. It's in these isolated
Speaker 5: places that you really have to worry.
Speaker 1: This case begins on December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight, on
Speaker 1: Lake Herman Road in Benetia, California.
Speaker 9: My name is Lorraine de Grot, I living NAPA from Valeo.
Speaker 9: That was Christmas vacation and we had a rally on
Speaker 9: Friday where you know, everybody joined in the big auditorium
Speaker 9: and it was a rally. We set together, and when
Speaker 9: we walked home, I said bye, and she said I remember.
Speaker 9: She said, Okay, I'll see you next year, and I go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 9: I'll see you next year. And that was the last
Speaker 9: time that I spoke or saw Betty Lou.
Speaker 4: David and Betty Lou were high school students. They met
Speaker 4: at a church function and were smitten with one another.
Speaker 1: This is Michael Butterfield. He's been researching this case for
Speaker 1: over a decade and he's one of the people who
Speaker 1: knows this story best.
Speaker 4: Within two weeks they were on their way to becoming
Speaker 4: a couple. David Faraday was a young, intelligent, very civic
Speaker 4: minded individual, cared about other people, was well liked, good student.
Speaker 4: Betty Lou Jensen was a very popular student, had many friends.
Speaker 4: She was also a very talented artist. When David Faraday
Speaker 4: asked her out. That was to be their first date
Speaker 4: together and her first date totally. That night, they promised
Speaker 4: Betty Lou's parents that they would be home by eleven PM.
Speaker 4: They did not go home by eleven pm. At some point,
Speaker 4: the two of them wound up on Lake Herman Road,
Speaker 4: which is a kind of dark and isolated area that's
Speaker 4: known as a lover's lane spot. Another vehicle pulled up
Speaker 4: into the area. We don't know for sure what happened
Speaker 4: after that because there are no witnesses, but the person
Speaker 4: got out of the car. There were some shots fired
Speaker 4: into the vehicle. David and Betty Lou escaped out of
Speaker 4: the passenger side of the Rambler station wagon, but David
Speaker 4: Faraday was shot at almost point blank range in the head.
Speaker 4: Betty Lou Jensen appeared to have run away, and at
Speaker 4: that point the killer shot at her at least five times,
Speaker 4: hitting her in the back. Shortly after that, a driver
Speaker 4: was passing through and saw the bodies laying on the ground,
Speaker 4: drove into town, notified the police, and then the police
Speaker 4: came on the crime scene. There was no discernible motive,
Speaker 4: no personal animosity, no rape, no robbery or anything like that.
Speaker 4: They're investigating people involved in the victim's backgrounds. People may
Speaker 4: have had a grudge, career criminals, the so called usual suspects,
Speaker 4: but none of that was working.
Speaker 9: This is a yearbook. This is very special to me
Speaker 9: because it's got Betty Lou in it. Bottom right, that's
Speaker 9: Betty Lou. I hold this just dear to my heart.
Speaker 9: I just think it's terrible. I've never been a situation
Speaker 9: where you knew somebody and they got killed. You know,
Speaker 9: it stayed with me.
Speaker 4: After a period of months had gone by. It was
Speaker 4: a cold case. The absence of any discernible motive made
Speaker 4: it vertually impossible to keep investigating it. Serial killers were
Speaker 4: not a national phenomenon back in the nineteen sixties. The
Speaker 4: term serial killer did not even exist in popular language.
Speaker 4: Most law enforcement agencies were not experienced in investigating serial homicides.
Speaker 9: I'm so consumed to this day about Zodiac. I don't
Speaker 9: think he'll ever be caught. My ears just pop up
Speaker 9: if I hear the name Zodiac.
Speaker 4: They were used to dealing with a killer who commits
Speaker 4: a crime for a traditional motive and who could be
Speaker 4: tracked down through traditional investigation. When you have someone who
Speaker 4: commits a bunch of murders for no apparent reason. Innocent
Speaker 4: people minding their own business out on a date. That's
Speaker 4: bad enough. But when a person brags about it, wants
Speaker 4: to taunt you, and threatens going to happen again, that's
Speaker 4: a whole other level of terror.
Speaker 7: The search goes on in San Francisco for the man
Speaker 7: known as the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 6: Zodiac rags.
Speaker 5: He's killed seven people, he tossed the police for not
Speaker 5: finding him, and he says he will do his thing again.
Speaker 10: We have reason to believe that he's a maniac.
Speaker 9: Who is the Zodiac?
Speaker 3: And chheer is he?
Speaker 4: The story that you hear about the Zodiac case is
Speaker 4: not the real story, and as you examine the facts,
Speaker 4: that story starts to disintegrate, and behind it is this
Speaker 4: other story. When I was twelve years old living in Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 4: I worked as a paperboy in my neighborhood. I was
Speaker 4: rolling the newspapers every morning and seeing stories about the
Speaker 4: Atlanta child murderer and all kinds of things. So I
Speaker 4: was already following true crime even as a young child.
Speaker 4: Around that time, another twelve year old paper boy was
Speaker 4: abducted and apparently murdered in our neighborhood. That was the
Speaker 4: first time that I ever really realized that there were
Speaker 4: people out there that wanted to kill you. Here in Phoenix,
Speaker 4: they stopped the paper boys. That's when your newspaper started
Speaker 4: being delivered by an adult in a van who was
Speaker 4: throwing a paper out the window. And it woke me up.
Speaker 4: And so that was the end of innocence in my
Speaker 4: life in many ways. But it really wasn't until the
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties that I started doing what you might call
Speaker 4: legitimate research.
Speaker 1: And with all of this research, Michael created a massive
Speaker 1: online archive dedicated to the Zodiac case. It's called Zodiac
Speaker 1: Killer facts dot com.
Speaker 4: Gathering all the police reports I could, the FBI files
Speaker 4: and everything, and then interviewing those who were involved in
Speaker 4: the case, the original investigators, surviving victims, some of the witnesses, suspects,
Speaker 4: and the people who accused them and their families, and
Speaker 4: so over a period of years, I built up a database,
Speaker 4: you might say, of information. I've devoted my website to
Speaker 4: spreading information for people who are out there just like
Speaker 4: I was years ago, struggling to find something and not
Speaker 4: being sure what's true and what isn't true, what's fact
Speaker 4: and fiction. I try to devote my research and make
Speaker 4: some use of all the work that I've done by
Speaker 4: providing accurate information so people can separate fact from fiction
Speaker 4: and reach their own conclusions. There are a lot of
Speaker 4: major differences between the true story of the Zodiac and
Speaker 4: the myth. A major component of the myth is that
Speaker 4: the Zodiac was some kind of master criminal who was
Speaker 4: playing some sort of elaborate game, who knew the victims,
Speaker 4: who was an expert marksman, who was responsible for dozens
Speaker 4: of murders. It's easier for someone like me, who doesn't
Speaker 4: have a suspect or a theory, when I'm asked a question,
Speaker 4: it's easier for me to say I don't know, because
Speaker 4: that's the truth, and that's the most honest answer someone
Speaker 4: can give you. But a lot of people aren't satisfied
Speaker 4: by the truth, and they're not satisfied by a mystery.
Speaker 4: People crave answers, and if someone's telling you I have
Speaker 4: all the answers, that can be very attractive, very compelling
Speaker 4: for a lot of people. And I think, like a
Speaker 4: lot of things in society, someone would rather be satisfied
Speaker 4: with the wrong answer than be satisfied with no answer
Speaker 4: at all. The name Zodiac is very much like the Boogeyman. Especially,
Speaker 4: it's the American version of Jack the Ripper. In many ways,
Speaker 4: we don't know who the Zodiac was. He's a mystery.
Speaker 4: That name. For me, it still scares me a lot,
Speaker 4: to be honest with you, it's terrifying what he did
Speaker 4: and what he got away with, the fact that he
Speaker 4: got away with it at all is terrifying. So when
Speaker 4: I hear that name, the first thing that pops into
Speaker 4: my mind is he's still out there there. We don't
Speaker 4: know who he is. We don't really know anything more
Speaker 4: than what we did almost fifty years ago about him.
Speaker 4: He could be anyone. He could be you know, that
Speaker 4: guy that lives across the street from you and comes
Speaker 4: out to pick his newspaper up in the morning, or
Speaker 4: someone in your family. The name Zodiac it's come to
Speaker 4: stand for many different things in the popular culture about
Speaker 4: true crime. You know, he's either a master criminal, or
Speaker 4: he's some kind of drooling maniac or whatever. But for me,
Speaker 4: I've always viewed him more as a person. That makes
Speaker 4: him much more terrifying to me.
Speaker 1: At this point, I had heard and read so much
Speaker 1: about the Lover's Lane on Lake Herman Road, but I
Speaker 1: had never seen it with my own eyes. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know exactly what David Faraday and Betty lou Jensen
Speaker 1: saw when they encountered the Zodiac that night. So the
Speaker 1: team and I, including our executive producer Jason Hoak, flew
Speaker 1: out to the Bay Area, and the Lake Herman Road
Speaker 1: site was our first destination. We headed east from Valeo
Speaker 1: on Lake Herman Road for a little over three miles.
Speaker 1: One of the first things you see is a huge
Speaker 1: rock quarry on the left, and then the relatively small
Speaker 1: Lake Herman on the right. But other than that, it's
Speaker 1: just rolling hills and very few signs of civilization. The
Speaker 1: site itself is located about a mile across the current Benisha,
Speaker 1: California line. What we're referring to as a Lover's Lane
Speaker 1: is actually just a small turnoff to a private road.
Speaker 1: That road leads down the hill to a Benicia Police
Speaker 1: Department shooting range. There's a large metal gate blocking the
Speaker 1: road and it's secured by numerous single key locks. It's strange,
Speaker 1: this is it? This is a turnoff?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's nothing here.
Speaker 3: Carve right here.
Speaker 1: It feels unlikely right, it.
Speaker 10: Feels very unlikely.
Speaker 5: This is in the middle kind of a country road
Speaker 5: with a little pull off.
Speaker 1: So if you're standing here at the entrance where the
Speaker 1: gate is and you look out, there's no human beings.
Speaker 1: I think this is the kind of place that a
Speaker 1: Zodiac killer knows kids come and make out in a car,
Speaker 1: knows they're going to be vulnerable. They just pitch black.
Speaker 1: It's like easy pray for him. Just beyond the fencing,
Speaker 1: there's an old sign that says no trespassing and no dumping.
Speaker 1: And on the front of this sign, someone at some
Speaker 1: point spray painted a large black Zodiac symbol. The murders
Speaker 1: of Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on December twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight were senseless and tragic, but at this point,
Speaker 1: for the people of Benetia, California, and the surrounding area,
Speaker 1: there was no further cause for alarm. As callous as
Speaker 1: it sounds, this was just an unsolved crime in a
Speaker 1: small town until that is, the following summer, when the
Speaker 1: Zodiac killer struck again.
Speaker 4: The next crime occurred at Blue Rock Springs Park, which
Speaker 4: is approximately two and a half miles away from Lake
Speaker 4: Kerman Road. I think Valeo was a popular city. Was
Speaker 4: also a part of a port of entry, so there
Speaker 4: was a lot of sailors, lots of influx of people
Speaker 4: coming in, but it was still a bustling community with
Speaker 4: lots of good people in it. On the night of
Speaker 4: July fourth, nineteen sixty nine, Darlene Farrin, a twenty two
Speaker 4: year old mother and waitress, picked up a friend of
Speaker 4: hers named Michael Migeaux. They were friends, they had met
Speaker 4: at the diner where she worked, and they decided to
Speaker 4: go to Blue Rock Springs Park, which is located across
Speaker 4: the street from a large golf course, but it is
Speaker 4: sort of outside it isolated in some ways, but it
Speaker 4: was also another lover's lane area.
Speaker 1: Valeo, California, is the next town over, just northwest of
Speaker 1: Benetia where the first murders took place. To put this
Speaker 1: into perspective, the location where Darlene Ferren and Michael Majeaux
Speaker 1: were attacked in Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo is
Speaker 1: only a seven minute car ride away from the Lake
Speaker 1: Herman Road site, and it's a fairly straight shot. There's
Speaker 1: literally one turn. Two similar shootings, two lovers lanes just
Speaker 1: miles apart. Things were starting to add up, but in
Speaker 1: July nineteen sixty nine, no one had the full picture yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, my name is Clarence Edward rust are USD.
Speaker 3: I'm a retired Bleo Police Department lieutenant. On the night
Speaker 3: of July fourth, nineteen sixty nine, I was working at a
Speaker 3: lake shift with Mike partner John Lynch when the Zodiet
Speaker 3: occurred in Loyo.
Speaker 8: A man in a match rob and stab them, leaving
Speaker 8: them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
Speaker 8: no a double murder.
Speaker 3: I did it.
Speaker 8: The man who wore a medieval style executioners hood, carried
Speaker 8: a knife and gun and intended to use them.
Speaker 6: They haven't arrested me because they can't prove a thing.
Speaker 6: I'm not the damn Zodiac. Who is the Zodiac and
Speaker 6: where is he from?
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio, Houstuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster the
Speaker 2: Zodiac Killer. This season on Monster the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 3: School children are nice targets.
Speaker 7: I shall wipe out his school by some morning, shoot
Speaker 7: out the tires, and then.
Speaker 8: Pick off the kiddies as they come bounding out.
Speaker 3: That was the threat of the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 5: When you talk to the survivors of dictims who can kill,
Speaker 5: you get that this is not fun.
Speaker 1: There's nothing fun about murder.
Speaker 2: LeHo police have submitted letters and envelopes from the Zodiac
Speaker 2: Killer to a private lab to obtain a DNA profile.
Speaker 6: I enjoy a good tussle that hey killing just for
Speaker 6: the pleasure of it.
Speaker 4: It's got to be him, and then the lab results
Speaker 4: would come back and it's an elimination, and that's just
Speaker 4: a crushing blow.
Speaker 5: He used to go there, even long after he retire
Speaker 5: and park his car and sit there and think about
Speaker 5: what did we miss?
Speaker 10: Why didn't we catch him? When these individuals are arrested,
Speaker 10: one of the things that strikes us is how ordinary
Speaker 10: they are. Their ordinariess is also deeply unsettling. If we
Speaker 10: come pick these people out of a crowd, then we're
Speaker 10: faced with a situation, well, how do we know that
Speaker 10: anyone is safe?
Speaker 2: Monster the Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced
Speaker 2: by iHeartRadio How Stuff Works in Tenderfoot TV. Donald all
Speaker 2: Right and I our executive us on behalf of Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 2: alongside producers Meredith Steedman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana Jason
Speaker 2: Hope is executive producer on behalf of House stuff Works,
Speaker 2: along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Keebrick, and
Speaker 2: Josh Thain. Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick
Speaker 2: is our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 2: If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
Speaker 2: first season of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta
Speaker 2: child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.
Speaker 2: Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments,
Speaker 2: email us at Monster at houstuffworks dot com, or you
Speaker 2: can call us at one eight three three two eighty
Speaker 2: five six six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.