[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to an all new episode trick ground ever saves show.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host as always.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, at least on this week, we continue our series, the zodiac files, episode two, like Herman Road murderers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I do that, give us your thoughts on the zodiac killer and anything we got wrong or got right on this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know in the comments.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with that, let's dive into today's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine, it's a crisp California night in the winter of nineteen sixty-eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: The moon hangs low over the rolling hills.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pale glow, buryingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Barely slicing through a blanket of fog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Downing only two lane stretch callaway, Carmen Road, a young couple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perks beneath a single flickering lamp post, seeking a few stolen moments of privacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There will be a place to the fact that surveillance cameras don't exist yet, cell phones are decades away, and the world is asleep beyond closed doors.
[SPEAKER_00]: In less than a minute, gunshots will echo through the trees, shattering their innocence and sending shockwaves through a community that believed it was safe behind suburban fences.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just seven months later, another couple hoping for a holiday fireworks display will find themselves ambushed by the same unseen mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: To attacks, one in ending in double tragedy, the other leaving one survivor clinging to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: usher in a new era of fear, uncertainty and obsession.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where the zodiacs first strikes begin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Light December and Solano County carries a unique chill.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just from the winter fog that drips the valleys each night, but from a collective sense of complacent security among towns that had until then, tasted violence only in headlines from San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_00]: By nineteen sixty-eight, the region was a patchwork of suburban calm and rural isolation.
[SPEAKER_00]: While I host tidy neighborhoods where families were tucked in a TV dinners by ten p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: The NEC is quite anti-cline streets, and Apple Valley's rolling vineyards busy with autumn harvest, but quiet under winter skies.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of these places anticipate a near rival of a predator, so stealthy that he would slip through their rosy facades, striking first on a desolate lover's lane, and then in a crowded park.
[SPEAKER_00]: Episode one walked to Stude Bay areas of late sixties, hippy anthems fading from St.
[SPEAKER_00]: Francisco's concert halls, highway, highways rumbling with commuters, and local law enforcement agencies stretched then across miles of farmland and suburban sprawl.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time December drew its veil across Lake Herman Road, dangerous convergence with geography, culture, and institutional unpreparedness had formed a perfect stage for tragedy.
[SPEAKER_00]: patrol cars, rumble past sporadically, deputies twirled their moustaches back in the sheriff's office, and families back home of locked doors, assuming their greatest risk lay in drunk drivers or theft.
[SPEAKER_00]: That assumption was about to be shattered.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, we planed in the opening X of the Zodiac saga, the December twentyth, nineteen sixty-eight, local Herman Roe murderous that killed two-nate, taint killed two teenagers, seventeen-year-old Betty Lugensen,
[SPEAKER_00]: in the July fourth and ambush Blue Rock Springs Park.
[SPEAKER_00]: That left eighteen-year-old Michael McGu, gravely wounded in twenty-two-year-old Darling Fair and Dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to examine the procedural missteps, fragmented jurisdictions, limited forensics and communication breakdowns that allow this killer to vanish as quickly as he struck.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of the episode, you'll see how two seemingly isolated shootings woke into a pattern that gave rise to one of history's most infamous, unsolved serial killer mysteries.
[SPEAKER_00]: On December, twenty-nineteen sixty-eight, like Herman Roode, Awards usual, and distinctness, like a cloak.
[SPEAKER_00]: A narrow, two-lane, black-top, hung to the hillside by miles north of Balejo, winding passscroves of Eucalyptus and clusters of oak, until it faded into a faint memory of grapebines near Napa.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only a single dim street art street light marked a gravel turnout known locally as Cougar Point.
[SPEAKER_00]: For years, couples looking for privacy, especially teenagers, pulled off there to escape the watchful eyes of their parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: That night, the air sat cold and still.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavy with a light drizzle that made the road slick and a hillside misty.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few minutes past eleven pm, a black and white patrol car from the Salano County Sheriff's Office rolled by.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cruiser lights reflecting off money ditches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deputy George Brainahann clicked his radio, all quiet on like Herman Roode so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a statement of fact, but one that ominously foreshadowed the violence out to erupt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just hours earlier, the Jensen Paradei family set carry on with routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Betty Lou Jensen, a junior at Balejo High School, baked cookies with her mom, testing flour across the kitchen counter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Freshman herself at the same high school, David Paradei spent the afternoon listening to the AM radio and his Mustang.
[SPEAKER_00]: stack of records from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, waiting to be played at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both teenagers were looking forward to spending a quiet, quiet Friday evening, covertly parked at Lake Herman Road, talking about school, music, and what the future might hold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither anticipated how swiftly normalcy could fracture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, within Solano County's law enforcement apparatus, no sense of foreboding stirred.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detectives of the Sheriff's Office pealed at a handful of calls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reports of livestock theft near Rockville, a minor scuffle outside a Glencove bar, and two separate DUIs on Highway twelve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sergeant David Slay, a twelve-year-old veteran with a reputation for meticulous crime scene documentation, sipped lukewarm coffee behind his desk, sorting through paperwork from midweek arrests.
[SPEAKER_00]: The department's homicide unit with only two-decade-ded detectives, work mostly cold cases and routine investigations.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dumbal homicide sounded like a plot twist from a pulp fiction novel rendered in a possibility on her own turf.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this environment, foggy roads, sleepy deputies, and trusting families, the stage was set for a killer to make its first move.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nightcurmin Road, December,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just before eleven p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: when seventeen-year-old Betty glue and her sixteen-year-old boyfriend David Affarade Cruz up Lake Herman Road in his pale blue nineteen sixty rambler station wagon.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's engine humming against the hush of the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Earlier that evening, they grabbed sodas at Ken's Brown, Derby and Balejo, laughed at inside jokes, and then headed out, wanting a few stolen moments away from crying eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a rock from KHJ Radio.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crune threw the station wagon speaker as they parked a cougar point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their tail lights fading into the mist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their roll down the windows, the damp air pressing strangely close to their faces.
[SPEAKER_00]: They joked about upcoming school dances, David reached for a small handheld tape recorder, planning to capture the sound of Betty's laughter echoing against the hills, then silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: precisely of XII of PM, a single shot popped through the stillness, so loud and suddenly that owls must have taken flight in the surrounding groves.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the nine-one-one transcript, a frightened motor is called a gunfire repeated, someone shouting, sounds like a kid screaming.
[SPEAKER_00]: A second shot followed less than a minute later, echoing off the hills and making broken branches tremble.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time dispatchers've always crackled across the radio,
[SPEAKER_00]: to the deputy, uh, brain of hand shots fired on like Herman Road near mile marker three, the rambler's dome light, light shattered, shards of glass, clinking on the wet asphalt.
[SPEAKER_00]: The deputy and his partner Rusty Graff, gunned their cruiser through the bins, tires skipping on damp asphalt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Graff flicked on the spotlight as they near the gravel turn up.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the beam, they first noticed Betty Luzbody, kneeling beside the rambler, knees pressed against the cold gravel, her arms folded across David's chest.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lay face down and a widening pool of dark blood, feet pointing towards the black top as though we had simply collapsed in mid-breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their eyes went opposite to melt the check, stared, unseeing at a swirl of fog drifting between them and the hills.
[SPEAKER_00]: Graph radio dispatched, too down, it's bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were barely ten minutes in another shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: A routine patrol, gone grimly, awry.
[SPEAKER_00]: That first officer on the scene, Graph recall later, felt a nut in his stomach tight as he saw how young the victims looked.
[SPEAKER_00]: saying they could have been my nephew and niece.
[SPEAKER_00]: A slate who arrived minutes later after being summoned from his desk, noted every detail, the empty vodka bottle, half buried in mud beneath the rambler's front passenger tire, a torn scrap of paper in the floorboard, bearing the embossed logo of Leo High School, and two pristine leaf imprints on the gravel, likely dropped by passing deer before the shooting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those observations became crucial when investigators realized there was no sign of struggle inside the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: The couple, and likely not seen their assignment, until it was too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first glance,
[SPEAKER_00]: Investigators stopped the killer may have been a stranger harboring a personal grudge.
[SPEAKER_00]: The time of death was estimated between eleven to eleven-five p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: A window confirmed by autopsy reports that pinpointed two bullet wounds to the chest, close together, twenty-two long rifle caliber.
[SPEAKER_00]: That particular ammunition was common among suburban gun owners, but who owned it, and was willing to scout numbers lane for victims.
[SPEAKER_00]: No shells littered to ground next to the rambler.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, they lay a farther off where the shooter must have stood, hidden by fog and brush.
[SPEAKER_00]: That invisibility gave the killer the crucial advantage, to fade silently away before officers could pinpoint any direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses emerged soon after, two young couples driving home from a nearby convenience store, recalled hearing shots and seeing a moving figure stepped into the spotlight's glare before vanishing into the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: A third witness, an older man, returning from a late night fishing trip, told detectives he saw a lone man in dark clothing tucked behind a bumper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then sprint southeast towards a service road,
[SPEAKER_00]: access that led to American Canyon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet that account remained unbearified.
[SPEAKER_00]: As the areas brush you terrain, offered meriad of hiding spots.
[SPEAKER_00]: When police searched by foot the next morning, they found only a solitary bootprint, size nine but partial.
[SPEAKER_00]: They heal smudge by mud.
[SPEAKER_00]: They collected it, sealed it in a paper evidence bag, and hoped for comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: But without a suspect, the print remained an orphan in the investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: as Dawn crept over the vineyards, families in Belaiho, woke to summer news.
[SPEAKER_00]: At St.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vincent for our church, parishioners paused and made him, when Officer DeVanna entered to announce the double homicide.
[SPEAKER_00]: Candlelight services planned for that evening were canceled, and instead a tearful vigil formed on the church's steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mother was clutching infants and teenage siblings, hugging one another for comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Local radio snippets barely a minute long blurted the headlines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two play-hotene slain at Lovers Lane.
[SPEAKER_00]: That start, uh, phrasing made it sound impersonal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two casualties in all Lovers Lane.
[SPEAKER_00]: As though they had slipped off a curving cliff.
[SPEAKER_00]: In reality, the victims possess names, dreams, families.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stories abruptly severed by a gunman unseen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Within hours, the photos were plastered across front pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their school pictures, Betty's warm smile, and David's mischievous grin looked hauntingly out of place besides crime scene photos.
[SPEAKER_00]: Felayo High's counselor, Ms.
[SPEAKER_00]: August, found herself providing grief session to first-period classes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fear Street teens scribbling notes in their notebooks, trying to process the sudden loss of peers they knew from math class and Friday night football games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Principal Briggs convened a school assembly that afternoon, urging students to remain calm and watch out for one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that effort did little to Quelle anxiety, rumors spread that anyone parking alone on a dark road was asking for trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prompting parents to reinforce earlier curfews and remind teens to stick to well-lit areas.
[SPEAKER_00]: December of sixty-nine rules in, along with growing whispers.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a month following Lake Herman Road, life from around Balejo tried to inch back towards normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: The solitary street light at Cougar Point remained dim and flickering.
[SPEAKER_00]: The silent witness to ongoing unease.
[SPEAKER_00]: On clear nights, writers on horseback passed the turnout, spooked by local tales of a shooter in the hills.
[SPEAKER_00]: Radio DJs occasionally paused their music, and leases to mention that W. Still Patrol, Lake Herman Road from dusk until dawn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hoping to deter anyone who might try to revive the tragedy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those patrols, however, achieved a little beyond boosting a sense of fall security.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deputy seldom caught anything unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Weekend curfews tightened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Teenagers returning from parties at local bowling alleys found their parents parked in driveways, waiting to double-check their shoes for grass stains.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jupbox tunes at Glenn Coves' diner shifted from Carefree Beachboy harmonies to more somber fare.
[SPEAKER_00]: such as, I heard it through the Great Vine, took on a darker connotation when played late at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Politically, nineteen sixty nine emerged as a year of paradox.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of Vietnam, more still rage overseas, pulling away resources and attention from local law enforcement budgets.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Lejo calls for a new police substation in the Northeast quadrant when unanswered.
[SPEAKER_00]: A city council argued that crime rates had dipped back to normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, on June twenty of the nineteen sixty nine,
[SPEAKER_00]: The Apollo eleven mission launch from Cape Kennedy in residence across the Bay Area of Paws to watch the first moonwalk.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sense of collective wonder contrasted sharply with the gnawing fear that someone, or something, worked in nearby woods, waiting for the next chance to strike.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Blue Rock Springs Park, July fourth,
[SPEAKER_00]: On a warm independent state evening, July, fourth, and nineteen sixty-nine, Blue Rock Springs Park, a sprawling public recreation area just north of Alejo, fused with Fourth of July festivities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Families pinched off bits of red, white and blue ribbon to decorate picnic tables.
[SPEAKER_00]: Children darted between trailers rigged with fireworks supplies.
[SPEAKER_00]: A band set up wooden folding chairs for a nine-pm musical performance, a promise patriotic anthems and jazz standards.
[SPEAKER_00]: The park's eastern corner,
[SPEAKER_00]: or a small pond glimmered under overhead floodlights, served as a popular spot for teenagers eager to watch the fireworks display, over the Benicio Martinez Bridge.
[SPEAKER_00]: That vantage point offered a breathtaking panorama.
[SPEAKER_00]: Columbia oil platforms glowing as distant torch fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: A carcass street shimmering downstream in the Bay's Inlets rippling into the night breeze.
[SPEAKER_00]: On that evening though, blue rocks springs would become ground zero for horror.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eighteen-year-old Michael McGoo and his girlfriend, twenty-two-year-old Darlene Ferrin, cruised into the park and Michael's cream-colored, nineteen-sixty corvare.
[SPEAKER_00]: They woke through gravel roads until they spotted a vacant area near the pond.
[SPEAKER_00]: Darlene, working as a hostess at Wagonville restaurant in North Baleau, wore a cheerful, pokedon dress, her dark hair tied back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael, a student at Napa Valley College, wore another jacket over a button-down shirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: his mind preoccupied with college courses but content to spend an evening with darling.
[SPEAKER_00]: They parked facing east waiting for other couples to arrive, happy to talk about nothing in particular.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fog hovered near the water's edge, making distant headlights look like wandering fireflies.
[SPEAKER_00]: and approximately eleven fifteen p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: The series of rapid pops, reports to describe them as five quick shots.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shots exploded in the night, darling twisted toward a Michael a thin shaft of moonlight illuminating her features for a split second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before blood pulled under her coat, Michael Fett felt serring pain in his face, a bullet had shattered his left cheek, knocking out several teeth and fracturing his jaw.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stumbled out of the corvare, hands covering his face as he clips to the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, darlingly in slumped over the passenger side, her poked on dress soaked red along the left side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shock screams pierced the air, mingling with a sudden crackle of small explosives.
[SPEAKER_00]: fireworks igniting in a distance, creating a unsettling counterpoint to the violence unfolding just yards away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike Unlike Lake Herman Road, this crime scene offered at least one living witness, Michael's voice, a horse in bleeding, managed to tell police what he saw.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man in a black, military-style jacket wearing a wide-brembed hat that shaded most of his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: The assailant seemed calm, methodical.
[SPEAKER_00]: He raised his arm to fire, step by step, as though practicing a strained ritual.
[SPEAKER_00]: In these few blurry moments, Michael noted the man's approximate height, around five-ten, and estimated his build is a medium, not too thin, not too heavy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That description would later resurface in Police Bulletin and composite sketches that tried to pin down killer's identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: After firing, the shooter vanished behind a grove of trees, illuminated for only a second longer than the earlier shots.
[SPEAKER_00]: Local deputy is arrived within four minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: A remarkable response time for rural Vallejo, alerted by Frantic calls, at the dispatching labeled Gunshots and Assault, a possible murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Officer Dave Kelly, driving at the nineteen sixty-eight Dodge Polaroah patrol car, spotted the Corverer's hazard lights blinking beside the pond.
[SPEAKER_00]: He went to assist Michael, riskingly rushing across Luis Gravel despite the threat of his second shooter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kelly dragged Michael's bleeding full of her way from the passenger to the side, easing him onto the grass, darling already unresponsive, slumped over the seat, her breathing shallow, another unit arrived to lift her in an ambulance, but she died in route to the Marin General Hospital in Greenbrake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her final words lost to the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses surface quickly, six-year-old Pamela, part ten cardal, links away with their two friends, ran towards the scene at the sound of gunfire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just in time to see the killer still owe it disappear behind a grove.
[SPEAKER_00]: She told the detective she saw a glint, perhaps a reflection of a watch band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before the figure merged with the darkness, another couple, parked even farther back,
[SPEAKER_00]: heard the pops, stumbled toward the pond, reaching Michael's side as he pressed a bloody hand to his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: The band playing patriotic tunes and a makeshift gazebo several hundred feet away, paused mid-saw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crowd members scattering when they realized someone was under fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fireworks began erupting overhead, fliers of red, green, and momentarily eliminated in the scene, making it look at once, surreal and apocalyptic.
[SPEAKER_00]: by eleven thirty p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: Solano County's forensic team arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: Six member unit armed with two small flashlights, four standard cameras, and fingerprint kits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Slate himself joined the after effort lifting Michael Spinger Prince despite heavy smears of blood, hoping they would match something in any existing database.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the reality of nineteen sixty nine meant that many prints on file came from people arrested for misdemeanors or petty thefts, not violent crimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The team found two, twenty-two shell casings on the ground near the Carveyor's rear bumper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each marked twenty-two LR, stamped into the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't a cold caliber to the Lake Herman Road shooting.
[SPEAKER_00]: That finding flipped a switch, investigators started to ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could the same killer be responsible for that double execution six months earlier?
[SPEAKER_00]: The forensic team submitted those two casings along with the twenty-two casings from Lake Herman Road to the California Department of Justice's Farm's Laboratory in Sacramento.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under a microscope, technicians matched the rifling patterns, both sets shared identical land and groove characteristics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Six rifling grooves, right twist, consistent striation marks indicating they were fired from the same make-in model of rifle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a, likely a Winchester or Harrington and Richard Sin-T-T-T.
[SPEAKER_00]: That revelation will electrified investigators.
[SPEAKER_00]: What had started is two isolated tragedies, now formed a possible pattern.
[SPEAKER_00]: Single perpetrator wielding a twenty-two rifle, attacking couples parked in remote locations, as a foaming some grim ritual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detective Sergeant Charles Hitt assigned to the video police department's new major crime task force, forward over case files from both scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: He noted uncanny similarities in both incidents.
[SPEAKER_00]: The victims were casually parked to the driver's side of their vehicles, as though seeking maximum protection from headlights.
[SPEAKER_00]: In both instances, he has sailing fired from the passenger side, crouching to avoid the main beams, suggesting tactical knowledge of ballistics and concealment.
[SPEAKER_00]: In both cases, he used a twenty-two LR, uncommon for street hits, since most criminals favored larger calibers for stopping power.
[SPEAKER_00]: That firearm choice implied a shooter comfortable with a low recoil rifle.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, who perhaps practiced regularly, may be outdoors in your rural property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, differences existed too.
[SPEAKER_00]: At Lake Herman Road, the killer sparks allided in complete darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: No fireworks and no crowds to confuse the noise.
[SPEAKER_00]: At Blue Rock Springs, a bustling Independence Day celebration raged just a few hundred feet away.
[SPEAKER_00]: That yearly chaos provided cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: Making witnesses, observations fragmented, burst the gunfire, sound like artillery for a moment, then vanishing among the booms and crackles of firecrackers.
[SPEAKER_00]: That environment underscored the calculated nature of the attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Zodiac, as you would soon dub himself, deliberately chose a crowded holiday setting to divert attention to mask gunshots under fireworks thunder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then slipped away before police could cordon the area.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the weeks after July, fourth, in the nineteen sixty-nine, Lejo's residents awoke to a donning hall.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was no random act of violence, a killer, marked among them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Invisible Predator with a twenty-two rifle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stocking couples on isolated county roads and in public parks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Newspaper seized on the connection immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Front page headline screamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same guns suspected in two, the Lejo attacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Coded killer on the loose.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our lover lanes no longer safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Teachers at Baleo High found students more jittery than ever, boarding parking their tree lines and glaring up passing cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: Parents who once allowed curfews at ten, now insisted the kids be home by sundown.
[SPEAKER_00]: Churchball tends went from advertising potlux to urging families to keep prayer in their hearts in these perilous times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hospitalized for nearly a month at Marin General.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael McGue hovered between life and death after the barrage of bullets tore through his jaw and cheek.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through blood-soaked bandages, he recounted to officers what he had recall about that July night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though Amnesia eclated parts of his memory, he offered details more vivid than any dead eye witness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The assailants A-drange, mid-twenties, proximate build, and a distinct sling in a speech, as it's said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which Michael mumbled faintly, and as though forced from unconscious lips.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctors had to reposition metal plates and his job multiple times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And though eventually you learn to talk again, his voice returned horse and thin, each word scratched into a no-pad by a police stenographer.
[SPEAKER_00]: His initial statements included a reference to a dark colored jacket with a specific insignia.
[SPEAKER_00]: three concentric circles embroidered on the left breast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You later retracted that detail, climbing confusion in the new shock, but detectives noted it anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sketchy Edblum would resurface when Zodiacsint is toning, taunting letters to three major Bay Area newspapers in August.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lighters bearing the same three-circle symbol, crossed by a plus sign.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the, whether those letters came from McGuys account, or inspired from photographs of crime scene investigation paintings, a similar symbol on highway signs nearby remain unclear.
[SPEAKER_00]: What mattered was that by mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the mid-August, in the
[SPEAKER_00]: Aguis surviving status also meant that investigators could clean psychological insights.
[SPEAKER_00]: What law enforcement then called a Fender Profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: The FBI's behavioral science unit in Quantico, Virginia, offered to assist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Agent reviewed the crime scene photos and let you as a count.
[SPEAKER_00]: pinning that the killer was likely a loner living close enough to scout kill sites undercover of familiarity with local roads.
[SPEAKER_00]: That intelligence shipped scrutinizing a killer psyche rather than just fingerprint matches, represented in a pivotal evolution in policing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also plant planted seeds of fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone among them possess not just a gun, but the audacity to toy with both couples and authorities.
[SPEAKER_00]: An audacity that would only grow bolder.
[SPEAKER_00]: While the pattern seemed clear, bringing definitive charges proved elusive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Solano can't own these detectives faced a quagmire of jurisdictional overlaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Herman Road fell under Solano Sheriff's Patrol, while Blue Rock Springs lay within Baleho's city limits.
[SPEAKER_00]: When evidence emerged like shell caseings and witness statements, cooperation between agencies was patchy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Baleho PD stored Blue Rock Springs evidence in a locked vault downtown while the sheriff's office achieved
[SPEAKER_00]: are archived Lake Herman Roadfiles in an aging steel cabinet in Fairfield.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took weeks to reconcile ballistic data when lab reports arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: One lab handled at twenty-two L.R.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rifling Analysis, another examined latent fingerprints lifted off the corvary dashboard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those duplications and delays gave the zodiac precious time to watch helicopters hover over the park.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gauge help police coordinate off-crime scenes and apply in his next move.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lemonade Forensic Technology of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the year of the
[SPEAKER_00]: For Michael Surgeon's rejoice that the bullet didn't sever his artery, but his fractured skull meant lengthy rehab and permanent scarring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without cameras mounted on squad cars, police cruisers were lied on the quick draw instinct of deputies who patrol roads on gut instinct rather than real-time video.
[SPEAKER_00]: That primitive gap of investigators chasing Phantom leads through grainy memory rather than clear evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Dawn broke after the Lake Hermann murders, residents of Balejo, Benicia, and Napa, awoke to the same sinking revelation, an unseen predator prowled their roads.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who once allotted the Bay Area sense of freedom now either neighbors was suspicion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Churches hosted emergency town hall meetings to address rampant fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: At Redeemer and Lutheran Church in Vlejo, Pastor Carl Stevens, delivered a campaign of reassurance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us not succumb to history.
[SPEAKER_00]: We must look out for one another, drive safely, and report any odd behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: His words, the well-intentioned, met a thorn of skepticism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Community members whispered that trusting signs and hugs wasn't enough when a shooter slipped through foggy hills.
[SPEAKER_00]: A convenient store owner on Glenn Coe posted a handwritten sign at his counter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saying, quote, call police if you see cars parked at dead and night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire fires at station fifty-six offered free reflective vests to joggers.
[SPEAKER_00]: An odd perk given that joggers rarely roam beyond city limits that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But an attempt to instill a sense of proactive safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Area high schools held assemblies where vice-principal sternly worn students.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you plan to meet your girl, boy friend at night, don't go to isolated roads.
[SPEAKER_00]: That advisory, however, hit awkwardly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many students pointed out that they had no other places to gather after curfew.
[SPEAKER_00]: No twenty-four hour diners, no community centers, open past midnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blue Rock Springs parks July fourth massacre, only stipend those in anxieties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even a holiday celebration couldn't guarantee protection.
[SPEAKER_00]: rumors proliferated like wildfire.
[SPEAKER_00]: One rumor claimed that the shooter targeted couples with stolen license plates.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another alleged he stalked young woman working at the Blaeo Medical Center on weekends, waiting for them to drive home alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some said he was a Vietnam veteran, conditioned by kill drills, now disillusioned and angling for revenge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others wondered if hippy runaways from since Francisco had banned it in a rogue cell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sub, such umstantiated theories only deepen the climate of fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like an itch beneath the skin, it refuses to go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Poly is trying to stern the type of panic, issued a series of statements clarifying established facts.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no evidence linking the crimes to local veterans, and no stolen plates, patterns, have emerged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet the disclaimers got lost amid sensational headlines and playground gossip.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a week's following the Blue Rock Springs attack, Salano County Sheriff Office reached out to the California Department of Justice multiple times for updates on ballistic matches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each update confirmed that the twenty-two casings from both crime scenes bore identical rifling patterns, leaving little doubt that the same weapon had fired at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs.
[SPEAKER_00]: That correlation spurred the formation of a multi-agency task force.
[SPEAKER_00]: the major crime unit, combining personnel from the Vallejo PD, Solano Sheriff's Office, and NEPA Sheriff's Office.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, even with combined manpower, their efforts faced uphill battles.
[SPEAKER_00]: by media, excuse me.
[SPEAKER_00]: By mid August, nineteen sixty-nine, killer, signing himself to Zodiac, sent letters to them Lejo, Times, Harold, San Francisco, Chronicle, San Francisco, Examher.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those letters took credit for the two Lake Harmin Roadmurs and the Blue Rock Springs shooting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Demanding that newspapers print, he's coded messages or face further attacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which we're going to dive deeper into those coded messages in a future episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the Cypher letters arrived at Baleo PD, Chief Jack Eberling, convened a task force meeting into department's cramped downtown headquarters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around a linoium covered table, representatives from Solano Sheriff's Office, Napa Sheriff's Office, and the FBI San Francisco Field Office gathered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detectives scrolled notes on legal pens, as Eberling outlined the scope, shared ballistic data, coordinated night patrols, isolated roads,
[SPEAKER_00]: Double check license plate registrations for recent purchases of twenty-two rifles, and that meeting produced the first truly coordinated response to the emerging zodiac case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deputy's in on-mark cars joined uniformed officers and marked patrol vehicles, aiming to appear both visible and covert, intending to thwart any return visit by the killer.
[SPEAKER_00]: They established rotating surveillance posts at Lake Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs Park, and Lake Buriesa.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though, staffing these posts meant polling deputies from other critical duties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nearly grinding some recidivist theft investigations to a halt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detectives also introduced a rudimentary offender profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: A male and his mid-twenties to mid-dirties familiar with rural roads, comfortable firing at twenty-two L.R.
[SPEAKER_00]: rifle and darkness, possibly living or working in Salon County.
[SPEAKER_00]: FBI agents shared techniques claimed from other serial killer investigations, import the case into a centralized index, expeditabilistic comparisons, and record all incoming tips in a standardized log.
[SPEAKER_00]: While technology lagged, no digital databases yet existed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This collaboration and the groundwork from modern multi-agency task force.
[SPEAKER_00]: Helping both to expedite data sharing and to avoid a finger pointing over jurisdictional turf.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of summer, the killer's image had transcended mirror suspicion.
[SPEAKER_00]: He became a mythic figure, appearing in whispered illusions as the zodiac, a name he chose in himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each time, please read his letters on the evening news, the phrase, I am the zodiac, thunder through homes, making chores, washing dishes, ironing pants, feel fraught with danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: The code in his first cipher once cracked revealed a chilling message,
[SPEAKER_00]: amplifying fear and ways no double murder could allow.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, Cypher was cracked by immature photographers from the Balejo rotary club.
[SPEAKER_00]: Extensively began with, I like killing people because it's so much fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Line that made the killer into a monstrous caricature.
[SPEAKER_00]: After an elastic sensation, half urban allegedly.
[SPEAKER_00]: As the last echoes of Gumpfire faded at Blue Rock Springs, a new menace began to take shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: One written in ink instead of Gumpower.
[SPEAKER_00]: Within days, Bay Area newspapers found themselves holding sealed envelopes, addressed by someone calling himself Zodiac.
[SPEAKER_00]: These letters threatened further violence, unless editors published his messages exactly as pent.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the first crypto gram arrived at the Chronicle on August first in the early sixteenth year on our nine excuse me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one realized it can seal the manifesto so chilling with send ripples of dread through every neighborhood crowded city streets to remote country roads or county roads.
[SPEAKER_00]: In our next episode we'll peel back the litter layers of these taunting letters and watch as local co-breakers race against time to crack a four hundred and eight symbol puzzle.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll take a look at their breakthrough, decoding a message about collecting slaves over the afterlife, shifted the Zodiac from mysterious shooter to public terror.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll see how the killers twisted since their showmanship played out in ink, forcing families to bolt doors earlier in students' question of safety and virtually existed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep your doors locked, and your eyes open, because in our next installment, the Zodiac steps out of the shadows onto the front pages, daring anyone to decipher his dark intentions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Episode three is coming up next week, and it starts with a code no one could ignore.
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