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The full episode, in writing.
A heavy drizzle pattered across the narrow, moonlit road just west of Benicia, California, on the night of December 20, 1968. By the time police arrived at Lake Herman Road, two teenagers lay motionless beside a battered Rambler station wagon. Betty Lou Jensen’s body was found a few feet from the car, bullets in her back as she’d tried, desperately, to run. David Faraday was slumped on the ground near the right front wheel, shot once in the head at point-blank range. The killer had vanished into the darkness, leaving behind only shell casings and a sense of dread that would soon blanket Northern California.
Betty Lou Jensen was sixteen, a high school student in Vallejo, known for her good grades and quiet demeanor. David Faraday, seventeen, was in his senior year. He played the saxophone in the school band and hoped to study medicine. The two had been dating only a short time. On the evening of December 20, they told their parents they planned to attend a Christmas concert. Instead, they drove out to a secluded turnoff on Lake Herman Road, a well-known spot for local teens seeking privacy.
The events began to unfold at approximately 10:15 p.m. Several witnesses later reported seeing the couple’s car parked in the gravel turnout, headlights off. Around 11:00 p.m., a passing motorist spotted the Rambler again and saw what appeared to be two bodies lying on the ground. He sped to the nearest house and called the police.
Investigators determined that the killer approached the car from the passenger side. He fired into the vehicle, shattering a window and forcing the teens out. Betty Lou attempted to flee but was shot five times in the back, collapsing on the gravel. David was shot once at close range, execution style. The killer left behind spent .22-caliber cartridge casings, from a Western Super X ammunition brand. There was no evidence of robbery or sexual assault.
The attack on Faraday and Jensen would soon reveal itself as the beginning of a series of brutal, seemingly motiveless crimes. Seven months later, just after midnight on July 5, 1969, gunshots rang out in Blue Rock Springs Park, Vallejo. Darlene Ferrin, twenty-two, was behind the wheel of her Corvair, with Michael Mageau, nineteen, in the passenger seat. Minutes earlier, they’d noticed a car pull up, then drive away. Now, the car was back, parking beside them.
A man emerged, carrying a flashlight and a 9-millimeter Luger pistol. Pretending to need help, he blinded the pair by shining the light in their eyes, then fired five shots into the car. Ferrin was hit multiple times and died before reaching the hospital. Mageau survived, despite being shot in the face, chest, and neck.
Approximately forty minutes after the attack, a man called the Vallejo Police Department. Speaking in a monotone, he claimed, “I want to report a double murder. If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find the kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.” The caller’s voice was calm, unhurried, and male. Investigators traced the call to a phone booth at a gas station four blocks from the Vallejo police station.
On August 1, 1969, editors at the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner each received an envelope. Inside was a page-long letter, written in block capitals, and a third of a 408-character cryptogram. The writer took responsibility for both attacks, taunted the police, and demanded his ciphers be printed “on the front page.” He warned that if his demands weren’t met, he would kill again and collect “a dozen people over the weekend.”
The ciphers were published. Amateur codebreakers Donald and Bettye Harden, a local schoolteacher couple, cracked the code within a week. The message that emerged read, “I like killing people because it is so much fun.” The letter described murder as “the most thrilling experience,” and ended, “I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.”
On September 27, 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard, both students at Pacific Union College, drove out to Lake Berryessa in Napa County. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. They picnicked by the water, away from other visitors. Around 6:30 p.m., a man appeared on the hillside above, wearing a black executioner-style hood and a bib emblazoned with a white crosshair symbol. He carried a gun and a pre-tied rope.
The man told Hartnell and Shepard he was an escaped convict from Deer Lodge, Montana, and needed money and a car to get to Mexico. He bound their wrists and ankles with cut lengths of clothesline, then stabbed them repeatedly with a foot-long knife. Hartnell was stabbed six times in the back, Shepard ten times in the back and side. The attacker drew his symbol and the dates of the previous crimes on Hartnell’s car door. He then walked three-quarters of a mile to a payphone, called the Napa County sheriff, and reported, “There are two people killed—Berryessa.” He spoke slowly and softly.
Shepard died two days later. Hartnell survived and gave police a detailed description. He recalled the strange calmness and precision of the attacker’s movements.
The next attack, in San Francisco, broke the pattern. On October 11, 1969, Paul Stine, a twenty-nine-year-old cab driver, was shot in the head at point-blank range in the wealthy Presidio Heights neighborhood. The killer wiped down parts of the cab and tore away a piece of Stine’s blood-soaked shirt. Witnesses saw a man leave the scene, but police mistakenly described the suspect as Black in the initial all-points bulletin, allowing the real killer to walk straight past two officers on Jackson Street.
Two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received another letter. It included a bloodied scrap of Stine’s shirt and a new threat: the killer claimed he would target school buses, shooting out the tires and picking off the children as they came out. This letter sent a wave of panic through the city. Police escorts were added to bus routes, and parents kept children home.
Over the next year, the Zodiac continued his communications. On November 8, 1969, he sent a 340-character cipher—340 symbols arranged in 20 rows of 17—known as the Z340. For over fifty years, the cipher went unsolved, baffling cryptanalysts and amateur sleuths alike. In December 2020, an international team of codebreakers finally deciphered the message. It read, in part, “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. That wasn’t me on the TV show.”
On October 27, 1970, the San Francisco Chronicle received a Halloween card. It had a drawing of a skeleton and the words, “Peek-a-boo, you are doomed.” In 1974, the Chronicle received the last known Zodiac letter, praising the film “The Exorcist” as “the best satirical comedy that I have ever seen.”
Investigators from multiple jurisdictions—Vallejo, Benicia, Napa County, San Francisco, and the California Department of Justice—collected thousands of pieces of evidence. They interviewed over 2,500 potential suspects. The killer’s communication style was erratic and mocking, sometimes spelling words phonetically and lacing his letters with cryptic references.
Physical evidence was limited. The killer wore gloves during attacks, leaving almost no fingerprints. The shell casings and bullets allowed police to confirm the same gun was used in the Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs shootings, but the weapon was never recovered. A partial palm print was found on Paul Stine’s cab, but it did not match any known suspects.
Composite sketches were created based on eyewitnesses’ accounts from Presidio Heights. Surviving victims Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell described the attacker as a white male, about 5’8” to 6 feet tall, heavyset, with dark brown hair. Hartnell described the killer’s calm, methodical speech.
Handwriting experts compared the Zodiac’s letters to samples from hundreds of suspects, but no conclusive match was found. The Zodiac’s signature—a circle with a cross through it—matched the logo of a “Zodiac” brand wristwatch. This detail led investigators to comb records for anyone who owned or worked with Zodiac watches, but the lead went nowhere.
The biggest break in the case came with the identification of a primary suspect: Arthur Leigh Allen. Allen was a former elementary school teacher in Vallejo and a convicted sex offender. He lived near the sites of several attacks and owned a watch with the Zodiac logo. Around the time of the Lake Berryessa stabbing, Allen was reported to have returned home with bloody knives in his car. He was interviewed by police in 1971 and again in 1974. Allen denied any involvement, and searches of his home turned up firearms, homemade bombs, and bloody knives, but none matched the evidence from the Zodiac killings.
Allen’s handwriting was analyzed and found inconsistent with Zodiac’s letters. Later, DNA testing on letters failed to link Allen to the case. Allen died in 1992, still maintaining his innocence.
Throughout the investigation, the Zodiac taunted police, claiming in one letter to have killed 37 people. Only five murders and two attempted murders have ever been definitively linked to him.
Two of the Zodiac’s ciphers remain unsolved. His cryptograms drew in amateur and professional codebreakers for decades. The Z340 cipher, when finally cracked in 2020, revealed a chilling message: “I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner.” The killer’s penchant for puzzles and his desire to manipulate the media became as much a hallmark as his violence.
The Zodiac’s threats to shoot out a school bus’s tires and “pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out” led to the implementation of new school safety procedures in the Bay Area. Police and local governments rerouted and protected buses, and parents organized walking groups for children.
Media coverage of the Zodiac case was extensive. Papers published his letters and ciphers, sometimes under duress, fearing further violence if they refused. The Zodiac’s manipulation of the press gave him an outsized presence, his threats magnified across the region. The killer’s ability to leverage fear and publicity kept him in the public eye long after the attacks stopped.
Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary described the Zodiac as a rare type of killer who “constantly changed his method of operating and openly admitted that murder was sport for him.” Most serial offenders stick to a pattern, but the Zodiac shifted from shootings to stabbings, attacked both couples and a lone male, and varied his tactics to confound investigators.
The last confirmed communication from the Zodiac arrived in early 1974. In it, he reviewed the film “The Exorcist” and included a running tally of “me = 37, SFPD = 0.” Despite this claim, only seven victims could be linked to him by evidence.
The case remains open. Law enforcement agencies continue to examine new leads. Advancements in forensic technology have yet to identify the perpetrator. The Zodiac Killer’s true identity—hidden behind ciphers, symbols, and threats—remains one of the most enduring mysteries in American criminal history.
The Zodiac’s first cipher was cracked in just a week by Donald and Bettye Harden, two schoolteachers, using a combination of letter pattern analysis and intuition about common English phrases. Their solution revealed, “I like killing people because it is so much fun.” This confession, devoid of remorse, shocked both police and the public, laying bare the killer’s chilling psychology.