Cheri Bates was an 18-year-old college freshman in her hometown of Riverside, Cal. On Halloween morning in 1966, Cheri’s body was discovered on the grounds of her own campus; her car had been sabotaged and her throat had been cut. Cheri’s killer somehow vanished, and the police were baffled. Case # 352-481 quickly went cold. Then, a month after Cheri’s murder, someone typed and mailed a letter confessing to the crime. Was this confession the big break police desperately needed, or was it some kind of a sick joke? The anonymous confession letter was specifically intended for the Riverside chief of police, with an exact copy also sent to the local newspaper. At that time, the chief of police in Riverside was an experienced lawman named Kinkead. The unknown author wanted their confession to the police chief to be published in the newspaper for all to read. Chief Kinkead knew the confession could be a hoax, so he searched for proof that the author of the confession letter was truly Cheri’s killer. As police chief, Kinkead had direct access to the evidence room that held the many clues pertaining to the murder of Cheri Bates. After reviewing that evidence — in Chief Kinkead’s expert opinion — there was no doubt the author of the confession letter was also the killer of Cheri Bates. From Kinkead’s Oct. 20th, 1969 letter to the sheriff of Napa County, Cal., Earl Randol: “There is no doubt that the person who typed the confession letter is our homicide suspect.”
Chief Kinkead’s letter to Sheriff Randol had been prompted by California’s notorious Zodiac killer, an apparently random killer on the other side of California who had recently struck again. This time, the Zodiac had surfaced at Lake Berryessa, a lake located in Sheriff Randol’s jurisdiction. The Zodiac killer’s attack at the lake resulted in the death of a 22-year-old college student named Cecelia Shepard. Chief Kinkead had noticed many similarities between the Zodiac’s 1969 attack at the lake, and Kinkead’s own 1966 unsolved homicide of Cheri Bates. In both cases, the killer had used a knife. And, in both cases, the killer had actually called the police to report his own crime. However, what interested Chief Kinkead the most: At the time of their murders, both Cheri and Cecelia were attending college in Riverside, Cal. Coincidence? Or, could Cheri Bates have been murdered by a serial killer who had since moved to a different part of the state? To make matters even more urgent, the Zodiac was now threatening to target and kill school children. Chief Kinkead knew that if the Zodiac killer had also been the murderer of Cheri Bates, Kinkead’s own evidence room might hold the key to stopping the Zodiac once and for all.
Note to the reader: This original article is based on: Official police documentation; my exclusive interviews with law enforcement officials; my interviews with the friends and family members of the victims. This article is also based on verified tips provided to me by the public going back 30 years. And, based on my own unique research discoveries.
About 15 years after the murder of Cheri Bates, history was rewritten. Today, in popular culture, the Zodiac killer’s link to the Cheri Bates murder is often portrayed as being nothing more than a theory from an enterprising newspaper reporter who was fooled — along with investigators — by the work of a hoaxer. The truth, as you will learn, is quite the opposite. I’ve gone back to the beginning, 1966, and put everything in its proper context. What began in Riverside finally ended at Lake Berryessa, just as predicted by the author of the Bates confession letter, which would prove to be as much of a curse as a confession.
CONFESSIONS & CONFUSION: The Murders of Cheri Bates and Cecelia Shepard
On the warm evening before Halloween, it was already dark when Cheri Bates’s college library opened at 6 PM, as the time change had occurred early that morning. An aspiring airline stewardess, Cheri needed at least two years of college before she could fly the friendly skies. For the time being, she worked part time at a local bank and took classes at Riverside City College. Cheri had driven to her campus library to check out a few books she needed for a class assignment. Chief Kinkead theorized that while Cheri was in the library shortly after it opened, her eventual killer tampered with her Volkswagen Beetle so that it wouldn’t start. At which point, when Cheri returned to the car with her library books, she either left willingly with the unknown subject — or was somehow forced — before eventually being killed in a nearby alley. Curiously, when Cheri departed her car for the very last time, even though it was dark outside, she left her car unlocked; her windows rolled down; and the library books she had just checked out were left on the passenger seat. She had also left her car key in the ignition — which was odd, as Cheri had no idea her car had been disabled. For all Cheri knew, the next time she turned that key, her car would start as usual. By leaving her car unlocked with the key in the ignition, she could have allowed her precious VW Beetle to be stolen. Also, if Cheri was like most other people on the planet, she would have kept her car key together with her house key, attached on the the same key chain. So, the question is: If Cheri had gone by choice with her eventual killer, why would she leave behind her keys? The library was scheduled to be open until 9 o’clock that night. While nobody knows for sure, the possibility exists that when Cheri was trapped in her disabled car, her killer approached quickly, displayed a gun, and demanded that she go to his nearby vehicle. All conjecture aside, Cheri’s killer did not take her directly to that dark alley where she was eventually attacked. Based on the timeline of events as established by Riverside investigators, Cheri Bates had already departed the library and was experiencing car trouble by 6:15 that evening. 6:15 PM was estimated to be the beginning of her ordeal. However, according to the autopsy report that I obtained, Cheri wasn’t dead until three to six hours after she left the library. What in the hell did her killer do with Cheri Bates — for up to six hours — before finally cutting her throat, killing her almost instantly? Cheri was left dead in a dark alley not far from her Volkswagen, face down in the dirt. According to the police timeline and autopsy report, the possibility exists that someone intended to keep Cheri captive long enough to kill her after midnight, the official start of Halloween. Was Cheri Bates intended to be some kind of a bizarre sacrifice? Later that day, when most people were having fun celebrating Halloween, Cheri’s parents, Joseph and Irene, her brother, Michael, and her fiancé, Dennis, were all trying to figure out how to deal with the brutal murder of a loved one.
The night before Halloween, a little boy named Dana was having trouble falling asleep. For reasons he didn’t quite understand, his parents had turned their clock backwards an hour, and by his usual bedtime, Dana just wasn’t tired. It was also very hot that night. Dana’s bedroom window was open, and at some point during the night, he heard a woman scream. The next day, Dana learned about a dead girl found in an alley that wasn’t very far from his open bedroom window. At that point, Dana’s parents told him that he was no longer to go anywhere near that alley. That was fine with Dana, because in the little boy’s imagination, the dead girl’s body might still be there. However, it didn’t take long for his natural curiosity got the best of him, and Dana mustered the courage to explore the area where the girl had been killed. Eventually, while exploring, Dana found a knife. He already knew the dead girl had been killed with a knife, and he also knew he should give the knife he found to his mom and dad. However, at Dana’s age, getting caught disobeying his parents wasn’t an option — and they had told him in no uncertain terms to stay away from that alley. Dana put the knife back where he found it. From that moment on, he’s lived with a huge weight on his shoulders: The guilt of knowing that if he had given that knife to his parents, they would have turned it over to the police…and the police might have found a clue that could have lead to justice for the dead girl in the alley.
At time of Chief Kinkead’s letter to Sheriff Randol (mentioned earlier in this article), police in the entire Bay Area of San Francisco were very busy. It was late October 1969, and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, the many crimes of the Zodiac killer had police overwhelmed with investigative work — so much so that it took just over a year for Bay Area Zodiac detectives to travel south to Riverside and join a task force with detectives handling their jurisdiction’s first-ever unsolved homicide: The murder of Cheri Bates. On Nov. 18, 1970, in Riverside, each police jurisdiction involved in the task force exchanged evidence and other information, and jointly reached the same conclusion: Cheri Bates was definitely a victim of the Zodiac killer, murdered more than two years before what was thought to be the Zodiac’s first attack. The Riverside task-force meeting was prompted by a handwriting match made just days earlier by expert document examiner Sherwood Morrill. The Zodiac killer was known to mail handwritten letters confessing to his own crimes, and nobody was more familiar with the Zodiac’s unique handwriting than Morrill. Curiously, five months after the typewritten Bates confession letters were sent, someone had also anonymously mailed handwritten letters taking credit for the Cheri Bates killing, and promising more victims. After intense scrutiny, it was concluded by Sherwood Morrill that those handwritten Bates letters had definitely been written by the man who was now known as the Zodiac killer. From that point forward, California’s Department Of Justice (DOJ) kept the entire task force updated on the progress made by each police jurisdiction involved in the hunt. With the Zodiac killer’s crimes now spanning all of California, the DOJ created a top secret report titled “ZODIAC HOMICIDES” that contained information about the confirmed Zodiac cases. The report was distributed to police departments throughout California and included Bates case # 352-481. The Cheri Bates murder was now officially a confirmed Zodiac crime. But long before the task force had found actual evidence linking the Zodiac and Cheri Bates cases — and before Sherwood Morrill confirmed the handwriting match — Chief Kinkead had already spotted his killer on the other side of California, now calling himself the Zodiac.
With its confirmed link to the Zodiac killer having just been established, the city of Riverside was on edge. The murder of Cheri Bates was bad enough, but the idea of the notorious Zodiac killer being so close to home was downright terrifying. The man who called himself the Zodiac was straight out of a scary movie; an evil, criminal genius who not only committed multiple murders — sometimes while wearing a horrifying costume — but who also reported his own killings by calling the police, and offering detailed confessions to those crimes in many handwritten letters to authorities. The Zodiac killer’s taunting letters included his personal symbol: A circle over a cross, resembling a gun site. In those letters, he challenged the police to catch him. In some cases, the Zodiac’s letters contained actual physical evidence, such as a bloody scrap of a victim’s shirt. The Zodiac even went so far as threatening to use a bomb to blow up full elementary school buses. Occasionally, the Zodiac killer sent coded messages, some of which have not been solved to this day. The Zodiac killer was like the Joker from the Batman movies. However, in reality, there were no superheroes to save California; just normal, everyday detectives who had never before seen anything like the Zodiac killer.
Behind the scenes within the Riverside police, there was no doubt the Zodiac was their man, having killed in Riverside before inventing the Zodiac persona. However, in interviews with the local media, officials from the Riverside Police Department portrayed skepticism, assuring the public that Zodiac might have simply lied when he took credit for the Cheri Bates murder. By acting skeptical, the Riverside police were actually emulating a strategy used earlier by Bay Area detectives. Back in July 1969, not long after the Zodiac killer first began killing around San Francisco, his attacks were followed by letters confessing to his crimes. Law enforcement officials knew the more letters they received from the Zodiac, the more evidence they would have to possibly catch him. So the police went public, saying they weren’t convinced the letter writer was actually their killer. It was a strategy that resulted in the Zodiac killer sending additional letters and providing additional proof that he really was their man. That ploy of skepticism eventually paid off again, this time for Riverside police, as the Zodiac soon wrote a letter to the nearby Los Angeles Times newspaper acknowledging his murder of Cheri Bates in Riverside, and claiming he had taken even more victims in that area of California. Perhaps the Zodiac killer was telling the truth. On the night of Nov. 22, 1966, just a few weeks after Cheri Bates was killed, another young Riverside woman was walking on her college campus — heading to the library — when a stocky white man pulled up in his car and offered her a ride. The incident began at almost the exact time of evening as the Cheri Bates encounter the previous month. The driver of the car even made reference to Cheri, saying “You heard about that girl at City College, right?” When the young woman still refused a ride, the man said “I’m not Jack the Ripper!” The encounter escalated into a kidnapping and assault situation. Fortunately, the young woman eventually escaped the car. The driver got away, and according to Riverside police, that driver might also have been the killer of Cheri Bates.
Allow me to briefly jump ahead. In the 1980s, there was a massive change within the Riverside Police Department that saw the department entirely abandon the “Zodiac killed Cheri Bates” conclusion, and replace it with the theory that Cheri had been killed by someone from her graduating class in high school. That massive departmental change was the direct result of Detective Granville ‘Bud’ Kelley taking over the Bates investigation. When Cheri Bates was murdered, Kelley was a Riverside patrolman, not a detective, and Kelley played no meaningful part in the original murder investigation. By the early 1980s, after becoming a detective and inheriting the Cheri Bates case, Kelley became fixated on the suspect I’ll refer to as Bob Barnett. Barnett and Cheri had attended school together at Ramona High, and Barnett was one of many male students who got a close look by police, only to be ruled out as Cheri’s killer. Sadly, by the time Bud Kelley took over the Cheri Bates case, Chief Kinkead and the other original investigators had retired. There was nobody to pull the reigns in on Kelley, who used the Cheri Bates case to suit his own agenda. Meanwhile, on the other side of California, a cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper was writing a book about the Zodiac killer, and his book preparation occurred during the very time that Bud Kelley was telling everyone who would listen that Zodiac had definitely not been the killer of Cheri Bates. Unfortunately, Kelley influenced the cartoonist, and when the book was finally published, Cheri Bates was not included as an established victim of the Zodiac killer. The book was very successful, and was eventually made into a film which also cast doubt on Zodiac being Cheri’s killer. Over time, the case that Bud Kelley had built against Bob Barnett as being the killer of Cheri Bates, was rejected by Riverside prosecutors on at least two occasions. Eventually, DNA testing cleared Bob Barnett. Still, Bud Kelley’s unprofessional bias succeeded in influencing younger Riverside detectives, convincing them that Bob Barnett was the killer. It wasn’t long before Kelley retired and one of those younger detectives took over the Bates case. By the year 2000, it was Detective Steve Shumway who was in charge of the unsolved Cheri Bates homicide. Shumway was very familiar with my website, Zodiackiller.com, and I had many detailed conversations with him. During one of those conversations, in May of 2000, Shumway dropped a bombshell directly on my head: Cheri Bates, he told me, had been stabbed 42 times. To put it mildly, I was completely shocked. Every report I had ever read indicated Cheri had suffered far fewer than 42 stab wounds. But Shumway was adamant. He told me “Tom…Cheri Bates was stabbed 42 times. And you can quote me!” On May 4, 2000, I published that quote at Zodiackiller.com. The result was tremendous controversy. Detective Shumway’s claim of 42 stab wounds greatly contradicted Cheri’s autopsy report which I had just recently acquired. And Shumway suddenly became strangely silent, offering no explanation for the vast discrepancy between his claim, and what Cheri’s autopsy report clearly showed. I was left with a grim conclusion: The Riverside detective now in charge of the Cheri Bates case hadn’t even read her autopsy report. On TV, cold case detectives always start fresh and from scratch. They consult the murder book, and look under every rock for clues missed by the previous detectives. But all too often, in reality, all those detectives know about their own cold case is misinformation they read on the Internet. As for Bud Kelley, in the year 2011 at the age of 74, Kelley plead guilty to nine felony counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Bud Kelley will likely die behind bars if he hasn’t already. Meanwhile, Kelley’s pet suspect, the man I referred to as Bob Barnett, retired to the Big Island of Hawaii.
(In late 2021, Riverside police released an intentionally confusing and misleading press release, the goal of which was to create distance away from two no-win situations for them: The unsolved murder of Cheri Bates, and the unsolved case of the Zodiac killer. The desperate press release was, in reality, nonsense. Details and in-depth discussion can be found at the Zodiackiller.com forum.)
In the early 1960s, Cheri Bates’s family had next-door neighbors that included a 13-year-old girl named Susan. From Susan’s bedroom window, she had a clear view of the Bates’s kitchen window. What Susan remembers most is how Joseph Bates, the dad, would make silly faces at her while he was doing the dishes next door. Joseph was born in New York and when he bought the Riverside house back in 1951, he still had that Brooklyn accent. It was once a house occupied by Cheri, her brother Michael, and their parents, Joseph and Irene. The address was 4195 Via San Jose. The Bates family occupied the home, in some capacity, for the next 21 years until Joseph finally sold it in 1972. Thirty years later, in 2002, I was invited inside the home where Cheri Bates had once lived. Cheri’s old bedroom was tiny, and I couldn’t help but notice how easy it would have been for someone to spy on her from busy California Avenue, which was just yards away from her bedroom window. In doing so, that someone could have become very familiar with Cheri’s entire family. Maybe that’s why the Zodiac killer eventually wrote one of them a letter. On April 30th, 1967, exactly six months after Cheri Bates was murdered, the Zodiac killer sent a letter to Cheri’s father, Joseph. To Joseph Bates, the Zodiac wrote “She had to die, there will be more.” And sadly, the Zodiac’s promise quickly came true, when Cheri Bates’s mother, Irene, was poisoned with strychnine. Her death was eventually ruled a suicide. But within several months of the poisoning death of Irene Bates, the Zodiac killer wrote another letter, this time claiming that he would disguise his murders, making them appear to be anything but murder. Soon after, the Bates mother and daughter were joined in death by Cheri’s grandmother. Within just three years, daughter, mother, and grandmother, all dead. And ironically, Cheri’s grandmother was named Cecelia. As for Cheri’s father, Joseph: Following the murder of his only daughter, Joseph Bates patiently waited for justice that was never served. In 2016 — 50 long years after losing his daughter, Cheri — Joseph Bates died at a care facility in New Mexico. He was 96 years old.
In March of 1910, Lambert Kinkead was born on a farm in Oklahoma. As a child, Kinkead’s older brother had given him the nickname of Curly, a nickname Kinkead grew to prefer over his real name. Kinkead’s natural ambition eventually lead him away from the family farm. In 1932, after graduating from Oklahoma State University with a degree in animal husbandry, the 25-year-old Kinkead found his way to Riverside Cal., and took a job caring for horses. It didn’t pay too well, so Curly Kinkead successfully applied for a job as a police officer. His career in Riverside law enforcement began in 1938, and by 1965, Kinkead had advanced all the way to the top of the ladder to become police chief. And Curly was no pushover. The tough-talking chief was often the subject of controversy, as Kinkead sometimes used politically incorrect language to make it clear that crime and criminals had no place in his community. A year after joining the police force, Kinkead married a woman named Zelda Zink. By the mid-1960s, Curly and Zelda were well-known figures in the quiet community of Riverside. The unsolved murder of Cheri Bates stayed with Chief Kinkead even after he finally retired in 1972. As fate would have it, Kinkead only had a few years to enjoy his retirement. Unfortunately, tragic deaths and mysterious coincidences did not just effect the Bates family; the curse of the confession also reached Police Chief Kinkead. On Nov. 29, 1976 — the exact, ten-year anniversary, to the day, of when he first received his Bates confession letter — Lambert Thomas Kinkead jr died in Long Beach, Cal. He was buried near Cheri Bates at Crest Lawn Memorial Park in Riverside. Curly was just 66 years old.
In November of 1970, investigators concluded that it was the Zodiac who had killed Cheri Bates. And, in the Bates confession letter, the Zodiac had warned Chief Kinkead that he was now stalking those very Riverside girls the chief had sworn to protect. If line six of the confession letter was to be believed, on one of those Riverside girls the Zodiac killer was again going to use a knife. And that is exactly what happened. At the time Cheri Bates was found dead at Riverside City College, Cecelia Ann Shepard was a 19-year-old sophomore at nearby La Sierra University, also in Riverside, and not far from the spot where Cheri was murdered. Cecelia was a full-time student who lived on campus. During that same 1966/1967 school year when Cheri was murdered, Cecelia had a college roommate named Sue who took a night course at Riverside City College. According to Sue, on at least two occasions Cecelia went with her…and while Sue was in her class, at night, Cecelia would study in that same small Riverside City College library where Cheri Bates had last been seen alive. The main route between the two colleges was Magnolia Avenue, the location of the only mental hospital in all of Riverside County. Which brings to mind the confession letter that took credit for the murder of Cheri Bates and had warned “I am not sick. I am insane.” According to Riverside newspaper reporter John Montgomery, soon after Cheri’s murder a local mental patient told his psychotherapist that he believed he had “killed Cheri Bates.” Additionally, in late 1969 — before anyone knew anything about a possible Zodiac connection to the city of Riverside — at that same mental hospital, someone left a note claiming to be from the Zodiac killer…and threatening to burn down the entire hospital. Unfortunately, due to privacy laws, the identity of that mental patient will never be revealed.
It was Friday, Sept. 26, 1969. 22-year-old Cecelia Shepard had just recently begun another year of college. Already a graduate of La Sierra University, as well as Pacific Union College (PUC), Cecelia was now a 5th year music major at U.C. Riverside in Riverside, Cal. It was a busy Friday morning, as Cecelia and her friend Delora were leaving on a road trip: A long drive north from the Riverside area to spend a couple of days back in the Bay Area of San Francisco, where Cecelia had graduated college a few months earlier. The plan was to retrieve the last of Cecelia’s belongings from her alma mater, PUC (which was not far from Lake Berryessa), and then to return to the Riverside area for good on Sunday, Sept. 28. Sadly, Cecelia never made it back home. Carolyn Shepard, Cecelia’s sister, told me that on the morning Cecelia departed for the San Francisco Bay Area, she mentioned that when she ever died, she wanted to be buried at the cemetery in a small town called St. Helena, which was very close to PUC. And that same morning, while saying her goodbyes, Cecelia ran back to her mother, Wilma, and hugged her for a second time. According to Wilma, Cecelia had never done that before. Carolyn Shepard believed that Cecelia somehow knew her own death was coming soon. Beginning the road trip, Cecelia looked forward to seeing her former steady boyfriend, Bryan Hartnell. The two had dated off and on for several years, and things were once again getting serious. In fact, Cecelia had recently confided to her sisters that she expected Bryan to soon propose marriage. Cecelia and Delora took turns driving north. And by the next morning, Cecelia and Bryan were finally back together once again.
It was Saturday, Sept. 27. In the far corner of the PUC parking lot, two freshmen, Carol and Holly, saw Cecelia and Bryan together by Bryan’s car. The foursome knew each other; in fact, Carol was dating one of Bryan’s previous college roommates. In the parking lot, Bryan was having trouble with his Volkswagen, and was working inside the engine compartment. Carol asked Bryan if she could be of some help, but Bryan seemed confident he could solve the problem…so Carol and Holly went on their way. Amazingly, just as in Riverside nearly three years earlier, a Volkswagen was experiencing mechanical difficulties on a college campus, shortly before a deadly knife attack that Zodiac would take credit for. And that’s not all. According to Cecelia’s good friend, Lori, on that same morning and in that same parking lot, the car that Cecelia had driven north in with Delora had issues with its battery, and Bryan had to go to great lengths to get it to run. Oddly, the day Cecelia was eventually attacked, both cars associated with her had mechanical issues. Did someone tamper with those vehicles, perhaps as he earlier did with Cheri Bates’s Volkswagen Beetle back in Riverside? Unfortunately, Bryan’s car eventually started, and he and Cecelia went on their way. At Lake Berryessa later that day, after completing his knife attack, the Zodiac killer targeted Cecelia’s passenger door to leave his symbol. Somehow, Bryan Hartnell survived the attack. But just as the Bates confession letter had promised three years earlier, another Riverside girl had been murdered. And just as promised, it was with a knife. About a week later, Cecelia Shepard was buried at that cemetery in St. Helena. And right around the time when the Zodiac finally admitted to killing Cheri Bates, someone went to Cecelia Shepard’s former church near Riverside and signed the name ZODIAC in the guestbook.
The parallels between the Zodiac killer’s Riverside and Lake Berryessa attacks are quite numerous. In Riverside, Cheri Bates had been lying face down on the ground when the Zodiac delivered the death blow with his knife. Later, at Lake Berryessa, face down on the ground was how the Zodiac positioned Cecelia and Bryan immediately before stabbing them with his knife. Also, in both the Bates murder and the attack at Lake Berryessa, the killer had involvement with the vehicles of his victims: In Riverside, Cheri’s Volkswagen Beetle had been disabled by her killer, and at Lake Berryessa, the attacker wrote his symbol on a car door of Bryan’s Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Cheri and Cecelia were both Riverside college students when murdered in early fall. In both attacks, the killer telephoned the police.
Though he was also attacked by the Zodiac killer, Bryan Hartnell fortunately survived. In the hospital the day after being stabbed ten times with a foot-long knife, Hartnell was able to answer questions from detectives. According to Bryan, he and Cecelia were alone on a picnic blanket near the shore at the isolated lake, when Cecelia saw a stranger approaching them. When Bryan finally got a look at him, he observed the man was wearing a bizarre costume. Artistic recreations of that costume resembled an executioner’s hood with a butcher’s apron. On the chest area of the black costume was a white symbol: A circle over a cross. The man in the costume was holding a gun and he claimed to be an escaped convict who needed to steal Bryan’s car in order to reach Mexico. The man with the gun had brought with him bindings, and he demanded that Bryan and Cecelia be tied up. To Bryan, the voice of the Zodiac killer definitely made an impact. Here is an actual quote from Bryan Hartnell’s hospital interview with police a day after the attack, and discussing the voice of the man behind the mask: “His voice, I can remember, almost like I’d heard it before.” You can read the entire interview at my website, Zodiackiller.com. The fact that Zodiac’s voice actually seemed familiar to victim Bryan Hartnell is perhaps the most significant — and overlooked — detail in the entire Zodiac case…especially from the perspective that Cecelia Shepard might have been targeted just like Cheri Bates.
Bryan and Cecelia had known each other for years and, at times, were much more than just friends. Could the Zodiac killer’s seemingly familiar voice have been the result of his lurking somewhere on the fringe of Cecelia’s life, and therefore somewhat familiar to Bryan? Perhaps the Zodiac was a twisted, obsessed admirer of Cecelia, pathologically compelled to destroy the object of his desire? From that hospital interview, here’s what Bryan Hartnell said about the demeanor of the Zodiac killer, specifically when the Zodiac touched Cecelia Shepard. Zodiac became “very, very nervous, his hands were shaking.” When the Zodiac was done stabbing, believing both victims were dead, he simply walked away. Before leaving the lake area, the Zodiac wrote his symbol on the passenger door of Bryan’s Volkswagen. 70 minutes later, the Zodiac killer called the Napa Police Department and spoke to Officer David Slate. Zodiac’s voice was so quiet that Slate described it as “barely audible.” First Zodiac was shaking, then he was barely audible. A far cry from the confident and taunting killer who spoke over the phone to police dispatcher Nancy Slover following a gun attack just a few months earlier. Curiously, in that Napa phone call to Officer Slaight, Zodiac seemed to make it clear that his focus had been on just one of those lake victims. To Officer Slaight, the Zodiac actually had to correct himself, first reporting just one murder at the lake before remembering there had actually been two victims. Cecelia Shepard had already chosen the place where she would be buried. Sadly, by going to Lake Berryessa that day, she also chose the place that killed her.
At nine years, Guy Darsow was the oldest of his five brothers, each in elementary school. At just past seven in the warm evening of Sept. 27, 1969, the Darsow brothers were patiently waiting to check a phone booth for any change left behind. Their mother was at the car wash next to Sam Kee’s laundry, located at 1245 Main Street in Napa, Cal. Whenever the Darsow brothers found themselves near one of Napa’s many phone booths, they always looked for change in the coin return. This time, the phone booth was occupied by a man wearing a long, light-colored rain coat. The brothers patiently waited, and after just a minute or so, the man left the booth. Guy and his brothers never saw the man’s face, but once inside the booth, Guy noticed the phone receiver was dangling. With no luck finding any change, the brothers began playing nearby. The next thing Guy remembered, there were police cars everywhere. Guy actually believed that he and his brothers were somehow in trouble, and he was terrified that his mother would finish at the car wash in time to see what was happening. Luckily, the police got occupied talking to some nearby adults, and Guy and his brothers found their way back to their mother’s car. Within two weeks, that man from the phone booth was threatening to target and kill school children just like Guy and his brothers.
By early October 1969, a suspicious man had gotten the attention of Captain Don Townsend of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department. Townsend had been warned of the man by a couple of young women who had encountered him in downtown Napa at a bar called Aquarius. The bar was located at 1018 First Street, only a minute’s drive from the phone booth where the Zodiac had called the police a couple of weeks earlier. The suspicious man was obsessed with the signs of the Zodiac, and had told Captain Townsend’s female informants that he worked in a rose garden at one of the nearby wineries. According to Captain Townsend, who refused to elaborate, during conversations with the female informants, the suspicious man had actually referenced details of the Lake Berryessa attack the police hadn’t yet made public. Captain Townsend grew so impressed by the possibility of the suspicious man being the Zodiac killer that he organized a stakeout at the Aquarius. The stakeout involved plain clothes police officers inside the bar with Captain Townsend’s female informants, while positioned outside the bar were unmarked police cars. Safely inside one of those unmarked police cars was the surviving victim of the Zodiac’s Lake Berryessa attack, Bryan Hartnell, who had recovered enough from his wounds to participate. The hope was that Hartnell could recognize the voice of the mysterious rose gardener as having the same voice as the Zodiac killer. But there was no luck. The suspicious man never returned, at least not that day. By 1970, the Aquarius closed for good. Soon after, the Zodiac killer vanished forever.
Tom Voigt | tomvoigt@zodiackiller.com
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