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No one knows when zodiac killed for the first time but his very first known killing that was recorded happened on the night of Sunday, October 30, 1966, an 18-year-old student named Cheri Jo Bates was brutally murdered near the parking lot of Riverside City College's library annex. Neither rape nor robbery seemed to have been a motive, as her clothes were undisturbed and her purse was present and intact. After disabling her lime green Volkswagen by pulling out the distributor coil and the condenser, then disconnecting the middle wire of the distributor, the killer had apparently waited for Bates to return to her car and try to start it, whereupon he made a pretense of unsuccessfully tinkering with the engine. After this ruse, and probably with the offer of a ride, he lured her into a dark, unpaved driveway between two empty houses owned by the college, where they spent approximately an hour and a half. Exactly what they did during this time is uncertain, but eventually the man attacked her, slashing her three times in the chest area, once in the back, and seven times across the throat. Police determined that the murder weapon was a small knife with a blade about 3 1/2" long by 1/2" wide, but the wounds to Bates' throat were so deep and brutal as to nearly decapitate her, severing her larynx, jugular vein, and carotid artery.The next killing occurred on December 20, 1968. Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday where parked along side a spot known to teen age kids at the time as lovers lane which stretched along lake Herman road. At about At 11:10 pm, David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were shot to death near Faraday's brown Rambler. Having told Betty Lou's parents that they were going to a Christmas concert, they had instead driven to the isolated road and had been there for less than an hour when someone pulled in with them, exited his vehicle, and began firing into their car. The killer was armed with either a .22 caliber rifle or, more likely, a handgun loaded with .22 LR ammunition. From light footprints and ballistic evidence, it appeared that the killer started from behind the car, shooting out the right rear window, then the left rear tire, then coming around to the front left. The two teenagers scrambled out the passenger's side door. Jensen, 16, left the car alive and must have started to run toward the road; her body was found less than 30 feet from the rear bumper.Six months later Zodiac struck again this time not far from the Jensen and Faraday murders. Shortly after 12:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 5, 1969, Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, and Michael Renault Mageau, 19, were shot as they sat in Ferrin's car in the parking lot of the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course. The killer raised a handgun and fired five 9mm rounds through the window. He shot first at Mageau, hitting him in the face and body: at such close range, several of the slugs tore through his flesh and entered Darlene. Fueled by pain and adrenaline, Michael kicked himself into the back seat, catching another bullet in his left knee. The killer then fired at Ferrin, hitting her in each arm and in the back as she turned away. The killer was walking back to his car after this volley of shots when he heard Mageau begin to yell, either in pain or in rage. He returned to Ferrin's car, fired two additional shots at each of the victims, then turned around casually and got back in his own car.The next killing came on Saturday, September 27, 1969, on the western shore of Lake Berryessa, about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco in Napa County. Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard were picnicking when a man in an unusual four cornered hood emerged from the trees and demanded money from them. This was only a distraction that the killer made so he could tie them up and eventually kill them with more ease. Hartnell was stabbed six times, and a retired police source confirms a fatal ten for Shepard, who died of her wounds two days later. Leaving them both for dead, the attacker walked to Hartnell's nearby car and, using a black magic marker, inscribed his crossed-circle logo and the dates of his Bay Area attacks on the door.On the night of Saturday, October 11, 1969, San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine unmistakably picked up the serial killer and was shot point blank on the right side of the head. There were some witnesses including some teenager who saw him wipe down parts of the cab, however no real description was ever made.The zodiac resurfaced in various other times including the time when Kathleen Johns, 23 and her infant were driving along side highway 132 in San Joaquin County when a light colored American car started to honk and blink his lights at her. Driving alongside her car he said that one of her wheels was wobbling and volunteered to fix. Accepting a ride from him to a near by service station they drove for an hour and a half before she suspected something was wrong and made her heroine escape only to realize later that she was riding with the Zodiac killer. These sightings and the many letters that zodiac wrote to various news agencies and police departments including the exorcist letter and remarking on the poor quality of the famous movie "The Exorcist" all contributed to this high prolific serial killer known as "Zodiac."
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