Understanding Blue Rock Springs’ parking lot layout in July 1969 is crucial to uncovering certain clues about The ZODIAC’s character. Since the park, especially the parking lot, has undergone drastic alterations, it must be restored historically from documents and photos. Amazingly, despite all the publicity surrounding The ZODIAC murders, nobody bothered to go photograph and document the crime scene locations at the time. We are thus minus any real contemporary visual of the park. And it is not an easy task, as one might think, to document the park’s past. Photos of the park have been taken for many reasons, of course. Jim Kern and Mike Turrini, of the Vallejo Historical Museum, brought boxes out from the basement/attic for me to examine. Hundreds exist in these boxes, but few can be had of the parking lot. People naturally didn’t go to a park to take pictures of its parking lot.

     Yet there is one particularly good photo which shows the overflow of parking on Easter Sunday 1974.  Jim Kern knew what I was looking for and had already set it aside in a manila folder. It shows a fraction of the road, Columbus Parkway, and then it shows the southern part of the parking lot, the area where Darlene Ferrin had parked her car on that night so long ago. It is here, in the photo, where we can actually see the crime scene location. Yet even better, coupled with the police diagram of the crime scene, we can reconstruct the parking lot in our minds and even go to the location today in the lot.

     This is because the photo in question gives us three absolute points by which to judge the layout of the old parking lot. It shows 3 trees (eucalyptus) that still remain. Furthermore, they are trees that are by the beginning of the parking lot and in juxtaposition to the old rock wall.  The rock wall is significant. It enclosed the park on its parkside (east side) and appears on the diagram. It was punctuated in 3 places. A “driveway” lead about through the park (there was once a train ride up on the hill where there are now parking lot annexes); and two walking paths lead into the park area. The western part of the parking lot was entirely open to Columbus Parkway. There was no designated entrance. Mike Turrini confirmed that the lot was basically flush with the road, as indeed the picture shows. According to the police diagram the parking lot was 328 feet long and 99 feet deep from road to the rock wall.

     In the 1974 photo there are 4 trees (eucalyptus) by the southern part of the lot. The one right on Columbus Parkway, by which a car is parked, is now gone. The 3 eucalyptus beyond it remain. They can be easily reconciled with the 3 eucalyptus at the southern end of the parking lot today. The trunks of 2 trees fork upward, starting quite low on the trunks, whereas the center tree is a solid trunk.

     According to the police diagram, Ferrin’s Corvair’s was parked 85 feet north of this spot, measuring from the beginning of the lot to the left nose of the car. From the road to her left rear bumper was 69 feet.

   Another great photo I found was in the boxes marked Greater Vallejo Recreational District. The GVRD used to hold day camps in the grand old park, and each year they took many pictures of the kids, the events, the training and games. Yet only one really showed the parking lot. The object of the picture was a ball game in the foreground. In the background was the sloping park’s long sweep of grass, the public bathrooms, and beyond this the majority of the parking lot. Jim Kern did a 300 dpi scan for me and this allowed me to crop the image and examine the parking lot.       

   The police diagram was finally brought to life. Parts of the rock wall can be seen above the grass and between the cars parked there. The back of the sign, a great landmark to use with

     The angle also helps us to appreciate Columbus Parkway. It was then but a narrow road to which the parking lot was attached. The lot is actually only divided from the road by the gutter, that strip of lighter shade of cement, the color of sidewalk cement that must have only been a couple of feet wide and was used to channel water runoff. The ridge on the other side of the road is basically where Columbus Parkway is today. The old road is buried and under a sidewalk now. All those trees on the embankment on the opposite side of the road are gone now.
   With these 2 pictures we can put back the crime scene.    

   Putting back the parking lot allows us to pinpoint the exact location of the murder scene, but more importantly it becomes evidence, for it reveals a number of clues to us. For one, the parking lot was only an upward slant from the narrow (26 feet wide) Columbus Parkway back then. The original fall of the pavement is preserved to this day, though Columbus Parkway is now elevated.  The park sign stood about center, just a couple of feet behind the rock wall. Both of the old pictures (1963;1974) confirm this. Ferrin had not parked far to the south of this sign. The Zodiac pulled into the park twice. His headlights could not have failed to have swept the sign. On top of this is the fact that Blue Rock Springs was a famous park. There are pictures in the Vallejo Museum which date back a 100 years. Even in the 1920s, Vallejoans went out en masse to the springs to swim.

     Yet The Zodiac does not know the name of the park. Nor was he in a state to notice the sign. Feigning ignorance would buy him nothing. Not knowing the name or just pretending he didn’t know the name would not indicate he was a stranger. Under normal circumstances a stranger would have noticed the park sign. When he calls the police, he actually gives them directions. But even in these he is quite wrong. He is really not aware of directions and distances.

     Over the phone, he said the following to Nancy Slover, the police operator. “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.”

     Blue Rock Springs was neither 1 mile east of where he called, nor a mile east of the junction of Springs Road and Columbus Parkway. It is north of Springs Road by about 1 mile and 3 miles away from where he had called. Instead of simply saying the name of the park, which would tell all and sundry the location, The Zodiac gives instructions and doesn’t really have a grasp on distance and direction. He didn’t stalk his ground much at all. Nor was he in a state to notice the sign.

     He could not have been a Vallejoan.

     He makes the same mistake after his attack at Lake Berryessa on September 27, 1969. He drives near an hour away to Napa, has the operator call the local police instead of the sheriff, in whose jurisdiction the lake lay, then told Officer Slaight that the victims were to be found two miles north of “Park headquarters,” though he doesn’t say what park. Why would Napa assume Lake Berryessa over an hour away?

     Yet in not speaking, he gave us a clue. After his first murder on December 20, 1968, he is silent. He didn’t take credit for this until after Blue Rock Springs. It is but an epilogue on his message to the police.

     But this did not mean he did not speak. By his silence on December 20, 1968, we have learned something valuable. We know the times by which witnesses passed the crime scene at the turn out on Lake Herman Road that frosty night. From the accounts of James Owen, Frank Gasser, Robert Connley and, most importantly, Stella Medeiros, we know The Zodiac did not flee the scene toward Vallejo. He drove on to Benicia. Stella Medeiros must have missed him by less than a minute, and yet no car passed her going to Vallejo. Somewhere between the pumping station turnout where he killed those two helpless teenagers and Benicia he transposed into the darkness. It is here in Benicia that the answer to The Zodiac’s identity lays.  

     He gave us many clues inadvertently. The first was at Blue Rock Springs where he decides to brag. Ironically, he gave away what he probably didn’t intend.