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Darlene’s autopsy tells us the trajectory of the bullets and therefore where The Zodiac stood. He stood toward the back of the window. He did not fire straight into the open window at them. We know this, for by the trajectory of the two bullets that hit Darlene’s right arm, how they exited and then where they hit her left arm, tells us the angle. Two bullets lodged in Ferrin, indicating they passed through Mageau first and lost momentum. The first 5 bullets fired seem to be:
1st = Mageau’s neck. It passes into Ferrin and remains lodged inside.
2nd = Before she can even slump forward, 2nd penetrates her right and left arms at an angle, telling us the trajectory and how she was holding the steering wheel.
3rd = does the same as above, only at a different location on her arm.
4th = probably hits Mageau in the hip as he is squirming.
5th = is fired into Ferrin’s right back, for she now must be slumped forward.
According to Mageau, the killer now casually walks back to his own car. Mageau lets out a cry of pain or anger. Killer returns and fires 4 more shots.
6 = hits Mageau in the left leg.
7 = hits him in the back shoulder.
8 = hits Ferrin in the right back.
9 = hits Ferrin in the right back.
This is the best one can make of it while keeping to the belief that Zodiac fired only 9 shots. Ferrin had 5 bullet holes in her right back, and 2 bullets perforated both her arms. Mageau is shot at least 4 times, with more than one bullet passing through him and hitting Ferrin. She had 9 wounds of entry and 7 wounds of exit, with 2 bullets remaining lodged inside.
The killer walks away and drives off. By this time, Mageau has fallen out the passenger side door and is wallowing in his own blood on the parking lot pavement.
Mageau estimated that the killer (Zodiac) was rather short, about 5 foot 8 inches. The trajectory of the bullets argues on behalf of this as well. A much taller man would have to bend a bit to get aim. The Corvair sat low to the ground. This would put the shooter’s face closer to the discharge of the pistol, not the best angle to hold a gun.
This height would be underscored by witnesses of future Zodiac strikes. He was at best 5 feet 10 inches tall, and heavy set. Mageau describes him likewise.
This is The Zodiac. This was his style. He shot Faraday once to the head. He tried that with Mageau but missed. He killed Stine the same way. But he shot or stabbed the women several times. He enjoyed that more.
This is a guy with a kink.
This kink is revealed in detail in the other crimes. The Jensen/Faraday murders were 6 months prior and of the same MO. The Lake Berryessa stabbings of months later were similar in that the female victim was stabbed the most. The cab driver Paul Stine was shot with one bullet to the head. And if we can finally link the Domingos/Edwards double murder of 1963 to The Zodiac, he had begun much earlier. If Zodiac was also Ferrin’s stalker, then he made a terrible mistake in actually killing somebody he knew.
To see if this is probable, we have to delve into that night even deeper.
The legend of Darlene tells us that her behavior that night indicated she knew the guy in the car. Several points are offered to support this: 1, when the car first pulled up, Mike asked her if she knew this guy. All she said was “Oh, never mind” like it was no big deal. (This is correct. Mageau so stated this in the police report.) 2, the strange phone calls of that early morning indicate somebody pretty sick already knew Ferrin was dead. (It is recorded in the Vallejo Police report that Darlene’s father and mother -in-law, Art and Mildred Ferrin, received a phone call at 1:30 a.m. Art Ferrin could hear deep breathing on the other end, but nobody would speak. They reported this to the police on July 7, 1969. Supposedly other family members got this call as well.) Put together, this was enough reason for immediate family to eventually believe in the Zodiac + stalker theory. We cannot blame them. Since we know Zodiac killed her, who else but her killer would know she was dead, and who else but her stalker would know her relatives in order to make calls like this?
This notion must have been smoldering in Vallejo for quite sometime. When in 1977 Vallejo Police got suspicious there really had been a stalker in Dea Ferrin’s life, they started rooting about. Lt. Husted was in charge of the investigation. A name had come to him from a reliable informant. That name was Bill Grant. Husted had even heard, and indeed even placed in his report, that Grant was the one believed to have placed 3 calls to Ferrin/Suennen family members that early a.m. July 5, 1969, including the call to Art and Mildred Ferrin.
Grant was beginning to look good to Husted. Among other points that linked him to Zodiac, he had served in the Air Force during World War II and had 7 months of code training. He matched, to an extent, the composites of The Zodiac, was unemployed during the Zodiac crime spree, and had alcoholic problems.
On June 10, 1977, Husted visited Karen Ellendy, one of Darlene’s babysitters back in 1969. She confirmed that Darlene indeed had had a stalker. Moreover, Karen remembered that Dea had been quite worried about him. Karen even remembered seeing him herself while she was baby sitting at their Wallace Avenue apartment. He had parked his white car on the street in front of Ferrin’s apartment and had just sat there for hours. Dea expressed her dread of the man and said that he was keeping tabs on her because she had seen him murder a man. Karen had said he was middle-aged. Soon after this, she told Husted, she had quit being Ferrin’s baby sitter, apparently due to guilt over keeping it a secret that Dea played around with other guys. Karen remembered that Dea had mentioned his name. It was a short and a common name, but she could not recall it exactly, not even later while under hypnosis.
From what Karen said, it sounded like Husted’s suspect, Bill Grant. Husted already knew that Grant had been identified in Vacaville as stalking another woman there in like manner (sitting outside her apartment, watching her and making unwelcome phone calls).
Dea Ferrin’s family, especially her sisters Pam and Linda, believed that Zodiac had been her stalker. They no doubt talked to Karen and perhaps were even the source that led Husted to her.
Darlene’s sister Pam certainly proved influential on Robert Graysmith. Graysmith, though deserving unbounded praise for preserving critical evidence, incorporated some of the growing “Legend of Darlene Ferrin” into his best-selling book ZODIAC (1986) which reintroduced the old cold case back into the public mind. In this book, he referred to the stalker as Andrew Todd Walker. He was presented as one of the viable suspects. Pam would later insist that Grant was the stalker and, moreover, that he was indeed The Zodiac. However, Pam’s unreliability was not readily apparent until after Graysmith’s bestseller attracted media scrutiny. On the Sally Jessy Raphael Show (1988) she even insisted she was knocked out 2 days before she was to appear. The reason? — to intimidate her from appearing on the show. She has also claimed that she has been sent bullets, a note was sent to her with 187 on it indicating ‘murder in progress’; and she has claimed that she was sent a coffin, which then disappeared. Pam also insisted that Darlene knew Cheri Jo Bates, and that, naturally, she had seen Zodiac murder her and that is the murder to which Dea referred when telling Karen. The police, and almost everybody else (including Graysmith), have washed their hands of Pam.
This leaves us with Karen Ellendy’s statement to the police. She certainly made the stalker sound menacing. But how much of Ferrin’s “dread” was real and how much was just a little adventurous drama? Ferrin enjoyed the whole ambiance of daring James Bond adventure. Her first introduction to the Mageau twins, Mike and Steve, was when Mike told her that he was Warren Beatty and that his brother was wanted by the FBI. Dea immediately smiled and said she’d take care of them. She knew it was rubbish, of course, but she liked that devil-may-care style. This is just only one example of the thrill seeking tall tales crowd Ferrin was a part of. S, too, was also able to tell some lulus herself. When originally looking for suspects in 1969, the police were told by Steve Mageau that once she claimed a man barged into her apartment and warned her he was going to rape her. Steve Mageau, however, told the police that he hadn’t taken her seriously.
Much in the Legend of Darlene Ferrin can be therewith excised from the true aftermath of her murder. But we can’t be over-reactionary and destroy the entire legend. Both Suennen sisters may have identified most anybody under the sun as having been the stalker, but neither wavered in their conviction Dea had a stalker. Thanks to Karen Ellendy we have an independent witnesses confirming she did.
What we are left with are those phone calls to family members that early a.m. July 5, 1969. They are a definite mystery. Collective evidence tells us it was Grant’s style. But it is only the phone calls, a stalker’s MO, that link Bill Grant to being Zodiac because of the implication the caller knew tragic events had happened. No direct evidence places him in a position to have known she had been killed. It is therefore a conundrum unless . . .unless . . .we assume that Grant had been at the parking lot that night.
Did Grant play a bigger part that night than we previously suspected? But in what capacity? There is only one in-keeping with the pungent pastime of stalking. Is it possible that Grant, stalking Dea, pulled up into the parking lot after the teenagers had fled to call the police? Did he stop and gape at the sight and then seized by terror flee to the closest bar and get a load on? In such a drunken state he may have called family members.
Mike Mageau, shot up and bleeding, and laying on the parking lot pavement, has conflicting memories of that night. He insists he was laying on the ground bleeding for hours and that during this time several people came along and wouldn’t help him. This is exaggerated, of course. But it may be that the teens who found him were not the only ones to visit the park, just as Mageau cloudily recalls. Did Grant indeed pull up and then flee?
Establishing belatedly that Dea Ferrin had a stalker does not make the stalker The Zodiac. Supporting the standard view that Zodiac was merely shooting them at random is Mike Mageau’s description of the assailant. He said he was short, about 5 foot 8 inches, and thickset, beefy. He was young, between 26 and 30, and with short curly hair, brown, almost blond. This would fit the reported description of The Zodiac in the Paul Stine murder, expect by this time he had a crewcut.
Nancy Slover, the police operator, would report that the voice that called her that night and took credit for the murder was young sounding. Officer David Slaight at Napa, after the Lake Berryessa stabbing, would also say the voice that called him was young sounding. Bill Grant, Darlene’s suspected stalker, was pushing 50, and there was nothing beefy about him. He was, to be brutally honest, a fat middle-aged sausage-chewing wino.
It is only the Legend of Darlene Ferrin that tells us Dea knew who was in the car that had just pulled up. But in order to support this her last known words have been taken out of context. That very night Mageau, while being treated in the hospital, said they he thought it was a policeman coming up to check on them. He was even getting his i.d. ready. This rather suggests that Darlene’s “Oh, never mind” didn’t carry any inference that she knew the man and thought he was a harmless stalker.
From our vantage point today it is easier to untwine the two strands— Grant and Zodiac— and keep them separate. But in the 1970s and 80s, when the legend began to germinate, that was not entirely possible. Only Robert Graysmith was researching the now cold case. Early-on another rumor seems to have crept about, and Graysmith innocently fell prey to it and would perpetuate it in his 1986 book ZODIAC. In it he detailed the desperate car chase that night between Darlene and Mike, in her Corvair, and another car, to Blue Rock Springs Park.
That the chase is highly dramatic and an unsteady composite of the truth and later embellishment is evident in how the Legend collides unskillfully with known facts. After the harrowing chase, in which Mike is telling Darlene to go this and that way down side streets to avoid the menace behind them, they plow to a stop at Blue Rock Springs parking lot. When the assailant soon pulled up and stopped, Mike whispered to Darlene “Do you know who it is?” To which she replied “Oh, never mind” like it was no big deal. Such words are a comical anticlimax to the harrowing chase. The only truth of this is that such lines were spoken that night.
Unfortunately, Mike Mageau, after over a decade of drugs and alcohol, would fall victim to this revision and support this version of the story, though it completely contradicts what he told the police that night. In a 2007 documentary This is The Zodiac Speaking he even recalled that the stalker/Zodiac’s name was Richard, which seems inspiration from a much later theory that San Francisco bon vivant Richard Gaikowski was The Zodiac and that he was intertwined with Darlene Ferrin somehow. It is true that Mike Mageau told a few contradictory things that night to the police. But these can be traced to his desire to cover up why he and Darlene, a married woman, were going to the park that night.
According to the police report:
He stated that Dea came over at approximately 11:30 or shortly thereafter and picked him up in her car. They were both hungry as they had not had supper and were going to go get something to eat. Stated she was driving vehicle, the Covair they were found in. Stated they drove west on Springs Road and as they were driving down Springs Road to go get something to eat, Dea stated to him that she wanted to talk to him about something. Michael stated that approximately at the location of Mr. Ed’s on Springs Road they turned around and headed east at his suggestion to go to Blue Rock Springs Park where they could talk. They went directly out to this location, pulled the car into the parking lot where it was found by the police. Dea turned the lights and motor off and had the radio playing. States they were there just a very short time, a few minutes, and three cars pulled into the parking lot where they were. They were apparently young kids, and they heard laughing and carrying on and a few firecrackers were set off, then the three vehicles left within a short time. This was just a very short space of time, a few minutes. Shortly after this and about five minutes before the shooting occurred, Michael states a vehicle pulled into the lot, coming from the direction of Springs Road and Vallejo. The driver turned the lights off on the car and pulled around to the left or east of their car, approximately six or eight feet away and sat there for a minute. Michael states he asked Dea if she knew who it was and she stated, “Oh, never mind.”
There is little reason to dispute the body of this statement. While in pain and laying in the hospital ER being treated, Mageau was not in a state to think up such a detailed chain of events and lies. The only thing questionable is that Dea and he made an impromptu trip to the park. Ferrin’s autopsy showed that her stomach was full of undigested food, so we know she had just eaten. They had not been on their way to go eat and then turned around. Dea Ferrin was notorious for being late to everything, but her whereabouts that night are well-documented. She should, in fact, have been out trying to get fireworks right now for a party they were about to throw at her and Dean’s new home at 1300 Virginia Street. Instead she went to pick up Mike. She, too, was late here. He had been waiting the whole evening, as they had prearranged to meet this night, but she was always having to put it back an hour or so.
All legends and popular folklore also inspire those who merely react and recoil and try and do away with all of it. There are those bent and destroying the idea that Ferrin knew Zodiac. In doing so they try to demolish every scintilla of the Legend of Darlene Ferrin, especially the idea that she also had a stalker. Here they mix apples and oranges. Darlene Ferrin does indeed seem to have had a stalker, but there is no evidence to suggest this was Zodiac.
Stalkers really don’t leave evidence in any real sense of the word, so there was little Vallejo Police could do 8 years after-the-fact anyway. Stalking is attested to by witnesses. Harassment is complained about to local authorities. The man is hauled before a judge and threatened with Bedlam if he doesn’t desist. Eight years after-the-fact, there was little for Vallejo Police to investigate. Karen Ellendy said a stalker existed. He appears to have been Grant. Detective Husted did some checking and found out Grant was identified as doing this in Vacaville as well. This is enough to be suspicious that the stalker facet in the Legend of Darlene Ferrin is true. But collation of so much data in the Zodiac crime spree tells us Zodiac is a separate entity.
Because Darlene apparently fostered the notion she had seen her stalker— i.e. Grant — kill somebody, and that this was the reason why she was stalked, part of the legend goes on to say that this murder (not Cheri Jo Bates in this installment) took place in the Virgin Islands when Dea either was living there with her first husband or on vacation with her second, Dean Ferrin. In whichever case, in this installment of the legend there are hints of drug running, police corruption, and murder. The upshot of the whole thing, however, is that Darlene Ferrin was the sole object of a cartel out to silence her. The other murders were just cover up to make it look as if a random, thrill killer was on the loose and she was merely one of his victims.
If anything that a study of The Zodiac reveals to a careful researcher, it is that Zodiac was a rogue and a thrill killer. He was not a hit man. Yes, it is strange that he stopped suddenly and sent very unconvincing letters that he was a terrorist going to strike again. Yes, it is strange that he could change MO so many times. That’s not the norm for serial killers. But the idea that the murders were largely just a ruse to hide the real purpose of the hit man— to kill Ferrin— is utterly ludicrous. If a cartel wanted Ferrin out-of-the-way without the police probing too deeply into her background, they could easily get a hit man to make it look like an accidental death. The Mafia is quite capable of that.
To kill innocent couples and make it look like a crazed serial killer is on the loose only opens up the hit man to greater danger, for in each case he could easily be caught or killed in-the-act. There would also be no need to wear a hood at Lake Berryessa or to strike so far from a quick get-away.
The Lake Berryessa attack invalidates so many of these bizarre conspiracy theories. There was no reason for any killer to wear that theatrical hood since the killer’s intent was to kill his victims. It had some other meaning purely for him, and we were never to know what it was. His victims were never to have survived. No hit man would need to go through all of this.
To this installment of The Zodiac’s game we must now go.
Lake Berryessa 9-27-1969
Due to the fact that Bryan Hartnell survived and has been quite specific in what happened, there is very little error concerning this event.
Those who still rely solely on Robert Graysmith’s first book, ZODIAC, may still have a false impression about what the crime scene looked like. Graysmith suggested that Zodiac walked around the “island” first and then mounted the knoll and hid behind the tree. This would have been impossible, as Hartnell and Shepard were on the steep incline of the “beach.” Zodiac would therefore have had to step almost over them if he walked around the “island.”
There is no credibility to the claim that Cecelia Shepard saw The Zodiac’s face as he was slipping on his hood. This stems from folklore and it has even convinced at least one law officer that she had so stated. She was, in fact, not very lucid while they awaited the ambulance. Along with Archie White and Ronald Fong, Ranger Sgt. Bill White was one of the first to the crime scene. He specifically said in the report, both in the Sheriffs Report by Ken Narlow, and as related by special agent Mel Nicholai, that she said she did not see the assailant’s face due to the fact he wore a hood.
The hood itself is quite problematic. Writing what follows here is not a question of correcting error. It’s a matter of contextualizing effect. Use of the hood has been debated. Since he intended to kill his victims, it obviously was not a message he intended to get to the masses at large, in other words— to us. From this point of view, wearing it was therefore a pointless embellishment. It was not meant for posterity. It meant something to him. It has been suggested that it was to imbue fear into his victims, something that a mere ski mask would not due. This seems unlikely. There is no ambiguity in the meaning of a man wearing a ski mask and pointing a pistol at you. You know exactly that you are in a precarious position. On the other hand, an elaborate hood can create great ambiguity. And this appears to be the case. Bryan Hartnell wasn’t sure what this guy was up to. He didn’t know if this hood was purchased (or stolen) from a costume shop or what. And, indeed, The Zodiac didn’t seem to want to create fear. He went out of his way to calm them. He got excited only when Hartnell kept jabbering on and delaying him. After he stabbed them, he walked away quickly. He seemed brisk to do business and go.
The hood and the Lake Berryessa attack in general throw a kink in many theories trying to proffer a logical, perhaps even prosaic, motive for the killing spree and its unexpected termination.
It has been said that after The Zodiac called Napa Police that he left the phone receiver hanging. In reality, he set it down on the small corner ledge under the pay phone. There is a press photo showing the phone receiver dangling, but that has been attributed to the press reenacting the scene after the forensic man (the redoubtable Sgt. Snook) was finished with his job.
San Francisco (Washington & Cherry) 10-11-1969
Due to the chain of events being so well documented, error is minimal in recital in this, the last and most daring of The Zodiac’s crimes. However, the recital is often very shallow. Due to the reported actions of Zodiac I personally favor the theory that Zodiac killed Paul Stine, the cab driver, at Washington and Maple rather than Washington and Cherry where the cab and body was found. Saying this is not a question of correcting error, but noting details. I’m the chief proponent of that idea for the following reasons. One, the kids across the street at Washington and Cherry heard no gunshot. They come into the picture seeing The Zodiac rifling Stine’s shirt and pants pockets. Then they see him wipe down areas of the driver’s side interior. There is no point in that unless Zodiac seized the steering wheel and carefully guided the cab to Washington and Cherry. If he shot Stine at Washington and Maple, as he himself implies in his letter taking credit, it is but a short block to Washington and Cherry. If anybody at Maple and Washington thought anything of a sound like a gunshot they would make little of it if the cab continued on. After he takes the shirt tail and the wallet, Zodiac must reach over and wipe off his fingerprints around the wheel and the shift.
He does an unexplained thing next. He gets out the passenger side door and then wipes the passenger side door. This is understandable. But then he walked around and wipes down the driver’s side door too. What for? Robert Graysmith suggested that Zodiac had put his hands on the driver’s side door while soliciting the driver. But what is the point? Why leave prints? Just hail a cab and say “Washington and Maple.”
There is another curious bit. Apparently there was no trail of blood from the scene down Cherry to Jackson Street, the path we know The Zodiac took. The dog teams apparently also traced nothing. Officer Don Fouke is unequivocal that he saw Zodiac walking down Jackson, and at the Maple Street corner he turned north toward the Presidio. Yet though Fouke is quite detailed in his description of the man he saw, he did not see any blood. This last point has caused a number of people to question whether Fouke really saw The Zodiac.
Officer Armand Pelissetti, the first SFPD officer on the crime scene, is one of them. He can’t imagine that Fouke would not have seen the large amount of blood that should have been on the killer. Pelissetti was the first to hear from the kids directly as to what the killer was doing inside the cab. Pelissetti saw for himself the horrifying amount of blood in the cab and on the pavement where the dead cab driver’s head wound continue to gush out blood. The kids said that the killer went through the dead cab driver’s pockets while his body was slumped over his lap.
This fact cannot be ignored.
On the other hand, it seems undeniable to me that Fouke saw The Zodiac. He describes the obsolete pleated baggy pants and the dark blue track jacket or Derby. This approximates the same outfit The Zodiac used at Lake Berryessa. This attack of 2 weeks before was far from San Francisco. It is unlikely that anybody in San Francisco had any comprehensive knowledge of Zodiac’s outfit at Lake Berryessa.
Fouke is actually backed-up by none other than The Zodiac. The “Astrological Assassin” had his own take on the events of that night. He tried to muddy the water. In attempting this, he proved Fouke to be right. On November 9, 1969, he mailed what would become one of his most famous letters. It was 9 pages long. On page 3, Zodiac writes something he wants put into the paper. Its purpose was to embarrass all SFPD before the citizens of San Francisco. About 3 minutes after he left the cab, he claims that 2 cops stopped him while he was “walking down the hill” (Jackson Street) to the park (see letter). Jackson and Maple is indeed 3 minutes walking time away from the crime scene. Zodiac unwittingly corroborates Fouke’s statement that he is the man seen walking here at Jackson & Maple and not an innocent passerby. It cannot be coincidence that Zodiac says he encountered the 2 cops only 3 minutes after leaving the crime scene and that this coincides with the spot on Jackson and Maple where Fouke saw the man walking.
It is reasonable to assume, at least for argument sake, that this is the first time SFPD heard anything about direct contact between police officers and Zodiac that night. Had Homicide heard earlier than this there had been direct communication, one would imagine they would seek out Fouke and Zelms in order to get a description. However, Homicide never did.
Rather it was Fouke that contacted Homicide. Only a couple of days later, the police composite of The Zodiac would come out at the nearby Richmond Station. Fouke saw it and realized it resembled the man he had seen. On November 12, 1969, he wrote his “scratch,” which is basically an interdepartmental statement, and sent it to David Toschi at Homicide. He described the events of that night and of seeing the suspect. Toschi visited him. Fouke adds a few more details, including that the brown pants were pleated, and he said The Zodiac was heavier and older.
However, Fouke made no mention that they stopped and talked to the suspect. But why should we believe Zodiac over Fouke? The entire tenor of Zodiac’s letter is to do what he openly says— “rile” the “blue pigs.” Yet in doing so, Zodiac has only unwittingly confirmed that he is the only one whom Fouke could have seen. It’s hardly surprising that a serial killer turns out to be a liar as well.
Nevertheless, controversy would come later. According to Armand Pelissetti, Fouke did indeed later tell him that they stopped the man and asked him if he had seen anybody suspicious. Fouke unequivocally denies they ever stopped anybody. Here Fouke seems better served by his memory than Pelissetti. Fouke and Zelms could hardly have failed to see the blood on Zodiac had they stopped and called him over as he claims.
Believing the latter bit as well, Pelissetti believes that Fouke just stopped an innocent passerby. This is impossible, however. Due to the Zodiac’s stunt to try and embarrass SFPD on page 3 of his letter, we know he had to be the man Fouke saw. Unintentionally, Zodiac has added support to Fouke’s “scratch.” Had Zodiac never tried this stunt, many in SFPD, beyond Pelissetti, might have seriously questioned whether Fouke just saw some local.
The answer to the bone of contention seems obvious. They could not have stopped and talked to Zodiac, for they would have seen the copious amount of blood on him. If they had stopped and talked to a mere by-passer, Zodiac would not be able to report that at the same time he saw 2 cops while walking “down the hill” in order to capitalize on it in his letter.
Yet time has convoluted many memories. In a 2007 interview, Fouke insisted that after seeing Zodiac that he and Zelms proceeded to the crime scene. There he was told by Pelissetti that the suspect was not a black male adult, as previously broadcast to all units, but a white male adult. At that moment Fouke realized he had seen the suspect. He cursed and drove off with Zelms to go search.
Pelissetti said that Fouke mentioned nothing to him about seeing a suspect at that time. Whether he did or not, it doesn’t seem relevant anymore. Fouke and Zelms most certainly told HQ, for no one else but them could have set into motion the actual events of that night. SFPD boiled into the Presidio and into Julius Kahn Playground nearby in hopes of catching the killer. They would not have done this unless they had been informed that the suspect was seen heading that way. Officer Fouke is the only one who could have said this, since Pelissetti never saw the suspect and was busy securing the crime scene and then checking the immediate vicinity for the suspect.
This chain of events is supported in a much earlier interview (1980s). In this interview Fouke does not mention going to the crime scene at all. Rather, he said that they they passed the man (Zodiac) on Jackson, they continued on up to Arguello Street. Here the broadcast came over that the suspect was not black but a white male adult. It is then that Fouke and Zelms realized they may have seen the suspect. They turned into the Presidio (down West Pacific) and searched on the other site of the wall that divides Presidio Heights and the Presidio. Here they contacted headquarters and mentioned a suspect was seen and that he might have gone into Julius Kahn Playground.
I believe Don Fouke was honest in his report, and that his details were correct. But there is that one missing detail. Both Pelissetti and Fouke would later say (in 2007) that Fouke pulled up to the crime scene first. This is very significant. Did it give The Zodiac time to get down to Spruce? There is no entrance to the Presidio along Maple. He may only have turned down the street when he saw the police coming. If Fouke and Zelms headed straight for Arguello there would be no time for Zodiac to get down another block and then walk down to West Pacific, get in his parked car and drive off toward the Lombard exit before Fouke and Zelms came cruising West Pacific. There may have been time if Fouke went to the crime scene first. It all depends on how much time he took getting the scoop from Pelissetti.
Now, with all that blood on him, it seems unlikely Zodiac could have jumped the wall at Maple and made it to West Pacific without leaving a trail any dog could follow. However, the problem here is that Fouke reported seeing a suspect go into the Presidio. There is nothing that says he said Maple Street until a month later when he wrote his ‘scratch.’ Therefore I do not know if Maple was searched by a dog team that night.
Fouke’s report became a point of contention only years later. Memories were now clouded. But Pelissetti does raise a valid point. Fouke’s description is quite detailed. Why did he not see blood? Is this a mistake on Fouke’s part or a clue? How could Zodiac not have blood all over himself? Instead of doubting Fouke, should we not rather also wonder why 7 bloodhound teams never traced Zodiac or found any trail of blood? Perhaps he didn’t have blood on him. If so, this is a major clue.
In a notorious slip of memory, in 2007 Fouke said that he had actually seen Zodiac turn and, instead of going north on Maple, he went up the stairs leading to one of the affluent homes on Jackson. For the first time ever, he declared that address on a TV documentary, the producer naturally later having it blipped out in editing. But for those of us who took the criminology class “Lip Reading During Emotionally Tense Moments,” we all understood it.
This is disastrously compromising, of course. Nowhere in his original “scratch” did he write this. He wrote the suspect turned north onto Maple. This is, once again, supported by what SFPD did that night— they finetooth-combed the Presidio. If he had mentioned that address, they would have surrounded the house.
We should take officer Fouke scratch as accurate, not 40-year-old memories anymore.
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