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Johns, yes, the Kathleen Johns “incident,” as it is frequently called. It’s a notorious incident that has become a part of the Zodiac legend or, more accurately perhaps, folklore. And folklore, as always, stems from uncritical chronicling rather than investigating and analyzing. Even a cursory investigation of this incident it should have caused it to be dismissed early-on as relating to anything genuinely Zodiac in nature.
In order to recap the incident’s preliminaries briefly, I will borrow from various versions of the story, for indeed there are a few. To begin: on March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns, a young mother, was driving from San Bernadino, California, to her mother’s home in Petaluma, California, a small community in the northern reaches of the Bay Area. She had her 10 month old baby girl Jennifer with her. She drove up Highway 99, probably for added safety. She was driving an old 1957 Chevy station wagon. She knew she would be driving at night, and 99 is an old highway that goes through all the central California towns, so there is never that much isolated road. Interstate 5 was a big deal, and remains California’s No. 1 artery north and south to this day, but it cuts through the heart of the farming belt, and its off-ramps, few and far between, go to small state highways that are little better than country roads. Connected with them is a web of small roads that service the miles and miles of flatland orchards and crop fields. This is not a place where you want your car to break down, day or night.
It was not unusual therefore that she picked 99. However, 99 will eventually pass through Sacramento and continue on north to Oregon. The best way to get to San Francisco would be to take one of the linking country highways over, which she indeed did.
At Modesto, she turned onto one of these highways, 132 by designation number. This headed west. Like all the small highways in central California it eventually crossed the new Interstate 5. Her intention was to go just beyond this to 580, a highway that went up to the Bay Area. (At this time it was still known as the 5 West, which followed old highway 50).
It was now late at night. Soon after turning onto 132 West, a car followed her. It was brownish in color, and that’s about it so far as she could tell. As she neared 5 the car started flashing its lights. She refused to stop. She continued on. Finally the car sped passed her. She had just passed under the I-5 overpass (known then as 5 East) and decided to pull over and see just what might be wrong. It was now about 11:45 p.m.
Up ahead the car that had been hounding her also stopped. Then it backed up. When abreast her, the man behind the wheel told her her left rear wheel was wobbling. He produced a tire wrench and gratuitously tightened it for her. As soon as he was done, he hopped back in his car and started off. She didn’t even get a chance to truly thank him. She turned over the ignition and drove ahead. She had barely gone a couple of car paces when her car collapsed. The back tired had fallen of!
The man backed his car up again (or did a U-turn). He was surprised that it was worse than he had thought. He offered to give her and her baby a lift. There was an ARCO up ahead, well-lighted at night. It had a tall metal sign, like the mast on a ship, with its revolving ARCO emblem at the pinnacle. It was visible for a couple of miles.
Johns accepted. She got her baby and hopped in. The man drove off. It wasn’t far to the ARCO. But then he passed it. She didn’t think much of it. But now he drove her through the town of Tracy and passed more stations. She started to get nervous. Then he headed back into the dark, lonely late night roads. She finally asked him if he helped many people like this, to which he responded “When I get through with them they don’t need much help” or words to that effect.
To condense the story, it is best to merely say she eventually flipped. After he had driven her around for about an hour and a half, he went up an off ramp by mistake and therefore had to fully stop in order to back up (he only did California stops before that). She bolted from the car with Jenny and ran into a dark field and hid. The man did not pursue her. He closed the door and drove off. A truck was pulling up anyway. The driver got out, apparently shouting first at the man for stopping in the road; then checking about to see what was up. Johns eventually came out but refused to ride with him until a woman came along.
The upshot was that others finally came along and she was driven into Patterson, California, a small town about 30 minutes south of 132. Her escapade with the “kidnapper” had lasted about 2 hours. She was dropped off by the police station at 2:30 a.m. March 23. Her ordeal was finally over. An older sergeant, Charles McNatt, was on duty and tried to make heads and tails out of her story.
Preliminarily, McNatt listed this as a kidnapping. But not much was made of it right away. McNatt did not even get the names of those who dropped her off, nor the location of where they had found her. Johns, too, was clueless; and she was, to use McNatt’s own word, hysterical. It seems Johns was now certain the man had removed all her lug nuts and intentionally sabotaged her car so her wheel would fall off.
Obviously, she had been through a bad experience. McNatt was trying to get the story out of her as understandingly as he could. Then she saw the wanted poster on the wall of the infamous San Francisco ZODIAC. She cried that was her abductor. That’s what he looked like. She didn’t know who it was, but then McNatt told her— The ZODIAC serial killer. She absolutely freaked and McNatt had to try and calm her. (The description of her “kidnapper” would eventually be: about 30 years old, 5 foot 9 inches in height, about 160 pounds, dark brown hair, crew cut, and he wore thick rimmed glasses. His pants were dark bell bottoms. He wore a dark ski jacket.)
This now became quite serious. In March 1970, the ZODIAC case was very much alive. He hadn’t been proved to have killed anybody since the cab driver Paul Stine last October, but his letters continued to warn of what he could do.
Adding to the sinister element the case had now taken on, Stanislaus County sheriffs found Johns’ station wagon gutted by fire. An element of mystery was added. Supposedly it was found a couple of miles from where she had left it. It was towed off to nearby Tracy.
The incident naturally got a lot of press because The ZODIAC’s name was raised. About 4 months after the incident, The ZODIAC himself took the credit for it in a letter to the San Fran Chronicle.
The Johns’ case thus became that of a frightening kidnapping, and Johns was credited as having survived being an intended victim of The ZODIAC. Because of ZODIAC’s letter, the San Francisco Chronicle would later print an article with an interview with Johns and elaborate with chilling dialogue. Now she claimed her kidnapper had repeatedly said “You know you are going to die, don’t you?” and “I’m going to kill you.”
The legend that has come down to us afterward is that of a spooky, lonely midnight rural road with The ZODIAC stalking about waiting for a victim. This he found in Kathleen Johns. He lured her to stop by blinking his lights and then telling her her car wheel was wobbling. Then in the guise of being a Good Samaritan, he removed and pocketed all the lug nuts so her wheel would fall off. Now, like a spider, he had his prey in his web. He took his intended victim on a long, terrifying ride, thrilled at her every gasp as he detailed how he was going to kill her. But Johns escaped the harrowing ordeal. The burned-out car was a final release of his frustration at not having been able to kill her. He even added mystery to the whole affair by moving her car a couple of miles away from where she reported she had pulled over, and there he set it on fire with fiendish glee.
Is this the truth? To decide we have to start with The ZODIAC’s supposed involvement. His claim doesn’t mean much. By this time he was making many claims, and none of them could be substantiated. His claim here actually appears to be one of his worst mistakes. For one, Johns clearly described the weight of her “kidnapper” as 160 pounds. She stuck to this even years later. If anything was set in stone about ZODIAC it was that he was a heavy-set man. He had not lost 70 pounds since October. Because of the impression of his shoe print at Lake Berryessa, the police there speculated he was at least 210 pounds in weight. However, from the looks of the wanted poster one would think The ZODIAC a fairly skinny man, but in truth he was not. It also doesn’t seem he necessarily wore glasses either. He was seen wearing them at Washington and Cherry the night he killed Stine, but neither Mageau or Hartnell mention glasses, nor the 3 girls at Lake Berryessa who later thought the man they saw stalking the area was The ZODIAC.
The man Johns describes was simply not The ZODIAC.
This is underscored when trying to unravel the truth from the other claims Johns made for that night. She turns out to be a highly unreliable and even variable source, and this casts much suspicion on her claims The ZODIAC kidnapped her. There was very little investigation at the time, but there was enough from the various law enforcement authorities involved for one to pick out their mistakes from hers. Most of the convolution actually stems from Johns, not from the various police officers involved.
Yet the mistakes, which we soon must tackle, are nothing compared to the legend that evolved even later, and in this we see how variable or manipulated Johns’ memory could be. This legend would blossom with the renaissance of The ZODIAC Case in 1986. Robert Graysmith was, amazingly, the first to write a book on the famous serial killings, and his Zodiac hit at the right time to ignite interest in a nation curious about the details of the now-18 year old unsolved crime spree and its once-famous and mysterious boaster. Graysmith, however, chronicled more than he investigated. And, unfortunately, on several occasions he proved to be quite “honesty challenged.”
Graysmith accepted the legend that Johns’ car was found torched a couple of miles from where she had pulled over. This legend actually stems from the Patterson police report by McNatt. He had contacted the Stanislaus sheriff’s department, since he knew the car had been left in the county, which was their jurisdiction. Jim Lovett, Stanislaus County sheriff detective, visited Patterson and went from there to find Johns’ car. According to McNatt, Lovett found it on Maze Blvd, which was about 2 miles east of I-5. In Kathleen Johns’ interview with Graysmith, she says the message came in that it was found on “this other road.” Graysmith’s lack of investigation is evident in that he did not clarify that Maze Blvd is Highway 132. Highway 132 carries the name Maze Blvd all the way from Modesto to McCracken Road, just a few miles before the I-5 overpass. Here it becomes known as Vernalis Road.
Granted Johns must have said any number of confusing things that very night while hysterical, but reading a collation of the various reports, or just by speaking with a few of the police involved, would easily have diffused this notion. San Joaquin County sheriffs (deputies Bauer and/or Ambrose) confirmed they found her smoldering car at Bird Road, just west of I-5 on 132 (that area of 132 is in their jurisdiction). They, in turn, talked straight to Mr. Reed of Reed & Sons Towing, who in turn stated plainly he picked the car up just east of Bird Road. There should be no question that Reed is correct about the location. One of the first papers to report the incident, the Modesto Bee, concluded its article: “Authorities later this morning encountered another curious happening, about which they have not yet theorized: Mrs. Johns’ car was found totally burned at Byrd Road [sic] and Highway 132, near where she thinks she stopped when her wheel fell off.” The ZODIAC himself said as much in his letter, (“which ended in my burning her car where I found them”) which showed he merely followed the earliest press reports. The Chronicle and Graysmith did not even do this much research.
But suffice it to say the location of Johns’ car was confirmed by more than one source, including Johns herself, soon after the incident. She would maintain this in interviews years later, including Graysmith (Zodiac, 1986), saying she waited to pull over until she was at the I-5 and 132 area. She said she could see the ARCO. And, indeed, from Bird Road one can see the ARCO station at a distance. From about 3 miles east of I-5 at Maze Blvd one cannot even see I-5 let alone the ARCO a couple of miles or so beyond that. Maze Blvd was simply Lovett’s mistake. Her car had not been moved from Maze to Bird nor vice versa. It was found where she had pulled over.
(Driving the Johns Incident Video)
This really should not surprise us. Folklore, as always, has a kernel of truth, but its details are always impossible. Logistically, it is impossible in the time frame allowed before the car was found for The ZODIAC (or anybody) to have moved the car. It would require that he park at 132 where it is still named Maze Blvd, walk almost 3 miles in the dead of night to Bird Road (with a car jack, no less), service her car, drive it back to Maze, torch it, then drive off in his own car, all the time being lucky his own car had not been tagged by the sheriffs as it sat there unattended on a busy highway. How long would all this take?
Not only is the legend impossible, Johns made many mistakes in her retelling of the events that prove damning to her own initial story let alone the legend she later adopted. One very significant one is that she said when she escaped from “The ZODIAC” into the fields she plainly described them as vineyards (Graysmith). The only vineyards around 132 are at Bird Road. They are still there today. The only thing Johns has ever been able to clearly describe is the immediate area of where she initially stopped. No other place.
As we progress further into investigating the incident, not only does it become obvious that The ZODIAC was not her abductor, but it becomes all too suspicious that the event never happened as she described it. For one, Reed states the wheel was not off the car at all when he found it. The right rear wheel, not left, was held on by only two lugs, and he didn’t feel this was safe, so he took 2 from the front and tightened them on before towing. Ambrose or Bauer was told straight out by Reed that the right wheel had been the loose one, and indeed one or the other checked and noticed only one tight nut, one loose, and the other 3 missing. It doesn’t seem that Johns threw a wheel at all. She did seem to have thrown a hubcap, which was found in the general area later. And she hadn’t lost it from the left side, for if that were the case the hubcap would have careened into the road. She lost it from the rear right, and the cap was naturally found out by the vineyard.
There are so many inexcusable inaccuracies that there is little reason to trust any of Johns’ account. For another example, while in the Patterson police station Johns had apparently told McNatt that the incident occurred on I-5, which is how he reported it. Johns would contradict this later, and admit it happened on 132 at the I-5 area. The Stanislaus County Sheriff’s report is incomplete, but it (apparently Lovett) states correctly that Johns said she stopped in the area of 132 and 5. In their report she is also stated as saying that her left wheel had fallen off. After she got out to check it, she saw it had been held on by only one lug nut. She clearly had some memory problems. But the rear wheel, whether left or right, had also not fallen off.
In order to maintain some fraction of the legend, it might be nice to think that her nefarious abductor, whoever it was, had returned to the car after she escaped nearby and then proceeded to replace the left wheel and then loosen the right just to make her look more unreliable. In this way he protects himself should this escalate to a dragnet for him. Then he torches the car to incriminate her.
But that simply is not the case. Johns is too incoherent for one to believe much of her account. Various jurisdictions convoluted it, but Johns was not very clear. When she was, there still remain many improbables to her ever-evolving story. Originally, according to Johns, the “kidnapper” drove into the ARCO, but they discovered it was closed so they continued on to Tracy. In her later interview with Graysmith, she said that the driver merely passed it and she thought nothing of it. In Ambrose/Bauer’s report, Johns’ had admitted that most of the “driving about” seems to have happened in Tracy. Johns even said that the driver told her they were in Tracy. She asked why he wouldn’t stop at this station or that station when they passed one. He said they weren’t the right ones.
In the Chronicle interview she then says that he began to tell her she was going to die. However, no law authority had ever heard that at the time. No contemporary report carries that. None of the law officers involved were even sure this was a kidnapping. San Joaquin county sheriffs (Ambrose and Bauer) underscore this in their report:
“According to Deputy LOVETT, at no time did Mrs. Johns say that she asked the suspect to let her out of the vehicle nor did she want him to stop and let her go. Undersigned [Ambrose] is not sure if this man actually forced her to staying. By her statement given to deputy LOVETT she was scared of the suspect but whether she was actually forced to stay in the vehicle and go with [sic, where] this suspect wanted her to is doubtful and not understood at this time whether this is a kidnap.”
Perhaps the truth of it was that she was picked up by a man. The gas station was closed, like she said. He drove her into Tracy, and couldn’t find help. Perhaps she freaked out. Perhaps he drove her back off into the rural dark roads to get her back. Maybe that’s all there was to it. He dumped her and sped off.
What is remarkable is that she ended up back at 132, for she apparently told either McNatt or Lovett that this is where she was picked up by people from Missouri. From there they took her to Westly, and from there to Patterson (which is actually hell and gone from 132). Thus she ended up south of 132.
One interesting thing is that the keys to the station wagon were never found. Lovett or Ambrose tried to find them. Reed admitted that a man and woman came on the 23rd to his station and asked to look at the car. He offered that they might have taken the keys. He was unaware. He assumed they were the owners.
What to make of all this? For one, as I’ve stated, the perpetrator or “kidnapper” wasn’t The ZODIAC. Johns clearly describes somebody else. As it relates to Zodiac, this case should have been dropped a long time ago. From minute one she had given conflicting accounts. The only area she ever describes is the area where her car was found, by the vineyards. It is definite that her car was not found a couple of miles from where she herself admits to pulling over. That was a mistake in only one report. Ambrose and Reed make it plain it was by the vineyards at Bird Road. It is quite suspicious that she escapes back around Highway 132, which is miles south of Tracy; that those who pick her up at 2: a.m. should be from out-of-state; that they take her southeast to Patterson and drop her off and remain anonymous.
Captain Roy Conway, of the Vallejo Police, in assessing The ZODIAC Case years later, said of The Johns Incident: “I’m at kind of a loss as how to explain it, but I don’t believe that what she described even happened, let alone that the Zodiac did it.”
I agree. The truth remains the truth, but lies always change. The only facts we do have are that Kathleen Johns appeared in Patterson, and that her car was found torched miles to the north by I-5 on 132 at Bird Road . . .and, worst, that a very uncritical media has continued to feed on the story even after her death.
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