Chasing the Zodiac, Part II: The anniversary of the Lake Herman Road murders

Mt. Diablo, from the scene of Zodiac's first attack.  
Click for larger image    © Pseudocognitive

Originally posted on December 20, 2010

I wrote the following report after visiting the scene on the 40th anniversary in 2008 and amended it the following September. This report holds no new information of interest to anyone who’s followed the Zodiac murders with any significant level of attention over the last several years.  It’s simply a description of my own experiences visiting one of the crime scenes.  This is the second part of a series on Zodiac (read Part 1 first). The sequence of these two reports is opposite the order of the actual crimes because this is the order in which I visited the scenes. Before I begin, allow me to restate in no uncertain terms that this tale in no way seeks to celebrate the acts of such a depraved waste of oxygen as the Zodiac killer, nor is it an obsessive or misguided attempt to "investigate" the crimes.

My brother and I set out early on the morning of the 40th anniversary of the first murders that can be indisputably linked to Zodiac. We planned to get over to the site, take a few pictures, and be gone before the crowds who take this stuff far more seriously started showing up. I exclude myself from the ranks of the truly obsessed because my case is one of mild and intermittent manifestation. Almost all of my doctors (and most of the time, my wife) agree with that assessment. Once again, however, I warn you that this kind of thing isn’t for everyone, and I am fully aware of the fact that some of you may find it rather bizarre that a person who’s been drawing breath for over half a century spends any time at all visiting a site of an infamous crime. All I will say in my own defense is that I know it’s a bit strange, but I only have a high degree of interest for this specific case (for reasons described in the first installment of this series), and I do not allow this mild obsession to interfere with real life. Still, I’ll grant you, it is offbeat.

Enough already with the apologetic tone. Stop watching Hollywood movies that depict such things. Put down your true crime novels. Turn off those shows on A&E like “The First 48.” Sell your Stephen King books at a garage sale. Then tell me I’m weird.

On the frigid night of December 20, 1968, Zodiac killed high school sweethearts David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen in a little dirt turn-out on Lake Herman Road, about 2/3 of the way from Vallejo to Benicia.

Faraday

Jensen

Zodiac approached the victims–who were seated in David Faraday’s car–on foot. He shot and killed both young people, and the crime provoked intense media attention from the start. You can Google this and get tons of hits, so I won't chronicle all the details. All you really need to know is that on a dark, cold winter night 40 years ago, a psychopath murdered two young people on a lonely road.

Faraday's Rambler - zodiackiller.com

That road and the surrounding countryside have changed little since 1968. No development has occurred along that stretch, and some of the original ranch houses stand exactly as they did before. The turn-out where the victims parked in David Faraday’s Rambler is also pretty much the same, save for the addition of a guard rail, a few traffic warning signs, and a new gate across the gravel road that leads to an undisclosed location. Pictured above is the scene in 1968, the morning after the murders.  Note the location of the victim vehicle.

Same place, 40 years later (12/20/08).  © Pseudocognitive

Rambler had been parked near where the motorcycles are.
Click for larger image    © Pseudocognitive

Detective Les Lundblad at the crime scene the next day.  zodiackiller.com

Much has been written about this case over the years.  Some of it is solid reporting that excludes or at least limits any groundless speculation, but a lot of it is sensationalistic tripe.  Given the choice between a simple explanation and one so convoluted that it may attract the attention of a former practitioner of editorial cartoonerism and prompt him to write a yellow-jacketed book that will sell millions and millions of copies despite its many factual errors and outright fabrications, I choose the former. That is, unless and until I write my own book, at which time I might decide to shift strata a bit, since nobody buys books that promote reason and judgment. Here’s one explanation for why Zodiac chose this particular crime scene (besides the obvious reasons that the road is dark and semi-secluded and young people in the area were known to park at night in its turn-outs): Supposedly, Zodiac had a fascination with Montaña del Diablo, and that very place is readily visible from the Lake Herman Road site. Somebody came up with the idea that this symbol,

which Zodiac drew on his famous Halloween card to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery,            

matches up with the profile of  Mt.Diablo. Let’s check:

© Pseudocognitive

So much for that.  Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

We spent about thirty minutes at the site, taking pictures and observing sullen, muddy horses walk back and forth in the pasture on the other side of the road.  

We left the Faraday/Jensen site shortly thereafter and rode over to Fresno Street in Vallejo, stopping by the house once owned by the man whom many still consider to be the best suspect among those identified as potential Zodiacs, Arthur Leigh Allen. Whereas Graysmith’s second Zodiac book, “Zodiac Unmasked,” and the 2007 film “Zodiac” portray Allen

as the guy, there’s no physical evidence linking him to any of the crimes.
In fact, his DNA did not match that which was found on one of the stamps stuck on a confirmed Zodiac letter. Still, there are intriguing facts that seem to point to him. His status as a potential Zodiac notwithstanding, Allen, who claimed that law enforcement hounded him mercilessly and who died of natural causes over a decade ago, was a very bad guy. The crimes for which he was imprisoned were sufficiently heinous to dissuade us from having any sympathy for him whatsoever. In other words, the world’s a better place without him.

I didn’t want to bother the current occupants of the house, so I parked very briefly in front and took a couple of photos. These do not appear here. As I was framing the  final shot, my brother advised me that someone was peering out at me, and I observed what appeared to be a brindle pit bull of placid affect silently watching through a big picture window. At that point I began to feel guilty for intruding, so I packed away my camera, put on my helmet and gloves and rode off down the street, expecting that my brother was on his way as well. He did not follow, however. I figured he was writing in that little memo book he carries, the one in which he has recorded every last drop of petrol he’s fed the red and chrome Triumph Rocket III beast, so I stopped and waited. What he was actually doing was talking to the owner of the house, who had come out to move his car down the street in order to produce a less cluttered photographic milieu.

That’s the sequel. I am not proud of stopping in front of dead Allen’s ex-house (I must take steps to ensure that act will serve as the absolute limit of my obsession), for, although I was there for only three or four minutes, I know exactly how I would respond if someone stopped on the street and began taking pictures of my house. I wouldn’t move my car to give the photographer a better view, that’s for sure. I suppose the guy figured that it goes with the territory of living in a home once occupied by a man suspected of being the Zodiac killer, and he didn’t seem bothered by any of it, so no harm, no foul, I reckon.

After we finished in Vallejo, city of one cop for every 100,000 residents, we dodged 4-wheeled bullets on I-80 to Fairfield, ate some tasty giant cheeseburgers at Nation’s on West Texas Street, and then slabbed on home to beat the cold. I still feel somethin’ in my marrow, though, and it ain’t exactly warm.

•    •    •

Update: Ten months later
The number nine is or is not important in Zodiac symbology, according to one or two things I may or may not have read. That made September 19th a perfect day to lose my ambitions for a longer ride to the coast (instead of allowing people to believe that I simply lacked the endurance for a longer trip due to my characteristic idiopathic slackerdom) and instead revisit one of the sites covered in previous reports. And to try out the new Nikon D5000, which had languished in its box, unexamined, ever since the big brown truck delivered it the week before. And because a major national travel magazine had expressed interest in paying me to write a series of hastily written semi-factual articles. The preceding statement is not true.

There was nothing of interest to be found at the Berryessa Zodiac site, which was expected yet still disappointing, especially after I had gone through the trouble of persuading the friendly personnel staffing the gate to the camping area to let us in for free. The only item of note is that the place heretofore referred to as Zodiac Island is now a campsite. There’s a picnic table and BBQ pit right there at the scene of Zodiac's attack on 9/27/69. No replacement trees, 90-something degrees. Water level dropping to near subterranean levels. It was not an attractive place to set up camp. I will not show you any pictures of this place because it is now so utterly devoid of interest. Also on account of the fact that, in my usual state of impatience-inspired idiocy, I forgot to change the factory default setting for JPEG quality on the D5000 and everything was shot at “Normal” instead of “Fine.” And because my efforts were not very productive that day anyway. I make no excuses. Except for the idiopathic malaise, ADD, and the heat. And a creeping sense of dread, because the next day was Monday Eve.

There’s no new Zodiac info in this addendum to the sequel to the report on Zodiac. That’s due partly to the fact that I have already explored the Zodiac deal to the point where there’s very little left to interest me, and mostly because the only reason I’m posting at all is to tell you that the best rib eye steak I have ever eaten is available a short distance south of Zodiac Island at Cucina Italiana. With pepper sauce, made with whole black peppercorns. And roasted fennel on the side, and all of the bread and really excellent Balsamic dipping stuff you want. Want to know just how good it really is? I’m sitting there, with my D5000 in the saddle bag just outside the window, and some guy comes in and says, “Stefano, I got a buck, dude! Come out and see it!!!” As the guy with the old “Good Chevrolet, Sacramento” license plate frame and Chef Stefano go out front, I’m thinking about the cool shots I could compose if I could talk the hunter into taking the deer out of the truck and propping him up on the seat of the Rocket III while my brother lies inert under the front wheel of the red behemoth. I’m starting to get motivated to put some effort into picture-takin’, but then I look back down at that rib eye and decide that nothing is gonna pry me away from it. It was that good.

With just the right level of attentiveness from Chef Stefano and his business partner Sharyn, we continued our excellent dining experience. I am telling you, I have never been disappointed by anything I have eaten at Cucina Italiana. Let the crotch-rocket riders patronize those places farther south and east—all they need is bread, sandwich meat, and beer and then they’re off on their next double-yellow scofflaw Team Berryessa adventure, like a flock of angry, buzzing mosquitoes. You want real food? Go see Chef Stefano.

On the ride home we gassed up the bikes and then observed the strange behavior of locals and travelers at the Chevron station at the east end of Winters. It is not rumored that this place has some significant connection with Zodiac lore. I just missed an opportunity to get a shot or two of Winters PD in the process stopping a red car with two occupants, but they were past my vantage point before I could raise the camera. All I have to show for my efforts is an unprintable snapshot of the physical environment. There was a dire warning inside the gas station, though:

© Pseudocognitive

And that’s the word.¹

¹Apologies to S. Colbert.

© Pseudocognitive

RELATED POSTS: The Zodiac Killer on the pages of Pseudocognitive

For detailed information about all of the Zodiac crimes, I recommend Tom Voigt’s ZodiacKiller.com. The discussion forum can be over the top at times and is best sampled as an entertained observer, but the information on the main site is extensive and well-organized.






.
© Pseudocognitive  

Mob captain's severed head found - Zodiac Killer involved?

– Wed. Dec. 28, 2011 5:57 am Winters, CA (AP) –
The severed head of reputed mob captain Ralph “Ralphie” Cifaretto was found in a steel drum behind a gas station in this sleepy northern California farm town earlier today by seekers of Richard Brautigan’s unique insights into the road habits of sheep. Police refused to speculate on Cifaretto’s viability as a Zodiac Killer suspect except to say that Ralphie would have been 17 at the time of the first Zodiac murders. Zodiac Internet “investigators” were not deterred, but they are some crazy motherfuckers.

Editor's Note: Please understand that the term "crazy motherfuckers" as applied here is not an insult, nor does it necessarily imply actual craziness. For one thing, "crazy" is not a medical term. Neither is "insane" (it's a legal term). Second, we too are crazy motherfuckers, each in our own way. We obsess on millionaires who wouldn't give us the time of day as they throw, carry, and kick a pigskin around a grass field, for example. All of us have our little obsessions, and as long as they harm no one and don't rule our lives, who are we to judge someone else for being a slightly different type of crazy motherfucker than we are? You'd do well to heed this advice: Judge ye not other crazy motherfuckers. Keepeth your own shit in line.

© Pseudocognitive

Part V: The Zodiac Killer is born. Self esteem in 1968. Good fishermen don’t steal from the dead.

There’s a gate here, but it’s not the original. Sturdy steel, clad in chipped yellow paint, it serves as the latest in a decades-old succession of useless structures designed to warn you that someone wants you to go back the way you came, but doesn’t feel strongly enough to do something serious about it. If you climb over the gate, or squeeze between its horizontal bars, or go around it to the left or the right (be careful of small dead mammals and used condoms and nails and rusty sheet metal screws and broken glass, and ticks who wait and wait, desperately clinging to the ends of quivering stalks on the off-chance that you’ll be their one true blood meal)--if you keep going and take this road, well then, you’re probably a damned idiot and I shouldn’t care what mess you find yourself in. I’ll warn you anyway, though, because I cannot bear to see a person run afoul of badness.


The road is made of dirt and gravel, and it runs south from the little turn-out on Lake Herman Road where Zodiac claimed his first victims in the cold waning minutes of Autumn in 1968. There are many stories about what might wait for you down this road, and most of them are as authentic as Carol Doda’s breasts. That is, they contain a lot of artificial filling, but are held in place by just enough truth to get the job done. It is within this zone of jiggling, fleshy semi-reality that we must complete our examination of Zodiac’s motives for his heinous acts. This little dirt road on the outskirts of Benicia is a good place to do it, but first you have to get here.

Click for larger image

We pick up the thread of the non-redacted and empirically deficient Zodiac Killer profile and pseudo-history where we left it: August 30, 1968. Zodiac was on that day some 43 crow-flyin’ miles to the northeast, enduring a blistering 106 degree afternoon mowing his cousin’s lawn-bowling court under an unforgiving Sacramento sun. It was the only work he could get after breaking nearly all of his fingers in a martial arts zydeco competition the month before. Before the day was out, Zodiac would adopt his now famous moniker for the first time, and to this day his cousin Biff wonders if perhaps he was the one who unwittingly set the whole thing in motion.

Zodiac left the River City determined to lighten his mood. Cousin Biff's self esteem was always sore, like it had just finished passing a stool of large caliber and insufficient moisture content. Biff never acknowledged this, since no one in 1968 even knew what self esteem was. On this occasion, he’d taken that permanently negative head-state and turned it on Zodiac, castigating him repeatedly for his unfamiliarity with power lawnmowers. Zodiac had been raised on the high plains of the Dakotas and knew only of the scythe and the goat as methods of grass management. He endured Biff’s taunts for as long as he could, then made as if to kill him with his boning knife. Biff fled to the neighbors’, and Zodiac took his car, a fine, ten year old glossy black Cadillac.

Zodiac drove that car in a style of wild, anti-cognitive abandon, later  employed by Charlie Sheen as he piloted the craft that carried his boss, Mike Huckabee, to little country grocery stores and juke joints all across the south. This whip was a mighty fine automobile, and its twin dorsal fins cleaved the hot, dry air like glistening machetes slicing through beef jerky. Speeding south on Franklin toward the county line, he thought he just might outrace his demons for good this time.

Click for larger image

Rio Vista Bridge

Arriving in Rio Vista (a better town than Petaluma), Zodiac sought relief from the heat. He pulled off the main road and found a shady spot under the bridge just inside the city limits. A hobo named Bob approached and offered some advice: Stay out of the old part of town, because the police chief was an inveterate gambler who was always looking for vagrants to lock up, stealing their cash to place bets on the dog fights in Paintersville. Zodiac told the old bum he wasn’t a vagrant, and Bob replied that a vagrant was anyone the chief wanted him to be. He said this while picking at his scalp, and I am moved at this time to reflect that many luckless people seem to do their best thinking while using their sharp, unclipped nails to gently tweeze hemophages from their heads. I figure it must have something to do with patience, the time to exercise that patience, and the bitter beauty of self discovery so often rendered inaccessible to polite society. That’s a load of crap and you know it.

Bob’s home was under the Highway 12 bridge on the banks of the deceptively languid Sacramento. He had an old pink lawn chair and some fishing equipment and a good view of the river.

What he didn’t have anymore was his .38, having lost it on a bet with some bikers from Cordelia. Zodiac took advantage of the opportunity, putting four slugs from his grandpop’s Army Colt right into Bob’s smooth forehead. Damn, but didn’t that old man have an unnaturally smooth forehead before he got shot.


Afterward, Zodiac took Bob’s fishing rod over to the pier and caught a few undersized stripers, which he kept to eat later. Unbothered by the  conscience he didn’t have, he saw no difference between killing a harmless old man, breaking fish and game laws, and indexing the dominance hierarchy of gulls as they quarreled over bits of tuna sandwiches tossed skyward by a screaming mob of first graders shepherded by two harried teachers.

Given the choice, would you lead a simple existence under a bridge, free to fish for whatever swims beneath the streaking traffic above, beholden to no one, or would you keep accumulating useless things and sunbathing in the glowing accolades of your fair-weather friends for your ultimately insignificant contributions to society? Bob tossed all that aside, voluntarily. It’s a powerfully tempting thought sometimes, to just shuck it all and take up residence near a pier jutting into a fabled waterway, offering opinions to all who pass regardless of their political or religious affiliation, wearing a red boatman’s cap and calling boisterously to those rich bastards floating by on their mahogany or fiberglass-hulled dick-replacements. Warning them to tell the rest of their tax-dodging, hand-washing brethren that in the end they’re nothing more than maggot shit and rich fertile loam, same as everyone else. If I were to adopt the Way of the Hobo, I’d tell those property-grabbing bastards they don’t know how to kick-start a recalcitrant mule, let alone a V-twin motorcycle. I’d challenge ‘em to go ahead and stop that boat, and ahoy there you sons o’ bitches hop on up here and I’ll show you what real life can do to a man’s face. Pull yourself on up here, you pinched-face pikers.
I dare you.
 

Zodiac became Zodiac when he killed Bob and found an old, wrinkled horoscope in the dead man’s back pocket: “You will see a mountain, cloak a visage, master the photovoltaic arts, quarter a circle, and eat a mango.”
 

© Pseudocognitive

Daily Journal: Bad Noir and the Nun's Ovaries

June 12, 1958 - Petaluma, California

Raptors woke me before I was ready. It was cold, so I found a discarded blanket, the value of which cannot be overstated except by those who senselessly appreciate reality. Snead was waiting, tapping his feet impatiently on the pavement and leaning on his low-slung purple brougham. I asked him for a spare magazine, because he always went into a fight over-prepared and I had used the opposite tactic on more than one occasion. He gave me a dog-eared Argosy. Worthless pulp and I told him so. He shot me in the gonadal vicinity but only hit one. Nature’s redundancy is awesome.
The next day I drove Snead’s car to the Jiffy Lube to get some bottles of fine beer. I prefer to drink my brew from a brown bottle, not green or clear, and they have some good lager over there. The owner, Marge, gave her ovaries to a nun who’d renounced her vows, and ever since my cars ran bad but I never wanted for beer. Marge is a decent woman but her skinny no-good husband Mixer Man is a bumbling failure at the serial killing arts. He’s always letting people escape and run through the shop. I’ve already decided to throw him to the carnivorous tadpoles in the Amazon drainage but I can’t bear to tell Marge. She collects vintage pickles.“Why won’t you just follow directions for once, you motherfucking fuckers?” This was Mix (a lover of redundancy himself). He couldn’t get his latest victim sweepstakes contestants to agree on the order of their demise. He finally gave up when the fastest of them kicked him in his smallberries. Most of the same lot would be back next week anyway, and pickles don’t go bad.

© Pseudocognitive

Burn rubber

No one was supposed to get hurt. Real criminals never say that or even think it. I would not base my evaluation of any dire progression of chaotic events on Ridley Scott's approximation of human behavior under such conditions. And who the hell says tarmac anymore? There's no rubber on the tarmac; that's out at the airfield at what used to be the south edge of town, where the Koren War era fighter from north of the border skittered down three-zero and slammed into the ice cream parlor sometime between the summer of love and the age of disco. 

This is a parking lot and those marks are burned on blacktop or asphalt or pavement. A guy once got shot near this place and I had to look at his distal innards as they tried to slither out the colander that used to be his belly and those things were still squeezing and trying to move the mail. I tried my best to keep them inside. You don't forget a thing like that.

© Pseudocognitive

Profiling the Zodiac Killer

I was recently asked by an unknown character to profile Zodiac; specifically, I was asked what I thought Zodiac's work background might have been. Having absolutely no formal training (but being a semi-frequent viewer of “Criminal Minds” and other entertaining yet unrealistic cop dramas), I naturally agreed to render my opinion. This analysis (although it is a complete fabrication) is at least as accurate as something that any other untrained person could come up with, so I feel vindicated already.

Zodiac could have been rejected for employment by the Montana Dept. of Corrections due to unknown factors and creeping suspicions still not spoken of by anyone in hushed tones, not even the regulars of the the Death-Delay Club near Missoula. He could’ve always wanted to be a correctional officer at Deer Lodge, and the rejection was rumored to have been a precipitating factor in his crimes. Long hours spent hauling bleating sheep to the rendering plant while listening to Jim Eason on the radio fueled his addiction to driving and forged in him a  mental connection between piloting a vehicle and causing death.  This was back in the celluloid age, of course, and his skill set reflected the times. He was an avid student of football strategy and was the first high school coach to pioneer the West Coast Offense, decades before anyone ever heard of Bill Walsh or his brother Joe. The warm smell of colitas did nothing to allay his suspicions that he was the beast and that steely knives would one day be driven home decisively. For this reason, he took up the cudgel and the mace and the longbow. I am certain there is some possibility  that he used his considerable skills in Kyūdō to fish for carp in his estranged father’s pond under the cover of darkness and that this had very little to do with the eventual death of his father at the hands of a vagrant at N. Houston and Main in Dallas. It is also possibly likely that the Panamint Mountains held great allure for him or that he once coveted the jar that held the head of the legendary outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, shot by Harry Love. Knots were not his thing especially. He mastered only the half-hitch and balked at the granny.  He was ambidextrous and ate beans from a can, worried open with a key to an old Karmann Ghia and time, lots and lots of time. He worked in highway construction and event planning and was, for a fortnight, a renowned surgeon who specialized in the excision of pilonidal cysts from the backsides of worthless hate-mongers. In short, as many others have previously concluded, he could have been anything or nothing or even an expert cartographer or USDA inspector or an organic bull testicle trader.  Or maybe he was just a guy who built jet boats in his garage next door. The possibilities are not endless, but almost.

© Pseudocognitive

The ultimate fate of Charlie Sheen

I don’t give a damn about Charlie Sheen. For all I care, he can drop in on Chuck Manson at Corcoran and commiserate about the effects of lost influence—Manson will ratchet his glinting shrike’s eye over Sheen’s adam’s apple and wish for a pair of pinking shears. Charlie Sheen can  stare at timorous apprentice chefs through night vision goggles as they prepare organic thimerosal-free potato pancakes for Jenny McCarthy. Jenny ought to be locked up in a deep cover North Korean maggot-gruel joint, not some soft Martha Stewart resort like the one Gibbs calls “Camp Cupcake.” Charlie can paddle a dinghy out past the 200 mile limit and cast his powder keg mindscape along the herring gull’s path and peer intently at the anemic krill below. He can enter a convenience store with a note and leave on a stretcher after an elderly woman decides she’s had enough self-infatuated putty-minded tough-guy-with-the-ladies stupidity for one day. Those purses are loaded with Eisenhower dollars.


Charlie can enhance his home rehab with sandpaper self-abuse, he can form a Dixie Mafia wannabe club with Gibson and Busey, he might kidnap mini schnauzers and lose money on the Cowboys-Vikings game and maybe go up against George Kennedy and stick his head up after getting fooled by a bad turkey imitation. Or he can have Don Meredith smear peanut butter on his license and eat it. I don’t care what the hell he does, as long as I don’t have to see his smarmy ass (or face) on a news update in the middle of a TV show I'm enjoying. Fade away, Charlie. Become as insensate as you are insensitive to the rights of others. Either that, or grow a pair and demonstrate a conscience. Eleven Mary Six, call the station.
  
                                    

© Pseudocognitive

Fan violence: Out of control hedonism and the frivolous use of oxygen

This isn't a thoughtful commentary or a well constructed essay. This is a disorganized spew of disgust haphazardly composed under a fog of caffeine-deficiency, and not a very coherent one at that. 


What the HELL is it going to take until NFL and MLB owners wake up and decide to start valuing decent fans over the worthless, waste-of-oxygen scumbags who seem to increasingly control the fan culture in stadiums, parking lots, and the immediate vicinity? I am as imbued with tradition as the next guy, and I do like a beer now and then, but until these money-grubbing owners decide that the safety of true fans and their families is more important than catering to drunken, shit-for-brains thugs, this will continue to escalate. Until they spend a little more on security and a little less on the contracts of multimillion dollar prima donna players, there will be more Bryan Stows lying in comas, more beat-downs in stadium bathrooms, and more brawls in parking lots documented by chanting idiots with cell phone cameras.


These issues have existed for decades, but they are exacerbated now by a societal celebration of immaturity and self-pleasure and by a legal system that seems at times to go out of its way to target and punish people who act in self defense. Whereas California's Penal Code specifies a more reasonable standard for defining self defense than some states (there is no legally mandated "duty to retreat" here), in practical applications, if you severely hurt or kill someone who presented a lethal threat to you or your family, you'll be confronted by a pretty high hurdle to jump in order to prove you were justified. And spare me the "presumed innocent, burden of proof on the prosecution" stuff. It sounds good, but vote-hungry, political wind-sniffer DA's have a way of doing what's expedient. Sure, such a situation can definitely threaten your life, but your response may come down to what you fear more: the effects on your family of your death or of your incarceration. Having a decent life insurance policy may tip the scales.


The latest violence at Candlestick Park isn't going to change my behavior; I have no time for attending games anyway. I'll continue to do what I've always done--take every possible step to avoid potential problems. I won't hesitate to defend my family and myself should that become necessary. In other words, I won't go looking for trouble. I'll behave in a civilized manner.  

Civilized...remember that?

© Pseudocognitive

Chasing the Zodiac: Crossing the plane of the obsessive end zone

A little bit of obsession can hone the senses, enhance attention span, and protect against the kind of mental flatulence that so often results from excessive exposure to the political games of the workplace. It is, however, best used in moderation, as a sparingly-applied seasoning for life’s electric meat. Too much will surely make jerky outta that meat.

I have been mildly obsessed with the Zodiac Killer since I was a boy. We grew up wild, up in the hills between Benicia and Vallejo back in the 60’s and 70’s. My brother and I would hunt anything that moved with a couple of old shotguns we bought off an old man who lived in an aging, beat-up International Scout. He used to park on ridge lines to look for his sheep. He didn’t actually have any sheep, but he claimed to be a Basque separatist in self-imposed exile and the Basques are well-known masters of the shepherding arts so we did not argue with him. Also, he could be a mean drunk and kept a couple of big-ass revolvers in a fancy cross-draw rig he wore at all times. We generally nodded and agreed with whatever lies he told us.

It was during my eleventh year that Zodiac first killed (possible connections to earlier homicides in southern California were later discovered, but those cannot be definitively attributed to him). Zodiac’s first confirmed murders occurred on a dark December night in 1968 at a little dirt turnout on Lake Herman Road near the entrance to the Benicia water pumping station. This was, as the crow flies, about 3 miles from my residence at that time. Old Lady Borges discovered the scene and later recounted many of the details to us. A few months later our parents moved us all to West Texas, and there we remained for almost a decade.

An interest in these unsolved cases could be unhealthy for some people. Like the guy who quit his job as an airline pilot in order to follow “leads” around the country. Let’s face it, though—most of us are to one degree or another fascinated by things like this, especially if they happen to connect even tangentially to our personal history in some way. With this in mind, my brother and I set out on a ride to visit a couple of the Zodiac crime scenes on a bright November Saturday. Neither of us had traveled Lake Herman Rd. since we were warned away one afternoon by Detective Les Lundblad almost four decades ago. That guy made a definite impression on us. Back then, cops could threaten kids without having to worry about lawsuits for damaging youthful self esteem and crap like that.

Our original plan had been to hit the Lake Berryessa Zodiac crime scene first and then ride on to the Lake Herman Road site. Time and photoperiod were not cooperative, however, so we went to Berryessa and then proceeded to eat a bunch of really good Italian food. I will fast-forward past all the slabbage involved in our exit from Sacramento County and cut to the chase. We stopped off down to the hardware store in Winters for no apparent reason at all.  Finding nothing to divert us from the bizarre purpose of the trip, we continued along past several other vaguely described places, some of which bore the scars of pretending that better days had not passed ‘em by, and then we were abruptly reminded of the fact that DOJ still uses a CHP officer on detached duty to scour the Berryessa area day and night for signs of Zodiac or any potential associates. I read about this in a dime novel so it is undoubtedly true.

The entire Berryessa area was eerily deserted on this day. We stopped on Berryessa-Knoxville Rd. and waited for whatever pack of sportbike double-yellow scofflaws might happen to rocket by, in hopes of getting a good action shot, but none materialized. We saw a steer in the back of a pickup truck. He fixed me with a baleful, accusatory stare as he passed. I did not take a picture of him out of pity for his misfortune, because it is a terrible thing to lose one’s balls.

Time to move on. We fired up the bikes and continued north. Now we were closing in. Sometime (minutes or hours) prior to Zodiac’s attack at Berryessa, several young women noticed a suspicious male sitting in a car parked next to theirs outside what has been variously described as a store or deli of some kind. Some accounts refer to this place as Muskowite Corners, but I believe that is over at the junction of Highways 128 and 121. I have never been clear on that point, but something about the self-storage yard near the spot where we stopped to drink some water reminded me for a moment of a gas station/eatery of the sort common near reservoirs in decades past.  No matter what time and human actions have done to transform the physical manifestations of any particular node of meatspace, in my mind I saw what I saw, and if I can see it, it’s still there somehow.

Riding on, we passed the park headquarters and knew we were getting close. The Napa County Sheriff’s Dept. crime report was a bit vague on the exact location, describing the scene as both 5/10 and 7/10 of a mile north of the park HQ. Back in ’69 the area was undeveloped; people parked along the road and walked down to the lake. Now there is a US Bureau of Reclamation day use area, complete with parking lots and picnic tables.

I’m telling you, I have not generally held with that superstitious hippie nonsense about places retaining a “psychic imprint” of past violence. I have not believed in any kind of hippie or new age foolishness ever since a man in a county fair booth near Clarksdale, Mississippi told me in 1983 that my dog was the reincarnation of John Wesley Hardin, the gunfighter who was so mean he once shot a man for snorin’. I had gone to Clarksdale in search of that dusty confluence immortalized in the lyrics of the late, great Robert Johnson so many years before, and here was some carnie tellin’ me about John Wesley Hardin! I do not believe in any such tripe, but as I implied, this place on the shores of the lake that drowned the little town of Monticello, California was creepy. I cannot adequately describe it; to say it was foreboding would be an understatement worthy of a punch in the face.

Our investigation yielded physical evidence that some taggers had been there before us. I was gonna scratch out the obscenities scrawled on the rough-hewn wooden picnic table, but I remembered that BLM rangers patrolled the area and might interpret my actions as further vandalism, and I do NOT EVER mess with the G. Minor vandalism at some county or state park might result in a citation, but for all I knew scratching on federal property is some kind of crime that could land me in Gitmo North. Looking for more info about the scene, I booted up and commenced to googlin’. Guess what? Bob Graysmith should have stuck to political cartoonery. In his yellow-jacketed book on the subject he’d gotten the site wrong—the real scene was two peninsulae further north. This was confirmed by Napa SD sources after two quick phone calls. So much for eerie psychic essences. It’s all intracranial. Such substances as laudanum and cocaine may help, but they are evidently not mandatory. At any rate, since I do not use such substances and never will (I am unwilling to surrender my mind without a fight), it is a moot point.

On to the actual site. On a warm late September day in 1969, Zodiac attacked college students Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell here at about 6:30 PM. Hartnell survived, but Shepard was killed. I will state forcefully for the record that none of this narrative is intended to disrespect the victims or their families. The fact that Zodiac’s attacks took place decades in the past does not diminish the depravity of his acts. It does, however, raise an interesting point to consider: How temporally distant, how done-and-gone must something as vile as this be until it becomes merely a historical curiosity and loses its emotionally evocative power? I guess the answer may be different for every person, but I can tell you that I have stood in places at which heinous acts were committed hundreds of years before, and those places have not lost their power to produce in me an awful awareness of man’s capacity for cruelty.

Lake Berryessa, crime scene just out of view to the left

We toyed with the notion of riding the bikes out onto the trail that leads to the site. Hard-packed dirt, fire danger close to zero. It would’ve made for some good photos, but we decided against it on account of the fact that it might have been disrespectful. Also because of the feds. We departed the scene, taking absolutely no rocks, tree branches, buried Coors cans dating back to the 60′s, or any other federal property with us. We rode down to Cucina Italiana, an excellent little Italian restaurant at Spanish Flat where we had previously dined once last summer before I re-acquired the Zodiac virus.

Hearty meal, full stomachs, strong coffee and a dozen No-Doz®. Headed north and then west on Knoxville with the eventual aim of riding past the eastern edge of Clear Lake then into Colusa and Yolo Counties and home. Saw some initials on a big rock that allegedly have no connection at all to the Zodiac case.
Damn, but didn’t that road turn kind o’ goaty. Nice ride. Saw very few people, save for a few unoccupied cages and another group of riders. Crossed a nice little bridge over some forgotten creek and let the other group pass, because I have very few photos with moving bikes in ‘em and I now take every chance I can to get one. We decided at that time to take a long detour to Mt. Diablo, a source of some alleged inspiration for Zodiac’s crimes (a subject rife with pseudo-scientific hooey and wild conjecture, best explored separately).

Fascination with violent death is as old as humanity. There is something disturbing about this, even when it’s dressed up as history or precautionary tale. At what point does an interest, a natural fascination, cross the line into unhealthy obsession? I don’t know for sure, but it’s not at that spot on the continuum where a person chooses to spend part of a day visiting a historical murder site. At least I hope it isn’t.

Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.

Intracranial Purge, Volume .22: Buntline vs. Brain

You step in the mud by the river and there’s no resistance. Your foot sinks, and as you fall, raspy stalks of Equisetum slide across your cheek like the Mastercard in those old Gillette commercials, and then you’re down. It’s cool and you stare at nothing and your eyes should hurt but they don’t. Twenty-two caliber Swiss cheezerizer, spent slug resting against your forehead after pinging around a few times. Your mind  is aerated, except there are no little cylindrical plug extrusions littering your scalp, just a neat little entrance wound. And then a small, fastidious man takes something from your hand, picks up his brass, walks away whistling “Fortunate Son,” and it’s done.


Once a week and only once a week, I drink a beer. Sometimes when I drink a beer, I write a paragraph, plucking random thoughts out of files on my mental office floor. I accept no blame (because of the beer).  Each of these paragraphs represents the effects of a different beer, and none of them are any good at all.

Post and photo © Pseudocognitive All rights reserved, forever.