◆ SpookStack

" desk and later proved to be written: - - _ by Zodiac: “Sick of living unwilling to die. Cut, clean, if red! clean, blood spurting, dripping, spilling: all over her new dress. “Oh well, it was red anyway. Life draining into an uncertain death. She won't die this ~"* 7-3 time.: Someone'll find her. Just wait _ till next-time.” It was signed, “r-h.” There was no mention of the _ ame Zodiac in either the poem or _ confession letters sent to police, a _ ~ focal newspaper and the dead girl’s . father. Zodiac apparently tried to : hide his connection to the Bates murder for some reason — possibly because the initials “r-h” might bea clue to his identity, possibly be- cause he was a fellow student or one of her teachers, possibly be- ~~cause ~-he ~was a ‘military ‘man stationed in the area, and possibly because he was a traveling busi- 4 nessman from the Bay Area. i i Whatever the Riverside con- ~ nection, Zodiac turned up in the San Francisco Bay Area and con- vinced police by providing details known only to the killer that he was responsible for the following h homi- _ cides: . © Dec. 20, 1968, a man used a pencil flashlight taped to the barrel of a .22-caliber pistol to find and kill - David Faraday and Betty Lou Jen- _ Sen on a lover's lane near Vallejo. : '@ July 5, 1969, a man fired a ’ 9mm pistol into a car parked less than two miles from the site of Faraday-Jensen murders, killing Darleen Ferrin, 22, and wounding Michael Mageau, 19. e ‘Sept. 27, 1969, a black-hooded’ man tied up and stabbed Bryan Hartnell, 20, 10 times, and then stabbed Hartnell’s companion, Ce- cejia Ann Shepard, 22, 24 times at ~ Lake Berryessa Park. The woman died, but Hartnell recovered. nce, © Oct. 11, 1969, a man shot and killed cab driver Paul Stine in San .. Francisco with a 9mm pistol . BV tT wee we Zodiac frequently used a 9mm __ pistol, yet he was clever enough . néver to use the same gun twice. He killed between 10 p.m. and mid- ‘night when darkness obscured his face, and he used a hood for his one daylight murder. mene Although he took care to wipe ’ his fingerprints and boasted that he -took other precautions, Zodiac made niistakes. Toschi said police have enough fingerprints — from * the Stine murder scene and from a Napa County telephone booth where Zodiac once called police — to make a positive identification if. - he is captured or surrenders. “ The Stine murder was a break “with Zodiac's pattern of killing women and couples. And perhaps the best explanation was Zodiac’s message a month later: ““} shall no longer announce to “any when I commit my murders, they shall look like routine robber- jes, killings of anger, & a few fake accidents, ete.” . Whether or not Zodiac is carry- ing out his morbid promise, Toschi is waiting and working for the day when he meets the killer face to face to inform him of his legal rights. “Hopefully, that day may come,” the detective said —.__,