This story regarding the recollections of Sandy Betts has been taken and edited from the 'Zodiac Killer Mystery' forum hosted by Ricardo Gomez.
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Sandra Betts circa 2007 The first time that I actually saw his face, was in the winter of 1968, around the time of the Lake Herman Road shooting of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen.
I was working as an waitress and bartender at Flamingo Joe's in Vallejo, when I got off work early to pick up my paycheck from the Melody Lounge on Sonoma Boulevard, Vallejo. The same person owned both places, so I would work at both. I also worked at the Coronado Inn for a different owner.
It was about 1.00 am when I left Flamingo Joe's to go to the Melody for my paycheck. When I walked into the Melody Lounge some male friends that I knew from Richmond called me over to have a drink and talk. I picked up my paycheck and sat with the three men for about twenty minutes. It was nearing closing time, so they walked me out to my car. Thank goodness they stood there for a few moments, as my vehicle failed to start.
I knew a lot about car maintenance because I used to watch my father regularly work on vehicles and would constantly question him about his work. I asked the men if they could check under my hood to see if my coil wire was okay and they duly obliged. They proceeded to take a look and commented "Are you Psychic or something, your coil wire is gone." They knew I needed to go home to Napa, so they removed one from someone else’s car and put it in mine. I thanked them and drove off towards Napa, when I noticed that I was perhaps being followed. This person was about an eighth of a mile back, but I felt I could possibly shake them off. As I got to my turn off, on Imola Avenue, next to Napa state Hospital, I knew that there was a dip in the road that might hide the low tail lights of my older model Pontiac Bonneville, so I turned right and drove like a bat out of hell. I believed I had lost him, but kept my foot firmly on the pedal just the same. I needed to turn on Navarre Street, but couldn't do that safely on account of my speed, so I turned left at the next block. I then turned off my lights and made another left onto my street. It was at this point I saw a car with its lights still on, parked across the street from my home. Nobody in my neighborhood would be up that late and I didn't recognize that car.
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1963 Ford Falcon I was curious to see who this person was, so I kept my lights off and pulled up alongside his vehicle. He was looking at my driveway as if to say 'where is she.' When I looked at his face, I saw the hatred in his 'contorted' face and feared that even by running to my front door I may not make it. This guy looked as if he hated me and thoughts spiraled in my mind that possibly my ex-husband had hired a hit man to kill me, so he wouldn't have to pay child support for our three children.
I kept on driving back towards town, where two police officers in two police cars were talking at the gas station on the intersection of Soscol and Imola Avenue. I got out of my car and proceeded to outline what had just occurred, when the same car came across Soscol Avenue behind the gas station. There was an all-night pancake house there. I pointed at him as he crossed, but he simply looked at me talking to the officers. It certainly didn't seem to bother him, because he still drove into the parking lot of the restaurant. One officer told the other: "Joe you go check that guy out and I will follow her home to make sure she is safe."
A few months later Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot in Vallejo on July 4th 1969. Michael Mageau had told investigators that the shooter's car was light brown, possibly a Falcon. This tallied with the vehicle that had followed me from Vallejo, so I called Napa Police Department and asked if they had noted the man’s name that followed me in the report that night. The woman I spoke to located the report, but it didn't show the name of the man. I didn't think to tell her that there could be two reports, because there were two officers. That phone call to Napa Police Department was made in July 1969.
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Plastic clothesline retrieved by Dennis Land from Lake Berryessa Some time later, my eldest teenage daughter was on the phone one day talking with one of her school friends. As they were conversing, her friend heard the family’s other phone ring, so left to answer it. When she came back, she said that the man on the phone had told her that he was the Zodiac Killer. I don’t remember what else was said about that call, but both my daughter and her friend were extremely frightened by the experience. I have no idea if that call was reported, or whether the phone call was before or after the Lake Berryessa attack on Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard. It was likely after, because the Zodiac Killer wasn't playing on our minds at the time- not until after the 27th September 1969 double stabbing. It was only then that the realization dawned that a serial killer was on the loose in our area.
During that summer of 1969, it must have been my day off work, because I was sitting outside my house on the lawn in the front yard. It was a warm day, and my next door neighbor Betty and I were talking, when my husband pulled into the driveway. He walked over to us and said: "Who in the world would steal a clothes line". That struck me as odd, because I hadn’t even noticed that it was gone. It was to the right of our driveway along our side yard, however I could now notice that most of it was missing.
I had to replace it, so I bought more at the store on Imola Avenue, where I had purchased the previous clothes line. The store was across from the State hospital, about one mile or less from my home. My neighbors and I use to talk about the patients escaping, although we believed that if and when they did, that they would go as far away as they could, not remain in the vicinity. Later, I heard that a woman on a block not far from my home had been murdered. I think the street name was Marie but cannot be certain.
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Bryan Calvin Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Ann Shepard (22) On Saturday 27th September, my husband and I were both working in Vallejo that night. My shift started at 6.00 pm, so I probably left the house about 5.00 or 5:15 pm. I would work until 2.00 am, during which time my daughter would babysit her brothers.
But that night at approximately 8:30 or 9.00 pm, while my daughter was changing the baby’s diaper in the bedroom, someone was knocking on the front door of the house. There was a man at the door, who proceeded to tell my daughter that he was there to look at the house, as it was up for sale. My home was certainly not on the market.
My son had earlier bumped and cut his head, so the man offered to take him to the hospital, indicating that he thought it looked serious. My children got into the man’s car, who had a woman with him, and went to the Queen of the Valley Hospital in his black Cadillac. It wasn’t until later that we found out that there had been two victims brought into that same hospital from Lake Berryessa, both of whom had been stabbed.
The next day, or the day after, both my husband and I had the day off. He went to Soscol House, Napa, a few miles southwest of our home, to have a couple of drinks and roll dice with his friends.
I didn’t feel like staying home that day without a car and asked Betty if she could give me a ride to get it. I got my baby ready, who was 8 months old at the time, and Betty drove us to pick up the car. She got out to help carry the things I needed for the baby. The windows were down in the car, because it was very warm that day, and we noticed that there was stuff all over the back seat and on the floor behind the driver’s seat. I opened the door to the back and picked up a garment made of black cotton cloth off the seat. It had a strange design on the front of it that I thought looked Asian- it was a white circle with a cross on top of it or over it. The black cotton material was about a yard and a half long and 36 inches wide. It had a hole with a slit towards the back, so it would fit over someone’s head. There was a wad of black paper on the floor behind the passenger’s seat, so I picked it up and opened it to see what the heck it was, and quickly realized it was like a mask that covered one’s head completely.
It was made from a paper sack and had large round holes for the eyes, although I don’t remember if there was a hole for the mouth and nose or not. It was square and flat on top just like a grocery bag and there were four 3 inch cuts at the bottom, that were bent to sit on a person’s shoulders. My initial thoughts was that it must have been an early Halloween costume. As I drove back home I noticed an awful stench filling the car. It was the paper sack. Whatever was used to make it black was creating the bad smell. So I had to throw it away in the garbage can as soon as I got home.
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Once I got home I looked at everything that was put in the car. There was a neat stack of things on the floor behind the driver’s seat. On the bottom of the stack was an old dictionary, and positioned on top of that was a green plastic template with letters of the alphabet on it, and four circle cut outs, from small to large, underneath the letters. It had been used, because I could see the dark ink inside the block letters. Next to the dictionary was a ruler from Heald College and two erasers, one was a large grey one, the other pink and smaller in size. On top of the green plastic was an ammo can filled with felt tipped pens, arranged like perhaps an artist would have, except most of the pens were very dark- one was orange or red, one was white.
At the bottom of the ammo can were three earrings, one of them was screw on with a small cross, along with a girls Timex watch with a thin grey leather band. A silver colored protractor was also inside the can with a small pencil at one end. In addition, at the very bottom, was a tiny Catholic mass book- the page that would have had the owner's name on it was torn off.
On the back seat was a clear plastic name tag, in which the name Daniel Perez was written on white paper.
When my husband came home I asked him if he had given someone a ride, because there were some strange things in the back seat of the car. He assured me that no one had been in the car except him, and he didn’t see anything in the back seat when he got in to drive. I surmised that maybe some guy worse the wear for drink or cannabis had mistook our car for his and put it all there.
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Darlene Ferrin (22) During the Vallejo springtime of 1969, my soon to be ex-husband and myself, leased Jay’s Governor’s room on Sonoma Boulevard, across from James Sear’s, where Darlene was starting to buy her very expensive clothes. Where she got the money to do that, was something that her family didn’t understand, but nevertheless had a bad feeling about.
On Saturday nights my husband would hire a bartender to do his job- I was the waitress and would have to keep an eye on the bartenders to make sure they weren’t tapping the till. My husband would go to the Vallejo Speedway to offer the winner of the main event and his crew free drinks at our bar after the races. I was still filling in at the Coronado Inn because the money was good there. It was always crowded, as people would come from as far away as Oakland, San Francisco and Yountville.
Vallejo was a Navy town and during the 1960s the Vietnam war was still raging on- we felt a lot of sadness for the loss of these young men, who were defending our country. I lost my brother-in-law, who re-enlisted in 1969.
On July 1st 1969 my father died unexpectedly at Kaiser Hospital- he had gone in for a hernia operation and died the day before he was due to be released, from what I was told was a blood clot. I thought it was unusual for him to be found with his arm up reaching for the buzzer to get help. I wasn't aware that one would know that a clot had moved to the lungs and would have had enough time to ring for help. I was devastated beyond belief, so my husband and I went to Walnut Creek to stay by my mother’s side until after my father was buried.
Our lease was up at Jay’s Governor’s Room, but a few of my friends still liked to go there to drink. One of them was Don Porter, who I had dated. I had no idea he was in the counterfeit ring that was going on in Vallejo during that time. He was being watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation- they were watching him in the bar while he lit ladies cigarettes with twenty dollar bills. They arrested him that night and found a lot more of the counterfeit bills in the trunk of his car. I had no idea he was doing this. He was stealing cars, chopping them up, and repainting them to sell along with his co-conspirators.
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Sandra Betts and Burt Reynolds I remember one afternoon, he and I were going to San Francisco to visit somebody. His roommate was on the porch- Don said to him that we were headed to San Francisco, but he needed to stop by Darlene’s place to pick up something or drop something off. His roommate, who was short man in his 30’s with brown curly hair, who liked to play the piano, screamed at Don "I told you to never say that name ever." I would not have remembered that name, if it weren’t for that man making such a scene.
In early October 1969, I got a day time job in Rutherford working at the Robert Mondavi Winery. While I was there, a movie was being filmed for CBS television. The star of the movie was Burt Reynolds, although at the time I didn’t know who he was, because it was before he became famous. I had a hard time not staring at him- what a hunk.
The next day the director asked me if I would like to be in the movie. I said I would if I could have one of my friends join me, so we could both be in the movie.
While we were waiting for our scene, we were in a room with Burt and a few other actors. I am not sure how I ended up with Burt lifting me up above his head and sliding me slowly down close to his body. But he said in a low voice while looking at me nose to nose, "you are one healthy girl." I still remember that moment as if it were yesterday. I was only an extra, but was a “key” extra. Some of the film was shot in St Helena, Santa Rosa, Lake Berryessa. I now wonder if Zodiac could have been there as an extra or just watching. The film was entitled “Hunters Are for Killing”, also known as “Hard Frame”.
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My divorce was about final- the children and I moved away from Napa to Rio Vista where their father had moved, so they wouldn’t be too far from him. I got a job at the Spindrift Marina Restaurant on the San Joaquin river, working three days a week- the other four I spent fishing with my children.
I started getting phone calls and could hear someone breathing, but whomever it was would never say anything. Then the car kept having odd problems, like the oil filter can would fall off while I was driving and all of the oil would leak out. Or my tire would be flat while I was parked at my apartment. I was still going to Vallejo to the Coronado Inn at night from time to time and still seeing Buzz Gordon, a cop that I started to date while I was working in Vallejo in 1969. We dated for about five years, not knowing he was married at that time. Furthermore, then finding out that he had gone out with Darlene Ferrin and was a Zodiac suspect. He and I would be in his squad car, go to the areas where we thought the Zodiac Killer might go, so we could catch him. He would have his 9 millimeter ready, just in case the Zodiac showed up. I actually offered myself as a decoy to Vallejo Police Department, but they told me that they had no idea when or where Zodiac would strike again and that they didn’t have the money or manpower to do that.
I look back on that now and how foolish I was for making that offer. I always wanted to work in law enforcement and bust drug dealers, or work at solving murders. That started in the 1950s, with the case of Stephanie Bryant who was kidnapped from Berkeley on April 28th 1955, then murdered. To this day I do not feel that Burton Abbott was her killer.
My father, who worked in Oakland, but would drive through the Berkeley hills and past Stephanie Bryant's street to get home in Walnut Creek, reported seeing something or someone suspicious pertaining to that case. He gave the police a description of a car with a young girl in it. That in turn made my father a suspect. He never offered any information ever again to police.
I have no idea if the person he turned in, retaliated against our family and is now the man who plays these child like games with me or not. We did have a prowler in the 1950s, who would go into our backyard and run a stick alongside the wooden slats to make a ticking sound. I can remember when ever I was home alone, I would hold our .22 rifle, just in case the person tried to break in. Could he be the same person today? I don't know.
While still living in Rio Vista and working only three days a week, I drove a 1967 Pontiac Firebird. I was still having problems with the oil filter falling off now and then, and my brakes kept going out. One night when I had a few female friends with me, the brakes went out and we almost ended up in the river. The phone calls were still coming at night from someone who would never speak- only breathing could be heard. I don’t believe I was thinking that it was the man I got away from in Vallejo a few years before, I thought by moving he wouldn’t know where I was, so I wasn’t worried.
There was a handsome guy named Ralph who seemed sort of distant, who would come in on Saturday nights.
He was very different than most of the men who came in and flirted with me. He was the opposite and it sort of bothered me. I wondered why he didn’t seem to like me?
Then one night he came in and I walked over to him and asked what he would like to have. He said "I would like to marry you." I thought it was pretty funny that he, who was so cool towards me, was interested after all. I joked back with, "well sure I am not busy when I get off work". We started to date and became engaged several months later. He had a boat and would take my children with him to fish and swim.
Ralph would tell me odd stories about when he was a frogman in the Navy, and how he could reach under a man’s rib-cage, pull out the man’s heart, and show it to him before he died. I was not impressed. One day when he was at my apartment and we were cooking game hens, he said something that was disturbing to my daughter. I don’t remember what it was, but it upset her. His friend was there as well and we were doing handwriting analysis after dinner. My daughter made the comment: "Jeez Ralph, you write just like the Zodiac." She was right- it did look like the Zodiac’s handwriting that we saw in the newspaper.
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Inspector Dave Toschi It was sometime later, when his friend was telling me a story about the three of them boating at Lake Berryessa and that when they woke up one morning Ralph had a hood on his head. Now that was becoming too much for me to keep to myself, after all, Ralph had once told me how he planned at one time to kill his ex wife, but didn’t, or so he claimed.
He had also said to me that one of his fantasies was to commit the perfect murder. By now, I knew I had to get out of this relationship. Meanwhile, I called Dave Toschi and told him everything I knew about Ralph. Dave asked me to get some of Ralph’s handwriting and send it to him. I wanted to get away from him as fast as I could without upsetting him, so I told him that I had a modeling offer in southern California. He said that if I took that job, he wouldn’t be with me. As far as he knew I took the job. Dave Toschi called to let me know that Ralph had only one DUI arrest and that his picture looked similar to the description of Zodiac. Ralph knew how much money was on Zodiac’s head at that time- I thought that was interesting that he would know such a thing.
In 1971 or 1972, my friend Verna and I decided to go east over the bridge towards the Spindrift Marina where I worked, to a place just past the Spindrift, for a few games of pool.
For whatever reason, instead of going east over the bridge I drove to Verna’s house, perhaps to use the rest room. Within a couple of minutes of being there my daughter called to say that a bomb had exploded near the Spindrift Marina and that they were evacuating everyone off the island. Luck was with us, because we would have been right on top of the explosion had we not stopped at Verna’s first.
Whatever it was, it blew a hole in the road 12 feet wide and 12 feet deep. It swept the boats in the marina away from their berths, with people on top of their roofs to keep from drowning. It flooded the corn fields, and the water went all the way to Stockton. My boyfriend, who owned the Spindrift, never understood what caused that to happen. The year before, on July 4th, both of his restaurants were set on fire within a hour of each other- one was the Spindrift, the other was near Sacramento called the Captains Table.
Sometime before the flood, someone took a shot at him from the levy road. Still, I don’t think I gave any thought to my secret admirer being behind all of these strange happenings. I was now out of work because of the flood, but thank goodness I was known to be a good waitress, because I received a call from the owner of the Sugar Barge, asking if I would work for him, so I started immediately, working there three or four nights a week.
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Clayton is a city in Contra Costa County, California. View from Mt Diablo. I moved from Rio Vista to Clayton and rented a home with three other girls. I believe the year was 1973. While we were looking for a place to rent we went through a real-estate agent, who showed us a place that was once rented by some members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). We didn’t want to take that one, so we took one in Clayton on Claycord Street.
While living there, I worked at a place in Pleasant Hill named Rick’s Lounge. It was a huge place with live music and sat in a mall with a large parking lot. A friend I went to school with owned it.
One night I had got off work just before closing time, when I saw a man in a station wagon sitting across the parking lot, who waved at me. I waved back, thinking he was a customer who was leaving as well. He pulled out when I did and ended up behind me.
I had a feeling that he might be planning on following me, so when I got out of the parking lot and was at the stop light, I decided to make a U-turn back into the parking lot.
The man behind followed suit, confirming my suspicions that indeed he was following me. I parked my car near the front door to Rick’s and ran towards the door. The man stepped on the gas to try and run me over. He had light hair, styled in a crew-cut. I don’t remember his face, but recalled that he looked older than me. His station wagon had wooden panels, with a rack on top- a conservative looking car unlike what a young person would be driving. I didn’t connect this incident with my secret admirer either. Unless he had different wigs, he didn’t look like the man in Vallejo in 1968, who had dark brown hair.
While still living on Claycord in Clayton, the girls and I noticed a man hanging around in an orange Volkswagen. He would just sit in his car near our home. I can remember his face as being real red looking, more than just flushed. He possibly had a skin condition, like a rash.
We started to get the same sort of calls that I had received when I lived in Napa and Rio Vista, just someone breathing on the other end. Then one day there was a voice that said "I just want you to know, I know where you live."
I could hear music playing in the background, but it wasn’t anything that I recognized, such as Rock and Roll, Country or Jazz.
By then I was dating Mike, someone who was in my life up until a few years ago. We maintained a friendship for many years, until he married. But one day stood out, that I still can’t forget. We had spent the night together in Concord at his place, and in the morning while Mike was in the shower, I was still in bed waiting for my turn to shower. I heard a slight noise at the window that was about six feet from the bed. I opened my eyes and saw a large muscular hairy arm coming through the open window. I let out a scream and the man left. Mike tried to see if he could see anything out the window, but the man was out of sight. Could that be the same person who was harassing me? How could one person have so many strange things happening to them. No one I know of, has had anything even remotely close to what I had going on- even now it only happens to me and Pam Huckaby. Not so much her anymore, she is in a gated community in another state.
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Lisa Dickinson Around 1973, I had saved up enough money to put a down payment on a condominium in Walnut Creek, just off Ygnacio Valley Road. It was very close to Heather Farm Park, once owned by Bing Crosby, but later remembered for the abduction site of a young girl on a bike, who has never been found. That took place while I was living there and she was a school mate of my son at that time. Lisa Dickinson (9) was last seen near the Pleasant Hill station of the Bay- Area Rapid Transit on September 5th 1976.
By now, I am at Pier 29 Family Restaurant in Oakland, working for the same owner of the Spindrift restaurant, Harry Schilling Senior. Only now I am working five nights a week instead of three.
One night I was driving home from Pier 29, when I noticed someone was behind me for a long time, so thinking I am being followed again, I remembered reading that it is a good idea to drive to a police station. So when I got to Walnut Creek I drove to the police station and starting to honk the horn to get help. That worked right away, as an officer came to the car. I told him that an orange Volkswagen was following me all the way from Oakland and should be showing up in a second. The person following me must not have known Walnut Creek very well, or he would have known that is where the police station is located. They spoke to the man in the Volkswagen, who said yes he followed me because he liked me, but meant no harm. He said that he was from the Alameda Navy Base. They sent him on his way and I drove to my apartment. I always looked in my rear view mirror to make sure I wasn’t being followed and still do that to this day.
The odd phone calls were still coming- I am not sure if I connected them to all of the other calls or not. One call was a man who said that he was doing a thesis and needed to ask me questions. I forgot everything he asked, but the questions became uncomfortable and I knew whoever this man was, he wasn’t a nice person. He started asking me about my daughter who was 16 years old. I wanted to get this person caught and tried to set him up. I called the police and told them everything, but the man was never caught.
Could that man be the one who is bothering me still? I have no way of knowing for sure. If he was my stalker, was he upset at all the guys I dated. Did he think I was a lot like Darlene.
In 1975 I met someone, fell in love and married him two years later. He lied to me about his age and over time he became fourteen years younger than I. He is the one who taught me all about guns and how to shoot. We joined the American Sportsman Club and went hunting, fishing and camping whenever we had a chance. My children loved the camping part of it. That wasn't so new to me- I grew up camping with my parents and frequented Lake Berryessa to camp many times, as well as the coast of Jenner and Fort Bragg.
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Antioch is a city in Contra Costa County, California From 1977 to 1982 my name was changed and I had moved from Walnut Creek, so I felt more comfortable during that period in my life. The only bad thing that took place was with one of my best friends Dana, who moved about the same time as I did, to the town of Antioch. I do interior decorating and my friend Dana wanted me to wallpaper her kitchen. We each borrowed three wallpaper books to take to her home, so we could pick out which would look the best. She was so happy about buying her first home at the age of only 24.
That was about three days before her parents found her body on the kitchen floor, on my birthday.
The night before I had received a phone call about 9.30 pm, no one spoke, so I hung up and took the phone off of the hook so we could get some sleep without anymore calls.
It was the next day that I was told by my other friend that Dana was dead. It was made to look like a suicide- she was shot with a .22 weapon, which she owned for protection. The gun was found in her living room near the front door, yet her body was in the kitchen several feet away. Her phone was found off the hook.
Dana's mother asked if we would clean up the kitchen floor where her body was found- we did. I also fixed Dana's hair for her funeral, which is when I noticed that someone had cut her hair. I was the one who she would ask to cut her hair and it was longer the last time I saw her, which was only a few day before. While I was sitting at her kitchen table looking out towards the road below, I happened to see a man looking up at us as he was driving by. He had curly dark brown hair, with a round face that reminded me of the man from Vallejo in 1968. It was almost a surprised look he had on his face when he saw us there. Could he be the one who killed our dear friend and made it look like a suicide. It was because her home was locked up, that the Antioch Police Department believed she had killed herself. The patio door had a automatic pen that would lock it if you closed it. Did the police ever ask her friends any questions about Dana- no they did not.
I believe Dana was murdered. She was very happy and had a lot to look forward to. Who plans on decorating their brand new home and shoots themselves instead.
My young husband was a bit spoiled by his mother. She gave him anything he wanted, so he didn’t have much incentive to work. I was earning enough to take care of us all. Because my credit was very good, he bought a boat without mentioning it to me. This made me responsible for all of the payments, which I was not happy about.
It was about 5 years into that marriage, when I had a feeling that he was straying. Long story short, I filed for divorce, filled his boat with his clothes and sent him home to his mother.
When I changed my name back to Betts, it wasn’t long before the odd phone calls started up again.
I started to notice someone following me again. He was clever, as he would park at different areas he knew I would pass by, and then he would pull out and follow. A few times he would wait on the side of the highway and then pull out thinking that I didn’t notice. One was a Chevrolet truck with a gun rack- it held a large rifle.
I memorized many of the license plate numbers, when one day I spotted one older green car with a plate I had seen before. This time I followed him. It was Veterans Day (11th November) in the late 1980s.
Three or four days later, I was in Lyons Restaurant drinking coffee, talking to my friend who tended bar there, when my car alarm went off. One of the waitresses knew my car and told me it was going off. Something told me it was a ploy for me to go outside, so I went to the door and used my clicker to shut the alarm off. About an hour later, I left for Alameda to do some work at one of my friend’s homes, before going to work in Oakland.
As I got to the tunnel that separated Orinda and Oakland, I heard a shot, but wasn’t sure if it was a backfire or not. Then half way into the tunnel I heard another shot- this time I knew it was gunfire, so I started to weave around to hopefully evade being struck. As I was coming out of the tunnel the last shot rang out.
Then I saw him, in an older blue Cadillac Convertible. He drove past me pretty fast, so I didn’t get the plate number that time. I knew better than to try and catch up with him as he headed towards Hayward.
When I got to my friends home in Alameda, I called to make sure that it was reported and was told that others had reported it too. A few months later I wanted to get a copy of the report and was told that because no one was hurt, it wasn’t kept.
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By 1989, I knew that the man I believed to be Zodiac was stalking me and following me almost every day and night, to and from work. He was becoming more bold- he didn’t seem to care if I was on to him or not. It was as if he and RH were taking turns taunting me. One day I was on my way to work in Oakland, when I stopped at a post office box on 23rd Avenue. I had some information I was sending to the Department of Justice in Sacramento.
I didn’t notice until I parked next to the box that RH was right behind me, parking as well. He was in a faded red car, like a boxy Volkswagen, with a plate that read K0K0- I believe I knew about the Mikado by then, because seeing the word Koko on the plate was a clever move on his part. I got out of the car, mailed the letter, and looked over at RH. I got back into my car and went to work.
As I approached my workplace, there is a place in the middle of the road, where I would wait for a break in the traffic to cross over to the parking lot to park up. When I neared the break in the middle of the road I saw a brown wallet. I didn’t pick it up because it was too dangerous to do that, but went to my manager, told her about the wallet and went with her to retrieve it.
It contained a driver’s license, with a picture of a male on it, so my manager said she would try to find that person and return the wallet. I don’t remember the name on that license or if she found the owner or not. To this day I wonder if that wallet was some sort of a plant or not, for me to get out of my car and get run over by a hit and run driver.
One Sunday afternoon, a man and two women came in and ordered drinks. The gentleman went over to the piano to play a tune. One of the women said Ron "could you please play------". For whatever reason I had the gut feeling the man was Ron Pimentel, and as it turned out I was correct. I had read about him in Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac book.
I told him a little bit about my stalker. He was very interested and gave me his home, car and cell phone numbers. He told me to call him the next time this suspect came into my job, which by now was almost every night.
Sure enough my suspect came in, so I went into the office to call Ron. The phone behind the bar had lights that would show when the office phone was in operation, so when I made the call the suspect knew I was contacting someone. He then would leave. Ron wasn’t there in time to see the suspect.
It was weeks later that Ron called me to tell me he believed my suspect was sitting in a white Jaguar in front of his office.
Ron’s car had antennas all over it, with a license plate that showed he was a private investigator. So, whenever Ron would be at my work, my suspect would not come in until Ron would leave. Then he would be there within a few minutes. It's as if he sat in his car waiting for Ron to leave. Ron died a year or so after that. I have no idea how.
I kept my gun with me 24 /7. One of the waitresses got off late one night and was hit in the head with something as she walked to her car. It wasn't a robbery, because she still had her purse, and she didn't see the person who hit her.
I then started to walk outside of work with my gun in my hand, looking over my shoulder. I would walk with other waitresses who were worried about their safety too. Nothing happened to any of us walking to our cars after that.
People reported to me that they saw a blond-haired man looking through my car windows, but when I would walk outside to see if I could see him, he would be gone. That could have been RH, wearing his light colored wig. One customer said he saw the man just sitting in his car reading a book and spitting out the window.
He even wrote to me once and said 'he didn't know why he was afraid to tell me who he was'. That was in the late 1980s, before I took his picture.
When he would phone me, he would say "hello, it's me." I would say "hello me, this is me" and he would chuckle. I knew that I needed to feed his ego because I felt that would help keep me alive. I didn't want to be an object, I needed to be someone he wanted to keep talking to. I told him that he and I could have had a nice relationship, if it wasn't for his one bad habit. He liked that, because he laughed, but not loudly.
Each night at around 3.00 am, as I drove the 47 miles home, I would be followed. That helped to save my life, because before that I would fall asleep while driving. I drank coffee at work before driving home, to try to stay awake, but that didn't work 90 percent of the time. Once I knew I had a crazy stalker following me each night, that kept me alert.
He would try to force me off the road by laying back, then speed up to my bumper. He did this a few times, so one time when he sped up and was close to my bumper, I tapped my break, just enough for him to see the brake lights. He went out of control and ended up sideways on a hill next to the highway.
One other time, on a drizzly and foggy night about 2.00 am, when I was on the 880 Freeway in Oakland, a car similar to a silver Honda passed me and stopped at the entrance of the exit I had to take to get home. I had to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting him and spun around on the slippery pavement a few times, fortunately escaping injury to myself and others, yet managing to continue. I am sure that made him angry that his plan fell apart.
One of the females that I feel he ran off the road and then stabbed her to death near her car, was Theresa Brown, who was also a waitress working in Walnut Creek and who lived in Antioch. She was forced off Highway 4 in Pittsburg, California. on April 22nd 1988, where many other women were being murdered by a serial killer that has yet to be caught. One of those females who got away from the killer's long knife, lived to tell me, that the man I have the picture of, was the man who tried to kill her.
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Elaine Davis (17) My youngest son Bobby was dating a girl from Walnut Creek named Trish. She had heard him mention that I was being stalked by a man who could be the Zodiac killer. She said she had a Zodiac book she had read and if I wanted it she would give it to me. Of course I wanted it.
We planned to meet up at Lyon's Restaurant, where she gave me the book, I bought her lunch and drove her back to Walnut Creek.
Soon after that meeting she started to get phone calls from an older sounding man, who told her that if she didn't stop dating my son, he would kill them both. He would watch her, because he knew when she was home alone and would call to let her know. He would watch her at her job and call to tell her that he saw her there and described what she was wearing. Thank goodness she reported all of this. This was before I took his picture, so I couldn't show her what he looked like to forewarn her.. There is no doubt in my mind that he was my stalker. It was a good thing that she made a police report, as that may have saved both of their lives.
Remember, Walnut Creek was the town where Elaine Davis was kidnapped. On December 1st 1969 Elaine Davis (17) disappeared from from her home in Walnut Creek, Contra Costa County, California, abducted in the evening time through a sliding rear window. Two and a half weeks later on December 19th 1969 her body was discovered floating off Light House Point, Santa Cruz, California, however due to investigators misinterpreting the age of the victim at the time, her identity was only realized 31 years later when officials exhumed the body in 2000.
Elaine's father worked at a Volkswagen dealership. Elaine was taken while her mother drove to pick up her father from work. She must have been being watched by her kidnapper for a while, for him to know when it would be safe to grab her.
The phone calls continued... I suspected someone was on the other end, because I could hear him breathing and sometimes play music for me. Two songs I remember were, “Every Day I get the Blues” and “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. They were recorded on my phone recorder, as were many of my phone calls.
Cards would sometimes be put in to my mail box- one was a green card with an Irish Leprechaun on it and the name Patrick’s or Saint Patrick's flooring.
In Robert Graysmiths Zodiac book there was no mention of Darlene Ferrin’s birthday being on Saint Patrick’s day. This card reminded me of her birthday. Was my stalker giving me a clue to Darlene? Perhaps he was- I do believe he knew her very well, and she him.
He waited until after her death to reveal his name Zodiac. Did she know that he used that name for himself, so he couldn’t use it until after Betty Lou and David? I believe that this stalker believed Darlene and I knew each other- she may have known me because I could have waited on her at the Coronado Inn. But I really don’t remember knowing her. Did she know me because I was dating Buzz Gordon, and she wanted him to date her more than the one night he told me he dated her. Your guess is as good as mine.
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Kathleen Johns The next striking date was January 15th 1988. It was about 11.00 pm, when a group of people came in and put a few of the small cocktail tables together. There were about eight people in the group. At the head of one of the tables sat a older looking man with a shaved head, horn rimmed glasses, thin dark mustache, nicely dressed. Next to him on his left was an older looking woman that could have been Dorothea Puente's twin sister. She was a female serial killer from Sacramento who was caught a few years later. There was one Asian woman, who I believe was a waitress at the Box Inn in Oakland's Chinatown on Webster Street. The man she was with asked for Vodka on the rocks- I told him he had drunk too much and I could only give him coffee.
I took the rest of their drink orders and asked the man at the head of the table for his order, to which he replied "Bailey's Amaretto and coffee".
I took a few steps and turned around when I felt some tension coming from the man. I then asked him if he wanted his drink made like an Irish coffee or a shot of Baileys, a shot of Amaretto and coffee on the side. He said he would like an Irish Coffee.
At that moment, I thought how odd that this man had asked for a drink, like one I had invented up on the Delta years before.
I did notice that this man had on very shiny shoes and had on dark wool Navy like pants, similar to the description offered by Kathleen Johns. His shoes were so shiny that the candles on my table tops were reflecting off of them. During Kathleen Johns ordeal in the car, she recalled his highly polished shoes reflecting the yellow lights from the car interior. I thought that I might be going crazy, thinking that this guy could be Zodiac, because he had clothes on and shiny shoes just like I had just read about in the Zodiac book. He even had the headband Kathleen mentioned her abductor was wearing. It was also the tension I felt. When I turned to ask him about his drink order, did he think I recognized him as my stalker.
I tried to not think he could be Zodiac, but asked an off duty cop friend of mine to look at him and to remember what he looked like, because I did believe he was the man who had been following me. My cop friend, Ted G, reassured me.
I went with my strong gut feeling anyway. The final nail in the coffin was when I went to see if anyone at those tables wanted another drink. He and a few others did. He politely asked the woman to his left if she wanted another plain coke. She didn't. While I was at my station waiting for the bartender to take my order, the older man came up behind me and touched my shoulder. I let out the loudest scream ever, but he didn't even flinch, seemingly unperturbed by the scream. We were toe to toe at that point, and he said to me in a very robotic sounding voice, as if he was reading (similar to what Nancy Slover recalled on July 5th 1969 ) "I am very sorry if I frightened you." It was the most monotonous sounding voice I had ever heard. I was so very sure at that point, I was standing in front of the Zodiac Killer, and no one could convince me otherwise.
He was a short man, approximately 180 pounds, but not fat. His teeth were very stained from chain smoking. I did see a scar like a L shaped scratch on his left cheek and a circle scar on his right cheek. He had light powder all over his head, face and hands. He didn't look at all like the man I got away from in 1968.
Meanwhile, Adrian, the cook from across the parking lot at the 400 Club, came in and sat next to my station. I told him that I would like for him to watch me when these people leave, because I was going to follow the man with the shaved head outside, to get his license plate number. I told him that I was pretty sure this was the man who had been calling and following me.
Adrian suggested that he could do it for me, although I had reservations about him getting involved.
Adrian assured me he could do it without the man knowing, and besides Adrian was very proficient in memorizing numbers. To this day I wish I hadn't accepted his assistance of help, because eight months later on my “birthday” in 1988, Adrian was stabbed, disemboweled, and left for dead in Oakland. His friends had told me about it, so I tried to find which hospital he was in, but couldn’t find him- probably because it was an attempted murder.
It was a year later in 1989 that Adrian came in to Pier 29. I gave him a hug, and asked him if the man who attacked him, was the man he followed outside for me. He said that he couldn’t talk about it.
The police officer friend of mine, Ted G, who was at Pier 29 the night I saw my 'head shaved' stalker, had a boat in the Alameda Marina. I would stay on his boat whenever there was too much fog to drive home. He was always a gentleman, but wasn't afraid of anyone.
On the night of January 12th 1990 (Teds birthday), he came in to Pier 29 with two friends, one male and a female. They left about 2.00 am closing time. He and his two friends went to his boat, which was kept in a secure locked boat dock. Next to his boat he saw a man wearing a knit watch cap and heavy coat wiping down the boat next to his. He was happy to finally meet his neighbor. He introduced himself to the man and invited him to join them for a glass of wine.
Whatever that man said to them, scared them so much, that Ted called my home about 3.00 am and left a phone message on my recorder, and told me that the man who I showed him at Pier 29 on January 1988, was crazy and evil.
I got home shortly after that and called Ted back. Ted didn’t answer, which worried me immensely, so I kept calling and still no answer. Finally I called Alameda Police Department and asked them if they could check on Ted to see if he was okay. They called me back, saying he had been asleep but was perfectly fine.
When I caught up with Ted, he told me I needed to be very careful of that man, as there was something very scary about him. He warned me to stay away from him, that he is dangerous. He never did say what the conversation was about, only that it was hard to understand the guy and that he sounded real crazy. But for sure, he was the man I pointed out as my stalker.
The following year, I sent Ted G. a birthday card, inside of which I included a photograph of one of my suspects I had taken in the August of 1990 (The one with the thick curly hair, not the shaven headed one). He said that he didn’t receive it.
A few months later on March 17th (Darlene’s birthday), I received one of the pictures in an envelope. There was no return address, but it had been mailed in Oakland. The address was printed just like the Zodiac Killer.
I am not sure if that was the picture I had mailed to Ted, or if it was one of the pictures that I handed out to the females who were being murdered in Pittsburg, California in the late 1980s early 1990s.
Was it from the killer, letting me know that he had killed another one of the girls whom I gave a picture to? I may never know that answer.
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Victoria Sue Bell It was Easter Sunday, April 3rd 1988. and I was working the day shift. A young woman sat next to my station and we were talking about our clothes and how closely we were dressed. We both had on black skirts, black high heels and silk blouses. She had on a pink jacquard material, with a shiny pink flower design on it, opened at the front. Mine was lavender, with a high neck.
I had looked for one more like hers but didn’t find one, so I asked her where she bought it. She told me it was a dress shop in Alameda- Foxy Lady or something like that.
I don’t remember what she was drinking because I didn’t serve her, the bartender Hal did. I believe the time was about 3:30 or 4.00 pm, because it wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t spend time talking to her. The bartender was concerned about the man sitting at the end of the curved bar, from where he could see us talking. I was advised to walk her to her car when she left, because Hal didn’t like the way that man was glaring at us. I didn’t recognize that man, as he didn’t look anything like the one with the shaved head. He did look like a very angry man, somewhat familiar, but I didn’t make a connection at that time with the man I had seen in Vallejo/ Napa in 1968.
I don’t remember asking the young woman what her name was- I wish that I had. When she went to leave, I walked with her, but before she got to the exit she decided to use the ladies room next to the exit. I waited a bit for her to come out, but then two more customers walked in and I had to take their order. When I went back she was gone and so was the angry looking man.
There were two homicides that I discovered in Oakland, one being a woman with no identification, wearing a black skirt, black high heels and a pink blouse. The other was up on Skyline Boulevard in Oakland Hills.
Within a few days of those murders, someone wanted me to know about them and neatly cut out the articles from a few newspapers for me to see. They were put on my cocktail tray, while I was in the kitchen area getting coffee.
On top of the neatly folded stapled articles, was a quarter with the number 9 on one side of it, and on the other side was a circle on the outer edge of the quarter and a cross that went through to the edge of that circle (like the Zodiac’s logo). It was crafted using indelible ink. No one saw the person who left that for me.
As it turned out, one of the women with the pink blouses, was named Victoria Bell. Now the strange thing about this, is that Oakland Police Department felt it was someone else that killed Victoria Bell. Seems like one heck of a coincidence to me, that one possible serial killer follows her outside and some other serial killer murders her.
Sorry, but I think that there is something very wrong with that picture. I saw Victoria Bell’s crime scene. I did not see any blood near her head, and yet the man who was convicted of killing her, shot all of his victims in the head.
William Jennings Choyce was found guilty of the 1988 murder of Victoria Bell, along with the 1997 rapes and murders of Stockton women Lawanda Beck and Gwendolyn Lee.
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There had to be a good reason for the number 9 to be put on that quarter, so I thought about it and remembered that my stalker connected Darlene to me for whatever reason. Darlene had been shot with a 9 millimeter.
Then I realized that the 9th letter of the alphabet was "I", inferring it was him.
I being Zodiac. He wanted me to believe he was Zodiac and that he killed both of these women.
I wasn't showing any fear, whereas he needed me to know that I should be very fearful, because he was in fact the Zodiac. Anyway that is what I perceived it to be.
The angry looking man, with the thick curly hair, was still coming into my work almost every night, but Ron the private investigator could never get there in time to see him. It was the January of 1990, and I had two tickets to go to a crab feed in Walnut Creek. I wanted to go, but knew it was getting too dangerous to go alone, so I asked one of my male customers Frank if he would like to join me. He said he would. However, I knew I needed to tell him that whoever this stalker was, he could possibly shoot at us while I was driving, but he wasn’t worried about it.
I said that he would need to spend the night at my home, because I didn’t want to drive back to Oakland and then back to my home alone. He was a smoker so I asked him to please open his bedroom window while he smoked.
In the morning I decided to leave early, so that whoever was following me wouldn’t see us leave. I also phoned the police to ask if they would drive by in case the man was waiting, to act as a deterrent. That took too long, so we left.
We were going to have breakfast at Nicko’s on 29th Avenue, across the street from Pier 29. It didn’t seem like we were followed, but within 5 or 10 minutes, my secret admirer walked into Nicko’s. For him to know I was there, he had to have followed me. He had on a rust colored sweater, the same one he had worn when he came in to my work in drag. His hair was different- it was combed with a part on the left and it was flattened down with something that took away the curls. But I knew it was him just the same.
I acted as though I didn't recognize him, so he wouldn’t know. I also didn’t mention it to Frank right then, because I knew Frank would look over at him and he would know. I waited until the man got up from the counter and walked past me towards the rest room and the public phone area, behind me. As I was telling him that, the man must have stopped behind me, because Frank’s eyes were looking above my head at him. The man then went around the corner.
He wasn’t gone long enough to use either the restroom or the phone- he just wanted a closer look at Frank I guess.
I did notice that he was pretending to be reading the yellow Zodiac paperback book. I am sure he did that as a taunt.
Frank got up to pay the bill and I was looking in my purse, thinking about carefully pulling out my gun so he could see it and then putting it in my jacket pocket.
But I was worried that if anyone else saw it, like the off duty cop sitting at the end of the counter, I would be taken away in handcuffs. Besides, I had a small can of mace in my pocket.
I could see the man was walking towards me again, knowing that I was leaving. I turned towards the door, so he stood in front of me, as if to block my leaving. He had his hand in his right hand pocket and was holding something. With his left hand he held the Zodiac book up, so as to block anyone seeing what was in his other hand.
I turned away from him and took another look in my purse, then started to step again towards the door, but again he stood in the way. This all took place in a matter of seconds. Then I guess he felt that he was drawing attention to himself and let me walk past him out the door.
I told Frank to leave quickly and to lock his door right away. I unlocked my side and got in, and just as I hit my door lock, the man had his hand on my door. I backed out of the parking place with my knees knocking. I was very scared.
I drove across the street to let Frank off at his truck and parked my car next to the Park Street bridge, went into my work and fell apart inside. I couldn’t stop crying, and I knew that would be my last day of work. This stalker was getting more and more brazen and he didn’t seem to care that all those people saw him. I called the other waitress, who would come in at 6.00 pm to replace me and I asked her if she would come in two hours early so I could leave safely. I then phoned my boyfriend and asked him to bring his brother, so his brother could drive my car to his house and my boyfriend could drive me to his home in Stockton. I am not sure if we stopped at my home, so I could get my things to stay in Stockton or not. But these were the lengths I went to, in order to be safe from this obsessed man.
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We told his brother to come and pick me up in the morning, but leave my car hidden in his garage. Somehow he didn’t know I wasn’t going home. I was going to Stockton. So he went to my home looking for me- he said he knocked on the front door and then climbed the fence to knock on my bedroom window, thinking I was still sleeping. He called his brother telling him he was at my home, but I wasn’t answering. That was when he found out I was in Stockton, so he drove there.
I have no doubt that he didn’t look behind him to make sure he wasn’t being followed, because the next morning my stalker drove by the house I was hiding at.
The reason I needed my boyfriend’s brother to pick me up, I had an appointment at the San Francisco Police Department with Jim Deasy about my stalker possibly being the Zodiac. I brought with me a tall glass which my stalker drank a “Bloody Mary” out of. It was before we knew about DNA, but I knew it would have his handprints and fingerprints on it, which could prove either way if he was Zodiac or not.
Deasey told me about two men who would be coming in to talk about their suspect after I left. I gave him the note with the printing. I was told by an “expert,” that the printing on that note was too much like the Zodiac’s printing to be his.
I also gave a tape of his voice saying "Sorry I missed you (meaning the shot he fired at me), well I guess I will say goodbye, don’t worry we will get together soon." I also gave him the ruler from Heald College, that was left with the Lake Berryessa costume. I thought that everything I gave him was enough 'if checked', to prove I was correct in saying that this man was the Zodiac Killer. But because they had so many people saying they knew who Zodiac is, you get tuned out, along with all of the kooks.
I did not mention the killer's costume in my car, because it sounds too good to be true. I thought that by not mentioning it, he would at least listen to the rest of my story. I had no idea at the time of discovery, that it was a costume worn by the killer. If I had any idea what it was, I would have taken it to Napa Police Department immediately. It was many years later that I realized what was put in our car in Napa County, thanks to the Robert Graysmith's drawing of the Lake Berryessa costume in his first Zodiac book.
As soon as I saw that was what I had put away in a box of material, I started to look for it. After searching for it and not finding it, I thought it had been thrown out by my daughter-in-law, who believed she was doing me a favor by cleaning out my garage. Either that, or a renter I had in the 1980s, who sold things at flea markets, had taken some of my belongings to sell.
Later, I received a call from my ex husband. He told me he had just moved and found some boxes of mine, that his mother had been storing for us since 1977 after we moved. He knew they were mine, because he knew I saved material for my sewing projects. I still do that to this day.
He said that as soon as he goes through all of his boxes he will let me know. I made the mistake of telling him how important the costume in one of those boxes was to me and to the Zodiac case. I have not heard from him since that conversation. http://zodiackillermystery.freeforums.net
http://www.mk-zodiac.com
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