The Lake [4]

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This guy is a pathological psycho killer. There's no doubt about it.

Is there any doubt in your mind that there is there is not any connection between Valleo and and.

This we're shifting out now. I wouldn't say that there is any connection yet. I wouldn't want to tell you that there isn't at this time. We have some pretty good physical evidence that we're working on now, and of course we're going to get together with the Valeo authorities. We've been in contact with them since the incident, and we definitely will pool our resources.

The shores of Lake Berriessa always felt like a safe place, and prior to September of nineteen sixty nine, there was no reason to think otherwise. Located about eighty miles north of the hard of San Francisco, it was quiet, it was remote. It was the perfect place to spend a lazy afternoon swimming, playing in the tall grass, or just relaxing on a blanket on the water's edge. Unfortunately, all the qualities that made it an ideal getaway also made it the perfect place for other darker pursuits.

We're standing on a peninsula at Lake Bury Essa, in this exact spot Brian Hartnell and the Cecilia Shepherd were attacked in nineteen sixty nine.

There's no boats, there's no planes. All you hear is birds in the background. So I can't believe it, But there's actually a couple shore on the actual island and they're the only people we see here. I mean, you can't even make this stuff up. I think we should go down and talk to him. You came here knowing what was here?

What's here?

Oh it's the same.

Yeah, it's where the Zodiac killer killed that guy in that one girl right yeah.

Yeah, didn't one of them get away?

One of them lived, and then one of them died. The girl died in the hospital. I think, right, well, that's kind of crazy. Like whenever we drive here, I'm like, wow, he drove the same exact way just to get here and do that. It's crazy to think about.

It's very peaceful out here, it is.

It doesn't seem like the place you get killed in.

Probably ruined the whole lak thing for you.

In a mask, robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving them for dad.

Subjects stated, I want to report a murder, no a double murder.

I did it a man who wore a medieval style executioners hood, carried a knife and gun and intended to use them.

They haven't arrested me because they can't prove a thing.

I'm not the damn Zodiac.

Who is the Zodiac and where is he from?

iHeartRadio, how Stuff works and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster, the Zodiac killer.

Dear editor, this is the Zodiac speaking in answer to your asking for more details about the good times I've had in Vallejo. I shall be very happy to supply even more material. The boy was originally sitting in the front seat when I began firing. When I fired the first shot at his head, he leaped backwards at the same time, thus spoiling my aim. He ended up on the back seat, then the floor and back, thrashing out very violently with his legs. That's how I shot him

So it was late September nineteen sixty nine, and most, if not all, of the residents of the nearby bay area were well aware of a killer operating on the outskirts, and now the killer had a name. In September of nineteen sixty nine, Napa County was still a place for relaxation and enjoyment.

On September twenty seventh, nineteen sixty nine, a college student, Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell decided to go to Lake barry Essa to spend some time together. They had dated in the years and they were still friends. They wanted to go out to Lake barry Essa, which is an absolutely beautiful location north of Napa, California. It's a massive body of water. It's a man made lake, green hills, green trees everywhere, lots of foliage, beautiful sunsets there reflected

The events in Napa County would be different. The zodiac was becoming more bold, emerging from the shadows.

Early last Saturday evening, Celia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell, both in their early twenties, were sitting on this knoll of land overlooking part of Lake barry Esa. They thought they were alone, but there was a third man on this a man who wore a medieval style executioner's hood, carried a knife and gun and intended to use them.

Brian and Cecilia decided to sit out on the banks and talk and whatever. And at a certain point Cecilia noticed a man up in the trees, and she commented to Brian that there was a man up there, and Brian thought, oh, it's no big deal. He might just be doing whatever. But then the man got closer, and at a certain point he donned a costume, and then

It'll be over.

The zodiac said he needed to tie them up, and he provided some pre cut links of plastic clothesline courtingly, and he had Cecilia type Brian and then he tied her up and once they were laying on the ground, I guess Brian Hartnell said to the man, is that gun really loaded?

And the man opened the.

Gun and showed him yes, there were bullets in there, and then out of nowhere, the man started stabbing Brian Hartnell on the back with a foot long knife, and apparently he stabbed Brian Hartnell at least six times, and Brian Hartnell decided that it was best to pretend to be dead, so he just stopped moving, and that apparently satisfied the killer, which is another indication of what his motives were. Soon as Brian stopped moving, he moved on

Victims and went off to get help.

Park ranger and others returned later and waited with the victims until the ambulance.

Right.

Yeah, when I arrived on the scene that Saturday night around seven thirteen, when found this young girl in on the shoreline here, all stabbed in several places, and her boyfriend male companion had came too from He had been stabbed and he had taken off for help. And the other patrolman came in, which is Dennish Land. He found him some hundred yards from here, passed out, so he brough him back the scene of the where the girl was.

Had to kill him.

Cecilia Shepherd initially survived the attack, but slipped into a coma on her way to the hospital and died two days later on Monday, September two, nineteen sixty nine. Brian Hartnell survived. Brian, in an interview from his hospital bed, describes how he found the strength to live that night.

At the beginning, I did think I was going to die, and so from that moment on one has to.

Have certain goals that you have to set. The first goal, of course, was to live. I suppose the second goal was to get untied. The next one was to get help, and getting help getting to the hospital. You know, you have to have a successful set of goals.

And if you can keep this going and you can keep your mind active, I don't whether you die or not, you're at.

Least psychologically.

Attune, whether you're in shock or not, if you can keep arguing with yourself, praying, doing anything to keep your mind off of yourself, or at least just not lapsing back and just saying well, it's no use.

Brian will probably be able to leave Queen of the Valley Hospital fairly soon. But where he's going from here is being kept secret. In the event that the man who attacked him and killed Cecilia Shepherd on Lake Barry esa, we could go Saturday tries again. Brian made it for two reasons some people might regard as intangibles, but reasons that for him were enough. A strong faith and an equally strong will to live. Dave Moncey's eyewitness news at Queen of the Valley Hospital.

Because he survived, Brian Hartnell was able to help the investigators by providing detailed descriptions of the zodiac's elaborate costume in the way he spoke to the couple before the attack.

In the hospital, Brian was interviewed and described the killer, described the exchange they had, the conversation they had had, and he also described the killer's costume in great detail. Unfortunately, Brian could not see the killer's face, but he could describe the killer's voice, and he thought that the killer seemed like a younger person, maybe a student, and that he appeared to have some kind of a drawl, not

Brian was fortunate to survive. But there's another side to the story that most people don't consider survivor's guilt.

In nineteen ninety nine, I spoke with Brian Hartnell and he told me some things about that day which put a lot.

Of things in context.

He did talk about his desire to take the gun away from the man, and then wrestling with the fear that doing so might make matters worse and that he might endanger Cecilia. And that was a tremendous responsibility, a burden to be carrying, because as the man, especially in nineteen sixty nine, you're expected to protect the woman. Put yourself in Brian's position. You're there with a woman that you care about and a man walks up with a gun and says he's just going to rob you, and

Brian crawled out onto the road.

He was bleeding so profusely that if the ambulance probably had not come when it did, there's a good chance that he might not have survived. And he told me that the knife came very close to his heart, just an inch in another direction, and Brian probably would have died that day and we would have never heard anything

He offered to help him.

Get some help, and of course the Zodiac wasn't interested in any of that because it was all a ruse. He was just trying to get them to cooperate so he can get them tied up. So he had apparently created this scenario where he was going to use this ruse to convince them everything's okay. Cooperate with me and

When he knew all along what he was going to.

Do to them.

This was not something that he just did on a spur of the moment. Once they were tied up, he tied them up for that specific purpose so they could not fight back. You believe somebody when they tell you I just want to take your money, So you say, okay, all right, you can tie me up, and once that's done, you have no choice any it's over. Brian was very lucky that he survived, but I think, like a lot of other people, he also still struggles with some guilt

And as it turns out, Zodiac was selective when choosing his victims on that day at the lake.

It was probably easier to escape that area during the day than it would have been at night. There's if you've ever been to Lake Barrier, so there's lots of winding roads, and it was even more so back in nineteen sixty nine when those roads weren't paved and they were little dirt trails and things like that. He may have been familiar with that area and selected that spot specifically, but there's no guarantee there would be somebody there. So that might also explain why some witnesses saw a.

Man walking around the area and just randomly looking at people and staring at them, because he may have been considering killing those people as well. There were three young girls who I believe were sunbathing in an area of the lake who said a man was staring at them. If that was the Zodiac, you have to stop to think about what was going on. Was he looking at those people because he was trying to make sure they wouldn't pay any attention if he attacked someone else, or

Maybe he decided not to he didn't want to kill a little boy. I don't know, but it does indicate that he was entertaining a lot of different.

Possibilities that day. And that's a drastic departure from what he had done before.

Was the Zodiac killing strictly for attention. He did seem proud of his kills, bragging about them in a very public way, But why such a dramatic turn of events at Lake Barriessa. The killer had changed his method of

I don't think that he's already had really cared whether he was caught or not. But I think he liked the game, and I think when he went from shooting to stabbing, shooting was just too easy, it was too quick, but stabbing much more statistic, and I think he took probably some delight in doing that. And you see some of these guys and we don't know about some of them. We don't know exactly what Ted Bundy did to his victims. We only heard some things because he did it in

It's one thing to just walk up and stab people, but if you think about somebody like Ted Bundy, he could have just as easily walked up and hit a woman over the head with a crowbar and threw her in the trunk and driven off but there was some part of him that needed to lure them and fool them into a false sense of security so that then he could turn around and spring it on them as a surprise. He needed to surprise women, and he needed

Was he moving from sudden, blind attacks to a much more controlled, ritualistic, or even sexual form of killing. The killer's carefully crafted costume, complete with a handstitched Zodiac symbol, may hold a clue. The bizarre costume he designed and then war for the Lake Barriesa attack still puzzles authorities and captivates the imagination of anyone who sees the police sketch. Even now, fifty years later, the Zodiac's strange costume raises questions.

At Lake barry Essa. He shows up with a bizarre costume with his chosen symbol on the chest, a bizarre story about how he had escaped from a prison and he needed their money and car keys to escape to Mexico, none of which appears to have been true. We know that this story wasn't concocted just to put them at ease, because he could have said anything to put them at ease. And then you have to deal with the costume itself.

The Zodiac had taken on the image of what he felt would instill the most fear in his victims. But the question remains, did he create and wear this elaborate, ritualistic costume for the benefit of himself or for his unfortunate victims. If there was no one left living after the Lake Buriessa attack, no one would have ever known of his bizarre ritual and he certainly didn't expect any survivors.

I want to report a murder, no, a double murder. They are two miles north of park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Karmen Gia.

I'm the one that did it.

Whatever his motive, the Zodiac was clearly done operating in the shadows. He was now ready to take his crimes to a larger venue, somewhere he could really grab the attention of the police and the public. Just two weeks after the Lake Berriesa attack in early October of nineteen sixty nine, The Zodiac would bring his own brand of terror into the heart of San Francisco.

Next time on Monster the Zodiac Killer.

He is a kid. He used kid, and he was playing downstairs and he just you know, looked outside the window and saw yo cab and saw someone slats over in the car. Come the finals a culprit of the Zodiac.

San Francisco is directly linked to the Zodiac Killer. There's no escaping it now. What he wanted in July of nineteen sixty nine was for as many people to see this as possible, to get as much attention as possible, and to cement his image as a real threat.

I've covered a lot of killers with a lot higher body counts and a lot more sick, twisted ways of killing people.

This guy was theatrical.

The Chronicle received a letter and only the Chronicle from the Zodiac. As the woman opened it in the editorial department, a piece of bloody shirt fell out with the letter.

Monster the Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced by iHeartRadio How Stuff Works in Tenderfoot TV. Donald Alright and I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Steedman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope is executive producer on behalf of House Stuff Works, along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Keebrick, and Josh Thain. Scott Benjamin provides additional voice Talent. Matt Frederick

Thanks for listening.