The Cases That Haunt Us (32 page)

We’ve discussed in earlier chapters how investigations can get complicated, even, in some instances, compromised, when multiple jurisdictions are involved. In this case, the two Benicia officers were there first because the woman who’d found the crime scene had spotted them. The crime actually occurred, however, outside Benicia’s jurisdiction. So when Captain Pitta called in the county coroner, he also got in touch with the Solano County’s Sheriff ’s Office so they could send investigators out to the scene. Around midnight, representatives from both jurisdictions were present to investigate. They were joined by Detective Sergeant Les Lundblad of the sheriff ’s office. Ultimately, all the work Benicia police did on the case was handed over to the sheriff ’s office.

While Lundblad investigated the crime scene, he sent two of his officers to get a statement from the surviving victim, but when they got to the
ICU
, they learned David Faraday had been declared
DOA
at 12:05.

So what had happened?

A number of witnesses had seen David’s car parked at what would later become the crime scene, including a couple who passed by twice between 10:15 and 10:30 P.M., and two hunters who noticed the Rambler just after 11:00. Although David apparently turned the car around after parking it, possibly to provide more privacy, there was nothing inherently suspicious about the scene.

But investigators uncovered one odd, possibly related incident in the area that night. Two other young people on a date had stopped on the side of the road to check their vehicle’s engine. They reported being passed by a car, described tentatively as a blue Plymouth Valiant, which first slowed and then backed up toward them. Something about the situation spooked the couple, and they hurriedly drove off, only to be followed by the mysterious car until they exited to head toward Benicia. This occurred around 9:30 P.M. Several of the people who’d seen David’s car also reported seeing a white, four-door Chevrolet Impala at the entrance to the pumping station around the same time. These vehicles could provide clues to what had happened or they could be red herrings. The only witnesses to the crime, other than the
UNSUB
, were dead.

There was also little in the way of physical evidence: no fingerprints, no tire tracks, no signs of a struggle. There were light shoe prints in front of the car, and one heel print nearby. The offender did expend ammunition in his rampage and investigators gathered that evidence: empty shell casings from a .22 were found in the car on the floorboard and outside, and several slugs were recovered from the car and the victims’ bodies. The murder weapon was gauged to be a J.C. Higgins, model 80 automatic, or a High Standard model 101 semiautomatic, using a type of copper-coated Super-X bullet produced by Winchester since October 1967.

With no signs of robbery or sexual assault, police looked to victimology, hoping for a clue as to the UNSUB’s motive. The Jensens told investigators that Betty Lou had been bothered by a boy whose romantic intentions she did not return. They said he even threatened David at one point. When the sheriff ’s office followed up on these leads, however, they found the boy had a solid alibi for the night of the murder. Betty Lou had also told her sister she thought someone was spying on her, and her mother found the side yard gate open a couple of times, but nothing was found to connect these incidents to the murders.

This type of crime is emotionally difficult to investigate. Nothing in the victimology indicated why these two young people had been killed and the motive was unclear.

“I
WANT
TO
REPORT
A
DOUBLE
MURDER”

Darlene Ferrin was a gregarious, sociable young lady, twenty-two, who lived in Vallejo with her husband, Dean, and their baby daughter, Dena. Shortly after the murders at the pumping station, she told one of her coworkers at Terry’s Restaurant that she knew the victims—or at least knew of them—from having attended Hogan High School, located about a block from where Betty Lou Jensen lived. Darlene found their murders so frightening she said she wouldn’t be going back to that area again.

About six months after the Jensen-Faraday murders, on the afternoon of the Fourth of July, Darlene called a friend, Mike Mageau, to see about getting together that evening. Then, leaving Dena at home with baby-sitters, Darlene stopped by the Italian restaurant where Dean worked (not the same one where Darlene was employed) to tell him that she and a younger sister, Christina, were heading off to a parade of boats at nearby Mare Island. Dean told her he’d invited some of his coworkers over for a party after work and asked her to pick up fireworks on her way home. She and Christina went to Terry’s Restaurant to invite friends to the party before going to the parade. She also called Mike again. After the parade, they stopped by Dean’s work. By now it was after 10:00 P.M. Darlene called to check on her daughter and was told someone at Terry’s was trying to get in touch with her, so she went back to the restaurant. Then she drove Christina home and returned to her own house.

Originally, her plan was to take her baby-sitters home and then clean up her house for the party, but after a phone call she instead asked the sitters, two young girls, if they could stay while she went out to get fireworks. They agreed, and Darlene drove to Mike Mageau’s house, where Mike was so anxious to see her that he ran out of the house without turning off the TV or lights, leaving the door open. As they left his house, they quickly realized they were being followed by another car, light in color. They tried to lose it and ended up on Columbus Parkway, a route that headed away from town. They turned into Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, not quite as isolated as the Lake Herman Road pumping station but also known as a lovers’ lane. As Darlene pulled into the parking lot, her Chevy Corvair stalled out as the other vehicle pulled up. It parked nearby before speeding off, only to return minutes later. As Mike would later recall, the other car pulled into position behind them almost as a police car would, cutting them off and shining its lights into Darlene’s car. The next thing he knew, he heard something against the car window, then saw a flash of light as he was shot. The bullets kept coming. Darlene fell onto the steering wheel, struck nine times altogether: two in each arm and five in the back, hitting a lung and her heart.

Mike tried to escape but was unable to find the door handle. As he struggled, he saw the shooter returning to his car. At one point the man turned and Mike got a good look at him: in his late twenties, he was stocky—maybe two hundred pounds, about five feet eight—with light brown hair, curly, cut in a crew cut. He wore a windbreaker, like those worn by people in the navy, and pleated pants, which didn’t hide a slight paunch. As his attacker seemed to be leaving, Mike let out a cry of pain, and the man changed direction, going back to Darlene’s car. He shot Mike twice more as his desperate victim jumped into the backseat. Then he shot twice more at Darlene, walked back to his car, and left.

Mike made his way out of Darlene’s car by opening the door from the outside and falling out. He was bleeding from his face, neck, right arm, and left leg. One of the bullets had cut through his jawbone and tongue, so he couldn’t even scream. Fortunately, three other young people were out that night looking for a friend of theirs. They drove into the parking lot and discovered Mageau, writhing on the ground. They raced off to summon help.

Just ten minutes after midnight, the call came in to the Vallejo police switchboard. The two officers first-on-scene were quickly followed by Detective Sergeant John Lynch and Sergeant Ed Rust. And the scene was horrible: Mike Mageau, bleeding profusely, was in a lot of pain, and Darlene was barely alive behind the wheel. Lynch laid Darlene out on the parking lot as they waited for an ambulance. She seemed to try to tell them something, but it was unintelligible. Lynch and Rust had actually heard a report of shots being fired. It had been called in by the son of the groundskeeper at the golf course, who heard the gunfire and the sound of a car leaving quickly. But it was the Fourth of July and the police figured it was fireworks. According to an interview Lynch gave Robert Graysmith, journalist and author of the comprehensive book
Zodiac
, he and his partner felt terrible later, wondering if had they responded more quickly would they have passed the suspect vehicle as it fled the scene. On top of that, when they arrived, they realized they knew one of the victims. Darlene knew a lot of the local police from the restaurant where she worked. She’d even dated them. And she and Dean lived next door to the Vallejo Sheriff ’s Office. She was pronounced
DOA
at 12:30 A.M. at Kaiser Foundation Hospital. Mike Mageau was critical and faced surgery to his jaw, arm, and leg, but would recover from his physical injuries.

At the crime scene, detectives found the Corvair’s windows were open on both sides with the ignition on. The car was still in low gear, the radio on, and Darlene hadn’t applied the parking brake. All of this was consistent with Mike Mageau’s description of how the car had stalled; the subject had caught up to them before she had a chance to either properly park or get going again.

Inside the bloody car, along with Darlene’s purse and Mike’s wallet, investigators found spent nine-millimeter shell casings. Mageau’s description of the events made no mention of the
UNSUB
stopping to reload, and at least nine shots had been fired, so the weapon was thought to be a Browning semiautomatic.

Comparisons between this and the shootings at Lake Herman Road just two miles away seemed inevitable. In both instances, the subject approached young couples as they sat in a car in an isolated location at night. Both times a gun was used. But in this case, according to the surviving witness, the subject actively and aggressively pursued the victim’s car, almost herding it to the crime scene. And in this case, the victimology yielded clues that this was not a stranger crime and that perhaps more easily discernible motives applied.

As police looked into the victims’ backgrounds, they discovered that Darlene Ferrin may not have been a random target. According to friends and associates, she liked to go out and was often in the company of men other than her husband—Mike Mageau, for example. But this seemed to irk Dean’s friends and coworkers more than it bothered him. When they brought it up, he would defend his wife, reminding them she was still young and free-spirited. It was all innocent fun, he insisted, not as if she were having affairs. (This was also the California of 1969.) And he had an airtight alibi that night: he was with his coworkers.

But there were other men in Darlene’s life to investigate, including her first husband, Jim, who’d owned a gun. Darlene was said to be afraid of him. But he didn’t match the physical description of her killer, and police ruled him out as a suspect. Another man, described as a persistent, frustrated suitor, was ruled out when police found he was home with his wife when the murder occurred.

Witnesses say another man spied on Darlene at home from a white, American car parked in front of her house. One baby-sitter reported that when she had told Darlene about the man in the car, Darlene had said she’d seen him kill someone. Darlene’s sister Pam also described a man in a white car who had delivered mysterious packages to the Ferrins’ home, including a package he warned Pam not to open. She’d seen him several times and described him as dark-haired and well-dressed. Sometimes he wore horn-rimmed glasses.

Another sister, Linda, also saw this man at Darlene’s house. He showed up at a party she threw to get the place painted. According to Linda, Darlene told her to steer clear of him. The baby-sitter and Darlene’s sisters all reported Darlene seemed afraid of this man, who’d also been spotted watching her at work at Terry’s. On the night she was killed, Darlene had a tense conversation in the parking lot of the restaurant with a man who drove a white car, as witnessed by her sister Christina.

Around the end of June, just before she was murdered, Darlene predicted to Christina that something big was going to happen. Darlene couldn’t or wouldn’t give her any details, but it would be big enough to get in the papers. People close to Darlene theorized that when she’d gone to the Virgin Islands with her first husband on their honeymoon, they might have fallen in with a rough crowd. Had she seen or heard about a murder there? Were drugs involved? But in the end, all of this speculation led no closer to the identity of her killer.

Mike Mageau was also an interesting character. He and Darlene had met at Terry’s, when he was there with his twin brother, David. The nineteen-year-olds were said to have a competition going, vying desperately for Darlene’s attentions, fighting over who would get to do favors for her. On the Fourth of July, Mike was wearing several layers of clothing, which stunned police until he explained to Detective Lynch that he was self-conscious about his slight build and wore more clothes to try to fill out his appearance. According to several people who talked to Robert Graysmith, Mageau also gave different versions of the events of that night depending on who asked the questions and when they asked. Variations included how the two ended up at Blue Rock Springs, whether they were randomly followed or whether they met up with someone who argued with Darlene first and were then followed to the parking lot, the physical description of the
UNSUB
and his vehicle, and so on. Darlene’s sister Pam thought Mike believed Darlene knew their assailant and Mike was trying to protect her because he loved her. In any event, after he recovered, he moved away.

At 12:40 A.M. on July 5, a call came in to the Vallejo police switchboard. A man’s voice told operator Nancy Slover that there had been a double murder. He gave such precise directions to the scene that it sounded to her as if he’d either rehearsed it or was reading from a script. He did not allow her to interrupt him with questions, and he continued speaking until he was done. For credibility, in addition to the exact description of where the crime scene was, he told her he’d shot his victims with a ninemillimeter Luger. Then he claimed credit for killing “those kids last year,” said good-bye, and hung up.