Chapter One
In the Beginning: Lake Herman Road
When December 20, 1968 rolled around it brought with it the promise of the end of one of the most tumultuous years in American history. It was a year in which both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been gunned down in cold blood, and in which there were violent confrontations between youthful protesters, Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies! and Mayor Richard Daley’s police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The war in Vietnam was raging on amid loud and sometimes bloody protests at home. The failed wartime policy of escalation had led in March to the essential abdication of President Lyndon Johnson, who chose not to run for re-election after the January Tet offensive by the North Vietnamese revealed our vulnerabilities and stunned the nation.
In Vallejo, California, a small, family-oriented city of roughly 65,000 people situated twenty-five miles northeast of the Bay Area metropolis of San Francisco, December 20th meant there were a mere five shopping days until Christmas. Spirits were high here, as they were everywhere in America, as the three astronauts of Apollo 8 were preparing to soar towards man’s first rendezvous with the moon. But the violence that marred 1968 was not yet done with Vallejo, or with the people of the San Francisco Bay Area. Before this cold, clear, essentially moonless night was out an unspeakably cowardly, brutal and senseless crime would occur. It was a seemingly motiveless attack that would at first shock and confuse Vallejoans by its sheer cold-bloodedness. But by July of 1969, it would take on even greater proportions, as it became clear that this had been the opening act of an enigmatic, ruthless and bizarre serial killer who would rain terror on the entire region for the next six years.
Of all the murders in this brutal series of crimes, the deaths of 17 year-old David Faraday and 16 year-old Betty Lou Jensen may have been the ones steeped in the most bitter of irony. Their story is not unlike that of star-crossed lovers from a Shakespearean tragedy. David was one of the finest and most community oriented young men at Vallejo High School and seemed to possess the qualities that would make him a born leader. Betty Lou was an outgoing and friendly young lady who had a strict Christian Science upbringing. She went to rival Hogan High School across town.
David and Betty Lou made plans to go on their first “official” date on December 20th. The brown and tan Faraday family 1961 Rambler arrived right on
