|
There is much biographical information that could be added, but in the way of preliminaries to the day’s events there isn’t much else to tell. There is only that one peculiar thing. Outside of Shirley, there were few, if any, that didn’t know Bob and Linda were going off on their own.
That evening Bob and Linda didn’t come home. By next morning Hutch Domingos was quite worried. He had only been told they were going “to the beach.” He had called Shirley Gnesa and she confirmed it. At 12:10 p.m. Hutch and Linda’s mom, Eva Edwards, filed a missing persons report. However, because they had not been missing long enough there wasn’t much the police could do.
By that night, Hutch was cruising Highway 101 with Shirley’s dad, Leo Gnesa and her brother, Lee Jr. Finally, they saw Bobby’s distinctive Pontiac parked alongside the road (supposedly under eucalyptus trees). They got out and walked to the railroad tracks, but in the darkness they could only hear the surf booming down the cliffs. Lee said there was a lean-to shack down there that was frequented by teens. They then turned around to find a cop. At Vista Del Mar School they found a CHP officer, Paul Schultz, writing a ticket. They had him come and follow them to the spot. With his flashlight he led the way down the bluff. Upon looking in the “lean to,” he found the couple’s “bullet riddled” bodies.
So we dissolve now from that dark night to newspapers. The Lompoc Record and the Santa Barbara News Press reported varying details. Bob was shot 11 times, supposedly all in the back. Linda was shot 8 times. According to the Santa Barbara paper, her right leg was shattered by one of the bullets. There were bruises on Bob’s face, indicating he had fought with the assailant. The Press Independent of Pasadena said there were powder burns indicating close range shooting. All papers reported that the sheriffs found 20 shell casings in the creek or stream bed. They belonged to a .22 caliber automatic. It was not certain whether these were from a rifle or a pistol. If all is true, the shooting obviously took place here, eventually at close range.
This gives us the following scenario: either the killer approached them or they stumbled upon him. There was a fight. They fled. The killer pursued. He shot them enough so that they fell. Then he closed in and stood over them and fired point blank. There are many possible sub-scenarios. Bob would have tried to shield Linda as they ran. Her leg wound would have brought her down. He might have stopped, then they were riddled with bullets. Or he could have been shot first and went down. She was still running. The killer then brought her down with a shot to her leg. It is not reported if the shell casings were grouped or spread out, the last supporting the theory the attacker chased the couple while they fled. If grouped, then after they fell the killer stood over them and maniacally and vengefully pumped the rest into them. There seems little reason to dispute such a state of mind. The firing of so many bullets only dangerously drew attention to the killer. No levelheaded killer— and sadly there are many— would have taken the chances that come with firing off so many bullets. In any case, the number of bullets cannot be disputed. The killer must have enjoyed shooting them full of holes. It was vengeful and way over the top.
Yet despite the appearance of rage, the killer supposedly did something very levelheaded next. According to further reports, the killer then drug the bodies about 30 feet through a clearing in the wooded banks of the stream where, according to the sketch (if this is the crime scene sketch), the shack stood under a large tree. He placed them inside— Bobby face down and on the bottom; Linda on him, face up. The Press reported that she was naked but not sexually molested. It is accepted today that her one-piece was cut only at top, exposing her breasts. It is said that Bobby’s face shows peri-mortem marks as if he was drug face down to the shack. If so, it meant the killer drug him by the feet. This would indicate the killer had an automatic pistol, which he tucked in his belt or holster, or his rifle had a sling, so he could shoulder it.
Now, something peculiar comes into the spotlight. It is said that leaves and grass was piled up around the “crude lean to.” Lying about were used wood matches. It had been posited by the newspapers that the killer attempted to ignite the entire shack and set it ablaze, destroying the evidence of his wanton malice and gruesome crime. In other reports, however, it was said that only a towel draped over the top of the shack (or over its doorway) showed charring.
Amidst the convolution of reports, we have reports that boxes of .22 caliber bullets were found in the shack as well. By the batch numbers on the boxes, the boxes could be traced to Vandenberg Air Force Base’s exchange. Then Sheriff James Webster discovered a telltale clue was missing. Vandenberg puts price tags on their boxes. These boxes had none. A continuing search of batch numbers uncovered a shop in Santa Barbara also sold the same batch of .22 caliber bullets. The investigation could no longer be limited to military personnel or their families.
Investigation cleared a 17 year old who was at Refugio Beach to the south. He was said to  have had bruised knuckles. He supposedly admitted he was jealous of Bobby. Another boy was cleared when his alibi of having been in Sacramento at the time was verified. He had stolen a .22 caliber in Lompoc and for that reason he had been a suspect. But apparently it could be proved that he had left Lompoc on the 2nd of June.
There is another shadowy suspect— the nebulous entity of “Sandy.” A murder had occurred in Lompoc only the day before when local quarrier Vern Smith was found with a single stab wound near his trailer on the woodsy San Miguelito Canyon Road. Two of the youths involved, J.C. Reed and James Coleman, were later captured and brought to trial. They tagged a mysterious companion as the one responsible for murdering Smith. He was known only by his sobriquet of “Sandy.” This was because of his natural blond hair. He wore it in a surfer cut. He was about 17 years old. He smoked, holding the cigarette butt by the base of his fingers.
According to Reed and Coleman, they had picked him up in Santa Cruz, in a Sunbeam they had stolen. They got along, and even tried a petty theft together. They had then driven back to Lompoc where Reed’s mother worked at the Ricksha Cafe. While eating at the counter, they noticed Vern Smith sitting in a booth. He was known to have flashed large amounts of money sometimes. They decided to follow him back to his isolated trailer and rob him.
This is according to Reed and Coleman anyway. They stopped near Smith’s trailer and feigned they were out of gas. While he was bent over refilling their tank with a portable gasoline tank, Sandy pulled out a knife and stabbed the old man in the back. The blade went right into his heart. Coleman and Reed were shocked, supposedly, but not enough to not rifle the body and take 360 bucks from Smith. The trio fled. Coleman and Reed were unnerved by Sandy’s presence now, sitting behind them in the stolen Sunbeam. At Arroyo Grande, a town north of Santa Maria, they gave him 20 bucks to rent a room at the Royal Motel. There they ditched him. The clothes he had left with them, they had tossed on the roadside to Santa Cruz.
After they were caught, they described him in detail. A dragnet went out for Sandy. From  the boy’s description, he sounded like a maniac killer in-the-making. Reed and Coleman had testified that when they asked him why he stabbed the man, he had replied: “I don’t know.” The police went and fetched the clothes, finding them exactly where the two boys had declared they had thrown them from the car. In the clothes there was sewn a name tag with the name Bob Coffman thereon. Investigation proved that “Sandy” did tenuously exist. At the motel in Arroyo Grande, where he had been ditched, he had registered under the name of William Carr, giving a fake address in Bakersfield. The police searched high and low, but never found Sandy. A few of the Grand Jurors expressed their opinion that Reed and Coleman could have gotten rid of him. This is possible, but so far as it relates here neither we nor indeed was Sheriff Webster sure. Sandy could have been on the loose and with a .22 automatic, if he had stolen one, and been hiding out at the beach shack, though it seems unlikely considering from where the ammo came.
It took the sheriffs a year but they also found a 50 year old itinerant, George Gill, who was known to have lived in the shack. He had gotten nailed for trying to hock a stolen gun. It turned out, however, that they could clear him too.
As a result, nothing could ever be proved about Bob and Linda’s brutal murders, and the information, as scant as it is, doesn’t lend to too much coherent recreation of what must have happened. The case faded into the cold file. The newspapers, yellowed and old, were tossed away.
Now come forward to 1972. The clean cut image is gone, almost ancient this one year less a decade later. America was now riding the pendulum of the antiestablishment movement. Even the late 60s seemed telescoped far back in time. Now a new sheriff in Santa Barbara County noticed the similarity in the Domingos/Edwards murder to those perpetrated by the Bay Area’s infamous “boastful killer” of 1968-69. Sheriff John Carpenter held a news conference on Monday, November 13, stating plainly that there was much evidence to suggest a strong link with Zodiac and the Domingos/Edwards murders.
In part, Carpenter declared: “After conferring with officers in these other jurisdictions [Bay Area], we have found that there appears to be a high degree of probability that this subject is responsible for the double murder in our county. Several significant similarities between our case and the others, as well as other evidence which I am not at liberty to disclose at this time, all tend to connect ZODIAC with this crime. In addition, we have information, to be investigated further, which may place him in the Santa Barbara area in 1963.”
The connection with Zodiac was “on the “surface,” a word his own office used. This word is no longer good enough 40 years later. We must now probe under the skin.
Despite Carpenter’s official press release demurring that the motivation for this pointless news conference wasn’t to cash in on the popularity of The Zodiac Killer, there was really no reason for the press release other than publicity. In a nutshell, the press release says that the Domingos/Edwards double murder looks similar but we have to look more. What need to think out loud and then tell the world? The obvious nebulousness of the press release later caused the detective assigned to the case, Bill Baker, to clarify that they had no evidence whatsoever. It just looks similar in MO.
Yet within the press release Carpenter used a very significant word. “Him.” What a remarkable thing to say! “In addition, we have information, to be investigated further, which may place him in the Santa Barbara area in 1963.” Him. Carpenter could not have used that pronoun unless he had a prime suspect, and he could not have gotten a prime suspect from San Francisco, Vallejo, or Napa because they didn’t have one. It was only around this time that Arthur Leigh Allen was beginning to look “real good” (to use Dave Toschi’s words) to Bay Area jurisdictions (amongst a few other suspects they had on their list). It seems unquestionable that Carpenter was referring to Leigh Allen. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Carpenter to have established that Leigh Allen once lived in a trailer near Lompoc. This, plus Vallejo or SFPD contacts telling him Allen was a suspect, must have been enough for Carpenter to dovetail on the resurgence of interest in Zodiac and hold his pointless press conference. A little quiet digging first, however, would have turned up that Allen was a poor fit for the case.
Native Lompoc son, Mike McVicar, remembers Leigh Allen well. Allen struck him as being really weird. But McVicar being a car aficionado, and Allen being quite a car buff, they did go to a few car shows together. McVicar, however, remembers that Leigh lived in Lompoc before 1963. McVicar, and so many others, were also used to seeing Leigh at the local public pool, where he was the lifeguard. McVicar recalls what so many others have recalled about Allen. “For a fat guy, he was a really good diver.”
Years later, around 1975 or 1976, McVicar was part of a car show at Atascadero State Prison. In those opulent open-minded days, the prison, which specialized in housing the criminally insane, sponsored a car show. Owners of souped-up and restored classic cars brought their specialties in and the prisoners were allowed to walk around and look at them. Mike was shocked to see Leigh Allen approach him. When asked why he was there, Leigh merely shrugged it off and said it was nothing big. It was only a “sex thing.” (Allen was a convicted pedophile). The irony, however, had not escaped Leigh. He reminded McVicar that he had once been an orderly there and now he was an inmate. He later wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to Mike describing how Mike could design the trunk of his next car with a hatch underneath and this way sneak him out.
If Leigh Allen was Carpenter’s trump, he had very little. He would have to prove Allen was visiting Lompoc or the Gaviota area in June 1963. Since nothing ever came of this— and we are now 40 years beyond this— we can assume Carpenter never made the connection. If he did, it still legally did not amount to much. It would not even constitute circumstantial evidence. There was really no reason for Carpenter to have held a news conference. If Carpenter’s comments were veiled references to Allen, he would have had nothing linking Zodiac to the Gaviota slayings anyway. Few to this day even believe that Leigh Allen could have been Zodiac. And there is indeed much evidence which argues against him.
Regardless, Carpenter may still have stumbled upon Zodiac. He was trying to get his dog to hunt, and we can’t condemn it for sniffing around. The surface resemblance to Zodiac’s MO is indeed there whether Allen was Zodiac or not. Carpenter’s motive may have been a ploy to worry the killer into believing they uncovered one of his killings and some critical evidence. This perhaps should be the most positive light in which to put Carpenter’s conference despite its grandstanding appearance and unfulfilling nature, and he may have succeeded.
It is a fact that Zodiac followed news concerning him. His connection with cold cases in southern California had begun just the year before with a series of newspaper articles. These began with the discussion of the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, a cold case since 1966. In response to the article in the Los Angeles Times, none other than The Zodiac himself took credit for her murder (March 13, 1971, letter to the Times) and then bragged, typically, that there was “a hell of a lot more” in southern California that the police had not picked up upon.
The Zodiac’s claim to have killed Cheri Jo Bates has struck most an investigator, from official police investigators to amateur detectives, as having no real substance. The Zodiac was in his bragging mode at this time. He had not been known to have killed anybody even in the Bay Area since Paul Stine on October 11, 1969. Nevertheless, he had continued to tastelessly claim many victims, but it seemed it was only his idle terrorism-by-proxy.
Cheri Jo Bates murder is in many ways quite at odds with The Zodiac’s style and abilities, and even Riverside Police discounted Zodiac’s hand in the actual murder. But Santa Barbara Sheriff John Carpenter was right to think that Zodiac had a pre-Bay Area record. We can dismiss Carpenter’s news conference as dovetailing, but there is one interesting aftereffect here. As the Domingos/Edwards case gained recognition as a possible Zodiac crime, one other thing became obvious— Zodiac avoided mention of the case completely. He didn’t boast. He didn’t elaborate. He fell silent. Could that be from the fact that he was truly responsible, and that the murder of Domingos and Edwards carries some clue to finally identifying him?
If true, rediscovering this cold case and even superficially linking it with Zodiac is a boon answered. If this was Zodiac’s first strike then there could be some tie to him uncovered in the case.
This is where analysis must begin to take over. And this is where the actual crime location becomes crucial. No impulsive killer is going to know the Gaviota site. One has to know how to get down to the beach from the highway. One has to cross the railroad tracks and pick up one of two game paths, specifically the one that leads down right by the mouth of the stream. Dragging the bodies to the shack might indicate the killer was aware that the hobo Gill used the shack as a home. Leaving the bodies there, with boxes of shells, would easily frame Gill and by doing so cover the killer’s tracks. This does indicate a knowledge of the site. Yet the “funeral pyre” rather complicates this, since on the surface it seems an attempt to destroy evidence rather than frame Gill.
The reports of the “funeral pyre” could be nothing but flummery. But if it is true, it makes one wonder what the killer was thinking. It could ignite a small brush fire, which would most certainly complicate the killer’s escape, since a plume of smoke rising over Highway 101 would only draw attention to him as he mounts the bluff and rushes to his parked car. It is also an act which indicates the killer is trying to hide his atrocious crime. This is not Zodiac at all. He boasted of his crimes. Yet it is true he did not do so until 1969, six months after his first known Bay Area killing.
The bodies were found in a lean-to. This is true. Such an act requires a motive. The first and most obvious is that it was to hide the bodies from view. Fishermen could walk down the bluff at any time and possibly see 2 bodies about the creek bed. Even if the killer had passed them on the path up, this would only draw their attention to him over their shoulders and he would have to flee up the bluff.
The killer would have to light it quickly and run up the bluff in order to make it to his car before the plume became noticeable. This may explain why the fire failed. The killer did not wait around long enough for it to ignite. He bolted and only at the top of the bluff realized he had failed. It is too risky to return and try again. He departs.
Night alone would be the only thing that could hide the plume of smoke, but none of the evidence that we have indicates the killer waited until dark. Bobby and Linda would not have been there at dark anyway, and trying to hold them for that long, alive or dead, only opens the killer up to unnecessary risks. His car also would have been on the road for a long time, parked near to a very distinctive Pontiac. No paper ever reported a motorist saying he saw two cars parked on the road. Had the killer been parked there for some time someone would have surely reported back to the sheriffs.
If this was somebody who knew Bobby and/or Linda, he knew where they would be. He also knew, moreover, that Shirley and her boyfriend had backed out and would not be there . . . unless Shirley was also an intended victim. He may, of course, never have known that she and her beau had been invited. Therefore there are only a few options. It would have to be someone who knew where Bobby and Linda were going, never knew Shirley was invited (or knew she had backed out), or was after her as well. In any scenario, the margin is narrowed for who the killer would have been. Even Bobby’s dad didn’t know. He only knew “at the beach.”
The Press reported that the .22 ammunition was found in boxes. Indeed it was. According to the Press it was found in the “shack.” No thrill killer would encumber himself with a couple of boxes of heavy ammo as he quickly descended the bluff. This suggest the killer was already there. Could it be that the killer did not come upon Bob and Linda but that they came upon him? Was he hiding out at the shack already?
But if he was already there, he must have had a means of escape. If he didn’t have a car, how did he escape? He didn’t bother to take Domingos’ car keys from his pocket. He didn’t try and steal his car. If he left the ammo, did he just fling the gun into the sea?
Karen Paaske, of the Lompoc Valley Historical Society, reminded me that trains passed overhead every day. In those days they still had box cars. Could the killer have arrived and departed in like manner? The problem is the ammo. A fugitive riding the rails would not be in a position to buy ammo in Santa Barbara or at Vandenberg. If waiting for another train, why try to torch the shack and send up a telltale clue to trouble? In this scenario, I can see why the killer would drag their bodies into the shack and hide them from sight while he waited for a train, but then why torch the shack? And who’s to say he could catch the next train?
No, it seems the killer had his own transportation. But why the boxes of ammo? Why have them there and leave them there? It does indeed seem as if the killer was there first. Who was known to visit this area to shoot? Who knew Gill used the shack?
“The terrible ifs accumulate” — Winston Churchill.
Is Zodiac involved? On the surface, it can be argued that he is. He killed couples at lonely spots. There seems to have been close quarter contact between Domingos/Edwards and the killer. The Zodiac always killed at close proximity. But Zodiac also took special vengeance on the woman. He shot the man to the head and dispatched him quickly. He riddled the woman with holes. The opposite is true here. Domingos was shot 11 times, Edwards 8 times.
The Zodiac was also quite clumsy after his crimes. Although the killer bungled the job of lighting the shack on fire (if true), he had the presence of mind to drag the bodies into the shack. The Zodiac was not like that. He was a thrill killer who didn’t take too much stock of his crime scenes. He fled Blue Rock Springs Park— hadn’t noticed the name— then he called the police and was quite fouled up with his directions to them. He had believed he had killed both victims. He had not. At Lake Berryessa, the crime that most try and draw parallels with between Domingos and Edwards, The Zodiac had killed neither of the victims and yet was sure he had. He wrote on their car door and then called the Napa Police —wrong jurisdiction— and confessed to a “double murder.” Brian Hartnell, the survivor, also expressed his surprise that Zodiac had not heard he and his companion talk to each other as they got loose of their bonds. Though walking away, Zodiac was still within earshot. In short, after a crime Zodiac was not in a state to hear his victims talk, take stock if he had killed them, and seemed fairly uninformed about the geography where he struck. It is only after his final murder— that of Paul Stine— that Zodiac shows some calm sophistication, wiping off his fingerprints and casually walking away.
In 1972, thanks to Carpenter stirring the embers, newspapers speculated that perhaps footprints had been found in 1963 that made a solid link with Zodiac. Footprints had been a big thing at Lake Berryessa. They had told the Napa sheriffs that The Zodiac wore Wing Walker size 10 1/2 military shoes. The Vallejo Times reminded us (November 13, 1972) that Cheri Jo Bates murderer had worn military style shoes. The idea that the ammo was bought at Vandenberg served to fuel the theory that the only person who could be responsible for Domingos and Edwards’ brutal murders was a former military man like Zodiac was thought to be.
But Bill Baker denied there was any evidence, including footprints.
“Zodiologists” have tried to accentuate that cut rope or other bindings were used on Domingos and Edwards. I have never confirmed this. This is their innocent attempt to draw closer parallels between the Zodiac’s MO at Lake Berryessa in 1969 and the Domingos/Edwards murders. It may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate that Zodiac was involved. “Practice makes perfect” is a maxim of human endeavor, even for something as ghastly as murder. Even serial killers, sadly, get better as they go. Zodiac’s advancing skill is noticeable in his crime spree in the Bay Area. He would not have had the fully blown MO of Lake Berryessa at his first strike at Gaviota 6 years earlier. At Lake Berryessa he intended to kill by stabbing, a motive that required he tie both victims up first. We have no evidence that this was the Gaviota killer’s intention.
What shall we then say? Some 49 years the clock has wound around in its course, and we are none the wiser about this case and Zodiac’s possible connection with it. The case sees the light of day only through attempts to link it with a notorious northern California serial killer.
If the Zodiac is to blame, then perhaps this was his first murder. Perhaps he indeed has a connection with Lompoc, Goleta, or Santa Barbara. Perhaps he was out hunting that day, and things happened. Perhaps he enjoyed it. Perhaps he was in the military and then got called up and sent to Vietnam. This would explain no more murders until 1968. Perhaps he now was out of active service and in the Bay Area. He certainly didn’t seem to know Vallejo well, but he did know some hunting and fishing locations, like Lake Herman Road and Lake Berryessa. But he didn’t know Blue Rocks Springs Park by name, nor was he very good with directions and judging distance. He hadn’t been in the area long, it seems.
Lompoc, Goleta, Santa Barbara, even those around Bobby and Linda, may hold the clue to unraveling Zodiac.
|
