The date: December 20, 1968. The time: 11:25 p.m.

     Stella Medeiros is driving on Lake Herman Road, a lonely country road just outside Vallejo, California. In a turnout, at the apex of a bend in the road, there is a parked station wagon. The rear and side windows sparkle as her headlights sweep it. A young man’s body lies beside the car; a girl lies about 30 feet behind the rear bumper.  Pools of blood surround the bodies.

     Mrs. Medeiros speeds off to the next town, Benicia. On the outskirts she locates a police car. She honks her horn and blinks her lights. She reports what she saw.

     In a few minutes Benicia police are in control of the area. The gravel turnout is known as a parking area for local teens. This is a brutal attack on two kids. 

     At 11:52 p.m. the call comes into to the Solano County Sheriff’s Office. Responding

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officers are Butterbach and Waterman. Lake Herman Road is their jurisdiction. When they arrive, the Benicia police show them the scene. They lift the wool blanket off the female victim.

     The victim is Betty Lou Jensen, 16 years old. She is dead, shot 5 times in the right of the back.

   The second victim was David Faraday, 17. He had been found alive, breathing faintly. He was currently en route to the hospital. A chalk outline marks the area where his body had fallen. He had been on his back, his left foot almost touching the right rear tire. A large pool of blood still marked where his head had been. He had been shot in the head, arms over his head in the pool of blood. Curiously, his class ring was dangling from his ring finger. It hung on at the tip only, held there by the tip of the middle finger.

     At 12:05 a.m. December 21 Detective Sergeant Leslie Lundblad of the Solano Co. Sheriffs arrived.  Lundblad asked Butterbach and Waterman to get a statement at the hospital from Faraday. Upon arrival at the hospital they discovered that the young man had been pronounced Dead on Arrival.

     The detectives now had to paste things together from what they had before them.  The general arrangement of things was recorded. The back passenger side rear window had been shattered by a bullet. A bullet hole was in the top just above the backseat passenger side door. The passenger side front door was open all the way. The others were closed and locked. Several shell casings peppered the ground on the passenger side of the car. They were .22 caliber. In all, 9 were collected. One, curiously, was about 20 feet away from the others.

This photo is taken from quite a distance in front of the car. Yet we see none of the fencing that divided the property from the turnout, which is also visible in the first photos on this page.

    The shell casings indicate that the killer fired 2 shots into the car to get them out. They scooted out the passenger side door. The killer confronted them. David challenged him. He had been shot close range through the upper left ear and into the head. It was then that Jensen must have fled. Standing by Faraday’s body, the killer shot her 5 times in a “remarkable grouping” of shots.

     Witnesses would help bring some clarity to a probable time for the crime. It isn’t necessary to itemize them all here. The most significant was James Owen. At 11:20 p.m. that night he had driven past the turnout, coming from Vallejo and going toward Benicia. He noticed 2 cars in the turnout. One was the Rambler station wagon. Parked along its passenger side, about 5 to 10 feet from it, was another car. He could not identify it by model or year, but it was a dark car, not too big, not compact, little chrome finishings.

     One quarter of a mile down the road he heard what he thought was a gunshot.

     Taken together, the fact pattern shows that James Owen passed extremely close to the time of the shooting.

     Continuing investigation by the Sheriff’s department revealed no possible motive for the killing. This was Betty Lou Jensen’s first date. David Faraday was new in her life. Nothing tied the two to anything that would motivate the joint killing. The end result was an unsolved killing. Suspect was unknown; motive unknown.

     This wasn’t new. The 1960s saw America inducted into a wave of pointless murders. Murders were no longer the exclusive province of cheap hoods, mob gunsels, and bank robbers. They occurred without reason and they plagued the clean-cut middleclass. San Francisco, too, was in the throes of the counterculture movement. Hippies, Yippies, all sorts of strange people were flocking to the city and living in love-ins and communes. Society was quite worried about drug use and “crazies” doing their “thing.” 

     From the evidence, we can suggest a certain chain of events. For one, due to that one shell casing found 20 feet from where Faraday lay, it is logical to assume that this casing represents one of the first shots fired. Tests have shown that .22 caliber automatic pistols (a J.C. Higgins Model 80 was believed used here) have a tendency to discharge their casings toward the rear of the shooter. The position of this particular casing indicates the killer must have stood toward the rear of his own car. Perhaps the killer fired once into the air and ordered them out of the car. (One bullet was never found.) When they didn’t get out, he may have approached closer and fired two rounds into the car.

     They scooted out the passenger side.  

     I visited the Vallejo Historical Museum on Tuesday, September 11, 2012, to get more information and photographs circa 1969 in my quest to document the crime. My visit was very successful. Two of the docents knew those involved in the Lake Herman Road murders. One had just been talking with Stella Medeiros. The other, Mike Turrini, was a schoolmate of David’s, though a year his senior. He told me that David had been a school wrestler. This answers significant points at the crime scene.

     With 2 bullet holes in his car, David must have known the score.  I suspect he tried to wrestle the assailant. This would explain the chalk outline of his body showing he was on his back and the killer was on top of him. It would also explain why his class ring was almost off his finger. It must have come loose during his clutching and re-clutching on the killer. The killer could have held him down and put the gun to his head. David’s last words could have been “Run!” The killer shoots pointblank. Jensen bolts. He jumps up and fires in time to get one grain of powder on her dress by a bullet hole (forensics uncovered this). He continues to fire until she drops.

     From the chain of sightings the witnesses give us, we must deduce that the killer came from Vallejo. (Coming from Benicia See Video.) Coming from Vallejo, See Video.)

     Over 6 months went by. The terrible slaying at Lake Herman Road began to fade. Then something else happened.