David Faraday & Betty Lou Jensen

Case background and investigation

David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were out on a date on the evening of Friday, December 20, 1968. According to accounts of the case, Faraday called for Jensen at her home in the area and had promised to have her back by 11 p.m. The pair drove in Faraday's station wagon to a gravel turnout on Lake Herman Road, a rural road just beyond the Benicia city limits in Solano County that was known locally as a lovers' lane.

Several people drove past the turnout that night. Timelines assembled from the police reports indicate that passers-by saw the couple sitting in the parked car at about 11 p.m., and that another motorist passed a few minutes before 11:15 p.m. and noticed two vehicles at the spot. Shortly afterward a local resident, Stella Borges, came upon the two teenagers lying on the ground at the turnout and alerted police.

Faraday had been shot once in the head at close range. Jensen had been shot five times in the back, apparently as she tried to get away from the gunman. According to Wikipedia's account she died at the scene, while Faraday was taken to a hospital and did not survive. Spent .22-caliber casings were recovered, and the ammunition was identified as copper-coated Winchester Western Super X. There was no sign of robbery or sexual assault.

Investigators found no motive and no suspect, and the inquiry had stalled by the following summer. Then, on July 31, 1969, three Bay Area newspapers received letters from a writer who claimed responsibility for the Lake Herman Road shootings and for a July 4, 1969 shooting in Vallejo, and who supplied details about the crimes to support the claim. The writer became known as the Zodiac. After a stabbing at Lake Berryessa that September, the attacker wrote the date of the Lake Herman Road killings on a victim's car door.

Law enforcement agencies treat Faraday and Jensen as the first of the confirmed Zodiac victims. The series also includes the Vallejo shooting, the Lake Berryessa attack and the murder of a San Francisco cab driver named Stine later in 1969.

Despite decades of work by local, state and federal investigators, and the examination of many named individuals, no one has been charged with any of the crimes. According to Wikipedia's summary of the case, it remains open with several agencies, including the Solano County Sheriff's Office, and the California Department of Justice and the FBI. The decoding of one of the ciphers by private researchers in December 2020 did not reveal the writer's identity.