The Lake Berryessa Zodiac attack took place on the afternoon of September 27, 1969, when a hooded man wearing the killer’s crossed-circle symbol bound and stabbed two college students picnicking on the Oak Shores peninsula in Napa County, California. Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22, died two days later. Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, survived six stab wounds and gave investigators the only detailed description of the Zodiac Killer ever recorded from a confirmed victim. The case remains unsolved.
What Happened That Afternoon
Hartnell, a student at Pacific Union College in nearby Angwin, and Shepard, who had transferred from that school to UC Riverside, drove to the lake that Saturday for a picnic along the shoreline near Twin Oak Ridge. While they lay on the ground near the water, they noticed a man watching them from the shade of nearby trees.
He walked over wearing a dark, executioner-style hood with clip-on sunglasses fixed over the eyeholes. A white crossed-circle symbol — the Zodiac’s signature emblem — was stitched onto the chest of his outer garment. Shepard later told deputies she could see brown hair through the eyeholes and dark glasses behind the hood.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack
The man held them at gunpoint and said he was an escaped convict who needed money and a car to reach Mexico. He produced pre-cut lengths of white plastic clothesline and bound both victims. Then he drew a long knife and began stabbing. Hartnell was stabbed six times in the back. Shepard was stabbed ten times in the back and abdomen.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack Hartnell later said the attacker’s demeanor shifted mid-assault and he admitted he did not want money, only to kill them.2All That’s Interesting. Zodiac Killer Victims
The autopsy on Shepard described a heavy, sturdy blade nine to eleven inches long and about an inch wide, possibly sharpened on both edges like a bayonet.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack Hartnell remembered seeing the knife in a case on the right side of the attacker’s belt.
The man walked away, leaving them for dead. Hartnell stayed still until he was gone, then crawled toward the road. A boater named Ronald Fong heard cries for help and raced to Rancho Monticello Resort to alert authorities. Park Ranger Sergeant William White received the report around 6:55 p.m. and sent a speedboat. Park Ranger Dennis Land reached Hartnell about a hundred feet from the attack site.3Napa Valley Register. Today Show to Explore Zodiac Mystery Napa County Sheriff’s Deputy Dave Collins questioned Shepard at the scene. He later said there was no place to administer first aid.4ABC30. Zodiac Killer Investigation Shepard was taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital, where she died on September 29 from cerebral anoxia caused by internal and external hemorrhage.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack
The Costume and the Writing on the Car Door
Before leaving the scene, the attacker used a black marker to draw the crossed-circle symbol on the driver’s door of Hartnell’s white 1956 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Below the symbol he wrote “Sept 27 69 6:30 by knife” and listed the dates and methods of two prior shootings he was claiming credit for.5Zodiac Killer Facts. Lake Berryessa The inscription tied all three attacks to one person. The car door went into evidence and, as of 2011, was still held by the Napa County Sheriff’s Department.3Napa Valley Register. Today Show to Explore Zodiac Mystery
Analysts have debated the handwriting ever since. Some have pointed to inconsistencies in how certain letters and numbers were formed. Others have attributed those variations to stress and to writing on a curved panel. Fingerprints were lifted from the door, though investigators have questioned how the attacker left usable prints without smearing blood on them, suggesting he may have wiped his hands or removed gloves before writing.6Zodiac Ciphers. The Car Door at Lake Berryessa
The hood itself is the most theatrical element of any confirmed Zodiac crime. The killer did not wear a disguise during the shootings at Lake Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs, or Presidio Heights. At Lake Berryessa, he took the trouble to construct and wear a hooded outfit with the symbol stitched to the chest. Because of the hood, Hartnell could not see most of his face.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack The costume, the pre-cut rope, and the marker all point to detailed advance planning.
The Phone Call From Napa
About seventy minutes after the attack, at 7:40 p.m., the killer called the Napa Police Department from a payphone at the corner of Main Street and Clinton Street in Napa.7Zodiac Ciphers. The Payphone Call at Main Street Dispatcher David Slaight answered. Speaking in a low monotone, the caller said: “I want to report a murder — no, a double murder. They are two miles north of park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.” When Slaight asked where the caller was, the voice grew more distant and said, “I’m the one that did it.”8Zodiac Killer Facts. The Crimes: Lake Berryessa
The caller left the receiver dangling. Slaight kept the line open while a local reporter named Pat Stanley, monitoring a police scanner, drove through Napa searching for the phone. Stanley found it near the Sam Kee Laundry building and confirmed the location by shouting into the receiver while Slaight listened.7Zodiac Ciphers. The Payphone Call at Main Street Investigators pulled 35 latent fingerprints from the phone, including a still-wet palm print, but none were ever matched to a suspect.9Zodiac Killer Info. Lake Berryessa Some accounts hold that the prints were compromised because Stanley may have handled the receiver before police secured it. The phone company could not trace the call.
The Boot Print and Other Physical Evidence
A boot print at the scene remains one of the most concrete pieces of physical evidence from any Zodiac crime. Investigators identified the sole pattern as a military “wing walker” boot, a chukker-style boot originally made for Air Force mechanics who worked on aircraft wings. The print was about size 10.5.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack Napa detectives Ken Narlow and Dick Lonergan traced the boots to Travis Air Force Base, the closest major base to the scene, where hundreds of pairs had been sold through the base store and a surplus store in the months before the attack.10Zodiac Killer Ciphers Forum. Wingwalker Boots The boots were simply too widely available to point to one buyer.
The pre-cut clothesline used to bind the victims was examined for fiber composition and knot structure. Microscopic comparisons did not produce a definitive match to any suspect.
What Witnesses Saw Earlier That Day
Three women from Pacific Union College were at the lake that afternoon and later reported seeing a suspicious man between roughly 3:30 and 4:45 p.m. They described a white male about 28 to 40 years old, six feet to six-foot-two, 200 to 225 pounds, stocky or muscular, with straight, dark, neatly combed hair. He wore a black short-sleeved pullover and dark pants and drove a late-model silver-blue or light-blue Chevrolet two-door sedan, possibly a 1966 or 1967 model, with California plates.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack
He pulled up bumper-to-bumper behind their car, sat inside for about thirty minutes, then got out and watched them from forty or fifty feet away, avoiding eye contact. They noticed something white at his waist or under his outer clothing. Investigators later wondered whether what the women saw was the plastic clothesline the attacker would use to tie his victims.1Zodiac Ciphers. Lake Berryessa Attack The women left around 4:30 p.m. By then his vehicle was gone.
Where This Attack Fits in the Zodiac Sequence
Lake Berryessa was the third known Zodiac attack. On December 20, 1968, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were shot and killed on Lake Herman Road in Benicia. On July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo; Ferrin died, Mageau survived. After Lake Berryessa, the Zodiac killed San Francisco taxi driver Paul Stine on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood. The FBI attributes five deaths to the Zodiac across 1968 and 1969.11FBI. Zodiac Killer
Several things set the Berryessa attack apart. It was the only Zodiac crime that used a knife as the primary weapon. It was the only one that happened in daylight, in a rural setting rather than on a street or in a parked car. And the killer’s behavior — approaching openly, speaking at length, binding the victims before the assault — was unlike the quick, ambush shootings at the other scenes.
Suspects and the Current Status of the Case
Arthur Leigh Allen was for years the most prominent suspect, in part because of circumstances tied to Lake Berryessa. Allen told police he had been at the lake on the day of the attack and had “bloody” knives in his car, which he said he had used to kill chickens. He also owned a Zodiac-brand wristwatch bearing the crossed-circle symbol. The case against him later eroded. Multiple handwriting experts concluded he did not write the Zodiac letters. DNA extracted from a confirmed Zodiac envelope in 2002 did not match him. His palm print did not match a print from a 1974 Zodiac letter. Witness descriptions did not match his height and build. Lead San Francisco inspectors Bill Armstrong and David Toschi moved on by the early 1970s, and neither SFPD nor the FBI considers Allen a viable suspect.12Zodiac Killer Facts. Allen: Primed Suspect
In 2021, an independent group called the Case Breakers publicly named Gary Francis Poste, an Air Force veteran who died in 2018, as their suspect, citing a boot print consistent with Lake Berryessa, a paint-splattered wristwatch they believed came from a military base, and statements from about twenty witnesses and sources.13The Hill. FBI Says Zodiac Killer Case Still Open After New Theory Arises Neither the FBI nor SFPD endorsed the identification.14University of Maryland. UMD Forensic Expert Team Might Have Identified ‘Zodiac’ Serial Killer
The case is still open in every involved jurisdiction. The FBI’s San Francisco office has said “the FBI’s investigation into the Zodiac Killer remains open and unsolved.”15The Guardian. Zodiac Killer Investigation SFPD has confirmed the same, and the Napa County Sheriff’s Department continues to receive leads tied specifically to Lake Berryessa.3Napa Valley Register. Today Show to Explore Zodiac Mystery In 2018, the Vallejo Police Department submitted two Zodiac letters to a private lab in hopes of recovering DNA from stamps or envelope flaps and running it through genetic genealogy databases, the same approach that identified Golden State Killer suspect Joseph DeAngelo.16KQED. DNA Match Sought to Catch Zodiac Killer After Break in Other Case Earlier attempts to extract usable DNA from Zodiac evidence, including the rope from Lake Berryessa, had failed. No confirmed DNA identification has been publicly announced.