For years, law enforcement and the general Zodiac community have wrangled with the question of whether the man spotted by the three girls from Pacific Union College saw a random man wandering around the hillside at Smittle Creek, or whether he was the Zodiac Killer, who had originally targetted the three girls, but opted to desist from his attack for whatever reason. The sketch derived from the three women was created from their lengthy observations of the man in daylight over an extended period of time. The verification of whether this man eventually went on to murder Cecelia Shepard two hours later would have been crucial, not only because of the sketch, but because the three women described his vehicle and its location. It may also have poured light on the accuracy of the Presidio Heights sketch, in respect to people who believe Lake Berryessa and Presidio Heights were two independent perpetrators.

This makes it highly unusual regarding the evidence collection detailed in police documents – along with no subsequent verification of law enforcement acting upon the three girls statements – and taking bootprint impressions from the areas they noticed the strange man walking. Bootprint impressions were easily retrieved from the trail to and from the Karmann Ghia and crime scene, yet this man wandered around an area 0.8 miles north for no less than 30 minutes and yet not one bootprint was secured and compared to the bootprints at the Hartnell/Shepard attack. The girls gave their report fairly swiftly and there was no rain in the Berryessa region in the intervening period. Law enforcement surely would have wanted to corroborate whether the man seen by the girls, was the same man who attacked Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard – and in light of what was written on the car door – this would have been the only sketch we had of the Zodiac Killer/murderer at this juncture – prior to the sighting at Presidio Heights.

The speculation to this day – and in the newspapers in the days immediately after the attack – suggests that these sets of bootprints were inexplicably not compared. This would have resolved this long standing question. If the bootprints were compared, then in theory, this question wouldn’t keep getting asked. Unless the topography and soil composition at Smittle Creek was vastly different from Twin Oak Ridge, I see little other reason why the man seen by the three girls didn’t leave one single bootprint. They all described him as 200+ lbs, just like the individual described by Bryan Hartnell.