Ya, i wondered the same things when i saw those videos. However, the police report clearly states that there was a chalk outline of the male by the front passenger door. I’m pretty sure there are pictures of the car where this outline is visible. One could question if David was in the car when police first arrived and somehow fell/slumped over and out of the car. However, he was shot in the left ear/head. It’s practically impossible for him to be shot where he was shot while still in the car. Unless Zodiac went thru the drivers door to herd them out of the passengers door. If that were the case then he would’ve moved the body so he could run after Betty or else go all the way around the car. So, i guess the detectives just had foggy memories in the interviews.

If David Faraday had looked for ID not unlike Mageau and rolled down the window, a shot to his left ear would not be unusual, but for that to have happened there would have been blood in the car (no close ups like Presidio Heights), the window down and first responders to have dragged him around the car to the opposite side. It does seem strange though two slip ups in one video.

I know Les Lunblad was of the opinion that they were both ordered out of the car.

Yes I always thought that Morf, but there was one shell casing found inside the car and of course had Zodiac been standing between the cars firing it is not implausible a casing ejected into the open passenger door. It just surprised me that the fatal shot to Faraday was actually beneath his left ear exterior, an unusually close position to adopt when you have both victims at your mercy. However had Zodiac approached the male threat first at the driver side window asking for ID Faraday could plausibly reach forward for ID from the glovebox and Zodiac being right handed pressed the gun into the region behind his left ear and fired. The gun may have been inside the vehicle when fired and the ejected shell casing ricocheted onto the floorboard of the vehicle. But for whatever reason no close ups of the interior were shown as they were at Presidio Heights and the police report never mentions any blood in the car. However Zodiac states in the Chronicle letter "the boy was on his back with his feet to the car", so why does Bidou twice state he found the male in the car, it’s a pretty big slip of the tongue. Were the photographs of the crime scene with both body positions shown in the newspapers before Zodiac’s Chronicle letter. If not and Bidou had discovered Faraday in the driver’s seat and Faraday’s body had been moved then Zodiac must have passed the scene later to view the altered position. I know it’s a long shot but something isn’t right. Had Zodiac ordered Faraday out of the car there is no need to make a contact wound behind the back of Faraday’s ear, a shot from 6-12 inches would work, but that would have damaged the ear itself but the wound is such that a gun was pressed behind the ear, not a natural position to achieve if Zodiac is to the right of Faraday as he exits the Rambler. I’m also not convinced both were ordered from the passenger door.

Thanks for posting this UK. I can’t remember the thread this was originally brought up in.

It is odd isn’t it? First (in the first youtube video you link) he states that the body was still in the car, then later he states he can still see the bodies lying on the ground. Is he THAT confused now? It just doesn’t make sense.

One would think too the cops Stella flagged down would have been first on the scene.

Is it possible David was in the car? I suppose–nothing with this case surprises me now, I just don’t think so. I think whoever shot David could have been left handed and simply been trying to keep him at bay by holding the gun close to him…then firing. As stated, there was no mention of blood inside the vehicle and no trail of blood if the body had been moved.

Unfortunately, some of these older officers have shown foggy memories or twist things for whatever reason. Sad, but true.

David Faraday’s Rambler is observed for at least a 15 minute time period from when they were observed alive by the Your’s around 11.00 pm until Stella Borges passed the turnout around 11.15 pm, when she observed the bodies lying in the turnout and raced off towards Benicia to alert Officer Daniel Pitta. We know Stella Borges passed the scene at around 11.15 pm, the exact minute is not important, it could have been 11.13, 11.14 or 11.16 pm, but she sped off towards Benicia and attracted the attention of Officer Pitta. He arrived at the crime scene between 11.22 pm and 11.28 pm, depending on whose opinion you read
Yes Tahoe something doesn’t make sense and as somebody else has mentioned Pierre Bidou after seizing the marijuana, stated he passed the turnout on the way to Benicia Police Department, his headlights illuminated the turnout and nobody was observed. It takes approximately 8 minutes to arrive at the Benicia Police Department from this location traveling at 30 mph, at which point he receives the dispatcher’s call of a possible murder, turns around and heads back up Lake Herman Road. Pierre Bidou had to have passed the scene before the murders, but how can 8 minutes later or even 10 minutes later a possible double murder have been reported. The timeline of the above witnesses is 15 minutes. In other words after Pierre Bidou had passed the turnout David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen would have had to park up, been spotted by six eyewitnesses over a period of 15 minutes, Zodiac would have pulled up and killed them both and Stella Borges then would have raced off to notify Officer Daniel Pitta a further 3 to 4 minutes later, meaning he was the first officer to have been told of the crime. This means 18 to 19 minutes had elapsed from the first eyewitnesses spotting David Faraday’s Rambler to the reporting of the crime to Officer Daniel Pitta, so how could Pierre Bidou have been notified as he pulled into the Benicia Police Department 8 to 10 minutes later after passing an empty turnout.

Pierre Bidou This is the Zodiac Speaking "As I was pulling into the lot at the police department we heard the Benicia Police Department dispatcher put out a call of a possible shooting and victims on Lake Herman Road and described the location. My partner and I turned around at that time and responded to the call."

Tahoe here are two more examples of Bidou saying Faraday was in the car.
In the https://beniciaherald.wordpress.com/the-zodiac-case/ article it states "Inside the car, the officers found a boy in the passenger’s seat who appeared as if “he was trying to get out” of the car. Bidou remembers seeing the shattered glass of the car window, pierced by a bullet. More poignantly, he also remembers that the boy was still breathing."
And on ‘Richard Gaikowski-The Case of the Zodiac Killer’ video we get a further example at 13:19 where Bidou says "The male was still halfway in the vehicle and he was showing signs of breathing." https://youtu.be/rO0u4e3qS9s?t=13m19s
That is four times too many for a mistake.

Since it was Faraday’s car and he was supposedly driving, being found in the passenger seat with a bullet wound on the inside of his left ear is suggestive of Faraday attempting to move away from a killer approaching the driver side door and why one casing was found on the floorboard of the passenger side.

This is an interesting thread–I also wondered about the video interviews and newspaper articles that said David was found either in or half-way out of the car. But Stella Borges account was she saw 2 bodies and first officer on the scene Pitta also described David as having his feet to the rear wheel. The chalk outline of his body shows a large pool of blood where his head was. But I have puzzled over the account of the officers who responded to the drug bust, then drove past gate 10 turnout 8-10 minutes before the attack and (?) Officer Bidieu said he saw no car at the turnout. How could that be? It was pretty well established that the Yours’ saw the station wagon there 15-20 minutes before the attack. And somewhere in the file I remember reading a classmate’s account of seeing David and Betty Lou parked there and stopping to tease them.

After reading through so many files and newspaper accounts I’ve come to the conclusion that newspaper articles need to be vetted. There were just so many little mistakes written–and maybe even some facts meant to mislead or obscure planted by the detectives.

There just seems to be too much proof David was outside of the car. As to why Bidou would bs…I have no idea. Maybe to cover his original flub?

Bidou admitted that it wasn’t their case, so it is no wonder he wouldn’t know very much about it. I travel Lake Herman rd many times a year., both day time and at night.
I would like to add that for Bidou to not see David’s car in the turn out , is no surprise to me. If you blink your eyes as you are driving even only 30 miles per hour pass the turn out , you can miss it. I would not put much weight on anything Bidou has to say about the case.

We all know that David’s body was on the ground near the passenger side of the car.The chalk out line of where his body was found, tells me that David was probably standing near the passenger door , perhaps with his hands up on top of the car, as if it were a hold up. Betty I assume was standing to David’s right.

Zodiac would have been standing behind David, towards his left side,then when the coast was clear and there were no cars driving near by, he shoots David behind his left ear ( similar to Paul Stine’s behind the right ear)
With that Betty realizes that it is not just a holdup , but murder and runs for her life , around the shooters car towards the right.
I think she chose to run that way thinking the other car would be some protection. The first few shots probably knocked her down, then Zodiac shot her up close a few more times to make sure she was dead. Always an over kill on the female.

It is somewhat Ironic that I have found two spent 22 long super X casings in the gravel at that crime scene. They look pretty old , but I wonder if Zodiac went back there and purposely put two of them there ? I have no doubt that he revisits all of his crime scenes, perhaps leaves his mark showing that he was there. He loves to taunt.

Again I am not stating this as a fact, it is what I think could have happened.

Sandy:
You brought up an interesting point, one that I believe has been discussed before: Z’s emphasis on killing women–not that he was Mr. Nice to the guys, but at least a couple of them survived. We all know he focused on necking couples in Lovers Lanes, no doubt because they were so vulnerable.
One thing especially interests me: the murder of Paul Stine. If you count Cheri Bates, all the Zodiac killings, except Stine’s, included women. Lately, we had a rash of "Why did Zodiac stop with Stine?" questions. If you’ll allow me to play shrink, I’ll add my two cents worth.
IMO, Z had serious sex hangups, and blamed females for his problems. Let us suppose that one of the reasons he was a serial killer was that killing a female supplied the ability to function sexually–at least, for awhile. Then he would again kill a woman, preferably in a Lovers Lane environment, which would eliminate the couple’s–particularly, the male’s–ability to enjoy normal sex.
Now, for Stine. Let us assume Stine’s murder was a random incident. Perhaps Stine said something that offended Z, perhaps not. At any rate, Z shot Stine, and escaped. Pushing "perhaps" to the max, Z found that recalling Stine’s murder turned him on! What might that have done to Z’s opinion of himself? He was a…faggot? Perhaps the unraveling of the big, bad, man’s man fantasy he created for himself effectively ended his "career."
All wild suppositions, I agree. But, what the hell? It makes a kind of goofy sense.

There are many people who believe that Zodiac stopped killing after Paul Stine.( I don’t believe that for a minute.)
Regardless of why Zodiac killed, I believe that he kept his word in part , by not announcing when , where or who he killed. At least that is what I think he did for a while, but because of his huge ego, he eventually had to send more communications.

Unfortunately most of those communications were thought to be a copy cat. Some may have been, but I don’t think that they all were.
I believe that he kept killing, because that is what he enjoyed doing. The attention he was receiving I think, was almost more important than the killing.
He became upset when he was no longer on the front pages of newspapers.

I have given a lot of thought as to why Zodiac seemed to slow up and then start up again . It could be that he was in a relationship for a while, then when it fell apart, he wrote again.
There had to be something that happened in his life that made him become a serial killer. Finding what that could be would narrow the list of suspects.

There have been times that perfectly normal people have a bad head injury that changes their personality and they become killers. I feel pretty sure that there is someone who knows who Zodiac is, someone who is afraid to come forward perhaps a close friend or relative, who is successful in business and worries about his reputation if he were to tell police.
I don’t think Zodiac knew either David or Betty Lou, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time seems reasonable. He could have been a worker at Humble Oil or at Syar on his way home from his shift or on his way to work. Safer for him if it was after his shift ended, because he would know that there wouldn’t be very many cars after the next shift started. I have been there on Dec. 20th from about 10 pm to 11:30 pm and could see the traffic almost come to a stop at about 11pm. That was when I felt Zodiac knew when it would be safe to do what he did. He was probably an opportunist at that time and any time before that. As he became more comfortable, because he was getting away with it, he progressed . The blitz attacks weren’t turning him on anymore, so he escalated at Lake Berryessa.
Being the coward that he is, he had to hide behind a mask to do what he did. Something else for us to think about.
( That is my take on it anyway ) I think he has changed his way of collecting slaves and is still killing.

We see many times when a murder is solved several years after the crime, often with DNA in recent cold cases, the killer is already behind bars for either a lesser infraction or for another murder. The Zodiac as you say likely never lost his compulsion to kill but obviously the more you keep re-offending the more likely your luck will run out. The more you commit the more you risk. There is one notable gap in Zodiac communication between 1971 and 1974 and if you believe any of the later letters are real in 1974, after this nothing. He probably never lost his compulsion, moreover the compulsion was an avenue he was now deprived of. The simplest and probably the most likely answer to the Zodiac mystery, although not certain, is he was either arrested for a subsequent murder and lived out his remaining days in prison or he simply died of natural causes and was buried long ago, likely in the 1970’s. The reality is likely far less interesting than the fantasy of keeping the Zodiac alive and living in a neighbourhood near you to this day. The enigma of the Zodiac has lasted for nearly 5 decades, it is likely this sad pathetic individual lasted far less. He has morphed from a ruthless coward in the 1960’s and 1970’s into this fictionalized and evasive ‘caped crusader’ we see today, serialized in films and books and the only way he is kept alive is through the imagination of thought turning man into myth. The idea this man is still alive driving a Toyota Prius, walking the dogs in the park, attending the baptist church every Sunday, mowing the lawn every Tuesday and leering over the neighbors fence with a glint in his eye, having eaten popcorn at the local cinema watching Zodiac 2007 is worthy of a movie all by itself, I love a good fantasy.

UKS: Don’t be so sure Z is fertilizing flowers. I’m 76, and far from wheelchair-bound. According to actuaries, the lifespan for the average white male American is 78.4 years. So, there’s every possibility your fantasy could be reality….
I’ve a non-Z related question to ask you, my British friend. You’re from Coventry, right? If my memory holds, that was the city that was ferociously bombed by the Nazis so that they wouldn’t discover the British had broken the Nazi code (Enigma?). What do residents of Coventry now think of that decision? And are they a bit upset with Churchill for having ordered it?