Hi-
I posted this to Tom’s site last May (2012):
Dear Mr. Crow-
On December 20, 1968, you were on Lake Herman Road and allegedly parked briefly at the site where the Zodiac killer would later murder David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Two days later, you came forward to state that you had pulled over in order to adjust what was then described as the motor of your girlfriend’s new sports car. You stated that a car, which you then described as a blue Valiant, passed by your car and then stopped and began backing up slowly towards you. Sensing danger, you put your car in gear and sped off with the other car following you but not so closely as to be described as chasing you. When you got to the Benicia turnoff near Route 80, you took the cutoff and the other car went straight ahead. The car, which reportedly had two Caucasian occupants, never attempted to gain on you.
Since that time, you have become a practicing attorney and are reportedly employed by the local government in Solano County. In February of 2004, you spoke to Zodiac researcher Howard Davis. At this time you had a much different story to tell. You clarified the reason you had pulled over to the side of the road near the pumping station as being to learn how to use "toggle switches" on the dashboard of your girlfriend’s car. The chase is now much more detail-filled and very dramatic. The car tried to gain on you and, in trying to get inside your left rear quarter panel, presumably tried to force you off the road. He flashed his lights on and off. In taking the turnoff to Benicia, you apparently had to execute a high speed "evasive" maneuver which the less agile, older car could not handle. There was just one person in the car now and his description was eerily like that which was promoted for the Zodiac killer (i.e., short hair and glasses) after October 1969. The car was now remarkably the "white Chevy" that two other sets of eyewitnesses described that night. You stated that your girlfriend lived in (and presumably purchased her sports car in) San Francisco (or was it Napa?). After the encounter, your common sense kicked in and you âwent home.â
As an attorney, I am sure you can see the many problems with your story. If you were a defense attorney, for example, and a witness like you presented himself for cross-examination in court, I am sure youâd be salivating waiting to tear apart his credibility. The reason is clear: When people embellish their stories over time, that is a huge red flag. This is now the problem that you face. You work for local government and draw your salary at least in part from public money. And yet you have two drastically different versions of you 1968 encounter in the (now) public record. What is worse is that your second story is highly embellished, more dramatic, more replete with details and tends to make the reader feel (i.e., given the white Chevy and the lone occupant with "short hair and glasses") that you were most likely chased by the Zodiac killer. All of the details you now provide are part of the "conventional wisdom" of the case and are available in the books of Robert Graysmith, in newspaper articles, on TV shows and on the Internet. We all know that when there are two versions of an eyewitness’ story, the most reliable one is the ORIGINAL one, not the embellished one!
I have been trying for many months now to obtain the answers to some naively simple questions from you. I first tried going through people who we know mutually in Vallejo (as I did unsuccessfully in 2004-5 when I approached you for a different reason), who presented you with a letter last year in which I asked you these questions. You readily agreed to assist me and then simply never got back in touch with anyone, them or me, just as you did in 2004-5, when I rewrote my entire report for you and you sent it back unopened and unread after about two months of insisting that all you wanted to do was to help me. Why this happens, nobody who knows you has any idea.
As an attorney and as someone who was apparently directly involved in the events of the night of December 20, 1968, one would think that you would have a strong sense of justice and want to get to the truth about who killed Jensen and Faraday that night, no matter where the truth may lead. Here are some disturbing facts:
1) The type of cars that had toggle switches in those days were British sports cars, like Triumphs, etc.
2) Your girlfriend lived in San Francisco at the time and may well have purchased the car there, not in Napa County where her parents lived. (This part of your story is unclear but potentially of great importance).
3) You tried to blame Les Lundblad for ignoring you and changing the make and color of the car you mentioned from the white Chevy to the "blue Valiant" (which he presumably invented out of thin air). But what you probably don’t know is that by the time the words "white Chevy" would have left your lips on December 22, 1968, Les would have already heard not one but two separate reports from three total eyewitnesses of the very same car having been seen that night. When you mentioned the white Chevy to Les, that should have set the alarm bells off in Les’ head so loudly that you would have heard them yourself! And yet you claim he drowsily changed the make and color of that car to another one. What motive would he have had for ignoring your statement, since it coincided with what both Bingo Wesher and the two hunters also saw that night?
4) The "white Chevy" may or may not have been Zodiac’s car that night. The final eyewitness did not recall the make, model or color of the car he saw parked alongside the Faraday car, despite all the references made to a "dark car with no chrome, etc." If you saw a blue Valiant, that might actually be a crucial bit of information from your report. And if there were two men in that car, that is also obviously extremely crucial information.
5) At another Zodiac crime scene, Zodiac was drawn to a white Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia. This particular car was apparently imported by a particular dealership in the Pacific Northwest which had the exclusive rights to import all VW’s into the northwest. At the time of the Berryessa attack, Hartnell’s car was owned by an ex-employee of this family owned Pacific NW car dealership with strong ties to a particular suspect in the case (see the Napa impound report for this vehicle that is available on the Internet). The "sports car" you were in driving that night also has at least some ties to the same individual/suspect who had imported the VW from Lake Berryessa on which Zodiac chose to write his message. This is due in the very least to the nation of origin of your "toggle-switch bearing sports car," if not the specific dealership in SF where it MAY have been purchased. That would make two cars that drew the attention of the Zodiac killer having ties to the SAME individual. That same man coincidentally was present on the streets of Presidio Heights and spoken to by an SFPD patrolman after the murder of cab driver Paul Stine. He is a dead ringer for the police sketch from that night. He lied about his military training with small arms in a 2006 meeting I had with him. He writes on Monarch sized paper and also has autographed cars in felt tip pen, as Zodiac did.
Here are the questions I’d like you to answer. Anyone who reads them can see that they are hopelessly innocent ones:
1) What was the make, model and color of the car you were driving on December 20, 1968?
2) Was it a hard top or a convertible?
3) Where was it purchased? (I do not expect you to know this but I am asking that you provide the name of the woman who did purchase it to the "mutual friends" we have in Solano and Contra Costa Counties, so one of them can locate her and ascertain its origins. You know who to contact.)
4) Are you being forthcoming about the actual time you left the Lake Herman Road area that night?
5) Why have you been so evasive in answering these simple questions that may have a strong impact on the direction of the Zodiac investigation?
Given how odd it would be for TWO cars that have strong ties to the same individual to be intimately involved in the Zodiac case, these are important questions. I did come after you aggressively last year because I feel that you are being evasive. I am admittedly an aggressive researcher of this case, who doesn’t have time for the mind games you are playing with me. If you do not wish to assist someone, why did you tell me in our 2004 phone conversation that you would be happy to do so and then send back my report unopened? Why did you tell someone last year that you would be willing to answer the above questions and then never have the courtesy to reply to him or to me? You are an attorney who is telling two different stories, the second of which is an embellishment of the first one that is more in line with the specifics of the "conventional wisdom" of the Zodiac case that would never stand up to scrutiny if you were cross-examined in court. This situation is unacceptable. Why is your story changing? Why won’t you answer my simple questions?
I await your response.
Sincerely,
Mike Rodelli
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
This is from 5/25/13:
Hi-
There has been much speculation as to the reason why I wrote my "open letter" to attorney William Crow last year. Some people may have viewed my letter as being too harsh and too strongly worded. It came out of the blue. What do I have against poor Mr. Crow? I have been led in circles by this man for several years now and had frankly had my fill of his promises to be of assistance to me. These "offers" dated back to 2004, when I rewrote my entire report following my initial meeting with Richard Walter, specifically in order to send the new version to Crow through friends of his. Crow, inexplicably, sent it back to me unopened several months later.
There is always a method to my madness, so let me explain some things about my case and about Mr. Crow. First, a diversion to Lake Berryessa.
As stated in my original post, based on information contained in the Napa Police Department Impound Report for Bryan Hartnell’s car, there is a very strong relationship between my suspect and the LB attack. I cannot go into specifics for the usual reasons but if you do some research on the owner of Hartnell’s car (i.e., Hartnell did not own his car and it was not owned by anyone named "Hartnell!"), you will find that the actual owner has close and proven ties to a certain business in the "Pacific NW" that imported such cars. I’ll let you imagine who owned that business. Now, people will say that this means nothing but if there were ties, regardless of how strong or tenuous they were, between that car and the person you think is Z, you’d change your tune very quickly, I am sure. My suspect had also signed his name on cars before in felt tip pen. Sound familiar to anyone? I don’t know of any other named suspect who has ever autographed a car in black felt tip and, to boot, in white artist’s ink.
Now back to Lake Herman and Mr. Crow.
Crow said in the interview on Howard’s site that, "My former girlfriend who had moved to SF was visiting her parents in Napa and had just purchased a sports car." This sports car had an unusual characteristic that led Crow to pull off to the side of Lake Herman Road: "I had never driven a car that had toggle switches on the dashboard." American cars do not have toggle switches; they had pull out knobs in those days. Toggle switches are characteristic of imported sports cars. So what type of car was this? It was clearly an import. But what make? There are several possibilities.
Crow then goes on to tell his story and explains that after the chase/non-chase was over, he simply left the area to avoid any confrontation. (Or did he?) Which brings us to Helen Axe.
I was indirectly the source of the LHR reports on Tom’s site. However, Tom does not have all of the pages of that report. There is a second page of Helen Axe’s report dated 12/23/68 that did not make it onto his site. On that page it states, "Miss Axe further states that when they were driving over the road about 10:20 PM they saw a new bright yellow foreign car with a hardtop. There were two Caucasians sitting in the car. The driver was a male, the passenger’s sex was not determined. The car was parked on the road facing Benicia east of the area where Faraday and Jensen were parked."
My question is this: How many new "foreign cars" (generally AKA "sports cars") were driving on lonely LHR that night?! Was there some kind of rally? The fact that there were two Caucasians in the car and a male was driving is very interesting because that could describe Crow and his girlfriend. Did Crow, who has seemingly changed his story since 1968, tell the police the truth when he said that he "immediately" left the area after the encounter? Or did he stay and go up the road east of Gate 10 to see if the guy who hassled them might return, so Crow could settle his score with him man to man? But more importantly: What type of car was Crow in that night? Was it a "new, bright yellow hardtop" sports car? What was the make? And most importantly: Where had his girlfriend purchased the car– in SF where she lived or in Napa while she was visiting her parents? What dealer had she used?
My theory is that Z, as was potentially the case at LB, may have identified with something about the car Crow was in. That may be why he did a "double take" and went by it but then backed up to get a closer look. Might he have closely identified with that car, just as he may have at LB? Is the fact that Z identified with Hartnell’s car, since it had "certain" license plates and was a "certain" make of car, the reason he wrote a message on it?
If one man who has been identified as a possible suspect can be tied to at least one and possibly two cars that played a role in the Z case, what does that say? (Especially since Z’s crimes are notoriously associated with cars.) How unlucky can one man be, since this same man also "just happened" to be stopped by SFPD after the Stine murder? His name just comes up too much in places it should not be coming up.
The answer to these questions awaits Mr. Crow and his whims. He is an attorney who (I understand) derives at least some of his pay from the taxpayers. Why he is not more civic minded and anxious to move the Z case forward if he has information, I don’t know. He may possess an important piece of the puzzle linking a suspect to the Lake Herman crimes. Why he promises to help and then refuses to do so is a mystery, especially since I have always approached him through two friends of his. They have both been left shaking their heads at his inexplicable behavior.
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
Mike,
I understand your reasoning, and path for this stuff as it relates to your suspect, but as much as your suspect may have been interested in Crowe’s girlfriend’s car,or in Hartnell’s, why would he have been interested in Faraday’s Rambler, or in Darlene Ferrin’s car? If the motive was the cars they were driving, these two cars don’t fit the equation
There is more than one way to lose your life to a killer
http://www.zodiackillersite.com/
http://zodiackillersite.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/Morf13ZKS
Hi-
Crow’s story deserves scrutiny. He came forward with a radically changed account of the events of December 20, 1968 some 35 years after the fact. And now there is circumstantial evidence in the account of another eyewitness for that night that suggests that he may not even today be providing all the details of his movements. If he did stay on LHR longer than he claims he did, what else might he have witnessed that night that he has not told us?
The bottom line is that we really need to interview the girlfriend, which Lundblad did not do for some reason at the time, in order to get her perspective on things. What doe she say happened that night? That is my real goal here.
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
Hi-
I am not saying that he only chose victims by what car they were driving but that when he saw one that was of particular interest to him in the attack area he was cruising on a given night, it simply drew his attention. Zodiac loved irony, and killing people in vehicles that had some hidden relationship to him that nobody else knew about might have provided a measure of excitement to him. If that car didn’t work out, he simply went after one that was in the attack area at the wrong time for the vics.
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
Hi-
In the new book, America’s Jack the Ripper by Soren Korsgaard, there is an interview with Bill Crow. In this interview, he states that when he parked the car facing out at the pumping station, he had the headlights off and the "dark colored" sports car blended into the background scenery. The problem with this version is that he told me (and maybe Howard Davis, as well) that the reason he saw the occupant(s) of the other vehicle is that they had to pass through the beams of his headlights in order to go past him towards Vallejo. If he had his headlights off, he would never have seen the interior of the other car because there are no streetlights on LHR. I do not believe, therefore, that he had his lights off.
One thing he does seem to at least imply is that the sports car in which he was sitting, which he called an "MG or Triumph" in a conversation with Jim Dean and Lyndon Lafferty in 2005, was seemingly purchased in SF by his then girlfriend. There was one really big foreign sports car dealer in SF at the time, which was on Van Ness…and still is today.
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
Hi-
I believe the key interview that still needs to be done in this case is that of the lady who was with this man that night and who owned the sports car. Too bad there is no way to get a clue as to who she is and where she may be.
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
I interviewed him and asked if he could identify who the suspects were in the car, either one man or two. I told him what I read online of him saying that the man had short hair and glasses. He said that sounds right, he didn’t sound sure but said it sounded about right. I asked if he could identify Allen and he proceeded to tell me that Detective Conway was convinced Allen was the zodiac etc. Once again I did read online on one of these forums ( not this one obviously) that their were one or two men in the car.
Hi-
Here is another, more practical issue with regard to having the lights on or off: IF he had the lights completely off and the car was completely dark, how on earth was he playing with the toggle switches? You would not even be able to find them!
Mike
Mike Rodelli
Author, The Hunt for Zodiac; 3.9 stars on Amazon and
In The Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer, a second edition in print format. 4.3 Amazon stars and great Editorial reviews. Twitter:@mikerodelli
