the head while they were giving him oral sex, then had sex with the dead body or just the severed head. To win her, Clark sent Compton a red rose when she was convicted for attempted murder and, as a Valentine, a photograph of a decapitated female corpse. Compton wrote back to Clark: “Our humor is unusual. I wonder why others don’t see the necrophiliac aspects of existence as we do.” She also admitted under oath that she and Clark planned to buy a mortuary together so that they could have sex with the dead bodies, once he was free. Their plan was that Compton should testify on his behalf at Clark’s trial, which, by coincidence, took place across the hall from the trial of the Hillside Stranglers. Carol Bundy, Clark’s accomplice who had lured his victims into his car, was in the same jail as Compton and Compton was to say that she had heard Bundy admit to the murders.
The affair ended when Compton lost her bottle in court and pleaded the Fifth Amendment, which allows witnesses to refuse to give testimony that would incriminate them. Clark then married a woman named Kelly Keniston, who crusaded to prove his innocence while he awaited execution at San Quentin. Carol Bundy was sentenced to 27 years to life and 25 years to life—the equivalent of two life sentences in the UK. The terms were to run consecutively. She died in the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowcilla on 9 December 2003 at the age of 61.
Although Bianchi was suspected of the Alphabet Murders in Rochester, no evidence was ever found to connect him with the killings. A film was made about
Veronica Compton wrote a book about her prison romances called
The San Diego Strangler
When prostitute killings began in San Diego in the summer of 1985, the police feared that the Green River Killer had moved down the coast from Washington State. But as the body count climbed towards ten, they realized that another, but just as elusive, serial killer was on the loose. Then almost exactly three years after he had started, he stopped, leaving the police baffled. He has neither been identified nor caught.
His first victim was 22-year-old Danna Gentile, who was last seen alive on 22 July 1985. Her naked, lifeless body was found three days later. Gravel and rocks had been forced into her mouth and she had been strangled.
A year after Danna Gentile had gone missing, the naked body of an unidentified woman was found. She had been strangled. Then on 3 August, Theresa Brewer was found dead. She had been tied up and strangled. The following April, the naked body of 29-year-old Rosemarie Ritter was found. And on 22 June, the body Anne Varela was discovered. Like the others, she was naked and had been strangled.
In 1987 three more women—Diana Moffitt, Sara Gedalicia, and Sally Moorman—had been killed, the murderer using the same MO. In April 1988 the body of another unidentified woman was found. The following month, the body of Melissa Sandoval was found just 30 yards away. Sandoval had been last seen eight days earlier driving off with a customer.
Then, for no discernable reason, the killings stopped. Two men who were later convicted of prostitute killings in the San Diego area during 1988 were suspects, but nothing linked them to these killings. There was a great deal of speculation about another one-time suspect, who has since died. Again there was no hard evidence linking him to these killings. The murders of these ten women remain unsolved.
San Francisco’s Zodiac Killer
An unidentified killer terrified the Bay Area in the late 1960s. Dubbed the “Zodiac Killer”, he killed at least six people, though his body count may have been as high as 37, or even 49.
His reign of terror began on a chilly, moonlit night around Christmas in 1968, when a teenage couple pulled up in an open space next to a pump house on Lake Herman road in the Vallejo hills overlooking San Francisco. This was the local lovers’ lane and David Faraday and Bettilou Jensen were indifferent to the cold. They were so wrapped up in each other that they did not even notice when another car pulled up about ten feet away. They were rudely awoken from their amorous reverie by gunfire. One bullet smashed through the back window, showering them with glass. Another thudded into the bodywork. Bettilou threw open the passenger door and leapt out. David tried to follow. He had his hand on the door handle when the gunman leant in through the driver’s window and shot him in the head. His body slumped across the front seat. Bettilou’s attempt at flight was futile. As she ran screaming into the night, the gunman ran after her. She had run just 30 feet when he fired five shots into her. She collapsed and died. Then the gunman calmly walked back to his car and drove away.
A few minutes later, another car came down the quiet road. Its driver, a woman, saw Bettilou’s body sprawled on the ground, but did not stop. Instead, she sped on towards the next town, Benica, to get help. On the way, she saw a blue flashing light coming towards her. It was a patrol car and she flashed her lights frantically to attract the driver’s attention. The car stopped and she told the patrolmen what she had seen. They followed her back to the pump station, arriving there about three minutes later. They found Bettilou Jensen dead, but David Faraday was still alive. He was unconscious and could not help them with their enquiries. They rushed him to hospital, but he died shortly after arriving there.
There was little to go on. The victims had not been sexually assaulted, nor was anything missing. The money in David Faraday’s wallet was untouched. Detective Sergeant Les Lundblatt of the Vallejo county police investigated the possibility that they had been murdered by a jealous rival. But the police could find no jilted lovers or any other amorous entanglements. The two teenagers were ordinary students. Their lives were an open book. Six months later, Bettilou Jensen and David Faraday had just become two more of the huge number of files of unsolved murders in the state of California.
Then, on 4 July 1969, their killer struck again. Around midnight, at Blue Rock Park, another romantic spot just two miles from where Jensen and Faraday were slain, Mike Mageau was parked with his girlfriend, 22-year-old waitress Darlene Ferrin. They were not alone. Other cars of other courting couples were parked up there. Again Mike and Darlene were too engrossed in each other to notice when a white car pulled up beside them. It stayed there just a few minutes, then drove away. But it returned and parked on the other side of the road.
Suddenly, a powerful spotlight shone on Mike Mageau’s car. A figure approached. Thinking it was the police, Mike reached for his driver’s licence. As he did so, he heard gunfire and Darlene slumped down in her seat. Seconds later, a bullet tore into Mike’s neck. The gunman walked calmly back to the white car, paused to fire another four or five shots at them, then sped off, leaving the smell of cordite and burning rubber behind him.
A few minutes later, a man called the Vallejo county police and reported a murder up on Columbus Parkway. He told the switchboard operator: “You will find the kids in a brown car. They are shot with a 9 mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.”
When the police arrived, Darlene Ferrin was dead. Mike Mageau was still alive, but the bullet had passed through his tongue and he was unable to talk. However, there were some other leads. Four months earlier, Darlene’s babysitter had spotted a white car parked outside Darlene’s apartment. Suspicious, she asked Darlene about it. It was plain that the young waitress knew the driver.
“He’s checking up on me again,” she told the baby-sitter. “He doesn’t want anyone to know what I saw him do. I saw him murder someone.”
The baby-sitter had had a good look at the man in the white car. She told the police that he was middle- aged with brown wavy hair and a round face. When Mike Mageau could talk again, he confirmed that the gunman had brown hair and a round face. But after that clues petered out.
Then, on 1 August 1969, almost two months after the shooting of Ferrin and Mageau, three local papers received handwritten letters. These began: “DEAR EDITOR, THIS IS THE MURDERER OF THE 2 TEENAGERS LAST CHRISTMAS AT LAKE HERMAN & THE GIRL ON THE 4TH OF JULY…” Like the “Son of Sam” letters written by David Berkowitz, they were printed and contained basic errors in spelling and syntax. But the author gave details of
