Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed Page 48

  “Was Leigh homosexual,” Voigt asked Cheney, “or did he have an interest in women? Was there ever a girl he really liked?”

  Cheney thought. “In the time that I knew Leigh,” he said, “there was only one female that Leigh ever mentioned and she was a waitress.”

  “Was this in Vallejo?” Voigt asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did she work?”

  “At a pancake house. I don’t remember her name or anything, and it was the only time Leigh ever mentioned her. We went to an International House of Pancakes, right around the corner from Leigh’s house. We had dinner there after a hunting trip in 1967. I was still living in Concord then. Leigh pointed out the waitress, a girl with brown hair. She was pretty and she was young. Leigh liked her.”

  “If you saw a picture of that girl would you recognize her?” said Voigt, his interest up.

  “Naw, it’s been too long,” Cheney told him.

  “I don’t know if Allen ever went to Terry’s,” Voigt said with a laugh. “Allen liked IHOP, I don’t know about Terry’s. Why would you go to Terry’s when you’ve got an IHOP just around the corner?”

  Cheney told me the same thing. “The IHOP was close to the house there,” Cheney said, “a couple blocks away at the bottom of Fresno Street. Leigh and I made a right turn on Tennessee. We were going someplace for an outing when we saw the girl there. Leigh indicated he was interested in her. ‘What do you think of that waitress?’ he asked. ‘I think I might be able to make some headway with her.’ But nothing ever happened with it. It was a girl of very similar appearance to Darlene Ferrin. She could have been the girl that he pointed out at the IHOP, but I couldn’t say from my memory that it was the same girl. This happened in 1967.”

  Cheney could have said that the waitress was Darlene and that the restaurant was Terry’s Waffle Shop at Magazine Street and Interstate 80. That Darlene had waitressed at Terry’s from April 24, 1968, until her murder on July 4, 1969, was well publicized. But I knew Cheney had told the truth because of something he did not know.

  After Darlene filed for divorce from her first husband, Jim Phillips, she spent six months in Reno, making four round trips to maintain residency. She returned to Vallejo in 1967 to work with her friend, Steven Kee, at the International House of Pancakes on Tennessee Street at the foot of Fresno. Darlene had been the woman Leigh pointed out to Cheney. He had even gotten the year right. Dean Ferrin had been the cook at the IHOP and eventually he and Darlene were married and she began to work at Terry’s. “Why do I meet all the sick ones first?” she had written Dean from Reno.

  “Darlene and I first met in ’65 at the phone company in San Francisco,” said Bobbie Oxnam, Darlene’s friend and coworker at Terry’s. “Six girls came into the phone company together. Three of us lived in an apartment house and three of the others lived in the residence quad just next door . . . some strong ties built there. Whenever I would have some of the group up, Darlene always had the invitation to come over. And so a lot of times when we talked, we were talking about the other girls. Unless she was really down or really depressed, Darlene seldom talked about her personal problems. She had to be especially down to burden you with her own problems.

  “She worked at the phone company about nine months, then her and Jim, her first husband, took off to the Virgin Islands. Then when they got back they got hold of Mel and I for a place to stay. They stayed with us two or three weeks. One of the reasons why we kicked them out of the apartment was because Jim had a small handgun and we didn’t want that. That’s when we told them to get out; otherwise they would have stayed with us longer while she was looking for work.”

  “Darlene’s first husband had a .22-caliber handgun while in Vallejo,” Sergeant Mulanax told me. “Because a .22-caliber semiautomatic had been used in the two murders out on Lake Herman Road, I went looking for him. I picked him up in Santa Cruz [February 2, 1970] and checked it out then.”

  “Jim was into horoscopes,” continued Oxnam. “I was scared of him and he scared Darlene. This guy who brought her a silver purse and belt from Mexico was down there while Jim was. I was always under the impression that Jim bought it and sent it up to her through this guy. I moved back to Vallejo. By this time she and Jim had split and she was going with Dean. It was sweet. She’d buy twenty-five chocolate mints for Dean, put them under her pillow, and forget about them. She was always there to listen to you, but would make a statement every once in a while that she was terrified of ‘this guy.’ She would never go into any sort of depth. If you questioned her she would clam up, but I know Darlene was afraid of someone. She never verbalized precisely what made her afraid. He had something on her, but what he had I don’t know. I have a feeling it was connected with the Virgin Islands, but that’s just a hunch. From some of Darlene’s conversations, Jim and her got into trouble while they were in the Virgin Islands skin diving for shells.” It was rumored they had seen a murder there.

  In 1966 Dean Ferrin had moved to a back apartment of Vern’s Bar at 560 Wallace Street. After he and Darlene married, she moved there too. Their daughter, Deena Lynn, was born January 24, 1969. Just over a month before Deena’s birth, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen had been shot out on remote Lake Herman Road. The next day Darlene told her coworker Bobbie Ramos, “This is scary. I knew the two kids who were killed on Lake Herman Road. The girl more so. I’m not going up there again.” Darlene told her baby-sitter the same thing: “That was really spooky. I knew that girl who was killed on Lake Herman Road. I’m not going out there anymore.”

  “It all started after her baby was born,” said Oxnam. “I mean, we talked about her fears a couple of times. Darlene was scared of somebody, had been for quite some time . . . she would make a statement every once in a while that she was having trouble. I think a lot of us know the man she was afraid of, but can’t place him. Darlene was the type of person who had a lot of friends and was friendly toward anyone. That was one of the problems between her and Jim. Every week there was somebody new, a new friend. They’d be her friend for a week, but after that wouldn’t be the topic of our conversation. People were her whole interest in life. She really enjoyed mixing and just being around people.”

  “What about this the guy in a white Chevy who had been bothering her at Terry’s?” I asked. “According to one of Darlene’s baby-sitters, she had complained of a stocky man coming to the restaurant early in the morning to talk to her.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” Oxnam said, then added surprisingly, “You know, in all the years since her murder the police never talked to me.”

  In February and March 1969, Darlene’s baby-sitter, Karen, observed a man in a white car staking out their ground-floor apartment. Around 10:00 P.M. the man lit a cigarette or momentarily turned on the interior light, and she got a glimpse of his face: “He was heavyset, middle-aged, and very round-faced,” Karen said. “His hair had a curl to it. I told Darlene about it when she got home. ‘I guess he’s back checking up on me again,’ Darlene told me. ‘I heard he was back from out of state. He doesn’t want anyone to know what I saw him do. I saw him murder someone.’ Dee [Darlene’s nickname] sometime during this conversation mentioned the man’s name, and that first name was very short, three or four letters. His second name was just slightly longer. A common name. Dee appeared to be genuinely frightened of this individual, and mentioned that he had been checking up on her at Terry’s Restaurant. . . .” Karen was so upset she quit in May.

  A strange man left packages for Darlene at her home—a silver belt and purse from Mexico, a flower-print fabric, and a package the size and shape of a bundle of money. “About the time I took that package from him that looked like money to me,” reported Darlene’s sister, Pam, “Darlene started paying me for baby-sitting in ten-dollar and twenty-dollar bills. Before that she was giving me quarters, her tip money.” Darlene’s sister, Linda, described the man who brought Dee presents from Tijuana—“large forehead and close-cropped hair”—like Leigh Allen’s. Leigh a
nd his chums had made a trip to Mexico about that time, feasting on lobster on the beach. Around the same period, a man Darlene referred to interchangeably as “Robbie” and “Lee” moved from his residence near Hogan High, about two blocks from Darlene’s friend Mike Mageau’s home, to directly across from the Ferrins’ home.

  “About the beginning of June 1969,” Bobbie Ramos said, “Darlene told me of a man in a white car watching her.” I asked about her “new friends.” “Darlene’s new friends were Mike Mageau and a man in a Mercury Cougar named Robbie or Lee. I never spoke to him, but I definitely know how he looks. He drove Darlene over and she had her laundry with her.” However, Bobbie recalled a slender and much younger man than Zodiac, with black hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

  Evelyn Olson, another Terry’s waitress, said a man named “Lee” had “some kind of hold on Dee [Darlene’s pet name].” Linda Del Buono, Darlene’s sister, also named Darlene’s closest friends for me: “They were Sue Gilmore [Dean Ferrin’s cousin],” she said. “Bobbie, a blond down at Terry’s, and this guy named Lee who used to bring gifts to her from Mexico. Darlene met this Lee by Franklin School at a laundromat. He told her he lived above the laundromat. I wonder if that’s when she got her laundry stolen—uniforms, baby’s diapers, everything.” Leigh Allen, who also spelled his name “Lee,” worked part-time at the Franklin School as a janitor.

  Though Dean saw no change in Darlene’s demeanor, her friends did. “Darlene became more nervous than ever. She rarely smiled now,” they said. They attributed her weight loss to diet pills. “I seen a change in my sister the last four months before she died,” said Pam. “Very nervous, losing weight. I don’t think it was drugs. She was just frightened of this guy who was constantly following her.”

  “Towards the end, that last year, we weren’t that close,” said Carmela Leigh, Dean’s boss at Caesar’s Palace Restaurant and his landlord. “She had a whole new group of friends—never mentioned names—she was just never around. We’d have barbecues and everything and Dean, who everybody just really liked, he’d come over for the barbecue and we’d say, ‘Where’s Darlene?’ and he’d say, ‘She went to the laundromat about 4:00,’ and this would be about 9:00. She’d go to the laundromat, and five hours later he’d be at the party by himself and he just didn’t know anything.”

  On May 9, 1969, Darlene purchased a new house at 1300 Virginia Street, and reported that a former neighbor was watching her. Darlene organized a painting party and invited a few of the many policemen she knew from Terry’s. “Lots of the cops knew her,” Sergeant Lynch told me. “They used to stop in at the coffee shop out there. She worked the 3:00 A.M. late shift on weekends, and she’d get off work and run off to San Francisco. She used to like to take off her shoes and stockings and run through the surf, and this is at four in the morning. She dated all kinds of guys. She was a goer.”

  “Among [Darlene’s] companions were men,” the Times-Herald’s Gene Silverman later wrote, “men who were not necessarily her husband. Dean Ferrin was reportedly unconcerned. He considered her association with male friends just an aspect of her being young and lively.” “You got to understand how cops operate, especially back in those days,” Detective Bawart added. “If you’re working the swing shift, the graveyard shift, and a new waitress came on, it would be a contest to see who could get in her shorts first. That’s the way cops were back then. There were a lot of cops pursuing her. She was a pretty loose gal, Darlene was.”

  “Darlene had a rep as being pretty fast and loose,” Mulanax elaborated. “She was dating a lot of different guys. Certainly during the time she was working as a waitress out at Terry’s. Prior to Terry’s I have no knowledge of Darlene dating. Before her death she saw three Vallejo cops, one ‘a drive-in Romeo’ and another a deputy in the sheriff’s office. According to our reports, Blue Rock Springs was Darlene’s favorite hangout to take her boyfriends. So regardless of who she was with, that’s where she would go.” And yet she had turned down the lonely older man in the white car. How must he have felt?

  Saturday, May 24, was the day of the painting party. “How many people showed up at the party?” I asked Linda. “There were about fifteen. The party lasted a long time.” “Who was there?” “The Mageau boys. Steven Kee. They were there. Steve went directly into the Navy after graduating from Hogan High in 1965. His friendship with Darlene goes back to about 1963, I think. He was worried about Dee during her year-long absence and was stationed on the U.S.S. Rook. He was very shy. I recall he had a little red car at one time and a green Olds pickup. He was also very jealous of Dee, you’ve got to keep that in mind. He moved to San Diego just after the Lake Herman murders, and so was not there for her.” I was more interested whether he had seen someone bothering Darlene at IHOP.

  “George was there.” Linda continued. “I know Howard was there.” “Howard ‘Buzz’ Gordon?” “Yeah.” “How about women?” “Only one or two.” “How about Baldino?” “Steve? Yeah.” Another Vallejo cop. Vallejo Policeman Richard Hoffman, though on the guest list, had not attended. Among the other guests were: Jay Eisen (a San Francisco friend of Darlene’s); Rick Crabtree; Darlene’s female friend Sydney; Linda, Darlene’s sister; Pam, Darlene’s younger sister; Ron Allen; and a stocky man in a business suit and tie.

  “Darlene called me and told me to come over to the party,” her sister Linda said, “and Darlene was scared to death. She didn’t expect for this man to show up. I got there at one in the afternoon. He showed up when I was on my way over. He was the only one dressed neat. Everyone else had old jeans on and was painting the house that she had just put a down payment on. . . . And so the police assumed that this was Bill Leigh, who was Dean’s boss, and they just left it at that. But it was ‘Lee,’ and it was not his last name. I never spoke to him, but I definitely know how he looks . . . and Darlene was scared to death. This guy at the painting party was the Zodiac. I know Zodiac is the person I saw at the party. The way she was acting. This guy had no business being at her house.

  “Dee got into something and she was afraid and wanted to back out of it. And she begged me, ‘Linda, don’t go near him. Just don’t talk to him.’ He was overweight . . . this guy scaring the heck out of her. I mean, she couldn’t eat. I noticed how much weight she had lost. When something was bothering her she couldn’t hide it. She wasn’t smiling. . . . She begged me, ‘Just go, Linda, just go.’ She asked me to leave ’cause she didn’t want him to know any part of the family.

  “The way she acted made me fix this man’s face in my mind. I can see him sitting there in the chair. There were still fourteen people left at the party when I left, and more coming. I wish I would have stayed. I do believe that she got into something and was afraid and she didn’t know how to go about getting out of. I think she did want to get out, and the Zodiac said, ‘Well, we’ll just do away with her’cause she’ll probably go to the police.’ He was also the one at Terry’s. When I walked into Terry’s this one particular day with my dad, this man was sitting there and he was constantly watching Dee all the time. And as I walked in he held the paper up above him’cause he noticed me. Later somebody [a tall, lean, black-haired man] shot four holes in the ceiling at Terry’s.”

  After Linda left the painting party, Darlene’s younger sister, Pam, arrived. She also noticed the man in the suit. “He was so out of place,” Pam told me. “He was a pretty well-dressed guy. Yeah, very well-dressed, an older man. I saw him only the one time. He never did get out of that chair. Everybody was a little scared of him being at the party and a little nervous because he was there. . . . This guy was asking about her at work, prying into her finances . . . he is the same man who was sitting at the bar, the counter, this was the same man that was asking me questions. He was asking me about her little girl and what was her relationship with her husband, Dean. ‘What did she do with her tips?’ he asked. ‘She really got her head together.’ ‘I understand Dean never wants to watch the baby.’

  “The stranger had a short common nickname—
Lee. It was ‘Lee,’ L-E-E, not ‘Leigh,’ and it wasn’t his last name. There was this guy at the party who I think is Zodiac. The same guy who was at the party was the one who delivered a package to the doorstep of Wallace Street one day that I was baby-sitting. I saw him at the door and took a package from him. He told me under no circumstance was I to look in that package. He was the same man I remembered seeing leave a package on the doorstep at Wallace Street.”

  “And the age of the man at Terry’s harassing Darlene—”

  “I would say between thirty-five and thirty-eight.” She estimated him to be almost six feet tall. “I can picture this man. . . . I remember seeing him at the door and I remember seeing him at the painting party and he liked to talk to me because I was a pretty honest person. Dee got upset with me because she thought I was telling him too much. ‘Well, he would ask me something so I answered.’ Dee said, ‘Pam, I’m going to stop asking you to my parties if you don’t stop talking to him. There are some things I don’t want people to know about me.’ I said, ‘I thought you were dating this guy the way he talks.’” Ron Allen’s name had been on the guest list for Darlene’s painting party. After Cheney moved to Southern California in 1969, Leigh’s brother and sister-in-law paid him a visit.

  “Ron and Karen were at my house for dinner,” Cheney told me. “This was before my purchase of my new house [at 1842 Berkeley Avenue]. We were sitting around the kitchen table chatting, and Karen told us about Leigh going to a painting party in his suit. Ron and his brother were at the party and Leigh was dressed in a suit and tie. Karen was using that as an example of him being unadjusted to social things. She was ragging him on that. She was a little afraid of her brother-in-law because she recognized he was not squared away with the world at all. With her education in social work she had been exposed to such things, and I don’t think Ron had.”