On Monday, October 12th 1970 the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article entitled Gilbert and Sullivan Clue to Zodiac. Just two weeks later, the Zodiac Killer would respond when he mailed the Halloween Card to Paul Avery, a prominent San Francisco Chronicle reporter. This card, containing two skeletons, opened with the phrase "I feel it in my bones, you ache to know my name. And so I'll clue you in". This on the face of it seemed like a direct response to the Chronicle article, but what clue was the Zodiac prepared to give us in this card regarding his identity or name? Before we tackle this problem, we shall fast forward to the Exorcist Letter, mailed to the Chronicle on January 29th 1974 and investigate any possible clues within this correspondence. This first part has been covered previously, however, this will be expanded upon as we delve a little deeper.
The Exorcist Letter appeared a curious blend of two productions; The Mikado (1885), a satirical portrait of Victorian England, and the horror classic The Exorcist (1973), ironically labeled "the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen" by the Zodiac Killer. The Exorcist Letter appears a mismatch of genres containing an unholy alliance of mixed messages - unless of course - it was designed this way to provide us with a hidden clue to his identity or name.   

After a line such as "Signed, yours truley" one would expect the sender to provide us with a name, yet here the Zodiac Killer gives us a line from The Mikado's On a tree by a river, part of Act Two. Is his name concealed within these lines? In the article 'The Best Saterical Comidy,' this idea was explored. The name William can be abbreviated to Will, Bill, Billy, Willy, or Willie. It can be seen that these lines contain the names 'Bill and Will' several times. This of course is meaningless on its own, until you wrangle with the unusual alliance of The Exorcist and The Mikado. 

The Exorcist is an American horror film released in 1973, directed by William Friedkin and adapted for screenplay by William Peter Blatty, based on his 1971 book. The Mikado was created by Gilbert and Sullivan, however, one half of the duo was Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, which effectively gives us the three William's in the excerpt above and tempt us with the phrase "Signed, yours truley, William".  The inspiration for William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist (1971) was the real life exorcism of Roland Doe, a 13-year-old Maryland boy, in 1949. Father William S. Bowdern, S.J. was central to this exorcism, assisted by Walter Halloran and William Van Roo, a third Jesuit priest, bringing our total to five.

​In the San Francisco Chronicle article Gilbert and Sullivan Clue to Zodiac, Paul Avery wrote "Sheriff's detective sergeant Kenneth Narlow of Napa County has fruitlessly followed up another 900 tips to Zodiac's identity since September 27th 1969". Did the Zodiac take this line and incorporate it into the Halloween Card, using the pumpkin fruit to effectively reveal his identity, by deliberately placing the pumpkin over the groin and then removing it to expose his identity. The groin becomes fruitless, yet reveals a name? I'm afraid you've guessed it - Willy. While this is highly improbable, the Zodiac Killer did present a rather immature element in much of his correspondence. In an attempt to reinforce this identity we shall proceed. The Halloween Card is obviously a reference to the Western Christian celebration of All Hallows Day on October 31st, hence the use of the spiders web, skeletons and pumpkin within the card. The most notable addition to the card was the pumpkin, so other than its deliberate positioning, has it any further significance to the Zodiac Killer's identity? The pumpkin itself is carved out on Halloween to create a spooky or ghostly face and lit on the inside to create a menacing glowing effect. This is termed a 'Jack o' lantern' or 'Will o the wisp' - an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night.    

The Zodiac Killer placed numerous eyes on the Halloween Card, accompanied by the words "peek-a-boo you are doomed" which was wrapped around the knothole in the tree. This, on the face of it, appeared a veiled threat towards San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, but was it yet another clue to his identity?
 
​'Blind Bat', a member on the Zodiac Killer Site forum, found an interesting connection to the Halloween Card involving the "peek-a-boo" phrase the author added to the greeting card. The picture on the right demonstrates this perfectly with the Zodiac-like letter K, with the eyes and eyelashes eerily similar to the depiction on the Halloween Card itself. ​William V. Peekaboo Pennington Senior was a San Francisco private detective, described as a cattle man, private investigator, theater owner, building contractor, oil man and member of the Eastern Star, a freemasonry related order established in 1850 by Rob Morris. He moved to San Francisco in 1924 and performed investigative duties for prominent lawyers and attorneys, including Melvin Belli, who became closely embroiled in the Zodiac Killer case. The Halloween Card provides us with two full, and two abbreviations of William, when we consider the following.

​The Halloween Card is the only time the Zodiac Killer used the letter Z on his correspondence. He placed the letter Z on the envelope and the inside of the card - but in addition to this - the Zodiac Killer placed a Zorro style mask on the skeleton. Is this a further clue? Had the Zodiac spent his formative years in the 1950s, Zorro would have been a high profile television series, made into two Walt Disney films, The Sign of Zorro (1958) and Zorro, the Avenger (1959). The Disney television series ran from 1957 to 1959, and this, along with the two movies, starred Guy Williams.  
  
Revisiting the subject of Melvin Belli, the Zodiac Killer wrote a personal correspondence to the prominent lawyer on December 20th 1969. In this correspondence he stated "I will loose all controol of myself and set the bomb up. Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer". This phrase is remarkably similar to a message scrawled on the wall of murder victim Frances Brown, who was discovered on December 10th 1945 at her 3941 North Pine Grove apartment, in Edgewater, Chicago. She had multiple knife wounds, with the actual knife found protruding from the victim's neck, along with a bullet wound to the head. The killer had left a calling card, in the form of a message written in lipstick on the wall. See here. It said: "For heavens Sake catch me Before I kill more. I cannot control myself". The Zodiac Killer wrote (edited) "I will loose all controol of myself. Please help me. I can not remain in control for much longer".  The killer William Heirens, known as the 'Lipstick Killer', was convicted of the murders of three females over a seven-month period. Was the letter mailed to Melvin Belli a plea for help or just another subtle clue to his identity.

Paul Avery extensively covered the Patty Hearst affair, along with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tim Findley, something the Zodiac was unlikely to miss. The Zodiac Killer has been credited with the 'SLA Letter' mailed on February 3rd 1974, the day before the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army on February 4th 1974. There are two links here, in that Patty Hearst was the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, who gained control of the San Francisco Examiner from his father. But more importantly, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) leaders were Donald De Freeze and William Harris. One of its founding members was Willie Wolfe. 

​In the article 'Gilbert and Sullivan Clue to Zodiac', Paul Avery wrote "Zodiac is still at large today. And he is now claiming he has murdered thirteen persons. Homicide detectives who've been hunting Zodiac for nearly two years frankly admit he is as much an enigma now as he was on December 20th 1968, when he chalked up his first two victims". In chalk-like writing, the Zodiac would now be claiming a potential fourteen victims in the Halloween Card, but was it revealing a lot more than initially thought?

The Little List letter mailed on July 26th 1970 heavily featured two portions of The Mikado. The seventh line of Mikado Act One Part 5a  As some day it may happen reads "All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat". The Zodiac Killer paraphrases this verse to "All children who are up in dates and implore you with im platt". It could simply be that he was attempting to write the letter F, and accidentally formed the letter P - but if not. I don't subscribe to the techniques employed in this article, but I thought it worthwhile for those who have William as a suspect.  

Betty Lou Jensen Autopsy:
There are five bullet wounds of entry on the right side of the back: three on the posterior chest cage and two over the right lower posterior lumbar areas. From up downwards:
[1] The first is located in the 5th intercostal space, 3 and 3/4 inches right of the midline.
[2] The second is in the 8th intercostal space, 5 and 1/2 inches from the midline.
[3] The third is in the 9th intercostal space, 1 and 1/2 inches from the midline.
[4] The fourth in the tip of the right 12th rib, 3 and 1/2 inches from the midline.
[5] The fifth is over the crest of the posterior right iliac bone and 5 and 1/2 inches from the midline.

​There are three exit wounds:
​[1] The first is over the left interior chest laterally and left margin of the breast, in the 4th intercostal space and 5 and 1/2 inches from the sternum.
[2] The second is in the anterior abdominal wall, below the xyphoid process and 1/2 an inch from the midline.
[3] The third is laterally and 3 and 3/4 inches to the right of the umbilicus.

Heart: A bullet wound penetrates from right to left through both atrium.
Lungs: There are three through and through bullet wounds, corresponding to the three bullet wounds of entry on the right posterior chest cage and one bullet wound through the left lung, in line with the wound through the heart. They are associated with extensive hemorrhage of both lungs.
Abdominal Cavity: A bullet wound penetrates the liver. A bullet wound penetrates the right kidney, the left is normal.
Head: No injuries or skull fractures.
The bullet wound over the posterior iliac crest penetrates the deep muscles and exits to the right of the umbilicus. One bullet is recovered in the subcutaneous tissue of the base of the anterior neck (left side) and the other bullet in the subcutaneous tissue anterior to the right 7th rib, which it penetrated of the sternum. The entry wounds aperture 3/16 inch in diameter. The exit wounds are larger.  

On the right the three exit wounds are marked with the letter E on Betty Lou Jensen's back. These exit wounds obviously exited the front of her body relative to the positions shown, but have been placed on the back to highlight the difference between the entry wounds and exit wounds. The other two red dots show the resting position of the remaining bullets within the body. ​One can see that four of the bullets that exited or remained in the body, are all situated to the left of the entry wounds, the fifth bullet traveled from right to left also. Bullets do not necessarily follow a linear trajectory when they enter the body, they can be deflected by the structures within the body, but here the pattern of all five bullets show a distinct right to left trajectory. This means the idea that Betty Lou was ordered to run from her killer, with the shooter standing directly behind her, is simply false. We would have to believe the notion that every single bullet that struck Betty Lou Jensen was deflected to the left. What it also means, is that if the uppermost wound was the first shot, on account of the gunpowder residue, this shot was likely fired at an acute angle. In the autopsy it states 'A bullet wound penetrates from right to left through both atrium; and one bullet wound through the left lung, in line with the wound through the heart', in direct alliance with the photograph on the right.  
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On the left is a police sketch of the scene. The cluster of red dots indicate the region the shooter was standing when he discharged at least 8 of his rounds. The green arrow signifies the direction of Betty Lou Jensen's path of movement away from the shooter, from east to west. Had the Zodiac fired 5 shots into Betty Lou Jensen while positioned between the two vehicles, then he was standing directly behind her. This would mean that every single bullet that struck the right side of her back just happened to deflect left, as shown by the autopsy diagram.

The trajectory of the bullets seem to indicate she was struck while running across the shooter's line of sight, or possibly stationary at some point. Betty Lou was found with her head facing eastwards, toward the Rambler, likely as a result of her legs buckling under her, and falling backwards. Her head was approximately 28 feet from the rear of the Rambler, her lower extremities slightly further than 33 feet away.
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"As long as I can remember she wanted to be a stewardess. She had already written to most of the major airlines. It was the only future she would talk about".  Poignant words spoken by her father Joseph Bates and one of Cheri's close friends, about a young 18-year-old freshman whose dreams were shattered and her future cruelly snatched away by a cold and cowardly act on Sunday October 30th 1966, on the campus grounds of the Riverside Community College Library.

Cheri Jo Bates was a gregarious, outgoing woman, who easily made friends, apparent by her desire to become an air stewardess, where personality and social skills are key ingredients. This makes it even more strange that such a vivacious young woman, who by all accounts was in a good, humorous and sociable mood that day, could enter the Riverside College library shortly after 6:15 pm, check out three books from stocks, and totally ignore everybody in the library including her close friends who were present in the cramped library from 6:00 to 9:00 pm that evening. In fact, in a reconstruction performed by police two weeks later, none of the 60+ people assembled remember ever seeing Cheri Jo Bates. What makes this crime even more unusual is that nobody set eyes on the young woman from approximately 6:15 pm that evening, until her body was discovered some 12 hours later, the following day on a dirt driveway.
 
On Halloween morning, groundskeeper Cleophus Martin (48) was traveling along Terracina Drive at 6:30 am, slightly west of the Riverside library annex, when he discovered the lifeless body of Cheri Jo Bates lying face down in the dirt driveway. Her body was discovered on the east side of the driveway between two vacant properties. Cheri Jo Bates had been brutally attacked with a knife. There were signs of a violent struggle with her murderer, with skin and hair present in the young woman's fingernails and hand, that in later years would reveal a mitochondrial DNA fingerprint. A Timex watch with a broken strap was discovered only ten feet from her body, likely wrenched off during the vicious attack. 

Her lime green Volkswagen Beetle was found only 200 feet from her body, to the west of the gravel driveway, parked on Terracina Drive. The keys were still in the ignition, the windows were down and her books and reading material were found on the passenger seat of the vehicle. The murderer of Cheri Jo Bates had disabled her Volkswagen Beetle by pulling out the middle wire of her distributor, thought by many to be a ruse, in an attempt to become the Good Samaritan when she left the library.

Riverside police would ultimately distance themselves from any Zodiac connection, initially focusing attention on their own prime suspect, who would eventually be ruled out using DNA analysis some 30 years later. But one overriding question has surrounded this case, on whether the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates was a stranger or somebody she knew?
This typed letter was sent to the Riverside Police and Riverside Enterprise on November 29th 1966 in reference to the stabbing of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966 - but whether it is from the killer/s or not is the center of much debate in the Zodiac community, and not something that will be covered here.​  
Screams were heard in the campus area by certain local residents at approximately 10:15-10:30 pm, so if Cheri Jo Bates had entered the library at 6:15-6:30 pm and left immediately after checking out her library books, then she could not have simply been led away from her vehicle on the pretext of help and murdered in the driveway. The screams were heard four hours later, not to mention the numerous people entering and exiting the library from 6:00 to 9:00 pm that evening, would surely have noticed the stricken Miss Bates.

Remember, Cheri Jo Bates was spotted in the area of the library shortly before and after 6:00 pm by several eyewitnesses. ​If Cheri Jo Bates had entered the library shortly after it opened and left at 9:00 pm, upon its closing, it is inconceivable she could spend upwards of two and a half hours inside the 'cramped' library annex and remained invisible for the entire duration to everybody inside it, including her close friends. Even had this been possible, we are left with literally 75-90 minutes from her leaving the library to the sound of the screams in the driveway. It certainly doesn't take this long to walk from the library to her Volkswagen Beetle, receive the 'assistance' from her attacker, and then travel back to the driveway where she was ultimately found. Neither scenario makes any sense, so there has to be an alternative sequence of events. The location of Cheri Jo Bates between 6:15 pm and 10:15/10:30 pm therefore has to lie elsewhere.

One scenario is offered by Raymond Grant, the outline of which revolves around Miss Bates being abducted by more than one person shortly after her arrival on Terracina Drive, with her books being checked out of the library by a third party, to ultimately generate the impression she entered the library and focus attention in the wrong direction.

Another possibility is that Cheri Jo Bates was approached by an 'unwanted admirer.' Planning to enter the library to check out her reading material, the admirer insisted on accompanying her, but Cheri not wanting to be seen with this man, asked him to get the library books on her behalf. When he returned, again uncomfortable at being spotted with this man, suggested a second location nearby to talk to him. As the hours passed she eventually makes her excuses to return to her vehicle and go home - the library had shut now and she feels safe that nobody will see her with this man. She rolls down the window, places the key in the ignition and prepares to leave, but her admirer makes unwanted advances that escalate. Fearing the situation has got out of hand, she races from the car towards the parking area to seek help and things turn violent in the driveway. However, the problem here  is we would have to assume he was able to check out the books from the library using female identification and not be questioned - and furthermore he would had to have disabled the Volkswagen Beetle after the attack, thereby creating confusion as to how the crime occurred. Not very likely. 

​One has to speculate on the two vacant buildings either side of where Cheri Jo Bates was found, having recently been purchased by the college. Would somebody known to Cheri Jo Bates and other students, or somebody familiar with campus grounds have been aware that these buildings were unoccupied, and at 10:30 pm at night, the risk of detection at this location was limited - something a stranger would be unaware of?

Would a stranger or persons unknown to the area have begun an attack between two buildings - only yards from them - and inflict numerous injuries on a screaming woman, not knowing if occupants resided within them. I suppose this is a question for the Zodiac Killer at Presidio Heights.
 
The college was supposedly undergoing renovation, and the Timex watch discovered just ten feet from the body of Cheri Jo Bates had paint splashes on it. Was it a crime of opportunity from somebody connected with the college? As my learned friend pointed out, an abduction is not an improbable proposition, especially if we contend the Kathleen Johns incident was perpetrated by the same person or persons, collectively or otherwise known as the Zodiac Killer. With so much time unaccounted for in the timeline of Cheri Jo Bates that evening, speculation will no doubt continue about the brutal murder of a very promising young future........ "As long as I can remember she wanted to be a stewardess. She had already written to most of the major airlines. It was the only future she would talk about". And this should always be remembered.

Zodiac Killer Solved - Raymond Grant.

​The murder of Sunny Lyn Dagowitz on December 16th 1970 in Los Angeles has been compared to the Riverside City College library murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966. Four years separate the crimes, yet both have some lines of similarity, although certainly not enough to draw any firm conclusions. Any connection to the Zodiac murders is tenuous, there is a composite drawing in this case, as there was at Presidio Heights, and there is a fleeting remark in the Los Angeles letter mailed by the Zodiac Killer on March 13th 1971, three months after this murder. In the letter, Zodiac was believed to be responding to the finding of Paul Avery, a San Francisco journalist, who forged a possible connection between Zodiac and the brutal stabbing of Cheri Jo Bates. The letter stated "This is the Zodiac speaking Like I have allways said, I am crack proof. If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses + do something. Because the longer they fiddle + fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my after life. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason I'm writing to the Times is this, They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others."  

Sunny Lyn Dagowitz (18) was a sophomore in psychology and worked as an assistant to Raymond Orbach, vice chancellor for academic change at UCLA, Westwood. See area on Google Maps. It is situated 70 miles west of Riverside.

Sergeant Thomas Rogers stated that Miss Dagowitz, wearing capris and a blouse, had left the Foreign Students Center on the campus at 4:45 pm, less than half an hour before she was killed, estimated at shortly after 5:00 pm. She was attacked on the third tier of the campus parking structure,

Miss Dagowitz was stabbed with a large knife at least 15 times, after a violent struggle resulting in wounds to her chest, arms, hands and back. She had succumbed just eight feet from her car. Thomas Tsunetomi Noguchi, Chief Medical Examiner for Los Angeles performed the autopsy, concluding she died from massive hemorrhaging. Two foreign students witnessed the attack and described how they heard a scream before seeing the assailant stabbing and slashing the young woman. One student tended to Miss Dagowitz while the other chased down the suspect to an exit in the parking structure. The man waved his knife at the student yelling "Get Back ! Get away", then disappeared. Unfortunately Miss Dagowitz died at the scene before help could arrive.  

The suspect was described as in his early 20s, having neatly trimmed brownish-blond hair in a pompadour style, 5'6" to 5'8", 155-160 lbs, large framed glasses, wearing dark slacks and a light blue shirt. Detectives were impaired logistically because the campus was on finals schedule and many students had already began their vacations, but irrespective of this hurdle, the ongoing task of searching and locating further eyewitnesses continued. Los Angeles Police sketch artist Ector Garcia created a composite sketch of the suspect and it was released to the public, along with the Daily Bruin newspaper who published two sketches (one with and one without glasses).        

Just for comparison I have placed the eyewitness description in this case alongside the Presidio Heights sketch from October 18th 1969. Nothing astounding can be drawn from a comparison such as this, with the age range estimated at considerably younger in the Dagowitz case and the weight estimation at least 10 to 20lbs lighter than Officer Donald Fouke and the eyewitnesses by Julius Khan playground described at Presidio Heights. 

The suspect in the UCLA murder may very well be connected to the campus, or at the very least familiar with it. The modus operandi in Los Angeles does have more in common with the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates, although there is no eyewitness description of the suspect in the Cheri Jo Bates case, so if the Riverside murderer and Zodiac are separate individuals (which seems likely), then the door remains open. The murder of Sunny Lyn Dagowitz and Cheri Jo Bates both occurred on campus grounds, both killers were seemingly oblivious, or simply didn't care to the great risk of detection, both women were in close proximity to their vehicle when attacked and both were stabbed and slashed numerous times. The murder of Cheri Jo Bates and  Sunny Lyn Dagowitz were separated by 70 miles and 4 years.

"I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read it. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that's up to you. It will be on your conscience. Not mine. Yes I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware....I am stalking your girls now."  The Confession Letter November 29th 1966.

​The Sunny Lyn Dagowitz case is unlikely connected to either the Zodiac Killer or Cheri Jo Bates cases, but it is a crime that receives little coverage, so if you have any information regarding this December 16th 1970 cold case, please contact the Los Angeles Police Department. http://www.lapdonline.org/ 

James Owen passed the Lake Herman Road turnout shortly after 11:00 pm on December 20th 1968. He was the only eyewitness to spot a second vehicle alongside David Faraday's 1961 Rambler Station Wagon, giving two accounts of what he saw that night. The first on 12/21/1968, he stated "he saw two cars parked near the entrance to the pumping station. He stated the car parked nearest to the road was a 1955 or 1956 station wagon, boxy type, neutral color. The other was parked to the right and abreast of the station wagon. The cars were about ten feet apart."  In his second statement on 12/24/1968 "he definitely saw two cars, a station wagon and another vehicle, parked approximately three or four feet to the right of the station wagon. He did not see anyone in the cars or around them. He stated as he had traveled approximately one quarter of a mile beyond, he thought he heard a shot. He had his car radio on low."
​
Whether James Owen unquestionably heard a gunshot is unknown, because he couldn't state definitively, only "he thought he heard a shot". He also gave two distances between the vehicles, however, it is extremely unlikely the vehicles were ever 3-4 feet apart, for which, one reason will be explained later, the other being that David Faraday was found lying on the turnout floor with his feet nearly touching the right rear wheel of the Rambler and his body extended perpendicular from it, indicating this is likely how he fell. Had the suspect vehicle been 3-4 feet away, David Faraday would surely have struck this vehicle, altering his position to the one discovered by responding officers later that night.

During the attack that night a total of 10 shots were fired, but only 8 bullets were recovered: 5 from the attack on Betty Lou Jensen, 1 from the head of David Faraday and 2 were retrieved from the Rambler. Two bullets were never recovered.
Zodiac author, Robert Graysmith, would claim that the murderer rounded the vehicle and shot a bullet into the left rear wheel well, to herd the couple from the right side of the Rambler. This never occurred, as no shell casings were recovered from the left side of the Rambler, and furthermore, the police themselves released a photograph tracing the path of a bullet as it entered the right rear window and which subsequently lodged in the left rear wheel well. The other bullet entered the headliner of the vehicle, 56 inches from ground level, and traveled virtually horizontal, before striking the upper interior region of the Rambler on the left side. 

The picture on the right shows the trajectory of the bullet fired into the window. It traveled downwards at an angle of 17 degrees to the horizontal, before it stuck the left rear wheel well. Using this angle, the height of the Zodiac Killer, the dimensions of the Rambler, and a liberal sprinkling of trigonometry, it is possible to discover exactly the distance the shooter was standing from the Rambler when this shot was fired.
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It could be argued that the assailant fired two warning shots, before escalating his threat and firing two shots into the Rambler - although these two shots may equally have been the initial opening gambit of the killer. The final six shots were reserved for the victims, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. David Faraday was gunned down at point blank range by the right rear wheel, with Betty Lou Jensen fleeing in a westerly direction toward the Vallejo edge of the turnout, before succumbing. ​The following diagram uses trigonometry and the concept of the internal angles of a triangle totaling 180 degrees to calculate any remaining values.   

The shooter on the left is approximated from eyewitness accounts at 5'10" in height, giving him a shoulder height of roughly 60 inches. The bullet entered the right rear window, just above the chrome stripping, and based on the specifications of a 1961 Rambler, gives us an approximate entry point of 43 inches from the turnout floor. These two heights form the basis of two right-angled triangles.
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In the trigonometry calculator here, we can place in the 17 degree and 73 degree angles, and the shoulder height or side height of 60 inches. This gives us a value for the distance between the shooter's feet and where the bullet would have struck had it not been impeded by the left rear wheel well of the Rambler. This value is 196 inches. To now get the distance of the shooter from the Rambler, we must calculate the length of the lower red line from the right side of the Rambler to the end of the bullet path, then deduct it from 196 inches. ​The side height or bullet entry point in the Rambler window is 43 inches and we still have the same two angles of 73 and 17 degrees, so we can now calculate this new distance. This value is nearly 141 inches.

This gives us a shooter distance from the Rambler of 55 inches (196-141), or 4 feet 7 inches. This means with an extended arm, the gun was likely only 25-30 inches from the Rambler window when fired. If, for example, the bullet trajectory is steepened to 20 degrees from the horizontal, this would place the shooter inside of 4 feet. The steeper the angle, the closer the shooter becomes. The height of the Rambler is 57 inches and the shooter's shoulder height is approximately 60 inches, which explains why the other shot into the headliner of the vehicle traveled virtually horizontal with little deviation and therefore failed to exit the glass on the left side of the Rambler. It is extremely likely that this was the first shot fired into the Rambler that night as the assailant exited his vehicle.   

You will notice that the bullet that struck the window could not have been fired from the suspect gun immediately after he left his vehicle, if his vehicle was parked directly alongside the Rambler approximately 10 feet away (as shown in the police diagrams). The bullet entered the window to the left side of the right rear wheel arch and embedded into the left rear wheel well at a 17 degree angle. A bullet fired from the driver side of a vehicle parked 10 feet or more away would have a much flatter trajectory and missed the left rear wheel well entirely. It would have likely struck just below the left rear window. This means the shooter was 4 and one half feet away and virtually alongside the right rear wheel when he took this shot. The gun barely over 2 feet away (25-30 inches).
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The estimated distance of the shooter from the Rambler and body position of David Faraday at least rules out the suspect vehicle being parked 3-4 feet away, as claimed in James Owen's second statement. But what does this prove? It may just indicate, that the killer never drew up directly alongside the Rambler, but having possibly parked his vehicle slightly back, so that his driver side door was adjacent to the rear door of the Rambler, changing the dynamics of the sequence, and thereby allowing the assailant to discharge these two bullets with reasonable haste upon exiting his vehicle and initiating the attack on December 20th 1968. There are of course multiple ways this attack may have unfolded, but the only thing we know for certain is how it ended.