SHIFTING THE TIMELINE AT LAKE HERMAN ROAD

1/28/2025

Stella Medeiros, after discovering the Lake Herman Road crime scene on December 20th 1968, "raced" off toward Benicia Police Station to seek help. Before she reached the police staton she noticed Captain Daniel Pitta by the Enco Gas Station at 1925 East 2nd Street and flagged him down. Captain Daniel Pitta in his police report recorded the time as 11:25pm, so with a simple calculation, law enforcement deducted her 5 minute journey time over the 3.4 miles to calculate that she passed the Lake Herman Road crime scene at approximately 11:20pm. I believe this time is way off, as does Ray Grant.

Investigators at the crime scene

After discovering the crime scene Stella Medeiros claimed she drove to Benicia at 60 to 70mph (which at the lower end speed would have taken approximately 3 1/2 minutes). She stated that she left her home (1.5 miles west of the turnout) after noticing the kitchen clock read 11:10pm. This clock was determined to be one minute fast, so the time was actually 11:09pm. However, she was still in the kitchen at the time and traveled to Benicia with her mother-in-law and daughter, so we can add that minute back on in order to get the family into her vehicle and onto Lake Herman Road (now 11:10pm).

At a slow speed of 30mph, the journey time from her residence to the turnout is about 3 minutes. If we now add this 3 minutes to the time she took from the turnout to the Enco Gas Station of 3 1/2 minutes, we get a total journey time of 6 1/2 minutes. The time should have been 11:16:30pm when she flagged down police at the Enco Gas Station, not 11:25pm as recorded in the Daniel Pitta police report. There is a massive discrepancy of 8 1/2 minutes. If we left these timings alone (and kept the time of 11:14pm that James Owen was thought to have passed the turnout), Stella Medeiros would actually have passed the turnout before James Owen. Now that would shake up the whole story.

Betty Lou Jensen

It is highly unlikely Stella Medeiros was driving at speeds of 60 to 70mph on an unlit road, with the temperature in the police report recorded at 22°F (-5°C) that night, with her mother-in-law and daughter in the car. She had spotted the body of Betty Lou Jensen on the turnout floor, but belting around at the speeds she claimed would have been putting her own family at risk, so I suspect these speeds were slightly exaggerated. Allowing for a slightly slower speed and a little more than one minute to leave the kitchen, seat her family members in the car and enter Lake Herman Road, I have added 1 1/2 minutes to the overall journey time. She would now be flagging down Captain Daniel Pitta at 11:18pm, but this is still 7 minutes shy of 11:25pm recorded in his police report.

According to Captain Daniel Pitta's police report, it was claimed that they arrived at the turnout at 11:28pm. A journey time of 3 minutes for him to travel 3.4 miles from the Enco Gas Station to the turnout, would have required him traveling at 68mph. However, 11:25pm was the time he recorded that Stella Medeiros flagged him down, not the time he headed to the crime scene. She had to approach the police car and relay to Captain Daniel Pitta what she had observed and where. He had to register her information and take down her details at the Enco Gas Station (name & address), before relaying this information to the Benicia Police Department. Even if this had somehow taken a meagre one minute, he would now only have 2 minutes to reach the crime scene at 11:28pm, traveling at 102mph. The timings are wrong at this end

Site of the Enco Station. Click for Google maps.

If we stretch the timeline a little further, allowing Stella Medeiros another 2 minutes leeway, she would now arrive at the Enco Gas Station at 11:20pm. We shall now give 3 minutes to the interaction between Stella Medeiros and Captain Daniel Pitta at the Enco Gas Station, and 5 minutes for Captain Daniel Pitta to reach the crime scene (the same time they calculated it took Stella Medeiros to travel from the crime scene to the Enco Gas Station). This means that 8 minutes would have elapsed between Stella Medeiros flagging down the police and Captain Daniel Pitta arriving at the crime scene at 11:28pm. Wringing everything from this timeline, it pours huge doubt on Stella Medeiros being anywhere near the turnout at 11:20pm, as claimed in the police reports and most Zodiac circles. If any error has been made, it probably lies in the interaction time at the Enco Gas Station. If the police took as correct the time given to them from the kitchen clock of Stella Medeiros, then it could have never taken her 11 minutes to leave the kitchen of her home at 11:09pm and pass the Lake Herman Road turnout at 11:20pm.

Factoring everything into the equation, I have estimated that Stella Medeiros left her kitchen at 11:09pm, entered Lake Herman Road at about 11:11pm, and passed the turnout no later than 11:14pm, to arrive at the Enco Gas Station at 11:19pm. Her interaction with Captain Daniel Pitta lasted upwards of 4 minutes until 11:23pm, before he headed off to the crime scene, arriving and parking up at approximately 11:27 or 11:28pm. Stella Medeiros would have left her home and passed the turnout at the higher estimate of 5 minutes she originally claimed in the police report. The police report stated that "she left her home and arrived at the area (turnout) four or five minutes later. She estimated between 11:14 and 11:15pm".

Ray Grant, Zodiac researcher

James Owen (see map below) stated that he had left him home at 1735 Mini Drive in Vallejo at 11:00pm and passed the Lake Herman Road turnout at 11:20pm, but after it was discovered that his clock was six minutes fast, his turnout passing was amended to 11:14pm. But like Ray Grant, I believe it was several minutes earlier. Ray Grant balanced the speed of James Owen to 35mph, equidistant between 30 and 40mph. With his clock time adjusted to 10:54pm, the 9.1 mile journey from his home to the turnout is calculated as 14 minutes on Google maps. This would have James Owen passing the turnout at 11:08pm.

However, he too had to leave his home and enter his vehicle. Allowing one minute for this task, he would have begun his journey at approximately 10:55pm, to arrive at the turnout at 11:09pm. To accomplish this, I calculated this to an average speed of 39mph. Ray Grant calculated a 15 minute 36 second journey from 10:54pm, traveling at 35mph, to arrive at the turnout at about 11:09:30pm. If James Owen began his journey at 10:55pm, traveling at a modest 35mph, he passes the turnout at 11:10:30pm. At a slightly higher speed of 40mph, he passes the turnout at 11:08:30pm. I estimate the time was somewhere around 11:09pm, in near agreement with Ray Grant. The window of the Zodiac Killer to now commit the murders would narrow to 5 minutes.

JIbberjabber

1/27/2025 10:21:50 pm

Great to see people challenging things which have been taken as set in stone all this time!

Would be interesting to hear from any one old enough to have been driving these 1960s (or maybe even earlier? I have read Bryan Hartnell's car was from the 1950s) to see if they needed time to warm up in the cold.

I remember cars in the 80s and even 90s having the "choke" on them to start when it was cold not sure if they are called the same thing in the US. This is the valve in the carburettor which changes the fuel / air ratio in cold temperatures just to allow the engine to warm up.

I still have a 1980s motorbike with a manual choke and - whether that has anything to do with it or not it sometimes is a bit harder to start the bike in the cold, until it has warmed up if I take my hand off the throttle the engine just dies.

If the temperature was -5 degrees and these were petrol cars, did they have (and need) manual chokes? I wonder if there needs to be a period of warming / idling the engine factored in here at least for Stella Madeiros.

Whether it accounts for the full missing 7 - 8 minutes not sure, but if she was starting her car cold and it had a manual choke, may need to allow for more than 1 minute to be from kitchen to driving on the road.

Like I say it would be interesting to hear from people who were driving at the time just incase there are any little things which are worth factoring in like this. I agree speeding on LHR at up to 60 mph at that time of night is not credible, I dont even think most women would ever drive like that even if seeing a victim in the road (just going by my own experience of being in cars with women in the dark - I mean professionally of course!)

I am also wondering about these pipes being installed in the area, they never really get mentioned - was that also reducing the width on certain sections of the road? I have never seen any photographs or seen much other writing about the water pipes but if they were running by the road they could have possibly caused some speed reduction of some sort at certain points.

I wish we knew more about that work, from previous newspaper searches I think it was going on into summer 1969 and extended down to Columbous Park Way - which is interesting considering what happened 7 months later

Richard

1/28/2025 12:09:09 am

According to the police report Stella Medeiros had just arrived back from Oakland at 10:50pm and she still had her coat on, so it was only 20 minutes later she departed the house. Her car therefore should have been less affected by the weather. I once considered whether James Owen had to warm his vehicle or even defrost the windscreen before traveling. It depends on where he kept his car and/or whether he had recently used it. But if he had warmed it up for an extended period of time such a 6 minutes, you would have expected him to have informed police of this action, or more importantly, I would have expected police to have asked him. There would be little point in questioning the eyewitnesses about discrepancies in their clock times, if you aren't going to factor in any defrosting or warming of engines. But it's a pertinent question to ask on such a cold night. That is why I questioned the Ray Grant abduction theory of Faraday & Jensen when he claimed they arrived at Blue Rock Springs after leaving the home of Sharon Henslin. Betty was wearing a fur coat, which she would almost certainly would still have been wearing a few minutes later when Ray claimed she was dumped into a boot/ trunk. This scenario contradicted her coat being found on the back seat by law enforcement.

If James Owen had been delayed by several minutes and arrived at the turnout at 11:14pm as investigators claimed, then the timeline has the potential of him passing the turnout after Stella Medeiros. I considered fleetingly whether he saw the couple on the turnout floor and had a different response to Stella Medeiros, by thinking they were drugged or drunk teenagers, so just avoided doing anything. When he realised the following morning of the murders his conscience got the better of him, but radically changed his story by saying he saw no one in or around the vehicles. Adding the second vehicle fo explain the new scenario. It's unlikely but stranger things have happened.

Richard

1/28/2025 12:30:09 am

Driving on that road at speeds of 70mph is totally unrealistic and downright dangerous, especially when you have your daughter in the car. Police estimated her journey time at 5 minutes from the turnout to the Enco Gas Station, which is an average speed of 40mph. This was far more realistic taking into account the lack of streetlights, the weather, factoring in the turns and her slowing down and parking her vehicle when spotting the police.

Without knowing the exact position of the pipes Jibber, I couldn't say what part they played in the width of the road. But police never brought it up as an issue in the police report or played it into any timeline, Without any consideration being given to them, I think it wise to dieregard them from any journey estimates until shown otherwise. However, these are all important points you have brought up.

JIbberjabber

1/28/2025 09:52:25 am

One thing I have always wanted to know and I dont think it has ever been mentioned, was the interior light on in the Rambler when police arrived (because the front passenger door was open)

If the interior light was on then I dont think it credible James Owen could have missed that detail - but I dont know if the light was on.

I do think chronologically Owen passed the turnout before Stella Madeiros even if times are out (I believe times are out at Lake Berryessa as well but that is for another topic)

For a while I thought maybe Zodiac had more than a simple flashlight taped to his gun barrel, I thought maybe he had some kind of IR sight or night scope or something - just because when he refers to it a second time he calls it his "electric gun sight" which seems a bit of a fancy name for a pencil flashlight. Plus he seems to be into electrical gadgets perhaps and talks about buying weapons through the mail order. He may have had more than a simple flashlight but who knows.

Would the sniper that shot the Swindles have needed additional lighting from his position on the bluff? We know he came down and shot the victims in cold blood execution style, but that was a nightime attack, there maybe was not lighting in that particular stretch of the beach - how did that killer see his target from the initial firing distance.

Those water pipes have always intrigued me, if they were not mentioned in the LHR reports wrt Homer Your wanting to inspect them for some strange reason, we may never know they were being installed

Like the white Chevrolet I would like to know more about that project

Richard

1/28/2025 11:37:21 am

I couldn't tell you Jibber if the couple kept or turned the light on in the vehicle or not. I doubt anyone knows this, or ever will. The sniper that shot the Swindles would have had less than ideal lighting, however, he made the shots, so there must have been enough. Sunset was 5:24pm, so he would had to have relied on ambient lighting from artificial sources in the immediate area. What those were in 1964 is anyone's guess. But her certainly achieved his goal and must have known that the location was conducive to a "successful" attack from 50 feet in distance. The next question is gun or rifle. Unless you have a car parked close by, would you really want to exit the crime scene carrying a rifle in full view?

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SHIFTING THE TIMELINE AT LAKE HERMAN ROAD

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