
Having visited this area previously, John Franklin Hood, after finishing work at the Wimpy's Drive-In on Saturday, left his parents home at 460 Helsam Avenue in Oxnard to visit his girlfriend Sandra, who lived with her parents at 3088 Calle Pinon in Santa Barbara, where they were last seen leaving for the beach at 6pm. The journey from here was a leisurely 12-15 minute drive to East Beach where they parked their vehicle at a beachfront parking lot.
I have yet to find the precise location where they parked but it was probably the one closest to their ultimate destination at "Cemetery Beach", which was located just under half a mile east of their vehicle. If they had traveled directly to the parking lot they would have arrived at approximately 6:15pm, with a casual stroll to "Cemetery Beach" placing them there at 6:30pm to 6:35pm, or thereabouts. On February 21st 1970 sunset was 5:47pm, so it was already dark when they began their journey eastwards along the beach. However, it was a full moon that evening, so there would have been limited illumination of 0.1 lux. At the point they reached "Cemetery Beach" the couple would have been 330 meters from East Cabrillo Boulevard, which lay to the north beyond the graveyard. Below is a map depicting the relevant locations.

Investigators found a four-inch bone-handled fish knife (with a saw blade and regular blade) buried in the sand about one foot from their bodies that they initially concluded must have played a part in the crime, but according to later newspaper reports uncertainty remained if it had any connection to the murders. It really shouldn't have been that difficult to test the knife for blood and answer this question, so I suspect this must have been established at some point in the future. It would have been an unusual coincidence had it been unrelated to the stabbings, although why would a murderer bury the murder weapon within one foot of the bodies rather than just tossing it into the ocean. Investigators stated "We don't know whose it is, but we know it didn't belong to the victims". On February 24th 1970 a newspaper headline entitled "Knife Linked To Murders" appeared to suggest we had clarity regarding the weapon used in the murders, despite immediately following this up with "a four inch blade apparently was the weapon used". This less than decisive language creates more questions than answers - so what happened to John and Sandra that evening or night?
The three likeliest possibilities are that John parked his vehicle in the parking lot and the couple were followed by an unknown number of individuals to "Cemetery Beach" and attacked, The second possibility is that their killer or killers just stumbled across them as they lay on the beach in the darkness. Or they inadvertently walked into an area where one or several undesirables were hanging around..The Santa Barbara Cemetery is shielded by steep cliffs from the beacfront except for its western edge, so if the topography was similar in 1970 it is likely the person/s arrived at the location of the murders from either the east or west.

With no subsequent information available regarding this sighting it is reasonable to conclude these two youths were never found. Anybody tending wounds to their person in close proximity to a beach where two vicious murders had recently occurred, where the victims were brutally stabbed and beaten to death, should have been given high priority. John Franklin Hood was clearly a man who knew how to handle himself, so it's very likely it required two people to overpower the young couple. Investigators attempted to trace the movements of the slain couple before they went to the beach, but with Sandra telling her parents at 6pm they would be back soon, where would they have possibly gone, bearing in mind the beach was already shrouded in darkness before they left 3088 Calle Pinon in Santa Barbara? With no reported sightings from establishments in close proximity to the beach, it could be considered likely that they headed straight to "Cemetery Beach" with no detours.

If the Hood and Garcia murders were ever linked to the Zodiac Killer, it would be strange quirk of fate that Robert Offerman and Debra Manning, a couple murdered by Joseph James DeAngelo in Goleta in 1979, would be buried in Santa Barbara Cemetery just a few hundred feet from the location where John Franklin Hood and Sandra Garcia lost their lives to the Zodiac Killer nine years earlier. However, that is a big if.
The Santa Barbara Cemetery is the resting place of many Hollywood stars, that unfortunately became the silent witness to the tragic final act of a young couple on February 21st 1970, whose lives may have ended, but whose story shouldn't be forgotten.
THE CEMETERY BEACH MURDERS OF 1970 (PT2)
Here are seven in depth articles examining the murders of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards. The Ballistics. The Shack. The Rope. The Beach. The Ammo. Pistol or Rifle? The Final Analysis.