Lover's Lane [2]

All small towns have their secrets. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not necessarily represent those of iHeartMedia, How Stuff Works,
or its employees.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Lover's Lane a secret of destination for hopeful young people,
a lookout or secluded area where couples anticipate privacy. Betty
lou Jensen and David Faraday were just kids, ages sixteen
and seventeen. Privacy and intimacy was probably what they expected
from their night. What they got instead, they never could

(00:38):
have predicted. Their murder at Lake Herman Road was horrifying
and brutal. Why would someone do that to two kids?
There couldn't be anything more terrible. It couldn't get any worse,
but it did. The killer struck again at yet another
Lover's Lane.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
A man in a mask, robbed, tied, and stabbed them,
leaving them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report
a murder, no a double murder. I did it a man.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Who wore a medieval style executioners hood, carried a knife
and gun and intended to use them.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
They haven't arrested me because they can't prove a thing.
I'm not a damn Zodiac.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Who is the Zodiac and where is he from?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
iHeartRadio, howstuff works and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster, the
Zodiac Killer.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
It's been six and a half months since the murders
at Lake Kerman Road. Like before, it's another couple in
a car and another attack.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
My name is Clarence Edward rust are USD. I'm a
retired Blayo Police depart my lieutenant. On the night of
July fourth, nineteen sixty nine, I was working at a
late shift with white partner John Lynch when the Zodiac
killing occurred in Yo. We were in an unmarked police

(02:15):
unit and we're in the downtown area of Layo when
the radio call came over about firecrackers at blue Ox
Springs Park and they got a call that this was gunshots.
We pulled into the barket area and observed a vehicle

(02:35):
in the parking lot, police car right next to it.
We got out of the car, observed the right passenger
side door was open and a body was laying in
the ground with legs still parsely in the car. The
male victim had obviously had injuries appeared to be bullet wounds,

(02:56):
and I walked around to the driver's zort and saw
a young white female behind the stream wheel, which was
later identified as Darlene Ferron. I talked to her, asked her,
can you tell me what happened? Her eyes were closed.
I could say she was still breathing, and she murmured

(03:20):
a couple times, but never opened her eyes. Didn't say
anything to me. I knew an ambulance just on the way,
so I walked around the side where John Lynch was
trying to talk to the young male. He was laying
on the ground and had an injury to his head
or neck, and he had difficulty talking. The ambulance arrived

(03:43):
shortly after that loaded both the victims into the ambulance.
I told Dick Cofflin to go in the ambulance with
him in case either one of them were able to
say anything. Darlene Farron was dead on a right or
at the hospital, but the male victim was alive and
put in emergency care.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Zodiac left a witness behind the male victim in the
emergency room. Michaelmajeaux survived. We went back to Michael Butterfield,
the Zodiac expert you heard in the first episode.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
He was just very fortunate in the sense that none
of those bullets hit him in a vital area, and
that's just pure luck. That bullet might have gone right
through his head, So he's very lucky to be alive.
And like most people who survive those kinds of traumatic events,
there's probably a certain amount of guilt attached to that,
wondering why did I survive? Why did she die? And

(04:42):
then also there's the horrifying realization of how close you
came to dying. There's no way that you can forget
about that every day. If you feel the pain of
that bullet, you see the scars, you know how close
you came to dyeing, and especially watching someone die right
next to you, that's got to be chilling. Michael Migau

(05:03):
has struggled a great deal with this over the years.
Not everyone walks away from a tragedy intact ed rust.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
The copy you heard earlier not only arrived on The
Zodiac's second gruesome scene, he also interviewed Michael Migaux in
the hospital the morning after the attack.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
He was fairly injured and it was under sedation, but
was able to speak with me and I interviewed him
at length. He was able to tell me that Darlene
had picked him up at his house. They had some
kind of an association, I'm not sure just what. She
drove them out to Blue Ox Springs Park and they

(05:46):
pulled into the parking lot and it was empty at
the time. This was pretty late at night. He said.
They were sitting in the car talking about things, and
a car load of young people pulled up next to them,
and the eld and holler and drove off, And shortly
after that a car pulled up behind him. The driver

(06:07):
got out, walked up to his side of the car
carrying a hand held flashlight. Michael Vagel he assumed it
was a police officer and was trying to get his
wallet out. This person walked up and was standing right
next to his open window, didn't say anything at all
to him, and suddenly he pulled a gun up and

(06:29):
started shooting. Michael Vigel. He was hit struck several times,
and he literally climbed over the seat into the back
seat of the little corve air. The shots just kept going,
and he said this person actually reached in and shot

(06:50):
him at least once or twice more while he was
in the back seat. After several shots and nothing said whatsoever.
He heard the car door slam, the lights disappeared, and
the vehicle drove off, he believed, toward Valo. He then

(07:12):
was able to reach and opened the passenger side door
that he had been sitting in and was able to
climb out, and he fell down on the ground and
that's where he was when the first police officer did
klauf and arrived. He said he tried to talk to Darlene,
but she never did answer. Michael Mjeau lived a life

(07:34):
of terror after this, heavily involved in drugs and he
just got completely out of it.

Speaker 6 (07:45):
I'd like to see this case solved, and I think
it can be solved, but it just hasn't, and I
don't uh. I'm just kind of burned out, bummed out
by the whole whole situation and everything. I was there
that night, and obviously I saw it the guy I
did to those two young kids, and I want to
see the person that did at hell responsible.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Witnessing and surviving and attempted murder is obviously traumatizing. It
can linger with someone for the rest of their life.
Not only did this impact Michaelmageaux, it also left its
mark on Darlene's parents, her daughter, and her husband, Dean Farren.

Speaker 7 (08:38):
That fourth of July, I was working and she came
by the restaurant and said, okay, let's go out and
get some fireworks and we'll meet at the house and
have beer and wine. And at that time you could
buy safe insane fireworks. We had a concrete pad in
the backyard that was the plan. Closed the restaurant up
and went by the house and we're kind of surprised
that the babysitter was still there. She hadn't come back yet.

(09:03):
There's no cell phones and anything that was a long
time ago, had no way to get in contact, just
sat around waiting. The police showed up to the door
wanted me and to come down the police station and
didn't really say why. They said, oh, there's been an.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Accident and you need to come down the police station.

Speaker 7 (09:23):
They took us in one little room kind of like
this little small interview room and said, well, you know
it's we're.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Just wondering where you've been tonight.

Speaker 7 (09:31):
And I told him, well, I've been working up till
forty five minutes ago or so.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
And checked with the boss and.

Speaker 7 (09:38):
He said, yeah, he's been here all night, and then said, well,
we just we don't tell you. It's it's the worst.
She's deceased. They asked where her parents lived, and I said, well,
I think I should probably be the one to tell him.
So I rode in out to their house with the
police officers told her parents that I don't really know

(10:00):
what happened, but you know, his daughter has been killed, and.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Then I went back home. I don't remember if my
brother took a daughter.

Speaker 7 (10:11):
To my parents' house, or if we did that in
the next morning. I don't remember exactly what went on
after that. I was kind of something I didn't know
where I was really.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Kind the end of days, that sense of shock Dean
felt persisted. The trauma of dealing with Darlene's murder left
him struggling to raise their daughter.

Speaker 7 (10:32):
Said, my daughter stayed with my parents for a little
bit of a while, but we had I had a
close friend that you well, they volunteered the babysit. Basically,
she was raised for about five years by this other
couple that was more of a foster sort of a situation,
which to this day she still calls them mother and dad.

(10:57):
That was a miracle for us or me or her both,
so it gave her some kind of a structure and
a family situation, which at that time I didn't know
where I was going. At this point, it's so long ago,
and my life has really.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
Been pretty good.

Speaker 7 (11:21):
I'm happy and got a nice family. And some people say, oh,
it'll bring closure.

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Well I don't.

Speaker 7 (11:29):
I talked to a TV news thing after the guy
up in Sacramento they found him California rapist or killer
or whatever they called me, and they came by the
house and stood out in the front of yard for
ten or fifteen minutes. Well, this bring closure, And I said,
I don't know what the hell closure is.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
And that was the end of it. I don't know
what closure is, and how.

Speaker 7 (11:52):
Does The only thing that'll end is maybe I won't.
People won't talk about it as much, but I don't
even see that happening anymore. It's less painful every time.
It's like picking a scab off of it, a little cut,
you know, Okay, first time it leads like hell, Next time, man,
not so much. This is going to lead somewhere. Well,

(12:13):
nothing's happened.

Speaker 5 (12:14):
So the police investigated the idea that Darlene Farren had
been killed by someone she knew. That's a traditional standard
investigative avenue. Darlene Farren was a very popular person as

(12:37):
a waitress and a local diner. There, she had many
fans and of course many male admirers. And I think that,
like many people her age, she liked having fun. I
don't know if that meant drinking or doing other things,
but she definitely liked having a good time, and that
included having fun with her friends. Michael Migeau was one
of the people she counted among her friends. Michael and

(12:59):
his twin brother had met Darlene at the diner where
she worked, and like many other male customers there, they
developed a friendship with her that sometimes extended beyond her
work hours. There are a lot of stories about Darlene
dating other men and doing other things like that, and
so it's easy to believe that she was dating a
lot of different men, and one of them could have

(13:20):
been the Zodiac.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
The police investigated multiple leads, and early on there were
two men who stood out as possible suspects, George and Gordon.
According to the Vallejo Police Department's reports, Darlene had some
problems with a guy named George. The report details how
George met Darlene at the restaurant where she worked and
would sometimes give her rides home, but friends of Darlene

(13:44):
said she was quote deathly afraid of him, but was
friendly towards him in an effort to keep him at
a distance. On one occasion, he walked into her apartment
and told her that he was either going to rape
her or get into bed with her in one way
or another unquote. Officers spoke with George and he denies
ever threatening Darlene, but does state that many times he

(14:06):
did tease her and make her angry. George was quickly
ruled out as a suspect. Gordon Arthur was another suspect
police spoke with. Gordon met Darlene while he was waiting
for the Navy to transfer him. He told officers he
and Darlene went on a few dates. According to the
police files, Gordon said a day or two before he moved,

(14:26):
Darlene told him that she wanted to leave her husband
and move with him, but Gordon said no because Darlene
had a baby he couldn't provide for. After he moved,
Gordon said, Darlene wrote to him telling him she might
be pregnant, but then he didn't hear from her for
a while. In the case report, it reads he received
one more letter from her, and it said she had

(14:47):
been in the hospital for a short time, but did
not state the reason. Gordon thought that possibly she had
been pregnant and went and got an abortion somewhere. Gordon
stated at this time that he decided not to have
anything to do with ar Darlene and not to see
her again. Gordon was also ruled out. After reading the

(15:12):
police reports and first hand accounts of people close to Darlene,
it seemed as if she had been living a secret
life went away from her family. I wanted to know
if Dean knew how Darlene spent her time when she
wasn't at home or at work.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
She was a waitress at pancake house.

Speaker 7 (15:33):
I was a cook there and we got to be friends,
and then it escalated from there. I guess at the
time she was married to somebody else and he was
being rather abusive, and I helped her find a place
to live with a friend of mine. From there we
got to be better friends. Ended up getting married a
little bit sooner than we may have thought. But back

(15:53):
in those days it was a little bit different. Now,
good girls don't get pregnant when they're single, and we
had planned on getting married anyway. It was kind of
pushed up a little bit. She had just turned twenty one,
so I like to go out and dance. She and
some of the other waitresses would go out. She would
go out occasionally with them. She still had friends from

(16:16):
when she had lived in San Francisco. She'd go down
and see and exactly what they did. I you know,
there's all kinds of rumors down there that was her
drug connection, and that was her boyfriends or whatever.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
You know.

Speaker 7 (16:29):
Some of the police I've talked to, they were asking me, okay,
rumors are that she was having a lot of affair
as well. I would like to believe she wasn't. But
I know that she liked to go out.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
But where did Mijau stand with Darlene As.

Speaker 7 (16:43):
Far as Michael Jaux or how to pronounce his name.
It's one of those things I'm trying to put out
of my head. I would like to believe that's not true,
but I don't have any way to confirm her to not.

Speaker 5 (16:59):
Michaelmajau today talks about their relationship in terms of that
he wanted to marry her in all kinds of things,
but at the time it appears that they were just friends.
Maybe he had a very strong crush on her. There's
no evidence that she ever responded or reciprocated in that way.
And although there are a lot of stories about Darlene

(17:22):
dating other men and doing other things like that, there's
no solid evidence behind any of that. I think a
lot of that is Rarmer, A lot of that comes
up years later. Darlene Farrin is like the Laura Palmer
of the Zodiac case. Laura Palmer was the victim in
the famous TV series Twin Peaks, and of course in

(17:42):
that series it was a very complicated murder story, and
her background had a lot to do with what was
going on. But I think that's what people wanted to
believe with Darlene Farren. So they wanted to believe that
she had this rich, mysterious private life where there's all
these your secrets and shadows and things like that, and

(18:03):
so it's easy to believe that she was dating a
lot of different men and one of them could have
been the Zodiac or all these things, but there's no
evidence to support that.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
For a moment, Investigators even looked into Michaelmajeaux. Many people
today still theorize that he knew the Zodiac was going
to attack that night.

Speaker 5 (18:25):
Michael Mijau at the time of the shooting was apparently
wearing several layers of clothing. The layers of clothing have
been troubling for some people because Michael Mijaud did have
some minor criminal entries on his record, and some people
have read a lot into that. They think it's evidence
that there was something sinister going on, or that he

(18:46):
knew something, that he was a criminal, like a burglar,
that he was wearing one set of clothes so that
if he escaped, he could take those off and not
be identified. There's other people who have actually come up
with the theory that he knew they were going to
be shot that night and he was wearing extra layers
of clothing in case he had to take it off

(19:06):
and if there was blood on him or something like that.
I think it makes a lot more sense to believe
that Michael Mageaux was a young kid, rather skinny, and
he was out at night. A lot of kids wear
extra layers of clothing. I never did that myself. I
wore a lot of jackets when I was in high school,
but I didn't know people who did that, and sometimes

(19:27):
it was because they weren't comfortable with the way they
looked in their clothes. They would try to pad their
bodies and that may have played a part in it.
I don't see any reason to believe that he knew
about the shooting that night. Most people would not volunteer
to be sitting next to someone who's going to be
shot to death in a car. I think in reality,
it's just a kid in his insecurities.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
The following is a reenactment of a portion of Michael
Magau's statement to the police after the incident at Blue
Rock Springs. The recording comprises reading by an actor of
mister Michaud's statement in first person voice.

Speaker 8 (20:10):
This vehicle pulled up approximately ten feet behind us, to
the right of Darlene's car. He had a high powered flashlight,
the kind you carry with a handle. He walked up
to the car, and both of us believed it was
a policeman. He stepped up to my side of the car,

(20:30):
shining a flashlight on us. He didn't say anything to us,
and we didn't say anything to him. I started to
reach for my wallet as I felt it was a
policeman who wanted to see my ID. As I did,
I heard a muffled sound and felt a pain in
my back and my neck. I heard some more muffled sounds.
It sounded like a gun with a silencer on it.

(20:53):
I tried to climb over the back seat to get
away from the shooting, and he kept shooting again and again,
and finally he quit shooting and turned the gun on
Darlene and started shooting her again and again. He then
turned around and started to walk back to his vehicle,
which still had the headlights on. I couldn't tell if

(21:15):
I meant to yell at him or if I just
yelled from the pain, but I let out some type
of yell. He apparently heard me and came back to
the car and shot me two more times, once in
the back and once in the leg. He turned the
gun on Darlene and shot her twice more. All the
shots I heard were muffled, like there was a silencer

(21:37):
on it. It wasn't loud. He then turned around and
casually walked back to his vehicle and got in. I
reached outside the car door to open it because the
handle inside was broken. I reached outside and opened the
car door and fell on the ground. As I fell
on the ground, the vehicle he was in backed up

(21:58):
in a turning movement and then took off towards Springs
Road in Vallejo at a very high rate of speed.
As the vehicle drove off, I only saw the rear
portion of it. This rear part appeared to be a
vehicle similar to or the same type as Darlene's car,
a Corvett, also a very similar color, possibly a little

(22:22):
bit lighter brown. It had a California license plate, but
I couldn't tell what the numbers were. As best as
I can recall, the man appeared to be short, possibly
five to eight. He was real heavy set, beefy build,
possibly one ninety five to two hundred, maybe even larger.

(22:44):
He had short, curly hair, light brown, almost blonde. He
was wearing a short sleeved shirt blue in color. I
saw his face from the profile a side view. I
don't remember seeing the front. There was nothing unusual about
his face other than it appeared to be large. He
had a large face. It was dark. It was just

(23:08):
too hard to see.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Him as strange as many of the circumstances were. Michael
Majeaux has been cleared of any and all suspicion. The
unanswered questions surrounding the murder of Darlene farrin an attempted
murder of Michaelmajeaux have left many people guessing and theorizing.

(23:30):
It's made for an odd and complicated case. But it's
not the questions or the attack itself that cast this
case in the limelight. It's what happened minutes after that
marked the beginning of the Zodiac's notoriety.

Speaker 5 (23:44):
While Michael and Darlene were struggling to survive in Blue
Rock Springs Park, the killer apparently was driving around Valleo
until he found a payphone and he called the Valeo
Police Department, and the call was answered by the dispatch
of Nancy Slogan.

Speaker 6 (24:08):
I want to report a murder.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway,
you will find kids in a brown car.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
They were shot with a nine millimeters luker.

Speaker 5 (24:23):
I also killed those kids last year.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Goodbye, next time on Monster the Zodiac Killer.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
A strange letter arrives at the offices of three Northern
California newspapers, so the first letter came.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
I was among the copy boys sorting mail.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
There was a box where letters. The editor went, we
just throw stuff in there.

Speaker 5 (25:12):
It's chilling just to look at it. Each part consisted
of a block of symbols from astrology, half filled circles
backwards letters.

Speaker 9 (25:21):
They found symbols that were repeating next to each other. Well,
the most common double letter in English is LL, and
you know LLL appears in a lot of words, all
will and kill.

Speaker 10 (25:35):
What I needed did was not a new weapon, not
a new animal. Here on my island. I hunted the
most dangerous game.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
When they searched his car, they found a couple of books.

Speaker 5 (25:50):
One the books was my book on Sir Murder. He decided,
it's not enough for me to just shoot these people.
I need to look in their eyes and see them going, oh,
everything's came out, and then look in their eyes when
I flip on them and they find out that this
is not what they thought and that their lives are
at stake.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Monster the Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced
by iHeartRadio, House, Stuff Works, and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright
and I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV.
Alongside producers Meredith Stebman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason
Hope is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works,

(26:34):
along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Keebrick, and
Josh Thain. Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick
is our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
first season of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta
child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.

(26:56):
Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions are common,
email us at Monster at houstuffworks dot com, or you
can call us at one eight three, three, two eight
five six six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.