Lake Herman Road runs through open rangeland between Vallejo and Benicia in Solano County, California. The road borders Lake Herman, a reservoir, and passes through territory that in 1968 was sparsely settled and frequented by teenagers seeking privacy along the roadside turnouts.
On the night of December 20, 1968, Betty Lou Jensen, 16, a student at Hogan High School in Vallejo, and David Arthur Faraday, 17, a student at Vallejo High School, parked at a turnout on Lake Herman Road just inside the Benicia city limits. Between 11:05 and 11:10 p.m., both were shot. Faraday was shot once in the head at close range; Jensen was shot five times in the back as she fled. Both died at the scene. The weapon was determined to be a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol.
The murders remained unsolved until August 1, 1969, when the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and Vallejo Times-Herald simultaneously received nearly identical letters from someone claiming responsibility for the attack and demanding publication of an enclosed cipher. The writer described the Lake Herman Road murders specifically as confirmation of identity. These letters represented the first public connection between the Lake Herman murders and what the media would name the Zodiac Killer.
The Zodiac Killer was never identified or prosecuted. The case remains one of the most extensively studied unsolved serial crime cases in American history. The road itself is unchanged: a rural two-lane route through the same open country where Jensen and Faraday parked in 1968.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer
- https://www.zodiackillerinfo.com/lake-herman-road
- https://www.zodiacciphers.com/lake-herman-murders.html
- https://zodiackillerfacts.com/the-crimes/12-20-68-lake-herman-road-benicia-california/
EVPPhantom soundsSensed presence
The Shadowlands account for Lake Herman Road describes EVP recordings of heavy breathing that seemed to come from a woman, and a reported feeling of not being alone at the turnout. These reports are consistent with accounts from true crime pilgrims and paranormal investigators who have visited the site since the late 1990s.
An atmospheric detail repeated across independent visitor accounts is the behavior of the nighttime mist: a low-lying fog that reportedly hugs the tops of the hills on the west side of the road rather than settling toward the lake on the east. Whether this represents a genuine microclimate particularity or selective memory among visitors who know the site's history is open.
Zodiac-related graffiti has appeared at the turnout over the decades, written by visitors rather than the original killer. The graffiti creates an additional layer of informal memorialization that distinguishes this stretch of road from the surrounding landscape.
The case's unresolved status — no confirmed identity, no conviction, no closure — gives the site an unusual quality even among true crime destinations. Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday were sixteen and seventeen years old on the night of December 20, 1968. The road is otherwise unchanged.
