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Published by Berkley, 2007
ISBN 10: 0425212181ISBN 13: 9780425212189
Seller: Ami Ventures Inc Books, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Book
mass_market. Condition: New. Reissue. Product DescriptionRobert Graysmith s New York Times bestselling account of the desperate hunt for a serial killer and his own investigation of California s unsolved Zodiac murders.A sexual sadist, the Zodiac killer took pleasure in torture and murder. His first victims were a teenage couple, stalked and shot dead in a lovers lane. After another slaying, he sent his first mocking note to authorities, promising he would kill more. The official tally of his victims was six. He claimed thirty-seven dead. The real toll may have reached fifty.Robert Graysmith was on staff at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969 when Zodiac first struck, triggering in the resolute reporter an unrelenting obsession with seeing the hooded killer brought to justice. In this gripping account of Zodiac s eleven-month reign of terror, Graysmith reveals hundreds of facts previously unreleased, including the complete text of the killer s letters.Review"Provocative.bizarre.Graysmith s taut narrative brings the horror back with jolt upon jolt."-San Francisco Chronicle"A chilling real-life detective story."-Savannah News PressAbout the AuthorRobert Graysmith is the New York Times bestselling author of several true crime novels including Zodiac, Zodiac Unmasked, Auto Focus, and Amerithrax. The major motion pictures Zodiac and Auto Focus are based on his books. A San Francisco Chronicle political cartoonist and artist for fifteen years, he lives in San Francisco.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.OneDavid Faraday and Betty Lou JensenFriday, December 20, 1968When he hiked in the rolling hills overlooking Vallejo, David Faraday could catch glimpses of the Golden Gate Bridge, the saltwater fishermen, sailboats and speedboats on San Pablo Bay, and the wide, tree-lined streets of the town. He could make out the black skeletal derricks, the piers, battleships, brick smokestacks, and three-tiered warehouses of Mare Island, the great gray mass lying across the straits.In World War II thousands swarmed to the area to do navy work, and Vallejo was transformed into a boom town. Cheap housing units of plywood and plasterboard were thrown up, temporary constructions. By the 1960s they had become permanent black ghettos, fosterers of race hatred and gang violence that reached into the high schools.David Arthur Faraday, seventeen, a scholar and varsity athlete, was one of the top students at Vallejo High School. As 1968 drew to a close, David had met a pretty, dark-haired sixteen-year-old, Betty Lou Jensen, who lived across town. He had been going over to see her almost every day since. Today, at 5:00 p.m., David and Betty Lou were talking with some friends on Annette Street about their date for that night. It was to be their first date together.David left at 6:00, and at 7:10 drove his sister, Debbie, to a meeting of the Rainbow Girls at the Pythian Castle on Sonoma Boulevard. David told Debbie that he and Betty Lou might be going out to Lake Herman Road at the end of their date because he'd heard "a bunch of the kids were going out there tonight."David returned home, to his parents' green, brown-shingled, T-shaped house on Sereno Drive, surrounded by a manicured hedge and two massive round shrubs, all dwarfed by the soaring poplar tree on the right.By 7:20 David was dressing for his date. He wore a light-blue long-sleeve shirt, brown corduroy Levi-type pants, black socks, and tan, rough-leather, low-cut boots. He put his Timex wristwatch with chrome case and band on his left wrist, and shoved a dollar and fifty-five cents, all in change, in his right front pants pocket. He pocketed a white handkerchief and a small bottle of Binaca breath drops. On the middle finger of his left hand he fitted his yellow metal class ring with its red stone. David combed his short brown hair diagonally across his forehead, above large, intelligent eyes and a generous mouth, then slipped on his beige sportcoat.David said good-bye to.