Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time by Nigel Cawthorne Page A

did not even notice when another car pulled up about ten feet away. They were rudely awoken from their amorous reverie by gunfire. One bullet smashed through the back window, showering them with glass. Another thudded into the bodywork. Bettilou threw open the passenger door and leapt out. David tried to follow. He had his hand on the door handle when the gunman leant in through the driver’s window and shot him in the head. His body slumped across the front seat. Bettilou’s attempt at flight was futile. As she ran screaming into the night, the gunman ran after her. She had run just thirty feet when he fired five shots into her. Then the gunman calmly walked back to his car and drove away.
    A few minutes later, another car came down the quiet road. Its driver, a woman, saw Bettilou’s body sprawled on the ground, but did not stop. Instead, she sped on towards the next town, Benica, to get help. On the way, she saw a blue flashing light coming towards her. It was a patrol car and she flashed her lights frantically to attract the driver’s attention. The car stopped and she told the patrolmen what she had seen. They followed her back to the pump station, arriving there about three minutes later. They found Bettilou Jensen dead, but David Faraday was still alive. He was unconscious and could not help them with their enquiries. They rushed him to hospital, but he died shortly after arriving there.
    There was little to go on. The victims had not been sexually assaulted, nor was anything missing. The money in David Faraday’s wallet was untouched. Detective Sergeant Les Lundblatt of the Vallejo county police investigated the possibility that they had been murdered by a jealous rival. But an investigation into the victims’ private lives revealed no jilted lovers or other amorous entanglements. The two teenagers were ordinary students. Their lives were an open book. And six months later, Bettilou Jensen and David Faraday were simply two more of the huge number of files of unsolved murders in the state of California.
    On 4 July 1969, their killer struck again. Around midnight, at Blue Rock Park, another romantic spot just two miles from where Jensen and Faraday were slain, Mike Mageau was parked with his girlfriend, 22-year-old waitress Darlene Ferrin. They were not alone. Other cars of other courting couples were parked up there. Again Mike and Darlene were too engrossed in each other to notice when a white car pulled up beside them. It stayed there just a few minutes, then drove away. But it returned and parked on the other side of the road.
    Suddenly, a powerful spotlight shone on Mike Mageau’s car. A figure approached. Thinking it was the police, Mike reached for his driver’s licence. As he did so, he heard gunfire and Darlene slumped down in her seat. Seconds later, a bullet tore into Mike’s neck. The gunman walked calmly back to the white car, paused to fire another four or five shots at them, then sped off, leaving the smell of cordite and burning rubber behind him.
    A few minutes later, a man called the Vallejo county police and reported a murder up on Columbus Parkway. He told the switchboard operator: ‘You will find the kids in a brown car. They are shot with a nine millimetre Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.’
    When the police arrived, Darlene Ferrin was dead. Mike Mageau was still alive, but the bullet had passed through his tongue and he was unable to talk. However, there were some other leads. Four months earlier, Darlene’s babysitter had spotted a white car parked outside Darlene’s apartment. Suspicious, she asked Darlene about it. It was plain that the young waitress knew the driver. ‘He’s checking up on me again,’ she told the babysitter. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know what I saw him do. I saw him murder someone.’
    The babysitter had had a good look at the man in the white car. She told the police that he was middle-aged with brown wavy hair and a round face. When