The third set of confirmed victims of the The Zodiac Killer.

Three months after the brutal attacks on Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau at Blue Rock Springs Park, and nine months after the attacks on David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, Zodiac struck again, this time at Lake Berryessa, near Napa, CA.

On September 27, 1969, Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell were enjoying a picnic at a remote location on Lake Berryessa called Twin Oak Ridge [16].

It was a little before 6 pm when Cecelia noticed a man in the distance acting strangely.

Shortly thereafter the man snuck behind a tree and when he emerged he was wearing a costume with a hood and a long bib.

Prominent on the front was the now-famous symbol used as a send-off in the Zodiac letters.

He approached the couple, aiming a gun at them and claiming to be a recent escapee from a Montana prison who needed money to get to Mexico.

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Bryan offered the man his wallet, but the intruder wasn't interested.

Instead he pulled some clothesline from his pocket and demanded that Cecelia tie Bryan up.

When she was finished, he used the clothesline to bind her as well.

At that point, the hooded man produced a long wooden-handled knife with a 10-12" blade, and stabbed them repeatedly.

Cecelia was stabbed ten times, and Bryan six times.

Cecelia kept thrashing about, so the attacker kept stabbing her.

Bryan played dead.

After the hooded man left, Bryan managed to get the attention of a fisherman passing by who set off for help.

Bryan, meanwhile, got loose from his ties, climbed the incline and alerted a ranger.

The ambulance took over an hour to arrive.

Bryan survived, but Cecelia was pronounced dead a few hours later.

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The Phone Call

About an hour after the attack, Napa Police received a call from downtown Napa from a man in a phone booth taking responsibility for the crime and telling the police where to find the bodies.

The police raced to the phone booth, but the man was long gone.

They were, however, able to grab a latent set of prints.

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The Crime Scene

At the scene, police found a hand-scrawled message on the door of Bryan's VW Karmann Ghia.

It listed the dates of the two previous Vallejo killings attributed to the Zodiac along with this new third date.

This was a change of pace for Zodiac who had never used a knife before, only a gun.

When the authorities released the door's message to the press, they deliberately left out the last line --By Knife-- so as to have a clue that only the killer would know.

Near the car they also found a size 10-1/2 shoe print that matched a military boot called a Wing Walker.

Based on the pressure, it was determined the wearer was probably between 200-220 pounds.

While recovering in the hospital, Bryan Hartnell described the attacker as heavyset, between 225-250 pounds, about 5'8"-5'10", and having brown hair (which he could see on the edges of the hood).

This aligned with the description provided by Mike Mageau.

Aftermath The Zodiac did not send a message to the newspapers after this killing, although he would send a letter in two weeks when he killed cab driver Paul Stine. Years later, serial killer Ted Bundy was briefly posited as the possible attacker, but this was disproved in 1989 when a fingerprint match came up negative.

This event is often referred to in Zodiac lore as the Lake Berryessa Murders.