The Most Dangerous Animal of All (19 page)

Suddenly, an unexpected lump formed in my throat, and my heart began to race. I was terrified. I knew I had made a mistake and prayed the car would stop, that my parents would turn around and get me. They didn’t.

I was still standing there watching for their car when Ken came out to find me. “Come on. Let’s go play,” he said.

Reluctantly, I followed my cousin into the house. Crawling through the hoop tent that Ken had in his bedroom and playing with toy soldiers distracted me for a while, but later, when Aunt Loretta said “Lights out” and Uncle Bub shut off the light, panic set in again.

I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t sleep.

All I could do was lie in that pitch-black room and pray that my mother and father would come back to get me.

I knew nothing, consciously, about the baby who had been left in the stairwell, nothing about the man who had so callously walked away from me, yet my fear of abandonment was palpable from a very early age.

28

Edith had no such fear.

By 1969 she had given birth to another son, named Urban, and she was pregnant again. As she happily prepared for the arrival of her third child, Edith didn’t know that her husband was sinking further and further into darkness and already looking for his next victim. There was much she didn’t know about her husband, including the fact that he was a friend of the high priest of the Church of Satan.

LaVey had recently published
The Satanic Bible
and was enjoying the controversy the book had caused.

Rick Marshall, the manager of the Avenue Theatre, thought it was funny. He had been struggling for years to keep the theater afloat and had been quoted the year before in the
San Francisco Chronicle
as saying, “I feel the smartest thing I could do would be to pull an Anton LaVey. He couldn’t make it as a bar organist, so he looked at himself in the mirror one day and said, ‘I’m a character,’ then he hired a press agent and became Satan.”

And now Satan had written a bible. Van couldn’t wait to read it. In the prologue, he skimmed through the Nine Satanic Statements:

Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!

Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!

Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!

Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!

Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!

Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!

Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!

Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!

Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!

Van and LaVey had been discussing these principles for years, in one form or another, principles that were diametrically opposed to the Ten Commandments with which Van had been raised. Whether he embraced these statements out of philosophical belief or rebellion against his father is unknown.

“Maybe I should send a copy to my father,” Van once said to William.

Earl would have been appalled. My grandfather didn’t have a clue how far downward his son had spiraled. And it was about to get worse.

Van might have spotted her at the Avenue Theatre: a pretty blonde who might have smiled at him when she walked in. He would have immediately noticed her resemblance to Judy—her innocent eyes, her wide smile. And the wedding ring on her finger.

Darlene Ferrin was a friendly girl, a party girl who loved men. She had met her first husband, James Phillips, in the Haight and married him in Reno on New Year’s Day 1966. The marriage did not last long, and Darlene remarried, to Arthur Dean Ferrin, in 1967, soon after her divorce.

In the beginning, Darlene would have thought what other girls thought when they met Van: that he was charming, intelligent, and interesting.

Soon after they met, she began to find unusual gifts from Mexico on the doorstep of her home, at 1300 Virginia Street in Vallejo. Although she was married, Darlene was flattered by the attention she was receiving from this older man. As with Gertrude so many years before, marriage vows had never kept this free-spirited girl in check. Darlene liked the attention of men. It was as simple as that.

To Van, she was Gertrude and Judy all wrapped up in one pretty package.

Soon he began showing up at her home without an invitation, and Darlene became wary of him, even mentioning her concern to her sisters Pam and Linda.

She was right to be concerned.

On July 4, 1969, Van followed Darlene from her home to Caesar’s Palace Italian Restaurant and waited while she visited with her husband, Dean, who worked there as a cook. When Darlene left with her sister Christina and drove to Terry’s Restaurant, where she worked as a waitress, Van must have been there, too.

Following.

Watching.

Later that night, Darlene dropped Christina off and drove to pick up her friend Michael Mageau. Darlene and Michael headed down Springs Road to grab a bite to eat. It was a little after 11:30 p.m.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Darlene said when they reached Mr. Ed’s restaurant, according to police reports.

“Why don’t we go to Blue Rock Springs Park?” Michael suggested.

“Good idea,” Darlene said, turning the car around. They listened to the radio as Darlene drove four miles from downtown Vallejo on Columbus Parkway toward the park. Neither was aware that Van must have been following from a safe distance.

When she reached their destination, she turned into a deserted parking lot and drove to the last parking space on the right, near a walkway lined with tall eucalyptus trees. Although the highway was only a few yards away, trees and bushes blocked them from sight.

Darlene turned the car off, leaving the radio on.

It was just before midnight when a car, maybe a Corvair, pulled in a few feet from them.

When Darlene seemed to recognize the driver, Michael asked, “Who is it?”

“Oh, never mind,” Darlene responded when the car suddenly left.

A few other cars pulled in, and a group of teenagers got out and set off some fireworks.

When they left a few minutes later, the car came back.

Van, holding a flashlight, got out and approached the passenger side of the car, where Michael was sitting. He shined the light into Michael’s eyes.

Van raised his nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol and began firing.

Michael was hit first in the neck. Trying to jump into the backseat, he was shot again, in the knee this time. With Michael incapacitated, Van, moving quickly to the driver’s side of the car, turned his attention to Darlene.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three shots into her arms and her left side.

Satisfied, Van turned to walk away. But then he heard a scream. It was Michael, voicing his pain.

Van turned around and walked back. He shot Michael two more times before turning his gun on Darlene and firing twice.

Michael tried to open the door, but the handle was broken. Reaching out of the window, he opened the door from the outside and fell to the tarred ground. Writhing in pain, he watched as Van sped away toward Vallejo.

A few minutes later, another car pulled in. Bleeding profusely, Michael yelled for help. Inside the car, Darlene could only moan.

A young girl came over and told Michael to lie still while her friends called the police.

Police, lights flashing and sirens blaring, flew to the scene. By the time help arrived, Darlene was struggling for each breath. Before she succumbed to unconsciousness, she tried to speak. The responding officer could only make out what he heard as “I” or “my,” before the young woman passed out. Darlene was pronounced dead when paramedics got her to the hospital.

Michael required emergency surgery to remove four bullets, but he survived. He would later describe the killer for police: late twenties to early thirties, brown hair, round face, stocky build. He would also indicate that he thought they had been followed to the park.

Forty minutes after the shootings, Van stopped at a service station on Tuolumne Street and Springs Road, four blocks from the sheriff’s office, and called the Vallejo Police Department from a pay phone.

When the operator answered, he said in a steady voice, “I want to report a double murder. If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a nine-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Good-bye.”

The operator, Nancy Slover, would later describe his voice as “rather soft but forceful.” She stated, “The only real change in the voice was when he said ‘good-bye.’ ” Then his voice “deepened and became taunting.”

Van had been wrong about the double murder. Michael was still alive.

Darlene’s husband, Dean, and her former husband, James, were soon cleared as suspects. Again police had no motive for the attack, although in one police report it was noted that a possible motive was jealousy or revenge. They also noted the proximity and similarity to the murders that had occurred on Lake Herman Road in December of the year before.

In Darlene’s address book they found the name Vaughn, the organist at the Avenue Theatre, and police deduced that she had some connection to the theater but couldn’t put the pieces together. No one could remember the name of the man who had been at her house, although Darlene’s sister Pam would later state that it was a short name, like Lee.

Or Stan.

According to police reports, Darlene’s sister Linda also reported that Darlene had a friend named Lee who brought her gifts from Mexico. One of Van’s aliases, listed in his criminal file with the FBI, was Richard Lee. Another alias, listed in Baton Rouge police reports, was Harry Lee.

During that horrible night, Darlene’s husband, worried that his wife had not arrived home with the fireworks he had asked her to pick up, waited and waited. Darlene did not show up.

Dean was left to raise their daughter, Deena, alone.

29

As was now his habit, Van read the newspapers religiously, studying each article about his murders in the Vallejo
Times-Herald
, the
San Francisco Chronicle
, and the
San Francisco Examiner
. He realized that police had no clue as to his identity. His arrogance increasing with each murder, Van decided to help them out.

Using the simple techniques he had learned from his father as a child and honed throughout his life, he began to craft a cryptogram. First he wrote his message, deliberately forgoing punctuation and misspelling words:

I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue animal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is thae when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the [people] I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or stop my collectiog of slaves for my afterlife

He included a series of letters at the end that had no meaning: “ebeorietemethhpiti.”

He had also included a variation on LaVey’s satanic principle that man “has become the most vicious animal of all.”

Van then began to encode his message, embedding his name and initials through the cipher.

When he was satisfied that the code was unsolvable and that he had left enough clues to his identity, he cut the finished cipher into three sections. Then he wrote a letter to include with the cipher:

Dear Editor

I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman and the Girl last 4th of July. To Prove this I shall state some facts which only I + the police know.

Christmass

1 Brand name of ammo Super X

2 10 shots fired

3 Boy was on back feet to car

4 Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west

4th of July

1 Girl was wearing patterned pants

2 Boy was also shot in knee

3 Brand name of ammo was Western

Here is a cyipher or that is part of one. The other 2 parts of this cipher have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner + the S.F. Chronicle.

I want you to print this cipher on your frunt page by Fry Afternoon Aug 1-69, If you do not do this I will go on a kill rampage Fry night that will last the whole week end. I will cruse around and pick off all stray people or coupples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people.

The letter was signed with a symbol—a circle with a cross in the middle: