The Most Dangerous Animal of All (17 page)

As had happened in his two previous marriages, a few months after the wedding, my father’s charm began to wear thin. He had moved with his bride to 797 Bush Street, on the corner of Mason, in Lower Nob Hill. At first he had been fascinated with Edith, mostly because she was from Austria. She was beautiful, but not sweet and innocent like Judy had been. She was older, more mature, not as pliable. His new wife was often away from home, rescuing this person or that, and Van was left to his own devices.

And by now he had suspicions that Edith was pregnant. He certainly did not want to go through that again.

Most of the time, he kept his feelings under wraps. Edith had no idea yet what kind of man she had married, although she knew he could be cruel at times.

She just didn’t know how cruel.

No one did.

But someone was about to find out.

Given what I have discovered and what I will present in due course, there is only one place that Van could have been on the day before Halloween in 1966, just five months into his marriage to Edith. The evidence I have collected indicates that Van left home that morning to make his usual drive from San Francisco to Mexico to hunt for rare documents. As he drove along California’s coast toward Tijuana, he decided to stop in Riverside, a little more than four hundred miles into his journey. He had loaded his car with books, hoping he would have some luck selling them at libraries along the way, as was his habit. He turned down Magnolia Avenue, toward Riverside City College, and drove through the campus until he reached the library.

My father had just gotten out of his car, his arms overflowing with books, when he saw her.

He stopped and stared, his heart pounding.

The girl looked just like Judy. She had the same wide eyes, same arched eyebrows, same beautiful cheekbones. Her hair flipped up on the ends. His eyes followed her intently until she walked into the library.

Then it must have started—the rage building inside of him. All the rejection he had experienced throughout his life from his mother, from Judy, washed over him. He put his books back in his car and looked around to make sure no one was watching before walking quickly toward the Volkswagen. He opened the hood and pulled on the distributor coil and condenser until he had loosened them completely. After disconnecting another wire to ensure that the car would not start, Van went into the library to spy on the girl.

Cheri Jo Bates, an eighteen-year-old sophomore at Riverside City College, browsed through the aisles of books in the archives and then sat down to read for a while, unaware that someone was watching her and waiting impatiently for her to walk outside. Cheri Jo had been a cheerleader in high school and enjoyed popularity with her peers that most teenage girls never achieve. Hoping to become an airline stewardess when she finished her degree, the young girl worked hard to achieve her goals. She lived with her father, Joseph, a machinist who dedicated himself to caring for his pretty daughter while her mother was away in a rest home.

Van sat down at a desk, keeping a close eye on his prey. He opened the top of the foldable desk and began etching a warning on the underside:

Sick of living/unwilling to die

cut.

clean.

if red /

clean.

blood spurting,

dripping,

spilling;

all over her new

dress.

oh well

it was red

anyway.

life draining into an

uncertain death.

she won’t

die.

this time

someone ll find her.

just wait till

next time.

Van then signed the poem with the lowercase letters
r
and
h
—the first initials of two of his aliases, Richard Lee and Harry Lee.

When he finished, he waited for Cheri Jo to walk outside. He followed her and watched as she got into her car, dug in her purse for her key, and put it in the ignition.

The car wouldn’t start. She kept trying until the battery ran down.

It was time.

Van emerged from the shadows and asked her if she needed help.

He looked nice enough, like a well-dressed businessman. Cheri Jo decided she could trust him.

Van opened the hood and moved some wires, then told her to try to start it again.

He talked with her as he worked on the car, his charming manner easing any misgivings she might have experienced.

A little after ten, he tired of playing the game.

“My car is parked down the street,” Van said. “I’d be happy to give you a lift.”

Fooled by his charming manner, Cheri Jo agreed.

As they walked toward the spot Van had indicated, darkness hid them from view. When they reached an isolated area between two houses, Van turned to Cheri Jo and said, “It’s about time.”

“Time for what?” Cheri Jo asked, not yet aware that she was in danger.

“Time for you to die,” Van said.

Cheri Jo did not have time to respond before my deranged father began stabbing her, burying his three-and-a-half-inch blade over and over into her body.

Retribution for betrayal the girl knew nothing about.

Cheri Jo refused to die easily. She scratched at Van’s face, drawing blood. She tried to stop the hand that was hurting her, holding his wrist so hard that when he drew back to stab her again, she tore his Timex off his arm.

Nothing worked. He was too strong, and he was determined to keep stabbing until she was dead.

Finally, after forty-two wounds covered her body and her blood saturated the ground, Van was satisfied. She wasn’t breathing. He took a final look at her bloody face before he turned and walked away.

For the moment, he had exorcised his demon.

Neighbors in the 3600 block of Terracina Drive heard the screams, the first at a little after 10:15 p.m. and two more at 10:30 p.m.

Cheri Jo had fought hard for her life.

Van calmly got into his car and drove on to Mexico, unconcerned about the clues he had left behind—his watch, the heel print of his shoe, and greasy palm prints on the driver’s-side door of Cheri Jo’s car.

None of that would matter. Police were stumped. This was not a typical homicide. There did not seem to be a motive. The girl had not been robbed. The key to her car was still in the ignition, her library books on the seat. She was fully clothed and had not been sexually assaulted.

It had to be personal. Forty-two stab wounds was overkill.

The palm prints yielded no matches, and police could not connect any of the clues Van left at the crime scene with a suspect.

The poem Van had left on the desk would not be found until December. It would long be debated whether it was written by the killer or by a student who might have been contemplating suicide.

On his way back from Mexico, Van picked up some Riverside newspapers and read about the investigation. Realizing that police were not close to solving the murder, he arrogantly decided to help them out.

On November 29, the Riverside Police Department and the Riverside
Press-Enterprise
each received a confession letter, typed on teletype paper, the kind often used by railroad clerks—and the same paper that Van’s stepfather, Harlan, a Southern Pacific Railroad clerk, often brought home from work. The letter read:

THE CONFESSION

BY_________________.

SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL BUT NOW SHE IS BATTERED AND DEAD. SHE IS NOT THE FIRST AND SHE WILL NOT BE THE LAST I LAY AWAKE NIGHTS THINKING ABOUT MY NEXT VICTIM. MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE BEAUTIFUL BLOND THAT BABYSITS NEAR THE LITTLE STORE AND WALKS DOWN THE DARK ALLEY EACH EVENING ABOUT SEVEN. OR MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE SHAPELY BRUNETT THAT SAID NO WHEN I ASKED HER FOR A DATE IN HIGH SCHOOL. BUT MAYBE IT WILL NOT BE EITHER. BUT I SHALL CUT OFF HER FEMALE PARTS AND DEPOSIT THEM FOR THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE. SO DON’T MAKE IT TO EASY FOR ME. KEEP YOUR SISTERS, DAUGHTERS, AND WIVES OFF THE STREETS AND ALLEYS. MISS BATES WAS STUPID. SHE WENT TO THE SLAUGHTER LIKE A LAMB. SHE DID NOT PUT UP A STRUGGLE. BUT I DID. IT WAS A BALL. I FIRST CUT THE MIDDLE WIRE FROM THE DISTRIBUTOR. THEN I WAITED FOR HER IN THE LIBRARY AND FOLLOWED HER OUT AFTER ABOUT TWO MINUTES. THE BATTERY MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT DEAD BY THEN. I THEN OFFERED TO HELP. SHE WAS THEN VERY WILLING TO TALK TO ME. I TOLD HER THAT MY CAR WAS DOWN THE STREET AND THAT I WOULD GIVE HER A LIFT HOME. WHEN WE WERE AWAY FROM THE LIBRARY WALKING, I SAID IT WAS ABOUT TIME. SHE ASKED ME, “ABOUT TIME FOR WHAT?” I SAID IT WAS ABOUT TIME FOR HER TO DIE. I GRABBED HER AROUND THE NECK WITH MY HAND OVER HER MOUTH AND MY OTHER HAND WITH A SMALL KNIFE AT HER THROAT. SHE WENT VERY WILLINGLY. HER BREAST FELT WARM AND VERY FIRM UNDER MY HANDS, BUT ONLY ONE THING WAS ON MY MIND. MAKING HER PAY FOR ALL THE BRUSH OFFS THAT SHE HAD GIVEN ME DURING THE YEARS PRIOR. SHE DIED HARD. SHE SQUIRMED AND SHOOK AS I CHOCKED HER, AND HER LIPS TWICHED. SHE LET OUT A SCREAM ONCE AND I KICKED HER IN THE HEAD TO SHUT HER UP. I PLUNGED THE KNIFE INTO HER AND IT BROKE. I THEN FINISHED THE JOB BY CUTTING HER THROAT. I AM NOT SICK. I AM INSANE. BUT THAT WILL NOT STOP THE GAME. THIS LETTER SHOULD BE PUBLISHED FOR ALL TO READ IT. IT JUST MIGHT SAVE THAT GIRL IN THE ALLEY. BUT THAT’S UP TO YOU. IT WILL BE ON YOUR CONSCIENCE. NOT MINE. YES, I DID MAKE THAT CALL TO YOU ALSO. IT WAS JUST A WARNING. BEWARE . . . I AM STALKING YOUR GIRLS NOW.

CC. CHIEF OF POLICE

ENTERPRISE

Using the techniques he had learned in his forensics classes, Van wiped the letter and envelope clean before putting it in the mail.

The following year, on April 30, the first anniversary of the Age of Satan, Van, upset that coverage of the murder had dwindled, decided to stir things up. He sent two letters—one to the Riverside
Press-Enterprise
and another to the Riverside Police Department. The unpunctuated letters stated, “Bates had to die There will be more.” He signed both letters with an inverted
E
and a sideways
V
,
a thinly disguised symbol for “Earl Van,” although this cryptogram would later be construed as a
Z
.

In a third letter, this one sent to Cheri Jo’s father, Van cruelly wrote, “She had to die There will be more.” This letter he left unsigned.

The envelopes, postmarked in Riverside, all had double postage attached.

Before long, although police would follow useless leads for years, Cheri Jo’s case, file number 382481, went cold.

25

As Van made his way through the crowds of young people gathered on Page Street, one block over from Haight, he could hear a group of hippies singing along with Grace Slick on the radio. Jefferson Airplane, born in the bars of Haight-Ashbury, had captured the hippie zeitgeist in an anthem about drug use, titled “White Rabbit,” that was rapidly climbing the American music charts during the Summer of Love.

Van got it.

Everyone got it.

It had started with the Monterey Pop Festival on June 16, 1967, a three-day concert organized by Lou Adler and John Phillips and held at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. More than fifty thousand people attended the event (some historians place the number at ninety thousand), which featured artists like the Who and the Mamas and the Papas. But it was the other artists, the unknowns, who made the biggest splash—Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and Otis Redding, who was backed by Booker T. and the M.G.’s. Many of the festival attendees migrated into the Haight afterward and, digging the vibe, stayed.

While the hippie movement might have been intriguing to Van in its more subtle nuances—the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, the music it generated, and the antiwar sentiments it proclaimed—the idea of everyone loving everyone was laughable to him.

Finally reaching his destination, Van walked through a doorway and entered a warehouse, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dimly lit room. The sweet smell of marijuana greeted him at the door. He took a deep breath, then looked around and noticed Robert Kenneth (Bobby) Beausoleil, surrounded as he always was by pretty young girls. A sometimes member of LaVey’s congregation, Beausoleil was just another lost soul searching for truth on the streets of San Francisco, but he was a talented musician.

And very good-looking.

He had earned the nickname Cupid through his ability to attract the ladies, among them Susan Atkins and Mary Brunner, who sat on the floor watching him as he strapped on his guitar.

Beausoleil knew Van’s reputation as an organist, and he desperately wanted to be accepted by respected musicians in the Bay Area, so he had invited Van to jam with his band. Beausoleil was working his way into the music scene through people like LaVey and filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who were good friends. Anger had recently cast him in the role of the devil for his upcoming film
Lucifer Rising
and had introduced him to members of the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company, which featured up-and-coming singer Janis Joplin. Van sometimes hung out with LaVey at Anger’s ornate home, known to locals as the Russian Embassy. He liked to jam with the bands. He liked the drugs, and he liked the young girls who always hung around.