On October 14, 1969, the editor of San Francisco Chronicle received a long letter. It was not the firsr of its kind, nor the last; but it sent a particular shiver of fear through families in the Bay Area. It began: This is the Zodiac speaking . . . and concluded:
. . . Schoolchildren make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out of the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.
This was a clear and chilling threat that the man already known as the 'Zodiac Killer' was about to widen the range of his targets.
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Over nearly three years, the targets had been young women, often together with their male companions. Originally, the first had seemed a single random victim-and it was many months before the police suspected that her death marked the beginning of an accelerating series of murders. On the evening of October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year old freshman at Riverside City College near Los Angeles, left the campus library to discover that her parked car would not start. She did not know, but the distributor had been disconnected. Someone-presumably a man-approached her, and probably offered her a ride. He dragged her into some nearby bushes, kicked her in the head, stabbed her twice in the chest and slashed her throat so viciously that she was almost decapitated.
