Message #143664

[Copperhead]

Santa Barbara
In a Vallejo Times-Herald story that appeared on November 13, 1972, Santa Barbara Sheriff's Detective Bill Baker (ret.) theorized that the murders of a young couple in Santa Barbara County may have been the work of the Zodiac.

On June 4, 1963, five-and-a-half years before the Zodiac's first known murders on Lake Herman Road, high-school senior Robert Domingos and fiancée Linda Edwards were shot to death on a beach near Lompoc, having skipped school that day for "Senior Ditch Day". Police believed that the assailant attempted to bind the victims, but when they freed themselves attempting to flee, he shot them repeatedly in the back and chest with a .22-caliber weapon. He then placed their bodies in a small nearby shack and tried, unsuccessfully, to burn it down.[2]