by Mark Hewitt
Because of her many male companions, her behavior was unusual and noteworthy. Mageau would later claim that while some people called her derogatory names, he never considered her in anything but positive terms. To him, she was “nice” and “kind.” If any of her relationships with men became sexual trysts, she was discrete. She left no conclusive evidence that she ever cheated on her husband. Mageau only reported kissing and hand holding.
Nevertheless, her second marriage began to exhibit the same trouble as her first, short-lived, marriage, which both began and ended abruptly. Investigators learned from her parents that Darlene left home after a family dispute on November 25, 1965, the year she graduated from Hogan High School. She had met James Phillips in August of that year, after his discharge from the Army. The couple lived together before marrying in Reno on New Year’s Day, 1966. For months, Phillips had no job, and lived off any meager earnings that Darlene provided for the couple, which included work in San Francisco.
Darlene’s parents did not hear from their daughter again for almost a year, until October of 1966, when the couple came to live with them. Phillips claimed that he owned a newspaper in the Virgin Islands, where the couple said that they had spent the previous five months. He also intimated that he had been an undercover agent for the U.S. Army. Darlene’s mother discovered that her son-in-law had no money, no job, and no income. Mr. and Mrs. Suennen soon tired of watching him mooch off of their daughter, so he was given an ultimatum: get a job or move out.
Phillips quickly found employment with The Daily Republic, Fairfield’s newspaper, as an assistant editor. Just as quickly, however, he left, just as he had abandoned other jobs. Though he only had a high school education, he was very intelligent, his IQ measuring 138. Mrs. Suennen later thought that he had worked for The Daily Republic for about three weeks. In truth, he was there for only five days, January 6-11, 1967, and did not return. Following his departure, several people called the paper to inquire about him—mostly regarding money owed to them—but he gave no forwarding address when he and Darlene left the area for Pennsylvania.
When the couple returned to Vallejo a couple of months later, the marriage was not going well. Darlene had finally adopted her parent’s view of her husband. She suspected he was bad for her, but she needed to arrive at that conclusion for herself. She realized that she had so many friends—and an easy time making more if needed. If she wanted another husband, she knew that too could be arranged. Phillips had become an anchor that was a drag on her social life. Darlene made the decision to travel to Reno and file for divorce.
In testimony in divorce court, Darlene cited emotional and physical abuse from her husband. She claimed that he used four letter words frequently, and because of his penchant for knocking her around, her health was adversely affected. She felt nervous and had difficulty paying her medical bills from three hospitalizations. On June 2, 1967, the divorce decree of the young, ill-matched couple was final. The judge granted Darlene’s petition without incident.
Phillips claimed that he did not want the divorce, but neither did he contest it. He moved to San Francisco, and had no contact with Darlene except to sign divorce papers. Darlene’s mother told the police that two of her family members recognized him sitting with a pregnant woman in the back row at Darlene’s funeral, but she herself had not seen him, and he had no contact with family, not even at the funeral.
Following her divorce, Darlene quickly married Dean Ferrin. But she could not stop running around with other men.
Darlene’s proclivity to date provided fertile ground for suspects—and speculation. Anyone who participated in an intense, emotional relationship with her may have had motive enough for murder. All of her friends had to be considered by law enforcement officials, and it took much time and effort on their part to untangle her relationship past as best they could. When her history began to emerge, some people called her names, like “whore,” as though her behavior merited her murder. Those who knew her well did not share the sentiment.
One of her later suitors was Gordon, a 21-year-old sailor. On September 1, he stopped into Terry’s Waffle Shop, Darlene’s place of employment at the time of her death. There he learned of her murder. He was on leave from the Naval Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, after being released from the Naval Schools Command Nuclear Power School in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He discovered that the Vallejo police wanted to speak with him. He headed immediately to the police station, and was openly cooperative.
He provided a statement to Rust. He told the investigator that he met had Darlene in December of 1968 while she was working at Terry’s, the restaurant on Magazine Street at Interstate 80, where Darlene was known as the chatty, outgoing server. Single at the time, and on leave from the Navy, Gordon had traveled to visit his family in Fremont, California. From there, he drove to Vallejo and made Darlene’s acquaintance.
About a month after that introduction, Darlene planned a trip with friends to San Francisco. Gordon tagged along, and got to know her as the two walked along the beach. Over the next few weeks, she and Gordon would meet up regularly. Sometimes he would drive her home from work in the early hours of the morning.
At the end of January, or early February, 1969, he picked her up at 1:00 a.m., went to the Blue Rock Springs Park—a favorite location of hers—and then took her home at 1:30 or 2:00. Darlene insisted that he come in and meet her husband. After some persuasion, he reluctantly agreed to the awkward encounter. He thought Dean friendly on their first and only meeting, when her husband took a break from painting his home to meet him.
Gordon explained to Rust that he felt free in flirting with Darlene only because he was not in a relationship at the time. His knowledge that she was married, however, was a constant reminder to him that there were limits to his advances. He soon found Darlene clingy and desperate to get out of her second marriage.
The next, and last, time that Gordon saw Darlene was one or two days before his leave ended and he was required to travel back to Idaho Falls. He went out dancing with Darlene and some friends to San Francisco. Or was it Oakland? Gordon could not recall which. Wherever it was, Dean did not join them, but was fully aware that Gordon was going along, ostensibly as Darlene’s date. Gordon brought Darlene home at 1:00 a.m., and even met her parents who were babysitting her daughter that night.
It was on this final “date” that Darlene confided in Gordon that her marriage felt like bondage. She wanted out, and hoped that he would take her along when he returned to Idaho and his nuclear training with the military. He dissuaded her, pointing to the best interest of Deena, her child. She had a stable home, which he could not afford to provide. Bobbie, a friend of Darlene’s, would later claim that Gordon promised to send money so that Darlene could eventually leave Dean and move to Idaho Falls. Gordon denied that there were any such plans. Later, in Idaho, he did receive two or three letters from her, but he never replied. He called her when she requested it in one of the mailings. She told him over the phone that she thought she was pregnant. When in the next letter he learned that she had been in the hospital, Gordon suspected that she had gotten an abortion somewhere.
Darlene had become too demanding, Gordon told Rust. She requested that he visit her in May during his next leave. He decided against it. He did travel to the Bay Area, but only to be with his family. He kept his distance from Vallejo. He didn’t even call Darlene to say he was on the West Coast. Gordon explained that he had decided not see Darlene again, realizing that the relationship meant far more to her than it did to him.
Evidently, the magic was gone. Darlene would remain in Vallejo to face her responsibilities, and in just a few weeks’ time, her demise.
***
At the hospital, Dr. Jantzen attended to Mageau who had been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in critical condition. The hospital staff hurriedly removed his clothing, which curiously included far too many garments than the weather would suggest. He had on three pairs of trousers, one t-shirt, thre
e sweaters, and one long-sleeve buttoned shirt. Why he was so attired on a hot July evening in Northern California would raise suspicions among the police. Hoffman received these garments and transferred them to the evidence locker at the Vallejo Police Station.
The medical staff provided Mageau with sedatives which would eventually enable him to descend into a recuperative sleep, at which time the necessary operations could be performed on his damaged body.
By 8:25 p.m., surgery on Mageau was finally complete. Dr. Jantzen passed to Detective Lynch a slug that he and Dr. Black had removed from the patient’s leg. It had been marked by Black and placed in a glass bottle with some liquid. The container was labeled and deposited in the ID property room evidence locker. It was not until Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. that Doctor Scott acceded to Rust’s request to be given a chance to interview Mageau, and even then only for a short time because the patient would soon succumb to the effects of additional sedatives. Rust eagerly took the opportunity to question an obviously medicated patient.
Born with his identical twin brother on October 29, 1949, Michael Renault Mageau was 19 at the time of the attack. Like his brother, he sported black hair. He had green eyes and a slender frame. Measuring an even six feet in height, he weighed a mere 170 pounds, in his opinion an embarrassingly light weight for such a tall young man. It was his shame in being skinny that prompted the layers of clothing he wore that night, he would explain. He was attempting to fill out his physique for any who would look at him. Darlene knew of his layering and joked with him about it, he later claimed.
Despite graduating from Hogan High School, Mageau lacked strong ambition. He had no shortage of imagination, however, which he demonstrated as an intrepid teller of tall tales. He worked for his father as an exterminator at Doyen Pest Control Service, a career that would be cut short by the attack.
The subsequent investigation revealed that Mageau’s past was not squeaky clean. Rust had checked police records at 4:30 a.m. and found no information relevant to the attack, but there was a file on Mageau. He had been arrested for petty theft at the Purity Store on Springs Road the previous September 6. At that time, he had given a false name to police, that of William James Janssen. The police had found on him an ID with the address of 1214 Oakwood, Apt. 12. The police file, #214080, contained a five by eight inch photo of the young delinquent. There was nothing else in the files under his name or the alias he had provided in 1968. An FBI report on Mageau finally arrived at the VPD on August 29, but provided little additional information.
Lawlessness was by no means a pattern in the young man’s life; he kept out of trouble for the most part. Though Darlene had at first been afraid of him, Michael was easily able to justify this to investigators. He had told her that he was wanted in New York City. It was just an immature ruse to impress a pretty woman. He later described joking with her, telling her that he was a gangster like Warren Beatty.
Before he drifted off into a drug-induced stupor, Mageau responded to as many of Detective Rust’s questions as he could. From the short answers offered—Mageau’s tongue was severely injured and his jaw was broken—Rust was able to piece together many of the details of the horror that had occurred that night in the park on the outskirts of Vallejo:
Mageau and Ferrin’s contact that day began at four o’clock in the afternoon, Mageau explained haltingly. Darlene telephoned and suggested they attend a movie in San Francisco. The initial plans were for her to pick him up at his house, 864 Beechwood Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. These plans were scuttled, however, when she didn’t arrive. Darlene called at 8:00 p.m. to say that she had to take her 15-year-old sister, Christine, to the Miss Firecracker contest, an annual Vallejo gathering sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. The Vallejo Times-Herald reported that because Christine was a runner up in the contest, she was invited to ride in the boat, the Genora, that night in the Mare Island Channel lighted boat parade. The Genora won first place. Darlene agreed to go to his house as soon as she was done shuttling her sister. She called at 10:30 p.m. to say that she’d be over shortly.
Ferrin drove along Georgia Street to travel from her home on Virginia Street to the Mageau residence, ominously covering some of the same pavement traveled by Faraday on his way to pick up Jensen six and a half months earlier.
Ferrin finally arrived at 11:30 p.m., or shortly after, by Mageau’s recollection. Both of them were hungry because neither had had any dinner. They departed Mageau’s parents’ house, and after a short jog in the road, turned left, or west, at Springs Road. Darlene wanted to talk to Michael about something, but she never got the chance to share her information—or even mention the topic.
Abruptly, Darlene turned the car around, performing a U-turn near Mr. Ed’s Restaurant at 1339 Springs Road, and headed east. Neither would eat that night. They drove to Blue Rock Springs Park at Mageau’s suggestion. Once they arrived, Darlene turned the car off and extinguished the headlights. The radio remained on, playing the music they enjoyed.
In the park, as the couple entered, there were three vehicles present. This is what Mageau maintained in later interviews. Another possibility is that these cars entered the lot just after the couple arrived, as Detective Rust would report from his bedside interview. Firecrackers exploded and some rowdy young people joked and carried on, their voices elevated. Soon, the three cars left, only a few minutes at most after Mageau and Ferrin had arrived. The couple sat alone in the quiet of the parking lot.
Shortly after that, a vehicle coming from the direction of Springs Road pulled into the lot, stopping behind and to left of Ferrin’s brown Corvair. It approached as close as six to eight feet. Its headlights went dark. Michael asked Darlene if she knew the person who had approached them so closely in an otherwise vacant lot. She replied, “Oh, never mind.” Mageau was not sure whether she knew the driver, or she simply did not want to talk about the car, whoever its occupant. He had often chided her about her wide circle of acquaintances.
The shape of this newly-arrived car looked similar to a Corvair, according to Mageau, not unlike Ferrin’s. He could not see its color; he did not get a good look. The car remained in place for about one minute, and then the driver—the only person in the car as far as he could tell—drove off at high rate of speed toward downtown Vallejo.
It—or maybe it was an entirely different car that only looked similar to the one that had just left—returned about five minutes later, coming from the direction of downtown Vallejo, where it had previously departed. Later, Mageau wasn’t sure if it was the same car or not.
This time, the strange driver maneuvered his car behind and slightly to the right of their vehicle, as close as five feet. The speed of the departure, the menacing stance behind the couple’s car, and the similarity of size and shape led Mageau to suspect that the second car was in fact the same one they had just seen. Whether it was the return of the other vehicle or not, this second car posed an imminent threat.
As it approached, the couple believed it was a different vehicle. They thought that a police unit was now behind them so they readied their identification cards. They may have concluded that the police had arrived in response to the exploding firecrackers. The couple may have considered it part of the weekend ritual of parking in a secluded location only to be hustled away by a concerned police officer, a familiar dance between teenagers and the police in the 1960s. The illumination of a brilliant spotlight seemed to confirm the couple’s suspicions that they were being accosted by law enforcement.
A man stepped out of the vehicle and made his way to the passenger side of Ferrin’s car. No words were exchanged. No warning was provided. As the man neared, Mageau heard muffled sounds, possibly from a gun with a suppressor (more commonly known as a “silencer,” which does reduce the sound of the shots, but not as much as is generally believed). Many years later, Mageau described the sounds as similar to firecrackers: “pow, pow, pow, crack, crack, crack,” or something approaching the sound of a BB gun.
Pain ripped into Magea
u as a bullet struck his neck. The gunman fired again and again without speaking a word. Mageau felt as though the shooting went on and on for a long period of time. As the shots continued, he found his way into the back seat, half diving, half falling.
Once he was satisfied that the passenger had received a sufficient number of wounds, the stranger turned his attention to Ferrin and repeatedly shot her several times as well. Then he casually walked back in the direction of his car.
Mageau yelled in searing pain or yelled at his assailant. On hearing his victim, the shooter returned to the open window. Years later, Mageau would explain that he had managed to hoist himself up while still in the back seat. The stranger fired some more: one shot in Mageau’s back and one in his left leg. He aimed and fired two more bullets into Ferrin before returning to his vehicle.
The two victims were in rough shape. Mageau said something to Ferrin, but got only a moan in response. He fumbled around to escape the car, but discovered that the inside door handle was broken. He reached outside the car to unlatch the door and let himself fall. As he collapsed to the ground, he saw the gunman back his car around and then drive out of parking lot, heading back toward Springs Road at what his victim described as a “high rate of speed.” Mageau saw only the rear part of the car, which he noted was similar in shape and color to that of Ferrin’s, possibly a lighter shade of brown. The car bore California license plates whose specifics he could not read.
Mageau struggled in his bed to describe for Rust the events that followed the shots.
Approximately 8 to 10 minutes after the attacker departed, three “hippy” types, two males and a female, approached at a distance in a car. Mageau pleaded with them to come over to help. The girl told him to lie still as they went for help. He estimated it was another 5 to 10 agonizing minutes passed before an officer in an unmarked car arrived.