The Zodiac Killer was one of America's most notorious criminals,
responsible for a series of murders between 1968 and 1969 in California's Bay Area in Northern California.
Ultimately, the Zodiac Killer vanished as abruptly as he started,
and the mystery of his short reign lives on to this day.
"Dear Editor," all three letters began, "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmas
at Lake Herman." Each letter, received at the desks of “The San Francisco Examiner,”
“San Francisco Chronicle,” and “Vallejo Times-Herald” on August 1, 1969, described
details of the crimes that only the police knew. More importantly, each letter contained
one-third of a cipher that, when assembled, constructed the now well-known, disturbing quote:
"man is the most dangerous animal of all". A bit frenetic, full of spelling and grammatical errors,
the letters illustrated that the Zodiac Killer wasn't at all a typical case.
The first victims of the Zodiac Killer were shot while parked in a car on a date — David
Faraday in the head, Betty Lou Jensen in the back while trying to escape — in the city of Benicia
north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The next victims, Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin, were shot
in almost the exact same fashion on July 4th, while parked in a car in Blue Rock Springs Park,
about 4 miles from the previous victims. Mageau survived the attack.
The last targeted couple were Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard. They sat on the shore
of a remote area of Lake Berryessa a bit north of Napa, on September 27. Zodiac attacked both with a knife.
Hartnell survived the attack but Shepard died two days later from her wounds.
In between his attacks, the Zodiac Killer sent his taunting letters full of ciphers
discussing his motives and, allegedly, his identity. Beyond these, the most long-lasting
piece of evidence we have to identify him is the now-infamous "Presidio Heights" sketch.
A mere two weeks after his final attack at Lake Berryessa, on October 11, 1969, a man got into
a taxi in San Francisco's theater district and requested a ride to Washington and Maple Street -
stopping a block early. After the Taxi stopped, he pulled a gun and shot the driver, Paul Stine, in
the head, and made off with his wallet, keys, and a part of his bloody shirt. The crime, ostensibly
a robbery, didn't fit Zodiac's modus operandi, and the police didn't suspect him until they received
mail from him not only claiming the crime, but containing a strip of Paul Stine's shirt.
In fact, the Zodiac Killer said he actually chatted with police shortly after the murder took place.
As it turns out, three teenagers saw the whole thing from the sidewalk. Their description of the
murderer produced the now-famous glasses-wearing portrait. And as “Zodiac Ciphers” explains,
Donald Fouke, a police officer who talked to the man later believed to be Zodiac,
produced an almost identical sketch. The only problem? His description might have
been biased because the former picture had already been circulating around the Bay Area.
We should mention those are the confirmed crimes. Zodiac actually claimed 37 victims in a letter once.
The most well known case that has ties to Zodiac is the 1966 murder
of Riverside City College student Cheri Jo Bates. In a 1971 letter to the LA Times, Zodiac claimed
responsibility for the crime - however this has never been definitively established by police.
There are a number of parallels between later Z crimes and this case. A different 1971 letter
seemingly took credit for a South Lake Tahoe missing persons case. Donna Lass’s body has
never been discovered and it remains unknown if Zodiac had anything to do with the crime or was
just taking credit for it. The true number of victims will likely never be known.
There have been several Zodiac Killer suspects over the years,
although no one has been formally charged.
Most distinctively, various circumstantial evidence supported the claim that disgraced school
teacher Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac killer. According to History, Allen liked to go shooting
at the location of the first official victims, Lake Herman. He was a convicted pedophile,
per “The Guardian,” and, to complete the stereotype, he even lived at home with his
mother well into middle age. Curiously, he even favored Zodiac brand watches.
"I'm not The Zodiac."
Allen, however, died of a heart attack in 1992.
More recently, in the 2014 book "The Most Dangerous Animal of All,"
New Orleans-born Gary Stewart accused his estranged father, Earl Van Best,
Jr., of being the killer. Stewart set out to track down his biological father in 2004,
and felt particularly stunned when he saw the 1969 Presidio Heights sketch,
it looked like his father’s1962 mug shot. In Stewart’s own words on CNN, he said of his book:
"I believe for the first time in the history of this case that I have presented
more evidence that has ever been presented on any one suspect."
Boasts notwithstanding, much of the evidence is circumstantial, such as the fact that both the
Zodiac Killer and Van Best enjoyed Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, "The Mikado".
Discussions of the Zodiac Killer have become something of an obsession for amateur internet sleuths.
Vast amounts of research and conjecture regarding conspiracies,
analyses of half-century-old events, connections to known people in the case,
and even artwork inspired by the killings can be found online.
Sometimes, though, obsessions yield useful results. Such was the case on December 11, 2020,
when YouTuber David Oranchak released a video on YouTube describing how he,
part of a team of three "codebreakers," solved the Zodiac Killer's 340-character cipher
delivered on November 8, 1969, 51 years prior.
Per The New York Times, the cipher says, in full:
"I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me that wasn't me on the
TV show which brings up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber
because it will send me to paradice [sic] all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to
work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I
am not afraid because I know that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death."
Even more promising than the 340-character cipher is the possibility for identifying
the Zodiac Killer through DNA evidence. Of course, such forensics didn't exist when the
Zodiac Killer was active, and only came into play starting in 1986, as “Easy DNA” tells us.
How is it possible that DNA evidence can be used for the Zodiac Killer, then?
Inspiration comes from the Golden State Killer, who committed over 50 rapes, 12 murders,
and burglarized over 100 homes across California in the 1970s and '80s.
Investigators reconstructed a DNA profile of the Golden State Killer from old evidence in storage, relying heavily on genetic
genealogy services, and compared the results to a massive DNA database. On July 29, 2020,
76 year old former police officer and Vietnam veteran Joseph James DeAngelo pled guilty to 26
charges related to his murder and rape spree, and will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The identity of the Zodiac Killer might be uncovered in the same way.
Forensics DNA expert Dr. Monte Miller described hope for the case in an interview with CBS
affiliate KPIX.He said that spit on the killer's cipher-filled letters might be used to track
him down, provided the evidence has been refrigerated and remains uncontaminated.
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