December 20, 1968 - Around 10:15 pm 17 year old David Faraday and 16 year old Betty Lou
Jensen parked at a gravel turnout--a well known popular lover’s lane on Lake Herman
Road, in the small Northern California town of Benicia.
Sadly, the teenage sweethearts never made it home after their date.
They were found shot to death shortly after 11 pm.
Thus began the reign of terror by the Zodiac Killer.
From December 1968 through October 1969, a serial killer who came to be known as the"Zodiac
Killer" from the cryptic letters he sent to the press plagued the California Bay Area.
Despite his brazen crimes and his clues to the authorities, the Zodiac Killer was never
caught.
A number of suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators over
the years, but there has been no definitive proof as to whom the Zodiac Killer was.
There are a lot of reasons why the Zodiac Killer was never found, but first a quick
run down of the depraved acts of that made him so notorious.
Nearly seven months after the murders in Benicia, the Zodiac Killer struck again.
On July 4, 1969, another young man and woman, Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin were shot
in Vallejo, California around midnight, as they sat in a car parked at a golf course.
The killer actually called the police from a pay phone at about 12:40 am and reported
the double murder, also mentioning that he ‘had killed the kids last year’ in reference
to the Benicia slayings.
Maegeau survived the attack, but wasn’t able to provide a description to the police.
On July 31, 1969 the Zodiac Killer sent letters to three local newspapers: The San Francisco
Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and the Vallejo Times-Herald.
Each of the letters contained a confession of the two murders and one third of a cipher.
When assembled and cracked, the cipher discussed how much the Zodiac Killer liked killing.
On September 27, 1969 came the third attack.
One evening two college students, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were relaxing by the shore
of Lake Berryessa about 25 miles (40 km) from Napa, California when they were approached
by a man wearing a homemade executioner’s mask.
He claimed to be an escaped prison convict who was trying to get to Mexico.
He needed the students’ money and car.
He tied them up and then without warning pulled out a knife and stabbed them.
Then he used a marker to vandalize Bryan’s car, memorializing his killing before making
his escape.
Again the killer called the police from a payphone to alert them about the attack.
Meanwhile, good Samaritans had found the victims and they were rushed to the hospital.
Miraculously Hartnell survived his stabbing.
A fourth attack happened on October 11, 1969.
In the Presidio Heights area of San Francisco the Zodiac Killer shot a cab driver, Paul
Stine, and then cut off and stole a part of the cabbie’s bloody shirt.
From then on, the killer sent taunting letters to the press and police, referring to himself
as the Zodiac and discussing the mystical and intellectual bases of his motivation for
the killings.
He also provided unknown details of his crimes, made threats and offered puzzles and coded
clues to future murder plots.
Twice he even included pieces of Stine’s bloody shirt with his letters as proof.
The fourth attack was the final one.
For the next five years, the Zodiac Killer continued to send letters to the media and
authorities, until 1974, though he may have sent correspondence until 1978--no one can
be sure if all the messages received really came from the killer.
Over time the authorities have interviewed nearly 2,500 people regarding the crimes.
Due to the killer’s communication with newspapers which somewhat sensationally printed his letters,
the public was highly interested in the Zodiac Killer.
Even today, tips still pour in and people have confessed to being the Zodiac killer
and made accusations to authorities that various family members or colleagues were the Zodiac
Killer.
Internet groups pour over every detail of the crimes in an attempt to crack the killer’s
identity.
So far, only 1 of the 4 pictograms sent by the killer has ever been decoded, one of the
3 unsolved puzzles allegedly provides the name of the Zodiac Killer.
Here are some reasons as to why the Zodiac Killer was never found:
Number 1: The locations the murders took place in.
The Zodiac Killer murdered his victims during the course of about a year, over a wide ranging
area.
The first two murders took place 7 months apart in Benicia and Vallejo, California.
Though the two murder scenes were less than 5 miles (8 km) apart, they were in different
municipalities and were therefore investigated by different police departments.
As was the third attack near Nappa and the fourth attack in San Francisco.
Four separate jurisdictions with different processes separately worked the cases during
a time when each police department was an entity unto itself which leads us to the next
reason why the Zodiac Killer wasn’t caught:
Number 2: Mishandled police work.
A variety of police mistakes were made with the Zodiac cases.
During the Zodiac Killer's final attack, witnesses called police to alert them of a cab driver
being shot by a middle aged white male.
On the first report over the police radio, the operator described the shooter as a black
male.
Because of the mistaken description, two officers ignored a white man who crossed their paths
as they were arriving to the crime scene.
In one of his letters, the Zodiac Killer sent a swatch of the cabbie’s bloodstained shirt
and taunted the police for their mistake in not apprehending him when they had the chance.
An ongoing mistake that all the jurisdictions were guilty of was lack of information sharing.
During the 1960s there was very little inter-agency cooperation.
Different jurisdictions were possessive of their cases, red tape and egos got in the
way.
Even when the police wanted to share case files, it was harder to share back then.
Which once again brings us to the next reason why the Zodiac Killer wasn’t caught:
Number 3: The time period.
During the Zodiac Killer’s spree there was no ease of sharing information via technology--there
were no fax machines, no computers, no cellular phones, no AFIS-- Automated Fingerprint Identification
System.
Also the police may have had too much information and trouble parsing it.
Once the Zodiac Killer’s correspondence was published, the police were inundated with
a wide variety of tips from the public.
Beyond all the technology and software which helps police gather data and analyze cases,
modern forensics was still in its infancy.
Crime scene investigation -CSI- was minimal and the evidence collected wasn’t well preserved.
Since then pieces of evidence been endlessly handled by the police.
The Zodiac case was so popular and had developed such as mystique that evidence was sought
out by curious authorities not directly working the case.
Over the years, evidence has been rifled through, taken home by retiring cops who wanted to
continue to work the case and even stolen as souvenirs.
Of course DNA testing wasn’t yet possible at the time of the crimes.
Since then, authorities have attempted to perform DNA tests on some items known to have
been handled by the Zodiac Killer such as the stamps from letters he sent.
Unfortunately since the evidence was poorly collected and has since degraded, investigators
haven’t yet been able to build a complete DNA profile from collected materials.
However, testing is continuing.
Also hampering the investigations was the fact that serial killers were poorly understood
during the late 1960s.
The FBI was just beginning to study the behavior of serial killers and to profile them.
Most police departments simply were not experienced with these types of crime and had no set process
for working serial murders with unconnected victims that seemingly had little or no motive.
Number 4: It’s been hard to identify the Zodiac Killer because he had a fairly low
victim count.
In one of his letters to the media, the Zodiac Killer claimed to have murdered 37 victims.
Officials can only confirm seven victims, four men and three women with two of the men
surviving their attempted murders.
In dispute are another 4 murders that were possibly committed by the Zodiac Killer and
1 more survivor.
The low body count made it hard for police to establish patterns when it came to the
killer.
By comparison, other well known serial killers such as Ted Bundy or the Green River Killer
murdered upwards of 30 people.
During the reign of the Zodiac Killer, the Manson Family began their own spree, killing
8 people.
The main reason why the Zodiac Killer has become so notorious is his cryptic, threatening
and taunting letters, many of which were printed in the local newspapers.
Considering the similiarity of the crimes, the police might have eventually linked the
first two attacks together: the murder of the couples in Benicia and Valleho.
But the MO for the stabbings of the third attack and the fourth, the shooting of a cabbie,
don’t fit.
Until the Zodiac Killer taunted the police about the crime, SFPD was investigating the
cabbie’s murder as a robbery gone wrong.
Without the Zodiac Killer announcing his murders, linking them and threatening future crimes,
the murders have just been sad blimps in police records.
Number 5: Entertwined with the low body count making it hard to notice patterns and identify
the Zodiac Killer, is the killer’s MO or modus operandi.
Serial killers tend to use same method to murder each time, refining their technique
based on previous crimes.
Also they tend to pick the same type of victims.
The Zodiac Killer both stabbed and shot his victims and preyed on couples and a single
person.
In his letters, the killer threatened to blow up various locations and even included instructions
for making a bomb, showing that he was well acquainted with how explosives worked.
Usually the method of killing is very personal to the serial killer and while they alter
it as needed, they rarely switch to an altogether different method of murder.
Once again, the police wouldn’t have connected the murder of the cabbie with the Zodiac Killer
if he hadn’t made a taunting confession in one of his letters.
The Zodiac Killer seems to defy the typical classifications the FBI has created for killers,
in fact he would be categorized as a ‘mixed killer.’
He displayed traits of both serial and spree killers, as well as both organized and disorganized
offenders.
Which brings us to the next reason why the Zodiac killer was never identified:
Number 6: The Zodiac Killer many have been more than one person.
There have been many different theories as to the identity of the Zodiac killer over
the years.
The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was even bandied about as a suspect for a while.
The police only publicly named a single suspect--Arthur Leigh Allen a Vallejo, California schoolteacher
who was institutionalized in 1975 for child molestation.
Allen died in 1992 and in 2002 was exonerated when a relative of his provided a DNA sample
to test against possible Zodiac Killer DNA found on a stamp.
There is definitely a camp of investigators that believe that the Zodiac Killer is multiple
people.
They point to the unusual mixed serial killer traits, the changing MO and the intricate
pictograms as proof that more than a single person was involved.
Number 7: The Zodiac Killer has managed to evade capture because he was simply lucky.
The Zodiac Killer committed his murders publically, and yet hardly anyone saw anything.
When he shot the cabbie, he actually briefly lingered at the scene and was seen by some
local teens.
In the poor light of a dim fall evening, they weren’t able to get a good look at him.
Likewise, it was pure luck that the police operator misidentified his description Also
while walking away from the scene of that shooting, the Zodiac Killer just happened
to turn in a direction away from the officers arriving at the scene; if he had gone the
other way, he would have met them head on.
During the stabbing at Lake Berryessa, the killer had a prolonged interaction with his
victims, first he tied them up, then stabbed them and then finally wrote on their car.
The length of time spent at the crime scene increased the possibility of a third party
showing up, but no one did.
It’s not known whether the Zodiac Killer purposely spread his crimes across multiple
jurisdictions, but even he couldn’t have foreseen how different agencies would fail
to close ranks and communicate poorly.
Number 8: The final reason why the Zodiac Killer was never caught was because he abruptly
stopped killing.
A hallmark of serial killers is their compulsion to murder--rarely do serial offenders voluntarily
cease killing sprees.
Usually serial killers stop because they are caught and institutionalized in a prison or
asylum.
It’s possible the Zodiac Killer might have stopped because he died.
Some think he moved away from the Bay Area and continued to kill in another location.
Or he may have continued to kill in the Bay Area but for reasons unknown kept silent about
his crimes; in the early 1970s a few unsolved murders happened in Santa Rosa, CA which some
point to the Zodiac Killer for.
Others believe that the Zodiac Killer quit because they were caught and jailed, just
for a different crime.
Some think that the Zodiac Killer completed his mission and that’s why he stopped murdering.
His real objective wasn’t murder, but to make society pay attention to hm.
He succeeded at that perhaps even beyond his wildest dreams.
Some 40 years later, the Zodiac Killer has become a American legend--our Jack the Ripper.
Countless internet groups are devoted to him.
The police ended up diverting a significant amount of the resources arrayed against him
to chase obscure leads in an attempt to solve his puzzles.
He inspired and spawned at least two other serial killers that we know of, perhaps more.
He’s inspired several movies, fiction and documentaries, books and even songs.
Even now the case has been reopened, the police convinced that in their files is a clue that
just has to be found to crack the case wide open and reveal the identity of one of America’s
most infamous serial killers.
What do you think was the biggest issue in preventing the capture of the Zodiac Killer?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video You Won't Believe Who Jack The Ripper Is - New
2019 DNA Test Reveals His Identity!
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