Could this be the face of the Zodiac Killer?
October 6, 2021 - the non profit group The Case Breakers - a team of 40 independent investigators
devoted to cold cases - made the bombshell announcement.
After more than 53 years of speculation, expert and amateur theories, the Zodiac Killer could
finally be identified.
His name: Gary Francis Poste.
We’ve talked about the Zodiac Killer a lot, but just in case you need a refresher: for
ten months, from December 20, 1968, to October 11, 1969, five people were murdered in the
San Francisco Bay Area.
The first two, David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, were tennagers, shot to death
on Lake Herman Road in Benicia.
Next, on July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau were shot while parked in Blue
Rock Springs Park in Vallejo.
Mageau survived, Ferrin did not.
An anonymous caller notified police, taking responsibility and also confessing to the
Benicia murders.
On August 1, three letters were sent to the Vallejo Times Herald, San Francisco Chronicle,
and The San Francisco Examiner, taking credit for the crimes and demanding publication.
That meant including a three-part cryptogram that, the writer claimed, would reveal his
identity.
On August 7, he wrote a subsequent letter giving details only the police could corroborate,
and naming himself the Zodiac.
On September 27, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Ann Shepard were attacked by a hooded man
at Lake Berryessa in Napa County.
They were tied up, then tabbed multiple times; Hartnell survived, Shepard did not.
Two weeks later, on October 11, cab driver Paul Stine was shot in the head in Presidio
Heights.
Three teens witnessed the killer leave the cab.
The Zodiac later wrote taking credit - and proved it by enclosing a piece of Stine’s
bloody shirt.
While there have been no confirmable Zodiac murders since, he continued a correspondence
with the police and press, claiming 37 kills.
So why do the Case Breakers think Poste is their guy?
According to the official press release, it’s been years in the making.
They identify, quote, “Outlaw-Turned-Zodiac Whistleblower, Wil,” unquote, who claims
he was part of a “posse” run by Poste near the High Sierra mountain range in California.
Wil says he even saw Poste bury a cache of weapons used in the Zodiac killings up in
the mountains.
He tried for years to convince authorities Poste was the killer, but no one seemed interested
- until he met California news anchor Dale Julin.
Dale heard Wil’s story and brought it to the attention of the Case Breakers.
Subsequent eyewitnesses agree.
These include a former neighbor whom Poste and his wife used to babysit, who claims that,
as a toddler, she was taken by Poste to the nearby woods and taught how to shoot.
He even gave her a .22 pistol of her own - and made similar gifts to members of his posse.
The organization’s intel expert Erik Kleinsmith says one witness saw a mechanism in Poste’s
home that could manufacture a postage stamp - thus obfuscating his whereabouts.
Poste, a former Air Force radar technician, also owned a pair of military-issued Air Force
wing walker boots - similar to the ones that made prints leaving the scene of the crime
at Lake Berryessa.
Poste had scars from a 1959 car crash that seem to match the markings on the face of
the police composite sketch based on the Presidio Heights teens’ account, and corroborated
by Kathleen Johns.
And while the tauntings continued throughout the 70s, Kleinsmith points out that the Zodiac
killings stopped…when Poste got married.
And if all that wasn’t enough, Case Breakers founder Thomas J. Colbert claims to have six
eyewitnesses, three of them via sworn affidavits, who say Poste actually told them he was the
Zodiac!
For the Case Breakers, though, the key was the cipher.
The Zodiac’s coded messages are infamous.
The first was broken by a high school teacher and his wife, one was not solved until 2020,
but some remain unsolved, baffling expert codebreakers from around the world.
Allegedly, Dale was told that Poste’s full name is the key to breaking the cipher.
He brought this up to the Case Breakers, who consulted other codebreaking experts.
And apparently, it’s a match - using Poste’s name is the key to deciphering the letters.
Any more details?
Not quite.
For one thing, no one can ask Poste himself - he died in 2018.
And in an interview with YouTuber Pete A. Turner, Kleinsmith admitted a lack of resources
is holding up some verification.
The hidden cache of weapons buried somewhere in the High Sierras?
Kleinsmith says they don’t have the skill, equipment or legal permission to make the
difficult hike and investigate, though they hope to get that organized soon.
The ciphers?
As with past attempts at breaking the Zodiac’s codes, the FBI will have to verify.
The DNA?
There is some of Poste available, apparently taken by police following an instance of domestic
abuse later in his life.
This will have to be officially verified by the FBI, which is a bit trickier - there is
no confirmed Zodiac DNA at any of the crime scenes.
The closest police have come is from the saliva on the stamps used to mail Zodiac’s mocking
letters.
So far, that partial profile’s only been used to rule suspects out.
The Case Breakers are also concerned with linking the murder of Cheri Jo Bates to Poste
- and, therefore, the Zodiac.
For decades, people have speculated that Bates was one of Zodiac’s early victims.
She was found stabbed to death, October 31, 1966, in Riverside, California.
Ten feet from the body was a paint-splattered watch and a footprint…made by a military-style
boot.
Bates had apparently fought her assailant, catching their skin and hair under her fingernails.
Palm and fingerprints not belonging to her or any of her friends and family were also
found inside her car.
Later, letters boasting of the crime were sent to police, the press, and Bates’ father.
An anonymous letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Paul Avery told the reporter
to look into similarities between the Bates case and the Zodiac murders.
Handwriting expert Sherwood Morrill believed the letter to Bates’ father matched the
Zodiac’s letters.
And the Zodiac Killer even claimed Bates as one of his victims in a letter to the Los
Angeles Times from 1971.
The FBI officially considers Bates one of the Zodiac’s victims.
The Riverside Police are more skeptical.
As recently as August 2021, they revealed that the writer of the initial letters was
known to them.
The culprit made a confession anonymously in 2016.
Police managed to track him down by, yes, DNA analysis from the saliva on the stamp
used.
Further investigation - and further confession - confirmed that the man wrote the letters
in 1966…but was neither Bates’ killer, nor connected to the Zodiac murders.
He had just been a troubled teen seeking attention.
The department’s official website hints that they have their own prime suspect, unconnected
to any of the Bay Area murders, and their investigation continues on that path.
Zodiac or not, could there still be a connection between Poste and Bates’ murder?
At the time of the murder, Poste was no longer with the Air Force, but still received check-ups
and medical attention at the hospital on March Air Force Base.
The base is just 10 miles from Riverside City College, where Bates’ body was found - a
15-minute drive.
Poste was also a house painter for 40 years - remember the paint-splattered watch found
near the body?
So far, the Riverside Police Department has declined the Case Breakers’ demand that
they compare the DNA evidence from the Bates crime scene - still in storage - to Poste’s
DNA.
And there’s no doubt DNA comparisons could help.
It was DNA that finally shattered a favorite theory for Zodiac enthusiasts: Arthur Leigh
Allen.
Allen was either interviewed or had his property searched by police frequently over a period
of 20 years.
In 1969, he was questioned by police when it was discovered he was in the Lake Beryessa
area the day of the Hartnell-Shepard attacks.
A so-called friend of his, Don Cheney, approached police in 1971.
He claimed Allen told him, that Allen wanted to kill people.
Allen also owned a Zodiac-brand wristwatch - a brand not really related to the murders,
except for the name…and the symbol: the very same crosshairs that the killer used
as his signature.
He liked to be called by his middle name, Leigh - and one of the victims, Darlene Ferrin,
was said to have been friends with a mystery man named “Lee.”
Besides, he was a known creep, with a record of sexual assault and misconduct against young
boys.
Mike Mageau, a survivor of one of the Zodiac attacks, identified Allen via photo lineup,
albeit 23 years after the fact.
The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming.
But circumstantial evidence isn’t definitive evidence.
Some noted that Mageau’s assertion contradicted his initial eyewitness description of his
attacker.
Others pointed out that Allen was balder, rounder, taller, and 100 pounds heavier than
any Zodiac description.
His handwriting didn’t match, nor did his palm print match anything collected at the
crime scenes.
Even Detective Dave Toschi, the lead investigator for the San Francisco Police Department, said,
“Allen looked very, very good for a while.
But everything turned out to be negative.”
It wasn’t until 2002 when DNA evidence from one of the Zodiac’s letters would rule him
out.
Even Don Cheney’s DNA was tested, just to make sure.
Nothing.
Which is why some Zodiac “experts” are already meeting this Poste news with some
skepticism.
They’ve seen this all before.
So what if friends and family members say Poste was the Zodiac?
He’s not the first to be accused by so-called loved ones.
Allen, remember, was tipped to the cops by a friend, and even some of his relatives had
their suspicions.
But Allen wasn’t the only one.
In 2015, Gary Stewart researched his biological father, Earl Van Best.
His search, he claims, revealed that after abandoning Gary in Baton Rouge in 1962, he
moved on to California, and became The Zodiac killer.
If you’d like to know more, you can read Stewart’s book on the subject, The Most
Dangerous Animal of All - or check out the original docuseries based on the book.
In 2014, Randy Kenney told press his friend, Louie Myers, confessed to the killings in
April 2001.
Myers would have been 17 at the time, and Kenney says the infamous Halloween card Paul
Avery received in 1970 was the key to the whole thing.
The inside says “4-TEEN” - not a kill count, but a hint to look FOR a TEEN.
Kenney claims Myers went to high school with some of his victims.
Myers died in May 2002, but made Kenney swear that he would write and publish a book about
Myers’ allegations…with proceeds going to the victims’ families, of course.
In 2009, Deborah Perez of Corona, California, claimed her father Guy Ward Hendrickson was
the Zodiac Killer.
She went further, actually, saying that when she was seven years old, he had her write
the letters, lick the stamps, and sew the mask he wore.
She also happened to be working on a documentary on the subject.
Her half-sister claims it’s all lies.
In 2006, retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel released his best-selling book The Black Dahlia
Avenger.
The book made a convincing case that his father, George Hodel, killed Elizabeth Short, another
legendary cold case victim who was murdered and mutilated in Los Angeles in 1947.
As we said, it was a bestseller, praised by critics and police.
Less praised was his 2009 follow-up, where he claimed his father was also the Zodiac
Killer…and the Chicago Lipstick killer of 1945…and the Manila Jigsaw murderer in 1967.
So, yes, while some are greeting the news of Poste’s identification with a sigh of
“Finally!” others look at the news with crossed arms and an arched brow.
After all, the founder of Case Breakers, Thomas Colbert, used to work in production in Hollywood.
In one interview, Erik Kleinsmith made sure to plug the team’s upcoming docuseries about
their investigation of the D.B.
Cooper case, coming to a prestige streaming service.
And their press release emphasizes - twice - that the guy who “broke” the case for
them, Dale Julin, has written a, quote, “copyrighted book manuscript” on the subject.
So…is this the face of the Zodiac Killer?
Only time - and official verification from someone not looking to cash in - will tell.