Zodiac Killer

For the New York City Zodiac copycat, see Heriberto Seda.

Zodiac Killer
Composite sketch made in 1969 based on eyewitness accounts of the Presidio Heights murder
Criminal status	Unidentified
Motive	Inconclusive
Wanted since	1968
Details
Victims	5 confirmed dead, 2 injured, possibly dozens more victims (claimed to have killed 37)
Span of crimes	1968–1969
Country	United States
State(s)	California, possibly also Nevada
Location(s)	San Francisco Bay Area Napa Valley
Weapons	Knives, guns
Date apprehended	Unapprehended
Notes

The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban, and suburban settings. He targeted three young couples and a lone male cab driver. The case has been described as "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history," and has become both a fixture of popular culture and a focus for efforts by amateur detectives.

The Zodiac's known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper. Of his seven wounded victims, two survived. He coined his name in a series of taunting messages that he mailed to regional newspapers, in which he threatened killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed. He also said that he was collecting his victims as slaves for the afterlife. Some letters included cryptograms, or ciphers; of the four codes he produced, two remain unsolved, while the others were cracked in 1969 and 2020.

The last confirmed Zodiac letter was in 1974, in which he claimed to have killed 37 victims. He had said earlier that many of them were in Southern California, including Cheri Jo Bates, who was murdered in Riverside in 1966; a connection between the two has not been proven. While many theories regarding the identity of the Zodiac have been suggested, the only suspect authorities ever publicly named was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992.

The unusual nature of the case led to international interest that has been sustained throughout the years. The San Francisco Police Department marked the case "inactive" in 2004, but re-opened it prior to 2007. The case also remains open in the California Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa and Solano counties.

Murders and correspondence

45km
30miles

4

3

2

1

  

Map of the Zodiac Killer attacks

1

Murder of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen

2

Attack on Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin

3

Attack on Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard

4

Murder of Paul Lee Stine

Investigators agree on four confirmed attacks by the Zodiac Killer in California. Five victims were killed during Zodiac attacks, and two survived:

1. David Arthur Faraday (17) and Betty Lou Jensen (16) were shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road in Benicia.
2. Michael Renault Mageau (19) and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin (22) were shot around midnight between July 4 and 5, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. Mageau survived the attack; Ferrin was pronounced dead at Kaiser Foundation Hospital.
3. Bryan Calvin Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Ann Shepard (22) were stabbed on September 27, 1969, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived, but Shepard died as a result of her injuries on September 29.
4. Paul Lee Stine (29) was shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

From 1969 until 1974, the Zodiac mailed letters and ciphers to law enforcement and media outlets. Some letters began, "This is the Zodiac speaking" and were signed with a symbol resembling the crosshairs of a gunsight: . Four of the mailings had a cryptogram enclosed. Two have been solved, in 1969 and 2020. The letters were postmarked in San Francisco and Pleasanton.

Zodiac Killer Correspondence with date, recipient, and incipit:

1. July 31st 1969: The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and Vallejo Times. One-third of Z408 cipher enclosed with each letter. "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass..."
2. August 4th 1969: SF Examiner. "This is the Zodiac speaking."
3. October 13th 1969: SF Chronicle. Swatch of Paul Stine's shirt. "I am the murderer of the taxi driver..."
4. November 8th 1969: SF Chronicle. Z304 cipher. The "Dripping Pen" card. "I though you would need a good laugh..."
5. November 9th 1969: SF Chronicle. Bomb diagram. "...I have killed 7 people".
6. December 20th 1969: Melvin Belli. Swatch of Stine's shirt. "...happy Christmass."
7. April 20th 1970: SF Chronicle. Z13 cipher. "My name is..."
8. April 28th 1970: SF Chronicle. Greeting card. "I hope you enjoy yourselves..."
9. June 26th 1970: SF Chronicle. Z32 cipher. "I have become very upset..."
10. July 24th 1970: SF Chronicle. "I am rather unhappy..."
11. July 26th 1970: SF Chronicle. "Being that you will not wear some nice ⌖ buttons..."
12. October 5th 1970: SF Chronicle. 13-hole punch card. "You'll hate me..."
13. October 27th 1970: Paul Avery at SF Chronicle. Halloween card. "From your secret pal..."
14. March 13th 1971: The Los Angeles Times. "...I am crack proof."
15. January 29th 1974: SF Chronicle. The "Exorcist" letter.

Lake Herman Road Murders

David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen

The first murders retroactively attributed to the Zodiac were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen (16) and David Arthur Faraday (17) on December 20, 1968. Jensen was a student at Hogan High School. At 8:30 p.m. on the 20th, Faraday, a student at Vallejo High School, picked up Jensen. They visited one of Jensen's friends. Sometime after 9 p.m., they drove to the outskirts of Vallejo and parked at a lover's lane on Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits. Between 10:15–30 p.m., a passing motorist noticed the couple parked on a gravel runoff near the gate to a water pumping station. They were spotted again at 11 p.m.

Between 11:05–10 p.m., the couple were attacked. Police determined that their assailant parked his vehicle about 10 feet alongside the passenger side of Faraday's car. He fired several shots at Faraday's car as he walked around to the driver's side. None of the shots hit Faraday and Jensen. They scrambled to get out through the passenger door. Jensen succeeded. As Faraday was exiting, the killer shot him in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. The murderer chased Jensen as she fled. He fired six shots at her back. Only one missed. Police theorized the whole attack took two to three minutes.

At 11:10 p.m., a motorist spotted the couple's bodies and alerted police. Jensen was dead. Faraday was still breathing. He died at the hospital. There were no witnesses and no usable tire or foot prints. The only motive the police could deduce was a "madman" wanting to kill. Despite an intense investigation in the following months, no viable suspects emerged. The murders were extensively covered by the media.

Blue Rock Springs Murder

Darlene Ferrin

Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot shortly after midnight on July 4, 1969. Ferrin was killed. Mageau survived. Ferrin (22) was popular in Vallejo due to her job at a local restaurant. She met Michael Mageau (19) there. On July 4, they went on a date, despite the fact that Darlene was married to Dean Ferrin. After 11:30 p.m., Darlene received a phone call at her house. She left and arrived at Mageau's house around 11:50 p.m.

Immediately after the couple left Mageau's house, they noticed they were being followed by a man in a light-colored car. Darlene drove out of town in the direction of Lake Herman Road. Shortly before midnight, she turned her car into an empty parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park. It was another popular area for couples, just two miles from Lake Herman Road. She either parked or stalled 70 feet from the lot entrance. Another vehicle parked about 80 feet to their left. The driver turned his headlights off and sat motionless. Mageau asked who the driver was. Ferrin told him not to worry. The stranger abruptly tore away from the parked couple.

Five minutes later, the stranger returned, parked a few feet next to Mageau's side of the car, and got out. He shone a flashlight into Ferrin's car as he approached. Assuming he was a police officer, the couple rolled down the window. The stranger did not speak and fired a 9 mm pistol into the car. One bullet hit Mageau in the right arm, and the other hit Ferrin in the neck. She slumped towards the steering wheel. Mageau tried to leave the car, but his door handle was missing or removed. The killer returned to his car, opened the door, and did something Mageau could not see. As Mageau struggled to exit the vehicle, the stranger shot him and Ferrin two more times each. The murderer hurried into his car and drove off. A golf course caretaker heard the shots around 12:10 a.m. The killer left no clues that could be traced back to him.

Three teenagers drove into the parking lot, saw the wounded couple, and got help. Police arrived at 12:20 a.m. Twenty minutes later, Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mageau survived and described his attacker as a heavyset white man, around 5'8" tall. He estimated the killer's weight as 195–200 pounds, with a large face and curly light brown hair. The killer wore dark clothes and no glasses. These details were not enough to develop a suspect. Moments after 12:40 a.m., the Vallejo Police Department received a phone call from a public telephone two blocks from them. The man on the other end of the line said:

"I want to report a double murder. If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye."

Serial killers will commonly pause to reflect on their actions. Authors Michael Kelleher and David Van Nuys speculated that the seven months between the attacks on Lake Herman Road and at Blue Rock Springs was a "cooling off period" for the murderer.

Ferrin-Zodiac Prior Relationship Theory

A 1966 photo of Ferrin and a man who resembles the Zodiac composite sketch.

Many have speculated that Darlene Ferrin knew her killer. Kelleher and Nuys credit the origin of the theory to Robert Graysmith's 1986 book Zodiac. He argued extensively for a connection, based on interviews with Ferrin's friends. A definitive connection has not been proven.

Mageau gave conflicting accounts on whether Ferrin knew their attacker. At the hospital, he said he did not know the killer. At another point, he said the killer's name was "Richard". Ferrin's sister claimed one of Darlene's boyfriends was named Richard. She also said she received annual July 4th phone calls from someone who said, "This is the Zodiac speaking." In the Zodiac's later correspondence, he only ever refers to Ferrin as "girl".

In Graysmith's telling, Ferrin and Mageau were chased. They only stopped when their car hit a log and stalled. The detective on the scene noticed that the car was still on and in low gear. Kelleher and Nuys suggest that Darlene would not tell Mageau to ignore the mystery driver, nor would they assume he was a police officer, if they had not stopped at the spot by choice.

Ferrin did know Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday. She lived less than two blocks from Jensen and attended Hogan High School. She was also familiar with Lake Herman Road's status as a lover's lane. There is a picture of Ferrin and an unknown man who closely resembles later composite sketches of the Zodiac. In a 2011 episode of America's Most Wanted, police stated they believe the photo was taken in San Francisco in either 1966 or 1967.

First Letters From the Zodiac

See: Zodiac Letters

Zodiac letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 1969 (PDF)

On August 1, 1969, the Vallejo Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco Examiner all received letters written by someone taking credit for the attacks in Vallejo. The three letters were nearly identical and began, "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman & the girl last 4th of July." They were rife with misspellings, and the writer revealed his plan was to collect slaves for his afterlife by murdering people. A psychiatrist described the writer as "someone you would expect to be brooding and isolated".

Each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram later named the "Z408", which the Zodiac claimed contained his identity. He demanded they be printed on each paper's front page, or else he would "cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend." The Chronicle published its third of the cryptogram on page four of the next day's edition. An article printed alongside the code quoted Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz as saying, "We're not satisfied that the letter was written by the murderer" and requested the writer send a second letter with more facts to prove his identity.

On August 4, the Examiner received a letter with the salutation, "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." This was the first time the Zodiac had used this name for identification. The letter responded to Stiltz's request for the Zodiac's personal information. It included details about the murders the public had not yet heard, and said that when the police cracked his code, "they will have me."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to decode the 408-symbol cryptogram. However, on the 5th, it was cracked by Donald and Bettye Harden, a couple in Salinas. It contained a misspelled message in which the killer seemed to reference "The Most Dangerous Game", a 1924 short story by Richard Connell. The author also said that he was committing the killings in order to collect slaves for his afterlife. No name appears in this decoded text. The killer said that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.

"I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is thae when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or atop my collectiog of slaves for my afterlife ebeorietemethhpiti"

—The solution to Zodiac's Z408 cipher, solved in August 1969, including faithful transliterations of spelling and grammar errors in the original. The meaning, if any, of the final eighteen letters has not been determined.

The Z408 cipher and its decryption by Donald and Bettye Harden

Lake Berryessa murder

Lake Berryessa, where Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were attacked.

On September 27, Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking at Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. The Zodiac, described as a white male 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) tall and weighing more than 170 pounds (77 kg), approached the couple wearing a black executioner's-type hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eyeholes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white three-by-three-inch (7.6 cm × 7.6 cm) symbol on it. He approached with a gun, which Hartnell believed to be a .45, and claimed to be an escaped convict from a jail with a two-word name, in either Colorado or Montana, where he had killed a guard and subsequently stolen a car. A police officer later inferred that the Zodiac had been referring to a jail in Deer Lodge, Montana, yet a park ranger claimed that Hartnell told him the man referenced Colorado. The Zodiac then said that he needed their car and money to travel to Mexico because the stolen vehicle was "too hot."

Photo of Hartnell's car door, onto which the Zodiac wrote details of the attack as well as his two previous confirmed attacks

The Zodiac had brought precut lengths of plastic clothesline and told Shepard to tie up Hartnell before he did the same with her. The Zodiac checked and tightened Hartnell's bonds after discovering that Shepard had bound them loosely. Hartnell initially believed this event to be a bizarre robbery, but the Zodiac drew a knife and stabbed them both repeatedly. Hartnell suffered six wounds and Shepard, ten. The Zodiac then hiked 500 yards (460 m) up to Knoxville Road. Footprints at the scene were studied by investigators. The killer drew the symbol on Hartnell's car door with a black felt-tip pen and wrote beneath it:

Vallejo
12-20-68
7-4-69
Sept 27–69–6:30
by knife

At 7:40 p.m., the Zodiac called the Napa County Sheriff's Department from a pay telephone at the Napa Car Wash in downtown Napa. He first told the operator that he wished to "report a murder – no, a double murder," before saying that he had committed the crime. KVON radio reporter Pat Stanley found the phone, still off the hook, a few minutes later. The phone was located a few blocks from the sheriff's office, and 27 miles (43 km) from the crime scene. Detectives lifted a still-wet palm print from the phone, but were never able to match it to any suspect.

Police sketch of a man seen at Lake Berryessa on the day of the murder

After hearing the victims' screams for help, a man and his son fishing in a nearby cove discovered Hartnell and Shepard and got help by contacting park rangers. Napa County deputies Dave Collins and Ray Land were the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the scene. Shepard was conscious when Collins arrived and provided him a detailed description of their attacker. She and Hartnell were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa by ambulance. Shepard lapsed into a coma during transport, never regaining consciousness, and she died in the hospital two days later. Hartnell survived to recount his tale to the press.

Napa County detective Ken Narlow, who was assigned to the case from the outset, worked on solving the crime until his retirement from the department in 1987. Three women at Lake Berryessa who viewed a man — potentially the Zodiac without his "executioner's hood" — at 2:55 to 3:30 p.m. later worked on an eyewitness sketch of him. Robert Graysmith also drew a sketch of the Zodiac's costume after being personally described it by Bryan Hartnell.

Presidio Heights murder

Crime scene image at Washington and Cherry Street, October 11, 1969

Two weeks later, at around 9:40 p.m. on October 11, the Zodiac entered the taxi driven by Paul Stine in downtown San Francisco, requesting to be driven to Washington and Maple streets in Presidio Heights. When they arrived, the passenger asked to be driven one block down to Washington and Cherry streets, and Stine did so. At approximately 9:55 p.m., the Zodiac shot Stine in the head with a handgun, likely killing him immediately. The Zodiac then took Stine's wallet and car keys. This was the last officially confirmed murder by the Zodiac.

Three teenagers at a home across the street, 50 feet away, witnessed the incident, viewing the Zodiac's face only when he was lit by a streetlight. They phoned the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) while the crime was in progress, saying the man in question was a "husky" white man wearing a "dark or black jacket." The dispatcher mistakenly broadcast to police that the suspect was a black man. The witnesses also observed the killer wiping the cab down and seemingly "rifling through the man's clothing." As he leaned on the inside of the cab and cleaned it up, he left partial prints from two of his right hand's fingers.

Two blocks from the crime scene, patrol officers responded to the radio dispatch and arrived to Washington and Cherry two minutes after the phone call was placed. They observed a white male in dark clothes walking north, away from the crime scene and towards the Presidio Army Base. This man may have been the Zodiac. When the officers' patrol car pulled up alongside the man, they asked him if he had seen anything suspicious. He responded that he had seen a man waving a gun earlier, and went east down Washington. They drove quickly away, believing that a black man was the culprit. Moments later, when more police arrived at the scene, Stine was declared dead and a search began of the nearby area, including the Presidio. The Zodiac had likely escaped by that point, getting into a parked car and driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.

October 1969 SFPD poster featuring initial sketch made from the teenagers' description (left), and one based on the officers' description of the man they encountered (right).

The Stine murder was initially believed to be a routine robbery that had escalated into homicidal violence. However, on October 13 the Chronicle received a new letter from the Zodiac that claimed credit for the killing and contained a torn section of Stine's bloody shirt as proof. The letter also included a threat about killing schoolchildren on a school bus. In response, Bay Area police departments began escorting school buses. SFPD detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case.

The officers who initially responded realized a few days after the murder that they had possibly seen the Zodiac. A few days after that, the teenage witnesses helped make two composite sketches of the Zodiac: the initial one was based only on the man they saw at Stine's cab, and a second was drawn after feedback and further questioning of the teenagers from the responding officers who had seen an unknown man at the scene, even though that man might not be the Zodiac.

A.M. San Francisco interview

On October 22, 1969, mental patient Eric Weill duped attorney Melvin Belli into a conversation on KGO-TV's A.M. San Francisco. Investigators concluded Weill was not the Zodiac. He called the Oakland Police Department and demanded to speak to Belli or F. Lee Bailey on TV. During the show, Weill told Belli he would not reveal his identity for fear of being executed. He arranged a rendezvous with Belli on Mission Street in Daly City and did not show.

November 1969 letter and card

The Zodiac's Z340 cypher, November 8, 1969

On November 8, the Zodiac mailed a card with a 340-character cryptogram (Z340) to the San Francisco Chronicle. It remained unsolved for 51 years. One cryptologist ranked Zodiac's unsolved ciphers second only to the Voynich manuscript. Zodiac ciphers were crowdsourced through a variety of websites, which led to gradual breakthroughs.

Z340 was deciphered by an international team of private citizens on December 5, 2020. The cryptology group included American software engineer David Oranchak, Australian mathematician Sam Blake, and Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke. They used a program made by Van Eycke called AZdecrypt, which ran 650,000 possible solutions for the cipher until it came up with the best possible encryption key.

In the decrypted message, the Zodiac denied being the "Sam" who spoke on A.M. San Francisco and explained he was not afraid of the gas chamber "because it will send me to paradice all the sooner." The team submitted their findings to the FBI's Cryptographic and Racketeering Records Unit, which verified the decryption and concluded the decoded message gave no further clues to the Zodiac's identity. Subsequent analysis confirmed the Z340 decryption using unicity distance as a measure.

The Z340 decoded cipher included the usual Zodiac respellings:

"I hope you are having lots of fan in trying to catch me that wasnt me on the tv show which bringo up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber becaase it will send me to paradlce all the sooher because e now have enough slaves to worv for me where every one else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I am not afraid because i vnow that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death"

The first page of the letter sent on November 9, 1969

On November 9, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter stating that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he had shot Stine. The letter also said that he would blow up a school bus, and claimed that the police would never catch him, because "I have been to clever for them" [sic]. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12, including the Zodiac's claim. That same day, Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened on the night of Stine's murder. On December 20, exactly one year after the Lake Herman Road murders, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli that included another swatch of Stine's shirt; the Zodiac said that he wanted Belli to help him.

April 1970

For the remainder of 1970, the Zodiac continued to communicate with authorities and the media by mail. In a letter postmarked April 20, he wrote "My name is _____," followed by a 13-character cipher (dubbed "Z13") which has not been definitively solved:

Bomb diagram, April 20, 1970

Dragon Card, postmarked April 28, 1970

One cryptologist suggested the solution is "Alfred E. Neuman"

The Zodiac also denied responsibility for the fatal bombing of the SFPD police station in Golden Gate Park but added "there is more glory to killing a cop than a cid because a cop can shoot back." The letter included a diagram of a bomb the Zodiac claimed would blow up a school bus. At the bottom of the diagram, he wrote: " = 10, SFPD = 0."

On a greeting card to the Chronicle postmarked April 28, 1970, the Zodiac wrote, "I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my BLAST," followed by the symbol. On the back of the card, the Zodiac threatened to use the bus bomb soon unless the newspaper published the full details that he had written. He also wanted to start seeing people wearing "some nice Zodiac butons".

June 1970 letter and map

The Zodiac letter and map postmarked June 26, 1970

In a letter postmarked June 26, 1970, the Zodiac stated that he was upset that he did not see people wearing Zodiac buttons, writing, "I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38." The Zodiac was possibly referring to the murder of SFPD Sergeant Richard Radetich, who was killed one week earlier after being shot through the window of his squad car by an unidentified gunman during a routine traffic stop. The SFPD denies that the Zodiac was involved in Radetich's death; the murder remains unsolved. Included with the letter was a Phillips 66 roadmap of the San Francisco Bay Area. On the image of Mount Diablo, the Zodiac had drawn a symbol. At the top of the crossed circle, he placed a zero, a three, six, and a nine. The accompanying instructions stated that the zero was "to be set to Mag. N." The letter also included a 32-letter cipher that the Zodiac claimed would, in conjunction with the other code, lead to the location of a bomb that he supposedly had buried and set to detonate at a school in the fall:

The cipher, later named the "Z32", has never been definitively decoded, and the alleged bomb was never located.

July 1970 letters

In a letter postmarked July 24, 1970, the Zodiac took credit for the Kathleen Johns abduction, four months after the incident. In a July 26, 1970 letter, the Zodiac paraphrased a song from The Mikado, adding his own lyrics about making a "little list" of the ways in which he planned to torture his "slaves" in "paradice [sic]". The letter was signed with a large, exaggerated crossed-circle symbol and a new score: " = 13, SFPD = 0". A final note at the bottom of the letter stated, "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians." In 1981, a close examination of the radian hint by Zodiac researcher Gareth Penn led to the discovery that a radian angle, when placed over the map per Zodiac's instructions, pointed to the locations of two Zodiac attacks.

October 1970 cards

The "13 Hole Punch Card", October 7, 1970

The "Halloween Card", October 27, 1970

On October 7, 1970, the Chronicle received a three-by-five-inch card (nicknamed the "13 Hole Punch Card") signed by Zodiac with the symbol and a small cross reportedly drawn in blood. The card's message was formed by pasting type from the Chronicle, and thirteen holes were punched across the card. Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi agreed it was "highly probable" that Zodiac sent the card.

On October 27, 1970, Avery received a Halloween card signed by "Z" alongside the symbol. A handwritten note read, "Peek-a-boo, you are doomed." The Chronicle covered this threat on its front page. The card's postmark was from a San Francisco mailbox that afternoon. The implication of a 14th Zodiac victim was speculated based on the phrase "4-teen" found in the card. Avery refused police protection and started carrying a pistol. His colleagues wore "I Am Not Avery" buttons. Shortly after the "Halloween Card", Avery also received an anonymous letter about the parallels between the Zodiac killings and Cheri Jo Bates' murder in Riverside.

March 1971 letter

In the March 13, 1971 letter to the Los Angeles Times, the Zodiac criticized that the police were unable to catch him, saying he had killed 17 victims. Zodiac expert Tom Voigt theorizes that the reason why the letter was postmarked from Pleasanton instead of San Francisco was for the joke of having an unpleasant letter come from "Pleasanton".

January 1974 letter

Zodiac remained silent for nearly three years. The Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac, postmarked January 29, 1974 from San Mateo County. It complained that columnist Count Marco needed to "feel superior to everyone" and praised The Exorcist (1973) as "the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen." The letter included part of a verse from "Tit-willow Song" in The Mikado and an unusual symbol at the bottom that has remained unexplained. Zodiac concluded the letter with a new score, "Me = 37, SFPD = 0."

Psychiatrist David Van Nuys theorized Zodiac stopped killing because he had multiple personality disorder. It may have lessened over time as it often can, which would also explain the reduced intensity of Zodiac's letters.

Letters of suspicious authorship

Of further communications sent by the public to members of the news media, some contained similar characteristics of previous Zodiac writings. In 1973, the Albany Times Union in New York received a letter postmarked for August 1. The symbol was placed in lieu of a return address. In it, the writer proclaimed they were not "dead or in the hospital", and that they were going to kill again on August 10. They said that the name and location of their next victim was available in a three-line cryptic code in the letter. FBI cryptanalysts deciphered the code to mean "[redacted by the FBI] Albany Medical Center. This is only the beginning." Investigators could not find the murder that supposedly took place on August 10, and handwriting experts could not determine if the letter was sent by the Zodiac.

The Chronicle received a letter postmarked February 14, 1974, informing the editor that the initials for the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical group which had recently kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, spelled out an Old Norse word meaning "kill." However, the handwriting was not authenticated as the Zodiac's.

A letter to the Chronicle, postmarked May 8, 1974, featured a complaint that the movie Badlands (1973) was "murder-glorification" and asked the paper to cut its advertisements. Signed only "A citizen," the handwriting, tone, and surface irony were all similar to earlier Zodiac communications. The Chronicle subsequently received an anonymous letter postmarked July 8, 1974 complaining of their publishing the writings of the antifeminist columnist Marco Spinelli. The letter was signed "the Red Phantom (red with rage)." The Zodiac's authorship of this letter is debated.

In 1976, several letters were sent to a San Francisco newspaper praising David Toschi's investigative work. These letters were eventually discovered to be written by Toschi himself. He was removed from the Zodiac case in 1978, and he later said he regretted writing the letters. Also in 1978, a letter was sent to Chronicle columnist Armistead Maupin that claimed to be from the Zodiac himself. It was alleged that Toschi wrote the letter, which he and the SFPD denied; the SFPD had compared the handwriting of the letter with Toschi's handwriting.

In 2007, an American Greetings Christmas card sent to the Chronicle, postmarked 1990 in Eureka, was re-discovered in the paper's photo files by editorial assistant Daniel King. This letter was handed over to the Vallejo police. Inside the envelope, with the card, was a photocopy of two United States Post Office keys on a magnet keychain. The handwriting on the envelope resembles Zodiac's print but was declared inauthentic by forensic document examiner Lloyd Cunningham; however, not all Zodiac experts agree with Cunningham's analysis. The discovery "electrified" Zodiac researchers; the letter, if it is real, disproves the theory that the Zodiac stopped killing due to his own death or imprisonment, and many theorized he could still have been alive.

Suspected victims

There is no consensus regarding the number of victims the Zodiac Killer actually killed, or the length of his criminal spree. In Zodiac, Robert Graysmith speculated that the Zodiac had forty-nine victims. Various other authors speculated at the time of the killings that several other high-profile murders and attacks may have been the work of the Zodiac, but none have been confirmed:

Raymond Davis

On April 9, 1962, a man called the police in Oceanside, California and said, "I am going to pull something here in Oceanside and you'll never be able to figure it out." At 11:10 p.m. on April 10, cab driver Raymond Davis, 29, told his dispatcher he was taking a fare to South Oceanside. The next day, his body was found near the mayor's house in St. Malo, a gated community in Oceanside. Days later, the suspected killer called the police again, “Do you remember me calling you last week and telling you that I was going to pull a real baffling crime? I killed the cab driver and I am going to get me a bus driver next.” The police placed armed guards on buses.

In 2019, the unsolved murder was connected to the Zodiac when Kristi Hawthorne, the Director of the Oceanside Historical Society, was researching St. Malo for another project. She stumbled upon a story about Davis' murder and further research dug up several parallels to the Zodiac killings. Davis' murder prefigured Paul Stine's by 7 years. Both cabbie murders involved wealthy neighborhoods. The ammunition was .22 caliber, which matches the Lake Herman Road attack. The taunting of police and the threat against buses also foreshadowed the Zodiac. She presented her findings to the Oceanside Police Department, which began an inquiry.

Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department claimed in a 1972 press release that the 1963 murders of a young couple in the county were the work of the Zodiac: “Although the anticipated response to this statement would be one of skepticism, let me say that we do not make this assertion frivolously." On June 2, 1963, a sniper fired two shots at a group of teenagers at Tajiguas. None of them were hit, and they identified the shots as coming from a .22 caliber weapon.

Two days later on June 4, 18-year-old Robert George Domingos and his fiancée, 17-year-old Linda Faye Edwards, were shot dead on a beach in Gaviota State Park, which is just west of Tajiguas. They had skipped school at Lompoc High School for Senior Ditch Day. The beach was frequently visited by young people and surfers from Lompoc. Edwards told her friend Shirley that they were going there. Domingos drove Edwards. When the couple had not returned to their homes the next day, their parents called the police. Inside Edwards' car were some of Domingos' clothes and Edwards' purse.

Police believed that the assailant attempted to bind the victims, but when they freed themselves and attempted to flee, the killer shot them repeatedly in the back and chest. Pre-cut rope was used to bind the victims, just as in the Lake Berryessa attacks. The killer then placed the bodies in a small shack and tried, unsuccessfully, to burn the structure to the ground.

The weapon was a .22 caliber semi-automatic firearm, probably a rifle, the same caliber of weapon used in the Lake Herman Road murders. The ammunition used, "Winchester Western Super X copper-coated bullets," was the same as Zodiac's. Domingos was shot 11 times, and Edwards 8 times. The lot number of the .22 ammunition was traced to a sale that took place in a Santa Barbara store in April. The only other place that same lot number turned up was at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Investigators looked into who purchased the ammunition at the store and on the base.

Dr. John Averitt, a police sergeant, clinical psychologist, and classmate of Domingos and Edwards, said, “I believe the murders were the work of the Zodiac killer, but I can’t prove it." Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi investigated the murders in 1972. Toschi said a connection is possible.

Johnny Ray Swindle and Joyce Ann Swindle

The bluff in the background is where a man first shot at the Swindles, who were approximately located by the sea wall (far left).

On February 5, 1964, Johnny Ray Swindle and Joyce Ann Swindle (both 19), a newlywed couple from Alabama on their honeymoon, were shot while walking along Ocean Beach in San Diego. A sniper with a .22 caliber long rifle shot them five times from a nearby cliff. The killer then shot each of them once in the head at close range. Similar to the Zodiac murders, Johnny was shot behind the ear. Despite multiple bullet wounds, he remained alive for hours and died at the hospital. Joyce died almost instantly from shots to her back, left arm, and head. The killer took Joyce's necklace as well as Johnny's wallet and Timex. The same brand watch was found at the Cheri Jo Bates crime scene and assumed to be the killer's.

Johnny Swindle's mother said she could not think of him having any enemies. Johnny's sister theorized the murders might have been the work of the Zodiac. Police investigated a 51-year-old man living in a beach shack, a teenager alleged by a priest to be violent, and a 19-year-old Marine from San Diego who killed his parents and sister in Illinois. They speculated that the two were victims of a "thrill killer", and they also saw a parallel with the Domingos and Edwards murders. In both the Santa Barbara and Ocean Beach killings, the victims were shot from a distance, then again at close range. Both the Ocean Beach and Lake Herman Road murders used a .22 Remington Arms Model 550-1 rifle, but the ballistics did not match between the cartridges found at the two scenes. The murders at Lake Berryessa, Santa Barbara, and Ocean Beach were all near water.

Cheri Jo Bates

Main article: Murder of Cheri Jo Bates

Officers from the Riverside Police Department examining the Bates crime scene at Terracina Drive, Riverside, in 1966. Bates' body lies at the right of the gravel path.

On October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year-old student at Riverside City College (RCC), spent the evening at the campus library annex until it closed at 9:00 p.m. Neighbors reported hearing a scream around 10:30. Her father reported her missing, and she was found dead the next morning at 6:30 a.m. She was found a short distance from the library, between two abandoned houses slated to be demolished for campus renovations. She had been brutally beaten and stabbed to death. The wires in her Volkswagen's distributor cap had been pulled out. A man's paint-spattered Timex watch with a torn wristband was found nearby. The watch had stopped at 12:24, but police believe that the attack had occurred much earlier.

One month later, on November 29, nearly identical typewritten letters were mailed to the Riverside police and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, titled "The Confession." The author claimed responsibility for the Bates murder, providing details of the crime that were not released to the public. The author warned that Bates "is not the first and she will not be the last."

The typewritten confession received by the Riverside Police Department and The Press-Enterprise on November 29, 1966

The inscription upon the Riverside City College library desk, discovered in 1967

In December 1966, a macabre poem was discovered carved into the bottom side of a desktop in the RCC library. Titled "Sick of living/unwilling to die," the poem's language and handwriting resembled that of the Zodiac's letters. It was signed with what were assumed to be a set of lower case initials (r h) inscribed below. During the 1970 investigation, Sherwood Morrill, California's top "questioned documents" examiner, expressed his opinion that the poem was written by the Zodiac.

On March 13, 1971, five months after Avery's article linking the Zodiac to the Bates murder, the Zodiac mailed a letter to the Los Angeles Times. In the letter, he credited the police, instead of Avery, for discovering his "Riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there." The connection between Bates and the Zodiac remains uncertain.

Enedine Molina and Fermin Rodriguez

On June 8, 1967, Enedine Molina, 35, and Fermin Rodriguez, 36, were parked on Vallecitos Road in Alameda County. A stranger approached and told them to get out of the car. Rodriguez was fatally shot and Molina abducted. The killer stopped near Sunol Regional Wilderness. Molina tried to escape and was killed. Rape and robbery were ruled out as motives. The murders occurred near Pleasanton. The March 1971 Zodiac letter to the Los Angeles Times was postmarked in Pleasanton.

John Franklin Hood and Sandra Garcia

Santa Barbara's East Beach

On February 21, 1970, John Franklin Hood, 24, and his fiancée Sandra Garcia, 20, visited East Beach in Santa Barbara. They left their Santa Barbara home at 6 p.m. Early the following day, their fully-clothed bodies were discovered under their blanket. Hood was stabbed eleven times, mainly in the face and back. Garcia received the brunt of the vicious attack, leaving her almost unrecognizable. The bone-handled 4" fish knife used in their murder was partially buried in the sand beneath the blanket. There appeared to be no sexual interference and robbery was ruled out. The double-murder was similar to the 1963 killing of Domingos and Edwards, thirty miles west. It also paralleled the 1969 Lake Berryessa attack.

Kathleen Johns

On the night of March 22, 1970, 22-year-old Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. Johns was seven months pregnant and was accompanied by her ten-month-old daughter. She first left San Bernardino at 4:30 p.m. While she was driving on Highway 132 near Patterson, at 11:30 p.m., a man driving behind her blinked his vehicle's lights. Most sources say that both cars pulled over, and the man said her left rear wheel was loose, offering to tighten the lug nuts on it. When he worked on the wheel, he actually loosened the lug nuts, so when Johns drove away, the wheel fell off. The man then offered to drive her and her daughter in his car to a nearby gas station. However, the San Francisco Examiner wrote that when the man stopped Johns, they checked the wheel to find it only had one lug nut, and then he offered a ride.

Once Johns and her daughter were being driven by the man, he drove around for two hours without stopping. Most accounts say that the man threatened to kill Johns and her daughter while driving them around. SFGate writes that at one point, she asked him if he always helped out strangers that way, and he said, "'By the time I get through with them, they won't need my help." Johns escaped by jumping out of one the car doors with her daughter. One account says that the man did not stop, and instead continued driving, while Johns' account to Chronicle reporter Paul Avery says that he left the car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight. A farmer driving by saw Johns, and took her to a nearby police station in Patterson, where she identified the kidnapper as the Zodiac using a sketch that was on a wanted poster there. An hour later, Johns' car was found on Highway 132, intentionally set on fire. The Zodiac took credit for the abduction.

Richard Radetich

Around 5:25 a.m. on June 19, 1970, 25-year-old police sergeant Richard Phillip "Rich" Radetich was gunned down by three shots from a .38 caliber revolver through the driver side window of his squad car, while in the process of serving a parking ticket on the 600 block of Waller Street in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. He died around 15 hours later. After Radetich's death, the SFPD started assigning two officers to every patrol car. Police investigated a possible link to the Zodiac, who alluded to the crime in taunting notes to authorities; however, no direct evidence has ever been established between him and Radetich's death. In 2004, the SFPD reopened the Radetich investigation.

Donna Lass

The Sahara Tahoe casino in 1965

The Lake Tahoe card addressed to Paul Avery on March 22, 1971

25-year-old Donna Lass worked as a registered nurse at the first aid station of the Sahara Tahoe hotel and casino in Stateline, Nevada. On September 6, 1970, she worked until about 2:00 a.m., treating her last patient at 1:40 a.m. Her last logbook entry was timed at 1:50 a.m. Later that day, both Lass' employer and her landlord received phone calls from an unknown male falsely claiming that Lass had left town because of a family emergency. Lass did not have a family emergency at the time. Lass was never found and the caller has never been identified. Her car was found parked near her apartment, but nobody saw her leave the casino. At her apartment, there were no signs of a struggle, the light was left on, and clothes were left folded.

On March 22, 1971, a postcard to the Chronicle, addressed to "Paul Averly" and believed to be from the Zodiac, appeared to claim responsibility for the disappearance of Lass. It has been nicknamed the "Peek Through the Pines card". Made from a collage of advertisements and magazine lettering, it featured a scene of the Lake Tahoe area from an advertisement for Forest Pines condominiums and the text "Sierra Club," "Sought Victim 12," "peek through the pines," "pass Lake Tahoe areas," and "around in the snow." The symbol was in both the place of the usual return address and the lower-right section of the front face of the postcard.

Two police reports filed on March 25, 1970, contain possible connections between the Lake Tahoe area and the Zodiac. In the reports, a woman claimed that at a restaurant in South Lake Tahoe, a man wanted to read her astrological chart. Later that day, he came to her house to read an astrological chart that he had prepared. The man was "30- to 40-years-old, 5 foot 9 inches tall, 160 pounds, had a pudgy stomach, and wore horn-rimmed glasses," which is similar to the Zodiac's description. He eventually left her house without incident.

On December 27, 1974, a Christmas card was mailed to Mary Pilker, Lass' sister, portraying trees covered in snow. Once opened it revealed a message that was part of the card itself – "Holiday Greetings and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year", followed by the handwriting "Best Wishes, St. Donna & Guardian of the Pines." The envelope was addressed to "Mrs. Mary Pilker, 1609 South Grange, Sioux Falls, South Dakota." It was postmarked 940, either from San Mateo or Santa Clara County.

In 1986, the Placer County Sheriff's Office located a skull near Emigrant Gap along California State Route 20 in the Sierra Nevada, 70 miles from South Lake Tahoe. In 2023, DNA profiling identified the skull as belonging to Lass. Police said no other evidence was found with the skull, and did not indicate how Lass died or whether homicide was suspected. Investigators at the South Lake Tahoe police department started investigating if there was a connection between Lass' disappearance and the Zodiac in 2001, and have not found one as of 2024.

Potentially related serial murders

Astrological murders

The "Astrological Murders" were committed by a suspected serial killer who was also active in the same state and around the same time as the Zodiac. Police in Northern California made a tentative connection between a single culprit and possibly at least a dozen unsolved homicides that occurred between the late 1960s and early 1970s. All of the victims were female and were killed in a variety of ways, including strangulation, drowning, throat-cutting, and bludgeoning, occasionally after being drugged. The killings were linked because victims were dumped in ravines and killed in conjunction with astrological events, such as the winter solstice, equinox, and Friday the 13th.

Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders

Main article: Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

The Zodiac was also suspected of being the perpetrator behind the "Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders". Between 1972–3, at least seven female hitchhikers were murdered in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa. In the Zodiac's January 29, 1974 "Exorcist letter" to the Chronicle, he claims thirty-seven victims. A symbol in the letter matched Chinese characters on a soy barrel carried by one of the Santa Rosa victims. The Zodiac had warned he would vary his modus operandi in a previous letter: "I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc."

One of the main Zodiac suspects, Arthur Leigh Allen, was also suspected of being the Santa Rosa killer.

21st-century developments

In April 2004, the SFPD marked the case "inactive," citing caseload pressure and resource demands, effectively closing the case. However, they re-opened their case sometime before March 2007. The case is open in Napa County and in the city of Riverside. In May 2018, the Vallejo Police Department announced their intention to attempt to collect the Zodiac's DNA from the back of stamps he used during his correspondence. The analysis, by a private laboratory, was expected to check the DNA against GEDmatch. It was hoped the Zodiac would be caught in a similar fashion to serial killer Joseph James DeAngelo, who was caught using DNA analysis earlier that year. In May 2018, a Vallejo police detective said that results were expected in several weeks. As of December 2019, no results had been reported. The FBI's investigation was still ongoing as of 2020.

Suspects

Main article: Zodiac Killer suspects

Arthur Leigh Allen in 1991

In 2007, The Guardian wrote that over 2,500 people have been brought up as a possible Zodiac suspect, and at least a half dozen names were credible. The SFPD had investigated an estimated 2,500 suspects by 2009. Richard Grinell, who runs the website Zodiac Ciphers, said in 2022 that "there are probably 50 or 100 suspects named every year."

The only man ever named by the police as a suspect is Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died of a heart attack in 1992. He denied being the culprit. Allen had been interviewed by police from the early days of the Zodiac investigations and was the subject of several search warrants over a 20-year period. In 2007, Graysmith noted that several detectives described Allen as the most likely suspect. In 2010, Dave Toschi stated that all the evidence against Allen ultimately "turned out to be negative."

Other suspects seen as viable include Earl Van Best Jr., Gary Francis Poste, Giuseppe Bevilacqua, Lawrence Kane, Paul Doerr, Richard Gaikowski, and Richard Marshall.

Legacy

Further information: Zodiac Killer in popular culture

This is the case that won't go away. The killer's catch-me-if-you-can taunting of police, the mind-puzzlers he sent to the press, the way he dropped off the face of the Earth in the early 1970s combined to give the Zodiac case a legendary status that in some ways outstripped the magnitude of the murders.

Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle

The Chronicle wrote that the Zodiac case is "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history". The unusual nature of the case led to international interest that has been sustained throughout the years. It is the subject dozens of books and documentaries, many by amateur sleuths. Multiple websites are devoted to cracking the Zodiac's ciphers. People who research him are known as "Zodiologists". As of 2018, an investigative "task force" meeting of Zodiologists is held annually in the Bay Area, which has been ongoing since 2002. The cottage industry of Zodiology has produced a great deal of fan fiction.

There have been no shortage of people claiming to either be the Zodiac or know who he is. There are also multiple allegations of additional Zodiac victims. For example, Sandy Betts has claimed repeated attacks by Zodiac as recently as 2009. Starting in 2013, a popular Internet meme has joked that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is the Zodiac.

The Zodiac inspired the nickname of Heriberto Seda, who, in the 1990s, committed three murders in New York City as "the Zodiac". The 1997 Kobe child murders in Japan were also inspired by the Zodiac. In 2021, threatening letters were sent to media outlets in New York by a person named the "Chinese Zodiac Killer".

The 1971 film The Zodiac Killer was part of a scheme to capture the Zodiac at the film's premiere at the Golden Gate Theater (pictured)

The Zodiac inspired characters in numerous movies, including Dirty Harry (1971), The Exorcist III (1990), Seven (1995), and The Batman (2022). He was also the subject of the 1971 movie The Zodiac Killer, which was made as part of a scheme to find the perpetrator. At the film's premiere at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco on April 19, 1971, the audience was asked to submit a piece of paper into a large box with an answer to the prompt, "I think the Zodiac kills because..."; the best responder was said to win a Kawasaki motorcycle. Inside the box, a person analyzed each response, hoping to find a match to the Zodiac's handwriting in case he had shown up and answered the question himself. After a match would be identified, six men waited in the lobby to find the writer and see if he matched the Zodiac composite sketch; if he did, he would be apprehended. One person's writing was actually considered to be a match, and he was apprehended, but was then released due to lack of evidence.

In 2007, the movie Zodiac was released. It was directed by David Fincher as an adaptation of Graysmith's books. It focuses on Avery and Graysmith's reporting and investigation over a period of 23 years. The acclaimed film was extensively researched, and the filmmakers conducted interviews with people involved with the case. The film posits Arthur Leigh Allen's culpability and led to more public interest in the case.

See also

• List of serial killers in the United States
• List of fugitives from justice who disappeared

Further reading

True Crime

• Brenda Haugen (2010), The Zodiac Killer: Terror and Mystery, Capstone Press, ISBN 978-0-7565-4357-0
• William T. Rasmussen (2006), Corroborating Evidence II, Sunstone Press, ISBN 978-0-86534-536-2
• Ronald J. Dayton (2018), Zodiac 340 Cipher, Inner Rapport Publishing ISBN 978-0-244-43599-8
• Michael H. Stone, M.D. & Gary Brucato, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, pp. 113–128. ISBN 978-1-63388-532-5

Cryptography

• Schmeh, Klaus. Nicht Zu Knacken: Von Ungelösten Enigma-Codes Zu Den Briefen Des Zodiac-Killers. Hanser, 2012.

FBI File

Wikimedia Commons copies of FBI file #9-HQ-49911 on the Zodiac Killer: Sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

External links

• Media related to Zodiac killer at Wikimedia Commons
• Works related to Zodiac Killer at Wikisource
• "Zodiac Murder Map" – Google Map plotting definite and possible Zodiac attacks (with details).