On December 20th, 1968, 16 year old Betty Lou Jensen and 17 year old David Faraday were on their first date.
Their plan was to stop at a local restaurant before driving out to Lake Herman Road which was a well-known lover’s lane. A few minutes after parking in a graveled area just off the side of Lake Herman Road, a man parked beside the couple’s car, rolled down his window, and ordered them to exit their vehicle. When Betty and David refused, the man got out of his car and drew a .22 caliber pistol. Instead of immediately shooting the two teenagers,
The man walked behind the couple’s car and fired a bullet into their rear left wheel housing. His intention was to scare the couple and force them to herd to the left side of the vehicle. Sure enough, the two scrambled to exit the vehicle using the passenger side door. The killer then ran up to the driver’s side window and pressed the gun against David’s left ear, shooting him point blank in the skull. By this time Betty had already exited the vehicle and was running away. The man ran after Betty, gun extended, and shot Betty five times in the back.
He then returned to his own vehicle and drove off. Shortly after 11 pm, a woman stumbled upon the bodies of the teenagers and immediately reported them to police thus sparking the search for the most bizarre and mysterious serial killer of all time. Reporter: “Wipe out a school bus some morning, just shoot out the front tire and then pick off the kiddies as they come bounding out.” (music) The Zodiac killer is arguably one of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century. Throughout the late 1960s and 70s, the Zodiac terrorized most of the larger San Francisco area with almost ritualistic murders, punctuating each murder with detailed letters describing exactly how he did it and mocking anyone who would try to catch him. These letters were sent to several newspapers and police departments that were investigating the cases along with complicated codes and ciphers that are still being decoded to this day. Reporter: “A homicide that took place out on a county road about, uh sometime after 11 o’clock last night.
A double homicide involving” (fading out) After his first murder, the Zodiac stayed quiet for about half a year before he struck again, this murder being much more bizarre than the last. On July 4th, 1969, 18 year old Darlene Ferrin and 16 year old Michael Mageau were going to get fireworks for the Independence Day celebrations. But as they pulled out of their driveway, they immediately noticed that they were being followed by another car. Panicked, Darlene made a series of twists and turns to try to lose the other vehicle, but eventually ended up pulling into the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park, only four miles from downtown Vallejo.
As the couple parked their car, their pursuer also pulled into the parking lot and parked to the left of Darlene’s vehicle before immediately leaving the parking lot. But the couple was only relieved for a few moments, because around five minutes later the same car pulled back into the parking lot and this time parked directly behind Darlene’s car. A man exited the vehicle with a flashlight, Michael, thinking it was the police, reached into his pocket to grab his identification and asked Darlene to do the same.
But before he could get it out, the man directed the flashlight into the couple’s eyes, distracting them for a moment before shooting both Michael and Darlene. More than seven shots were fired before the man started walking back to his car. The bullets had pierced Darlene’s lungs and heart, killing her, but Michael still retained consciousness.
While the man was walking back to his car, Michael let out a painful moan, hearing this, the man paused and for a split second Michael could see the face of his attacker which he later described to the police in detail. Nevertheless, the man heard that Michael was still alive and returned to Darlene’s car to finish the job. As a last resort, Michael tried jumping into the back seat of the car before the man fired two more shots at both of them. At this point the man had gotten back into his vehicle and drove off. Luckily, three teenagers celebrating Independence Day stumbled across the couple and alerted police immediately. Although, the strangest part of this whole ordeal is that after the murder, at 12:40 am on the same day, an anonymous man called the Vallejo Police Department with a pay phone.
He then abruptly hung up, making this the first time the Zodiac contacted the police later. On August 1st, 1969, the Zodiac wrote his first three infamous letters to the Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner. All three letters were nearly identical. In crude handwriting, the letter read: “Dear editor, this is the murderer of the two teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman and the girl on the 4th of July near the golf course in Vallejo. To prove I killed them, I shall state some facts which only I and the police know.” He proceeded to state details about the brand of ammo he used, how many shots were fired, and the victim’s clothing.
He continued with: “Here is a part of a cipher, the other two parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of Vallejo Times and San Francisco Examiner. I want you to print the cipher by the afternoon of Fri 1st of August, 1969. I will go on a kill rampage Fri night, I will cruise 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.
At the end of the letter was an eight-line series of characters including Greek symbols, morse code, weather symbols, alphabet letters, and astrological symbols. Complying with the demands of the Zodiac, the Times Herald and the Chronicle both printed their parts of the cipher in their next editions, while the Examiner waited until Sunday to publish their part because of doubts that the letter was real. The cipher was quickly passed on to Naval Intelligence for deciphering, while the NSA and the CIA also joined the effort. Although, a police chief at Vallejo, Jack E. Stiltz wasn’t convinced that the letter was real.
He publicly requested that the killer send a second letter with more information to prove it was real. Meanwhile, Donald and Betty Harden, a couple living a few miles south of San Francisco saw the cipher in their morning paper and having been avidly interested in puzzles since they were young, Donald and Betty decided to try and see if they could solve it. The couple reasoned that the killer most likely started the cipher with the letter ‘I’ or by saying ‘I like killing’. They also used common letter pairings like the double ‘L’ that appears in the word ‘kill’.
And with these assumptions, the rest of the message could be decoded. It read: “I like killing because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill. The message goes on to describe the thrill of murder, the letter also says that when he dies, the people who he has killed will become his slaves in paradise. He explains that he won’t release his identity because the police will stop his collection of slaves. But towards the end of the cipher, the letter seemed to be jumbled up.
This led some to believe that this was an anagram. We’ll talk more on that later. While the cipher had been solved but not released to the public, the letters didn’t stop, and only three days after Donald and Betty solved the first cipher, the Zodiac sent a second letter, this time he was responding to Chief Stiltz’s request for more information to prove he was the killer. The letter read: “This is the Zodiac speaking. In answer to your request for more details about the good times I had in Vallejo, I shall be very happy in supplying more material.
By the way, are the police having a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up, when they do crack it, they will have me.” This was followed by more details about how he murdered his victims and other details that had not yet been released to the public which confirmed that the letters were indeed from the real killer responsible for the murders and not the work of a fraud At this point, the decoded cipher was published all over the Bay Area and amateur code breakers across the country started analyzing the letters thoroughly.
They first turned their attention to the jumble of letters at the last line of the cipher. It was unanimously agreed upon that it could be an anagram for the killer’s real name. Some suggestions were, Emmett O. Wright, Robert Hemphill, Van M. Blackman, I am O. Riet, and Kenneth O. Wright. Some dismissed this theory and suggested that the jumble of letters were only there to throw them off. After all, the killer did say, “I will not give you my name”.
After this first string of letters, it wouldn’t take long for the zodiac to kill again.”But he told me, at that time that he had killed a guard getting out of a prison and so I did, uh take him as a killer. To me a killer isn’t a normal person so I assumed at the time that something was wrong, but as far as a psychopath or anything.” (fading out).
On September 27, 1969, college students Brian Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were having a picnic at Lake Berryessa. When Cecilia noticed a man walking towards them. Cecilia mentioned it to Brian but Brian dismissed it as nothing. “And when she says, ‘I see a man over there, what I’m thinking is, if you look to the left of her, you can see those trees on that hill. That would be another picnic area, so seeing someone on that hill, you know, would be of interest but not of any great urgency. But seeing someone as close as her would obviously be some cause for concern. And so I’m continuing to talk, and then she says, ‘he went behind a tree’ and so he goes behind the tree where she is, and again, I’m thinking behind those trees”. (fading out) Minutes later, the man was within 20 feet from the couple, when he drew a gun. He was wearing a black executioner type hood with the zodiac symbol on his chest.
As the man pointed the gun, he demanded the couple’s money and car keys so he could drive to Mexico. Brian pulled his car keys and only 50 cents out of his pockets and handed them to the cloaked man. Brian later told police that the man pocketed the 50 cents and then tossed the car keys back to the couple, at which point the man put his gun back in the holster on his waist. The man told the couple that he was an escaped convict from Deer Lodge, Montana, and that he had killed a prison guard to escape. Brian: “This came out since then but he told me at that time that he had killed a guard getting out of a prison and so I did take him as a killer. To me a killer isn’t a normal person so I assumed, at the time, that something was wrong.” “He wanted our money, and I actually laughed at the moment because I told him, I said, ‘I’ve only got 75 cents in my pocket’ and I said, ‘you’re welcome to have it but if you need help’. (fading out) He claimed that he had already stolen a car but it was, quote, ‘too hot’. After explaining himself, the man pulled out a three-foot clothesline and instructed Cecilia to tie Brian’s hands.
After Brian was tied up, the man proceeded to tie up Cecilia’s hand. At this point, Brian recalls the man saying, ‘I’m going to have to stab you people’. He proceeded to stab Cecilia, ten times and Brian, six times. After believing he had finished the job, the man left the scene and hiked 500 yards to the couple’s car. And with a black felt-tip pen, he wrote on the car door, “Vallejo 12-20-68 September 27-69 6:30 by knife”. The couple, who were both still conscious, were found by a fisherman and his son, and were taken to the hospital.
And at 7:40 PM on the same day, much like the last murder, the Zodiac called in to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office to report his crime. Cecilia later died from her wounds but Brian survived to explain the ordeal to the police and press. By now, the police were starting to see similarities in the Zodiac’s murders: 1. The Zodiac targeted young students, mostly couples 2. The attacks all occurred on weekends, two near holidays 3. The murders would usually take place at either dusk or night 4. The killer would often brag about his murders in letters or calls most of the murders took place in well-known lovers lanes 6. the murders all took place in or around cars and finally, 7. The murders all took place near a body of water. These patterns picked up by police suggested a number of reasons for his strange killings.
Because most of the victims were couples, the Zodiac was maybe frustrated with couples or love and potentially could hold a specific hate for women because in the last two murders, the focus for most of the damage was on the woman, causing them to die in both cases, but leaving the men to survive. But with his next and final confirmed murder, the Zodiac would break his pattern. Reporter: “Police with guns take the threat seriously.
The psychotic killer has already murdered five. One at a lovers’ lane near a lake just north of San Francisco, three others in nearby Vallejo. The latest, a taxi driver in San Francisco. The Zodiac killer seems to crave publicity.” (fading out) On October 11, 1969, only two weeks after his last murder, the Zodiac entered a cab driven by Paul Stine at around 9:30 PM. He requested to be taken to Washington and Maple Street in Presidio Heights, but for some reason the cab driver drove one block past their destination, maybe at the instruction of the passenger.
The Zodiac waited for the car to come to a full stop on the side of the road before grabbing Paul Stine’s collar and shooting him point blank in the right side of the skull. At this point, the Zodiac exited the vehicle from their rear doors and re-entered the vehicle through the passenger side door. While sitting in the front seat, the Zodiac grabbed the cab driver’s wallet and tore off a piece of his shirt before exiting the vehicle once again.
While all this was taking place, two teenagers who lived across the street, saw the cab from their second floor window and called the police. But while the kids were giving the police a description of the man they saw, the Zodiac was mistakenly described as a black male. This one mistake proved to be massively detrimental, as it allowed the Zodiac to evade capture once again. This was because, in the dead of night, a police patrol unit reached the scene and saw a man, quote, ‘lumbering along in the fog’. This was later determined to most likely have been the Zodiac.
But since this man was white, the police didn’t stop him and only asked him if he had seen anything unusual in the area, to which the man responded that he had seen someone waving a gun around a couple blocks to the east. At which point the patrol unit sped off in that direction. If the police had stopped the man, or come any closer, they would have seen that the man’s jacket was drenched in Paul Stine’s blood. But police did find evidence in the cab driver’s vehicle. A partial print was found in blood that was later confirmed to be that of the Zodiac. Also the kids
who had seen the Zodiac quickly collaborated with a police sketch artist to try and come up with a preliminary sketch of the Zodiac. By now, the kid’s mistake had already been corrected. And so the first sketch of the Zodiac was drawn and circulated to every cab company in the area. After another failed attempt at catching the killer, the Zodiac saw this as a perfect opportunity to taunt the police department once more. On October 14th, only three days after the murder, the Chronicle received another letter from the Zodiac, but this one was different from his previous letters in that the Zodiac had included a piece of Paul Stine’s blood soaked shirt in the letter. It read, “This is the Zodiac speaking. I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington Street and Maple Street last night. To prove this, here is a blood-stained piece of his shirt. I am the same man who did in the people in the North Bay Area. The SF Police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcycles seeing who can make the most noise.”
The letter continues, ridiculing the SFPD before ending with a chilling threat It reads, “School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning, just shoot out the front tire and then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.” The Chronicle published the letter in their next edition but excluded the school bus threat at the request of authorities. Despite the advice, the threat was released a mere two days later. While the world was informed of the school bus threat, panic swept over the Napa Valley Unified School District, who were in charge of the school busses. School bus drivers across the district were given a set of instructions on how to handle an attack from the Zodiac. 1. Continue driving with a flat tire. Do not stop. 2. Tell the children to get below the windows and lie on the floor 3. The driver will continue driving and turn on all lights while sounding his horn 4. The bus driver should not stop until he has arrived in a well-populated area 5. Upon arrival at this location, a local law enforcement agency should be notified immediately Despite the claim from the Zodiac, no such attack ever occurred. Later, after working with the police officers that mistakenly allowed the Zodiac to walk free, a second sketch of the man was made, making him older and his jaw thicker. This sketch was then circulated to the public, replacing the original. With his letters in full swing, and the San Francisco area in the palm of his hand, the Zodiac did something that shocked everyone throughout the country.
At the end of the month, on October 22nd, the Zodiac called the Oakland PD and asked to speak to Melvin Belli, a prominent lawyer at the time. He said he wanted the lawyer to appear on a TV talk show so that the Zodiac could call in and talk to him on the air. The talk show the Zodiac was referring to was the Channel 7 talk show, which usually started at 7 AM but began half an hour early that day. After waiting for 40 minutes on the air for the Zodiac to call in, the telephone finally rang but hung up almost immediately. The next call came in at 7:20 AM. This time, he stayed on the call for longer and after being asked if he had any other name other than Zodiac, the man said Sam.
The Zodiac called the show a total of 35 times, but only 12 of them were heard on air. But people were still hesitant on whether this caller was really the Zodiac. To confirm, the only three people who had ever heard the Zodiac’s real voice, Nancy Slover, who was the telephone operator on duty when the Zodiac claimed responsibility for the murders. David Slaight, who was the police officer who had seen the Zodiac the night of the cab driver murder. And Brian Hartnell, the survivor of the Lake Berryessa stabbing, were all brought in to verify the voice in the calls.
All of them agreed that the voice they had heard was much deeper and older than the one in the calls. Further investigation discovered that the calls were actually made from the Napa State Hospital by a mental patient. Effectively proving that the Zodiac was not the one making the calls. In the following weeks, the Zodiac would send two more letters, boasting about two more murders. In the first letter, there’s a card that reads, “Sorry I haven’t written but I just washed my pen.” On the inside it reads, “This is the Zodiac speaking. I thought you would need a good laugh before you hear the bad news. You won’t get the news for a while yet, PS, could you print this new cipher in your front page? I get awfully lonely when I’m ignored, so lonely I could do my thing!!!” This letter also contained another cipher, and since his last one had been cracked in a day, the Zodiac decided to make this one considerably more challenging, now known as the “Z340 Cipher”.
This cipher remained unsolved for over 50 years, until a few weeks ago, an international group of three amateur code breakers used computer software to finally crack the Z340 Cipher. This cipher requires the letters to be substituted, read diagonally, rearranged, and flipped, while also skipping certain words. It was due to the complex nature of the cipher that it remained unsolved for so long. But once it’s finally decoded, it reads, “I hope you were having lots of fun in trying to catch me. That wasn’t me on the TV show, which brings up a good point about me, I am not afraid of the gas chamber.”
The letter continues and says that he will have his slaves work for him in the afterlife, a belief that he expressed in his first letter back in 1969. Although the letter doesn’t give us any clues as to who the Zodiac was, it does confirm that it was not the Zodiac who called into Melvin’s show. Not only that, but it also confirms that the Zodiac keeps up with his own publicit,y and was in fact watching the show. The second letter the Zodiac sent in 1969 read, “This is the Zodiac speaking. Up until the end of October, I have killed seven people. I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me so I shall change the way of collecting my slaves, I shall no longer announce to anyone when I commit my murders. They shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, a few fake accidents, etc. The police shall never catch me because I have been too clever for them. The letter goes on to list some facts that the police departments got right and wrong. In a seven page rant, the Zodiac states that the police sketch that was circulated is correct but, quote, “the rest of the time, I look entirely different”.
He also states that, contrary to what the police say, he never left fingerprints at his murders. He says that he’d been leaving fake clues at his murders to, quote, “keep the cops happy”. He then goes on to describe the moment where he got stopped by police after the cab murder, PS. two cops pulled a goof about three minutes after I left the cab, I was walking down the hill to the park when this cop car pulled up and one of them called me over and asked me if I saw anyone acting suspicious or strange in the last 5-10 minutes, and I said ‘yes, there was a man waving a gun’ and the cops peeled rubber and went around the corner.”
After he recapped his encounter with the police, the Zodiac wrote step-by-step instructions on how to create a bomb with household items. But the following sentence caught investigators’ attention. The Zodiac writes, “What you do not know is whether the death machine (bomb) is at the site or whether it is being stored in my basement for future use.” If the Zodiac was telling the truth that he had a basement, it would drastically reduce the list of possible locations where the Zodiac lived. First, the Zodiac having a basement means that he lives in a house and not an apartment building and second, basements aren’t that common in the Bay Area so either the Zodiac didn’t live in the Bay Area or, in revealing that he had a basement, he had made a possibly fatal mistake. On March 22nd, 1970, Kathleen Johns was on her way to visit her sick mother in Petaluma with her 10 month-old baby.
She was driving on Highway 132, a rarely used road, when a car seemed to be following her in the near midnight darkness. Kathleen decided to slow down and let the car pass her but before she could do so, the car started honking its horn and blinking its lights at he.r Knowing how dangerous it was to pull her car over with a stranger behind her on such deserted road, she kept driving. The car behind her noticed this and accelerated into the lane right. Beside Kathleen, from his passenger side window, a man shouted that Kathleen’s rear tire was wobbling. Still skeptical of the man, Kathleen waited until she’d made it to the freeway to pull over. The man pulled over behind her and told her again that her rear tire was wobbling. He then offered to fix it, explaining that he had the appropriate tools in his car.
Kathleen agreed, and so the man retrieved his tools and tightened the lugs on the woman’s vehicle. Once the man finished fixing her tire, he notified Kathleen and returned to his car. After merging back onto the freeway and driving for a few seconds, Kathleen’s whole rear tire spun off, she attempted to pull over once again when the same man came back. Seeing her tire completely detached, the man offered to take her to the nearest gas station. Eventually, Kathleen agreed they started driving down the freeway, but to Kathleen’s surprise. He completely passed the gas station before passing a number of exits as well. At this point, Kathleen knew something was wrong but didn’t say anything. The man took her to various rocky deserted roads before breaking the silence, and saying, Terrified, Kathleen began frantically thinking of ways to escape. In the panic and chaos, her best and only option was jumping out of the passenger side door. The next time the man pulled up to a stop sign, she executed her plan, finally escaping the car and rolling into a ditch. After the Zodiac had tried and failed to find her in the ditch, Kathleen waited on the side of the road until a female driver saw her and offered to take her to a police station. When she arrived at the station, she talked to a police officer about her situation, and after being shown a police sketch of the Zodiac, Kathleen strongly believed that he was the one who had abducted her.
After police units went back to retrieve Kathleen’s car, they discovered that it had been set on fire. Most likely by the Zodiac to destroy any incriminating evidence. Around a month later, on April 19th, 1970, the Zodiac sent another letter and cipher. The letter read, “This is the Zodiac speaking, by the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is-” followed by a 13-character cipher which, when decoded, is supposed to contain the Zodiac’s name.
But because the cipher is only 13 characters long, it is nearly unsolvable. There have been thousands of possible solutions to the cipher but no way of knowing whether any of them are correct. The letter continues with the Zodiac claiming he’s killed 10 people to date and that he would have killed more, except the bomb he was going to use was a dud. the second page of the letter shows a diagram of his new and improved bomb and how it works. Of course the newspaper and the authorities kept any mention of a bomb threat, hidden from public knowledge in order to prevent panic.
For the next four years, around eight Zodiac letters were sent to the Chronicle containing much of the same information and pleas for attention as his previous letters. One more cipher was sent, and when deciphered it apparently contained the location of a bomb that would go off in the Fall of 1970. No bomb was ever found or detonated. In one of these letters, the Zodiac claimed responsibility for Kathleen John’s abduction, confessing that he lit Kathleen’s car on fire after failing to kill her. His final letter was sent on January 30th, 1974, and seemed to review the movie, “The Exorcist”, before once again demanding publicity.
At the end of the letter, the Zodiac’s final score was written, “Me-37, SFPD-0”. Police had only confirmed five murders and two attempted murders from the Zodiac so his claim of 37 murders could very well just be an exaggeration.
The Zodiac did previously say in a letter though, that he would not continue announcing his murders and he would make them look like accidents meaning the final murder count could technically range anywhere from 5 to 37. Because of the magnitude and popularity of this case, many people have claimed to be the Zodiac for attention, or given false tips to police, making it very hard to identify who’s telling the truth and who’s not. That being said, one of the most likely suspects in the case and one that the police identified very early on was Arthur Leigh Allen. Suspicion first arose about Allen, when a friend of his, Donald Cheney, voiced concerns he had that Allen was connected to the Zodiac killings. Donald Cheney explained that Allen and him used to go hunting together, and at one point, Allen had asked him, “Have you ever thought about hunting people?” Allegedly, Allen had started explaining how he would murder people and how it would be impossible to track him down, because he had no motive.
Donald Cheney also claimed that Allen had said he would sign letters to the police as the Zodiac killer. Allen later denied any recollection of this conversation. After this tip, police went to question Allen. In the interview, Allen had said he had an interest in guns but only owned .22 calibers.
A witness would later state otherwise. Allen was also dishonorably discharged from the Navy, which was a critical clue because the character profile of the Zodiac indicated that he most likely had military experience. The terminology used in the Zodiac letters indicate military, specifically Air Force language, in terms like “unflappable” which is an adjective that means “calm and clear thinking”. There were also footprints that were found at a few crime scenes that indicated that the Zodiac most likely wore Wing-Walkers, a brand of boot that is only sold at military outlets. His knowledge of guns and cryptology is also likely learned in the Navy. When asked where he was during the Lake Berryessa stabbing, Allen had said he spent most of his day at his house but he had no witness to support his alibi. Allen also owned a watch from the company named Zodiac, whose brand logo was the infamous Zodiac signature. Because this was the only time that the signature and the name Zodiac ever appeared together before the letters, it’s assumed that the Zodiac took his name and sign from the watch brand which Arthur Leigh Allen owned. In 1991, Michael Mageau, the man who survived one of the Zodiac shootings, had later identified Arthur Leigh Allen as the person who appeared most similar to the man who shot him.
Therefore making him the most likely Zodiac suspect at the time. But despite the circumstantial evidence, fingerprint and handwriting analyses did not match between the Zodiac and Allen and the police sketch of the Zodiac didn’t resemble Allen at all. Although, police kept him as a person of interest because they had speculated that the fingerprint found in Paul Stine’s cab wasn’t from the Zodiac. But before any concrete incriminating evidence surfaced, Allen died of a heart attack on August 26, 1992. He remains the sole and top suspect. Another possible suspect is Richard Gaikowski, Gaikowski was the editor of a counterculture newspaper based in San Francisco, where most of the Zodiac’s killings took place .There are a number of clues that connect him to the Zodiac such as his army service as a medic in the 1950s, meaning he fit the military assumption for the Zodiac but unfortunately, 80% of Rick’s army records were destroyed in a fire, so not much more is known about his time in the army. Although the main reason Gaikowski became a prominent suspect was the long and frequent letters the police would receive from a co-worker of his, who nicknamed himself “Goldcatcher”. In these letters, Goldcatcher claimed that Gaikowski had frequently talked about committing violent acts, similar to that of the Zodiac.
In 2009, Goldcatcher provided voice recordings of Gaikowski’s voice and Nancy Slover, the police dispatcher who took the Zodiac’s 911 calls when he reported the murders, and one of the only four people who have ever heard the Zodiac’s real voice, confirmed that the voice recordings of Richard Gaikowski matched the voice she heard on the phone that night. Nancy: “The last part of that, was even more like… what I heard in the first part.” Lastly, in the cipher that supposedly contained the Zodiac’s identity, the word “GYKE” appears, and some speculate this might be a nickname for Gaikowski.
Unfortunately, most of the evidence against the suspect are claims made by the anonymous, “Goldcatcher”, who has very little credibility. So none of these claims can be considered conclusive. Reporter: “The mystery has never been solved. And now, one man claims to have indisputable evidence he knows who the killer is. Gary Stewart, author of a new memoir, “The Most Dangerous Animal of All” says the serial killer is his father, Earl Van Best Jr.” The final and one of the most popular suspects in the Zodiac case is Earl Van Best Jr. The basis for suspecting Van Best comes from the, “The Most Dangerous Animal of All” authored by Gary Stewart, who claims that his biological father, Earl Van Best Jr, was the Zodiac killer. When this book was published, it became very popular among the general public. The author claims that his father lived in California at the time of the killings and was very interested in ciphers and codes. He also matched the composite sketch of the Zodiac and had many strange friends including a Satanist and a Manson family member.
Some of the more concrete evidence was the fact that a handwriting expert found that the handwriting on Best’s marriage certificate matched the handwriting in the Zodiac’s letters making this one of the few times an expert certified a match to the Zodiac’s handwriting. Unfortunately, critics quickly dismissed the suspect because there was not enough evidence against him. The facial match to the composite sketch was a very loose one and it was also later determined that the handwriting on Best’s marriage certificate actually belonged to the minister who officiated the marriage and not to Best himself, therefore effectively ruling out Best as a suspect.
Throughout the late 1960s and 70s the fear of the Zodiac killer gripped the San Francisco area and sent the whole nation into a frenzy. Although, even decades after the last letter, there are still many aspects of this case that remain unsolved. Not only is the identity of the Zodiac killer unclear, but the number of victims could range from 5 to nearly 50. And the translations to his cryptic ciphers are still being decoded 50 years later.
Despite all of the publicity that this case received, the identity of the Zodiac killer remains one of the most popular unsolved mysteries in true crime history. By the way thank you very much to read this long article.