Had an idea for a 'series' of threads that I am hoping are fun/interesting that I will post every few weeks or so. Big fan of serial killers/crime/mysteries, I really like to discuss the cases and get in to the thought process of what happened, who did it, where are they now, all that kind of stuff, with unsolved cases. To get this all going, each 'episode', I will post information about the cases so you guys can read about it. Then, it's just basically to get your thoughts on who you think did it, what you think motivated the killer, where you think they are now, etc. Not all will be the big, popular cases, I am gonna mix it up. Figured the best way to start is with one of the most popular unsolved cases.
Confirmed murders
Public Speculation
I used to think the zodiac killer was Dennis Rader, who is also the BTK killer, as they both have some similarities, including sending letters. It's odd to think that Zodiac just got bored one day and stopped writing letters, he just seemed so dedicated to doing it and really enjoyed the fact he was fucking with police and newspapers. Also the fact that in those days, there were quite a few of the popular serial killers around, no telling which bodies who's murders are unsolved could have belonged to which killer. There are some pretty compelling stories in the public speculations, though, interesting read. Zodiac killer is either quite old or dead now, I would think.
Side note, a bit of an underwear soiler just looking at that sketch and wondering who the hell that guy is. Sketches of unknown killers creep me the fuck out.
The Zodiac Killer
The Zodiac Killer, or simply Zodiac or the Zodiac, is the pseudonym of a serial killer who operated in northern California from at least the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The unidentified killer originated the name in a series of taunting letters and cards sent to the San Francisco Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms, or ciphers.
The final Zodiac letter was received in 1974. Other letters afterwards were fakes as the handwriting did not match that of the Zodiac killer.
The Zodiac Killer, or simply Zodiac or the Zodiac, is the pseudonym of a serial killer who operated in northern California from at least the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The unidentified killer originated the name in a series of taunting letters and cards sent to the San Francisco Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms, or ciphers.
The final Zodiac letter was received in 1974. Other letters afterwards were fakes as the handwriting did not match that of the Zodiac killer.
| Victims | 5 confirmed dead, 2 injured, possibly 20–28 total dead (claimed to have killed 37) |
|---|---|
| Span of crimes | 1960s–1970s |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | California, possibly also Nevada |
Confirmed murders
- David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16: shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, within the city limits of Benicia.
- Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22: shot on July 4, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. While Mageau survived the attack, Ferrin was pronounced dead on arrival at Kaiser Foundation Hospital.
- Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22: stabbed on September 27, 1969, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived eight stab wounds to the back, but Shepard died as a result of her injuries on September 29, 1969.
- Paul Lee Stine, 29: shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood in San Francisco.
Public Speculation
- Ross Sullivan became a person of interest through the possible link between the Zodiac Killer and the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside. Sullivan was a library assistant at Riverside City College and was suspected by coworkers who said that he went missing for several days after the murder. Sullivan resembled sketches of the Zodiac and wore military-style boots with footprints like those found at the Lake Berryessa crime scene. Sullivan was hospitalized multiple times for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
- Lawrence Kaye, later Lawrence Kane: Kathleen Johns, who claimed to have been abducted by the Zodiac Killer, picked out Lawrence Kane in a photo lineup. Patrol officer Don Fouke, who possibly observed the Zodiac Killer following the murder of Paul Stine, said that Kane closely resembled the man he and Eric Zelms encountered. Kane worked at the same Nevada hotel as possible Zodiac victim Donna Lass. Kane was diagnosed with impulse-control disorder after suffering brain injuries in a 1962 accident. He was arrested for voyeurism and prowling.
- Police informants accused Richard Marshall of being the Zodiac Killer, claiming that he privately hinted at being a murderer. Marshall lived in Riverside in 1966 and San Francisco in 1969, close to the scenes of the Bates and Stine murders. He was a silent film enthusiast and projectionist, screening Segundo de Chomón's The Red Phantom (1907), a name used by the author of a possible 1974 Zodiac letter. Detective Ken Narlow said that "Marshall makes good reading but [is] not a very good suspect in my estimation."
- Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was investigated for possible connections to the Zodiac Killer in 1996. Kaczynski worked in northern California at the time of the Zodiac murders and, like the Zodiac, had an interest in cryptography and threatened the press into publishing his communications. Kaczynski was ruled out by both the FBI and SFPD based on fingerprint and handwriting comparison, and by his absence from California on certain dates of known Zodiac activity.
- Bruce Davis, a member of Charles Manson's Manson Family cult and a convicted murderer, was investigated, but no evidence linking him to the Zodiac murders was discovered. A 1970 report by the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation stated that all male members of the Manson Family had been investigated and eliminated as Zodiac suspects.
- In 2007, Dennis Kaufman claimed that his stepfather Jack Tarrance was the Zodiac. Kaufman turned several items over to the FBI, including a hood similar to the one worn by the Zodiac. According to news sources, DNA analysis conducted by the FBI on the items was deemed inconclusive in 2010.
- In 2009, former lawyer Robert Tarbox, who was disbarred in August 1975 by the California Supreme Court for failure to pay some clients, said that in the early 1970s a merchant mariner walked into his office and confessed to him that he was the Zodiac Killer. The seemingly lucid seaman, whose name Tarbox would not reveal based on confidentiality, described his crimes briefly but persuasively enough to convince Tarbox. The man said he was trying to stop himself from his "opportunistic" murder spree but never returned to see Tarbox again. Tarbox took out a full-page ad in the Vallejo Times-Herald that he claimed would clear the name of Arthur Leigh Allen as a killer, his only reason for revealing the story 30 years after the fact. Robert Graysmith, the author of several books on Zodiac, said Tarbox's story was "entirely plausible".
- In 2009, an episode of the History Channel television series MysteryQuest looked at newspaper editor Richard Gaikowski. During the time of the murders, Gaikowski worked for Good Times, a San Francisco counterculture newspaper. His appearance resembled the composite sketch, and Nancy Slover, the Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac shortly after the Blue Rock Springs Attack, identified a recording of Gaikowski's voice as being the same as the Zodiac's.
- Retired police detective Steve Hodel argues in his book The Black Dahlia Avenger that his father, George Hodel, was the Black Dahlia killer, whose victims include Elizabeth Short. The book led to the release of previously suppressed files and wire recordings by the Los Angeles district attorney's office of his father, which showed that the elder Hodel had indeed been a prime suspect in Short's murder. District Attorney Steve Kaye subsequently wrote a letter which is published in the revised edition stating that if George Hodel were still alive he would be prosecuted for the crimes. In a follow-up book, Hodel argued a circumstantial case that his father was also the Zodiac Killer based upon a police sketch, the similarity of the style of the Zodiac letters to the Black Dahlia Avenger letters and questioned document examination.
- On February 19, 2011, America's Most Wanted featured a story about the Zodiac Killer. In 2010, a picture surfaced of known Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin and an unknown man who closely resembles the composite sketch, formed based on eyewitnesses' descriptions, of the Zodiac Killer. Police believe the photo was taken in San Francisco in the middle of 1966 or 1967.
- Convicted serial killer Edward Edwards, who committed five murders between 1977 and 1996, was linked to the Zodiac murders and several other unsolved cases by former cold case detective John A. Cameron. Cameron's theories were met with "almost universal disdain, especially from law enforcement".
- Former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty said the Zodiac Killer was a 91-year-old Solano County, California, man he referred to by the pseudonym George Russell Tucker. Using a group of retired law enforcement officers called the Mandamus Seven, Lafferty discovered Tucker and outlined an alleged cover-up for why he was not pursued. Tucker died in February 2012 and was not named because he was not considered a suspect by police.
- In February 2014, it was reported that Louis Joseph Myers had confessed to a friend in 2001 that he was the Zodiac Killer after learning that he was dying from cirrhosis of the liver. He requested that his friend, Randy Kenney, go to the police upon his death. Myers died in 2002, but Kenney allegedly had difficulties getting officers to cooperate and take the claims seriously. There are several potential connections between Myers and the Zodiac case; Myers attended the same high schools as victims David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen, and allegedly worked in the same restaurant as victim Darlene Ferrin. During the 1971–73 period, when no Zodiac letters were received, Myers was stationed overseas with the military. Kenney says that Myers confessed he targeted couples because he had had a bad breakup with a girlfriend. While officers associated with the case are skeptical, they believe the story is credible enough to investigate if Kenney could produce credible evidence.
- Robert Ivan Nichols, also known as Joseph Newton Chandler III, was a formerly unidentified identity thief who committed suicide in Eastlake, Ohio, in July 2002. After his death, investigators were unable to locate his family and discovered that he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old boy who was killed in a car crash in Texas in 1945. The lengths to which Nichols went to hide his identity led to speculation that he was a violent fugitive. The U.S. Marshals Service announced his identification at a press conference in Cleveland on June 21, 2018. Some Internet sleuths suggested that he might have been the Zodiac Killer, as he resembled police sketches of the Zodiac and had lived in California, where the Zodiac operated.
- In 2014, Gary Stewart published a book, The Most Dangerous Animal of All, in which he claimed his search for his biological father, Earl Van Best Jr., led him to conclude Van Best was the Zodiac Killer. In 2020, the book was adapted for FX Network as a documentary series.
- Since 2018, a journalistic inquiry on a connection between the Zodiac and Monster of Florence cases is being published on Italian magazine Tempi and newspapers Il Giornale and Libero. The suspect is a former superintendent of the Florence American Cemetery in Italy, Joseph "Joe" Bevilacqua, also known as Giuseppe, who was born on December 20, 1935, in Totowa, New Jersey, and had a 20-years career in the Army when he left it to move to Florence in 1974.Francesco Amicone, the author of inquiry, wrote an account of a Bevilacqua's partial admission, in which he would have confessed to Amicone to being responsible of the murders attributed to the Zodiac killer and the Monster of Florence in an unregistered conversation occurred on September 11, 2017. After the release of the first part of the inquiry in May 2018, Bevilacqua denied his admission; even though he threatened him with a lawsuit, Amicone did not stop to accuse him. In 2021, Amicone reported that Bevilacqua would have been an undercover CID agent assigned to an investigation in San Francisco concerning SMA William O. Wooldridge and other Army sergeants at the time of Zodiac's homicides in 1969 and 1970. While Army criminal investigator in Italy in the early 1970s, Bevilacqua would have had access to a case file of a double murder occurred near Florence in 1968 where bullets and shell casings had been improperly stored. Bevilacqua replaced the pieces of evidence with spent cartridges shot by the gun he would use in the Monster of Florence's homicides in order to link his future crimes to those murders for which he had an alibi. Italian authorities collected Bevilacqua's DNA in late 2020.
I used to think the zodiac killer was Dennis Rader, who is also the BTK killer, as they both have some similarities, including sending letters. It's odd to think that Zodiac just got bored one day and stopped writing letters, he just seemed so dedicated to doing it and really enjoyed the fact he was fucking with police and newspapers. Also the fact that in those days, there were quite a few of the popular serial killers around, no telling which bodies who's murders are unsolved could have belonged to which killer. There are some pretty compelling stories in the public speculations, though, interesting read. Zodiac killer is either quite old or dead now, I would think.
Side note, a bit of an underwear soiler just looking at that sketch and wondering who the hell that guy is. Sketches of unknown killers creep me the fuck out.
