The Zodiac Killer of North California

True Crime Horror #2

⚠️ There are information and images that might be sensitive to some readers. Read at your own risk!

Trigger warnings: violence, murder, assault, graphic descriptions, blood, gore, death, weapons, home invasion, trauma, psychological distress, crime scene details, mentions of decapitation, forensic investigation, historical crime.

The images of the victims or any suspects are the original photos. The crime boards are created by me. (I will not mention this as the caption in any of the images) ⚠️

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Between the late 1960s and early 1970s, North California was haunted by a serial killer known as the Zodiac Killer. This notorious assailant is confirmed to have committed at least five murders and claimed responsibility for a total of 37. His identity remains a mystery, making the case one of the most infamous unsolved serial killer cases in American history.

The Timeline

The Zodiac Killer’s attacks were marked by suddenness and brutality, employing various methods to murder his victims.

Attack 01

The Zodiac's first known victims were 17-year-old David Faraday and 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen. The young couple was shot while sitting in a parked car in a gravel parking area off Lake Herman Road. When the police arrived, Betty was found dead on the ground 30 feet from the car, while David, still clinging to life, succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital.

Attack 02

Just a few miles from the site of the first murders, 22-year-old Darlene Ferrin and 19-year-old Michael Mageau were shot while parked in a car. The killer approached with a flashlight and fired multiple shots into the vehicle. After initially walking away, he returned to shoot the couple again. Both were found alive, but only Mageau survived.

Mageau was able to make out the face of the killer and described him as:

• Young, white male, 26-30 years old

• stocky about 5’ 8’’

• 200 LBS or larger

• Light brown curly hair and a large face

Strangely, within an hour, the police received a phone call from someone claiming responsibility for the attack and linking it to the Lake Herman Road murders.

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The First Letter: August 1, 1969

On August 1, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner and the Vallejo Times-Herald received identical handwritten letters from the self-proclaimed killer.

‘‘I shall state some facts which only I + the police know.’’

The letters contained specific details about the murders, proving their authenticity. Each was signed with a distinctive mark: a circle with a cross through it, which became known as the Zodiac’s symbol.

The letters included cryptic codes that the Zodiac demanded to be published in the newspapers, threatening more killings if his demands were not met. The Zodiac claimed that the cracked codes would reveal his identity.

On August 4, 1969, another letter was received that started with the phrase 'this is the zodiac speaking', marking the first time the killer referred to himself as the zodiac killer. On August 8, 1969, the code was cracked by a couple in Salinas, CA.

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. Something gives me the most thrilling experience, it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl. The best of it is when I die, I will be reborn in paradise and those I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting off slaves for afterlife.’’

Attack 03

September 27, 1969, in Lake Berryessa, Napa, CA, 22-year-old Cecelia Shepard and 20-year-old Bryan Hartnell were picnicking in Berryessa when Cecelia saw a man hiding behind a nearby tree and staring at her. After some time, a man wearing an executioner-style hood with the Zodiac symbol on his chest approached them. He had a long knife and a used pre-cut rope to tie up Cecelia and Bryan before stabbing them repeatedly. Cecelia would die at the hospital, but Bryan would survive despite being stabbed six times in the back.

Bryan described the man as being;

• 5’ 8’’ to 6ft

• Heavy set

• 225-250 LBS

• Dark brown hair

A message was found on the side of Bryan's car with the zodiac sign, the dates of all three killings, and the words 'by knife' written below the September 27th date.

Attack 04

October 11, 1919, just before 10 pm in San Francisco, CA at the intersection of Washington and Cherry a cab driver Paul Stine was shot in the head by his passenger. A teenage girl from her home across the street heard the shot along with two other witnesses in her home and got a good look at the man as he swiped down the car and walked away.

They called the police and described him as :

• White male, 25-30 years old

• 5’ 8’’ to 5’ 9’’

• Stocky with Heavy rimmed glasses

• Reddish brown crew cut

A police car that was nearby quickly came to the scene, but the chaos of the situation would strangely result in the police dispatcher incorrectly identifying the suspect as an African American male. That incorrect identification would prove to have disastrous consequences.

The police car driven by Officer Don Fouke and Eric Zelms would come upon a white male walking on the sidewalk described by Officer Fouke as;

• White male about 40 years old

• 5’ 10’’

• 170 LBS

• Reddish hair and glasses

It was very similar to the description offered by the teenage girl. However, because they were looking for an African American male, the police officers left the man alone, watching him walk into the park.

The zodiac would later comment on this interaction in a later letter,

‘‘Ps. 2 cops pulled a goof about 3 min after I left the cab’’

making it very likely that Fouke and Zelms came into contact with the nation’s most notorious serial killer at the time, without even knowing it. A composed sketch would be drawn based on the two descriptions that would later become part of a famous wanted poster.

Another crucial piece of evidence was a bloody fingerprint discovered in the cab. However, the Zodiac also claims in a letter that it was planted by him to throw the cops off his trail.

‘‘I was leaving fake clues for the police to run all over town’’

Two days later the San Francisco Chronicle gets another letter that claims responsibility for the cab driver, Paul Stine's murder, and includes a piece of Stine's blood-stained shirt.

‘‘This is the Zodiac speaking. I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St + Maple St last Night,’’

Even more horrifying, the letter included;

‘‘School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning, just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they came bouncing out’’

He also later included diagrams of bombs that could be used on buses. after this, a zodiac task force was created so that multiple departments could share info.

On April 20, 1970, a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle included a cipher with the sentence 'My name is ____', which would later become a point of contention among potential suspects.

The Zodiac would continue to send letters before stopping in 1971. Only to send his last letter in 1974 where he claims to have killed 37 people and bizarrely reviews his viewing of The Exorcist, Which included,

‘‘I saw + think ‘The Exorcist’ was the best satirical comedy that I have ever seen.’’

Skipping forward, in 2002 the San Francisco police department was able to extract a partial genetic profile from a Zodiac letter from the salvia on the stamp. The profile was not enough to conclusively identify a single person, but enough to eliminate potential suspects.

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Suspects with the most circumstantial evidence against them

Theory 01

The theory is from Gary Stewart who believes that his father, Earl Van Best Jr. was the Zodiac killer. Gary Stewart published a book called ‘The Most Dangerous Animal’ of all that presents this theory. He bears an uncanny resemblance to the composite sketch from the Paul Stine killing.

His name also matches the number of characters in the ‘My Name is’ cipher. Finally, Stewart says a handwriting expert is virtually certain that Best's handwriting on his marriage license matches the writing of the writing of the Zodiac Killer.

The reasons why Best may not be the Zodiac:

1. According to an administrator at the church, where Best's Marriage certificate came from, the handwriting is that of the priest and not Best himself, making the match virtually certain to implicate the priest rather than Best.

2. Best only matches the description of the Zodiac at the Paul Stine killing, but not the ‘Heavyset large face’ description of the previous three killings.

3. Gary Steward also tried to test his father's DNA against the recovered 2002 Zodiac DNA, but investigators never complied with their reason being not enough evidence to make a case. Gary Steward has mentioned this as a police cover-up.

Theory 02

The second and the most famous theory is from Robert Graysmith who believes that Arthur Leigh Allen is the Zodiac killer. This theory is the basis for the 2007 film, The Zodiac, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith. Robert was a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who became obsessed with finding the Zodiac. After a decade of personal research, Graysmith wrote two books entitled ‘Zodiac’ and ‘Zodiac Unmasked’ that heavily implicate Arthur Leigh Allen as the Zodiac.

Graysmith's case for Arthur Leigh Allen.

• On the day of the third Zodiac attack at Lake Berryessa in 1969, Allen told his family he was going scuba diving to Lake Berryessa.

• Later that evening, he would come home covered in blood with a bloody knife in his car. The Zodiac murdered Cecelia and Bryan with a knife that day.

• Two years later in 1971 one of Allen's friends, Don Cheney said that Allen called himself the Zodiac before the killer publicly referred to himself as the Zodiac.

• Cheney also said that Allen told him he was planning to hunt people with a gun and a flashlight tied to it.

As a result of this information, the police would interview Allen a second time and Allen would say his favorite book is ‘The Most Dangerous Game’, a book about a man who hunts humans and a book referenced by the Zodiac in his first letter to the press. To add insult to injury, Allen was also wearing a Zodiac brand watch which contained the same symbol the killer used.

The police searched Allen's trailer home where they found small dissected animals in a freezer, bloody knives, and sexual devices, but no direct evidence of the murders.

In 1974, Allen was convicted of child molestation, a crime for which he spent three years in jail. Coincidently, during this time no Zodiac letters were received. In 1987, a San Jose jail inmate named Ralph Spinelli told police that Allen admitted to him that he murdered Paul Stine. In August 1991, Vallejo detective George Bawart interviewed Mike Mageau, the man who survived the 2nd Zodiac attack and saw him without his mask on. When shown up a lineup of photographs Mageau picked out the man who shot him, it was Arthur Leigh Allen. With this info, the police search Allen's home again, and this time, they found formulas for bombs, constructed bombs, and tapes about the Zodiac killer. They interviewed Allen again and he said he knows nothing.

One year later, in August 1992, Allen was found at home dead from a suspected heart attack.

Reasons why Allen may not be the Zodiac Killer:

1. Allen's DNA was compared against the 2002 DNA extracted from stamp saliva on a Zodiac letter, but it was not a match. However, it's also believed that Allen had a habit of letting others lick his stamps instead of him, which would explain why the profile didn't match him.

2. In 1971, the police took Allen's fingerprints, but the prints did not match the bloody prints recovered from the Paul Stine crime scene.

3. They also had Allen undergo handwriting analysis, but the handwriting did not match the Zodiac either.

4. Allen also does not look like the sketch from the Paul Stine scene.

But it's worth mentioning that Arthur Leigh Allen was considered the prime suspect for the Zodiac by most involved police departments and is widely believed to be the Zodiac.

Theory 03

This theory is from a retired Escalon, CA police officer, Harvey Hines who believes Lawrence Kaye, more commonly known by the surname Kane was the Zodiac killer.

Kane was involved in a car accident in 1962 which resulted in brain damage influencing his Behaviour. One psychologist claimed Kane was ‘‘Losing his ability to control self-gratification.’’

Additionally, Kane can be seen in the ‘Zodiac's My Name Is’ cipher. In that cipher, there are three eights with circles around them, three times eight is 24 and Kane was born in 1924. Additionally, the Zodiac's second victim, Darlene Ferrin had a sister who said Kane was the man who followed and harassed Darlene in the weeks leading to her murder.

In the 1969 Paul Stine Murder, the man suspected to be the Zodiac seen by Officer Don Fouke was described as 35 to 45 years old. Kane was 45 in 1969. Officer Don Fouke said in 1987 that in the hundreds of pictures over the past 20 years, he had been shown, Kane was the closest of them as he remembered the killer. Kane also lived a six-minute walk away from Mason and Geary, the location where cab driver, Paul Stine was thought to have picked up his killer.

An excerpt from Vallejo PD states, quote,

‘‘Investigation has placed Kaye (Kane) in the locales where several of the Zodiac’s victims either lived or were killed.’’

To piggyback on that sentiment, in 1970 Kane moved to South Lake Tahoe, and that year a possible Zodiac victim that I didn't discuss earlier named Donna Lass, disappeared in South Lake Tahoe. Donna Lass also coincidentally worked at the same South Lake Tahoe hotel as Kane.

But the last and arguably most damning evidence against Kane is about another Zodiac interaction I haven't discussed yet.

On the night of March 22, 1970, on Highway 132 near Patterson, California, Kathleen Johns and her baby were tricked into riding the Zodiac's car. After entering the car, the Zodiac told Johns that he was going to kill her and throw her baby out after her. As the Zodiac was about to make a turn, Johns jumped out of the car ran into a nearby field with her baby, and escaped.

Despite some believing this is an unconfirmed Zodiac encounter, others believe a letter confirms this incident.

‘‘So, I now have a little list, starting with the woman + her baby that I gave a rather interesting ride’’

The reason I bring this encounter up is because Kathleen Johns, unlike most surviving Zodiac victims, had extended face time with the Zodiac. This is important because when shown a lineup of photos, Kathleen Johns was reportedly able to pick out the man who tried to kill her. It was Lawrence Kane.

Reasons why Kane may not be the Zodiac Killer:

1. There are no instances of a DNA test against the recovered 2002 sample, nor could any record of Kane's fingerprint being tested against the fingerprint found in the Paul Stine case.

2. Kane's handwriting was not a match to the Zodiac's, but also could not be ruled out.

3. Kane, much like Earl Van Best Jr., matches the description of the killer of the Paul Stine scene but not the previous murders.

There could be an original Zodiac or a copycat.

The Zodiac Killer's reign of terror remains one of the most compelling and horrifying chapters in criminal history. Despite the extensive investigation and numerous leads, his true identity has never been uncovered.

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Who do you think is the true Zodiac killer? I feel like there was the original and a copycat.

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Spookily yours,

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