Homicide Inc. - Compelling True Crime Stories
Homicide Inc. - Compelling True Crime Stories
Episode 87 | Unmasking the Mysterious 'Zodiac Killer' - A Deep Dive
In this podcast we'll look deep into the unsolved cases linked to one of the most elusive killers in US history. From December, 1968, till at least January, 1974, the Zodiac Killer, a near-legendary serial killer murdered, terrorized, sent letters to the media, left riddles to be solved, and openly taunted law enforcement. And not only was he never caught, he was never even identified – hence, ‘the most famous unsolved murder case in American history’.
In 45 years, police investigated and cleared more than 2,500 suspects and they are no closer to identifying the perp even with today's technology.
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Prologue
Arthur Leigh Allen. Richard Marshall. Robert Ivan Nichols. Richard Gaikowski. Lawrence Kane. Ross Sullivan. Giuseppe Bevilacqua. Ted Kaczynski. A bunch of names with no connection at all. An elementary school teacher. A silent film enthusiast and projectionist. An identity thief. A newspaper editor. A convicted voyeur. A library assistant. A superintendent of the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial. The fucking Unabomber. About as random as stuffing your hand in a bowl of business cards at a Bitcoin convention and pulling out a few.
And yet they all have one thing in common.
They have all been suspected of being the Zodiac killer.
From December, 1968, till at least January, 1974, this near-legendary serial killer murdered, terrorized, sent letters to the media, left riddles to be solved, and openly taunted law enforcement. And not only was he never caught, he was never even identified – hence, ‘the most famous unsolved murder case in American history’.
In 45 years, police investigated and cleared more than 2,500 suspects.
Act I + II
Pretty much nothing is simple, clear-cut in this case, even the first and simplest thing you’d think to look at, the actual murders themselves, remain largely shrouded in mystery – while investigators have confirmed five murders (seven victims in total, two of whom survived), the Zodiac has claimed to have committed at least 37, and rumors and theories regarding suspected murders and victims abound.
It began on December 20th, 1968, with the murder of a high school student couple on their first date (after a uniquely long pause between the 1st and 2nd confirmed murder – the next attack wouldn’t happen until July of 1969, while from that point on the killings occurred somewhat regularly throughout that year).
He targeted almost exclusively couples (at least as far as the confirmed murders are concerned), with one exception of a cab driver whom he shot once in the head on October 11th, 1969 (this was also the last confirmed victim of the Zodiac).
One of the most significant, and perhaps the most chilling of all, was the Lake Berryessa murder. On September 27th, 1969, students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking at Lake Berryessa, when a man approached them wearing a black executioner’s hood, with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white cross-circle symbol on it. He had brought precut lengths of plastic clothesline and – at gunpoint - told Shepard to tie up Hartnell before he tied her up. He then pulled out a knife and started stabbing them both repeatedly, Hartnell suffering six wounds, and Shepard ten.
It was Hartnell who survived to tell the tale.
But it’s not the killing that this serial killer is known for – it is, in essence, what he did after the murder.
Once he had stabbed the two, he hiked back up towards Hartnell’s car, drew the cross-circle symbol on the door with a black felt-tip pen, and wrote this beneath it:
Vallejo
12-20-68
7-4-69
Sept 27–69–6:30
by knife
What set the Zodiac apart from all other serial killers was his constant correspondence, and communication with the world watching – he wasn’t afraid of police and media attention, he actively caused it with the letters he would send to newspapers on a regular basis.
Within those he would openly take credit for murders committed, sometimes providing details about them that had not yet been released to the public.
On August 7th, 1969, in a letter to the The San Francisco Examiner, the salutation ‘Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking’ was used. This was the first time the killer had used this name for identification
On October 20th, 1969, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called into the talk show A.M. San Francisco. Asked for a less ominous name, he picked ‘Sam’. The caller said that he would not reveal his true identity as he was afraid of being sent to the gas chamber.
A meeting was arranged on-air between the caller and a prominent lawyer, outside a shop on Mission Street in Daly City, but no one ever showed up. The call was later traced back to a patient in a mental institution, and investigators concluded that the man was not the Zodiac
On October 27th, 1970, Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, best known for his reporting on the Zodiac killer, received a Halloween card signed with the letter 'Z' and the Zodiac's crossed-circle symbol. The front of the card read, ‘From your secret pal: I feel it in my bones / you ache to know my name / and so I'll clue you in...’ only to read inside, ‘But why spoil the game?’
There was also a handwritten note inside, which read, ‘Peek-a-boo, you are doomed.’
What really set him apart – and still does – were his ciphers. Encrypted messages that were made public for everyone to try their hand at decoding them.
The first cipher was the longest, a 408-symbol cryptogram which the killer claimed contained his identity. The killer demanded it be printed on each paper's front page or he would ‘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.’
On November 8th, 1969, the Zodiac mailed the Z-340 cipher, a cipher that would remain unsolved for over 51 years – until December, 2020, when an international team of private citizens decrypted it (which was verified by the FBI). In the decrypted message the Zodiac denied being the ‘Sam’ who spoke on A.M. San Francisco, explaining that he was not afraid of the gas chamber ‘because it will send me to paradise all the sooner.’ The FBI stated that the decoded message gave no further clues to the identity of Zodiac.
On April 20th, 1970, the shortest, and perhaps the most important, cipher appeared. The Z13 cipher was preceded simply by the words ‘My name is __’, followed by a 13-character cipher that hasn't been solved to this day (though there is one quite infamous claim to this, quite recently, which will get back to later on).
On October 6th, 1969, police interviewed Arthur Leigh Allen, after he had been reported in the vicinity of the Lake Berryessa murder. But that was no more than a routine encounter. It wasn’t until August 4th, 1971, when he came to the police’s attention again, after a friend of Allen’s reported that Allen had – allegedly – talked about how he wanted to 'kill couples at random', 'call himself Zodiac' and that he 'would use a flashlight attached to his gun to aid hunting at night'. According to this friend, that conversation occurred no later than January 1st, 1969.
Out of all the names in that opening list (which itself is an extremely abridged version) Allen remains, to this day, the only suspect authorities ever publicly named.
In 1972, San Francisco police obtained a search warrant for Allen’s residence. Allen was eventually arrested in 1974, but for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy. He pleaded guilty and served two years in prison.
In 1991, police again obtained a warrant for Allen’s residence, where this time they found bomb making diagrams, including the use of oil and ammonium nitrate, pipe bombs and a host of incriminating evidence - but Allen claimed they had been left there by a third party. No charges were filed.
In 1992, a victim and survivor of the Zodiac identified Allen as the man who shot him in 1969 from a photo line-up, saying "That's him! That's the man who shot me’. However, in the 2007 documentary His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen, a police officer who was speculated to have seen the Zodiac fleeing from the cab driver killing, stating that Allen weighed about 100 pounds more than the man he saw, adding that his face was ‘too round’.
At the end of the day, the evidence against Allen was always almost exclusively circumstantial. He lived in Vallejo and worked minutes away from where one of the Zodiac victims lived and from where one of the killings took place. He owned a Royal typewriter with an Elite type, the same brand with which a letter sent to the Riverside Police Department was typed. He owned and wore a Zodiac brand wristwatch. He had stated that his favorite story was 'The Most Dangerous Game', which was partially mentioned in the 408 cipher (‘man is the most dangerous animal’).
That circumstantial evidence, however, was enough for detective George Bawart. who was almost certain it was him, as there were simply too many coincidences to not be. They were ready to charge Arthur Leigh Allen and take him to trial but he died before they could do that.
In 2002, the SFPD developed a partial DNA profile from the saliva on stamps and envelopes of Zodiac's letters. The SFPD compared this partial DNA to that of Arthur Leigh Allen, with no match indicated.
T he world's leading expert on the Zodiac’s handwriting, Lloyd Cunningham, who worked on the Zodiac case for decades, received boxes full of Allen's writing, and none of his writing even came close to the Zodiac. Nor did DNA extracted from the envelopes (on the Zodiac letters) come close to Arthur Leigh Allen.
After the so-called Lake Tahoe card in 1971, the Zodiac went silent for nearly three years.
Until on January 29th, 1974, he mailed a letter to the Chronicle, which opened with the phrase, ‘I saw + think “The Exorcist” was the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen.’
It included a ‘Signed, yours truley’, the usual spelling errors, these lines from The Mikado, ‘He plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the suicides grave tit willo tit willo tit willo’, and a postscript reading ‘if I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I’m capable of doing’. A strange collection of Asian styled characters at the foot of the letter remain unexplained, though one – unverified – decoding spells out the words ‘To Kill’.
Finally, at the very bottom, the score was ‘Me – 37 / SFPD – 0’.
This would be the final officially recognized Zodiac letter, and as such the final officially recognized activity by the Zodiac killer, ever. As far as the actual events of the case were concerned, it was over.
Act III
But as far as the mystery, the lasting cultural impact of the unshakeable question of ‘who’, it was just the beginning.
A number of suspicious letters followed in the years to come, all unverified.
Then, in 1978, a uniquely bizarre case unfolded. On April 24th a letter arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle that read:
‘Dear Editor
This is the Zodiac speaking I am back with you. Tell herb caen I am here, I have always been here. That city pig toschi is good - but I am smarter and better he will get tired then leave me alone. I am waiting for a good movie about me. who will play me. I am now in control of all things.’
The letter was initially deemed authentic, but was then declared a hoax less than three months later by three experts. But where this gets bizarre is that the man who was accused of forging it was none other than Dave Toschi, the top investigator in the Zodiac case for nine years. Author and columnist Armistead Maupin believed the letter to be similar to ‘fan mail’ that praised the work of Toschi in the investigation, which he received in 1976 – and he believed that both letters were written by Toschi.
Toschi did actually admit to sending fake fan letters about himself to Maupin, but denied writing the letter in question, calling it ‘absurd’. He was demoted to pawn shop detail, and retired from the force in 1985.
And then, nearly 30 years later, on March 3rd, 2007, an American Greetings Christmas card sent to the Chronicle, postmarked 1990 in Eureka, California, was re-discovered in their photo files (apparently initially overlooked amidst the countless hoax letters and forgeries). Its written contents bore an eerie resemblance to the Halloween card received by Avery more than twenty years ago, the front reading, ‘From your secret pal / can’t guess who I am yet? / Well look inside and you’ll find out…’ only to read inside, ‘… that I’m gonna keep you guessin! / Happy holidays, anyway.’
The handwriting resembled the Zodiac's, however an analysis by Lloyd Cunningham, led him to declare that he ‘could never conclude that this is the writing of the Zodiac. It tends to lean the other way -- I have the impression that someone tried to imitate the Zodiac's handwriting.’
Not all Zodiac experts agree with Cunningham’s analysis.
But what followed in far greater quantities than letters was suspects.
Perhaps no other case has created as many amateur detectives and researchers and at times just opportunists and con artists trying to make a buck or get their fifteen minutes by selling a book, positing some wild, absolutely ridiculous tale.
- In 2006, retired police detective Steve Hodel released a book called Black Dahlia Avenger, in which he argued that his father, George Hodel, was the 1947 Black Dahlia killer. Then taking advantage of that newfound credibility, he wrote a follow-up book called Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac in which he claimed that his father was also the Zodiac Killer, based upon a police sketch.
That book by the way was not well-received, widely described as unconvincing and lacking evidence.
- In 2009, in an episode of the History Channel television series MysteryQuest, Richard Gaikowski was investigated as a potential suspect. A newspaper editor, Gaikowski resembled the composite sketch. A police dispatcher that 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.
- Then in 2014 it was reported that a man had come forward and told police that a friend of his, Louis Joseph Myers, had confessed to him all the way back in 2001 that he was the Zodiac killer, after learning that he was dying from cirrhosis of the liver. He said that Myers asked him to wait until after he died to tell authorities, and that he wanted him to write a book with the proceeds going to the victims' families.
Myers died in May, 2002, and his friend has spent years trying to get police to listen.
There are a few potential connections linking Myers to 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 another victim. Military records show Myers was stationed in Germany between June, 1971, and January, 1973 – coincidentally, the Zodiac didn't send any letters during that time. Hmmm. - Then there’s Lawrence Kane, an American salesman and career criminal, who was apparently known for having a tendency to use various aliases to conceal his identity. – we’ll put a pin on that and get back to it in just a bit.
In March 1970, Kathleen Johns claimed that she had been abducted by a man who resembled the police sketch of the ‘Zodiac’ suspect.
Fast forward to 1992 – Johns picks out Kane in a photo lineup. Additionally, a patrol officer, who may have encountered the Zodiac Killer leaving a murder scene, said that Kane closely resembled the man he crossed paths with. Kane also worked at the same Nevada hotel as possible Zodiac victim Donna Lass.
Leaping forward to June 2021 – Fayçal Ziraoui, a French-Moroccan business consultant, announces online that he has solved the Z13 cipher, and that the solution reads ‘My name is Kayr’. Now, remember that bit about Kane using different aliases? There were a few of them; Kane, obviously. His birth name, Klein. Caine with a c. And Kaye.
That is what Ziraoui assumed ‘Kayr’ was a typo for, similar to ones found in previous ciphers.
His claims caused quite an uproar in the Zodiac community, with a member of the international code-breaking team who solved 340, saying that was practically impossible to determine if any of them are correct because the ciphers are too short to verifiably establish a pattern.
One final, potentially interesting tidbit – in the Zodiac’s ‘My Name is…’ Cipher, the first four letters are A E N K, an anagram for ‘Kane’. Hmmmm…
- In October of 2021 a team of more than 40 former law enforcement investigators, journalists and military intelligence officers, known as the Case Breakers, claimed to have identified the Zodiac Killer as Gary Francis Poste, an Air Force veteran who passed away in 2018 at the age of 80.
Their claims included the discovery of new forensic evidence and photos from Poste's darkroom, one image allegedly featuring scars on Poste’s forehead that match scars on a sketch of the Zodiac.
They also believe that Poste killed Cheri Jo Bates back in 1966, citing a series of coincidences connecting them. Among them are the facts that Poste was an Air Force veteran when he received medical check-ups for a gun incident at a hospital located 15 minutes away from the Bates murder scene.
- A wristwatch with paint splatter on it was collected at the murder scene and is thought to have been worn by the killer, and Poste painted homes for more than four decades- And detectives found a heel print from a military-style boot, which matched the same style and size of those found in other Zodiac crime scenes, and of Poste.
- And finally most recently and perhaps most inspiring are the following findings. In spring of 2021, an author by the name of Jarrett Kobek set out to write a book specifically about misinformation and misguided theories based on speculation rather than facts. But during his research into the Zodiac, one name kept popping up over and over again – Paul Doerr.
- He stumbled across a letter sent by Paul Doerr, wherein he advocated for the use of one-cent stamps – around the same time as a letter sent by the Zodiac, with six one-cent stamps.
- He also uncovered works of Doerr where he discussed J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional runic language, Cirth, used for creating ‘codes and cyphers’, published in April 1970, just when the killer was posting letters with ciphers of his own. It included an example bearing some resemblance to Zodiac’s handiwork, and like the Zodiac, Doerr had used an arcane spelling of cipher.
- He kept digging and found Doerr expressing enthusiasm for the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group devoted to medieval cosplay—as good an explanation as anyone had yet offered for the executioner’s hood the Zodiac wore during the Lake Berryessa murder. It turned out a Renaissance Faire was taking place in the same area on that very day.
- He then came across Doerr outlining instructions for making a bomb with ammonium nitrate and fertilizer, known as the ANFO formula—the same formula that the Zodiac had outlined in one letter. And, perhaps most importantly, both Doerr’s and the Zodiac’s instructions contained the same error.
- Finally, he discovered that the Minutemen, a militant right-wing group, had first published the ANFO formula in the mid-60s, and that they had also advocated sending threatening letters that featured a gunsight symbol similar to the Zodiac logo.
In the Minutemen FBI file, Kobek found a membership list. And guess who was on it…Paul Doerr.
Kobek compiled his findings in a 19-page document that he sent to the SFPD, but got no response. His book, How To Find Zodiac, was released in February, 2022, to modest sales and virtually no public notice.
However, so impressed was the daughter of Paul Doerr that she shifted from a lawsuit to meeting with Kobek, and eventually even telling him that despite her wanting to deny her father is the Zodiac Killer, she unfortunately thinks Kobek is right.
Epilogue
It’s been estimated that if the Zodiac were still alive today, he would most likely be around 90 years old. So maybe there’s an old man somewhere, on his porch at home, or in a nursing home, laughing at all these wannabe Sherlocks and fame chasers tripping over one another, or maybe trembling at every genuine discovery and advance towards uncovering him, or maybe not caring anymore in the slightest, tired of it all, or maybe, at the age of 90, not even remembering anymore – the Zodiac having forgotten that he’s the Zodiac. The one man that could’ve solved it.
In 45 years, police investigated and cleared more than 2,500 suspects – and by the looks of it, there’s another 2,500 coming.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer_letter,_April_24_1978
https://www.foxnews.com/us/cold-case-zodiac-killer-identified-murder
https://abc7news.com/archive/9441384/
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Zodiac-s-written-clues-fascinate-document-expert-2644828.php
https://zodiackillerfacts.com/zodiac-christmas-card.htm
https://reallifevillains.miraheze.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kane
https://www.thefocus.news/culture/lawrence-kane-zodiac-suspect/
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/arthur-leigh-allen.html
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/the-exorcist-letter.html
https://www.zodiackiller.com/ExorcistLetter.html
https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/231082
https://apnews.com/article/b792f9841bd475db489d58fc3601b319
https://www.history.com/news/the-zodiac-ciphers-what-we-know
