The Murders of The Zodiac Killer
In In the late 60’s and early 70’s, the Zodiac Killer terrorized Northern California, killing at least five people and claiming to have killed 37 people in total.
The first killings occurred on Dec. 20, 1968, in Vallejo, California. The two teen victims were shot and killed while sitting in a parked car in a gravel parking area.
The next crime occurred on July 4, 1969, only a few minutes away from the first killings. The killer approached a parked car with a flashlight and shot the two passengers before walking away and coming back to shoot them again. One of the victims, Michael Mageau, survived and was able to give a description of the killer:
A few weeks later, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald all received identical handwritten letters from someone claiming to be the killer.
The letters included three different codes that the Zodiac claimed would reveal his identity.
A couple days later, the San Francisco Examinerreceived another letter, in which the killer referred to himself as the Zodiac for the first time, writing, “This is the Zodiac speaking.”
On Sept. 27, 1969, in Napa, California, a picnicking couple was stabbed by a man in an executioner-style hood with the Zodiac symbol on his chest.
But one of the victims, Bryan Hartnell, survived! He was able to give a description of the killer:
Finally, on Oct. 11, 1969, in San Francisco, taxi driver Paul Stine was shot in the head by his passenger. A teenager across the street heard the shot and got a good look at the perpetrator, and so did two other witnesses.
In the chaos of the situation, the police dispatcher somehow incorrectly identified the suspect as a black male, even though he was described differently:
When two police officers, Donald Fouke and Eric Zelms, drove past a stocky, white male with heavy-rimmed glasses a few blocks away from the scene, they did not question him, since he didn’t fit the dispatcher’s description.
The Zodiac would later mock this interaction in a letter, making it likely that the two cops drove by the nation’s most notorious serial killer at the time without even knowing.
A composite sketch was drawn based on descriptions by the two witnesses at the Paul Stine killing. It has become the most famous image of the Zodiac.
On April 20, 1970, a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle included a coded message of the Zodiac’s name.
The Zodiac continued sending letters, but then stopped in 1971. But in 1974, he sent one last letter, in which he claimed to have killed 37 people.
In 2002, the SF police department was able to extract a partial genetic profile from a Zodiac letter from the saliva on the stamp. It wasn’t enough to conclusively identity a single person, but was enough to eliminate some suspects.
Unsolved 