Zodiac Killer


The Zodiac is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. The Zodiac attacked three couples and a cab driver in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco. Two of the Zodiac's seven victims survived.
In a series of letters mailed to Bay Area newspapers, the Zodiac took credit for the murders, described details known only to police, threatened bombings and more murders if the newspapers did not print his letters, and included cryptograms with his correspondence. Two of the Zodiac's four cryptograms were decrypted in 1969 and 2020, and the other two remain unsolved. The Zodiac's last letter was received by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1974. In the letter, The Zodiac claimed to have killed 37 people, one of which was a 1966 murder of a woman in Riverside, California.
Despite several theories about the Zodiac's true identity, the only suspect police named was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992. The Zodiac's murders, cryptograms, and letters to newspapers have made the case one of the most famous unsolved cases in American history. The Zodiac has become a fixture of popular culture, and the search for his identity continues to be pursued by amateur detectives all over the world.
In 2004, the San Francisco Police Department marked the case "inactive," but subsequently re-opened the case in 2006. The California Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the city of Vallejo, and the Napa and Solano county sheriffs maintain the case status as "open."

Murders and correspondence

Police and investigators concur The Zodiac attacked seven people on four occasions in California. Five victims died; two survived:
  1. David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on [|Lake Herman Road] in Benicia.
  2. Michael Renault Mageau and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin were shot around midnight between July 4 and 5, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. Mageau survived the attack; Ferrin died at Kaiser Foundation Hospital.
  3. Bryan Calvin Hartnell and Cecelia Ann Shepard were stabbed on September 27, 1969, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived; Shepard died from her injuries on September 29 at Queen of the Valley Hospital.
  4. Paul Lee Stine was shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.
From 1969 to 1974, the Zodiac sent over twenty letters to newspapers, police, Chronicle writer Paul Avery, and attorney Melvin Belli. In the first sentence of the third letter, the writer identified himself as, "This is The Zodiac speaking," and signed all his letters with a symbol resembling the crosshairs of a gunsight:. Four of the mailings included cryptograms; only two have been solved. The letters were postmarked in San Francisco and Pleasanton.
The Zodiac's confirmed correspondence with date, recipient, and incipit:
  1. July 31st 1969: San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and Vallejo Times. One-third of "Z408 cryptogram" enclosed with each letter. "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass..."
  2. August 4th 1969: Examiner. "This is the Zodiac speaking."
  3. October 13th 1969: Chronicle. Swatch of Paul Stine's shirt. "I am the murderer of the taxi driver..."
  4. November 8th 1969: Chronicle. "Z340 cryptogram." The "Dripping Pen" card. "I though you would need a good laugh..."
  5. November 9th 1969: Chronicle. Bomb diagram. "...I have killed 7 people".
  6. December 20th 1969: Melvin Belli. Swatch of Stine's shirt. "...happy Christmass."
  7. April 20th 1970: Chronicle. "Z13 cryptogram." "My name is..."
  8. April 28th 1970: Chronicle. Greeting card. "I hope you enjoy yourselves..."
  9. June 26th 1970: Chronicle. "Z32 cryptogram." "I have become very upset..."
  10. July 24th 1970: Chronicle. "I am rather unhappy..."
  11. July 26th 1970: Chronicle. "Being that you will not wear some nice ⌖ buttons..."
  12. October 5th 1970: Chronicle. Thirteen-hole punch card. "You'll hate me..."
  13. October 27th 1970: Paul Avery at Chronicle. Halloween card. "From your secret pal..."
  14. March 13th 1971: Los Angeles Times. "...I am crack proof."
  15. January 29th 1974: Chronicle. The "Exorcist" letter.

    Lake Herman Road murders

The first murders retroactively attributed to the Zodiac were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Arthur Faraday on December 20, 1968. Faraday was a student at Vallejo High School, while Jensen was a student at Hogan High School. At 8:30 p.m. Faraday picked up Jensen, and the couple visited one of Jensen's friends. Sometime after 9 p.m., they drove to the outskirts of Vallejo and parked at a lover's lane on Lake Herman Road,, just inside the Benicia city limits. Between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., a passing motorist noticed the couple parked on a gravel runoff near the gate to a water pumping station. The couple was spotted again at 11 p.m.
Between 11:05 and 11:10 p.m., Faraday and Jensen were attacked. Police determined that their assailant parked his vehicle about ten feet alongside the passenger side of Faraday's car. He fired several shots at Faraday's car as he walked around to the driver's side. None of the shots hit Faraday and Jensen. The couple scrambled to get out through the passenger door; Jensen succeeded. As Faraday was exiting, the killer shot him in the head with a.22-caliber pistol. The assailant chased Jensen as she fled, firing six shots at her back. Only one missed. Police theorized the whole attack took two to three minutes.
At 11:10 p.m., a motorist spotted the couple's bodies and alerted police. Jensen was dead. Faraday was still breathing. He died at the hospital. There were no witnesses and no usable tire or foot prints. The only motive the police could deduce was a "madman" wanting to kill. Despite an intense investigation in the following months, no viable suspects emerged. The murders were extensively covered by the media.

Blue Rock Springs murder

Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot shortly after midnight on July 4, 1969. Ferrin was popular in Vallejo due to her job at a local restaurant, where she met Mageau. On July 4, they went on a date despite the fact that Ferrin was married. After 11:30 p.m., Ferrin received a phone call at her house. She arrived at Mageau's house around 11:50 p.m.
Immediately after leaving Mageau's house, the couple noticed they were being followed by a man in a light-colored car. Ferrin drove out of Vallejo in the direction of Lake Herman Road. Shortly before midnight, she turned her car into an empty parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park. This was another lover's lane, located just two miles from Lake Herman Road. Ferrin either parked or stalled 70 feet from the lot entrance. Another vehicle parked about 80 feet to their left. The driver turned his headlights off and sat motionless. Mageau asked who the driver was. Ferrin told him not to worry. The stranger abruptly tore away from the parked couple.
Five minutes later, the stranger returned, parked a few feet next to Mageau's side of the car and got out. He shone a flashlight into Ferrin's car as he approached. Assuming he was a police officer, the couple rolled down Mageau's window. Without speaking, the stranger fired a 9mm pistol into the car. One bullet hit Mageau in the right arm, and the other hit Ferrin in the neck. Mageau tried to leave the car, but his door handle was missing or removed. The assailant returned to his car, opened the door, and did something Mageau could not see. As Mageau struggled to exit the vehicle, the stranger shot him and Ferrin two more times each. The killer hurried into his car and drove off. A golf course caretaker heard the shots around 12:10 a.m. The perpetrator left no clues that could be traced back to him.
Three teenagers drove into the parking lot, saw the wounded couple, and got help. Police arrived at 12:20 a.m. Twenty minutes later, Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mageau survived and described the attacker as a heavyset white man, around 5'8" tall. He estimated the assailant's weight as 195–200 pounds, with a large face and curly light brown hair. The killer wore dark clothes and no glasses. These details were not enough to develop a suspect. Moments after 12:40 a.m., the Vallejo Police Department received a phone call from a payphone two blocks from headquarters. The man on the other end of the line said:
"I want to report a double murder. If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye."

Serial killers will commonly pause to reflect on their actions. Authors Michael Kelleher and David Van Nuys speculated that the seven months between the attacks on Lake Herman Road and at Blue Rock Springs was a "cooling off period" for the Zodiac.

Ferrin–Zodiac prior relationship theory

Many have speculated that Darlene Ferrin knew her killer. Kelleher and Nuys credit the origin of the theory to Robert Graysmith's 1986 book Zodiac. He argued extensively for a connection based on interviews with Ferrin's friends. A definitive connection has not been proven.
Mageau gave conflicting accounts on whether Ferrin knew her killer. At the hospital, he stated he did not know the murderer. At another point, he said the assailant's name was "Richard". Ferrin's sister claimed one of Darlene's boyfriends was named Richard. In the Zodiac's later correspondence, he only ever refers to Ferrin as "girl".
In Graysmith's telling, Ferrin and Mageau were chased. They only stopped when their car hit a log and stalled. The detective on the scene noticed that the car was still on and in low gear. Kelleher and Nuys suggest that Ferrin would not tell Mageau to ignore the mystery driver, nor would they assume he was a police officer, if they had not stopped at the spot by choice.
Ferrin did know Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday. She lived less than two blocks from Jensen and attended Hogan High School. She was also familiar with Lake Herman Road's status as a lover's lane. There is a picture of Ferrin and an unknown man who closely resembles a composite sketch of the Zodiac. In a 2011 episode of America's Most Wanted, police stated they believe the photo was taken in San Francisco in either 1966 or 1967.