Zodiac Killer Biography | Zodiac Killer

Zodiac killer, unidentified American serial killer who is believed to have murdered six people, primarily in northern California, between 1966 and 1969. The case inspired the influential 1971 film Dirty Harry, which starred Clint Eastwood, and it was the subject of the critically acclaimed David Fincher drama Zodiac (2007).

Zodiac killer’s apparent first victim, an 18-year-old college student, was stabbed to death in Riverside, California, in 1966. Although this murder is commonly attributed to the Zodiac killer, some experts claim it was not committed by him. Soon after the murder, a local newspaper received a letter that provided details of the crime and declared that the victim was neither the first nor the last.

In 1968 a teenage couple was shot to death near their car in a remote area north of San Francisco; one year later another couple was attacked in similar circumstances, though the male victim survived. After the 1969 attack, the killer phoned the police to alert them to the crime and to take responsibility for the 1968 murders. Later that year the Zodiac killer attacked another young couple, though once again the male survived. The last victim, a taxi driver, was shot in October 1969.

The murders were the subject of intense investigation and media coverage, particularly because of the killer’s taunting letters and phone calls, in which he explained the mystical and intellectual bases of his decision to kill. His letters demonstrated great interest in astrological symbolism and may have reflected the influence of occult religious thought popular in California at the time.

Much remains mysterious about the Zodiac case, not least the issue of when the crimes stopped. Crime writer Robert Graysmith has argued that the Zodiac killer remained active through the 1980s and murdered dozens of more people, though this view is controversial. During the 1990s several investigators claimed to have identified the Zodiac killer; the suspect most often cited was Arthur Leigh Allen (1933–92), a Vallejo, California, schoolteacher who had been institutionalized in 1975 for child molestation, though his identification with the Zodiac killer has never been substantiated.

Zodiac-killer Age

Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted.

Zodiac Killer Image

Zodiac Killer Movies

The Zodiac Killer was the inspiration for the psychopath in the 1971 Clint Eastwood classic Dirty Harry, which includes a scene involving a school bus full of children being hijacked.

Years later, Robert Graysmith’s writing fueled the creation of David Fincher’s critically acclaimed Zodiac, which hit the big screen in 2007 with Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. in starring roles.

Subsequent dramatized takes on the subject include the 2017 feature Awakening the Zodiac, about a couple that investigates the murderer before falling into his crosshairs.

The History Channel also featured a 2017 nonfiction TV series, The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer, about investigators’ hunt to decipher the Zodiac Killer’s code.

Victims & Attacks

At present, four separate attacks have been definitively attributed to the Zodiac Killer. The first confirmed incident took place on the night of December 20, 1968, when 17-year-old David Faraday and his 16-year-old girlfriend, Betty Lou Jensen, were shot to death near their car at a remote spot on Lake Herman Road, on the outskirts of Vallejo, California. Police was baffled, unable to determine the motive for the crime or a suspect.

Early in the morning of July 5, 1969, Darlene Ferrin, age 22, and her boyfriend, Mike Mageau, age 19, were sitting in a parked car in a similarly remote Vallejo location, when they were approached by a man with a flashlight. The figure fired multiple shots at them, killing Ferrin and seriously wounding Mageau.

Within an hour of the incident, a man called the Vallejo Police Department, giving them the location of the crime scene and claiming responsibility for both that attack and the 1968 murders of Faraday and Jensen.

Despite evidence that included fingerprints, Mageau’s description, the decoded cipher and a wave of tips and leads, police were unable to track down the Zodiac Killer.

On the evening of September 27, 1969, he struck again, approaching young couple Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell as they relaxed on an isolated part of the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Wearing a hood and a shirt bearing a circle-cross symbol, he tied them up before brutally stabbing them, scrawling a message for police on their car door and leaving the scene. He then called the Napa Police Department to claim responsibility. Shepard and Hartnell were both in critical condition but alive when emergency services arrived, but Shepard died of her wounds shortly thereafter.

Two weeks later, on October 11, 1969, the Zodiac claimed another life, shooting 29-year-old taxi driver Paul Stine in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood. As the murder did not seem to fit the Zodiac’s pattern, it was initially deemed a robbery until the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter claiming the crime.

At least five other murders have been tentatively linked to the Zodiac killer, including the 1963 shooting of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards near Santa Barbara, California, and the 1966 stabbing death of college student Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, California.

Sketch of the Zodiac Killer

With descriptions from witnesses who had seen a man leaving the scene of Paul Stine’s 1969 murder, police were able to create and circulate a composite sketch of the killer. But despite mounting evidence and the investigation of numerous suspects, the Zodiac remained at large.

Was the Zodiac Killer Ever Caught?

In both the known and presumed Zodiac murders, no suspect has ever been arrested. In the nearly five decades since the Faraday-Jensen murders, the inability to identify the Zodiac Killer has continued to frustrate law enforcement.

Zodiac Killer Theories & Suspects

The mystery surrounding the Zodiac case also continues to fascinate the public and has inspired more than its fair share of theories regarding the killer’s identity. Ranging from plausible to crackpot, these include the claims that he was Unabomber Ted Kaczynski or convicted murderer Charles Manson, or that he eventually moved to Scotland and committed more murders there before finding happiness and giving up his wicked ways.

Zodiac Killer Timeline

Lake Herman Road attack

The first murders widely attributed to the Zodiac Killer were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits. The couple were on their first date and planned to attend a Christmas concert at Hogan High School about three blocks from Jensen’s home. The couple instead visited a friend before stopping at a local restaurant and then driving out on Lake Herman Road. At about 10:15 p.m., Faraday parked his mother’s Rambler in a gravel turnout, which was a well-known lovers’ lane. Shortly after 11:00 p.m., their bodies were found by Stella Borges, who lived nearby. The Solano County Sheriff’s Department investigated the crime but no leads developed.

Utilizing available forensic data, Robert Graysmith postulated that another car pulled into the turnout, just prior to 11:00 pm and parked beside the couple. The killer apparently exited the second car and walked toward the Rambler, possibly ordering the couple out of the Rambler. Jensen appeared to have exited the car first, yet when Faraday was halfway out, the killer apparently shot Faraday in the head. Fleeing from the killer, Jensen was gunned down twenty-eight feet from the car with five shots through her back. The killer then drove off.

Zodiac Killer Blue Rock Springs attack

Just before midnight on July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau drove into the Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo, four miles (6.4 km) from the Lake Herman Road murder site, and parked. While the couple sat in Ferrin’s car, a second car drove into the lot and parked alongside them but almost immediately drove away. Returning about 10 minutes later, this second car parked behind them.

The driver of the second car then exited the vehicle, approaching the passenger side door of Ferrin’s car, carrying a flashlight and a 9 mm Luger. The killer directed the flashlight into Mageau’s and Ferrin’s eyes before shooting at them, firing five times. Both victims were hit, and several bullets had passed through Mageau and into Ferrin. The killer walked away from the car but upon hearing Mageau’s moaning, returned and shot each victim twice more before driving off.

On July 5, 1969, at 12:40 a.m., a man phoned the Vallejo Police Department to report and claim responsibility for the attack. The caller also took credit for the murders of Jensen and Faraday six-and-a-half months earlier. Police traced the call to a phone booth at a gas station at Springs Road and Tuolumne, located about three-tenths of a mile (500 m) from Ferrin’s home and only a few blocks from the Vallejo Police Department. Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mageau survived the attack despite being shot in the face, neck, and chest.  Mageau described his attacker as a 26-to-30-year-old, 195-to-200-pound (88 to 91 kg) or possibly even more, 5-foot-8-inch (1.73 m) white male with short, light brown curly hair.

Letters from the Zodiac

On August 1, 1969, three letters prepared by the killer were received at the Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The San Francisco Examiner. The nearly identical letters—subsequently described by a psychiatrist to have been written by “someone you would expect to be brooding and isolated”—took credit for the shootings at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs. Each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram which the killer claimed contained his identity. The killer demanded they 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.

The Chronicle published its third of the cryptogram on page four of the next day’s edition. An article printed alongside the code quoted Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz as saying “We’re not satisfied that the letter was written by the murderer” and requested the writer send a second letter with more facts to prove his identity. The threatened murders did not happen, and all three parts were eventually published.

On August 7, 1969, another letter was received at The San Francisco Examiner with the salutation “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking.” This was the first time the killer had used this name for identification. The letter was a response to Chief Stiltz’s request for more details that would prove he had killed Faraday, Jensen, and Ferrin. In it, the Zodiac included details about the murders which had not yet been released to the public, as well as a message to the police that when they cracked his code “they will have me.

On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California, cracked the 408-symbol cryptogram. It contained a misspelled message in which the killer said he was collecting slaves for the afterlife. No name appears in the decoded text, and the killer said that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.

Lake Berryessa attack

On September 27, 1969, Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking at Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. A white man, about 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) weighing more than a 170 pounds (77 kg) with combed greasy brown hair, approached them wearing a black executioner’s-type hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white three-by-three-inch (7.6 cm × 7.6 cm) cross-circle symbol on it.

He approached them with a gun, which Hartnell believed to be a. The hooded man claimed to be an escaped convict from a jail with a two-word name, in either Colorado or Montana (a police officer later inferred he had been referring to a jail in Deer Lodge, Montana), where he had killed a guard and subsequently stolen a car, explaining that he now needed their car and money to go to Mexico, as the vehicle he had been driving was “too hot”. He had brought precut lengths of plastic clothesline and told Shepard to tie up Hartnell before he tied her up. The killer checked and tightened Hartnell’s bonds after discovering Shepard had bound Hartnell’s hands loosely.

Hartnell initially believed this event to be a weird robbery, but the man drew a knife and stabbed them both repeatedly, Hartnell suffering six and Shepard ten wounds in the process. The killer then hiked 500 yards (460 m) back up to Knoxville Road, drew the cross-circle symbol on Hartnell’s car door with a black felt-tip pen, and wrote beneath it: “Vallejo/12-20-68/7-4-69/Sept 27–69–6:30/by knife.”

At 7:40 p.m., the killer called the Napa County Sheriff’s office from a pay telephone to report this latest crime. The caller first stated to the operator that he wished to “report a murder – no, a double murder,” before stating that he had been the perpetrator of the crime. The phone was found, still off the hook, minutes later at the Napa Car Wash on Main Street in Napa by KVON radio reporter Pat Stanley, only a few blocks from the sheriff’s office, yet 27 miles (43 km) from the crime scene. Detectives were able to lift a still-wet palm print from the telephone but were never able to match it to any suspect.

After hearing their screams for help, a man and his son who were fishing in a nearby cove discovered the victims and summoned help by contacting park rangers. Napa County Sheriff’s deputies Dave Collins and Ray Land were the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the crime scene.

Cecelia Shepard was conscious when Collins arrived, providing him with a detailed description of the attacker. Hartnell and Shepard were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa by ambulance. Shepard lapsed into a coma during transport to the hospital and never regained consciousness. She died two days later, but Hartnell survived to recount his tale to the press. Napa County Sheriff Detective Ken Narlow, who was assigned to the case from the outset, worked on solving the crime until his retirement from the department in 1987.

Presidio Heights attack

Two weeks later on October 11, 1969, a passenger entered the cab driven by Paul Stine at the intersection of Mason and Geary Streets (one block west from Union Square) in San Francisco requesting to be taken to Washington and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights. For reasons unknown, Stine drove one block past Maple to Cherry Street; the passenger then shot Stine once in the head with a 9mm, took Stine’s wallet and car keys, and tore away a section of Stine’s bloodstained shirt tail. This passenger was observed by three teenagers across the street at 9:55 p.m., who called the police while the crime was in progress.

They observed a man wiping the cab down before walking away towards the Presidio, one block to the north.Two blocks from the crime scene, Officer Don Fouke, responding to the call, observed a white man, walking along the sidewalk and stepping onto a stairway leading up to the front yard of one of the homes on the north side of the street; the encounter lasted only five to ten seconds.

Fouke estimated the man to be 35-to-45 years old, while the teenagers who observed the killer in Stine’s cab mentioned he was a 25-to-30-year-old white male adult at about 5-foot-8-inch (1.73 m) to 5-foot-9-inch (1.75 m) tall. The radio dispatcher had alerted to be on the lookout for a black suspect, so they drove past him without stopping; the mix-up in descriptions remains unexplained.

A search ensued, but no suspects were found. The three teen witnesses worked with a police artist to prepare a composite sketch of Stine’s killer; a few days later, this police artist returned, working with the witnesses to prepare a second composite sketch of the killer.

Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case. The San Francisco Police Department investigated an estimated 2,500 suspects over a period of years.

 Zodiac Killer Communication from the Zodiac

On October 14, 1969, the Chronicle received another letter from the Zodiac, this time containing a swatch of Paul Stine’s shirt tail as proof he was the killer; it also included a threat about killing schoolchildren on a school bus. To do this, Zodiac wrote, “just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.” At 2:00 p.m. on October 20, 1969, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called the Oakland Police Department (OPD), demanding that one of two prominent lawyers, F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, appear on the local television show A.M. San Francisco, hosted by Jim Dunbar.

Bailey was not available, but Belli did appear on the show. Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open, and eventually, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times and said his name was “Sam”. Belli agreed to meet with him in Daly City, but the suspect never showed up.

On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. The 340-character cipher has never been decoded. Numerous possible solutions have been suggested, but none can be claimed as definitive.

On November 9, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter stating that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he shot Stine. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12 including the Zodiac’s claim; that same day, Officer Don Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened the night of Stine’s murder. On December 20, 1969, exactly one year after the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli that included another swatch of Stine’s shirt; the Zodiac said he wanted Belli to help him.

Modesto attack

On the night of March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. She was seven months pregnant and had her 10-month-old daughter beside her. While heading west on Highway 132 near Modesto, a car behind her began honking its horn and flashing its headlights.

She pulled off the road and stopped. The man in the car parked behind her, approached her car, stated that he observed that her right rear wheel was wobbling, and offered to tighten the lug nuts. After finishing his work, the man drove off; yet when Johns pulled forward to re-enter the highway the wheel almost immediately came off the car. The man returned, offering to drive her to the nearest gas station for help. She and her daughter climbed into his car.

During the ride, the car passed several service stations but the man did not stop. For about 90 minutes he drove back and forth around the backroads near Tracy. When Johns asked why he was not stopping, he would change the subject. When the driver finally stopped at an intersection, Johns jumped out with her daughter and hid in a field. The driver searched for her using his flashlight telling her that he would not hurt her, before eventually giving up. Unable to find her, he got back into the car and drove off. Johns hitched a ride to the police station in Patterson.

When Johns gave her statement to the sergeant on duty, she noticed the police composite sketch of Paul Stine’s killer and recognized him as the man who had abducted her and her child. Fearing he might come back and kill them all, the sergeant had Johns wait, in the dark, at the nearby Mil’s Restaurant. When her car was found, it had been gutted and torched.

Most accounts say he threatened to kill her and her daughter while driving them around, but at least one police report disputes that. Johns’s account to Paul Avery of the Chronicle indicates her abductor left his car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight; however, in one report she made to the police, she stated he did not leave the vehicle.

Further Zodiac communications

Zodiac continued to communicate with authorities for the remainder of 1970 via letters and greeting cards to the press. In a letter postmarked April 20, 1970, the Zodiac wrote, “My name is _____,” followed by a 13-character cipher. The Zodiac went on to state that he was not responsible for the recent bombing of a police station in San Francisco (referring to February 18, 1970, death of Sgt. Brian McDonnell two days after the bombing at Park Station in Golden Gate Park) but added “there is more glory to killing a cop than acid  because a cop can shoot back.” The letter included a diagram of a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would use to blow up a school bus. At the bottom of the diagram, he wrote: “ = 10, SFPD = 0.”

Zodiac sent a greeting card postmarked April 28, 1970, to the Chronicle. Written on the card was, “I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my BLAST,” followed by the Zodiac’s cross circle signature. On the back of the card, the Zodiac threatened to use the bus bomb soon unless the newspaper published the full details he wrote. He also wanted to start seeing people wearing “some nice Zodiac buttons .”

In a letter postmarked June 26, 1970, the Zodiac stated he was upset that he did not see people wearing Zodiac buttons. He wrote, “I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38.” The Zodiac was possibly referring to the murder of Sgt. Richard Radetich, a week earlier, on June 19. At 5:25 am, Radetich was writing a parking ticket in his squad car when an assailant shot him in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. Radetich died 15 hours later. SFPD denies the Zodiac was involved in this murder; it remains unsolved.

Included with the letter was a Phillips 66 roadmap of the San Francisco Bay Area. On the image of Mount Diablo, the Zodiac had drawn a crossed-circle similar to the ones he had included in previous correspondence. At the top of the crossed circle, he placed a zero, and then a three, six, and a nine. The accompanying instructions stated that the zero was “to be set to Mag. N.”The letter also included a 32-letter cipher that the killer claimed would, in conjunction with the code, lead to the location of a bomb he had buried and set to go off in the fall. The cipher was never decoded, and the alleged bomb was never located. The killer signed the note with “ = 12, SFPD = 0.”

In a letter to the Chronicle postmarked July 24, 1970, the Zodiac took credit for Kathleen Johns’s abduction, four months after the incident. In a July 26, 1970 letter, the Zodiac paraphrased a song from The Mikado, adding his own lyrics about making a “little list” of the ways he planned to torture his “slaves” in “paradise”. The letter was signed with a large, exaggerated cross-circle symbol and a new score: “ = 13, SFPD = 0″. A final note at the bottom of the letter stated, “P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians.” In 1981, a close examination of the radian hint by Zodiac researcher Gareth Penn led to the discovery that a radian angle, when placed over the mapper Zodiac’s instructions, pointed to the locations of two Zodiac attacks.

On October 7, 1970, the Chronicle received a three-by-five-inch card signed by the Zodiac with the and a small cross reportedly drawn with blood. The card’s message was formed by pasting words and letters from an edition of the Chronicle, and thirteen holes were punched across the card. Inspectors Armstrong and Toschi agreed it was “highly probable” the card came from the Zodiac.

Zodiac Killer Final Zodiac letter

After the “Pines” card, the Zodiac remained silent for nearly three years. The Chronicle then received a letter from the Zodiac, postmarked January 29, 1974, praising The Exorcist as “the best satirical comedy that I have ever seen”. The letter included a snippet of verse from The Mikado and an unusual symbol at the bottom that has remained unexplained by researchers. Zodiac concluded the letter with a new score, “Me = 37, SFPD = 0”.

Later letters of suspicious authorship
Of further communications sent by the public to members of the news media, some contained similar characteristics of previous Zodiac writings. The Chronicle received a letter postmarked February 14, 1974, informing the editor that the initials for the Symbionese Liberation Army spelled out an Old Norse word meaning “kill”. However, the handwriting was not authenticated as the Zodiacs.

A letter to the Chronicle, postmarked May 8, 1974, featured a complaint that the movie Badlands was “murder-glorification” and asked the paper to cut its advertisements. Signed only “A citizen”, the handwriting, tone, and surface irony were all similar to earlier Zodiac communications. The Chronicle subsequently received an anonymous letter postmarked July 8, 1974, complaining of their publishing the writings of the antifeminist columnist Marco Spinelli. The letter was signed “the Red Phantom (red with rage)”. The Zodiac’s authorship of this letter is debated.

A letter, dated April 24, 1978, was initially deemed authentic but was declared a hoax less than three months later by three experts. Dave Toschi, the SFPD homicide detective who had worked the case since the Stine murder, was thought to have forged the letter because author Armistead Maupin believed the letter to be similar to “fan mail” he received in 1976 which he believed was authored by Toschi. While he admitted to writing the fan mail, Toschi denied forging the Zodiac letter and was eventually cleared of any charges. The authenticity of this letter remains unverified.

On March 3, 2007, an American Greetings Christmas card sent to the Chronicle, postmarked 1990 in Eureka had recently been discovered in their photo files by editorial assistant Daniel King. Inside the envelope, with the card, was a photocopy of two U.S. Postal keys on a magnet keychain. The handwriting on the envelope resembles Zodiac’s print but was declared inauthentic by forensic document examiner Lloyd Cunningham. However, not all Zodiac experts agree with Cunningham’s analysis. There is no return address on the envelope nor is his crossed-circle signature to be found. The card itself is unmarked. The Chronicle turned over all the material to the Vallejo Police Department for further analysis.

Current status of investigations
In April 2004, the SFPD marked the case “inactive”, citing caseload pressure and resource demands, effectively closing the case. However, they re-opened their case sometime before March 2007.

The case is open in Napa County and in the city of Riverside.

In May 2018, the Vallejo Police Department announced their intention to attempt to collect the Zodiac Killer’s DNA from the back of stamps he used during his correspondence. The analysis, by a private laboratory, is expected to utilize an advanced new technique that is able to separate DNA from the glue present on the back of stamps. It is hoped the Zodiac Killer may be caught in a similar fashion to the Golden State Killer. The results are expected back soon.

Zodiac Killer Suspects

Arthur Leigh Allen
Robert Graysmith’s book Zodiac advanced Arthur Leigh Allen as a potential suspect based on circumstantial evidence. Allen had been interviewed by police from the early days of the Zodiac investigations and was the subject of several search warrants over a 20-year period. In 2007 Graysmith noted that several police detectives described Allen as the most likely suspect. However, in 2010, Toschi stated that all the evidence against Allen ultimately “turned out to be negative.”

On October 6, 1969, Allen was interviewed by detective John Lynch of the Vallejo Police Department. Allen had been reported in the vicinity of the Lake Berryessa attack against Hartnell and Shepard on September 27, 1969; he described himself scuba diving at Salt Point on the day of the attacks. Allen again came to police attention in 1971 when his friend Donald Cheney reported to police in Manhattan Beach, California, that Allen had spoken of his desire to kill people, use the name Zodiac, and secure a flashlight to a firearm for visibility at night. According to Cheney, this conversation occurred no later than January 1, 1969.

Jack Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department subsequently wrote Allen had received an other than honorable discharge from the US Navy in 1958 and had been fired from his job as an elementary school teacher in March 1968 after allegations of sexual misconduct with students. He was generally well-regarded by those who knew him, but he was also described as fixated on young children and angry at women. He apparently never had a girlfriend or wife.

In September 1972, San Francisco police obtained a search warrant for Allen’s residence. In 1974 Allen was arrested for committing lewd sex acts upon a 12-year-old boy; he pleaded guilty and served two years imprisonment.

Vallejo police served another search warrant at Allen’s residence in February 1991. Two days after Allen’s death in 1992, Vallejo police served another warrant and seized property from Allen’s residence.

Other evidence existed against Allen. A letter sent to the Riverside Police Department from Bates’s killer was typed with a Royal typewriter with an Elite type, the same brand found during the February 1991 search of Allen’s residence. He owned and wore a Zodiac brand wristwatch. He lived in Vallejo and worked minutes away from where one of the first victims (Ferrin) lived and from where one of the killings took place.

In 2002, SFPD developed a partial DNA profile from the saliva on stamps and envelopes of Zodiac’s letters. SFPD compared this partial DNA to the DNA of Arthur Leigh Allen. A DNA comparison was also made with the DNA of Don Cheney, who was Allen’s former close friend and the first person to suggest Allen may be the Zodiac Killer. Since neither test result indicated a match, Allen and Cheney were excluded as the contributors of the DNA, though it cannot be stated definitively that it is DNA from the Zodiac on the envelopes. However, as of March 2018, it was announced that the 2002 DNA sample was collected from outside the stamp rather than behind it, or from the envelope seal, meaning Allen could still be a suspect.

Retired police handwriting expert Lloyd Cunningham, who worked the Zodiac case for decades, added “they gave me banana 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.” While police often use document examiners during investigations, court rulings on the scientific validity of handwriting analysis have been mixed to negative.

Public suspicions and speculation

In 2007, a man named 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, a former lawyer named Robert Tarbox (who, in August 1975, was disbarred 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 due to 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 thirty 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 (1936–2004). During the time of the murders, Gaikowski worked for Good Times, a San Francisco counterculture newspaper. His appearance resembles the composite sketch, and Nancy Slover, the Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac shortly after the Blue Rock Springs Attack, has 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 (1907–1999), 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 he was 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 a 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.

Former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty said the Zodiac killer was a 91-year-old Solano County, California man whom he called by the pseudonym “George Russell Tucker”. Using a group of retired law enforcement officers called the Mandamus Seven, Lafferty discovered “Tucker” and a 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 a man named 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. Myers allegedly worked in the same restaurant as victim Darlene Ferrin. Myers also had access to the same sort of military boot whose print was found at the Lake Berryessa crime scene. Furthermore, during the 1971–1973 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.

Robert Ivan Nichols aka 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 fugitive.

In late 2016, [U.S. Marshals Service-Cleveland, Ohio] announced that forensic genealogist Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International had compared the then-unidentified man’s Y-STR profile to public genetic genealogy Y-STR databases to determine his possible last name was “Nicholas”. In 2017 Fitzpatrick along with Dr. Margaret Press formed the non-profit DNA Doe Project, which revisited the case by analyzing the man’s autosomal DNA using the same methodology they used in identifying Marcia King and Lyle Stevik. In March 2018 the DNA Doe Project identified the man as Robert Ivan Nichols.

The U.S. Marshals Service announced the identification at a press conference in Cleveland on June 21, 2018. Authorities had believed that he was a fugitive of some kind. There were many theories as to what he may have been running from, none of which were confirmed. 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.

Another theory was that he was Steven Campbell, an engineer from Cheyenne, Wyoming, wanted for attempted murder. Authorities also considered that he could have been a German soldier or Nazi official from the Second World War that had escaped to the United States.
Ted Kaczynski a.k.a the Unabomber was once thought to be the Zodiac Killer.

The Zodiac is also suspected of being the Monster of Florence.