He sent provocative letters to the press and the police with threats and ridicule, in which he called himself the nickname Zodiac. Investigators in Northern California after a series of mysterious murders began hunting for a serial killer. However, this has not been successful to this day.
We are trying to understand the history of this mysterious person and remember what we already know about him.
The first of the murders that the Zodiac committed was that of Betty Jensen and David Faraday on Lake Herman on a road near Vallejo, California on December 20, 1968. The students were sitting in a parked car when a car drove up to them, the driver of which forced them to get out. Faraday was killed first, while Jensen tried to escape but was shot in the back. The killer fled.
Victims of the Zodiac Killer
The first Zodiac murder was committed in California on 12/20/1968
Six months later, in July 1969, another murder was committed. Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magjot were also parked when someone drove up to their car. The man came out, shone his flashlight, and shot them both. Then he got into the car and drove away. Ferrin died, but Magjot survived and was able to tell about it.
The very next day, a man who called the police claimed he was the killer of "those guys" from the first murder, Betty Jensen and David Faraday.
On August 1, 1969, letters came to the editorial offices of various newspapers with different parts of one ciphergram. The killer demanded to print it, otherwise he threatened with new murders. A week later, another letter arrived. In it, the killer called his nickname - Zodiac.
Zodiac Letters
On August 8, the school teacher and his wife were able to decipher the message. It contained nothing about the Zodiac Maniac's identity, but merely stated that he was "gathering slaves for the afterlife".
From the letters of the Zodiac: "I collect slaves for the afterlife"
On September 27, 1969, students Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd were having a picnic by Berryessa Lake. A man in a hood and black glasses approached them. He called himself a runaway convict and, at gunpoint, forced Cecilia to tie up Brian. He later tied up Cecilia, pulled out a knife, and stabbed the couple multiple times. Soon he called the police and himself mockingly reported the crime. Nearby, a father and son were fishing on the lake. They heard heartbreaking screams and called the police. Shepard succumbed to her injuries, but Hartnell survived.
On October 11, 1969, taxi driver Paul Stein was killed in his car by a passenger who pulled out the driver's wallet, took the car keys, and wiped all traces of himself with a piece of the driver's shirt. He was seen by three teenagers who compiled a description of the killer, but he was never caught.
A message from the Zodiac killer is on the car door
Zodiac sent threatening letters to the editor of an American newspaper
On October 14, 1969, an American daily newspaper received another letter, allegedly written by the Zodiac maniac. This time, as proof of his murders, he sent in a letter a piece of fabric cut off from the taxi driver's shirt. The letter contained threats of more murders of children. The Zodiac demanded that he be given an opportunity on a famous TV show to contact lawyer Melvin Bailey.
Failure of the Zodiac
On the night of March 22, 1970, seven months pregnant, Kathleen Jones was on her way to her mother in Modesto. She also brought her 10-year-old daughter with her. The driver behind her honked and flashed his headlights. Jones stopped, a man approached her and said that her rear wheel was loose and could come off. He offered to help, tweaked something, and then left. When Jones' car started moving, the wheel immediately came off. The assistant, who had not gone far, returned and politely offered to give them a lift. Kathleen and her daughter got into the car. The driver drove for more than an hour and did not stop, and then said that he was going to kill them. At the crossroads, Kathleen and her daughter jumped out of the car and hid in the field. The man tried to look for them, but gave up and left. Jones got to the police and confirmed that they were kidnapped by a man who looked like an identikit drawn from the description of the killer Paul Stein.
Confession
Letters with threats and ridicule from the Zodiac maniac continued to come to the newspapers. On October 30, 1966, 18-year-old student Cherie Bates was stabbed to death.
Murder scene Cherry Jo Bates
A month later, on November 29, 1966, printed letters with the title "Confession" were sent to the press and the police. The author was aware of the minutiae of the Bates murder near the college library, although the details of the crime were not released to the general public.
Investigative work on the Zodiac case
To find the Zodiac, the police checked thousands of suspects
The police checked more than a thousand suspects. According to circumstantial evidence, the role of the main suspect was most suitable for Arthur Allen. But the DNA analysis from the stamps on the envelopes sent by the Zodiac maniac and Allen's DNA did not match, there was no weighty evidence against him. In 2007, Dennis Kaufman claimed that his stepfather Jack Tarrance was the Zodiac, but the evidence he turned over to the FBI was not convincing either. In 2009, Deborah Perez claimed that the Zodiac Killer was her father, Guy Hendrickson, who died of cancer in 1993.
Photograph of the alleged perpetrator
For 40 years of searching, there have been many imitators and imitators of the Zodiac. His letters of police mismanagement are reminiscent of the confessions of Jack the Ripper. To this day, the Zodiac remains one of the most mysterious maniacs, whose identity has not been established.
The FBI has promised to conduct a DNA examination of one of the most mysterious cases of the 20th century - the case of the Zodiac serial killer, sometimes also called the "American Jack the Ripper".
California in the late sixties was not the most peaceful place. Bikers, Satanists, drug addicts - strange and dark personalities came to the West Coast of the USA. In 1968, a homicidal maniac nicknamed "Zodiac" appeared in the vicinity of San Francisco.
It is authentically known about five murders committed by him. Compared to the serial killers who killed dozens of people, the Zodiac seems unremarkable. But the criminal, whose name has remained unknown for forty years, knew how to attract attention.
First, the murders looked like a scene from a Hollywood thriller. A typical picture: a young man and a girl are sitting in the back seat of a car parked in a deserted place. While they are kissing, a sinister figure in a black hood creeps up to the car with a huge knife or a pistol unloaded. The police arrive at the scene too late and find two bodies in the car.
Secondly, the perpetrator seemed to have studied manuals on marketing, advertising and public relations. After the second murder, in 1969, he began sending out long encrypted messages to the police and journalists detailing the crimes. Sometimes he hinted that he had his eye on a new victim. Often, the Zodiac attributed to himself other people's deeds - according to the messages, 37 people became his victims.
By the way, he came up with the name himself. In the first letter, instead of a signature, there was a sign - a circle with a cross, reminiscent of an optical sight. And all subsequent messages began with the words "This is the Zodiac." To ensure that the crimes did not go unnoticed, he also called the police - sometimes from the street machine closest to the place of the murder. By the way, this even led the investigators to the idea that a whole gang was operating.
In the first message, the Zodiac explained that all victims in the afterlife (he was convinced that he would go to heaven) would become his slaves. Probably the perpetrator was mentally ill and believed in this theory. Perhaps that is why he attacked young people. His two first victims, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, were under 18. The second pair of victims, Michael Mago and Darlene Farrin, were 19 and 22 years old. The young man survived, but his companion died. By the way, Darlene was married, and the criminal knew this fact. One of the first about the perfect murder, the Zodiac notified her husband Farrin. In the third pair, the young man survived again (it was 20-year-old Brian Hartnell), and the girl died from multiple stab wounds (her name was Cecilia Shepard, and she was 22 years old). Only the fifth murder breaks out of the cinematic scheme of the Zodiac - in 1969, he killed a 29-year-old taxi driver.
In the letters, Zodiac mocked the police, claiming that after one of the crimes, they questioned him for several minutes, trying to find out if he had seen anything suspicious.
And in one of the last messages of the Zodiac, his real name was allegedly encrypted (although in the first letter he said that he would not reveal his name so that the police would not try to stop him and deprive him of the pleasure that he gets from the murders). If the popular theory that every criminal seeks to be caught is to be believed, this seems like a natural move. However, the desire of the Zodiac to fall into the hands of justice was not too strong - the cipher was so complex that the experts failed to unravel it.
From some point, the Zodiac ceased to remind of itself. For forty years, several books have been published dedicated to his crimes. Not only did he act "like in a movie," at least three films were made about the California maniac. Many researchers were convinced that it would never be possible to find out who was hiding under the name "Zodiac". In 2004, investigators got tired of handing over the Zodiac case and closed it, considering it hopeless.
In the early nineties, imitators appeared at the Zodiac. In New York, a Zodiac fan killed three people, was caught and sentenced to 235 years in prison. This man had nothing to do with the murders in California, although his handwriting resembled the deeds of the Zodiac. But the New York wannabe was born in 1967. And in 1997, in the vicinity of Tokyo, a 14-year-old teenager also decided to "play Zodiac", and even killed two children, leaving a sign in the form of a cross and a circle at the crime scene.
It seemed that the name of the Zodiac would remain as much a mystery as the personality. But the FBI was contacted by a man named Dennis Kaufman, who stated that he knew for sure that his stepfather Jack Terrence was the Zodiac. Theoretically, Terrence could have committed these crimes. Moreover, the famous black hood (or just a very similar one?), A knife with traces of blood (it is not specified whether human or not) and film frames with frightening images were found in his things.
Whether Jack Terrence was the same Zodiac - DNA examination will reliably show. But if Terrence is guilty, he will not be punished - he died in 2006.
A serial killer who operated in northern California (California) in the late 60s and early 70s.
Considered one of the most famous homicidal maniacs in the world; What makes his story particularly popular is the fact that the police never managed to catch him, or at least accurately identify him.
Stories about serial killers have always stirred the blood of readers; often maniacs managed to catch, but sometimes they managed to get away from legal retribution. One of the most famous uncaught killers is the Zodiac; this serial killer was remembered for a series of mocking messages to the local press and the mysterious ciphers attached to them.
The killer chose the nickname "Zodiac" for himself; he mentioned it in a series of mocking letters he sent to local newspapers. These letters were accompanied by cryptograms, in which - according to the killer himself - the secret of his identity was hidden. In total, 4 cryptograms were received from the Zodiac; only one of them was deciphered.
In his letters, the Zodiac claimed to have taken the lives of 37 people; officially, however, only 7 victims are listed behind him - and two of them managed to escape from the maniac. Schoolchildren Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday are considered the first victims of the Zodiac; On December 20, 1968, the guy and the girl went on their first date, where they caught the eye of the killer.
On July 4, 1969, an unknown person shot another couple - Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau. Ferryn died in the hospital; Majo managed to survive.
A day later, the local police received a call from someone claiming responsibility for both the attack and the deaths of Jensen and Faraday. On August 1, 1969, almost identical letters were sent to three newspapers at once; their author called himself the killer of Ferrin, Faraday and Jensen. Each letter was accompanied by a third of the encrypted message. The killer demanded that the letters be published - threatening to kill a dozen people over the weekend. The local police chief immediately issued a statement expressing doubts about the author's involvement in the murders - and demanded from him detailed details of what had happened.
On August 7, 1969, The San Francisco Examiner received another letter; it began with the greeting "Dear editor, the Zodiac is talking to you." The letter contained details requested by the police that had not been disclosed to anyone before, and a hint that the ciphers contained clues necessary to catch the killer.
On September 27, 1969, an unknown person attacked students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard; this time the murderer acted not with a pistol, but with a knife. The assailant left a mysterious message on the door of Hartnell's car; he later called the police and reported the crime. The police installed the phone from which the call was made and even took fingerprints from it, but they failed to catch the caller. Shepard and Hartnell - still alive - were discovered by a father and son fishing nearby; the girl managed to describe what happened, after which she fell into a coma, from which she never came out. Doctors managed to save Hartnell.
On October 14, 1969, another letter came to the press - to which a piece of a taxi driver's shirt was attached.
On March 22, 1970, a pregnant Kathleen Johns and her 10-year-old daughter were kidnapped by an unknown person. The woman managed to escape from the kidnapper's car with her daughter and hide in the field.
The Zodiac continued to communicate with the police and the press further - he regularly sent new letters and greeting cards. The killer signed with his already familiar name and trademark in the form of a crossed out circle.
March 22, 1971 in the "Chronicle" came another postcard - which hid information about the disappearance of a certain Donna Lass (Donna Lass); after that, the killer fell silent for three whole years.
On January 29, 1974, the maniac sent another letter - in which he shared his impressions of watching the movie "The Exorcist" ("The Exorcist") and attributed 37 murders to himself. More letters, whose authorship would be officially attributed to the Zodiac, were not received by the press and the police - although a number of dubious authorship of messages came to various sources for a long time.
On the night of July 4-5, 1969, a telephone rang at the police station in the American city of Vallejo. A male voice said that he had just killed two people. The unidentified person then claimed that the death of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, who were found dead on a country highway last year, was also the work of him.
From that moment on, a series of brutal murders began, which were committed by a maniac who introduced himself as the Zodiac. He claimed to have 37 murders to his credit. Extensive materials have been collected on the case of a serial killer. There are even fingerprints and a voice recording, but his true identity has not yet been established.
Killer handwriting
The United States police know how to investigate this kind of crime, but several episodes recorded in California between December 1968 and October 1969, as well as the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in 1966, remained unsolved. All cases are united by a common handwriting:
- All crimes were committed on the street, in secluded places where couples in love traditionally meet.
- The killer's victims are young people.
- The maniac Zodiac attacks at dusk or at night.
- Prefers weekends and holidays.
- Robbery or sexual motives are excluded.
- Used weapons - cold, firearms, etc.
- All the victims were in cars or next to their car.
- The places where the Zodiac maniac operated are somehow connected with water.
- The offender is interested in publicity, so he reports his atrocities in letters and by phone.
The police who investigated these cases believe that the killer either died at the hands of another potential victim who turned out to be more dexterous than him, or died from drugs, or hid in prison under a completely different article than murder, because the death penalty is imposed in the United States for such a crime. . There are other versions.
First official casualties
The murder of Jensen and Faraday was the first in the Zodiac case. For him, it became, as they say, a test of the pen. All subsequent crimes of the maniac, one way or another, echo the first. This was noticed by both the police and the newspapers, who later also became participants in the terrible script written by the Zodiac.
Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday just started dating. They had known each other for a long time through a mutual friend, Sharon. The girls were in the same class and were friends, and David regularly drove them home from school. The pretty companion Sharon liked the young man with a cheerful character and friendly manner of communication. David was not overly shy, but, knowing the severity of the morals that reigned in Betty's family, he was afraid that she would reject him.
The fact is that Betty's older sister, Meloni, got married very early due to an unplanned pregnancy. The marriage was unsuccessful and soon broke up. So that the youngest daughter does not repeat the sad fate of her sister, the parents directed their efforts to keep their daughter in the bosom of the family for as long as possible. But it is pointless to resist the call of nature, and sixteen-year-old Betty fell in love. Her heart was won by a high school student from Vallejo. Betty and David lived in neighboring towns. Competitions, concerts and competitions were regularly held locally, where students from nearby educational institutions were invited, and they were in Valleio (David studied here), Hogan (Betty studied here) and Benicia. are excellent, everyone has a car, or even several - all this helps to quickly solve the problem with distances.
David, the beauty and pride of the school, an example for the younger ones, an athlete, the soul of the company, the secret dream of all the young ladies of Vallejo, Hogan and Benicia, gave his heart to the safemorka. Safemores in the United States are called sophomores or students in the eleventh grade of high school. At the time of the novel, David was already a junior, that is, a twelve-grader, a senior student. His plans stretched further than life in a town of 20,000 people. The young man planned to go to university, get a higher education, get a good job, get married and help his mother raise two younger brothers and a sister.
The tragedy that happened to a couple in love shook the whole district. An advertisement was placed in the local newspaper to raise funds for the investigation and capture of the criminal. The crossroads of two roads, once a favorite place for secret romantic dates, young couples began to avoid, considering it cursed.
On the eve of the misfortune, David and Betty decided that it was time to move from simple meetings in a cafe to a more serious relationship. Sharon advised them to retire to Blue Rock Springs Park or go to St. Catherine's Hill, but the lovers chose Herman Lake, more precisely, the bend at the intersection of two roads - to the pumping station and Lake Herman Road, popularly referred to as "lovers' corner". Betty told her parents that she was going to a singing party for the upcoming Christmas. It was nine o'clock when their Rambler, borrowed from David's mother, took the couple on a romantic date. First there was dinner in a small restaurant, and an hour later the young people were already hugging, lying on the reclined car seats.
Chronology of the crime and investigation
The first witness driving along this road saw two empty cars and then heard what sounded like a gunshot. Zodiac parked his car very close to the Rambler to block the side doors. When cars appeared on the road, he ducked down, so people thought that there was no one in it.
The next witnesses, and these were seventy-year-old Stella Borges and her daughter, nicknamed Baby Stella, drove past the scene of the tragedy at the very moment when the Zodiac maniac had just fled the scene of the crime. The women saw corpses, broken car windows and rushed at maximum speed to get away from the terrible sight. Panicked, they honked their headlights and horns, hoping to draw attention to themselves. Finally, they saw a policeman and told him everything.
The signal was relayed to Sergeant Bidu and his partner Stephen Arment. They were closer than others to the "corner of lovers." After 15 minutes, the police were already examining the crime scene. David leaned halfway out of the car. In his hand was a school ring. The young man was still breathing, but died on the way to the hospital. He was killed with one shot to the skull. The only bullet hole was behind the left ear. Betty died before the police arrived. She lay at a distance. The girl tried to run away from the criminal, but five shots in the back stopped her a few steps from the car. Several shots shattered the windows in their car and made a hole in the roof.
The version of the attack with the aim of robbery disappeared almost immediately. Most likely, the Zodiac maniac made the first shot in order to attract attention to himself. Then he demanded to give him valuable things. Apparently he tried on and decided what to do with the guys. When they began to make excuses and stick a ring on him, he fired the first shot. Betty jumped out of the car, and he finished her already on the street.
The case was entrusted to detectives Les Lundblad and Russell Butterbach. They did not solve the murder, but they collected a lot of material that allowed their colleagues to subsequently determine the handwriting of the criminal. In addition, the following year, on July 31, in a letter to the Times Herald, the serial killer Zodiac confirmed his guilt, describing how he dealt with lovers and indicating the brand of cartridges for his pistol. They were rifle cartridges - a remarkable detail, and no one except the police knew about it. This was not written in the newspapers.
Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magieu (Majo)
The attack on Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magew is the second crime committed by the Zodiac. The killer has not yet adopted a sonorous pseudonym, but has already begun to take steps to become famous and demonstrate his fearlessness and uniqueness.
The incident took place on July 4, 1969, when the entire city was celebrating Independence Day. Over the roar of fireworks, no one heard the pistol shots that rang out in Blue Rock Springs Park. At 00:10, the Zodiac called the police station and reported the murder, and also added that he also committed last year's crime in the "lovers' corner".
This time, the victims were 22-year-old Darlene and her young lover Michael Maguey. They were sitting in Darlene's husband's father's Chevy when the Zodiac drove up to them. The killer jumped to conclusions - the guy was only wounded. The bullets hit him in the face, neck and chest. Woman dies 20 minutes after phone call
Darlene was married to Dean Ferrin for the second time. In 1968, the couple had a daughter, and two months before the sad event, the family bought a new house. From the photograph, Darlene is very reminiscent of Betty Lou Jensen. Most likely, the similarity is a mere coincidence. Nothing says that the maniac was hunting for women of the same type of appearance. Michael Mague is not like any of the victims. He arrived at his date with Darlene wearing three trousers, a T-shirt, a heavy shirt, and three sweaters. The man explained this to the police by saying that he was very worried about his thinness and in this way tried to give himself volume.
Darlene's adultery caused a lot of noise in Vallejo. Subsequently, the sister of the deceased, Pamela, in order to justify a relative, confused the investigation, suggesting that Darlene's husband was involved in the attack on her lovers. In order to exclude the motive of revenge on the part of the deceived spouse, the police checked Dean Ferrin's alibi. The unfairly slandered was acquitted.
First letters
It is obvious that the serial killer Zodiac craved fame, because in his crimes there were no traditional motives - profit, sex or revenge. The desire to become the main topic of conversation among the inhabitants of the whole city, to read about himself in the media, made him start a correspondence with journalists. At the end of July, three local newspapers, the Valeo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Examine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, received the Zodiac letters, which were parts of the same text, cryptograms, and explanations regarding the above crimes. He promised that information about his identity was encrypted in cryptograms, demanded that the letters be published on the front pages, otherwise he threatened to kill 12 more people next weekend. It was not possible to establish what codes the Zodiac (the killer) wrote after the first revealed texts. It is likely that in some cases this was simple abracadabra, intended to lead the investigation astray or to show that he is so smart that his ciphers are too tough for anyone.
Contact with police and journalists established
On August 1, the San Francisco Chronicle printed a statement by Jack Stills on the back page. The head of the police department of the city of Vallejo expressed doubts about and asked the author of the cryptogram to provide additional information about himself. Two other newspapers also published letters and ciphers.
The response to the publication was a new letter to the editors of the San Francisco Examine. The offender clearly enjoyed the hype he caused and the fact that the police were following his lead. It was in this letter that he signed the name Zodiac. The pseudonym, in its essence, is very strange, and has nothing to do with crimes. He also said that deciphering the cryptogram would reveal information about his personal data.
All of Northern California was involved in solving the encrypted messages. The Gardens of Salinas were the first to decipher the killer's texts. They contained a lot of grammatical errors. They said that he was collecting slaves who would serve him in the afterlife - the criminal was clearly mocking. He did not provide any information about himself, explaining this by his unwillingness to help the investigation.
Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Ann Shepard
The next crime took place on September 27, 1969. College students Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell were on the shores of Berjesa Lake when a man wearing a hood covering the top and bottom of his head stepped out of the bushes. On the eyes - sunglasses, and on the chest - something like an apron with a pattern in the form of a circle crossed out with a cross. The strange man took a gun from his pocket and handed Cecilia a rope, ordering her to tie up Brian. Otherwise, he promised to kill both. The young man took it as a joke, but the alien showed a full magazine of cartridges. Cecilia tied up her companion and the stranger tied her up. Then he took out a long knife and inflicted several blows, first on Brian, and then on her. Before leaving, the killer, nicknamed the Zodiac, took a black felt-tip pen and drew a circle on the unfortunate car, crossed out with a cross, and wrote the dates of the three previous crimes.
When he was done, he called the police department and told them what had happened. A few minutes later, the duty squad determined the location of the telephone booth. When the police arrived, the tube was still damp. Fingerprints were taken from her, but later they were never useful, because they were not in the file cabinet.
The wounded were taken to the hospital. Brian survived, but Cecilia fell into a coma and died a few days later.
Paul Stein
The murder of Paul Stein, a taxi driver, took place in San Francisco. The crime is even more mysterious than the previous ones. If the taxi driver had reported to the control room that he had taken a passenger and named the route, then everything would have been easier, but it was the so-called left side job. The Zodiac killed Stine the same way he killed David Faraday, with a shot to the head behind the ear. Witnesses, three teenagers, saw how he put the driver with his head on his knees and did something with a knife. As it turned out, he cut off a piece of blood-soaked shirt from the shot, and the boys thought that this black man was cutting off the head of a taxi driver. They mistook the Zodiac for a black man because of the dark mask pulled over his face. The police arrived quickly and even ran into a white man who was asked if he had seen a black man with a gun. He, and this was the Zodiac himself, pointed them in the wrong direction. Later, he called the police and laughed at the stupidity of the law enforcement officers.
Three days later, on October 14, 1969, another letter arrived in the Chronicle. The zodiac wrote that he planned to kill schoolchildren. To do this, he will shoot through the wheel of a school bus, and then begin to kill children coming out of it. So that there was no doubt about his identity, he described Stein's death in detail and put a fragment of the man's shirt into the envelope.
A week later, the Zodiac called the Oakland Police Department and said he wanted to be on Jim Dunbar's TV talk show. Well-known lawyers must be present in the studio. Through them, he will conduct a telephone conversation. Melville Belley agreed to come. On the show, someone who called himself the Zodiac called and said his real name is Sam. The call came from a psychiatric hospital, and Sam was just a normal patient with nothing to do with a serial killer.
Then in November, two more Zodiac letters arrived in the Chronicle. One of them contained another cryptogram, but it has not yet been deciphered, and on December 20, the criminal sent Bellai's lawyer a Christmas card and a second piece of Paul Stein's shirt.
Kathleen Jones
At the time of the crime, Kathleen Jones was 20 years old. She was driving her own car to visit her mother in Petulama. The woman was 7 months pregnant. Her 10-month-old daughter was traveling with her. On the highway in the Modesto area, she was overtaken by a car that gave signals, asking to stop. Kathleen obeyed. The driver of the honking car said that her right rear wheel was wobbly, offered his help and corrected the problem. As soon as the woman left the track, the wheel fell off. The man soon drove up again and offered to take her to the nearest gas station, where she would be given more efficient assistance. They drove past several gas stations, but the man did not stop. Then he, according to Jones, stopped at an intersection and said that he would kill her along with the child. The woman jumped out of the car and rushed into the thickets of tall grass. The criminal looked for Kathleen, but did not find it and left.
In the police station, where she soon turned, hung an identikit who attacked Paul Stein. She recognized him as her companion. The testimony of the woman is doubtful, as she was constantly confused and changed information about the circumstances of the incident.
Cheri Jo Bates
The murder of Cherie Jo Bates was claimed by the Zodiac, but the police doubt the veracity of this statement. The manner of the criminal was too different from the handwriting of the Zodiac.
The first doubt about the involvement in the death of the girl of the same person who committed the above murders is the date of the crime.
The eighteen-year-old girl died in October 1966. She lingered in the library of her college and at dusk walked through a deserted area with abandoned houses. Cherry was first beaten and then stabbed to death with a short dagger. The wounds were inflicted directly on the carotid artery and larynx, and Shepard and Hartnell's Zodiac hit erratically and never hit the throat. Most likely, the maniac took responsibility for the crime he had not committed in order to confuse the police.
Attributing this atrocity to the Zodiac is forced by letters sent by him to the girl's father, to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper and to the Riverside Police Department. The handwriting matches that of the Zodiac, but some of his messages were typed and others handwritten. The only embarrassing thing is that the letters were sent six months after the death of the girl. This is not like the Zodiac - he did not like to wait and always contacted the police immediately after the murder.
The history of the Zodiac - the killer is full of secrets. Some journalists suggested that completely different personalities operated under the name of the famous maniac. All the blame lies with the newspapers and the under-professional police officers who gave out too much information to the general public.
When asked who in the history of mankind deserves the title of the most brutal serial killer, almost every interviewee names Jack the Ripper. Few people know that this never caught Englishman was surpassed in terms of the number of innocently killed by another serial killer who lived and committed crimes 70 years later. His name, or rather a pseudonym, Zodiac. As in the case of the killer of prostitutes, the real name of the perpetrator was never found out.
Briefly about the Zodiac
The country in which the Zodiac did lawlessness is the USA. The case against this mysterious person was opened in several cities and counties of the United States in 1969. The offender has been active since December 1968. In his letters sent to the newspapers, the Zodiac spoke of 37 victims. According to investigators, only 7 crimes could be imputed to him. This number was confirmed by a police investigation. The victims were young people: the youngest victim was 16, the eldest - 29. Of these, there were three women and four men. Two people managed to survive.
The killer composed 4 cryptograms into which, according to him, his name was encrypted. The offender wrote a series of caustic and ironic letters, sent them to the local media. These letters contained the cryptograms compiled by him. The most talented cryptographers in the country puzzled over the solution of what this secret script hides. It was not them at all, but the school teacher and his wife who managed to decipher only one cryptogram. The next generations of cryptographers did not advance in this either. The best cops in California and San Francisco were looking for the criminal, but also, as in the case of decryption, to no avail. What is the reason, either in the genius of the criminal, or in the fact that in fact it was just a set of characters, is not known. It is possible that this was trolling of the public and representatives of law enforcement agencies.
Victims of a mysterious criminal
David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen are a couple who get shot on their first date. They were in a car parked near the lake. The criminal drove up in a car, forced the lovers out and shot them. The girl tried to run away, but failed.
Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magjot were also shot by the Zodiac. Their offender shot right in the car. Since it was at night, he used a flashlight so as not to miss. Despite the terrible injuries, the guy managed to survive.
Brian Calvin Hartnell and Cecilia Ann Shepard were attacked at the water's edge. This time, the Zodiac acted not with a firearm, but with a knife. The girl died after numerous wounds, the guy survived.
Paul Lee Stein - This man was shot to death in San Francisco.
There are a number of other victims that may have been the work of the Zodiac. Among them is another pair of young people, a 17-year-old girl and a 27-year-old woman. According to 22-year-old Kathleen Jones, a man abducted her and her 10-month-old daughter and tried to take her out in a car in an unknown direction. Fortunately, the woman managed to escape with the child. Why are there suspicions that these 5 crimes are the work of the Zodiac? The police saw in them the handwriting of a serial killer.
The cryptogram, which was able to decipher, contains a brief explanation of the purpose for which the Zodiac commits crimes. According to him, in this way he prepares for himself the slaves he needs in the afterlife...
Letters to newspapers came until 1974. Then the Zodiac fell silent. In the spring of 2007, when analyzing the archives of The Chronicle, the publication's employees found a Christmas card. The handwriting on it was similar to that of the Zodiac. It was posted in 1990. The official handwriting examination did not confirm the authorship of the Zodiac...
