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Investigators agree on four confirmed attacks by the Zodiac Killer in California. Five victims were killed during Zodiac attacks, and two survived:

1. David Arthur Faraday (17) and Betty Lou Jensen (16) were shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road in Benicia.
2. Michael Renault Mageau (19) and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin (22) 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 was pronounced dead at Kaiser Foundation Hospital.
3. Bryan Calvin Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Ann Shepard (22) were stabbed on September 27, 1969, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived, but Shepard died as a result of her injuries on September 29.
4. Paul Lee Stine (29) was shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

From 1969 until 1974, the Zodiac mailed letters and ciphers to law enforcement and media outlets. Some letters began, "This is the Zodiac speaking" and were signed with a symbol resembling the crosshairs of a gunsight: . Four of the mailings had a cryptogram enclosed. Two have been solved, in 1969 and 2020. The letters were postmarked in San Francisco and Pleasanton.

The Zodiac's confirmed correspondence with date, recipient, and incipit:

1. July 31st 1969: The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and Vallejo Times. One-third of Z408 cipher enclosed with each letter. "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass..."
2. August 4th 1969: SF Examiner. "This is the Zodiac speaking."
3. October 13th 1969: SF Chronicle. Swatch of Paul Stine's shirt. "I am the murderer of the taxi driver..."
4. November 8th 1969: SF Chronicle. Z304 cipher. The "Dripping Pen" card. "I though you would need a good laugh..."
5. November 9th 1969: SF 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: SF Chronicle. Z13 cipher. "My name is..."
8. April 28th 1970: SF Chronicle. Greeting card. "I hope you enjoy yourselves..."
9. June 26th 1970: SF Chronicle. Z32 cipher. "I have become very upset..."
10. July 24th 1970: SF Chronicle. "I am rather unhappy..."
11. July 26th 1970: SF Chronicle. "Being that you will not wear some nice ⌖ buttons..."
12. October 5th 1970: SF Chronicle. 13-hole punch card. "You'll hate me..."
13. October 27th 1970: Paul Avery at SF Chronicle. Halloween card. "From your secret pal..."
14. March 13th 1971: The Los Angeles Times. "...I am crack proof."
15. January 29th 1974: SF Chronicle. The "Exorcist" letter.

The first murders retroactively attributed to the Zodiac were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen (16) and David Arthur Faraday (17) on December 20, 1968. Jensen was a student at Hogan High School. At 8:30 p.m. on the 20th, Faraday, a student at Vallejo High School, picked up Jensen. They 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 Benicia city limits. Between 10:15–30 p.m., a passing motorist noticed the couple parked on a gravel runoff near the gate to a water pumping station. They were spotted again at 11 p.m.

Between 11:05–10 p.m., the couple were attacked. Police determined that their assailant parked his vehicle about 10 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. They 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 rifle. The murderer chased Jensen as she fled. He fired 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.

Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot shortly after midnight on July 4, 1969. Ferrin was killed. Mageau survived. Ferrin (22) was popular in Vallejo due to her job at a local restaurant. She met Michael Mageau (19) there. On July 4, they went on a date, despite the fact that Darlene was married to Dean Ferrin. After 11:30 p.m., Darlene received a phone call at her house. She left and arrived at Mageau's house around 11:50 p.m.

Immediately after the couple left Mageau's house, they noticed they were being followed by a man in a light-colored car. Darlene drove out of town in the direction of Lake Herman Road. Shortly before midnight, she turned her car into an empty parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park. It was another popular area for couples, just two miles from Lake Herman Road. She 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 the window. The stranger did not speak and fired a 9 mm pistol into the car. One bullet hit Mageau in the right arm, and the other hit Ferrin in the neck. She slumped towards the steering wheel. Mageau tried to leave the car, but his door handle was missing or removed. The killer 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 murderer hurried into his car and drove off. A golf course caretaker heard the shots around 12:10 a.m. The killer 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 his attacker as a heavyset white man, around 5'8" tall. He estimated the killer'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 public telephone two blocks from them. 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 murderer.

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 their attacker. At the hospital, he said he did not know the killer. At another point, he said the killer's name was "Richard". Ferrin's sister claimed one of Darlene's boyfriends was named Richard. She also said she received annual July 4th phone calls from someone who said, "This is the Zodiac speaking." 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 Darlene 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 later composite sketches 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.

See: Zodiac Letters

On August 1, 1969, the Vallejo Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco Examiner all received letters written by someone taking credit for the attacks in Vallejo. The three letters were nearly identical and began, "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman & the girl last 4th of July." The three letters were rife with misspellings and presented the first definitive link between the two separate attacks in Vallejo.

Enclosed in all three letters was a different cryptogram. They combined to form a 408-symbol cipher (Z408). The writer claimed, "In this cipher is my idenity." He demanded the codes be printed on each newspaper's front page. If they were not, he threatened to "cruse 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 inside the August 2nd edition. In the accompanying article, Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz said, "We're not satisfied that the letter was written by the murderer". He requested the killer send more facts to prove his identity.

On August 4, the Examiner received a letter with the salutation, "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." This letter marked the debut of the Zodiac persona. It was the first time the killer called himself by this nickname.

In this second letter to the media, the killer wrote at much greater length. He happily obliged Chief Stiltz's request for more information about both murders. He provided minute details about how he shot Michael Mageau. He described the golf course caretaker. Regarding the Lake Herman Road attack, he revealed that he had taped a flashlight to his gun in order to aim easily in the dark. The August 4th letter also referred investigators back to the Z408 cipher. The killer wrote, "when they do crack it they will have me".

The decoded message did not reveal the Zodiac's identity. Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to decrypt the Z408 cipher. On August 5th, it was cracked by Donald and Bettye Harden, a couple in Salinas. Neither was a cryptologist. Bettye deployed a crib by correctly guessing the word "kill" would appear in the message.

The message was rife with misspellings and referred to Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game". The Zodiac explained killing was a way of collecting slaves for his afterlife. The full text of the decoded Z408 cipher reads:

"I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is thae when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or atop my collectiog of slaves for my afterlife ebeorietemethhpiti"

Vallejo police asked a psychiatrist at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville to analyze the Zodiac's message. The doctor concluded the writer felt omnipotent based on his fantasy about collecting spiritual slaves. His analysis described the Zodiac as "someone you would expect to be brooding and isolated". He speculated that the letter's praise of murder over sex could be "an expression of inadequacy".

At 4:00 p.m. on September 27, 1969, Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Shepard (22) were picnicking at Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. Sometime later, Shepard noticed a man watching them. When he emerged from behind a tree, he put on a black executioner's hood with clip-on sunglasses. He wore a bib with a white 3x3" symbol on it. He brandished a gun, which Hartnell believed was a .45. The Zodiac said he escaped from jail after killing a guard and needed their car and money to travel to Mexico.

The Zodiac made Shepard tie up Hartnell with precut lengths of plastic clothesline and then tied her up. He tightened Hartnell's bonds because Shepard's knots were too loose. Hartnell still believed they were being robbed when the Zodiac drew a knife and stabbed them. Hartnell suffered six wounds and Shepard ten.

The Zodiac hiked 500 yards to Knoxville Road, leaving several footprints for investigators to study. The killer drew the 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

After hearing the victims' screams, a fisherman and his son sought help. Hartnell untied Shepard's ropes with his teeth, and she freed him. Two park rangers arrived and tended to Shepard and Hartnell until the ambulance arrived. Napa County deputies Dave Collins and Ray Land responded to the report of the attack. Shepard was conscious and gave a detailed description of their attacker. She and Hartnell were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa. Shepard lapsed into a coma during transport. She never regained consciousness and died two days later. Hartnell survived to recount his tale to the press.

Earlier that day, a suspicious man had been seen around Lake Berryessa by several people. A dentist and his son saw a heavyset man looking at them from a distance before he hurried off. Around 2:50 p.m., three women noticed a strange man as they stopped on their way to Lake Berryessa. After they had arrived to sunbathe, they noticed the man again. Since this was potentially the Zodiac without his hood, the women worked with Napa Valley Register photographer Robert McKenzie to create an eyewitness sketch using an Identi-Kit. Police showed it to other potential witnesses. The man was described as being roughly 6' tall and weighing 200 pounds, which matched the descriptions by Shepard and Hartnell. Robert Graysmith also drew a sketch of the Zodiac's costume after Bryan Hartnell described it to him. Napa County detective Ken Narlow was assigned to the case from the outset, and he worked on solving the crime until his retirement in 1987.

The killer drove 27 miles from the crime scene to a car wash in downtown Napa. He used a payphone to call the Napa County Sheriff's Department at 7:40 p.m. He told the dispatcher he wished to "report a murder – no, a double murder" and confessed to the crime. He did not hang up the phone. KVON radio reporter Pat Stanley found the phone a few minutes later. The payphone was located a few blocks from the sheriff's office. Detectives lifted a wet palm print from the phone but were never able to match it to any suspect.

The last confirmed Zodiac murder took place two weeks later. Around 9:40 p.m. on October 11 in downtown San Francisco, the killer hailed a cab which was driven by a doctoral student named Paul Stine. The Zodiac gave a destination in Presidio Heights. When the taxi arrived at Washington and Maple streets, the passenger asked to be driven another block. At Washington and Cherry around 9:55 p.m., the Zodiac shot Stine in the head with a handgun and took his wallet and car keys.

Three teenagers witnessed the crime from a house directly across the street from Stine's cab. The Zodiac's face was clearly visible by streetlight. They watched as the Zodiac wiped down the vehicle and rifled through Stine's clothes. He left two partial fingerprints from his right hand. While the killer was tending to the cab, the kids called the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). They described the criminal as a "husky" white man in a "dark or black jacket". The dispatcher mistakenly alerted SFPD that the suspect was Black.

Just two minutes after the call to SFPD, two patrol officers nearby responded to the radio dispatch. They encountered a white man in dark clothes walking north towards the Presidio Army Base. They pulled alongside him and asked if he had seen anything suspicious. The man confirmed he had seen someone waving a gun and heading east. The cops hurried away. The Zodiac claimed he was the witness that spoke to the patrol officers. When police arrived at the scene, Stine was declared dead. SFPD canvassed the area, including the Presidio. The Zodiac had probably fled the area in a car by then.

Police assumed the murder was a result of the robbery. However, the Zodiac mailed a bloody piece of Paul Stine's shirt to the San Francisco Chronicle on October 13. He enclosed it in a letter where he boasted about the murder and claimed to have clandestinely watched the SFPD search for him. The Zodiac also threatened to shoot a tire on a school bus and kill children as they exit.

The teenage witnesses helped a police artist make a composite sketch of the man they saw at Stine's cab. The two patrol officers who questioned the witness near the scene realized it may have been the Zodiac. They also helped develop a sketch of the suspect.

SFPD detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case. Toschi ended up working on the case by himself and filling eight filing cabinets with suspects. In 1976, Toschi told the Associated Press that Zodiac's letters were an "ego game". He believed the killer lived in the San Francisco Bay area, "He's a weekend killer. Why can't he get away Monday through Thursday? Does his job keep him close to home? I would speculate he maybe has a menial job, is well thought of and blends into the crowd...I think he's quite intelligent and better educated than someone who misspells words as frequently as he does in his letters."

After working on the Zodiac case for 7 years, Toschi started writing anonymous letters praising his own investigative work to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Armistead Maupin. Two years later in 1978, Toschi was removed from the case and busted down to pawn shop detail. He expressed regret for the hoax. That same year, Maupin also received a purported Zodiac letter. SFPD investigated whether Toschi wrote it as well and concluded he did not.

On October 22, 1969, mental patient Eric Weill duped attorney Melvin Belli into a conversation on KGO-TV's A.M. San Francisco. Investigators concluded Weill was not the Zodiac. He called the Oakland Police Department and demanded to speak to Belli or F. Lee Bailey on TV. During the show, Weill told Belli he would not reveal his identity for fear of being executed. He arranged a rendezvous with Belli on Mission Street in Daly City and did not show.

On November 8, the Zodiac mailed a card with a 340-character cryptogram (Z340) to the San Francisco Chronicle. He asked for his code to printed on the front page. It remained unsolved for 51 years. One cryptologist ranked Zodiac's unsolved ciphers second only to the Voynich manuscript. Zodiac ciphers were crowdsourced through a variety of websites which led to gradual breakthroughs.

Z340 was deciphered by an international team of private citizens on December 5, 2020. The cryptology group included American software engineer David Oranchak, Australian mathematician Sam Blake, and Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke. They used a program made by Van Eycke called AZdecrypt. It ran 650,000 possible solutions for the cipher until it came up with the best possible encryption key.

In the decrypted message, the Zodiac denied being the "Sam" who spoke on A.M. San Francisco and explained he was not afraid of the gas chamber "because it will send me to paradice all the sooner." The team submitted their findings to the FBI's Cryptographic and Racketeering Records Unit, which verified the decryption and concluded the decoded message gave no further clues to the Zodiac's identity. Subsequent analysis confirmed the Z340 decryption using unicity distance as a measure.

The decoded Z340 cipher included the usual Zodiac respellings:

"I hope you are having lots of fan in trying to catch me that wasnt me on the tv show which bringo up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber becaase it will send me to paradlce all the sooher because e now have enough slaves to worv for me where every one else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I am not afraid because i vnow that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death"

On November 9, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter to the Chronicle. In his postscript, he claimed he was stopped and questioned by two policemen three minutes after he shot Stine. He threatened to blow up a school bus and included a diagram of the bomb. The Zodiac boasted police would never catch him because "I have been to clever for them". The Chronicle excerpted the letter on November 12th.

One year after the Lake Herman Road murders on December 20, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Marvin Belli. He enclosed another swatch of Paul Stine's shirt. He pleaded, "Please help me I am drownding...I can not remain in control for much longer."

For the remainder of 1970, the Zodiac continued to communicate with authorities and the media by mail. In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle postmarked April 20, he wrote, "My name is—". It was followed by a 13-character cipher (Z13) which has not been definitively solved.

The Z13 cipher:

One cryptologist solved Z13 as "Alfred E. Neuman"