The Zodiac Killer
The Zodiac's known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper. Of his seven wounded victims, two survived. He coined his name in a series of taunting messages that he mailed to regional newspapers, in which he threatened killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed. He also said that he was collecting his victims as slaves for the afterlife. Some letters included cryptograms, or ciphers; of the four codes he produced, two remain unsolved, while the others were cracked in 1969 and 2020.
The last confirmed Zodiac letter was in 1974, in which he claimed to have killed 37 victims. He had said earlier that many of them were in Southern California, including Cheri Jo Bates, who was murdered in Riverside in 1966; a connection between the two has not been proven. While many theories regarding the identity of the Zodiac have been suggested, the only suspect authorities ever publicly named was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992.
The unusual nature of the case led to international interest that has been sustained throughout the years. The San Francisco Police Department marked the case "inactive" in 2004, but re-opened it prior to 2007. The case also remains open in the California Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa and Solano counties.
Murders and correspondence
The Zodiac Killer claimed in messages to newspapers to have committed 37 serial murders. Investigators agree on seven confirmed assault victims, all in California, five of whom died and two of whom survived:
- David Arthur Faraday (17) and Betty Lou Jensen (16) were shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road in Benicia.
- 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.
- 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.
- Paul Lee Stine (29) was shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.
Lake Herman Road murders
The first murders widely attributed to the Zodiac were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Arthur Faraday on December 20, 1968. Jensen was a 16-year old student at Hogan High School, and on the night of the 20th she had a date with Faraday, a 17-year old student from the neighboring Vallejo High School. Faraday drove his mother's car to Jensen's house at 8 p.m., and they left in the car at 8:30, driving to the house of one of Jensen's friends. Sometime after 9, they drove to the outskirts of Vallejo, and parked at a lover's lane on Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits. A passing motorist noticed the couple between 10:15 to 10:30, parked on the side of Lake Herman Road, on a gravel runoff near the gate to a water pumping station. They were spotted again at 11.
The couple were attacked sometime between 11:05 and 11:10. Police determined that an unknown assailant, the Zodiac, pulled his car up next to Faraday's, about 10 feet away from the passenger's side of the vehicle. He left his vehicle and approached the couple's car, firing several shots inside. The bullets hit various car parts, but not the couple; he may have been trying to force them to leave the vehicle. They both attempted to leave through the passenger door. Jensen was able to get out. As Faraday was leaving, the Zodiac shot him in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. The Zodiac began to chase Jensen, who was running away. He fired six shots at her, hitting her in the back five times. He then left in his vehicle. The police theorized the whole attack took two to three minutes.
A passing motorist spotted the couple's bodies at 11:10. She drove down the road and flagged a police patrol car to report the scene. The officers in the car immediately went to the scene. Jensen was pronounced dead, and Faraday was still breathing. He was taken to the hospital, but died from his wounds. Police could find no usable tire or foot prints of the assailant, and there were no witnesses. They were unable to find a motive other than the killer being a "madman." An intensive investigation took place over the following months, but a viable suspect was never developed. The murders were extensively covered by the media. For seven months afterwards, the Zodiac is not confirmed to be active. Authors Michael Kelleher and David Van Nuys suggest this was a "cooling off period" to reflect on his actions, experienced by most serial killers.
Blue Rock Springs murder
Background
Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot around midnight between July 4 and 5, 1969. Ferrin was fatally wounded, and Mageau survived. Ferrin was 22, and was popular with many in the community due to her job at a local restaurant. There, she met Michael Mageau, who was 19. They became friends, and went on a date on July 4, despite the fact that Ferrin was still married to Dean Ferrin. After 11:30 p.m. that night, Ferrin received a phone call in her house, probably from Mageau. She left and arrived at Mageau's house around 11:50.
Afterwards, the facts in the case become "clouded with conflicting statements and speculation." Some information comes from Zodiac researcher Robert Graysmith's work (Graysmith, one of the case's most notable amateur investigators, became famous for his research while as a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the murders). Allegedly, immediately after Ferrin and Mageau left the house, they started believing or noticed that they were being followed by a man in a light-colored car. For some reason, Darlene started driving out of town in the direction of Lake Herman Road. Shortly before midnight, she turned her car into an empty parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park. It was another popular area for couples, two miles from Lake Herman Road. She parked 70 feet from the lot entrance, and soon, another vehicle parked around 80 feet to her left. The unknown driver, the Zodiac, turned the headlights off and sat motionless at the steering wheel. Mageau asked who the driver was, and Ferrin vaguely replied to not be worried about it. The Zodiac then left the parking lot, likely at a high speed.
Shooting
Five minutes later, the Zodiac returned, and parked a few feet next to Ferrin's vehicle at the passenger's side. He exited his car, and approached Ferrin's. He shone a flashlight into the car; the couple assumed he was a police officer and rolled down the window. The man did not speak, and fired a 9mm pistol into the car. One bullet hit Mageau in the right arm, and the other hit Ferrin in the neck, causing her to slump towards the steering wheel and become motionless. Mageau tried to leave the car, but the door handle on the passenger's side was missing or removed. The Zodiac stepped away from Ferrin's car and went back to his own, opened his car door and did something Mageau could not see. Mageau was struggling to get out of Ferrin's car, and the Zodiac fired four more shots, two at each person, before he moved quickly back to his car and drove off. He was heard by the golf course's caretaker, who estimated it to be at 12:10 a.m. The Zodiac left no clues that could be traced back to him.
Aftermath
Soon, three teenagers drove into the parking lot and saw the wounded couple. They left to get help, and police arrived at the scene at 12:20. The couple were taken to the hospital. Mageau survived, but Ferrin was pronounced dead at 12:40. Mageau described his attacker as a white man with a large face, who was heavyset, around 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed 195 to 200 pounds, and had short, curly light brown hair and a potbelly. He was wearing dark clothes and did not have glasses. These details were not enough to develop a suspect. Moments after 12:40, the Vallejo Police Department received a phone call from a public telephone within two blocks from them. The man on the other end of the line stated:
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.
Ferrin-Zodiac prior relationship theories
Controversy surrounds the discussion of whether or not Ferrin knew the Zodiac beforehand. Kelleher and Nuys write that theories regarding a potential relationship started with Robert Graysmith's book Zodiac (1986). He argued extensively for a connection, using events he was told by Ferrin's friends. However, the argument was ultimately based on "speculation and assumption"; there has been no proven connection. At the hospital, Mageau said he did not know his attacker, and different sources state that he said he was unsure if Ferrin knew him, or that Ferrin did know him, and his name was Richard. Ferrin's sister also claims one of Darlene's boyfriends was named Richard. In the Zodiac's later correspondence, he only ever referred to Ferrin with the term "girl". The locations of the Zodiac's three known shootings could imply he only shot Ferrin and Mageau because of their isolated location.
Kelleher and Nuys focus on the idea that the couple were followed once they left Mageau's house, which would be a clue towards the Zodiac knowing Ferrin. One version of events describes a high speed chase between the unknown driver and Ferrin, which would make it unlikely for her to drive into the deserted parking lot instead of getting help. There is also suspicion as to why, if they were being followed into the lot, Ferrin did not drive out of it once the unknown driver initially left. Kelleher and Nuys suggest that Ferrin telling Mageau not to worry about the driver, and the couple assuming he was a police officer, are more likely to happen if they arrived on their own accord.
Ferrin did know Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday, however. She previously attended Hogan High School, was familiar with Lake Herman Road's status as a lover's lane, and lived less than two blocks from Jensen's house. In 2010, a picture surfaced of Ferrin and an unknown man who closely resembles the later composite sketch of the Zodiac. In a 2011 episode of America's Most Wanted, police stated they believe the photo was taken in San Francisco in either 1966 or 1967.
First letters from the Zodiac
The Zodiac's letters, sent at least from 1969 to 1974, often started with "This is the Zodiac speaking" and signed with a symbol resembling the crosshairs of a gunsight: 
. He sent out four cryptograms, or ciphers; two have been solved, one in 1969 and one in 2020. The letters were postmarked San Francisco, except for the March 13, 1971 letter, which was postmarked Pleasanton. His use of astrological symbols led the police to "pore over occult works and astrological charts and even to consult psychics."
On August 1, 1969, three letters purportedly 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. He explained that he was killing victims to collect them as his personal slaves in the afterlife.
Each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram later named the "Z408", which the Zodiac claimed contained his identity. He demanded they be printed on each paper's front page, or else he would "cruse [sic] 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.
On August 4, the Examiner received a letter with the salutation, "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." This was the first time the Zodiac had used this name for identification. The letter responded to Stiltz's request for the Zodiac's personal information. It included details about the murders the public had not yet heard, and said that when the police cracked his code, "they will have me."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to decode the 408-symbol cryptogram. However, on the 5th, it was cracked by Donald and Bettye Harden, a couple in Salinas. It contained a misspelled message in which the killer seemed to reference "The Most Dangerous Game", a 1924 short story by Richard Connell. The author also said that he was committing the killings in order to collect slaves for his afterlife. No name appears in this decoded text. The killer said that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.
"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"
—The solution to Zodiac's Z408 cipher, solved in August 1969, including faithful transliterations of spelling and grammar errors in the original. The meaning, if any, of the final eighteen letters has not been determined.
Lake Berryessa murder
On September 27, 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. The Zodiac, described as a white male 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) tall and weighing more than 170 pounds (77 kg), approached the couple wearing a black executioner's-type hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eyeholes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white three-by-three-inch (7.6 cm × 7.6 cm) symbol on it. He approached with a gun, which Hartnell believed to be a .45, and claimed to be an escaped convict from a jail with a two-word name, in either Colorado or Montana, where he had killed a guard and subsequently stolen a car. A police officer later inferred that the Zodiac had been referring to a jail in Deer Lodge, Montana, yet a park ranger claimed that Hartnell told him the man referenced Colorado. The Zodiac then said that he needed their car and money to travel to Mexico because the stolen vehicle was "too hot."
The Zodiac had brought precut lengths of plastic clothesline and told Shepard to tie up Hartnell before he did the same with her. The Zodiac checked and tightened Hartnell's bonds after discovering that Shepard had bound them loosely. Hartnell initially believed this event to be a bizarre robbery, but the Zodiac drew a knife and stabbed them both repeatedly. Hartnell suffered six wounds and Shepard, ten. The Zodiac then hiked 500 yards (460 m) up to Knoxville Road, 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
At 7:40 p.m., the Zodiac called the Napa County Sheriff's Department from a pay telephone at the Napa Car Wash in downtown Napa. He first told the operator that he wished to "report a murder – no, a double murder," before saying that he had committed the crime. KVON radio reporter Pat Stanley found the phone, still off the hook, a few minutes later. The phone was located a few blocks from the sheriff's office, and 27 miles (43 km) from the crime scene. Detectives lifted a still-wet palm print from the phone, but were never able to match it to any suspect.
After hearing the victims' screams for help, a man and his son fishing in a nearby cove discovered Hartnell and Shepard and got help by contacting park rangers. Napa County deputies Dave Collins and Ray Land were the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the scene. Shepard was conscious when Collins arrived and provided him a detailed description of their attacker. She and Hartnell were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa by ambulance. Shepard lapsed into a coma during transport, never regaining consciousness, and she died in the hospital two days later. Hartnell survived to recount his tale to the press.
Napa County 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. Three women at Lake Berryessa who viewed a man — potentially the Zodiac without his "executioner's hood" — at 2:55 to 3:30 p.m. later worked on an eyewitness sketch of him. Robert Graysmith also drew a sketch of the Zodiac's costume after being personally described it by Bryan Hartnell.
Presidio Heights murder
Two weeks later, at around 9:40 p.m. on October 11, the Zodiac entered the taxi driven by Paul Stine in downtown San Francisco, requesting to be driven to Washington and Maple streets in Presidio Heights. When they arrived, the passenger asked to be driven one block down to Washington and Cherry streets, and Stine did so. At approximately 9:55 p.m., the Zodiac shot Stine in the head with a handgun, likely killing him immediately. The Zodiac then took Stine's wallet and car keys. This was the last officially confirmed murder by the Zodiac.
Three teenagers at a home across the street, 50 feet away, witnessed the incident, viewing the Zodiac's face only when he was lit by a streetlight. They phoned the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) while the crime was in progress, saying the man in question was a "husky" white man wearing a "dark or black jacket." The dispatcher mistakenly broadcast to police that the suspect was a black man. The witnesses also observed the killer wiping the cab down and seemingly "rifling through the man's clothing." As he leaned on the inside of the cab and cleaned it up, he left partial prints from two of his right hand's fingers.
Two blocks from the crime scene, patrol officers responded to the radio dispatch and arrived to Washington and Cherry two minutes after the phone call was placed. They observed a white male in dark clothes walking north, away from the crime scene and towards the Presidio Army Base. This man may have been the Zodiac. When the officers' patrol car pulled up alongside the man, they asked him if he had seen anything suspicious. He responded that he had seen a man waving a gun earlier, and went east down Washington. They drove quickly away, believing that a black man was the culprit. Moments later, when more police arrived at the scene, Stine was declared dead and a search began of the nearby area, including the Presidio. The Zodiac had likely escaped by that point, getting into a parked car and driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Stine murder was initially believed to be a routine robbery that had escalated into homicidal violence. However, on October 13 the Chronicle received a new letter from the Zodiac that claimed credit for the killing and contained a torn section of Stine's bloody shirt as proof. The letter also included a threat about killing schoolchildren on a school bus. In response, Bay Area police departments began escorting school buses. SFPD detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case.
The officers who initially responded realized a few days after the murder that they had possibly seen the Zodiac. A few days after that, the teenage witnesses helped make two composite sketches of the Zodiac: the initial one was based only on the man they saw at Stine's cab, and a second was drawn after feedback and further questioning of the teenagers from the responding officers who had seen an unknown man at the scene, even though that man might not be the Zodiac.
A.M. San Francisco interview
At 2:00 a.m. on October 22, 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 that morning on A.M. San Francisco, a talk show on KGO-TV hosted by Jim Dunbar. Bailey was not available, but Belli agreed to appear. Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open. Someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times, and Belli asked the caller for a less ominous name and the caller picked "Sam." The caller said he would not reveal his true identity as he was afraid of being sent to the gas chamber (then California's capital punishment method). Belli arranged a rendezvous to meet the caller outside a shop on Mission Street in Daly City, but no one arrived. The calls were later traced back to a mental patient named Eric Weill, who investigators concluded was not the Zodiac.
November 1969 letter and card
On November 8, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. This cipher, later named the "Z340," remained unsolved for over 51 years. On December 5, 2020, it was deciphered by an international team of private citizens, including 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, which 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, explaining that he was not afraid of the gas chamber "because it will send me to paradice [sic] all the sooner." The team submitted their findings to the FBI, which verified the discovery and stated that the decoded message gave no further clues to the identity of Zodiac.
"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"
—The solution to the Z340 cipher, solved in 2020, including faithful transliterations of spelling and grammar errors.
On November 9, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter stating that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he had shot Stine. The letter also said that he would blow up a school bus, and claimed that the police would never catch him, because "I have been to clever for them" [sic]. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12, including the Zodiac's claim. That same day, Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened on the night of Stine's murder. On December 20, exactly one year after the Lake Herman Road murders, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli that included another swatch of Stine's shirt; the Zodiac said that he wanted Belli to help him.
Suspected victims
There is no consensus regarding the number of victims the Zodiac Killer actually killed, or the length of his criminal spree. In Zodiac, Robert Graysmith published a list attributing forty-nine victims to the Zodiac. Various other authors speculated at the time of the killings that several other high-profile murders and attacks may have been the work of the Zodiac, but none have been confirmed:
Raymond Davis
Local historian Kristi Hawthorne suggests that the Zodiac may have murdered 29-year-old cab driver Raymond Davis in Oceanside, California on April 10, 1962. In 2019, following Hawthorne's research, Oceanside police announced that they were looking into possible connections between the Davis murder and the Zodiac. The day before the murder, an individual believed to be the culprit had phoned the Oceanside police and told them, "I am going to pull something here in Oceanside and you'll never be able to figure it out."
At 11:10 p.m. on the 10th, Davis radioed in to his dispatcher that he was taking a fare to South Oceanside. The next day, his body was found in an alley between the current and former mayors' houses by a police officer. Days later, before the April 9 call was publicly reported, the police received another call from someone who is presumed to be the same individual, saying: “Do you remember me calling you last week and telling you that I was going to pull a real baffling crime? I killed the cab driver and I am going to get me a bus driver next.” Nothing similar had happened in Oceanside before; police reacted to the murder by "putting armed guards on city buses and armed military police on buses heading to Camp Pendleton." There are similarities to the Zodiac murders: ABC10 wrote, "both cases involved attacks on cab drivers in wealthy neighborhoods, threats against buses, and cryptic messages expressly aimed at baffling investigators." The ammo used to kill Davis was from a .22 caliber pistol, the same as in the Lake Herman Road murders and the Lake Berryessa murders.
Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department claimed in a 1972 press release that the 1963 murders of a young couple in the county were the work of the Zodiac: “Although the anticipated response to this statement would be one of skepticism, let me say that we do not make this assertion frivolously." On June 4, 1963, Tuesday, 18-year-old Robert George Domingos and his fiancée, 17-year-old Linda Faye Edwards, were shot dead on a beach in Gaviota State Park, having skipped school at Lompoc High School that day for Senior Ditch Day. The beach was frequently visited by young people and surfers from Lompoc. Edwards told her friend Shirley that they were going there. Domingos drove Edwards. When the couple had not returned to their homes the next day, their parents called the police. Inside Edwards' car were some of Domingos' clothes and Edwards' purse.
Police believed that the assailant attempted to bind the victims, but when they freed themselves and attempted to flee, the killer shot them repeatedly in the back and chest. The weapon a .22 caliber semi-automatic firearm, probably a rifle, the same caliber of weapon used in the Lake Herman Road murders. The ammunition used, "Winchester Western Super X copper-coated bullets," was also used by the Zodiac. Domingos was shot 11 times, and Edwards 8 times. Pre-cut rope was used to bind the victims, just as in the Lake Berryessa attacks. The killer then placed their bodies in a small shack and then tried, unsuccessfully, to burn the structure to the ground. Dr. John Averitt, a police sergeant, clinical psychologist, and classmate of Domingos and Edwards, said, “I believe the murders were the work of the Zodiac killer, but I can’t prove it." Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi investigated the murders in 1972; Toschi said a connection is possible.
Earlier, at mid-afternoon on June 2, 1963, a sniper had fired two shots at a group of teenagers at Tajiguas, located east of the Domingos and Edwards murders. None of them were hit, and they identified the shots as coming from a .22 caliber weapon. Earlier that April, a Santa Barbara store sold .22 ammunition from the same lot number as the Domingos and Edwards murders, the second place that ammunition in the country was found from that lot number besides Vandenberg Air Force Base. An investigation on the person(s) who bought the ammunition were done at the store and air base.
Johnny Ray Swindle and Joyce Ann Swindle
On February 5, 1964, Johnny Ray Swindle and Joyce Ann Swindle (both aged 19), a newlywed couple from Alabama, were gunned down while walking along Ocean Beach in San Diego while on their honeymoon. Their killer, who was on a nearby cliff with a .22 caliber long rifle, shot them from the cliff five times, then went down to them to shoot them both once in the head. Johnny was shot behind the ear, similar to the Zodiac murders. Despite multiple bullet wounds, Johnny remained alive for hours. Joyce died almost instantly after she was shot in the back, left arm, and head. The suspect took Johnny's wallet and watch, then left the crime scene. The watch taken was a Timex, the same brand found at the Cheri Jo Bates murder (see below). The watch found at the Bates scene was initially assumed to belong to her murderer. Johnny died in the hospital that night.
Johnny's mother said she could not think of him having any enemies. Police speculated that the two were victims of a "thrill killer" and Rita, Johnny's sister, has theorized that the murders might have been the work of the Zodiac. They also believed there was a link to the Domingos and Edwards murders; author Soren Korsgaard notes how in both the Santa Barbara and Ocean Beach killings, the victims were shot from a distance, then the killer went down, reloaded, and shot them again. Both the Ocean Beach and Lake Herman Road murders used a .22 Remington Arms Model 550-1 rifle, but the ballistics did not match between the cartridges found at the two scenes. People who were suspected by police were a 51-year-old man living in a beach shack, a teenager alleged by a priest to be violent, and a 19-year-old Marine from San Diego who killed his parents and sister in Illinois. There were also two men who took interest in Joyce's necklace while her family was traveling to California; the necklace was taken from her at the crime scene. The locations of the Lake Berryessa, Santa Barbara, and Ocean Beach killings, if they are all done by the Zodiac, could mean his murders have some connection to water.
Cheri Jo Bates
On October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year-old student at Riverside City College (RCC), spent the evening at the campus library annex until it closed at 9:00 p.m. Neighbors reported hearing a scream around 10:30. Her father reported her missing, and she was found dead the next morning at 6:30 a.m. She was found a short distance from the library, between two abandoned houses slated to be demolished for campus renovations. She had been brutally beaten and stabbed to death. The wires in her Volkswagen's distributor cap had been pulled out. A man's paint-spattered Timex watch with a torn wristband was found nearby. The watch had stopped at 12:24, but police believe that the attack had occurred much earlier.
One month later, on November 29, nearly identical typewritten letters were mailed to the Riverside police and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, titled "The Confession." The author claimed responsibility for the Bates murder, providing details of the crime that were not released to the public. The author warned that Bates "is not the first and she will not be the last."
In December 1966, a macabre poem was discovered carved into the bottom side of a desktop in the RCC library. Titled "Sick of living/unwilling to die," the poem's language and handwriting resembled that of the Zodiac's letters. It was signed with what were assumed to be a set of lower case initials (r h) inscribed below. During the 1970 investigation, Sherwood Morrill, California's top "questioned documents" examiner, expressed his opinion that the poem was written by the Zodiac.
On March 13, 1971, five months after Avery's article linking the Zodiac to the Bates murder, the Zodiac mailed a letter to the Los Angeles Times. In the letter, he credited the police, instead of Avery, for discovering his "Riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there." The connection between Bates and the Zodiac remains uncertain. Avery and the Riverside police maintain that the Bates homicide was not committed by the Zodiac but did concede that some of the Bates letters may have been his work to claim credit falsely. In 2016, the Press-Enterprise reported that Riverside police knew who killed Bates but did not have enough evidence to arrest them. In 2021, the Riverside Police Department said the suspected killer was still alive and remained the investigation's focus, and believed their acquaintances had information that could lead to a prosecution.
Enedine Molina Martinez and Fermin Rodriguez
On June 8, 1967, Enedine Molina Martinez, 35, and Fermin Rodriguez, 36, were attacked and murdered on Vallecitos Road in Alameda County while relaxing in their vehicle. A stranger approached the couple and told them to get out of the car. Rodriguez was shot dead as he exited the car and the killer abducted Martinez. The killer then stopped by the entrance of Sunol Regional Wilderness, where Martinez was killed trying to escape. Shortly afterward, a nearby resident called the Santa Rita police substation to report two gunshots, resulting in the discovery of the bodies. Rape and robbery were ruled out as motives. The murders occurred close to Pleasanton, where the Zodiac mailed a letter to the Los Angeles Times in March 1971.
John Franklin Hood and Sandra Garcia
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On February 21, 1970, 24-year-old Vietnam War veteran John Franklin Hood and his fiancée, 20-year-old Sandra Garcia, visited East Beach in Santa Barbara. They had left their Santa Barbara home at 6 p.m. The couple were discovered early the following day, fully-clothed, lying face down under their blanket. Hood suffered eleven knife wounds, the majority inflicted to his face and back, while Garcia received the brunt of the vicious attack, leaving her almost unrecognizable. The bone-handled 4" fish knife used in their murder was retrieved from beneath the blanket, partially buried in the sand. There appeared to be no sexual interference and robbery was ruled out. The double-murder bore many similarities to the previous murders of Domingos and Edwards, thirty miles west of the attack and seven years earlier, as well as the Lake Berryessa attack on Hartnell and Shepard.
Kathleen Johns
On the night of March 22, 1970, 22-year-old Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. Johns was seven months pregnant and was accompanied by her ten-month-old daughter. She first left San Bernardino at 4:30 p.m. While she was driving on Highway 132 near Patterson, at 11:30 p.m., a man driving behind her blinked his vehicle's lights. Most sources say that both cars pulled over, and the man said her left rear wheel was loose, offering to tighten the lug nuts on it. When he worked on the wheel, he actually loosened the lug nuts, so when Johns drove away, the wheel fell off. The man then offered to drive her and her daughter in his car to a nearby gas station. However, the San Francisco Examiner wrote that when the man stopped Johns, they checked the wheel to find it only had one lug nut, and then he offered a ride.
Once Johns and her daughter were being driven by the man, he drove around for two hours without stopping. Most accounts say that the man threatened to kill Johns and her daughter while driving them around. SFGate writes that at one point, she asked him if always helped out strangers that way, and he said, "'By the time I get through with them, they won't need my help." Johns escaped by jumping out of one the car doors with her daughter. One account says that the man did not stop, and instead continued driving, while Johns' account to Chronicle reporter Paul Avery says that he left the car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight. A farmer driving by saw Johns, and took her to a nearby police station in Patterson, where she identified the kidnapper as the Zodiac using a sketch that was on a wanted poster there. An hour later, Johns' car was found on Highway 132, intentionally set on fire. The Zodiac took credit for the abduction.
Richard Radetich
On June 19, 1970, around 5:25 a.m., 25-year-old police sergeant Richard Phillip "Rich" Radetich was gunned down by three shots from a .38 caliber revolver through the driver side window of his squad car, while in the process of serving a parking ticket on the 600 block of Waller Street in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. He died around 15 hours later. After Radetich's death, the SFPD started assigning two officers to every patrol car. Police investigated a possible link to the Zodiac, who alluded to the crime in taunting notes to authorities; however, no direct evidence has ever been established between him and Radetich's death. In 2004, the SFPD reopened the Radetich investigation.
Donna Lass
25-year-old Donna Lass worked as a registered nurse at the first aid station of the Sahara Tahoe hotel and casino in Stateline, Nevada. On September 6, 1970, she worked until about 2:00 a.m., treating her last patient at 1:40 a.m. Her last logbook entry was timed at 1:50 a.m. Later that day, both Lass' employer and her landlord received phone calls from an unknown male falsely claiming that Lass had left town because of a family emergency. Lass did not have a family emergency at the time. Lass was never found and the caller has never been identified. Her car was found parked near her apartment, but nobody saw her leave the casino. At her apartment, there were no signs of a struggle, the light was left on, and clothes were left folded.
On March 22, 1971, a postcard to the Chronicle, addressed to "Paul Averly" [sic] (Paul Avery) and believed to be from the Zodiac, appeared to claim responsibility for the disappearance of Lass. It has been nicknamed the "Peek Through the Pines card". Made from a collage of advertisements and magazine lettering, it featured a scene of the Lake Tahoe area from an advertisement for Forest Pines condominiums and the text "Sierra Club," "Sought Victim 12," "peek through the pines," "pass Lake Tahoe areas," and "around in the snow." The symbol was in both the place of the usual return address and the lower-right section of the front face of the postcard.
Two police reports filed on March 25, 1970, contain possible connections between the Lake Tahoe area and the Zodiac. In the reports, a woman claimed that at a restaurant in South Lake Tahoe, a man wanted to read her astrological chart. Later that day, he came to her house to read an astrological chart that he had prepared. The man was "30- to 40-years-old, 5 foot 9 inches tall, 160 pounds, had a pudgy stomach, and wore horn-rimmed glasses," which is similar to the Zodiac's description. He eventually left her house without incident.
On December 27, 1974, a Christmas card was mailed to Mary Pilker, Lass' sister, portraying trees covered in snow. Once opened it revealed a message that was part of the card itself – "Holiday Greetings and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year", followed by the handwriting "Best Wishes, St. Donna & Guardian of the Pines." The envelope was addressed to "Mrs. Mary Pilker, 1609 South Grange, Sioux Falls, South Dakota." It was postmarked 940, either from San Mateo or Santa Clara County.
In 1986, the Placer County Sheriff's Office located a skull near Emigrant Gap along California State Route 20 in the Sierra Nevada, 70 miles from South Lake Tahoe. In 2023, DNA profiling identified the skull as belonging to Lass. Police said no other evidence was found with the skull, and did not indicate how Lass died or whether homicide was suspected. Investigators at the South Lake Tahoe police department started investigating if there was a connection between Lass' disappearance and the Zodiac in 2001, and have not found one as of 2024.
Sandy Betts
Sandy Betts is an amateur Zodiac researcher who claims that the people responsible for the Zodiac attacks repeatedly harassed and attacked her. She states that three men were the primary culprits, and that at least one of these core members is identified and still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She claimed that one of the culprits has attempted to shoot her multiple times over the years, the most recent attempt in 2009. In 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the Lake Herman Road murders, a group of 30 Zodiac enthusiasts, including Betts, planned to commemorate the murders at the Lake Herman Road site. However, the event was cancelled because a local man threatened to murder the group if they showed up. Betts said this man had stalked her in the past, that he believes his father who tried to kill him was the Zodiac, and that his father went to prison for the attempted murder.
Potentially related serial murders
Astrological murders
The "Astrological Murders" were committed by a suspected serial killer who was also active in the same state and around the same time as the Zodiac. Police in Northern California made a tentative connection between a single culprit and possibly at least a dozen unsolved homicides that occurred between the late 1960s and early 1970s. All of the victims were female and were killed in a variety of ways, including strangulation, drowning, throat-cutting, and bludgeoning, occasionally after being drugged. They were linked by the fact that they were dumped in ravines and killed in conjunction with astrological events, such as the winter solstice, equinox, and Friday the 13th. The alleged victims are:
- Elaine Louise Davis, 17, who disappeared on December 1, 1969, from her home in Walnut Creek, California. On December 19, the body of a young woman – eventually identified as Davis after an exhumation in 2000 – was discovered floating off Light House Point near Santa Cruz.
- Leona LaRell Roberts, 16, whose nude body was found ten days before the winter solstice on the beach at Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County, on December 28, 1969. She had been kidnapped from her boyfriend's home on December 10. Her death was treated as a homicide, although the official cause was listed as "exposure" by the medical examiner.
- Cosette Ann Ellison, 15, whose nude body was found in a ravine seventeen days before the vernal equinox. The cause of her death was undetermined. She had been abducted on March 3, 1970, from her residence in Moraga, California, as she got off the school bus at 3:20 p.m.
- Patricia Ann King, 20, who was found strangled and discarded in a rural gully at Diablo Valley College. She was nude from the waist down but had not been raped.
- Judith Ann Hakari, 23, who was last seen leaving work at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento at 11:30 p.m. on March 7, 1970, thirteen days before the equinox. She was discovered, nude and bludgeoned, in an overgrown ravine off Ponderosa Way, near Weimar on April 26.
- Marie Antoinette Anstey, 23, who was kidnapped in Vallejo after being stunned by a blow to the head, and then drowned. Her body was recovered in rural Lake County on March 21, and an autopsy revealed traces of mescaline in her bloodstream.
- Eva Lucienne Blau, 17, who was found clubbed to death and dumped in a roadside gully near Santa Rosa during the equinox on March 20, 1970. The medical examiner discovered drugs in her circulatory system. She was last seen on March 12, leaving Jack London Hall after telling friends that she was heading home.
- Carol Beth Hilburn, 22, who was found beaten to death in a ravine on November 13, 1970. She was last seen at Lloyd Hickey’s Forty Grand Club in Sacramento on November 14 at approximately 5:00 a.m. Hilburn had been stripped of her clothing except for her underwear, which was found around her knees. She had been beaten about the face, and had a deep cut to her throat.
- Denise Kathleen Anderson, 22, who disappeared on April 13, 1971, having been last seen by one of her roommates at 5:30 a.m. at their residence in Sacramento. She has not been seen since.
- Susan Marie Lynch, 22, who was discovered murdered on July 31, 1971, having been buried alive near East Levee Road in Sacramento, one-half mile north of Del Paso Road and 0.6 miles southwest of the Hilburn dump site.
- Linda Diane Uhlig, 19, who was found in a ditch alongside a rural road beaten to death at Half Moon Bay on March 28, 1972, six days after the vernal equinox. Her skull had been smashed and it appeared that her attacker had tried to decapitate her.
- Lynn Derrick, 24, who was discovered in Noe Valley, San Francisco, on July 26, 1972, at 4:15 a.m. She had been strangled and a sock had been forced into her mouth, but no sexual molestation had taken place. Derrick had been abducted from her home approximately two hours earlier, at around 2:00 a.m., when a female neighbour reported hearing a disturbance, a dragging sound, and a car speeding away.
Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders
The Zodiac was also suspected of being the perpetrator behind the so-called "Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders", in which at least seven female hitchhikers were all murdered in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa between 1972 and 1973. The suspicion was based upon similarities between an unknown symbol on his January 29, 1974, "Exorcist letter" to the Chronicle, in which he claims thirty-seven victims, and the Chinese characters on the missing soy barrel carried by victim Kim Allen, as well as stating an intention to vary his modus operandi in an earlier letter to the Chronicle: "I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc." (sic)
In addition, Zodiac suspect Arthur Leigh Allen, an elementary school teacher, was independently suspected of being the Santa Rosa killer. He owned a mobile home in Santa Rosa at the time of the murders, had been fired from his Valley Springs teaching position for suspected child molestation in 1968, and was a full-time student at Sonoma State University. Allen was arrested on September 27, 1974, by the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and charged with child molestation in an unrelated case involving a young boy. He pleaded guilty on March 14, 1975, and was imprisoned at Atascadero State Hospital until late 1977. Graysmith, in his book Zodiac Unmasked (2002), claims that a Sonoma County sheriff revealed that chipmunk hairs were found on all of the Santa Rosa victims and that Allen had been collecting and studying the same species.
Further Zodiac messages
April 1970 letter and card
The 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, he wrote "My name is _____," followed by a 13-character cipher – later named the "Z13" – which has not been solved to this day:
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