Original subtitles

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"This is the zodiac speaking.

"To kill something gives me the most thrilling experience.

"I like killing people because it is so much fun.

"It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest

because man is the most dangerous animal of all."

??

??

??

Welcome to "very scary people."

I'm Donnie wahlberg.

At the end of the 1960s,

a series of murders in northern California

in different towns, using different weapons

would turn out to be the work of one man,

but police didn't connect the crimes

until the killer did it for them.

Not satisfied with just getting away with murder,

he bragged to newspaper reporters

and taunted investigators.

What would inspire someone to conjure up such a twisted plot,

stalking innocent people and killing them for sport?

His reign of terror would go on for years,

and he would live in infamy, naming himself the zodiac.

??

He taunted police with letters and terrorized

the people they protect.

More than three decades later,

a famous serial killer case goes unsolved.

??

The first set of murders took place near Christmas.

Benicia is about an hour away from San Francisco.

Bidou: Benicia was a very quiet community.

Benicia never had the crime rate

that San Francisco had.

??

On December 20, 1968,

David Faraday came to Betty Lou Jensen's house

to pick her up for their first date,

and they promised her parents

that they would return by 11 P.M.

David and Betty were just typical

high school kids back then.

Butterfield: Betty Lou Jensen was 16 years old

and David Faraday was 17 years old.

He was a popular young man.

Betty Lou Jensen was an art student

who showed tremendous talent.

They went to a restaurant,

spent some time with some friends.

They were supposed to go to a Christmas play,

but instead, they went to a place where young people park.

They went out to lake Herman road.

Butterfield: Lake Herman road back in 1968

was very much how it looks today.

It's actually rather isolated, way out in the hills.

It was a lovers' Lane area.

They were looking for a place to be alone.

??

Jordan: Betty Lou and David thought they were alone,

but they weren't.

We know that they were there at 10:30.

Another person drove by and saw their car and again,

after 11, another person drove by and saw their car,

so they were out there for quite a while,

and we don't know exactly when she planned to leave,

but she wasn't going to make curfew that night.

Benicia was a safe town.

You're not going to think twice about parking

at lake Herman road.

I'd be surprised if they were worried about much

of anything right then.

??

??

Graysmith: They were in the car when suddenly,

a car came and blocked them off.

And this figure gets out

and walks around their car,

firing bullets into it.

[Gunshots]

A bullet shattered a window,

but at some point,

it appears the killer forced the victims out of the vehicle.

David was shot in the head once,

and Betty Lou Jensen was shot in the back five times

as she was trying to run away.

[Gunshots]

10 shots were fired that evening,

and apparently, the assailant got back in the car

and drove away and was not spotted

after leaving the scene.

It wasn't so remote that there weren't other people around,

so risky for the offender,

but he was also able to commit these murders

and then get out of the area pretty successfully.

??

Myself and my partner were going back to the police department

when we heard the call come over the air saying

there was some type of a disturbance

or a vehicle accident on lake Herman road.

Possibly, they were ordered out of the car by the responsible

and a boy was shot right at the side of the car,

and the girl apparently tried to run,

and she was shot and found 28 feet further on.

When we got there, we, again, found the two victims

and, of course, realized that this was not

just a routine call.

We could see the young lady had run from the car,

and she was dead.

He was still breathing.

It was fairly cold,

and, in fact, you could see the breath, too.

That's why we knew there was some life left in him.

Oddly enough, even though he was still alive,

a responding officer did a chalk outline of his body.

The boy was an eagle scout.

The girl was on her first date

and there's no record of any misbehavior

on either one of them.

He was rushed to the hospital, but he was doa,

but if you were at that scene and saw the waste of life

in these young kids, turn your stomach.

This was real life.

Police found many shell casings at the scene of the crime,

and they also found several bullets.

The evidence indicates that there were certain elements

of gunshot residue on her dress

which indicated that the first shot may have occurred

while she was closer to the killer.

The police also found the tire tracks

showing where the killer's car had been parked.

They did take photographs, picked up the spent cartridges,

did some fingerprinting on the car.

That was it and you have to realize that we didn't have

the technology then that we have today.

??

The police initially investigated the possibility

that the victims were killed by someone they had known.

Bidou: We had no idea at all who the responsible

or responsibles were.

It could have been more than one person.

We didn't know.

The police tend to focus on the inner circle

because usually when someone is killed,

especially a low-risk type victim like Betty Lou

and David farraday,

probably the perpetrator knew them and was mad at them.

It's called a crime of passion.

There was one young boy

who apparently had an interest in Betty Lou Jensen

and was jealous of her relationship with David,

but police investigated and discovered

that he had an alibi for the time of the crime.

Other suspects in the murders of David and Betty Lou

included the usual suspects,

the local druggies they were focused on,

and it just went nowhere.

Do you have any idea what the possible motive

might be for this killing?

We have no motive at this time.

The benicia case went cold almost immediately.

Without a motive to go back

and find out what was the causation,

I mean, the causation for the person

or persons to do this, you just speculate,

and there was all type of speculation,

which none of it actually panned out,

and it was hard to believe at first.

Is this really happening here in this community?

We had some robberies and that type of thing

but not where you just actually zero in on someone

and just take their life.

The community was horrified by this murder.

There were not murders like this in the past.

??

It turns out that the killer was actually just getting started.

??

The first murders happened December 20, 1968.

It was on lake Herman road just outside of vallejo

in Solano county, California.

After six months, the double murder was cold.

They'd done everything they could do.

Barring a miracle, they weren't gonna solve that murder,

and then they had a new one.

??

Darlene ferrin was 22 years old.

She was a wife, a mother,

and she was a very popular waitress at a local restaurant.

Voigt: She had been married once.

That ended, and she was relatively

early into her second marriage.

Darlene, or Dee as I knew her, we met through our work.

I was a cook and she was a waitress at the pancake house.

We ended up getting married.

Our daughter was born in January of 1968.

She was the type of person that people could fall in love with

just because she was outgoing and bubbly,

just friendly to people.

I know it upset a lot of the other waitresses

she worked with because she always made better tips.

Voigt: On the night of July 4th,

Darlene ferrin had apparently been out.

Everybody is downtown. The sky is full of fireworks.

There's crowds. There's a marching band.

I was working at my regular job.

She was gonna go out and buy some fireworks,

and we were gonna meet at the house.

She went out with her friend Michael

just to kill some time until her husband got home from work.

We don't know for sure what the nature

of their relationship was.

Michael developed some sort of fixation on Darlene,

which led to an odd friendship.

Michael mageau told Darlene

that he wanted to talk to her about something,

so they drove to blue rock Springs park.

They parked in the parking lot.

Blue rock Springs is a lovely place

and again, off the beaten path.

Again, a lovers' Lane area,

had only been there a few minutes,

and a car pulled up behind them

as they were parked in the car talking.

The vehicle pulled up behind and sat there for a moment,

but they didn't think anything of it.

A few minutes later,

what appeared to be the same vehicle returned.

Graysmith: Mike is very upset.

"It's the police," he thinks, because the guy

is shining a huge light on him and he walks toward the car.

But instead of asking for their license,

he opened fire through

the window of the passenger side.

Michael mageau is hit once in the jaw.

He was hit in the shoulder.

But the shooter isn't done yet.

He walks around the car and then starts shooting Darlene

repeatedly in the driver's seat.

[Gunshots]

In the process of returning to his vehicle,

Michael mageau cried out in pain,

causing the assailant to turn around and return to the window

and fire twice more at each of them.

He got in his car and drove away.

??

Three teenagers were driving in the area,

and when they saw a vehicle parked in the blue rock Springs

parking lot, they decided to investigate,

but when their headlights hit the area,

they saw Michael mageau laying on the ground,

and one of the kids jumped out and asked him if he was okay,

and Michael mageau explained that they had been shot

and that they needed a doctor.

They drove on to a house and called the police.

Darlene was still breathing when police arrived,

and one of the detectives tried to talk to her,

and she appeared to be trying to say something,

but it wasn't intelligible.

The police found shell casings,

but that's really it in terms of evidence.

No other evidence was found... No footprints, no fingerprints,

no tire prints, nothing.

There didn't appear to be a motive.

To me, what's so interesting is that these crime scenes

are pretty clean of emotion.

They're devoid of emotion.

You don't see any expression of anger

like any battering to the face of the victims,

like coming up to the car and yelling and screaming

and then punching and slapping them.

They're rushed to the hospital,

and at the hospital, Darlene is pronounced dead,

but Michael miraculously survives.

??

Darlene ferrin is a little bit like Laura Palmer

in the "twin peaks" television show.

You know, her death set off this thing in vallejo.

One murder could be the result of a grudge

or the act of a crazy boyfriend,

but these two similar murders had police very worried

that it could be something far more sinister.

??

They were both what you might call blitz-style attacks,

using a handgun.

Now this is the beginning of a theme.

He's going to do this again.

We think that he's... it appears to us

that he is killing just for the thrill.

??

??

Like the son of Sam, the Boston strangler, btk,

the zodiac stalks his prey and then slaughtered them.

??

A couple parked at a lovers' Lane

was shot in December of 1968,

and then six months later, another couple was shot.

Now, we have a second attack

that took the life of a young mother

but left a living witness that could potentially identify

the shooter, and it's also possible

that Darlene knew the man who killed her.

There have been stories over the years

that Darlene ferrin was the victim

of some mysterious stalker who was following her

in the weeks and months before her death.

She worked at an ihop, and he would sit there and watch her.

Police were never able to find

whoever it was that was bothering her.

Michael mageau was very traumatized by these events.

He was the only living person to have seen the killer,

and that put him in a very difficult place.

Mike is interviewed by the police,

and he is able to articulate that a white man

approached the car, round face, glasses, maybe 30s,

and he thinks that if he saw a photo,

he might be able to identify this shooter.

It's not much to go on,

and the killer could just disappear,

except that he doesn't.

About 45 minutes after the shooting,

the killer chose to go to a phone booth in vallejo

and actually report what he had just done to Darlene and Mike

and take credit for killing Betty Lou and David.

He identified the type of weapon used as a 9 millimeter.

He also described Darlene's car.

When the dispatcher tried to interrupt the caller

to ask him a question, the man raised his voice

and said, "I'm the one who did it."

Dispatcher Nancy slover described the call as taunting,

and she said that at the end of the call,

the man said, "goodbye," in a long taunting tone.

That call was traced to a nearby gas station,

but they were not able to find any evidence,

and the killer was long gone.

He's ratcheting up what he's doing, and he's changing.

Graysmith: The interesting thing about the phone booth is,

what do you think is across the street?

Vallejo pd.

Now, this is the beginning of a theme.

He's gonna do this again.

He's taunting the police.

Why was he willing to take such risks

that could have resulted in an arrest made of him?

Taking high risks is important to this offender,

and it increases the thrill and excitement of his murders.

Three days after the shooting,

vallejo detective ed rust interviewed

Michael mageau at the hospital, and he provided

a detailed account of what happened that night,

including a description of the killer.

He described the man as being approximately 5'8",

a beefy build, short brown curly hair.

Jordan: This murderer, he's the sort of generic man

who could easily disappear into a crowd.

The most interesting aspects of this attack at this point

are the similarities and connections to the murders

that happened just six months before.

They were both what you might call blitz-style attacks

using a handgun on victims sitting in a parked vehicle.

He's choosing young couples on a weekend under the moon

in a lovers' Lane on specific days.

I would not be surprised if he had never had

a real relationship with a woman,

and so he's going to get people that have what he does not have.

Somebody who in their own life feels very powerless,

feels very weak and only feels important and significant

if they can go out and kill somebody.

There was some sort of serial killer

operating in the bay area.

We think that he's... it appears to us

that he is killing just for the thrill.

For the next three weeks, the investigation goes nowhere.

Then the killer does something really odd.

He reaches out to the media.

??

Three bay area newspapers receive

three virtually identical handwritten letters.

He wrote to "the vallejo times."

He wrote to "the San Francisco examiner,"

and he wrote to "the chronicle."

Graysmith: As a political cartoonist,

I was 20 feet away when the letters came in.

We're across the hall.

Jordan: These letters were so specific.

They really went into detail about the victims

and their appearances and the number of shots.

It couldn't have been anyone other than the culprit.

These three letters were accompanied by

a section of a cipher, a coded message.

The letter claimed that the ciphered message

would reveal the killer's identity.

Normally, killers don't send letters

bragging about their crimes to newspapers

and including mysterious codes

that they're trying to compel people to work on,

so it was a very unique thing for the newspaper.

He demanded that these ciphers and the letters be published

in the newspapers and threatened to go on a killing rampage

over the weekend if that was not done.

And they had to weigh a lot of different factors

before deciding to publish.

They published them.

I don't think the police were very happy with that,

and here is where you enlist the public.

Many citizens took this as a challenge to try to solve it,

and they were successful.

Donald harden was a high school teacher in salinas,

and he and his wife saw the codes in the paper

and decided to start working on it.

It took Donald and Betty 20 hours on and off

to solve the first cipher from the killer.

"I like killing people because it is so much fun.

"It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest

because man is the most dangerous animal of all."

What is intriguing about his choice of words

is he actually gave away the cipher

because everybody that's looking at this,

the hardens especially, they were looking for I.

This is egotist.

He's going to begin his letter with I,

and they were right, and they said,

"okay. What's the most commonly double letter

ever used in the English language?

I. Two ls. "Well, I like killing people."

Now, they had an I. They had two ls.

They had a g, an I, an n.

That's the way it starts,

and they solved it in that manner,

but it was basically based on the killer's own egotism.

The last section of that has never been decoded,

and, of course, the theory is that it includes

the killer's name.

I actually think it was just planted there to baffle

and confuse the decoders,

and it's obvious that he wants to get credit for his crimes.

??

He appeared to want to taunt the police.

"Dear editor, this is the zodiac speaking.

"In answer to your asking for more details

"about the good times I've had in vallejo,

I shall be very happy to supply even more material."

That message made it clear just how close police may have come

to catching the zodiac killer,

and as you'll see next, the terror was far from over.

??

??

Welcome back to "very scary people."

By the summer of 1969, two young couples

had been shot on lovers' lanes.

Three are dead, and one is seriously injured.

Instead of retreating to the shadows,

the killer is writing letters to newspapers.

The police and the public have begun asking,

"what does zodiac really want, and what will he do to get it?"

??

By the end of the summer in 1969,

we have two attacks, three murder victims,

another victim who is seriously injured,

and now a killer who's writing letters to the local newspaper

and taking credit for all of it.

He appeared to want to taunt the police.

Just days after the initial communications from the killer,

a new letter arrived.

And that letter was the first to begin with the phrase,

"this is the zodiac speaking."

"Dear editor, this is the zodiac speaking.

"In answer to your asking for more details

"about the good times I have had in vallejo,

I shall be very happy to supply even more material."

He named himself.

He called himself zodiac.

What exactly that meant and where the word zodiac

came from has never been described by the killer.

When you think about the definition of the zodiac,

the zodiac is everything out there in the universe,

and it's all-powerful, and it's all dark.

It implies somebody who's omnipotent,

and so I think that this is

an individual who is very arrogant,

loves that power, loves that control.

He was kind of developing his own character

through these communications, through these ciphers.

The three-page letter includes a great many details

about the Darlene and Michael attack

that only the killer could know.

Graysmith: "On the 4th of July, I did not open the car door.

The window was rolled down already."

The killer provided more details about the crimes,

which apparently satisfied police that he was responsible.

These letters contain some misspellings,

which led some people to believe

that the killer had a very limited education.

The intelligence of the zodiac is still an open question.

In his letters, he spells some very difficult words

exactly correctly

and yet mess up on very simple words.

But it's also possible that that was a put-on,

that he was trying to make himself appear less intelligent

than he actually was in order to throw off investigators.

I've always called it

as he's playing chess against the police.

I think the killer is matching wits.

He's making himself feel important.

He may have misspelled some words,

but the message that he's trying to get across is very clear.

"Last Christmas in that episode the police were wondering

"as to how I could shoot and hit my victims in the dark.

"What I did was tape a small pencil flashlight

"to the barrel of my gun.

"I was not happy to see

that I did not get front page coverage."

He seemed to be very interested in gaining publicity.

The zodiac obviously had a tremendous ego.

When he didn't get what he wanted, he complained.

His next move ensures that he will continue to get

the attention from the public that he's been seeking.

He hog-tied them so that they were lying on their stomachs

with their feet tied behind their backs.

The zodiac then drew a foot-long knife

out of a scabbard in his belt.

Hartnell: And I'm just kind of, like, waiting to die.

??

Anchorman: The zodiac killer craved publicity,

taunting the public with creepy letters to the media

in which he said he had killed 37 people,

those letters often written in a cipher

he seemed to have invented himself.

Jordan: After gunning down two teenage couples,

the killer starts writing to the press,

and he's given himself a name... The zodiac.

It's as if he wants us to think of him

as a signature or a symbol, even a brand.

On September 27, 1969,

the zodiac showed up at lake berryessa,

where Bryan hartnell and Cecelia Shepard

were lying by the water's edge.

Jordan: 22-year-old Cecelia Shepard,

a local college student.

She was transferring from one college to another,

and she got the help of her fellow college student

Bryan hartnell to pack up her room.

Bryan hartnell was a young man attending college for prelaw,

and he had had a previous relationship with Cecelia

and obviously still had a lot of feelings for her,

and they decided to spend some time together.

Collins: The weather on September 27th

was very pleasant.

It was a beautiful day.

This is a remote lake. This is up in the mountains.

Is there... you got through, you know, from vallejo

and all the way over at napa, and you go up this hill.

We were not on high alert

or expecting anything like this to occur.

We didn't have that type of community.

??

As they were sitting there, Cecelia noticed a man

walking through the trees in the distance.

She commented to Bryan about the man,

and Bryan assumed he was just there

doing whatever and dismissed the man.

As he approached and got closer and closer,

he reached a point to where he was approximately 75 feet away

when he stepped behind a tree.

Put on a hood with sunglasses that had a chest covering

that had the zodiac's crosshair symbol on it.

He approached them with his gun drawn.

Bryan started to get up, and he told him to

"get down. Get back down," and he pointed the gun at him.

And he told Bryan and Cecelia that he had escaped

from a prison, and he needed their car keys

and some money to escape to Mexico.

He's wearing this scary Halloween-mask contraption

on his head, engaging in conversation

with these people who are looking up at him,

seeing this knife hang off of him, seeing this gun,

seeing the ropes hang off of them.

That mask, his conversation I'm sure increased their fear

and their expressions and how they responded to him.

That's everything that they want

to see the fear in the eyes of their victims.

Bryan said to him, he said, "I don't have any money.

"I've only got some change. Here, take mine.

"Take the change. Take the car keys.

You can have it," and zodiac did not take it.

He had Cecelia tie up Bryan.

Then he tied up the two of them.

He hog-tied them so that they were lying on their stomachs

with their feet tied behind their backs.

Bryan thought that was going to be the end of that.

The zodiac then drew a foot-long knife

out of a scabbard in his belt and stabbed Bryan

about six times in his back and then turned to Cecelia.

Who then was screaming and yelling and rolling

and trying to get away from him,

and he began stabbing her.

She was stabbed approximately 10 times...

Five times in the front, five times in the back.

I felt my life, my energy, just this dark...

And I'm, like, just kind of, like, waiting to die.

He watched them for a moment or two

and then quietly walked away.

Bryan and Cecelia with these multiple stab wounds

had been left to bleed to death, but they don't give up.

The killer left both of the victims alive.

They waited to be sure he was gone,

and then Bryan turned to her,

and he tried to get her loose by using his teeth on her knots.

He was barely able to get it loose enough

to where she could get a hand free,

then he felt Cecelia actually get a hand and loosen his knots,

and so he became free.

Bryan got up and tried to walk to flag down help

and they were a good 300 yards away from the road.

He was never able to really get very far.

I couldn't see. You know, I kept blacking out.

My legs kept getting weak.

Offshore, a father and son see something on the shore,

and they row like crazy,

and they get the two park rangers to come to them.

I was on patrol in napa on the east side of town.

It was 7:15 when I received the call

to respond to a double stabbing at lake berryessa,

so by the time I got to the scene,

it's over an hour that the victims had lay injured.

??

Man: Can you describe for us what your attacker looked like?

He was of medium to short height,

kind of pouchy.

He had this black hood on.

He put it down to here, just little slits in the eyes.

The costume at lake berryessa

is one of the most fascinating portions of the case.

If not for Bryan hartnell's survival,

we would never have known about it.

He had some clip-on glasses that were either affixed to the hood

or affixed to glasses underneath.

The circle on the chest was a perfectly formed circle.

It was always puzzling to us that the zodiac would wear

a mask to cover his identity if he had intended to kill them.

I think he just felt like his follow-up performance

had to be something just shocking and terrifying,

so he created this costume,

but it wasn't for the benefit of his victims.

It was for his own need.

When I got there at the scene, I went right to Cecelia,

and my partner went to Bryan.

She knew that she was critically ill

and she knew that she had to give as much information

as she could, so we could try and catch him.

She had saw him without his hood on.

She saw that he had a round-type face

and that he had brown hair,

and then within 10 to 15 minutes,

the ambulance did arrive.

Bryan and Cecelia are taken to the hospital,

and police comb this crime scene for evidence.

They found several bootprints

which appeared to belong to a military-style boot.

They're wing-walkers, is what they were called.

These are extremely rare boots,

150,000 made and sold only at military bases.

You had to literally be in the Navy or the air force.

Those bootprints led from the area

where the killer apparently parked his vehicle

down to the crime scene

and then back up to Bryan hartnell's car.

What I found was a karmann ghia with Oregon plates,

and on the side, the zodiac had scrolled his symbol,

which was the circle with the crosshairs in it.

He writes with a blue felt-tip pen on the car.

It's dead-on zodiac lettering.

He puts the time of the murder.

He puts all of his previous attacks.

The vallejo and benicia crimes, and he ended that by saying,

"by knife, lake berryessa,"

so we knew that this all tied together with one individual.

Without that message on that car door, it's perfectly possible

that crime may never have been connected to the zodiac.

He's doing the investigators' work for them,

which goes back to the whole idea of,

"I want credit for these murders.

"These are mine.

Now make sure you give me credit for these cases."

It's very compromising for him

because now they are going to connect them

which ups his risk of being caught.

He was able to do what he always does.

He made a phone call to the police.

He is a cunning man.

He pulled out a gun and held it to the back of his head.

We have reason to believe that he's a maniac.

With each attack, he keeps ratcheting up the risk factor.

It really begs the question, what is he planning to do next?

??

??

Investigators hoping to crack one of america's

most mysterious unsolved cases.

Authorities in California have been trying

to hunt down the zodiac killer for decades.

The murderer has been linked to five deaths

in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The zodiac, he was so brazen.

Calling the police a second time in a downtown location

in daylight was very risky,

and at any point, he could have gotten caught.

The subject stated, "I want to report a murder.

"No, a double-murder. I did it," and with that,

the officer could feel that there was nobody on the line.

The police are able to trace the call,

and it goes to a pay phone at a napa car wash

at 1231 main street,

just five blocks away from the police station.

So close to them,

but, of course, when they get there, there's no one there.

However, this time, they're able to get a palm print.

He's right near the police department once they figure out

which pay phone he's called from.

Being able to do this under the nose of law enforcement

is certainly a way of saying,

"I can do this and carry it out right in front of you,

and there's nothing that you can do about it."

There's this sketch that comes from some eyewitnesses

who saw a man earlier in the day.

He's white with brown hair and has a round face.

He might be the zodiac.

Well, sheriff, what type of person is this man?

He is a cunning man.

He knows just exactly what moves he's going to make.

He knows where he's going to start

and when he's going to end,

and he knows just exactly

how this thing is gonna turn out.

We think that he's... it appears to us that he is killing

just for the thrill of killing.

Well, we have reason to believe that he's a maniac.

The attack on Cecelia Shepard and Bryan hartnell

had been particularly brutal, especially Cecelia.

She had been stabbed twice as many times as Bryan.

Cecelia died three days after the attack at lake berryessa.

She was lucky to have survived that long.

She fought back.

She was very strong, and unfortunately,

she was not strong enough.

Bryan miraculously survived.

This guy took his anger and all of his fury out on the woman.

Once again, the men survive. The women die.

That just seems to be the motif of the zodiac crimes.

When you're in control and you're able to shoot them

in a very cold-blooded manner,

the victims are no longer human beings.

I don't think that he was acting under his total,

complete consciousness.

When a man is, if you don't mind me using the word, sick,

you can't hold this against them,

but the real concern that I have is

that he doesn't do this again.

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Contrary to all things logical,

this killer is leaving lots of clues,

almost intentional clues, not just at the crime scene,

but he's also calling the police from pay phones,

sending letters to the media,

talking out loud in front of a victim.

Why would a killer be so careless

or is it just all part of his grand scheme?

Man: Does it seem to you as if you're pretty much

on the verge of finding this man?

Well, I wouldn't want to say that.

The one thing that is indisputable

is that this killer loves attention.

When you see taunting behavior in a case,

it's not typical, even for a serial killer,

and they know that if they taunt the police,

they run the risk of getting caught a lot sooner,

but for zodiac, I think at a certain point in his crimes,

it was the taunting behavior

that continued to motivate him more so

than the murders themselves.

With each attack, he keeps ratcheting up the risk factor.

The first one was a shooting.

The second one followed by a phone call.

Now the third one, there's the element of terror,

the executioner's costume, the knives,

tying the victims up, again, followed by a phone call.

It really begs the question, what is he planning to do next?

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After the gruesome stabbing attack at lake berryessa,

it's only two weeks before the zodiac killer strikes again.

It's in the heart of San Francisco.

Paul stine was a cabdriver who was working the evening

of October 11, 1969.

Paul was working two jobs at the time.

He was selling insurance

and also driving a cab, of course,

and he was putting himself through college

and was pretty interesting, intelligent guy.

We know some of what happened because of the taxi logs.

Zodiac had been waiting under a place

called the pine street magazine shop and it was on Geary.

The driver pulls by, and he says,

"hey. Can I get a ride?"

He directed the driver to take him to a location

at the intersection of Washington and maple streets,

which was located in the upscale presidio heights neighborhood.

He drove out there and went to park the car

where he was told to.

And for some reason, "go another block further,"

says zodiac.

"I want you to go to Washington and cherry."

He wants to get to an isolated spot.

When he pulled over at the side of the road

and put the car in park,

zodiac apparently pulled out a gun

and held it to the back of his head toward his ear

and fired a bullet, which killed him instantly.

Some kids who were in a house

nearby apparently heard some kind of commotion

and looked outside the window,

and they observed the man inside the cab

handling Paul stine's body.

What the kids see is really bizarre.

He was tearing off a square of Paul stine's shirt,

and the cab driver is bleeding.

Zodiac gets out. He begins wiping down the car.

He might have left prints.

Then he walked away up north up cherry street and disappeared.

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The three kids who were observing what had happened

called the police, and they described the killer.

The facts got confused,

and when the police broadcast a description of the killer,

they described him as a black man instead of a white man.

Two police officers who were responding to the scene

were driving down Jackson street one block north of Washington,

and they apparently saw this white man

walking down the street.

Zodiac is stopped by a police car,

and they see him.

Stocky man, round face.

The officers ask him if he has seen anyone suspicious.

But zodiac says, "oh, yeah. I saw a man running with a gun."

"He went that way," and they thank him,

and then off they go.

Zodiac was right there. They would have caught him.

He was within arm's reach.

Who is this man, so ordinary that his presence

near a crime scene doesn't alarm police

and yet so terrifying that

the entire country is now on alert?

With this chance to catch the killer

having slipped through their hands,

investigators hope he'll make another mistake,

but zodiac is about to make a move that changes everything.

The hunt for the zodiac killer has only just begun,

next on "very scary people."

I'm Donnie wahlberg. Thanks for watching.

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