Original subtitles

The search goes on

in San Francisco for the man known as the Zodiac Killer.

The psychotic killer has already murdered five.

He claims that he has murdered 13 individuals.

Of course, our records reflect five.

The Zodiac killer seems to crave publicity.

He sent letters and cryptograms to newspapers and the police.

Police are now convinced

that it was the killer of a San Francisco cab driver

who sat in a swatch of bloody cloth

with a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle.

This guy is a pathological psycho killer.

You have those headaches, Sam?

Since I killed a kid,

School children...

make find targets.

I think I shall wipe out a school bus.

some morning.

Just shoot out the front tire

and then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.

We have no known motive at this time.

However, we're not overruling any possibility.

How about leads?

We have several leads

that we're working on, and some of them have

been barred.

We have ruled them out.

No, we're just about position.

We're still following a tremendous amount of leads.

We're getting a tremendous amount of information every day,

not only from the Bay Area but from all over the nation.

The murderers terrorized the Bay Area decades

ago, the killer taunted police by sending letters to the media.

But now a team of independent investigators

says it has identified the Zodiac killer

I also killed those kids last year.

Good.....Bye.....

Can we put “documentary filmmaker” instead of “YouTuber”

Unless one of you guys can think of something more pretentious.

The Zodiac case was one of the earlier cases at a time

that was rife with serial killers in the USA

between the 1960s and early eighties,

there was a multitude of serial killers

by a killer who's become nown as the Night Stalker

A killer

The police are calling the Hillside Strangler

the vine or intent to effect the death of Lisa Lehey.

This is where they live.

Among the stables, barns and phony buildings

of an old rundown movie location.

20 miles from Los Angeles

has had three of its followers arrested in the investigation

of the murder of Sharon Tate and six others.

Well, he said, you've got me.

Police say those words ended the biggest manhunt

in New York City history with a capture of Son of Sam.

More bodies unearthed from the basement

crawl space of Gacy's Norwood Park Township home today,

bringing to 15 the number of found there since Friday.

I'm called the banana and I'm looking really good.

And there was obviously serial killers

outside of that time frame, but there was very much

a grouping of them around that time.

And specifically in California, it was awash

with serial killers.

And there was a few reasons for this.

All of which added up to the key reason.

And that was the fact that it was just easier

to get away with murder.

Big city police rejected evidence

from small town cops like Harvey Irons and police rivalries

hampered the Zodiac investigation

of possibly 30 murders all over the state.

It wasn't handled, as you would handle it today,

eh...

because I don't think

there was the experience there to actually handle it that way.

Today, of course, this would have been

a very different investigation at the crime scene.

Forensics would have been on site

for at least 24 hours, taking everything from soil samples

to deep diving into every piece of available DNA on site.

Unfortunately, back in those days, that technology

just wasn't available to the investigators.

They had to make do with what they had.

The interdepartmental politics where police would be fighting

that a case is

theirs or the case is someone else's,

along with the fact that DNA evidence just didn't

exist and forensics in general

was nowhere near what it is today, just made it a lot

easier for people to get away with murder back then.

And serial killers thrived in that environment.

And the Zodiac Killer was one of the most famous.

And it got more and more famous as each year

where it was unsolved went by

between 1968 and 1987,

someone calling himself

the Zodiac

claimed responsibility

for up to 40 murders

and he left behind

a trail of bodies and taunting letters.

Then suddenly the murders stopped and he went silent.

Something about this case that was different.

And it became, I think, a battle,

you know, a chess game between the killer and people

like Captain Narlow of Napa, who were highly intelligent

police officers who really did their best.

And if you watched a 27 movie

Zodiac with Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr,

Jake Gyllenhaal, you would be forgiven for assuming

that this case was solved,

but it couldn't be further from the truth.

Officially, it remains unsolved.

Are people going to be dissatisfied with that?

I'm going to give them the full ending of the movie,

but dissatisfied with the ending.

Why has he not been caught?

Extremely intelligent.

This man has crafted ciphers that have never been broken

to this day.

A certain amount of luck involved too.

And he's highly skilled.

He is skilled in explosives, cryptography...

A master criminal?

A master criminal.

And uncaught to this day, I still get calls almost daily

I still get calls almost daily

from people who believe they know who the Zodiac is.

Part of its fame as well was definitely helped

by the fact that the lead

detective on the case was this rock star detective.

For the last nine years,

the Zodiac investigation has been headed by homicide

inspector David Toschi

David Toschi, a San Francisco homicide detective.

And the model for the Dirty Harry movies

vowed to catch the Zodiac, but he never did.

I have always felt

a gut feeling

that he was not dead and that he was out there somewhere and

that he would communicate in every manner.

and everyone man and his

dog thought their father or their dog did it.

Um...

But this case remained unsolved for a very long time.

Now, though, it seems like we are closer than ever

to getting a final answer on who the Zodiac is.

But to really understand how, why and who

we need to first go back

to where it all begins.

The first murders in this case took place

in a very quiet and small town in California called Benicia.

The population was probably around 5000.

It was a sleepy little community, middle class

crime rate was

very, very low.

The first killings

and the enduring mystery began not far from San Francisco.

It is late one night.

Five days before Christmas, in December of 1968, David

in December of 1968, David

Faraday took Betty Lou Jensen out on their first date.

The two teenagers made the unfortunate

choice to park up in a secluded area in Benicia, California,

shortly after a car pulled up behind them

with its headlights on full blast.

A man emerged and began firing into the car.

A shots fired report was

called in to the police

and shortly after dispatchers

called out, the closest police officers

to arrive on scene as soon as possible.

Sergeant, could you briefly describe

what apparently happened last night?

Yes, we had a double homicide that took place

out on a county road about, sometime after 11:00 last night.

A double homicide involving victims were,

16 year old girl and a 17 year old boy.

What were the circumstances involved?

Possibly they were ordered out of the car by the

the boy, was shot right at this side of the car.

And the girl apparently tried to run

and she was shot and found 28 feet

further on.

There was one bullet hole that penetrated

one of the windows of the car.

Was this a stray bullet or was this one of the bullets

that hit the victim and went on through?

This could be a stray bullet or

a warning bullet of some sort that,

we can't connect it with the bodies,

but it's the same type of shell.

He reached his gun through the window

and shot David as he exited,

and Betty Lou was running toward Benicia

when he shot her some 26 feet away.

Five times.

This was a particularly brutal murder.

The killer placed the gun right up against

David's skull for the last shot.

And then as Betty Lou started running

as fast as she could away from the killer, he fired

several shots into her back in a in a very, very close pattern.

Whoever did this was clearly a marksman.

They knew how to use a gun,

obviously, given the fact that there was no known

related killings at the time.

The police were a little bit

dumbstruck by what the motive could be for this.

Do you have any idea what the possible motive might

be for this killing?

We have no motive at this time.

And within a few days, a picture started to form

that this could be drugs related, which was at first

thrown out because Betty Lou and David didn't even drink.

But there was then a report

that came to the attention of the police

that David had threatened someone who was pushing drugs

in the local area.

A recent spike in biker gangs and drug related

violence in the Vallejo area was quickly linked

and thought to be the cause of this execution style murder.

During that night, we had served a search warrant

at the what we called the cottage at Lake Herman,

which was owned by the city of Benicia

Earlier

that same day, a substantial drug bust took place.

A pound and a half of marijuana was confiscated,

which by today's standards would barely be noticed.

But that was a large drug bust in those days.

David Farraday was a member of the community who stood up

for his values as an Eagle Scout who was on the wrestling team,

who would

push back on these dark elements within the community.

And it was reported to police

at the time of the incident that just days

before this took place, he had confronted

someone from his school about selling drugs in the area

and telling them that he was going to personally stop to it.

So for the first while after the murders this is where the police

were looking ...but that would change

I think that the FBI statistics are still somewhere

in the high eighties that most victims know their assailant.

The next murders took place in Vallejo

at a place called Blue Rock Springs,

which was only about a six or seven minute drive

from Lake Hermon Road where the first murders took place.

Again, another fairly quiet,

fairly small and peaceful place.

Never had too many murders.

We solved them all, but there was just a few.

Darlene Ferrin was the next victim.

She was a 22 year old local waitress who had gone out

for a nice drive with a friend, Mike Margo, that evening.

They were cruising around Vallejo when a car chased

them out of town and cornered them.

We were chased by this guy.

Chased by him from a restaurant.

He was chasing us and I told her to pull into the parking lot.

According to Mike Mageau,

they were chased throughout the evening to restaurant

and location after location until they got to blue

rock Springs, where they thought they had lost him.

And this guy pulled up beside them.

Darlene and Mike

looked across at them and apparently Darlene knew

who this guy was.

That was chasing them.

22 year old Darlene Ferrin and 19 year old Mike

believe the man approaching their car is a policeman.

And then suddenly the door was open and this crew cut

Man with glasses, really pronounced stomach

gets out, shining a light into their eyes.

They're totally blind.

And Mike had reached for his wallet,

almost as if he thought it was some sort of policeman.

And he fired bullets into the car and the bullets

passed through.

Mike, who was very badly wounded.

He had extensive surgery, but Darlene was killed.

He survived.

Mike Mageau miraculously survived.

This was a pretty brutal murder once again.

And most of the bullets

were pumped into Darlene.

Mike obviously took a few pretty brutal shots, but

it seemed like the killer was very focused on Darlene.

At least that was what the police

and what the reports would say at the time.

And he asked Darlene, do you know who that is?

And she said something like, Never mind.

And the fact is as well that Darlene had been

saying to people, including her sister,

that there was someone who she was afraid of,

someone who basically she

apparently had witnessed do something before.

She said that she's seen them do something.

She's seen them kill someone

She never mention the name.

But she... Something about a Richard.

I remember Richard.

Named Richard

So the initial thoughts were that someone clearly knew

the victim

because of

how brutal it was, particularly to Darlene.

For example, she was out with Mike while her husband

was apparently at home with the kids at the time.

You know, and Mike has said that

he was her boyfriend at the time.

According to her husband, Dean,

she liked to go out and dance

and enjoy a time with her friends.

And while there were rumors

spread that she was off with other men,

Dean says he never took this to heart

and didn't believe it.

So there was a lot of intrigue around this idea that it was

someone that Darlene knew that was chasing them.

And the police officer angle was quite interesting.

This was one that was put forward

very much by, I think, Graysmith in his book at one point.

And that was an interesting one for a few reasons,

not least the fact that Mike

has admitted in his testimony that they thought

it was a police officer behind them

the way

the car parked behind them apparently

was quite like a police officer.

And another part of that theory

that would make you think that perhaps this guy

has some sort of insight with the police or is police

is that according to Mike, in Graysmith’s book,

the door handle on the passenger side was removed

and he couldn't actually get out of the car

until the zodiac opened the door to shoot him.

But in the police reports, that door handle was then back,

which would mean someone

who had access to the crime scen

Graysmith wrote a book

about the Zodiac and he mentioned in his book

that I was at her Darlene and her husband's house

on a house painting party prior to her death.

And I, I don't know anything about that.

I wasn't me.

Dick Hoffman was the police officer who arrived on

scene first before the rest of the cavalry rode in.

He collected some of her items and waited for the ambulance

and was told to ride with them to the hospital.

You knew her before the attack, right?

I've never laid eyes on her.

You never laid eyes on her?

No. No.

I had heard that she was a waitress at

an all night restaurant in Vallejo.

But I didn't know the girl at all.

Initially, there was obviously the thought

that this was someone she knew.

Some of those roads would have pointed

for obvious reasons to her ex-husband.

But there is

a variety of other people that could have been involved.

Darlene definitely was afraid of someone.

In cases such as this,

those closest to the victims are normally the ones

who are investigated first,

especially when there is not only a husband

but an ex husband involved.

And especially in this case where her ex-husband

had a criminal record to beat.

And Dean had said that she and her ex-husband

had had a lot of issues throughout their time together.

And he had even stalked her at times.

Those closest to Darlene also talked

about how her ex-husband was a strange character.

All of this leading police to believe

that was the best place to look, at least at first.

All of those thoughts and ideas, though, quickly

went out the window after one terrifying phone call.

Then the next call I got

was about 12:40

Vallejo Police Department

I want to report a double murder.

If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway,

a public park, you’ll find kids in a brown car.

They were shot with a nine millimeter lugar.

I also killed those kid last year.

Goooood....bye.....

the lead investigator, sent police

to go and dust the phone booth for fingerprints.

But even today, this would have been difficult

as they found dozens and dozens of fingerprints

that still have not been verified or identified.

This was no easy task,

especially in the sixties.

Then the case's

most famous signature would be introduced.

The killer sent letters between to the

Newspapers. The San Francisco

Chronicle, The Examiner and The Vallejo Times Herald.

They were the beginning of a flood of written evidence.

He would pour forth for years to come.

He gave himself a name.... Zodiac!

Knowing such things as describing what the woman was

wearing. You know, enough details

to tell the police that he was the man.

Print these pages...or else

If you do not print this cipher,

I will cruise around all weekend killing

lonely people in the night and until I end up with a dozen.

And what did that do to this community?

It terrified everyone.

Three newspapers gave their front pages to this man.

I mean, that's how terrible they were.

In this particular code, the Zodiac used what we referred

to as a common letter numeral substitution code,

where you might substitute the letter

C for E, and A for B and etc., etc.. And

coupled with that, he used

some symbols that you might describe as being

something like semaphore flags, where he'd

take a square and color in half of it diagonally,

or he used some Greek symbols.

The published codes stumped hundreds of amateur

cryptographers

and several intelligence agencies

Police, the CIA, and

a variety of law enforcement and governmental

offices tried to break the cipher

that was given with these letters, but

it was solved by an unlikely couple.

Husband and wife who were teachers in San Francisco.

And finally, Donald Harden and his wife,

simply sat down and through sheer stick-to-itiveness

worked around the clock.

And they were the only ones, the CIA, Naval intelligence,

None of these people were able to crack the three cipher codes.

And this was certainly for his wife,

the very first attempt at any

sort of cryptography for Don Harden.

I think he'd done the crossword puzzles.

He had some various books on ciphers.

But what they had begun to do

is they looked for a double combination

of symbols, the most common being a double “L”.

And Mrs. Harden thought that he would use the word kill.

And so once they figured that word,

killing or kill was somewhere,

and those were double L's

that they were seeing throughout these ciphers

that eventually gave them the key to to break it.

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.

There's an interesting piece in the cipher, which is

about humans being the most dangerous animal of all,

which is a quote from “The Dangerous Game”.

And this definitely stood out to police officers

and got them a little bit worried

because at the end of the day, that is a movie about a man

who hunts humans basically for sport.

So a little bit worrying that even

with these letters, the police essentially had nothing.

The status of the case is just as bad as it was.

We're getting many, many letters

and telephone calls and everything.

There's no no specific person that we suspect at this time.

And it was about to get much, much worse.

Napa was kind of a secluded

community were bordered on both sides by major

highways.

Highway 80 to our east and highway one on one to our west.

And so we don't get a lot of the traffic coming through Napa.

Some of the other cities do.

So we have a relatively low crime rate.

We sometimes go several years without a homicide.

Napa in those days would have been very quiet

in terms of crime.

However, that year

there had been five or six homicides, which was

quite unusual for the sixties in Napa

Lake Berryessa

at that time of year was also extremely quiet.

So this was an unusual day,

September

27th, 1969, for his new role of executioner.

Zodiac chooses a peaceful setting

in the heart of California's wine country.

Celia Sheppard and Bryan Hartnell,

both in their early twenties,

were sitting on this knoll of land

overlooking part of Lake Barry.

They thought they were

alone, but there was a third man on this knoll.

A man who wore a medieval style executioner's hood,

carried a knife and gun and intended to use them.

They were approximately a quarter of a mile

from the road down near the water front,

and they were laying down on a blanket.

The talking, they were schoolmates.

And the subject approached them.

They saw

a subject come up by them.

I happened to hear some rustling in behind us

and I asked her to look as she was facing that direction.

I was facing toward the water and

I asked her to note, you know, what was going on.

And she said, there's a man walking around.

And she became concerned about it.

And I said, Well, actually, don't worry about it.

It's something there's a lot of people, picnickers, etc..

And just, you know, if you kept coming, let me know.

And she kind of kept watching.

I noticed she wasn't following my conversation.

She told me

he was stepping behind a tree and the tree was about

30 feet behind us.

And when he came out, she said, he's got a mask on.

And that was my first inkling

that there was anything actually wrong going on.

They didn't think too much about it.

And the next thing I knew, the subject was upon him with a gun

and demanded the keys to the car and money.

And I actually laughed at the moment

because I told him, I said, I've only got $0.75 in my pocket.

And I said, You're welcome to have it.

I considered him a robber.

I had absolutely no thought

that he was anything but that.

And when we were at this robbery stage,

I didn't consider any real threat to my life

or to or to the girl or anything.

I didn't consider this, but I really wanted to help him.

He pulled some cuts of a three foot length of clothesline

It's actually plastic.

It's the kind that this hollow in the center.

The young man

stated that, you're going to have my money.

I've only got a few cents, 75 or $0.80.

And with this he says, Well, I'm going to tie you up.

And he had the young lady tie

her friend up, and then he tied the girl up.

He said, Well, what I need right now is to get you

tied up. And so he had the girl tie me. Of course she was real

nervous and tied me rather loosely.

And he came and he tightened the knot up,

and then he tied her up.

And we continued the dialog along

most of this time,

and the kid said the money is in my pocket.

He said, I don't want the money.

All I want to do is just kill you.

The boy asked him, said, You really mean that?

And he said, yes.

I mean it

he said, well if you're going to, then kill me

first because I can't stand to see the girl be stabbed.

He said, Well, I'll do that.

So he started stabbing the kid in the back

and laid him face down.

And with this, he proceeded to knife

both of them numerous times.

Still on his knees, the man gave a ghastly,

frenzied sound and letting out a long, low exhalation

began stabbing the girl in the back ten times.

The knife fell.

Instinctively, Cecilia rolled over on her back

and the dark hunter continued, thrusting.

Once he plunged the knife full length into her chest.

sated at last, the stocky man stood up

and tossed the money and keys onto the blanket next

to his victims.

He walked slowly across the open peninsula

and was soon lost in the empty twilight.

Bryan will probably be able

to leave Queen of the Valley Hospital fairly soon,

but where he's going from here is being kept secret.

In the event that the man who attacked him

and killed Cecilia Shepard on Lake

Barryessa a week ago Saturday tries again.

Bryan made it for two reasons some people might regard

as intangibles, but reasons that for him were enough,

a strong faith and an equally strong will to live.

I got, I was able to untie one of her hands

that she was too weak to untie me at that time.

Finally, one fisherman who's going real slow, he stopped.

He shut off his motor

and we cajoled and called and we did everything to try

to get him to come.

He sat there for about 15 minutes and he

he did finally come closer, but he wouldn't come to the shore.

I guess he was afraid that the man might still be around.

He said he'd go get help.

So I got...encouraged her enough to get me untied, and

I got one wrist loose so that I could get the rest untied.

How were you finally?

How were you finally found?

Well, she was found out on the blanket.

Still...I made it up about 300 yards up

almost to the road.

And that it was a slow process because I kept black.

I couldn't see, you know, I kept blacking out and my legs

kept getting weak, but I was getting progress.

I think I could have made it to the road,

but a pickup

truck, was coming along

with these dirt roads, and apparently

this man had called for help.

Such a change in crime.

He was clearly evolving

and getting,

let's be honest, much worse.

I've had 11 years

patrol on this lake and I've seen a lot of people

cut up by boat accidents and this.

But this is one of the worst things I ever witnessed.

So for no reason at all,

a hooded man came out with a pistol drawn on them,

tied him up, and then told me he had to kill them. So.

So there have been this theory that park ranger

Dennis Land

was somehow involved in this,

and his activities and his actions during and after

the crime are definitely cause for suspicion.

There has been one man who is a source of controversy

around this particular incident, a man who fit the description

of the killer who was nearby and who tampered with evidence.

And this was park ranger Dennis Land.

In fact, when Dennis Land arrived on scene,

Brian Hartnell even said he thought

it was the killer returning to the scene of the crime.

And while waiting for detectives

from the sheriff's department to arrive, Deputy Land

talked to the witnesses that were there

and obtained statements from them.

I began a search for evidence.

Dennis Land

has been the cause of suspicion

ever since that day by a variety of people.

And the reason for this

is that he packed up the entire crime scene

and brought it back to the park ranger station.

This is not something an investigator

or a police officer would do.

And in fact, it is something that normally

they would be trained

not to do in order to preserve the crime scene

and allow the lead investigators to look at the crime scene

as it was at the time that the crime itself took place.

Now, according to the investigator and Dennis Land,

it seemed like Dennis Land was trying to do the right thing

to preserve the crime scene from being blown apart

and blown away in such an open area.

However, this did upset the police,

who really would have preferred to see the blood,

the hair follicles and so on in their correct location.

Another reason why Dennis Land has been a cause

for suspicion is that he radioed himself

going into the dark before the crime took place

and put himself back into radio contact

only after the police had been called.

One crucial piece of evidence that was found during

this was a very unique boot print.

One piece of evidence that would become synonymous with

this crime was the footprint left behind at Lake Berryessa

A very unique boot print

that was easily identifiable by the police

to a very unique shoe known as a wing walker.

This shoe was used specifically so as not to build up static

so that military personnel could walk on the wings

of aircraft in order to service them.

Well, the pictures are in the paper.

This last one that they put out,

I think is probably as accurate

as any of that they have put up.

He was of medium to short height, a kind of

pouchy

real casually casual, I don't want to say sloppily,

but casually, real casually dressed,

of course, a little dusty from the lake.

And he had this black hood

on, came clear down to here, just little slits in the eyes.

And you know, these clip on glasses,

they were clipped into those little.

One piece

of evidence that baffled police

was why this man would wear a mask

if he intended to murder someone,

as the police said at the time.

Normally, if you knew you were going to kill someone,

you don't need to hide your identity.

But very quickly,

there was some clear and evident links

that would tie this right back to the prior zodiac killings.

At 7:40 p.m.

Officer Slaight at the Napa Poli Department received this call.

The local police switchboard was one of the old

style switches where you had to manually plug the

cables in and out.

And that evening

one of the operators got a very ominous call.

There was a male voice on the other end of the phone

and he said, I want to report a murder,

A Double Murder.

two miles north of the park headquarters.

They were in a white Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.

I'm the one that did it

the call to Napa.

Police came within an hour after the stabbings.

A young man's voice reported the double murder.

He described the couple their car at the scene and hung up.

And then the dispatcher knew that the phone was not hung up.

It just went silent.

And just minutes later, one of the officers said

that he had discovered a phone off the hook at the

at this car wash, which was only five

or six blocks from the local police department.

David's first thought

was that this had been the park ranger

having issues with his radio and sending someone

to the nearest payphone to report the crime.

While that call was terrifying. For me,

it does do one thing,

and that is dissuade

the idea that this could have been Dennis Land,

because he was at the crime scene with the detectives

when that call was placed.

And therefore, I don't think he could have done it.

You could get around that

by saying perhaps these killings are done by two people.

But for me, it

kind of dissuaded me away from the idea that Dennis Land

had any involvement.

Personally.

I saw the white Carmen Ghia

and I saw tracks leading away from it.

Police assumed that these tracks were tracks of the Zodiac car

leading away, and this gave them a couple of potential clues.

First of all, there was, of course, the fact

they were able to identify the tires, which were mismatched,

which led the police believe that this was an older

model car that wasn't very well-maintained.

But then, of course, there was the biggest clue,

the connection in all of this,

where they found a list of dates

written on the door of the Carmen Ghia,

which matched to the previous crimes

and finally led to September 29th.

6:30 p.m.

by knife, which was this crime.

Pretty thin point.

You can see a little OCD, though,

with the circles being filled on the time.

You know, if you're in a hurry, you wouldn't even know

he was into time.

You know, he's continually telling us

how far something has went, how long it's been

except this right here is the only thing

that really nails down with some degree of authenticity.

We think the connection between the pieces.

I agree with you.

the killer was evolving.

He was getting more brutal, this time

He actually talked to the victims.

He was experimenting.

He was getting far more brutal.

This was becoming a big issue for the local area.

There is, as far as I'm concerned,

a definite pattern between their killings and ours.

And the message left on the side of the victim's door

eh...

with the dates

of the Solano County murders and ours,

along with other items that are on there, have

definitely indicated to us that they're one and the same.

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.

Dave. We're hoping

we've...we've got some good things working for us,

but it takes time and to be able to reach out

and pluck this guy out of the air isn't done

in most murder cases.

You'll find a motive.

But of course, this guy is just a killer,

a mad killer, and you have no motive.

So it makes it a little bit harder for us to track him down.

In early October, the police interviewed

a man who would go on to become the most famous suspect

in this case.

And the man that I think Toschi and Graysmith

very, very quickly set their focus onto

and they still are fairly certain

that this is the guy who did it.

There's a retired homicide

investigator in Vallejo, California,

who thinks he knows who the killer is.

His name is Jack Mullinax.

18 years ago,

when he was a homicide detective,

he was assigned a case involving the Zodiac.

What was your feeling once

you got

once you got close to him,

did you feel strongly that he was the guy?

I did.

I mean,

I had...the only... of all the people

that I was involved in investigating Zodiac.

He was the only one that really,

really turned me on.

Where is he now?

Do you know?

the last I heard, he was working in

a hardware store in Northern California.

His name is Robert Graysmith, and this man has spent ten years

researching the Zodiac before he wrote a book on it

to know about Zodiac.

Before there was a Zodiac, to us the symbol, to wear that watch

and and to be at the crime scenes and to know the victims.

He would have to be Zodiac.

And there are a lot of strange theories and things.

But if it's one man, if it's one man only.

He liked the children's world.

He liked kids.

He liked to be a part of that world.

He went a little too far with it, obviously.

But he enjoyed children and they loved him.

But he admitted to using the screams of a child as a sex toy.

Yeah. Yes, he did.

He....he said...he... he enjoyed listening

to the screams of a child being beaten.

as far as I can tell, Alan is the best suspect

they come up with.

And the heart of the Alan's choice of very specific boots

would also add suspicion to his character in this case.

And it was determined to be

what was referred to as a wing walk or shoe

that was used primarily with the Navy and the Air Force

in maintenance duties of static free soul and the shoe.

Our suspect wears them.

It's not just that he's a size ten and a half.

The shoes that were pressed into the dry

sand at Lake Berryessa, a size ten and a half.

There were various people over the years

who pointed at Arthur Lee Allen more so than just

Robert Graysmith and Dave Toschi.

There was, of course, Cheney who said that Arthur Lee Allen

had asked him to write and help him stamp envelopes

where he was talking about being the Zodiac killer.

There was Spinelli who said that he had offered services

to do things in so far as to kill people

or other acts of that nature for a fee.

And the police

were interested in him for a variety of reasons,

especially given his background,

the fact that he was in the area and the fact that he wore

a watch with the Zodiac name on it

and a few detectives went so far as to say that in reality

he should have been looked at a lot harder

by the investigating detectives at the time.

Personally, I don't think Arthur Lee

Allen looked like this sketches in any way.

In fact, one of the sketches definitely

looks more like me, I think, than Arthur Lee Allen.

But that could be explained away very, very quickly.

I look like the description passed out

only when I do my thing.

The rest of the time I look entirely different.

A couple of years before

the Lake Herman, Blue Rock Sprin and Lake Berryessa

murders, back in 1966, there was another case

that would eventually end up being very much tied

to the Zodiac case,

and that was the case that took place in Riverside.

Sherri Jo Bates was stabbed to death,

nearly decapitated by her killer.

She was an athletic girl, strong girl who was able to fight back.

Unfortunately, she couldn't fight off her killer,

but she did manage

to knock his wristwatch off, which was found by the police.

And it was sputtered with white paint, which perhaps

would allude to the job of the killer at the time.

This was the only at the time,

at least unsolved murder in Riverside history.

And six months later, the police received a letter

from supposedly the killer

outlining what he had done and taking credit for it.

There was a few reasons

why this letter would later be tied to the Zodiac, not least

because it was signed off with the letter Z.

But some instances in it.

At one point in the letter

he said, I then finish the job by cutting her throat.

I am not sick, I am insane.

But that will not stop the game.

The fact that he put the game in there

obviously was later

linked to

the fact that he talked about ”The Dangerous Game”

in later letters, but the

Z was obviously the big thing that was brought up,

but that connection wasn't made until four years later

by Paul Avery.

six months later.

Other...other things that make me think that

it's quite possibly him.

I received a letter from an individual

in Southern California pointing out the similarities

actually was an anonymous letter.

And I.

I felt that there might be something to it.

So I contacted the Riverside Police.

They were very cooperative.

Gave me information on the phone and then sent me

some information, Xerox copies of certain documents,

and then they included kind of as an aside, a letter

that had been received

six months after the suicide girl had been killed.

And said this might be of interest to you.

It’s signed with a Z

in 2016, according to, I believe, the FBI,

someone had called in to a police department

or somewhere and basically said that, look, that was a prank.

I wrote that letter.

If that is the case, it was in really, really poor taste.

But that would essentially

dissuade the idea that it was linked to the Zodiac in any way.

And there was another case that very much lines up with

similarities to the Zodiac case, and that was the 1962

killing of Ray Davis, who was a cab driver.

And letters also appeared after that murder.

But personally,

I think the Ray Davis killing was very much only linked

to the Zodiac because of what would happen next

in San Francisco after Lake Berryessa

this has always been known as a city of mystery.

And it seems now to have a new and real one on its hands.

Five murders,

somebody who says he committed all and will commit yet more.

The latest, a taxi driver in San Francisco

came here to San Francisco to commit a deliberate murder

so that he might

garner that attention that had remained so elusive.

And with the murder of Paul Stine

He gained that notoriety.

Driver for Yellow Cab in San Francisco picked up a fare

in downtown San Francisco, and some were in route to

the Sunset District.

The fare asked him to stop at a certain location,

and at that time, the Zodiac killer shot the cab driver.

This was a very different crime by the Zodiac,

a crime that wasn't against a couple in a remote area,

but instead in a wealthy neighborhood

using a weapon, which was loud and could draw attention.

A stark departure

The description that came out over the air was of an

NMA, Negro male adult at the time.

The only person that could have given

that information would have been the child

who called it in to police dispatch.

What did you see when you came down this road?

My headlights

went on to an individual who

was walking in the shadow of the trees at the time.

The individual I saw that night was a white male adult,

approximately 35-45 years of age,

five feet, ten inches tall, 180 to 210lbs.

Unfortunately, as I was told,

they were looking for a black man.

They had been given wrong information on the phone.

Since we were looking for a Negro male adult,

we proceeded on Jackson

Street towards Arguello, continuing our search

as we arrived at Arguello Street.

The description of the suspect

was changed to a white male adult,

believing that this suspect was possibly the one involved

in the shooting.

We entered the Presidio of San Francisco and conducted

a search on West Pacific Avenue

on the opposite side of a wall in the last direction.

that we observed the suspect but did not find the suspect.

Police were dubious, though,

that folk had actually seen the Zodiac killer.

The reason being that this was a brightly lit area

and the assailant would likely be covered in blood,

which would have been noticeable.

The moment the headlights focused on the killer,

He claimed later in a letter that he had been watching

the whole time

finding one psychopath in this city could be a tall order.

This latest communication from the killer who calls himself

Zodiac adds very little substantially to the case,

except that he may be a conservationist.

Ed Leslie, News 13 San Francisco.

It very much seems like he only committed this murder

to prove a point

just to get the bloody cloth that he later sent in

to the newspapers from Paul Stine’s shirt.

Police are now convinced that it was the killer

of a San Francisco cab driver who sent in a swatch

of bloody cloth with a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle.

And two days later, the Chronicle,

where I worked, then received a letter from the Zodiac.

The the envelope was opened.

It was addressed to the editor,

and it was like a letter to the editor and the secretary

who handled that correspondence opened envelope,

saw this

bloody, bloodstained shirt and read

the letter then rushed it in to the executives at the paper.

Over the next several weeks, Zodiac sends two more swatches

of the bloody shirt, along with letters

taunting the police for failing to catch him

and confirms that he was spotted that night.

All of the letters sent by the killer have been posted

from San Francisco, and police

believe the man either works or lives in the city.

Laboratory tests on the cloth torn from the shirt of Paul

Stine prove

that it came, in fact,

from the cab driver when he was murdered

last Saturday night in Presidio Heights.

And handwriting analysis of a foreboding letter indicates

the writer is the same man who's committed five murders.

One here, three in Vallejo,

and one in Napa over the last ten months.

His chilling allusions to future slayings are being counted

with an intense drive

to prevent him from fulfilling any promises.

Dick Carlson reporting for Newsbeat from San Francisco.

Hall of Justice

There has also since been suspicion

that the Zodiac could live

very close by, given the fact that,

according to one of his later letters,

he was watching the entire thing unfold afterwards

as the police were running around looking for him.

I enjoy needling the blue pink.

Hey, blue pig.

The dogs never came

within two blocks of me and they were to the west.

Motorcycles went by about 150 feet away.

Nearly 50 years after the first murder.

There was still a big push to try and break the codes.

They couldn't crack them.

The CIA had tried. The FBI had tried.

Various code breakers had tried.

They were alluded by these.

And these were to codes in general.

Z 13 because of 13 characters and likewise Z 340.

The Z 13 in 2017

was thought to have been broken. Apparently...

Once the Z 13 code was broken, the shorter of the two.

It alleged that the name of the person was Kane

K.A.N.E....the FBI, though, very much had their doubts

about this and the accuracy of that code break.

And the problem with cryptography and encryption

and so on

is it's very hard to verify something with a small subset.

Realistically, it's much easier to verify something

along like the 340 code than it is with the 13 code,

because you don't have much

to compare it to to check whether the rest is gibberish.

So the FBI still weren't 100%

sure that the Kane finding was actually accurate.

Back in the late sixties, though, while

the police were still trying

to crack these codes and hunt the killer

things were going from bad to monumentally worse.

Schoolchildren... make fine targets.

I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning.

Just shoot out the front tire and then pick off the kiddies

as they come bouncing out.

That was the threat of the Zodiac killer.

Now, every day, police cars follow the busses,

which would be likely targets.

Officers armed with shotguns take the threat seriously.

Parents were obviously

terrified of this threat.

And now there was a renewed effort to find

this guy as quickly as possible before something horrible

happened to local schoolchildren

In San Francisco

We have been since the first day since the reception

of this note.

And up to now and continuing,

we have a number of plainclothes officers

following busses in the morning and in the evening.

You know,

somebody shoots at your tire, don't stop, keep driving.

So there was a great panic.

As you can imagine, there was immense pressure

on the police to ensure that nothing happened

and to get on top of this as quickly as possible.

And I think

even the word immense there is probably the understatement,

the century.

The bus patrol was started first in this county Wednesday.

Police units

from various agencies using marked and unmarked cars

follow busses on their runs to and from schools

assisted by aerial patrols and some busses

now equipped with two way police radios.

The massive patrols are responses

to the Zodiac Killer's threat to stop a bus and shoot children.

The patrols are concentrated in the remote sections

of the county, similar to areas where five were murdered.

The Napa School District is the third largest in the state.

In bussing, its 70 busses travel more than 4000 miles a day.

These patrols have been expanded to several counties

and the highway Patrol has written guidelines

for bus drivers.

We have specifically requested that they

alert their drivers to not stop under any conditions

if a shot was fired or if their busses

subjected to a flat tire by the sniper.

Further, that they get the children down immediately

and proceed with all speed out of the area

and to try and attract

all the possible attention by blowing their horns

and therefore get out of the situation.

We're satisfied that it is all that can reasonably be done

under the circumstances

that might be present at the particular time,

giving due

consideration to the vast number of busses operating.

Have any of the drivers

expressed any concern over their job now?

Well,

there's naturally talk, everybody,

I guess, tense, about it, but they all seem to be

in good spirits and all seem to be going on with the job.

I don't know of anybody that's quit.

You're not afraid?

No.

Just not too afraid.

On top of all of this, even worse, there was then

a bomb threat thrown in on top of a potential sniper situation.

If you did not want me to have this blast,

you must do two things.

Tell everyone about the bus bomb and all the details.

I would like to see some nice zodiac buttons

wandering about town.

On the face of which says, I hope you enjoy yourselves.

When I had my blast,

the killer sent a diagram for an explosive device

that was in the hillsides around Napa.

And this was working on an electric system

where everything else could pass.

But a school bus would set this bomb off.

Bomb, as he described it to us in the past, consist of a bomb

planted in the street or alongside of a roadside,

which would be triggered when a school bus passed by.

He is an absolutely

ruthless, completely merciless killer.

He does not get great excitement.

Or is he just

he thinks killing is is just killing.

So somebody like that

is going to be a very serious problem for us.

What more do you know

about the killer today than you did earlier?

Well, we have progressed.

We've been able to come up with more physical evidence

that will be able to be used in in court.

What we have to do is find the suspect,

of course, and be able to apply those.

And this man is a

psychopath and very, very seriously

mentally deranged.

He appears to have no conscience at all,

no remorse after any of the acts, certainly no reason

or even alleged justification for anything that he does.

Several of

the shootings have occurred without a single word

to anybody, just merely to walk up and start shooting.

This man is a

serious problem to us.

He's very, very sick and very dangerous person.

Thankfully, though, another letter will arrive

and for the first time,

police were relieved to get a letter from the Zodiac

after last month's letters and the murder of a cab driver.

The Zodiac threatened to

kill children on a school bus, so bus guards were provided

in many Bay Area counties, including these at Napa.

Police say most of those precautions have been halted.

And now in the latest letter, the Zodiac says

if you cops think

I'm going to take on a bus, the way I stated I was.

You deserve to have holes in your heads.

Sadly, though, throughout all of this, police

were no closer to catching the Zodiac killer.

Are you confident

you will get him sooner or later?

Well, of course, that's.

I feel that about all the murders we're involved in.

I mean, that's our business and that's our job. And.

And that's the only way to look at it and approach it,

is that...Of course.... Eventually we'll get him.

I'm standing in front of the Vallejo home,

which investigators searched last Valentine's Day.

The home of the man police

have suspected off and on for the last 20 years.

Thousands of people have been interviewed

and the Zodiac bounced in and out of the news.

And through it all, there's been one constant.

Arthur Allen

I’m not the Zodiac Killer

I feel that there are so many areas

that point directly at Arthur Lee Allen that I feel

that he is a viable suspect in, in all probability, the Zodiac.

In 1991, there was a break in the case

when a tip came in to one of the case.

Detectives still working on this to make things

even more exciting for the police.

Mike Mageau, one of the survivors

of the Zodiac killings, was able to I.D.

a suspect.

Mike Miguel was given a set of photos

and immediately identified within 20 seconds.

Arthur Lee Allen.

That is mine.

But that's my third Karman Ghia

Your third. Okay.

According to the affidavit, it unsealed by a judge late

this afternoon, an armed robbery suspect arrested in

San Jose last December told police there

that Arthur Allen, now 52 years old, is the infamous Zodiac.

That information led Vallejo police

to obtain a warrant and search Allen's home

last Valentine's Day.

Police were looking for specific items, 22 caliber pistols,

a black executioner style hood, yellow taxicab keys.

Without revealing everything they found.

I learned they did confiscate explosives.

Bombs exactly like those

the Zodiac serial killer described during his murder

spree in the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s.

Arthur Lee Allen died

just months after this and was never formally arrested

or formally a suspect in the case.

Since his death, though,

there was continued intrigue into him as a suspect.

And this meant that as the nineties moved on

and into the 2000, new DNA and forensic technology

allowed investigators to, with more certainty, decide

whether or not Allen was in fact, the right suspect

for the case, whether or not he was the Zodiac.

Police and various interested parties

continued to try and do DNA matches.

And after recovering DNA from the stamps on the letters

that were sent,

as well as taking DNA from the various pieces of evidence,

they could still not find a hard evidence match

linking this crime to Arthur Lee Allen.

Arthur Lee Allen did not donate the biological material

that was recovered from the stamp.

When you write, you rest the heel of your palm,

a very characteristic part of it on the paper

and people in those days weren't really aware

that you could

leave a palm print and that it could be identified.

They knew about fingerprints.

It was compared to the one that had been developed earlier

and they don't match.

That is not Arthur Allen's palm print.

It seems then, at least according to any hard evidence,

that Arthur Lee Allen did not commit the Zodiac killings.

It seems like the only evidence left is circumstantial

and under today's burden, that just wouldn't be enough,

given the fact that there's no DNA evidence and DNA evidence

from the letters and so on exists,

that would point to the fact that it just isn't

Arthur Lee Allen.

And during an interview here last Friday night with Channel

seven News, Arthur Allen claimed that he is being persecuted

by Vallejo police

And Arthur Lee Allen would go on until

his dying breath, adamant that he wasn't the Zodiac killer.

Two types of liars in the world fishermen & policemen,

and not necessarily in that order.

And their function is lying to you is to trip you up.

They can't do it to me because I have nothing to trip over.

No, I'm certainly most

certainly not the Zodiac killer having arrested me,

because they can't prove a thing.

I'm not the damn Zodiac.

Thank God for our Constitution,

because that says a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Difficult as and it can be.

It can be terribly depressing.

And if I deserved any of it, that would be

something different. But I don't.

Michael Finney, Channel seven News tonight.

So the issue for me personally with Arthur

Lee Allen is not the fact

that I don't think he's a good suspect.

He clearly is not a great person given he was charged

with child molestation, as far as I'm aware.

It's the fact that we had a living victim, a survivor

who was able to be used at various points to check

the voice of the Zodiac killer against the voice he heard.

And at no point,

as far as I'm aware, did Brian Hartnell ever point to Arthur

Lee Allen as sounding exactly like the man who stabbed him?

So that for me was the the point where

that for me was the indication

that I don't think Arthur Lee Allen did it, or at least

he didn't commit the Lake Berryessa stabbings.

But this is an even bigger problem,

isn't it, for the police?

Because if not Arthur Lee Allen after all these years, then who

he was the mad man who called himself the Zodiac killer?

And this is the surviving victim who looked him

straight in the eye and says she knows who the killer is.

Kathleen Jones was a woman that was down in central California.

It was late at night and left in the evening.

And the car behind me starting flashing its lights and

bright and dim

and the car pulled up behind me and the guy got out

and said my back

Wheel was wobbly It’s not

on good

The man pulled up beside her car told her that there

was an issue with her wheel.

that it was about to fall off

and that she and her child should get in the car with him

When we would come to any kind of stop

sign, he would slow down. But he didn't stop.

So I jumped finally

saw a man in the field.

Just wait and see what happens.

No, he could have stopped at any time and physically

been stronger than I was.

I was like

seven months pregnant and I had the little kid on my lap.

She was seven months pregnant with an infant child in her arms

and managed to jump from the car

and survive

while it was moving.

Terrifying stuff.

But now one determined cop says he knows

exactly who the killer is and where he's hiding.

Doug Buckner has the story.

She did offer up a clue to the investigators, though,

a very, very interesting one.

He says it's her eyewitness account

that proves the suspect is, in fact, the Zodiac.

Detective Harvey Hinds of Echelon says his analysis

of these cryptic symbols reveals the Zodiac name is Cain.

We also have another clue.

He installed another clue in the in the cryptogram.

It reads, Name Cain or name.

Cain's here.

And he reading from right to left.

She saw him and put her finger down on the picture and said

that was him.

And she said, it's not only my eye is telling me

it's my stomach, too.

Indeed, there is a man who used the name Cain,

who has a criminal record, who was born in 1924.

He's an ex mental patient

who fits the profile of the Zodiac killer.

The man called Cain now lives

in rural northern California, but he hasn't been arrested.

Later, he would be linked to another crime where Donna Lass

an employee in a hotel where Cain worked in Lake

Tahoe, went missing and was never seen again.

And she was seen last in that area

And a postcard supposedly from Zodiac, was sent later

on from that area, from Forest Pines.

The limit of my knowledge about the girl at Lake Tahoe,

and we discussed that at the time

that we were talking during the investigation of Benelli.

Appears that

She was a nurse, that she got off duty at a casino up there.

And ostensibly, that's the last time anybody saw her.

And the similarity between that and Judith Acaree that Ms.

Acaree was a nurse and

within reason, she got off duty.

She was followed by a fellow employee to a certain,

you know, location. And she was never seen again.

I understand there was also a similarity

in the way the parked cars were found.

The car and again, the girl in Lake Tahoe was apparently found.

And I just learned that today.

It was apparently found in her parking

stall in front of her apartment or her cabin

or wherever she her place of residence was.

And Ms. Acaree’s automobile was found

in its parking spot in front of her apartment.

And there is a link between the Riverside case

and the Kathleen Johns case.

And that is the fact that in the Riverside case,

the killer did actually disable her Volkswagen Beetle

by removing the distributor coil

and the condenser so that the car wouldn't start.

And then,

according to a later letter, if it is to be believed

and according to police in general,

it seems likely that the killer offered her help to get to

wherever she was going.

And that's how we got her in the car.

And this was similar to the Kathleen Jones case

where he decided to help with the wheel

but then went and loosened the wheel.

There was never enough evidence, though, to either tie

to Zodiac or on Cain in general.

And Cain was never treated as a official police suspect of

the case In either situation.

One of the most bizarre

parts of this case, though, is definitely that call in show

Zodiac, a symbol that now stands for terror in San Francisco.

Today, there was a possibly significant

development in the terrifying case

of the man who calls himself Zodiac.

Inspector, attorney Melvin Belli’s office said it

has been contacted by a person claiming to be the Zodiac.

Have you been able to verify

that the letter received by his office is authentic?

Yes.

We have, this has been done by our crime lab.

Basically, it was a letter written to Mr.

Belli, which was a personal type letter.

And again,

at this point of the investigation,

I would not want to comment on the particular details

of the contents of this letter.

This bizarre situation began at 2:00 this morning

when the so-called Zodiac telephoned police headquarters.

He said he was sick, he needed help

and he wanted to talk to Belli on television.

All of a scheduled guests

were canceled from the show on the ABC station KGO.

Belli waited for Zodiac to call on the private line.

The phone was not tapped.

The killer telephone 12 times.

He spoke very

little with attorney Belli, trying to draw him out of that.

Just tell us what’s going on inside you right now.

I have a headache.

There Was one moment when he talked about

killing kids that I still remember with.

a shiver.

I wanna kill those kid

He calls back 11 time

how long

have you had those headaches... Sam?

Been a long time?

Since I killed a kid.

Just tell us what's going inside you right now.

I have a headaches.

Right

Were you in service that you might have had an injury?

In Service? Did you ever fall

out of a tree or downstairs or become unconscious

I don't know.

You don't remember,

So no one knows yet.

If they had the Zodiac killer on the phone,

they'll have witnesses listen to a tape of the broadcast

to determine that.

But it seems

a solution to the five Zodiac murders is just

as far away as it was before.

Spencer Michaels, Casey RA News, San Francisco.

The Supposed Zodiac afterwards even offered to meet up,

but never showed.

Belli, I finally arranged to meet Zodiac in Daly

City, a suburb south of San Francisco, to talk in person.

The attorney waited in

an office building, but Zodiac never showed.

I asked Belli

if he thought the man who called really was the Zodiac killer.

I can’t. Negative, I can't say.

All I can say is this man needed help.

This man seemed like a man who was coming up to a storm or

to a climax, this very blood curdling thing.

Children kill.

And then sort of an agonized cut off, enough to turn your

hair whiter than mine.

So inside the thrift

Saint Vincent de Paul, attorney Melvin Belli

and the San Francisco police waited for the Zodiac killer.

The man did not show.

So now all we can do is wait.

Perhaps that next phone call from the man who calls himself

Zodiac who has killed five says he's going to kill again.

Dick Shoemaker, ABC News, San Francisco.

Nothing came of that.

We went out to the location where the meet was to have been.

Mr. Belli was out there.

Mr. Dunbar was out there

and nobody appeared.

Could you tell us where that was?

That was in the a little out of San Francisco

in the outer end of the Mission District,

Do you think he reall the Zodiac?

Not necessarily.

I listen to the program. My opinion my.

For what it's worth, my my opinion is that

this is no hoax or no prankster.

The man on that show, I sincerely believe,

has a problem,

has a mental problem, but he may or may not have been

the so-called Zodiac.

I hope you're having lots of fun in trying to catch me.

That's part of the chilling taunt

from one of the Bay Area's most notorious serial killers.

Now decoded after 51 years,

a major break in the case came in 2021

when these 340 cipher was finally cracked.

This major development in the case comes decades

after that coded message was sent

to the San Francisco Chronicle in November of 1969,

and many hope it will help identify the serial killer.

A coded 340 character message sent to the San Francisco

Chronicle from the infamous Zodiac killer of the 1960s

cracked by a group of amateur code breakers.

In a statement, the bureau said the FBI is aware

that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer

was recently solved by private citizens.

We we tried several hundred thousand incorrect

of solving the cipher.

And just by chance, we happened to sort of stumble

upon a fragment of of how it could be solved.

And using that fragment, we reverse engineered

the entire solution

and got the entire message out from the Zodiac.

Sadly, though, there was no name to be found in this cipher.

Fagen said there had been hope that the killer

would reveal his identity in one of his coded messages.

This one didn't do the trick.

It doesn't reveal his identity.

It doesn't give a lot clues to his identity.

I think more what it does is the the method

that he was able to use to create that that cipher

may help us track down who he is that the Zodiac was encrypting

is replaced with multiple symbols.

It did, though, confirm what Brian Cardinal had said

years and years ago that the voice who called in

to the Jim Dunbar show wasn't in fact the killer.

And in the cipher it said it wasn't me on the TV show.

At one point in time, I was asked to go down

and listen to a tape of an interview

that had been on the Jim Dunbar Show.

Hartnell was asked to come to the Jim Dunbar Show studio

and listen to the recordings of the events of that day

and said that it wasn't anywhere near

what he had heard on the day of his attack

and that the cadence wasn't

even close and that he didn't believe

that man on the phone was the man who had attacked them.

After no new letters, contact or information

since 1974, police finally got another break in the case

with a letter sent in by the supposed Zodiac in 1978.

This letter from the Zodiac poses

more questions than it answers.

Questions like Why is he only communicated

twice in the past nine years.

Has he killed in that time?

No clues in the latest letter.

But more importantly,

who is the Zodiac and where is he?

Every time the Zodiac would send us a letter.

We were spurred on because we gleaned

a little bit of intelligence information

out of every letter that he sent us.

And we just hope that we can latch onto one

little thing that might might lead us to the Zodiac killer.

We knew an awful lot about this this killer.

But in 1978, April 25th, I believe,

we got a letter that says, I am back with you.

I've never been anywhere else.

You know, I've been with you all this time.

San Francisco police displayed a blackboard

with excerpts of the latest Zodiac letter.

At a news conference last night,

police are convinced it is authentic.

Deputy San Francisco Police Chief Glenn D'Amico said

it's the 16th letter received from the Zodiac killer.

However, there was more to this 1978

letter than meets the eye

towards the end.

I don't know

we're getting some some letters that

turned out not to be authentic Zodiac letters and

and I believe the last time we heard from them

with an authenticated letter was in April of 1974.

For the first time since the Zodiac case began

nine years ago, Inspector Toschi is out of it.

Toschi is under fire for writing phony fan letters

about himself to a newspaper feature writer Armistead Maupin.

And Maupin today came up with far more serious charges

that there are similarities between the letters

Toschi admits writing to Maupin

and the most recent Zodiac letter of last April.

And that was it.

Toschi was off the case and close to losing his career

after being one of the most famous detectives

only a decade earlier.

Toschi admits writing the fan letters to Maupin,

but vigorously denies

having anything to do with the letters

purporting to come from the killer known as Zodiac.

Toschi was low profile at the Hall of Justice today.

He had been officially reprimanded over the fan letters

by being transferred from the homicide detail

to the pawn shop detail,

and an official investigation is underway on any connection

he might have with the Zodiac letters.

Thus far, the experts can't agree

on the authenticity of the last letter from the Zodiac.

Right now, Toschi has admitted to nothing

more than being guilty of an indiscretion.

As technology moved forward,

the case continued on in the background

and investigators struggled to find more on more evidence.

Thankfully, though,

technology also got better and they had more DNA out there

to either put more pressure on certain suspects

or completely clear them from their list.

Careful as he was, it's unlikely that 33 ago

Zodiac would worry about leaving behind a genetic trail.

Could this tiny strand bare Zodiac's DNA fingerprint?

She examines it.

But again, no luck.

From all of your investigations, what can you tell us

about the Zodiac?

Not a great deal.

He's not an unintelligent man by a long shot.

His paragraph in his phrasing, his punctuation is very good.

I'm sure he has deliberately misspelled words in the attempt

to lead us to believe that he's illiterate. But

in so doing.

Why he’s...

led us to thepoint that we believe just the opposite.

And I think that after the Golden State killer was caught

in 2021, investigators had more hope than ever

that they could potentially do the same thing with Zodiac

and catch him while he was alive.

That bombshell arrest,

that former police officer who authorities say

went on a reign of terror for so many years.

The numbers, as I mentioned, are simply staggering at.

Least 12 murders, 45 rapes.

They say this is their man,

Joseph D'Angelo, now 72, arrested outside his home.

They surprised him.

He spent years as a California police officer.

He'd been married.

Law enforcement now identifying 72 year old

Joseph James D'Angelo as the Golden State killer.

But D'Angelo, not a suspect until days ago

when they got a break. They say cutting edge

DNA testing allowed them to make a match.

Now, though, in 2023, as each year passes by, becomes

less and less likely that they'll catch this man alive.

There may now be a break in this case, though.

A nonprofit group claims

that it has identified the Zodiac killer.

A group of Independent cold case investigators claims

they have solved

the more than 50 year old mystery of the Zodiac killer.

It is made up of former FBI agents, military officials

and forensic investigators from all across the country.

And they say they're confident they have solved this mystery.

The case now, though, might finally be closer

to being solved than it ever has before.

By going to the library that simple and going through

Bay Area phonebooks that put him in the Bay Area

at the right times and there was just no way

you could get around it that it wasn't this person.

Everything matched up, including stuff

that wasn't public, that we had kind of found

and talked

the long unsolved Zodiac killer case

and a high profile announcement.

We're putting a name to the suspect's face. It's

no surprise for this Sacramento investigator and attorney.

The group says Post

had scars on his forehead from a car crash

that matched scars on a sketch of the Zodiac.

That is irrefutable.

That Is a mark. That's the same.

It's on him all the way to his death at 80 years old.

The case breakers point to Gary Post, an Air Force

veteran and house painter who died in 2018.

We have six people that he told

towards his last years that he was the Zodiac.

The group says evidence like a shoe

match, court affidavits matching facial features and a clue

that the killer hid his name in those ciphers proves their I.D.

His name is Post.

He ended it with the stamp

and they couldn't figure out his last name.

He cleverly used the postal markings

as Gary Francis...stamp...Poste.

And it's more than just this little riddle

or the code that was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

They have the scars apparently on Poste

forehead that match that drawing of the Zodiac killer.

And they've even gone so far as to interview Poste’s neighbor

who says that she believed that Poste was the Zodiac killer

So they've done an outstanding job.

And it's interesting at first.

Obviously, we dealt with Bob Durst

after years and now more than 50 years,

we're getting close to identifying the Zodiac killer.

Obviously, he's passed if it is Poste.

He's not going to face the same justice that Bob Durst.

It's a good feeling.

But there was a bit of, you know, sadness to it

that we actually when he was still alive,

we're talking to individuals in law enforcement about,

you know, we were confident it was him.

Sacramento attorney Mark Reichel and his longtime investigator,

John Kennedy, named Gary Poste as the likely Zodiac killer

years ago after their own lengthy investigation.

This is the radar station where he worked.

Kennedy showed me the digital files of his own

Zodiac Killer investigation tied to Gary Post compiling records

where he was stationed in the Air Force

before the Zodiac Killer spree in the fifties.

And in these places,

there were encrypted messages being sent and received

and where Post may have picked up a knack for codes.

Kennedy also found a news clipping of a deadly car

crash Poste was involved in just outside the base.

So Mark Reichel and John Kennedy,

While they believe that Poste is in fact the Zodiac killer.

They do acknowledge that the evidence that they have

is circumstantial.

They look forward to the day that science will prove

them right.

An Expert like myself who has

had contact with members within the bureau that said that

since 2016, Gary Francis Post was their suspect.

They will be releasing

this evidence if and when the FBI confirms

whether or not they are accurate,

using the database of evidence that the FBI has on this case.

Some aren't convinced.

I woke up this morning.

I really thought it was April 1st.

Tom Voight of ZodiacKiller.com calls the claims

hot garbage and says the theories presented are thin.

Who are we to say yay or nay?

San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan

has been covering the Zodiac case for years.

He says he's not so sure Post is the right guy.

You know, I got an email two weeks ago

saying that they found Herb Caen's name in the anagram.

So Herb Caen must be the Zodiac.

Before that, it was Charlie Manson.

Back in December,

the FBI confirmed that the Zodiac cipher

had been cracked by code breakers.

His message said in part, I hope you're having lots of fun

and trying to catch me, and I'm not afraid of the gas chamber.

Now, we did reach out to the San

Francisco Police Department and the FBI,

and they both told me that this case remains open.

They have not confirmed the theory

presented by the case breakers today.

So at least for now, the mystery continues.

Until then, we can only ponder.

But I for one

have always been of the opinion that this is

most likely a gun for hire type.

A man who was hired

to commit murders on the behalf of others and.

He cleverly used the letters to make

this look like a serial killer instead of a gun for hire.

The San Francisco police say the Zodiac case is still open,

but it's not actively under investigation.

In fact,

many of the files in the case have been stored in Sacramento

and the original detectives in the case every time.

And I think given that that's been my opinion on it

that, makes the idea of Poste who was a house painter

even more poetic.