The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban and suburban settings. He targeted young couples and a lone male cab driver.
The last known victim, a taxi driver, was shot in October 1969. The murders were the subject of intense investigation and media coverage, particularly because of the killer's taunting letters to newspapers and phone calls to police.
In October 2021, a cold case investigation team known as the Case Breakers claimed to have successfully unmasked the serial killer as Gary Francis Poste.
According to news sources, DNA analysis conducted by the FBI on the items was deemed inconclusive in 2010. Former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty said the Zodiac Killer was a 91-year-old Solano County, California, man he referred to by the pseudonym George Russell Tucker.
The last pair targeted were Cecelia Shepard, 22, and 20-year-old Bryan Hartnell, who were both stabbed multiple times beside a lake in Napa in September 1969. Mr Hartnell survived the attack.
Of the four ciphers he produced, two remain unsolved, and one was cracked only in 2020. While many theories regarding the identity of the killer have been suggested, the only suspect authorities ever publicly named was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992.
He finally named himself the “Zodiac Killer”, using it as a signature from the letters sent to the San Francisco papers and police. He enjoyed taunting the police through his letters, and even would call after committing the crimes to let them know where to find the bodies.
Zodiac wore what has been described as an executioner's costume for at least one of his killings. Hartnell told detectives Zodiac appeared wearing clip-on dark glasses, a black executioner's hood with a white circle and cross on the chest, a foot-long knife with a taped wooden handle and a scabbard with brass rivets.
The California Department of Justice has left the case open since 1969. Mike Renault Mageau and Bryan Calvin Hartnell are the only two known survivors of the Zodiac. Mageau was conversing in a car with her co-worker, Darlene Ferrin, when the Zodiac shot and killed Ferrin. Mageau was shot four times and survived.
The self-named Zodiac Killer stalked and killed at least five people across California's San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 and 1969.
Reviewers praised it for its historically accurate depiction of the hunt, by journalists, law enforcement, and the public, for the serial killer known as the Zodiac, who tormented the San Francisco Bay Area beginning in the late 1960s.
Whether it was Gary Francis Poste or not, one thing that is clear according to the authorities is that the Zodiac killer would now be around 90 years old.
A group of specialists, including retired law enforcement and miilitary officers, says it has identified a "very strong suspect" in the Zodiac killer case. The group says that the Zodiac's cryptic letters identified the killer, who also had a facial scar that matched a scar in the police sketch of the Zodiac.
But unlike that case, there is no confirmed DNA from any of the Zodiac killings.
The Zodiac Killer is believed to be a California man who gave himself that nickname to conceal his identity from authorities.
Cecelia Shepard, 22, was stabbed 10 times, five in the front and five in the back. Bryan Hartnell, 20, was stabbed six times in the back. Darlene Ferrin, 22, was shot five times. Mike Mageau, 19, was shot four times.
"I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAT WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN ...
Arthur Leigh Allen
Most famously implicated in David Fincher's 2007 movie Zodiac, and in Robert Graysmith's 1986 book of the same name, Allen is perhaps the best known of all Zodiac Killer suspects. Allen was a problem child who, relatives say, killed animals for fun, and who grew up to be a convicted child molester.
Who was Gary Francis Poste? He reportedly had a wife and at least one son. The man named by the Case Breakers was married to Mary Poste, and had at least one son. He reportedly worked for years as a house painter after serving time in the United States Air Force.
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Yes. The movie shows Zodiac suspect Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) wearing a watch that bares the killer's symbol and the brand name Zodiac.
Arthur Leigh Allen WASN'T The Zodiac Killer
Some events may have been slightly exaggerated for the sake of the movie, but ultimately the events of Zodiac went down the same way they did in real life. Arthur Leigh Allen was a prime suspect for years with heavy circumstantial evidence against him.