Zodiac Killer
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Image:Zodiac-logo.jpg The Zodiac Killer is the name of a bizarre serial killer who murdered five known victims in Benicia, Vallejo, at Lake Berryessa near Napa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. He wrote many taunting letters to the press, including four cryptograms, three of which have yet to be solved. In April 2004, the San Francisco Police Department officially closed the case, even though the killer's identity still remains unknown and despite the fact that there is no statute of limitations on murder. Thousands of suspects were investigated over the years, and it is the opinion of some investigators that the Zodiac Killer may never even have been questioned.
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Murders
Image:Faraday1.jpg Before he named himself publicly, the Zodiac Killer first came to police attention following the apparently random murders of Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on December 20, 1968, just inside the Benicia city limits in a turnout on Lake Herman Road near Vallejo; it was their first date together, and Jensen's first date ever. They were supposed to go to a Christmas concert that night at Hogan High (just a few blocks from Jensen's home), but visited a friend named Sharon instead, then stopped at Mr Ed's, a local restaurant. Meanwhile on Lake Herman Road, a white Chevrolet was observed parked in a gravel turnout by two hunters, who approached it at one point, but the driver was nowhere to be seen. At 9:30 PM, Bill Crow and his girlfriend stopped in the turnout and saw a white Chevy drive past them, heading towards Vallejo. It stopped and backed up, and Crow, who left the engine running, took off towards Benicia with the Chevy in hot pursuit. At Reservoir Road, Crow made a sharp right, but the much bigger Chevy could not follow them and stopped a short distance past the intersection, as did Crow. He got out and shouted a challenge at the other driver, but the Chevy drove off. Faraday and Jensen parked in that same gravel turnout about 45 minutes later and were seen by several witnesses, and shortly after 11 PM, the Zodiac pulled into the turnout and parked beside them. At least one witness drove by moments later and saw both cars; with a .22 caliber handgun, the Zodiac shot out the rear passenger window, shot through the roof of the car, then forced Jensen and Faraday out on the passenger side. He shot Faraday once in the head and Jensen five times in the back as she was running away, then he quickly departed the scene, leaving their bodies to be found minutes later by Stella Borges, who raced into Benicia and alerted Captain Daniel Pitta and Officer William T Warner, who she found at an Enco Station in town. Detective sergeant Les Lundblad of the Solano County Sheriff's Department investigated the crime, but no solid leads were developed.
Image:Ferrin.jpg Image:Mageau.jpg The double homicide was followed 6½ months later by the shooting of Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau near midnight on July 4-July 5, 1969, at the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course parking lot in Vallejo, just four miles from the Lake Herman Road murder site. The Zodiac drove up behind them, cutting off any escape, and using a flashlight to blind them, shot them with a 9mm while they sat in their car. At 12:40 AM on July 5, the Zodiac anonymously called Vallejo PD and reported the crime, also taking credit for the murders of Jensen and Faraday nearly seven months before. Interestingly enough, the phone booth he used was at a gas station about half a mile from Ferrin's home. Nancy Slover took the call and remembered it the best she could when she spoke to the Vallejo News-Chronicle five weeks later; there is a rumor that Vallejo PD recorded the call, but there is no evidence that such a recording ever existed. Ferrin was pronounced DOA at the hospital, but Mageau survived despite being shot in the face, neck and chest. Ferrin was a popular, outgoing waitress at Terry's Waffle House in Vallejo, and it seems that she had more than her fair share of admirers despite the fact that she was married. Some of these admirers apparently stalked her, giving rise to the story that she knew the Zodiac's true identity and that he killed her to prevent her from turning him in to the authorities, but there has never been any credible evidence to substantiate this belief. In an interesting case of zynchronicity, Ferrin worked at the International House of Pancakes on Tennessee Street in Vallejo in 1966, just around the corner from the home of Arthur Leigh Allen, the most well-known of the Zodiac suspects; she may have actually known him as a customer. Allen is known to have commented about a particular waitress who worked there, but never revealed her name; considering her popularity, the waitress in question was very likely Darlene Ferrin. It's also interesting to note that Allen's house at 32 Fresno Street is about half a mile from the phone booth the Zodiac used to call Vallejo PD after Ferrin's murder. John Lynch and Ed Rust of VPD initially investigated the crime, and Jack Mulanax took over the case in the 1970's.
On August 1, 1969, letters prepared by the Zodiac were received at the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner. The nearly identical letters took credit for the three murders and also included one third of a cryptogram with a total of 408 characters in which he claimed was his identity; the Zodiac demanded they be printed on the front page or he would go on a rampage and kill a dozen people that weekend. The threatened murders did not happen, and all three parts were eventually published.
On August 4, 1969, another letter was received at the San Francisco Examiner, and it started with, "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." The Zodiac had finally given himself the name by which he is now known, and the letter itself was in response to Chief Stiltz of Vallejo asking him to write again with more details as proof that he was really the killer of Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin.
On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California cracked the code, but it was more of a mission statement than anything else and did not include his name. It started with, "I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN..." There were 18 apparently random letters at the end, which some believe can be rearranged to spell "Robert Emmet the Hippie" (a solution that can be obtained only by adding three more letters).
Image:Hartnell.jpg Image:Shepard.jpg On September 27, 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking on the shores of Lake Berryessa, on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. The Zodiac, wearing a black executioner's type hood (but square on top like a paper bag) with clip-on sunglasses over the eyeholes and a biblike device on his chest that had a white cross-circle symbol on it, approached them with a gun; Hartnell thought it was a .45. The Zodiac claimed to be an escaped convict from Deer Lodge, Montana, where he had killed a guard and stolen a car; he told his victims he needed their car and money to go to Mexico. He had brought pre-cut lengths of plastic clothesline and told Shepard to tie Hartnell up, then he tied her up. The Zodiac checked Hartnell's bonds and found she tied him loosely, and so tightened them. Hartnell initially thought it was only a weird robbery, but the Zodiac drew a knife and stabbed them both, then hiked the 500 yards back up to Knoxville Road, drew his cross circle symbol on Hartnell's car door and wrote beneath it: Vallejo 12-20-68, 7-4-69, Sept 27-69-6:30 by knife. At 7:40 PM, the Zodiac called Napa PD to report his crime, and officer David Slaight took the call; the phone booth was found minutes later at the Napa Car Wash, only a few blocks from the police station and 27 miles from the crime scene. Meanwhile, passing fisherman Ronald Fong discovered the victims and summoned help, and Hartnell and Shepard were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa. Shepard lapsed into a coma and died two days later, but Hartnell not only survived to tell the bizarre story, he went on to become a successful lawyer in Southern California. The island (located in the present day Oak Shores Recreation Area) on which the attack took place is even referred to locally as Zodiac Island; it has changed a lot over the years, since the three trees present at the time are now gone, and a picnic table sits right by the spot where Hartnell and Shepard were attacked. Sergeant Ken Narlow of the Napa County Sheriff's Department investigated the stabbing; his best suspect was Rick Marshall, but there was not enough evidence for an arrest.
Image:Stine.jpg Image:Zodiac3.jpg Just two weeks later on October 11, 1969, the Zodiac took a cab driven by Paul Stine from the intersection of Mason and Geary Streets in San Francisco and requested to be taken to the intersection of Washington and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights. For reasons unknown, Stine drove one block further to Cherry Street; the Zodiac shot him once in the head with a 9mm (a different weapon than the one used at Blue Rock Springs three months earlier), then took his wallet and car keys and tore off his shirt tail. He was observed by three teenagers across the street, who called the police as the crime was in progress, but they didn't realize Stine was dead; they thought he had been stabbed, since they heard no gunshot. They observed the Zodiac wiping the cab down, possibly eliminating fingerprints, and then he simply walked away towards the Presidio, just a block to the north. The police arrived at the crime scene minutes later, and only two blocks away at the intersection of Jackson and Maple Streets, Officer Don Fouke, also responding to the call, observed the Zodiac walking along the sidewalk then stepping onto a stairway leading up to the front yard of one of the homes; his rookie partner, Eric Zelms, apparently did not see the suspect. The radio dispatch alerted them to look for a black and not a white suspect, so they had no reason to talk to the Zodiac and drove past him without stopping; the mixup in descriptions remains unexplained to this day. Only a block or so later, they received an amended description and realized they must have passed the killer (no one at the time knew it was the Zodiac); thinking quickly, Fouke logically concluded the Zodiac resumed his original route east on Jackson then escaped north along Maple and into the Presidio, so they drove another block to Arguello Street and entered the base to look for him, but the Zodiac had vanished. A search ensued, but nothing was found. The three teen witnesses sat down with a police artist and prepared a composite of Stine's killer, and a few days later returned to produce a second composite. The Zodiac was estimated to be 35-45 years of age. Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case, and SFPD eventually investigated an estimated 2,500 suspects over the years.
On October 14, the Chronicle received yet another letter from the Zodiac, this time containing a swatch of Paul Stine's shirt tail as proof he was the killer; it also included a chilling threat about shooting school children. It was only then that they knew who they were looking for a few nights before in Presidio Heights.
At 2 AM on October 22, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called Oakland PD demanding that F Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli appear on Jim Dunbar's television talk show the next morning. Bailey was not available, but Belli appeared on the show. Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open, and eventually, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times and said his name was Sam. Belli agreed to meet with Sam in Daly City, but he never showed up, disappointing Belli and the media. Bryan Hartnell, David Slaight and Nancy Slover, the only three people known to have heard the Zodiac's voice, listened intently to Sam's voice and all agreed that he was not the Zodiac. Subsequent calls Sam made to Belli were traced to the Napa State Hospital, where it was learned that he was a mental patient there.
On November 8, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters and on November 9, he mailed a seven-page letter in which he claimed that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he shot Stine. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12, including the Zodiac's wild claim; that same day, Don Fouke wrote a memo explaining what truly happened that night. Despite claims to the contrary, the 340 character cipher has never been decoded. Many "solutions" have been arrived at, but these always ignore codemaking conventions and are therefore not valid.
On December 20, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli and included yet another swatch of Stine's shirt; the Zodiac claimed he wanted Belli to help him, but it was, in all likelihood, a joke on the Zodiac's part. Had he truly wanted legal representation, he would have walked into Belli's office with Paul Stine's driver's license as proof of his identity and given himself up to the police.
Just after midnight on January 1, 1970, Eric Zelms was killed in the line of duty while attempting to stop a robbery in progress. His name can be seen in the roster of fallen officers at the beginning of Dirty Harry (which is very loosely based on the Zodiac case).
On March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother when she picked up a tail in Modesto. He followed her west on Highway 132 and began honking and flashing his lights, then pulled up beside her to yell through his window that her tire was wobbling. Her car was old, so she figured maybe something was wrong, but she didn't pull over until she reached Chrisman Road, a quarter mile from an ARCO station and right by I-580. The man pulled up behind her and offered to tighten the lugs; instead, he loosened them. He drove off, and as Johns pulled away from the shoulder, the wheel came off. The man backed up and offered to take her to the gas station, and that's when he realized she was seven months pregnant and had a ten month old daughter. They drove off, but passed the ARCO; they eventually came to Tracy, but the man refused to stop anywhere. He eventually made his way back into the countryside and began threatening to kill her, but she refused to lose control and give him a reason to kill her. It had been two to three hours since she got in his car when the man apparently drove up a freeway offramp; as he stopped to turn around, Johns jumped out with her daughter and hid in a nearby vineyard. The man came out to look for her, but a passing truck stopped and scared the man off. Johns eventually got a ride to Patterson and, as she was telling the sergeant of her terror ride, she happened to see on the wall a composite of the killer of Paul Stine: the Zodiac. She told him he was the man who abducted her and her daughter, and thinking the Zodiac might show up and kill them, the sergeant awakened the owner of Mil's Restaurant and made her sit inside in the dark just in case. When her car was finally located, it was found on Bird Road, more than two miles east of where she left it, and it had been gutted by fire.
Image:Bates1.jpg Because of the Halloween card the Zodiac mailed to Paul Avery (the Chronicle reporter who covered the Zodiac case) on October 27, 1970, an anonymous tipster wrote to him claiming that the Zodiac had murdered a college coed in Riverside, California around Halloween in 1966. Avery contacted Riverside PD and they sent him copies of various items from the Cheri Jo Bates case file; two of the three letters written six months later to the local paper, the police and Cheri Jo's father, Joseph, were signed with what appeared to be a Z. Two hours later, Avery was on his way to Riverside. He discovered that Cheri Jo had stayed in the library annex at Riverside Community College until it closed at 9 PM on October 30, 1966, some neighbors heard a scream around 10:30 PM, and that she was found dead early the next morning a short distance away, between two abandoned houses that were to be torn down for campus renovations. On November 29, a carbon copy of a typewritten letter allegedly by her killer was mailed to Riverside PD and the Riverside Enterprise, claiming that he had killed her because of all the brush offs she had given him, but many of the details included in the appropriately titled "Confession" letter had already been published in the paper. A desk that was in the library annex the night Cheri Jo was murdered was discovered in storage in December 1966 with a poem etched into the top that was thought to be about her murder; it was the opinion of Sherwood Morrill, the state's top Questioned Documents examiner for many years, that it was written by the Zodiac. It is the opinion of Mike Kelleher and David Van Nuys (authors of "This is the Zodiac Speaking": Into the Mind of a Serial Killer) that the Zodiac was not the killer of Cheri Jo Bates nor did he type the "Confession," but that he was the author of the three "Bates had to die" letters of April 30, 1967. The murder of Cheri Jo Bates is so different from the subsequent Zodiac murders more than 400 miles north starting two years later that it is likely that she was killed by someone who knew her, and that the Zodiac, for whatever reason, happened to be in the area and had a little twisted fun by writing those three letters.
Image:Lass.jpg The Zodiac continued to mail letters and cards to the Chronicle at irregular intervals; one of the last was a card on March 22, 1971, that seemed to take credit for the disappearance of Donna Lass from South Lake Tahoe on September 6, 1970. Considering the numerous differences between her presumed abduction and the known Zodiac murders, it is the opinion of some researchers that the card was not prepared by the Zodiac, but possibly by the real killer attempting to pin the blame on the Zodiac. Alternatively, it very well could be an authentic Zodiac communication in which he took credit for a murder he didn't commit in order to confuse the investigation.
On April 6, 1971, a super-low budget movie, The Zodiac Killer, opened at the RKO Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco; it played for a week and was seen by no more than a thousand people.
On December 23, 1971, Dirty Harry opened in theaters nationwide.
The Zodiac remained silent until January 29, 1974, when he mailed another letter to the Chronicle praising The Exorcist as "the best saterical comidy" that he had ever seen. Three other letters that may have have been written by him were also received that year, and then he vanished completely. The letter of April 24, 1978, was declared to be a hoax less than three months later and was thought to have been perpetrated by David Toschi, the SFPD homicide detective who had been on the case since the Stine murder. While Toschi did not forge the letter, it was used against him politically to remove him from homicide. A recently discovered letter in the files of the Los Angeles Police Department was written to Channel 9 on May 2, 1978, supposedly by the Zodiac, but it has apparently not yet been authenticated.
The case is officially unsolved, and even though there is no statute of limitations on murder, it is not being actively investigated, and SFPD has gone as far as to close the case (although it is still open in the other jurisdictions). Over the years, there have been numerous newspaper and magazine stories, TV shows, a handful of true-crime books (and even some novels based on the crimes), a few movies and several websites dedicated to solving the case. A recent movie to be made is The Zodiac, which was to be released on March 17, 2006, but is currently in limbo. Currently, David Fincher is filming an adaptation of Robert Graysmith's books about the Zodiac. The film will star Jake Gyllenhaal as Graysmith, Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery and Mark Ruffalo as David Toschi.
Popular suspects
- Arthur Leigh Allen: Robert Graysmith champions the theory that the Zodiac Killer was Arthur Leigh Allen (under the pseudonym "Robert Hall Star" in Zodiac), who died in his home on August 26, 1992 at the age of 58 of arteriosclerotic heart disease. Allen denied his guilt in interviews but there was much self-incriminating circumstantial evidence against him. Allen was the only suspect in the case that police had enough evidence against to execute a search warrant on not just once, but three times: on September 14, 1972; February 14, 1991; and August 28, 1992, just two days after he died. They found no evidence to arrest him as the Zodiac Killer, but, strangely enough Vallejo PD chose not to press charges against Allen, a felon, after finding weapons and explosives in his home following the 1991 search. Michael Mageau, who briefly glimpsed the Zodiac's face after being shot in the face himself, picked Allen out of a police lineup as the man who shot him, but this was 22 years later and he clarified his identification by saying the Zodiac had a rounder face like another man in a different photo; unfortunately, this identification is hardly conclusive because of that. In July 1971, a friend of Allen's reported his suspicions about Allen to the Manhattan Beach, California Police Department, and the report was forwarded to SFPD. When questioned later, Allen claimed without prompting that the bloody knives he had in his car the day of the Lake Berryessa attack he had used to kill chickens, and also said that The Most Dangerous Game was his favorite book; this was an interesting comment since the 408 character cipher references that movie. Allen was arrested for child molestation on September 27, 1974, and remained in prison until August 31, 1977; it is often claimed that this coincided with the Zodiac's strange silence during this period. However, the Zodiac never wrote again after 1974, so the claim is meaningless. Ultimately, Allen's fingerprints and handwriting does not match the Zodiac's, no concrete evidence linking him to the Zodiac was ever found, and recent DNA testing in 2002 seems to exonerate him as a suspect. However, the DNA results are inconclusive, since only one letter was tested and it is unknown if the same DNA profile can be extracted from each of the known Zodiac letters. Thus, the clearing of Allen's name based on DNA is premature. While Graysmith's books make an interesting read, it is unfortunate that much of his evidence against Allen was exaggerated or fictionalized. More information can be found in The Arthur Leigh Allen File
- Jack Steadman Beeman: Bill Beeman, a lawyer from Vallejo, accused his deceased brother, Jack, of being the Zodiac in the early 1990s. Jack, who died in Phoenix, Arizona on February 17, 1984, at the age of 66, was 51 at the time of the Zodiac murders and a little too old to match Zodiac's age of 35 to 45. Jack was a heavy smoker and suffered from emphysema, and could be heard wheezing half a block away wherever he went. This fact alone shold rule him out as the Zodiac, since a lengthy hike 500 yards down to Zodiac Island to stab Hartnell and Shepard and then back to Knoxville Road would have been too much for him. Hartnell never described the Zodiac as having emphysema, and actually said he sounded young, which is at odds with Jack's age at the time. Faced with the fact that Jack in no way resembles the Zodiac composite, Bill came up with the theory that Jack used some form of prosthetics and makeup to alter his appearance. Bill Beeman published his theory in the two volume Jack the Zodiac.
- Bruce Macgregor Davis: A member of the Manson Family, Davis was convicted of two murders (Gary Hinman and Donald "Shorty" Shea) and is currently serving time in jail. Dr. Howard Davis (no relation) began investigating Davis in 1987 based on a tip he received many years earlier, and has uncovered a lot of interesting circumstantial evidence that appears to link Davis to the Zodiac, including a letter believed to be from Davis and signed "the Zodiac Killer" that was found among the effects of Doreen Gaul, who was savagely murdered with James Sharp on November 21, 1969 in Los Angeles. While still unsolved, it was believed by some that the Family was involved, and it is claimed that Davis knew Gaul (Helter Skelter, p. 647). There is, however, nothing concrete linking Davis to the Zodiac, and he was ruled out as a Zodiac suspect in 1970 by the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, but it is interesting to note that Zodiac victim Paul Stine lived at 615 Cole Street in San Francisco in 1966, a year before the Manson Family moved into 636 Cole, which is right across the street. Dr. Davis published his findings in The Zodiac/Manson Connection.
- Theodore John Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, is also a popular Zodiac suspect. Kaczynski taught at Berkeley until June 30, 1969, but he apparently left California immediately to join his brother that summer on a cross-country trip in search of land and was not present for the Blue Rock Springs attack nor could he have mailed the first four letters. He also possessed knowledge of constructing bombs; many of Zodiac's later letters included bomb threats and detailed schematics of bombs. A known killer, Kaczynski makes an interesting suspect because his behavior parallels the Zodiac's in many ways as demonstrated by Doug Oswell and Mike Rusconi in their book on CD-ROM, Dr. Zodiac: The Unabomber-Zodiac Connection; Kaczynski was, however, officially ruled out by the FBI.
- Lawrence Kane: Kane was identified as the Zodiac by Escalon policeman Harvey Hines, who investigated the Donna Lass disappearance; unfortunately, other than a vague card that may or may not claim her as a victim and that may or may not have been prepared by the Zodiac, there is no evidence that the Zodiac had anything to do with her presumed abduction and murder, so Kane is a very weak Zodiac suspect at best. He is described as having a mental condition leaving him unable to control self-gratification and Hines claims that Kane asked Lass on a date at least once, but she turned him down. Kane was arrested many times for voyeurism, and it seems quite odd that someone who was so often easily caught looking in windows somehow avoided being arrested as the Zodiac Killer. The name Kane can be easily extracted from the Zodiac's 13 character "my name is" cipher of April 20, 1970, but such a "solution" assumes that the symbols that can be rearranged to spell out "Kane" actually represent themselves and not other letters. Even if Kane is responsible for the disappearance of Donna Lass (and no one knows if she simply chose to disappear of her own free will), that still does not make Kane the Zodiac.
- Rick Marshall: A radio engineer living in San Francisco in 1969, Marshall also apparently lived in Riverside in 1966. He also worked as a theater projectionist at the time the "Red Phantom" letter was mailed on July 8, 1974, and he loved old movies, one of which was El Spectre Rojo. He also had a supply of odd-sized paper that was similar to that which the Zodiac used for his letters. He was ambidextrous, as the Zodiac was believed to be, and even owned a Portable Royal typewriter, similar to the one used to prepare the "Confession" letter, mailed to Riverside PD and the newspaper on November 29, 1966. Marshall also worked at KTIM in San Francisco in the early 1970's, and it's believed by some that the strange "signature" at the bottom of the Zodiac's "Exorcist" letter resembles the call letters of that radio station. In Robert Graysmith's Zodiac, he was called "Donald Jeff Andrews."
- Michael Henry O'Hare: A Harvard graduate, Mike O'Hare became a suspect in early 1981 when Gareth Penn, based on several questionable assumptions, claims to have found his name in a reference book on artists in the Napa County library that, strangely enough, he did not make an effort to name (subsequent searches in the same library by Zodiac investigators have failed to turn up any volume on artists that mention him). O'Hare was living in Massachussetts at the time of the Zodiac murders and cannot be placed in California, and it is unknown how Penn even came up with his name. Ironically enough, O'Hare now lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gareth Penn himself was a Zodiac suspect for a short time in Napa County after he came forward with his bizarre theory; he believed the Zodiac to be playing complex word and number games in his letters, using simple binary mathematics to Morse code conversions and redivisions (among other things), and eventually published the results of his six-year investigation in Times 17.
- "Andrew Todd Walker": Robert Graysmith used this pseudonym for this suspect in Zodiac. Walker spent nearly four years in the Army Air Force and received seven months of code training, he apparently spent a lot of time at Terry's where Darlene Ferrin worked, and may have even known her family. He was unemployed during the time of known Zodiac activity, and also had a drinking problem. Walker was believed to have sent threatening letters to a young woman in Vacaville as well as making harassing phone calls, and disliked law enforcement. Other than a general resemblance to the SFPD composite, there does not seem to be much in the way of incriminating evidence against him.
New York Zodiac copycat
Between 1990 and 1994 in New York City, a Zodiac copycat murdered three people and wounded five others with a zip gun. He also wrote letters to the police in a fashion similar to the San Francisco Zodiac. In 1996, Heriberto Seda was identified as the New York Zodiac after he was arrested for shooting his sister, and in June 1998, he was sentenced to 236 years in jail; he will not be eligible for parole until 2082.
In the media
The actions of the Zodiac Killer inspired several movies.
- Steve McQueen based his character in the 1968 movie Bullitt on SFPD homicide detective Dave Toschi, who gained a modicum of fame for his work on the Zodiac case. (McQueen's preparation for the role included having a copy made of Toschi's custom fast-draw shoulder holster.)
- The Zodiac Killer, directed by Tom Hansen and starring Hal Reed and Bob Jones was released in April 1971.
- Best known is Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood, filmed in San Francisco and released in December 1971. In the movie, the killer calls himself Scorpio (played by Andrew Robinson), who at one point kidnaps a school bus full of children and threatens to kill all of them.
- In 1987, Barry Orton took on the Zodiac Killer-based gimmick of The Zodiak in Stampede Wrestling.
- The fictional "Gemini Killer" in the movie The Exorcist III in 1990 was also loosely based on the Zodiac killer.
- In 1996 Edward James Olmos starred in the made-for-HBO movie "The Limbic Region", which is based on Robert Graysmith's 1986 book, Zodiac.
- The Thrash Metal band Slayer have said their 1996 song 'Gemini' from their Undisputed Attitude album to be about The Zodiac Killer.
- In the second season of San Francisco cop show Nash Bridges (1996), Don Johnson's police inspector is on the hunt for a killer copying the Zodiac's work years ago. He worked on the original case, and enlisted the help of the retired cop in charge of that investigation.
- The fictional serial killer "Avatar" in a 1998 episode of the TV series Millennium is also based on Zodiac.
- In 1999, punk group The Zodiac Killers released their first album, The Most Thrilling Experience.
- Zodiac Killer, a 2005 digitally recorded movie by Ulli Lommel, is about a cat-and-mouse game between the real Zodiac and a young copycat in 2002 Los Angeles.
- In 2005 Alternative Metal band Silt Is... wrote and recorded a song about the Zodiac Killer simply named "The Zodiac."
- The Zodiac, directed by Alex Bulkley, is about a fictional detective in Vallejo obsessed with investigating the real Zodiac. It opened on March 17, 2006 (on what would have been Darlene Ferrin's 59th birthday) on 10 screens nationwide, one of which is in Vallejo, less than a mile and a half from Blue Rock Springs where she was murdered in 1969.
- The most recent work is Zodiac directed by David Fincher. Filmed in San Francisco and Los Angeles with Anthony Edwards, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, Chloë Sevigny and Bijou Phillips this film is slated for a 2006 release.
- The thrash metal band MACABRE (band) released a "tribute" song called Zodiac on their 1993 album which was inspired by many serial killers, Sinister Slaughter.
- In 1999, Greg Lowery formed the San Francisco punk band The Zodiac Killers.
References
- zodiackiller.com
- Beeman, William (writing as “Dr. Oscar Henry Jigglelance”), Jack the Zodiac Parts I & II (White Lite Publishing, Vallejo, CA, 1990).
- Davis, Howard, The Zodiac/Manson Connection (Pen Power Publications, Costa Mesa, CA, March 1997).
- Kelleher, Michael D. and Van Nuys, David, “This is the Zodiac Speaking”: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer (Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, January 2002).
- Oswell, Douglas and Rusconi, Michael, Dr. Zodiac: The Unabomber-Zodiac Connection (CD-ROM; Carfax Publishing, Dover, DE, 1998).
- Penn, Gareth, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachussetts, 1966-1981 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987).
- 2006 Brutal Metal Enthusiasts Fascinated By The Story Surrounding The Zodiac Killer and His Murders form 'The Zodiac Killer' a death metal concept band exploring throught the media of technical metal the different attacks, each suspect and the overall picture of the unsolved case