Surely, many have watched Don Siegel’s film “Dirty Harry”. A man named Scorpio, who committed the murder of a girl, demands a ransom from the city authorities for future murders. The search for the criminal is entrusted to policeman Harry, whose illegal (but very effective) methods of work are turned a blind eye by his superiors.
Few people know that the film was based on real story. The Zodiac serial killer, the most famous maniac of the 20th century, who killed five people and injured two, was never caught.
Serial killer Zodiac - maniac Zodiac
The real killer was incredibly lucky: thanks to mistakes made by law enforcement officers, he managed to escape punishment.
The story of the Zodiac serial killer began with the first murder he committed in the second half of December 1968. That evening, a 19-year-old guy and a 17-year-old girl, college students, decided to retire to the car. There, not far from the Californian Lake Herman Road, they met their death.
There were no signs of sexual violence on the girl’s body. Their corpses were discovered almost immediately after death, but the killer could not be detained - he fled in his car.
Betty Lou Jensen, the murdered girl, knew Darlene Ferrin, the next victim of the Zodiac. Both attended college located in Valejo, a small California town.
Friends and relatives of Darlene, testifying to the police, unanimously noted that shortly before her death, she was pursued by a man who looked like the Zodiac. Friend Darlene Ferrin recalled that the deceased once said that she saw her stalker kill someone.
On July 5, 1969, twenty-two-year-old Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, despite being a married lady, was in the car of her 19-year-old friend Michael Magow, parked near a nightclub. The young man expressed concern about the man in the next car, but Darlene was completely calm, answering something like: “Nothing special!”
A few moments later she was already dead, and the wounded Michael, who miraculously survived, was able to describe the killer in detail. The young man also told the police that the perpetrator called Darlene “Dee”, as if he belonged to her close circle.
The police arrived too late - when Darlene, taking her last breaths, could no longer pronounce the name of the killer.
Thirty minutes later, an unknown person called the Valejo Police Department and reported two bodies in a brown car near Columbus Boulevard. Later it became known that Serial killer Zodiac called from telephone booth, located near the police department.
An hour later, the phone rang in the Ferrin house, where the husband of the late Darlene was receiving guests. A man’s voice said: “Why doesn’t she always spend the night with her husband?”
At the end of July of the same year, the editors of three California newspapers received letters of identical content from one person who wished to take responsibility for all the crimes. Some sections of the text in the letter were encrypted, and the signature was an image of a cross in a circle.
The code was solved by a mathematics teacher from a local school, but the meaning of the signature is unknown to this day. According to one version of criminologists, the author of the letter borrowed the emblem from the American company Zodiac. This version is supported by the fact that the killer soon began to call himself the Zodiac.
He first called himself that in the following letter, sent on August 4 to a San Francisco publication.
The next victim of the maniac was again young people - college students Cecilia Shepard, 22, and twenty-year-old Brian Hartnell. The couple had a picnic on the shores of Lake Berryssa (California) on September 27. Late in the evening they saw a man approaching. On the black hood mask covering the stranger’s face, there was a white sign embroidered - a crossed out circle.
Threatening them with a pistol, the serial killer Zodiac tied them up and began to beat them with a knife. The girl died after the tenth blow, and the young man, who received six blows in the back, survived. When leaving, the killer wrote down the dates of previous murders on the victims' car. After some time, an unknown man called the Napa police and reported the crime.
The latest victim of the Zodiac was a 29-year-old taxi driver - lonely Paul Lee Stine. The man was shot in the back of the head by a disgruntled customer on the evening of October 11, 1969, at a busy San Francisco intersection. The Zodiac Maniac didn't know he was being watched. According to one version, a girl sitting near the window called the police while other children and adults were having fun in the same apartment and did not hear the sound of a shot.
At that time, the killer was described as a dark, that is, tanned man, but the police decided that he meant a black man, so in the orientation sent to all patrol posts, the killer was described as a dark-skinned man. Not far from the crime scene, only one person was found walking from the murder scene, but he was white-skinned, so he was not detained. A few days later, he sent another letter and a piece of the bloody shirt of the taxi driver he had killed to the editor of one of the San Francisco newspapers.
According to the descriptions, the Zodiac maniac was of middle age and height, had a thick body and wore glasses. But in his messages he said that he looked different, but before the murders he carefully disguised himself.
Fame came to the Zodiac even after the first murders thanks to newspaper reports about the progress of the investigation and television interviews with surviving victims and their relatives. The Zodiac did not kill anyone else, but the newspapers continued to receive letters with his signature.
In one letter, the Zodiac maniac threatened to plant explosives on a school bus in retaliation against child witnesses, but never carried out his threats.
In the next letter he indicated his real name, encrypted so skillfully that decryptors are still struggling to figure out the solution. In one of follow-up letters serial killer Zodiac has demanded that all residents of the city wear his sign... and that through murder he recruits slaves who will serve him in afterlife. Later, he began to take credit for other people's crimes, counting the number of victims.
Newspaper editors received about 20 messages from him, and investigations into his crimes continued until 2000. According to one of the many versions, a whole gang of criminals called themselves the Zodiac, in which someone killed, someone made phone calls, someone wrote letters...
The police were unable to detain anyone, despite having fingerprints of the killer left in the taxi, as well as samples of the maniac’s genes. Neither the fingerprints nor the genes matched the fingerprints or genes of the suspects.
Serial killer Zodiac - maniac Zodiac
2015, . All rights reserved.
Serial killer active in Northern California and San Francisco (USA) in the late 1960s. The identity of the perpetrator has not yet been established.
1. Photo identikit
Citizenship:
USA
Murders
Number of victims:
7-37?
Killing period:
December 20, 1968 (possibly June 4, 1963) - October 11, 1969 (possibly 1972)
Main killing region:
Northern California and San Francisco
He called himself the Zodiac in a series of caustic letters he sent to the editors of local newspapers. The letters also contained cryptograms in which the killer allegedly encrypted information about himself. Three out of four cryptograms remain undeciphered. Zodiac committed the murders between December 1968 and October 1969. According to Zodiac's own statements, the number of his victims reaches 37, but investigators are only sure of seven cases. Four men and three women aged between 16 and 29 were attacked. Five died, two managed to survive. During the investigation, many suspects were named, but no convincing evidence was provided to link any of them to the murders. San Francisco police stopped investigating the case in 2004, but reopened it in early 2007. The case remains open in the city of Vallejo, Napa and Solano counties. The California Department of Justice has opened a file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.
Canonical victims
According to Zodiac statements, he claimed responsibility for 37 murders, but law enforcement officials confirmed only seven of them (with two victims surviving):
17-year-old David Arthur Faraday and 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen were shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on a highway in Benicia, California.
Michael Mageau Renault, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, were shot at on July 4, 1969, in a parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park. ) Californian city of Vallejo (Vallejo). Mageau survived, Ferrin died.
20-year-old Bryan Calvin Hartnell and 22-year-old Cecelia Ann Shepard became Zodiac victims on September 27, 1969. The attack took place on the shores of Lake Berryessa. This time the killer used edged weapons. Shepard died, and Hartnell, who suffered 8 stab wounds in the back, survived.
29-year-old Paul Lee Stine was shot and killed on October 11, 1969 in San Francisco.
Possible victims
18-year-old Robert Domingos and 17-year-old Linda Edwards were shot and killed on June 4, 1963, on the coast near Lompoc, California. Several details are noted that point to the characteristic style of the Zodiac, in particular to the murders he committed in 1969 at Lake Berryessa.
18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates died as a result of knife wounds inflicted on her. The murder occurred on October 30, 1966, on the grounds of Riverside City College. The victim's head was almost cut off from the body. Four years later, Paul Avery, a journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle, was privately informed that there was evidence that the Zodiac had committed the murder.
Donna Lass, 25, of Stateline, Nevada, went missing on September 6, 1970. On March 22, 1971, the San Francisco Chronicle received a postcard, which, based on a number of signs, was interpreted as a statement from the Zodiac about his involvement in the girl’s disappearance. However, no evidence was found to link the Zodiac to the disappearance of Donna Lass.
In addition, it is assumed that one of the victims managed to escape from the Zodiac:
22-year-old Kathleen Jones was abducted along with her 10-month-old daughter on March 22, 1970, along Highway 132 west of Modesto, California. Jones managed to escape from the car approximately three hours after the abduction.
Chronology of events
Murder of Jensen and Faraday
2. Jensen and Faraday
On the evening of December 20, 1968, students David Faraday and Betty-Lou Jensen went on their first date. At first, the couple planned to attend a Christmas concert, which was supposed to take place near Jensen's house, but instead they stopped (in a car belonging to Faraday's mother) to visit a friend, then had dinner at a local restaurant and drove along the road leading along Lake Hermann. At about 10:15 p.m., Faraday parked the Rambler in a lot known as the "try-out spot."
Shortly after 11 p.m., their bodies were discovered by local residents. The Solano County Sheriff's Office took over the investigation, but due to a lack of witnesses, motives and evidence, the case came to a standstill.
Events allegedly unfolded as follows: shortly before 11:00 p.m., another vehicle parked behind the car containing Faraday and Jensen. The killer exited his vehicle, approached the Rambler, and ordered Faraday and Jensen to exit the vehicle. Jensen came out first, then Faraday. The killer fired the first shot at Faraday's head. Trying to escape, Jensen ran away from the car at a distance of 8.5 meters. During this time, Zodiac fired 5 shots at her in the back. After that, the killer got into his car and drove away.
Attack on Ferrin and Mageau
On July 4, 1969, around 12:00 midnight, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau parked in Blue Rock Springs Park. The parking lot was located 4 miles (6.4 km) from where Jensen and Faraday were killed. After some time, another car stopped behind the Chevrolet Corvair, in which Ferrin and Mageau were, but immediately drove away. 5-10 minutes later, this car returned, again stopping behind the Chevrolet.
The killer, getting out of his car, approached the victims' car, approaching it from the passenger seat in which Mageau was located. Then, using a flashlight, he fired five shots at Mageau and Ferrin from a 9 mm Luger pistol. Both victims were wounded; some of the bullets pierced Mageau's body and hit Ferrin. As the killer returned to his car, he heard Mageau groan. The killer again approached the victims, fired two shots at them, got into his car and left the crime scene.
On July 5, 1969, at 00:40, an anonymous call was received at Vallejo police headquarters. The male caller reported a double murder and took responsibility for the crime. In addition, the anonymous person stated that it was he who “killed those kids last year.” The female dispatcher who took the call was under the impression that the killer was reading out a prepared text. Police later determined where the call came from: it was made from a pay phone at a gas station located 500 meters from Ferrin's home and just a few blocks from the Vallejo Police Department.
Ferrin died as a result of her injuries. The bullets fired by the killer wounded Mageau in the face, neck and chest, but he survived.
8.
On July 31, 1969, the offices of three newspapers - the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner - received letters from the killer. All three letters were almost the same - they contained statements in which the killer took responsibility for the crimes committed. In addition, each envelope contained 1/3 of the encrypted message, a total of 408 characters. The cryptogram, according to the killer, contained his personal data. The killer made the following demand: on August 1st, all three newspapers must publish the received message on their front pages. Otherwise, the criminal threatened to kill 12 people over the weekend.
On August 1, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle published the resulting third of the cryptogram on page four. In addition, the newspaper published an article in which Jack E. Stiltz, chief of the Vallejo Police Department, stated: “We are not sure that the letter was sent by the killer.” The policeman demanded that the author of the letter provide Additional information, indicating that he is the killer. The remaining two parts of the cryptogram were published no later than August 2. The murders that the criminal threatened to commit did not happen.
On August 7, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner received a letter that began: “Dear Editor. The Zodiac speaks (...)” (“Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking”). This was the first time the killer identified himself by that name. The letter was in response to Stiltz's demand for additional information, and contained previously undisclosed details of the murders of Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin. In addition, the author of the letter reported that the police would be able to detain him as soon as the cryptogram code was cracked.
On August 8, 1969, residents of the Californian city of Salinas - schoolteacher Donald Harden and his wife Betty - deciphered the cryptogram. It contained a misspelled statement from the killer: he claimed that he was collecting slaves that he would need in the afterlife. The text did not contain the personal information of the criminal; according to him, this would prevent him from collecting slaves.
10. Attack on Hartnell and Shepard
On September 27, 1969, Brian Hartnell and Cecelia Ann Shepherd were vacationing at Lake Berryessa. They settled on a small island connected to land by a sandy bridge. At about 18:20, a strangely dressed man approached them: a black headdress completely covered his face and resembled an executioner’s hood, the eye holes were covered with sunglasses, and something resembling an apron was worn on his chest. On the “apron” there was an image measuring approximately 8x8 cm: a white circle with a cross through it.
In his hands he was holding a pistol, according to Hartnell, a .45 caliber. On the man's left thigh was a bayonet-type knife, at least 30 centimeters long. The stranger said that he was an escaped prisoner and explained that he needed money and a car in order to get to Mexico. He handed Shepard a clothesline, previously cut into pieces, and ordered her to tie Hartnell up. Then he tied Shepard, checked how securely Hartnell was secured, and tightened the knots. Hartnell believed that he and Shepard were victims of a robbery and expressed doubts that the stranger's weapon was loaded.
The criminal showed Brian a full magazine of live ammunition, noting that he was going to use a knife. After this, the criminal pulled out a knife and inflicted a series of wounds on Brian and Cecilia. Then the killer, having covered about 450 m, approached Hartnell’s car and, using a black felt-tip pen, drew a crossed out circle on the car door, accompanying the drawing with the following inscription:
At 7:40 p.m., the killer called the Napa County Sheriff's Office and reported the crime. The payphone from which the call was made was identified - it was located on car wash, located just a few blocks from the sheriff's office and 25 miles from the crime scene. Law enforcement officers removed the caller's still wet palm print from the telephone receiver, but this evidence did not help them in identifying the suspect.
During the commission of the crime, the screams of the victims were heard by a certain man and his son, who were fishing on the lake. They located the victims and reported the incident to local rangers. Napa County Sheriff's deputies Dave Collins and Ray Land were the first law enforcement officials to arrive at the crime scene. Cecilia Shepherd, who was stabbed 24 times, was conscious and provided a detailed verbal profile of the perpetrator. Shepard and Hartnell were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. On the way, Shepard fell into a coma and died two days later without regaining consciousness. Hartnell survived.
A Napa County Sheriff's Office employee named Ken Narlow was put in charge of the investigation. Narlow, along with other law enforcement officials, identified features characteristic of attacks committed by the Zodiac:
Victims - youth, couples;
attacks occur on weekends or holidays;
the criminal acts in dark time day or at twilight;
robbery or sexual innuendo are not motives for the crimes;
apply different kinds weapons;
the offender tends to report crimes he has committed (by letter or telephone);
attacks occur in the so-called. “dating places”;
victims are in or near cars;
all crimes were committed near water or objects whose names are related to water (Lake Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs, Lake Berryessa).
Murder of Paul Stein
On October 11, 1969, around 9:40 p.m., a man got into a taxi at the intersection of Mason and Geary streets in San Francisco. The passenger told the driver, Paul Stine, to take him to the intersection of Washington and Maple streets. For an unknown reason, the taxi drove one block further and stopped at the intersection of Maple and Cherry streets around 9:55 p.m.
Here, a passenger shot Stine in the head with a 9 mm pistol. The killer took the victim's wallet, car keys and tore off a piece of the victim's bloody shirt. The witnesses were three teenagers who were on the second floor of a house located on the opposite side of the street - 15 meters from the crime scene. They called the police while the killer was still in the car. According to witnesses, the killer wiped away the marks he left in the taxi before fleeing.
According to police officers Don Fouquet and Eric Zelms, who received the signal about the murder, two blocks from the crime scene they noticed and observed a certain white man for 5-10 seconds. The police alert stated that the suspect was a black man, and therefore the police made no attempt to apprehend him. But they asked if he had seen a man running away with a gun. And he indicated the direction in which the alleged criminal fled. A little later, Zodiac allegedly called the police station, mocking the stupidity of the patrolmen (“stupid pigs”), who, having met him, did not even suspect him of being the same killer.
The confusion with the data indicated in the orientation remains unexplained to this day (perhaps the teenagers' testimony regarding skin color was due to the fact that the killer was wearing a black mask). The search continued, but the suspect was not found. Based on the testimony of teenage witnesses, a portrait of the killer was made. Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to investigate the crime. In subsequent years, San Francisco police officers interrogated about 2.5 thousand people allegedly involved in the murder of Paul Stein.
11. Letters written by Zodiac in 1969
The symbol with which the Zodiac signed his messages.
On October 14, 1969, The Chronicle received another letter sent by the Zodiac. As proof that he was Paul Stein's killer, the sender included a piece of the taxi driver's bloody shirt in the envelope. In his message, Zodiac said that he was preparing a mass murder of children - he was allegedly going to shoot out the front wheel of a school bus and “will shoot the kids” when they run out.
On October 20, 1969, at 2 p.m., the Oakland City Police Department received an anonymous call. The caller identified himself as the Zodiac and demanded that one of the famous lawyers - F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli - appear on Jim Dunbar's popular morning talk show. Bailey could not be contacted, but Belly was found, he agreed and arrived at the studio.
The host of the program asked the audience not to occupy the telephone lines. Ultimately, someone calling himself the Zodiac made several calls, during which he said that his name was Sam. Belly agreed to meet "Sam" outside the studio, but he failed to show up. It was later determined that the anonymous caller and "Sam" were different people. The police tracked where the calls to the studio were coming from - this place turned out to be a psychiatric hospital, and “Sam” was one of its patients.
13. 340-character cryptogram
340-character cryptogram
On November 8, 1969, an envelope was sent to The Chronicle marked “Please forward to the editor immediately.” The envelope contained a postcard from the Zodiac, which contained a cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. This cryptogram, despite numerous attempts, was never deciphered.
On November 9, 1969, Zodiac sent a seven-page letter to The Chronicle in which he reported that three minutes after Stine's murder, two police officers stopped him and briefly interviewed him. A portion of the letter containing this information was published (as required by the Zodiac) on November 12 in The Chronicle. On the same day, Don Fouquet composed explanatory note, in which he outlined the details of what happened that evening.
On December 20, 1969 - exactly one year after the murders of David Faraday and Betty-Lou Jensen - Zodiac sent a letter to Bally's lawyer wishing him a Merry Christmas and asking for help. The envelope contained another fragment of the murdered taxi driver's shirt.
Kidnapping of Kathleen Jones
On the evening of March 22, 1970, 23-year-old Kathleen Jones was heading from San Bernardino to Petaluma, where her mother lived. Jones was 7 months pregnant and had her 10-month-old daughter in the car with her. Driving in the Modesto area, she noticed that the driver of the car following her was giving her sound and light signals. Jones pulled over and stopped.
The car behind her also stopped. A man got out and told Jones that the right rear wheel of her car was wobbly and suggested tightening the bolts securing it. Having finished work, the man got into his car and drove away. As soon as Jones began to drive onto the highway, the wheel fell off. The man immediately returned and offered to take her to the nearest gas station, where she could seek technical assistance. Jones took his daughter and got into his car. The stranger drove them for about one and a half hours (according to other sources - about three) hours around the outskirts of the city of Tracy.
During this time they drove past several gas stations. When Jones asked why they didn’t stop, the man did not answer, changing the topic of conversation. At some point, they stopped at an intersection and the driver allegedly told Jones that he would kill her and then throw the child away. The woman grabbed her daughter, jumped out of the car and hid in a field. The driver closed the car door and drove away. Jones hitched a ride to the police station located in the city of Patterson.
At the police station, Jones drew attention to the portrait of the wanted criminal who killed Paul Stein and reported that this man was her kidnapper. Fearing that the Zodiac might show up at the police station and kill the victim, the desk sergeant told Jones to hide in a local cafe. Some time later, Jones' car was found: it had been gutted and burned - presumably by the man who kidnapped Jones.
In subsequent years, Jones has given several versions of what happened to her that night. She typically stated that the man had threatened to kill her and her daughter, but at least one police report did not contain such information. Jones told The Chronicle's Paul Avery that after she jumped out of the car, the kidnapper followed her and spent some time trying to find her in the dark, using a flashlight. However, in one of the statements, Jones reports that the man did not exit the vehicle.
On April 28, 1970, The Chronicle received a postcard that read, “I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my BLAST.” The text was accompanied by the symbol with which the Zodiac signed his messages - a crossed circle. On back side The postcard also included the following text: Zodiac threatened to blow up a school bus if the newspaper did not publish his entire message. He also expressed his desire for people to start wearing "cute Zodiac pins." On April 29, The Chronicle published the text of the message.
In a letter sent on June 26, 1970, Zodiac reported his disappointment that people did not wear badges with the symbol. In addition, he reported that he used a .38 caliber weapon to shoot a man sitting in a parked car. Apparently, the reference was to police sergeant Richard Radetich, who was killed on June 19. Radetic was in his official car and filling out transport documents. At 5:25 a.m., an unknown man shot the sergeant in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. Radetic died 15 hours later. San Francisco Police Department officials denied that Zodiac was involved in the murder of Sgt.
In addition, the envelope contained a map of the surrounding areas of San Francisco. The Zodiac drew its logo on the image of Mount Diablo - a crossed out circle. Starting from the top point of the circle and along its entire length, he put down numbers in this order: 0, 3, 6, 9. Thus, the image resembled a watch dial. To the right of the number “0” there was an inscription with the following content: “is to be set to Mag. N" (“orient north”). The letter contained a 32-character cryptogram. Zodiac claimed that the map and cryptogram encrypted the location where he planted the bomb. The killer concluded his message as follows: “= 12, SFPD = 0.” The bomb, which, according to the killer, was supposed to explode in the fall, was not found.
On July 24, 1970, the editor of The Chronicle newspaper received a letter in which the Zodiac took responsibility for the kidnapping of Kathleen Jones, which occurred four months earlier.
In a letter sent on July 26, 1970, Zodiac paraphrased one of the comic opera's vocal numbers. The killer added a text of his own that spoke of a “small list” of tortures prepared for his “slaves” in “paradise.” This time, the Zodiac depicted a larger-than-usual crossed out circle and indicated a new “score”: “= 13, SFPD = 0.”
On October 5, 1970, the editor of The Chronicle newspaper received another postcard from the Zodiac. The Zodiac-logo crop.jpg symbol was drawn in blood. The message consisted of words and letters cut from an issue of The Chronicle. There were 13 holes punched in the card. Law enforcement officials said it was "highly likely" that the card was made and sent by Zodiac.
On October 27, 1970, journalist Paul Avery, the author of articles about the Zodiac published in The Chronicle, received a Halloween postcard that was signed with the letter “Z” and a characteristic symbol - a crossed circle. The card had handwritten text on it: “Ku-ku! You are finished" (“Peek-a-boo, you are doomed”). The threat was taken seriously: The Chronicle published material related to this incident on the front page of its edition. Some time later, Avery received an anonymous letter, the author of which pointed out a number of common details present in the actions of the Zodiac and discovered during the investigation of the murder of Cherie Jo Bates. On November 16, 1970, Avery published the information he had received.
31.
32. San Francisco Zodiac Serial Killer
When asked who in the history of mankind deserves the title of the most brutal serial killer, almost every respondent names Jack the Ripper. Few people know that this never-caught Englishman was surpassed in terms of the number of innocent people killed by another serial killer who lived and committed crimes 70 years later. His name, or rather pseudonym, is Zodiac. As in the case of the prostitute killer, the real name of the criminal was never found out.
Briefly about the Zodiac
The country in which the Zodiac committed lawlessness is the USA. The case against this mysterious person was opened in several cities and counties in the United States in 1969. The criminal has been active since December 1968. In his letters sent to newspapers, Zodiac spoke of 37 victims. According to investigators, he could only be charged with exactly 7 crimes. This number was confirmed by police investigation. The victims were young people: the youngest victim was 16, the oldest was 29. Of these, three were women and four were men. Two people managed to survive.
The killer compiled 4 cryptograms in which, according to him, his name was encrypted. The criminal wrote a series of caustic and ironic letters and sent them to local media. These letters contained the cryptograms he compiled. The country's most talented cryptographers racked their brains to figure out what this secret letter was hiding. Not for them at all, but school teacher My wife and I managed to decipher only one cryptogram. The next generations of cryptographers made no progress in this either. The best cops in California and San Francisco searched for the criminal, but, as in the case of the transcript, they were unsuccessful. It is not known what the reason is, either the genius of the criminal, or the fact that in fact it was just a set of symbols. It is quite possible that this was trolling the public and law enforcement officials.
Victims of a mysterious criminal
David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen - a couple in love who were shot on their first date. They were in a car in a parking lot near the lake. The criminal drove up in a car, forced the lovers to get out and shot them. The girl tried to escape, but was unsuccessful.
Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were also shot by the Zodiac. The perpetrator shot them right in the car. Since it was at night, he used a flashlight so as not to miss. Despite the terrible wounds, the guy managed to survive.
Brian Calvin Hartnell and Cecelia Ann Shepherd were attacked on the shore of a pond. This time the Zodiac did not act firearms, but with a knife. The girl died after numerous wounds, the guy survived.
Paul Lee Stine - This man was shot and killed in San Francisco.
There are a number of other victims who may have been the work of the Zodiac. Among them is another pair of young people, a 17-year-old girl and a 27-year-old woman. According to 22-year-old Kathleen Jones, a man kidnapped her and her 10-month-old daughter and tried to take her in a car in a direction unknown to her. Fortunately, the woman managed to escape with the child. Why is there a suspicion that these 5 crimes are the work of the Zodiac? The police saw in them the handwriting of a serial killer.
The cryptogram, which was deciphered, contains a brief explanation of the purpose for which the Zodiac commits crimes. According to him, in this way he prepares for himself the slaves he needs in the afterlife...
Letters to newspapers came until 1974. Then the Zodiac fell silent. In the spring of 2007, while sorting through The Chronicle's archives, the publication's staff found a Christmas card. The handwriting on it was similar to the handwriting of the Zodiac. It was sent in 1990. The official graphological examination did not confirm the authorship of the Zodiac...
FBI specialists have promised to conduct a DNA examination of one of the most mysterious cases of the 20th century - the case of the Zodiac serial killer, who is sometimes also called the “American Jack the Ripper.”
California in the late sixties was not the most peaceful place. Bikers, Satanists, drug addicts - strange and dark personalities flocked to the West Coast of the United States. In 1968, a killer maniac nicknamed “Zodiac” also appeared in the vicinity of San Francisco.
It is reliably known about five murders he committed. Compared to the serial killers who killed dozens of people, the Zodiac doesn't seem particularly remarkable. But the criminal, whose name has remained unknown for forty years, knew how to attract attention to himself.
Firstly, the murders resembled a scene from a Hollywood thriller. A typical picture: a young man and a girl are sitting in the back seat of a car parked in a deserted place. While they are kissing, a sinister figure in a black hood with a huge knife or a pistol with the safety off is creeping up to the car. The police arrive at the scene too late and find two bodies in the car.
Secondly, the criminal seemed to have studied manuals on marketing, advertising and public relations. After the second murder, in 1969, he began sending long, encrypted messages to police officers and journalists detailing the crimes. Sometimes he hinted that he had his eye on a new victim. Often, the Zodiac took credit for the actions of others - if you believe the messages, 37 people became his victims.
By the way, he came up with a name for himself. In the first letter, instead of a signature, there was a sign - a circle with a cross, reminiscent of an optical sight. And all subsequent messages began with the words “This is the Zodiac.” To ensure that the crimes did not go unnoticed, he also called the police - sometimes from the street machine closest to the scene of the murder. By the way, this even led investigators to believe that a whole gang was operating.
In the first message, the Zodiac explained that all victims in the afterlife (he was convinced that they would go to heaven) would become his slaves. The perpetrator was probably mentally ill and believed in this theory. Perhaps that is why he attacked young people. His two first victims, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, were under 18 years old. The second pair of victims, Michael Mago and Darlene Farrin, were 19 and 22 years old. The young man survived, but his companion died. By the way, Darlene was married, and the criminal knew this fact. Zodiac was one of the first to notify Farrin's husband about the murder. In the third pair, the young man again survived (he was 20-year-old Brian Hartnell), and the girl died from multiple stab wounds (her name was Cecelia Shepherd and she was 22 years old). Only the fifth murder stands out from the cinematic scheme of the Zodiac - in 1969, he killed a 29-year-old taxi driver.
In the letters, Zodiac mocked the police, claiming that after one of the crimes they questioned him for several minutes, trying to find out if he had seen anything suspicious.
And in one of the last messages of the Zodiac, his real name was allegedly encrypted (although in the first letter he said that he would not reveal his name so that the police would not try to stop him and deprive him of the pleasure he gets from killing). If you believe the popular theory that every criminal strives to be caught, this step seems quite natural. However, the Zodiac’s desire to fall into the hands of justice turned out to be not too strong - the code was so complex that the experts were unable to solve it.
At some point, the Zodiac stopped reminding us of itself. Over the course of forty years, several books dedicated to his crimes have been published. Not only did he act “like in a movie,” but at least three films were made about the Californian maniac. Many researchers were convinced that it would never be possible to find out who was hiding under the name “Zodiac”. In 2004, investigators got tired of handing over the Zodiac case and closed it, considering it hopeless.
In the early nineties, Zodiac imitators appeared. In New York, a Zodiac fan killed three people, was caught and sentenced to 235 years in prison. This man had nothing to do with the murders in California, although his handwriting resembled the actions of the Zodiac. But the New York wannabe was born in 1967. And in 1997, in the vicinity of Tokyo, a 14-year-old teenager also decided to “play Zodiac” and even killed two children, leaving a sign in the form of a cross and a circle at the crime scene.
It seemed that the name of the Zodiac would remain as much of a mystery as the personality. But a man named Dennis Kaufman contacted the FBI and said that he knew for sure that his stepfather Jack Terrence was the Zodiac. Theoretically, Terrence could have committed these crimes. Moreover, in his belongings they found the famous black hood (or just very similar?), a knife with traces of blood (it is not specified whether human or not) and film frames with frightening images.
DNA testing will reliably show whether Jack Terrence was the Zodiac. But if Terrence is guilty, he will not be punished - he died in 2006.
On the night of July 4-5, 1969, a telephone rang at the police station in the American city of Vallejo. A man's voice said that he had just killed two people. The unknown person then claimed that the deaths of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, who were found dead on a country highway last year, were also his doing.
From that moment on, a series of brutal murders began, committed by a maniac who introduced himself as Zodiac. He claimed to have 37 murders to his name. Extensive materials have been collected on the serial killer case. There are even fingerprints and a voice recording, but his true identity has not yet been established.
The killer's handwriting
The United States police are adept at investigating these types of crimes, but several cases recorded in California between December 1968 and October 1969, as well as the 1966 murder of Cherie Jo Bates, remained unsolved. All cases have a common thread:
- All the crimes were committed on the street, in secluded places where loving couples traditionally meet.
- The killer's victims are young people.
- The Zodiac maniac attacks at dusk or at night.
- Prefers weekends and holidays.
- Robbery or sexual motives are excluded.
- Weapons used - bladed weapons, firearms, etc.
- All victims were in their cars or near their cars.
- The places where the Zodiac maniac operated are somehow connected with water.
- The criminal is interested in publicity, so he reports his crimes in letters and by telephone.
The police who investigated these cases believe that the killer either died at the hands of another potential victim who turned out to be more dexterous than him, or died from drugs, or hid in prison under a completely different article than murder, because such a crime carries the death penalty in the United States . There are other versions.
First official victims
The murder of Jensen and Faraday was the first in the Zodiac case. For him it became, as they say, a test of his pen. All subsequent crimes of the maniac, one way or another, echo the first. This was noticed by both the police and newspapermen, who later also became participants in the terrible scenario written by the Zodiac.
Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday had just started dating. They had known each other for a long time through a mutual friend, Sharon. The girls studied in the same class and were friends, and David regularly drove them home from school. The young man liked his pretty companion Sharon for her cheerful character and friendly manner of communication. David was not overly shy, but, knowing the strict morals that reigned in Betty’s family, he was afraid that she would reject him.
The fact is that Betty's older sister, Melony, got married very early due to an unplanned pregnancy. The marriage was unsuccessful and soon broke up. So that the youngest daughter would not repeat the sad fate of her sister, the parents focused their efforts on keeping their daughter in the bosom of the family for as long as possible. But there is no point in resisting the call of nature, and sixteen-year-old Betty fell in love. A high school student from Valleio captured her heart. Betty and David lived in neighboring cities. The local community regularly organized competitions, concerts and competitions, where students from nearby areas were invited educational institutions, and they were in Vallejo (David studied here), Hogan (Betty studied here) and Benicia. excellent, everyone has a car, or even several - all this helps to quickly solve the problem with distances.
David, the beauty and pride of the school, an example for the younger ones, an athlete, the soul of the party, the secret dream of all the young ladies of Vallejo, Hogan and Benicia, gave his heart to Safemorka. Safemores in the United States are called sophomores or eleventh grade students in high school. At the time of the novel, David was already a junior, that is, a twelfth-grader, a senior student. His plans extended further than living in a town of 20 thousand people. The young man planned to go to university and get higher education, get a job Good work, get married and help his mother raise two younger brothers and sister.
The tragedy that happened to the loving couple shook the entire area. An advertisement was placed in the local newspaper to raise funds to conduct an investigation and capture the criminal. The intersection of two roads, once a favorite place for secret romantic dates, began to be avoided by young couples, considering it cursed.
On the eve of the disaster, David and Betty decided that it was time to move from simple meetings in cafes to more serious relationship. Sharon advised them to retire to Blue Rock Springs Park or go to St. Catherine's Hill, but the lovers chose Lake Herman, or rather, the bend of the intersection of two roads - to pumping station and the Like Herman Road, popularly called “lovers’ corner.” Betty told her parents that she was going to a singing evening dedicated to the approaching Christmas. It was nine o'clock when their Rambler, borrowed from David's mother, took the couple on a romantic date. First there was dinner in a small restaurant, and an hour later the young people were already hugging, lying on the reclined seats of the car.
Chronology of the crime and investigation
The first witness driving along this road saw two empty cars and then heard what sounded like a gunshot. Zodiac parked his car very close to the Rambler to block the side doors. When cars appeared on the road, he ducked, so people thought that there was no one on it.
The next witnesses, seventy-year-old Stella Borges and her daughter nicknamed Baby Stella, drove past the scene of the tragedy at the very moment when the Zodiac maniac had just fled the crime scene. The women saw the corpses broken glass car and at maximum speed rushed away from the terrible sight. In a panic, they honked their lights and horns, hoping to attract attention. Finally, they saw a policeman and told him everything.
The signal was passed to Sergeant Beede and his partner Stephen Arment. They were closest to the "lovers' corner" than others. After 15 minutes, the police were already examining the crime scene. David hung half out of the car. The school ring was clutched in his hand. The young man was still breathing, but died on the way to the hospital. He was killed with one shot to the skull. The only bullet hole was behind the left ear. Betty died before the police arrived. She was lying at a distance. The girl tried to run away from the criminal, but five shots in the back stopped her a few steps from the car. Several shots broke the windows of their car and made holes in the roof.
The version of an attack for the purpose of robbery was dropped almost immediately. Most likely, the Zodiac maniac fired the first shot in order to attract attention to himself. Then he demanded to give him valuables. Apparently he was trying things on and deciding what to do with the guys. When they started making excuses and thrusting the ring at him, he fired the first shot. Betty jumped out of the car, and he finished her off on the street.
Detectives Les Lundblad and Russell Butterbach were assigned to handle the case. They didn't solve the murder, but they collected great material, which allowed their colleagues to subsequently identify the handwriting of the criminal. Besides, in next year, July 31, in a letter to the Times Herald, serial killer Zodiac confirmed his guilt, describing how he dealt with his lovers and indicating the brand of ammunition in his pistol. These were rifle cartridges - a remarkable detail, and no one except the police knew about it. This was not written about in the newspapers.
Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magew (Majo)
The attack on Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magew is the second crime the Zodiac has committed. The killer has not yet taken a sonorous pseudonym, but has already begun to take steps to become famous and demonstrate his fearlessness and uniqueness.
The incident occurred on July 4, 1969, when the entire city was celebrating Independence Day. Over the roar of fireworks, no one heard the pistol shots that rang out in Blue Rock Springs Park. At 00:10, Zodiac called the police station and reported the murder, and also added that he also committed last year’s crime in the “lovers’ corner.”
This time the victims were 22-year-old Darlene and her young lover Michael Magew. They were sitting in Darlene's husband's father's Chevrolet when the Zodiac pulled up. The killer jumped to conclusions - the guy was only wounded. The bullets hit him in the face, neck and chest. The woman died 20 minutes after phone call V
Darlene was married for the second time to Dean Ferrin. In 1968, the couple had a daughter, and two months before the sad event, the family bought a new house. From the photo, Darlene looks very much like Betty Lou Jensen. Most likely, the similarity is just a coincidence. There is nothing to suggest that the maniac preyed on women of the same type of appearance. Michael Magew doesn't look like any of the victims. He arrived on his date with Darlene wearing three trousers, a T-shirt, a thick shirt and three sweaters. The man explained this to the police by saying that he was very worried about his thinness and in this way tried to give himself volume.
Darlene's adultery caused a lot of noise in Vallejo. Subsequently, the sister of the deceased, Pamela, in order to justify her relative, confused the investigation by suggesting that Darlene’s husband was involved in the attack on the lovers. In order to exclude a motive for revenge on the part of the deceived spouse, the police checked Dean Ferrin's alibi. The person who was unfairly accused was acquitted.
First letters
It is obvious that the serial killer Zodiac thirsted for fame, because his crimes did not follow the traditional motives - profit, sex or revenge. The desire to become main theme conversations among residents of the whole city, read about yourself in the media mass media forced him to start corresponding with journalists. At the end of July, three local newspapers, the Valeo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Examine and the San Francisco Chronicle, received letters from the Zodiac, which were parts of one text, cryptograms and explanations regarding the above crimes. He promised that the cryptograms contained information about his identity and demanded that the letters be published on the front pages, otherwise he threatened to kill 12 more people over the coming weekend. It was not possible to establish what codes the Zodiac (the killer) wrote after the first revealed texts. It is likely that in some cases this was simple gobbledygook, intended to lead the investigation astray or to show that he was so smart that his codes were beyond anyone’s ability.
Contact has been established with the police and journalists
On August 1, the San Francisco Chronicle published a statement from Jack Stills on its back page. The chief of the Vallejo City Police Department expressed doubts about this and asked the author of the cryptogram to report additional information About Me. Two other newspapers also published letters and codes.
The response to the publication was a new letter to the editor of the San Francisco Exam. The criminal clearly enjoyed the hype he had caused and the fact that the police were following his lead. It was in this letter that he signed the name Zodiac. The pseudonym, in its essence, is very strange, and has nothing to do with crimes. He also said that deciphering the cryptogram would reveal information about his personal data.
All of Northern California became involved in solving the encrypted messages. The Garden couple from Salinas were the first to decipher the killer's texts. They contained a lot of grammatical errors. They said that he was collecting slaves who would serve him in the afterlife - the criminal was clearly mocking. He did not provide any information about himself, explaining this by his reluctance to help the investigation.
Brian Hartnell and Cecelia Ann Shepard
The next crime occurred on September 27, 1969. College students Cecelia Shepard and Brian Hartnell were on the shore of Lake Berryesa when a man wearing a hood covering the top and bottom of his head emerged from the bushes. Before our eyes - Sunglasses, and on the chest - something like an apron with a pattern in the form of a circle crossed out by a cross. The strange man took a gun from his pocket and handed Cecilia a rope, ordering her to tie Brian up. Otherwise, he promised to kill both of them. The young man took this as a joke, but the alien showed a full magazine of cartridges. Cecilia tied up her companion, and the stranger tied her up. Next, he took out a long knife and struck several blows, first to Brian and then to her. Before leaving, the killer, nicknamed the Zodiac, took a black felt-tip pen and drew a circle with a cross on the unfortunates’ car and wrote the dates of the three previous crimes.
Having finished this, he called the police department and reported what had happened. A few minutes later, the duty squad identified the location of the telephone booth. When the police arrived, the pipe was still wet. Fingerprints were taken from her, but later they were never useful, because they were not in the file cabinet.
The wounded were taken to the hospital. Brian survived, but Cecilia fell into a coma and died a few days later.
Paul Stein
The murder of Paul Stein, a taxi driver, occurred in San Francisco. The crime is fraught with even more mysteries than the previous ones. If the taxi driver had reported to the control room that he had picked up a passenger and named the route, then everything would have been simpler, but this was a so-called false part-time job. Zodiac killed Stein in the same way as David Faraday, with a shot to the head behind the ear. Witnesses, three teenagers, saw him put the driver's head on his lap and do something with a knife. As it turned out, he cut off a piece of the man’s blood-soaked shirt, and the boys thought it was a black man cutting off the taxi driver’s head. They mistook the Zodiac for a black man because of the dark mask pulled over his face. The police arrived quickly and even confronted a white man, who was asked if he had seen a black man with a gun. He, and it was the Zodiac himself, pointed them in the wrong direction. Later he called the police and laughed at the stupidity of the law enforcement officers.
Three days later, on October 14, 1969, another letter arrived in the Chronicle newspaper. Zodiac wrote that he was planning to kill schoolchildren. To do this, he will shoot out the wheel of a school bus, and then begin to kill children getting out of it. So that there was no doubt about his identity, he described Stein's death in detail and enclosed a fragment of the man's shirt in the envelope.
A week later, Zodiac called the Oakland Police Department and said he wanted to appear on Jim Dunbar's television talk show. Well-known lawyers should be present in the studio. Through them he will conduct a telephone conversation. Melville Bellay agreed to come. Someone calling the show called the Zodiac and told him his real name was Sam. The call was coming from a mental hospital, and Sam was an ordinary patient who had nothing to do with the serial killer.
Then in November, the Chronicle received two more Zodiac letters. One of them contained another cryptogram, but it has not yet been deciphered, and on December 20, the criminal sent lawyer Bellay a Christmas card and a second piece of Paul Stine's shirt.
Kathleen Jones
Kathleen Jones was 20 years old at the time of the crime. She was riding on own car to his mother in Petulama. The woman was 7 months pregnant. Her 10-month-old daughter was traveling with her. On a highway in the Modesto area, she was overtaken by a car that was beeping and asking her to stop. Kathleen obeyed. The driver of the honking car said that its right rear wheel was wobbly, offered his help and corrected the problem. As soon as the woman drove onto the highway, the wheel fell off. The man soon drove up again and offered to take her to the nearest gas station, where she would receive more effective assistance. They drove past several gas stations, but the man did not stop. Then, according to Jones, he stopped at the intersection and said that he would kill her along with the child. The woman jumped out of the car and rushed into the thickets of tall grass. The criminal looked for Kathleen, but did not find him and left.
At the police station, where she soon went, there was a photo identikit of Paul Stein's attacker. She recognized him as her travel companion. The woman’s testimony is questionable, as she was constantly confused and changed information about the circumstances of the incident.
Cherie Jo Bates
The Zodiac claimed the murder of Cherie Jo Bates, but police doubt the veracity of this claim. The criminal's manner was too different from the Zodiac's handwriting.
The first doubt about the involvement in the death of the girl of the same person who committed the above murders is the date of the crime.
An eighteen-year-old girl died in October 1966. She lingered in her college library and walked through a deserted area of abandoned houses at dusk. Cherry was first beaten and then stabbed to death with a short dagger. The wounds were inflicted precisely on the carotid artery and larynx, and Shepard and Hartnell's Zodiac hit randomly and never hit the throat. Most likely, the maniac took responsibility for a crime he had not committed in order to confuse the police.
The letters he sent to the girl's father, to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper and to the Riverside Police Department force this crime to be attributed to the Zodiac. The handwriting matches the Zodiac's, but one part of his messages was typed and the other was handwritten. The only confusing thing is that the letters were sent six months after the girl’s death. It's not like the Zodiac - he didn't like to wait and always contacted the police immediately after the murder.
The story of the Zodiac killer is full of secrets. Some journalists suggested that completely different personalities were operating under the name of the famous maniac. All the blame lies with the newspapermen and the insufficiently professional police officers who gave out too much information to the general public.