The Zodiac Killer: America’s Most Elusive Killer

Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript:

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Those are the chilling words of a man who put his belief into practice: the Zodiac Killer. He terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s and was never caught or identified. He popularized several tropes that we associate with serial killers today, which we find in numerous crime shows, movies, and books: taunting the police, giving himself a unique name, and using the media to feed his craving for attention. He disappeared without a trace, and 50 years of investigation have yielded only one solid suspect, but not enough evidence to make an arrest. Like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac seems destined to remain one of the biggest question marks in the annals of criminal history.

On December 20, 1968, 17-year-old David Arthur Faraday climbed into his Rambler station wagon to pick up 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen. They had only known each other for a couple of weeks, having attended different high schools in Vallejo, a city located within the San Francisco Bay Area. This was supposed to be their first date. David went by the Jensen home to meet Betty’s parents. Afterwards, the couple stopped by a friend’s house on their way to a concert. Their last stop of the night was a secluded area along Lake Herman Road, which was a popular Lovers Lane for local teens. The two of them were hoping for some privacy, but another car soon pulled up alongside them. A dark figure walked out and approached Faraday’s Rambler. He pulled out a .22 caliber semi-automatic weapon and shot into the vehicle, purportedly to get the high schoolers to exit.

David Faraday was his first target; the killer shot him once in the head. Betty Lou Jensen had time to make a run for it, but she didn’t get very far. Her body was found 28 feet from the car, shot five times in the back. Faraday was still alive when a passing motorist stumbled onto the crime scene, but he died before reaching the hospital. The Zodiac Killer had claimed his first victims. At that point, nobody knew who he was. The first detectives assigned to the case investigated it just like any other double homicide. Jensen’s best friend later criticized the officers, saying they had already made up their minds that the killings were drug-related and refused to pursue any other areas of investigation.

They looked at an ex-boyfriend of Betty Lou, but he was at home watching a movie with his family on the night of the murders. They investigated two local hunters out that night hunting raccoons, but their guns didn’t match the murder weapon. They also heard that two white men spent the night scaring teenagers by chasing them around in a blue sedan, but they were never identified. It wasn’t until after the holidays, when the typical leads dried up, that investigators concluded that the killings were, in fact, the work of a murderous maniac with no connection to the victims. A few months later, the new hypothesis was confirmed when he killed again.

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On July 4, 1969, a very similar scenario unfolded when the gunman pulled his car behind a couple parked in another secluded area, this time the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, just a few miles away from the first crime scene. The victims were a little older: Michel Magoo was 19 years old, while his girlfriend Darlene Ferrin was 22. The killer got out of his car and pointed a flashlight at the couple so they couldn’t see him. Initially, they thought he was a police officer, so they handed over their IDs. However, as soon as he reached the driver’s side window, he started shooting. He fired five shots inside the car and then simply turned around and slowly made his way back to his own vehicle.

However, he heard Michel Magoo moaning in pain and, realizing that he was still alive, went back and put two more bullets into each body before leaving the scene. Less than an hour later, the Vallejo Police Department received a call traced to a phone booth just a few blocks away from the station. The man on the line said, “I wish to report a double murder. If one of you will go a mile east on Columbus Parkway to a public park, you will find the kids in a brown car. They’ve been shot by a 9-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.” As it turns out, the police were already aware of the shooting; a few teenagers had found the couple just minutes after the killer left, which ended up saving Michel Magoo’s life. Darlene Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital, but Magoo survived the attack. Not only that, but he saw his attacker because the shooter didn’t bother to hold up the flashlight the second time around.

He described the killer as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s, short, around 5’8″ or 5’9″, with a stocky build, brown hair, and a round face. It didn’t take long before the murderer made his presence known again. This time, however, he didn’t kill more people; instead, he reached out to the media. On August 1, less than a month after the attack on Magoo and Ferrin, three newspapers from the Bay Area received letters from the killer: the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times Herald. The letters were almost identical, and the criminal used them to take credit for the shootings. They differed in one way: the killer had created a 408-symbol cryptogram, which is a puzzle made using encrypted text. He split it into three parts and sent each newspaper one part, telling them that solving the cryptogram would reveal his identity. He also demanded that all the newspapers publish their sections on the front page; otherwise, he would cruise around all weekend killing lone people at night and then moving on to kill again until he had killed a dozen people over the weekend.

The Chronicle did not obey his instructions, instead publishing their cryptogram on page four alongside a quote from the Vallejo police chief saying that they did not confirm that the letters came from the real killer and asking for more information to prove his identity. The gunman did not act on his threat; instead, he gave in to the request of the police chief and wrote another letter, this time only to the Examiner, in which he included details about the murders that were not public knowledge. There was no doubt anymore that this killer was also the author. But there was something else notable about this particular letter: it began with the chilling words, “Dear Editor, this is the Zodiac speaking.” It was the first time that he gave himself the name that would go on to become one of the most infamous words in criminal history, accompanied by a crosshairs symbol which he often used as his signature.

Going back to the cryptogram, usually referred to as the Z 408 cipher, it actually didn’t take long for someone to crack it. Less than a week after it was published, a couple of amateur cryptologists named Donald and Betty Harden contacted the San Francisco Chronicle to tell them they had the solution. For the cryptography buffs out there, the way the Hardens solved the cipher was by finding a few “cribs.” A crib is a word or phrase that you suspect will appear in the message. In this case, Betty Harden cleverly profiled the creator of the cryptogram, reasoning that given the Zodiac’s craving for attention, the message would begin with the one-word letter “I.” She also suspected that the word “kill” or “killing” had to appear somewhere, perhaps even the phrase “I like killing.”

It turns out Betty was right on the money: “I like killing” were the first three words in the cipher. Once she knew that, deciphering the rest of the message was just a matter of time. As far as the content was concerned, it wasn’t the big breakthrough investigators were hoping for. Despite his promise, the Zodiac was not foolish enough to include his identity in the message. Instead, he talked about how he enjoyed killing and that he planned to continue to do it so that his victims would become his slaves when he is reborn in Paradise, stating that giving his name would only slow him down. The whole message was coherent, albeit rife with spelling errors, except for the last group of 18 letters, which appeared to be gibberish. If there is some hidden meaning behind them, we haven’t figured it out yet.

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The little exchange he had with the media did not hold the Zodiac for long. In the following month, he was ready to claim more victims. On September 27, 1969, he attacked a college couple who were picnicking by Lake Berryessa in Napa County, California. 22-year-old Cecelia Shepard and 20-year-old Bryan Hartnell were approached by a man who matched the description given by Michel Magoo. As he made his way towards the couple with a gun in his hands, he put on a strange black hood, like something an executioner would wear, which also had the Zodiac crosshair symbol on the front. The gun complemented it with a pair of sunglasses. He told the couple that he was an escaped convict and that he intended to rob them and steal their car. This might have allowed them to lower their guard somewhat.

Once they were tied up, the Zodiac pulled out a knife and stabbed them both multiple times. Afterwards, he hiked up to where Hartnell parked his car. Using a felt-tip pen, he wrote on the door: “Vallejo 12:00 xx 68, 7/4/69, September 27, 69, 6:30 by knife.” These were the dates of all the killings. Clearly, even if he used a knife instead of a gun this time, he did not want anyone to think that somebody else committed these murders. But this was still not enough. Later that day, he called the police again and said, “I want to report a murder. No, a double murder. They are two miles north of Park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. I’m the one who did it.” Once again, the Zodiac made the call from a phone booth just a few blocks away from the police department.

It was becoming pretty clear that taunting the authorities and showing them that he was smarter was almost as important as the killings themselves. Just like before, one of the victims survived the attack. Both Shepard and Hartnell were still alive when they were discovered. They were taken to the hospital; Shepard succumbed to her injuries, while Hartnell made a recovery. The last known Zodiac killing took place two weeks later in the middle of San Francisco. On October 11, cab driver Paul Stine was murdered on the job. A white man who matched the previous descriptions of the Zodiac got into his cab and asked to be taken near Presidio Park. Once they reached their destination, the passenger shot Stine once in the head. Afterwards, he took the victim’s keys, his wallet, and cut off a piece of his shirt.

The killer was seen by multiple witnesses as he walked away, and they were able to give a description. The murder was so different from the rest that nobody initially suspected that the Zodiac was the culprit; they thought it was just a regular robbery that escalated to homicide. However, like before, the killer took steps to ensure that nobody else would get credit for his work. Paul Stine is the last murder definitively attributed to the Zodiac.

As soon as the killings stopped, Zodiac’s communication with the media increased. He sent over two dozen letters in the following years. His next one arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle just a few days after Stine’s death, alongside a piece of the cab driver’s shirt to prove that he was the killer. Zodiac also mocked the San Francisco Police Department for its inability to catch him and ended the letter with an ominous threat. He said, “Schoolchildren make nice targets. I think I shall wipe out a school bus. Some warning: just shoot out the front R and then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.” Fortunately, the Zodiac never followed up on this threat, but his words had the desired effect of causing terror and chaos in the city, even spurring talks of canceling school altogether.

It was becoming more and more evident to the people investigating the murders that what the Zodiac enjoyed most was feeding off the public fear and attention. Perhaps he even enjoyed this more than the killings themselves. After all, he rarely bothered to check if his targets were dead after he attacked them. On the other hand, he always went to great lengths and even risked getting caught to ensure that everybody knew he was the one responsible.

A very strange episode occurred the following week when someone alleging to be the Zodiac called the police again and demanded that either F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, two of the most famous lawyers in the country, appear on a talk show called “A.M. San Francisco,” hosted by Jim Dunbar. Belli complied and went on the show, eagerly waiting alongside Dunbar for the Zodiac to call. The suspect actually did call, not once, not twice, but 54 times in two hours. Each time, he would only say a few words, hang up, wait a bit, and then phone again. Eventually, he agreed to turn himself in and arranged for a surrender location in Daly City. It probably won’t surprise you to discover that he never showed up.

Although to be fair, it was never established with any certainty that the caller was the actual killer and not just someone looking for his 15 minutes of fame. The real Zodiac did get in touch soon after, this time with a letter containing another cipher referred to as Z 340. While the first cipher took about 20 hours to crack, this one remains unsolved even today, 50 years later. Two more ciphers followed; one of them was really short and only had 13 symbols, which were preceded by the words “My name is.” This last one was the most complex of all and also included a map of the Bay Area alongside instructions on how to use it correctly. If solved, it would have led to the location of a bomb buried somewhere near Mount Diablo. Neither of these ciphers was ever solved conclusively either. It’s possible they were never meant to be solved and were just full of gibberish. Some cryptologists argue that the Zodiac significantly increased the difficulty of his ciphers after the first one was solved so quickly, while others believe he filled them with random symbols to ensure that nobody could crack them and therefore nobody could show that they were smarter than him.

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Like with most other serial killers, investigators have to consider the possibility that the Zodiac had other victims. Indeed, they suspected that he might have started killing as early as 1963 and that he continued after the death of Paul Stine. In the last letter he sent to the media, the Zodiac bragged about having 37 victims. Mailed on January 29, 1974, it is known as The Exorcist letter because the killer starts off praising the movie “The Exorcist” as the best satirical comedy that he has ever seen. He ends it by writing, “Me 37, SFPD 0.” Not a lot of people actually think the Zodiac had that many victims. For starters, he had already made plenty of other claims and threats that were false, like attacking the school bus or the bomb buried near the mountain. But more importantly, with his five known victims, the Zodiac always seemed to take extra steps to ensure that people knew he did it. Would he murder dozens of other people without taking credit, or was this simply just another throwaway line to make himself feel superior to the authorities?

Regardless of what his profile might have suggested, the police couldn’t dismiss possible Zodiac victims just because they didn’t fit his behavior. The first murders that caught their attention took place in 1963: the high school couple of Robert Dominguez and Linda Edwards, who were shot to death on a remote beach near the town of Gaviota. Not only that, but the same kind of weapon and type of ammunition were used as in the attack on David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Contrary to the Zodiac, though, this killer wanted to get rid of the bodies by placing them in a rundown old shack and trying unsuccessfully to light them on fire.

Another suspicious case was the murder of 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates in 1966. She was stabbed to death in an alley on the campus of Riverside City College. The Zodiac did eventually take credit for her death in one of his many letters, but this happened in 1971, only after the media publicized her story. There was also the attempted kidnapping of Kathleen Jones and her infant daughter on March 22, 1970. A car broke down, and she was picked up by a strange man. He said that he would drop her off at a gas station, but he kept driving past one gas station after another. Jones became nervous enough that she ran out of the car when the man stopped in an intersection and hid in a field. The stranger came looking for her with a flashlight but eventually gave up. Later, at the police station, Jones recognized the composite of the man who killed Paul Stine as the same person who picked her up.

The last case that warrants mention was the disappearance of a nurse named Donna Lass in 1970. Her body was never found, but a Zodiac-style letter, where she was referred to as “Victim 12,” contained details regarding her location and was sent to journalist Paul Avery from the San Francisco Chronicle. It is possible that the Zodiac indeed killed this woman, or it is also possible that he was once again lying to make himself feel more important. The third and most interesting idea suggested that the letter was written by the actual killer, deliberately imitating the style of the Zodiac to make him take the blame