INTRODUCTION
The infamous self-named Zodiac serial killer managed to hold hostage the entire San Francisco North Bay area and finally the City of San Francisco itself from December of 1968 through October of 1969. While the actual killings stopped in 1969, the fear continued on into another decade that was filled with Zodiac’s terror threats.
The salutations “Dear Editor” and “This is the Zodiac speaking” reluctantly became anxiously awaited opening lines of the correspondence from hell that the killer mailed to a variety of entities he felt the need to taunt. His targets were the newspapers in and around the towns where the murders were committed and the police agencies working the homicide cases. In December of 1969, Zodiac sent a letter to the high-profile San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli stating, “I cannot reach out for help because of this thing in me won’t let me [sic]” when in fact the Zodiac well knew that he himself was “the thing.”
In January of 1974, after a two-and-a-half-year silence, the last letter confirmed by the FBI as having been written by the person calling himself the Zodiac was received by the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. I have included in this book all the confirmed letters, cards, diagrams, and envelopes that are publicly available as they contain the most important clues to solving the Zodiac case. The letters appear in chronological order and should be read through before reading this book as I continuously refer to Zodiac’s writings.
Zodiac sent a combination of at least twenty-one letters and cards filled with dangerous rants. Two of the correspondence included diagrams of a bomb he threatened to make to blow up a school bus loaded with children. He further threatened to go on weekend killing rampages if the newspapers did not print his letters in their editions. Along with ciphers and greeting cards that contained threatening messages, Zodiac despicably included bloody pieces of his last known victim, taxi driver Paul Stine’s, shirt. The killer had ripped a swatch from the back of Stine’s shirt before leaving his body slumped on the front seat of his taxi … dead from one nine-millimeter shot to the head.
This book, however, is not about the killings, but rather it is a biographical profile of the killer—the killer who sought out innocent young couples as they sat in parked vehicles in lover’s lanes or enjoyed a relaxing late September afternoon on a blanket in the grass at the edge of a lake. Attacked by multiple gunshots or multiple stab wounds, all were left for dead. Valuable information was obtained, however, from some of the victims who survived the vicious attacks and also from eyewitnesses, including two San Francisco police officers who encountered the Zodiac the night of the Stine taxi driver murder and several teen witnesses who saw the killer wiping down the taxi at the murder site. All had witnessed the killer calmly walk away from the attack area.
This same killer, on a dark Halloween Eve in 1966 in Riverside, California, may have also murdered eighteen-year-old student Cheri Jo Bates after she left the Riverside Community College Library. The killer disabled the victim’s vehicle, then menacingly lurked in or around the library waiting for the young student to exit the building and attempt to start her vehicle. When the vehicle would not start, the killer offered the vulnerable girl a ride home. But instead of a ride, he lured his innocent prey to a darkened gravel and dirt area between two vacant houses where he brutally stabbed her to death. At one point during the killing, he would “kick her in the head to shut her up,” as stated in an anonymous unsigned confession letter received by the Riverside Police Department on November 29, 1966. The deed was consistent with the Riverside County Coroner’s report. The killer then walked away, leaving this young, innocent girl with multiple stab wounds, nearly decapitated, lying dead and bloodied on the ground.
There are two particular motivations that have driven me to answer the question “Who was the Zodiac killer?” The first is the haunting vision of Cheri Jo Bates’s murdered body left alone all night on the ground of a darkened alleyway, victim of an unimaginably cold, brutal act made even more horrific by the brazen killer bragging in a mocking confession letter that he “kicked her in the head to shut her up.” I needed to know what evil caused this kind of heinous behavior directed toward this innocent young girl. This particular crime became very personal to so many because among all the victims, the only person mentioned by name in the Zodiac’s letters is Cheri Jo Bates … the killer sent two letters stating “Bates had to die.” Only in a third letter mailed to the girl’s father did the killer state, “She had to die.” By stating she instead of Bates, the killer heartlessly implied to the girl’s father, “You know who I am talking about”—a statement that tells me the killer of Cheri Jo Bates either knew this particular young victim or was in some way close to the crime.
The second motivation is the arrogance of this killer. In a November 9, 1969, letter to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, Zodiac wrote, “The police shall never catch me because I have been too clever for them.” In another letter to the Chronicle on April 20, 1970, Zodiac sarcastically asked, “By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you?” Then, on March 13, 1971, in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Zodiac stated, “Like I have always said I am crackproof.” Zodiac’s overconfident, arrogant attitude has finally brought his identity out … because I have cracked him.