The Zodiac Killer: America’s Most Elusive Killer

today's episode is sponsored by - Layne Troy - Layne for free on your first device and when you decide to upgrade to premium use my code biographic s-- to get a 10% discount on premium more on them in a bit [Music] 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 for lack of a better word several tropes that we associate with serial killers today and 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 arrest like Jack the Ripper the Zodiac seems to guarantee to remain one of the biggest question marks in the annals of criminal history on December 20th 1968 17 year-old David Arthur Faraday climbed into his Rambler station wagon and went to pick up 16 year-old Betty Lou Jensen they had only known each other for a couple of weeks they went to different high schools in Vallejo a city located within the San Francisco Bay Area and this was supposed to be their first date David went by the Jensen home to meet Betty news parents afterwards the couple stopped by a friend's house on their way to a concert their last stop of the night was the secluded area along Lake Herman Road which was the popular Lovers Lane for the local teen 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 the vehicle purportedly to get the high schoolers to exit David Faraday was his first target the killer shot him once in the head that he looped 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 he reached the hospital the Zodiac killer had claimed his first victims of course nobody knew us at that point the first detectives who were assigned to the case investigated it just like any other double homicide Jensen's best friend later criticized the officers saying that they'd already made up their minds that the killings had been drugged somehow and refused to pursue any other areas of investigation they looked at an ex-boyfriend at betty-lou but he was at home watching a movie with his family on the night of the murders they investigated to local Seward but 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 who had no connection to the victims a few months later the new hypothesis was confirmed when he killed gain [Music] on July the 4th 1969 a very similar scenario unfolded when the gunman pulled his car behind a couple pots in another secluded area this time the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course just a few miles away from the first crime scene these victims were a little older Michel Magoo was 19 years old while his girlfriend's Darlene Ferrin was 22 the killer got out of his car and pointed a flashlight at the couple so they couldn't see him first they thought he was a police officer so they got all their IDs as he approached that car however as soon as he reached the driver side window he started shooting he fired five shots inside the car in and simply turned around and slowly made his way back to his own vehicle however the heard Michel Magoo moaning in pain and realizing that he was still alive he went back and put two more bullets into each body before leaving the scene less than an hour later the Viejo 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 and this ended up saving Michael Mageau his life Darlene Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital but the goat 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 early 30s short around five eight or five nine with a stocky build brown hair and a round face it didn't take long before the murderer made his presence known again but this time however he didn't kill more people instead he reached out to the media on August the first less than a month after the attack on McGowan fairing three newspapers from the Bay Area received letters from the killer they were the San Francisco Chronicle the San Francisco Examiner and the Viejo Times Herald the letters were almost identical and the criminal used them to take credit for those 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 and sent each newspaper one part telling them that solving the cryptogram will reveal his identity he also demanded that all the newspapers published their sections on the front page otherwise he would cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night and then moving on to kill again until irons with a dozen people over the weekends The Chronicle did not obey his instructions instead publishing their cryptogram on page four alongside a quote from the Viejo police chief saying that they're not confirms 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 he soon accompanied by a crosshair symbol which he often used as his signature thus making zodiac perhaps the only serial killer who had his own logo going back to the cryptogram usually referred to as the Z 408 cipher it actually didn't take long for somebody to crack it less than a week after it was published a couple of amateur cryptologists named Donald and Betty hardened from sound ask contacted the San Francisco Chronicle to tell them they had the solution via cryptography buffs out there the way the hardened solved the cipher was by finding a few cribs a crib is a word or phrase which you suspect from the outset will appear in the message in this case Betty hardened is a bit of clever profiling on the creator of the cryptogram she reasons that given the zodiacs craving for attention the message will begin with the one word letter I she was also set and that's the word kill or killing had to appear somewhere perhaps even the phrase I like killing 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 and 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 and speaking of cryptograms and cryptography - Lane - Lane is today's sponsor and it's a one-stop shop for all of your digital identity protection needs if all your passwords are the same that's a bad idea you can use - Lions password manager to create and securely store complex and unique passwords making it less likely that your accounts are gonna get compromised they also have a VPN as part of their service meaning that you can browse the Internet securely and confidently even on public Wi-Fi but not just that they also actively monitor the dark web to see if your information has been leaked somewhere that means you can just go in and change your passwords before someone breaks into other accounts that share that same password blast - Lane does what it's always done it stores your passwords it keeps your personal data secure it fills all of those annoying boxes for payment info or passwords for you so make your life easier and tet2 - Lane comm forward slash biographic Stu tried Ashley in for free on your first device and when you decide he wants upgrade to premium use my code biographic Stu get a discount of 10% and let's continue with today's video [Music] 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 the 27th 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 brown heart nor were approached by a man who matched the description given by Michael Mageau as he made his way towards the couple with a gun in his hands he but on a strange black hood like something an execution would wear it also had the zodiac crosshair symbol on the front and the gun meant complemented it with a pair of sunglasses he told the couple that see was an escaped convict and that he intended to simply rob them and steal their car this might have allowed them to lower their guard somewhat as they were tied up once they were immobilized the Zodiac pulled out a knife and stabbed them both multiple times afterwards he hiked up to where hot mullet 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 that he was calling 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 Shepherd and Hartnell were still alive when they were discovered they were taken to hospital that Shepherd succumbed to her injuries or heart nor made a recovery the last known zodiac killing took place two weeks later in the middle of San Francisco on October the 11th 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 one in the head afterwards he took the victim's keys his wallet and cut off the 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 we're getting two other possible victims in a bit but for now we noticed that as soon as the killings stopped zodiacs 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 Stein's death alongside a piece of the cab drivers 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 and the desired effect of causing terror and chaos in the city even spurring talks of cancelling school altogether it was becoming more and more evident to the people investigating as murders that what the zodiac enjoyed most was feeding off the public fear and attention perhaps he even enjoyed this more than the killing after all he rarely bothered to even check of his targets were dead after he attacked them on the other hand he always went to great lengths and even risked getting caught in order to ensure that everybody knew that 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 went on the show and eagerly waited alongside Dunbar for the Zodiac to call the suspects 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 some guide 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 Zed Burton 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 solves and that they 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 believed he filled them with random symbols to make sure that nobody could crack them and therefore nobody could show that they were smarter than him [Music] 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's he continued after the death of Paul Stine in the last ever letter he sent to the media the Zodiac bragged about having 37 victims mailed on January the 29th 1974 it is known as The Exorcist letter because the killer starts off praising the movie The Exorcist as the best satirical comedy that I have 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 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 we 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 run-down 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 an alley on the campus of Riverside City College the Zodiac did eventually take credit for her death and 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 the 22nd 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 that he kept driving past one gas station after another Jones became nervous enough that she ran out of the car when the man stops in an intersection and hid in a field the stranger came looking for her with a flashlight but eventually gave than laughed 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 mentioned 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 and contained details regarding her location 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 for it [Music] so now we arrive at the big question who was the zodiac in the decades following his murders over 2,500 suspects have been investigated yet none of them have ever been arrested or charged with anything we might as well start with the biggest one of all Arthur Leigh Allen a convicted child molester who lived in Vallejo to this day he remains the only suspect ever named publicly by the police Robert gray-smith a cartoonist who worked for The Chronicle at the time of the killings and who wrote two definitive books on the zodiac case also named Arthur Leigh Allen as being the murderer there was evidence for Allen as the Zodiac he owned a pair of boots identical to those of the killer and a watch with the crosshairs symbol on it he was even identified out of a photo lineup by one of the surviving victims of the zodiac however the photo ID occurred many years after the attack and a questionable DNA test back in 2002 they have exonerated him although he was later deemed inconclusive the problem with DNA in this case is that there are no good reliable samples officers back in the 60s and 70s that no way of knowing that DNA would end up becoming so importance in the future so the evidence was handled poorly and Taine's it there was some renewed hope a few years back after the Golden State killer was finally identified using a genealogy website investigators hopes that the same thing would happen for the zodiac so they resubmitted for analysis stamps that had been licked by the killer to see if they could obtain a full DNA profile however this was back in late 2018 no new developments were ever announced so presumably an analysis didn't work Arthur Leigh Allen died in 1992 of a heart attack and many people remain convinced that he was in fact the zodiac one of those people was David Toschi the chief investigator on the case we should take a quick moment to mention him more in depth as he was quite a character himself he had the reputation of being a tough guy although he enjoyed wearing bowties and colorful jackets he served as inspiration for Dirty Harry as well as Steve McQueen's character and Bullitt he had an ignominious and bizarre departure from the zodiac case in 1978 when it was discovered that he had been sending letters under fake names to San Francisco newspapers praising himself and the work that he was doing on the case at one point he was even suspected of forging a zodiac letter but this idea was later dismissed like we said Allen was the only suspect the police ever named but this did not stop other amateur sleuths from advancing all sorts of ideas many of them claimed that other notorious killers like BDK or the Unabomber were also the zodiac one former detective wrote a book where he advanced the outlandish hypothesis that a convicted serial killer by the name of Edward Edwards was responsible for many other infamous unsolved murders this includes the Zodiac killings but also the black dahlia John Bennett Ramsey and Jimmy Hoffa then there are a bunch of people who have come forth in recent years claiming that their deceased fathers or acquaintances had been the zodiac Jack Terrence George Hodel guy Ward Hendrickson Lewis Mars have all been advanced to suspects by people who knew them closely each one comes with enough proof to make them possible candidates but nowhere close enough to confirm them there are so many questions that remain unanswered did the zodiac truly stop killing why did he stop writing letters do his unsolved ciphers actually contain any useful information was Arthur Leigh Allen the killer all along it seems like the zodiac is just destined to remain a mystery forever so I really hope you found their video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe also please do check out our wonderful sponsor - Lane who I'm linking to below and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Biographics

Views: 1,078,008

Rating: 4.9134269 out of 5

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler, The Zodiac Killer, The Zodiac Killer facts, The Zodiac Killer story, The Zodiac Killer biography, The Zodiac Killer bio, America’s Most Elusive Killer

Id: xCuyPvfkmug

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020