Who is Zodiac Killer, Why Was He Never Found and Other Important Things Him or Her (Compilation)

december 20th 1968 two high school students named betty lou jensen and david faraday are making out in a car on a dark road nicknamed lovers lane suddenly a man appears out of nowhere and orders the love struck teens to get out of the vehicle faraday gets out first at which point he's shot and killed jensen makes a run for it and is shot five times in the back this was the work of the zodiac perhaps america's most mysterious killer a maniac still in the crosshairs of law enforcement today and a man that just spoke again after half a decade of silence around six months after that murder three newspapers received a letter each from a person who claimed he was the killer in the letters the person included a cryptic gram that after being cracked seemed to reference a book about hunting but not about animal hunting it was about hunting humans for sport his victims he wrote would become his slave in the afterlife this is the zodiac speaking would become five words that etched themselves into the minds of millions of americans after more brutal murders and bewildering letters the killer was playing with the cops he was needling them trolling them so much so that he drove some investigators nearly out of their minds and then came the unsolvable puzzle the zodiac's ps de resistance a cipher so perplexing that not even the greatest code breaking minds in the world could solve it until now anyway it's taken 51 years to finally solve the puzzle and it's revealed a chilling message okay so first you need to know a bit more about the person known as the zodiac killer it's something we've covered in detail before so we'll give you an abridged version of this rather long and very disturbing tale spoiler alert the cops never caught him should they have you can tell us at the end it's possible he started this journey as a ruthless killer with those two young lovers but it's also possible the zodiac had actually killed before we may never know for sure but in a letter he once claimed to have killed as many as 37 people the police though if only ever definitively linked him to the killing of five people in all likelihood the zodiac's body count was way higher and he might have carried on killing for decades his last letter came in 1974 and then like a ghost he just disappeared that letter contained a postmark saying if i don't see this note in your paper i'll do something nasty which you know i'm capable of he then wrote me 37 sfpd0 such letters infuriated the police especially when he wrote things such as i like killing people because it's so much fun for the cops it was only a matter of time before they caught the maniac but they were wrong very wrong it's certain the zodiac murdered 22 year old darlene elizabeth ferran and almost killed 19 year old mike renault major as they sat in their car in a secluded section of blue rock springs park in vallejo california the killer pulled up behind him at one point and then drove away when he returned he got out of his car and shined a bright light into the couple's car he shot farron five times in mojo four times she died but he lived to tell the tale cops now knew they were looking for a male possibly in his late twenties early thirties he was about five foot eight and on the stocky side he had brown hair and a roundish face mojo might have gotten some details wrong but who takes notes when you have a gun in your face how did the police know it was the zodiac killer well he had the gumption to call them from a pay phone only a few blocks away from the station less than an hour after the attack he told them details about the murder only the killer could possibly know like what weapon was used and then he shocked the cops by saying he was also the one who killed the kids on lover's lane so if it wasn't a one-off killer it was the work of a serial killer since the woman was cheating on her husband he was a suspect for a while but it didn't take long to figure out it wasn't him the zodiac was real he was far from finished so now we need to talk about ciphers and cryptograms a cryptogram is like a puzzle that contains encrypted symbols might look like gibberish but it has a hidden meaning to figure out that meaning you need a kind of key to decode it called a cipher anyone can create one with a little bit of research and if you're the clever sort you can even create a cryptogram that's next to impossible to decipher seeing as it took 51 years to crack one of the zodiac's puzzles well you say criticize him all you want for his brutality but you can't underestimate the man's brain power his first cryptogram was the 408 which is called that because that's how many total symbols are in it it was published by the san francisco chronicle and two other newspapers that were each sent different parts of the puzzle and the public was asked to solve it a couple of teachers in california named donald jean and betty june hart and did just that and it only took them 20 hours strange since the so-called experts had failed where they succeeded there's actually a conspiracy theory that the two were the zodiac but that's a story for another day so when all this cryptogram contained 54 different cipher symbols in 25 letters that are in the english alphabet the couple worked out that they were looking at what's called a homophonic substitution cipher which basically means you replace one letter with another say a d for an m it gets tricky though when one letter can be replaced by five different letters the couple cracked it though and this is how the decoded message began i like killing people because it's so much fun it's more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience it's even better than getting your rocks off with a girl he then goes on about slaves in the afterlife and paradise so despite being very clever the zodiac may also be suffering from mental illnesses and he wasn't finished killing just over a month later he struck again this time he picked on two pacific union college students named brian hartnell and cecilia shepard they were enjoying a picnic at a bucolic spot next to lake berryessa in california's beautiful napa valley the pair might have received the shock of their lives when they saw a man that looked like a vision from hell walking toward their very secluded spot it was a man about five foot eleven average weight wearing what looked like an executioner's hood they couldn't see his eyes though due to the fact that he was wearing sunglasses over the mask's eye holes if that wasn't frightening enough he was also wearing what looked like a child's bib on that bib was his now famous crossed circle symbol the couple were absolutely petrified but didn't move since the maniac approaching them was clasping a handgun he told him not to worry and told them a story about being a convict on the run he subsequently told the young man to tie up his girlfriend with plastic clothesline that the supposed convict just happened to have handy the zodiac then tied up the man himself what happened next is usually what only happens in horror movies featuring college students that drive out to the woods or a lake even though they're warned not to do so by a peculiar looking gas station owner the zodiac started going crazy stabbing them both in the back he stabbed the man six times and the woman 10 times leaving them for dead the zodiac walked about 500 yards to where the couple's car was parked and there he drew his symbol on the door and wrote vallejo 12 2068 7469 september 2769 630 by knife that evening the zodiac got the napa police department on the phone and told them that he really was behind the double murder at the lake the cops later discovered he'd made that call from a napa car wash that was just around the corner from their department the cops got a lead from this though because they managed to get some prints from the phone not only that the kids he stabbed weren't dead they were discovered inches from death having lost a ton of blood the girl told the cops what she'd seen but not long after she fell into a coma and died in the hospital two days later the man survived though and told the cops everything he knew the police also had other clues such as tire tracks most likely from the killer's car and to size 10 and a half wing walker boot prints now cops knew they were looking for a true american psycho soon after the zodiac struck again this time murdering a taxi driver named paul stein with a bullet to the back of the head three days later the san francisco chronicle received a letter from the zodiac containing a piece of stein's shirt there was no doubt that it was the real deal the zodiac said in the letter that the cops could have caught him if they'd been doing their job correctly he also wrote school children make nice targets i think i should wipe out a school bus some morning just shoot the front tire and then pick off the kitties as they come bouncing out just over a week later someone claiming to be the zodiac called the oakland police department the person demanded that either one of the two big shot lawyers f lee bailey or melvin belly go to a popular local talk show hosted by a man named jim dunbar belly did just that and appealed for the killer to call in a man who said he was the zodiac did call he said i need help i'm sick i don't want to go to the gas chamber and he even said he'd meet with belly but in the end he didn't turn up as you'll soon find out there was likely more to that call than first meets the eye this finally brings us to that unbreakable puzzle not long after that no-show with the lawyer the chronicle received a new communication from the zodiac this time it was a cryptogram containing 340 characters which came to be known as cipher 340 and it proved to be too difficult for the best minds in the world to decipher at the time people tried for decades from the usa and across the world but what the zodiac killer had created was something special something so annoyingly difficult that after years of trying and failing the puzzle was forgotten by most code crackers maybe it was meaningless they thought an assumption that put their frustrated minds at ease but then in 2006 a global team of crack code breakers took a look at the impossible puzzle again they knew it meant something but finding the key it was no easy task it would end up taking them 14 years to finally decipher the code that's dedication the team included an american software developer named david aranczak a computer programmer from belgium named yarov nike and an australian mathematician named sam blake their hard work finally brought the words of the zodiac to the public ikea actually developed software to break the codes and he had created it specifically to crack the one made by the zodiac blake's role in figuring out the cipher was to manipulate the symbols and see how they could be transposed and iran check did the rest the team said at times they'd get somewhere with the puzzle and they'd find a word but then they discovered that what they discovered was a false positive what they called a phantom then one day a ranch hack announced this is a big one we have a solution for the 340 and it's real it hadn't been easy the team had looked at hundreds of thousands of different manipulations of the text then on a thursday morning at the beginning of december 2020 a variation of the text showed up in the program aranjak said at first sight it looked like gibberish but it also contained the words gas chamber and the even more zodiac-esque phrase hope you're trying to catch me that was a signature zodiac taught if those phrases were actually part of the correct solution to the puzzle what the team would have to do is apply a cipher that had been used for those words to the rest of the symbols in the cryptogram it was complicated they realized they had to look at the puzzle and read it in a diagonal fashion so they took the symbol in the top left-hand corner and wrote it down so if it was an h they'd write h then they'd move down one and over to the right two spaces then they'd write down that symbol which here's a plus sign then they went through the entire puzzle doing this until they'd written down every symbol what they ended up with was a completely different looking puzzle it still looked like nonsense of course but now they had something new that they could put into the code breaking software huh the team was rather disappointed after that not only did not much of anything come up but the terms gas chamber and hope you're trying to catch me weren't there either it was as if they'd gone backward but then a ranchek tried something else he added the words they suspected were correct gas chamber and hope you're trying to catch me to the software as known solutions and let the program run presto an english message popped up the words of the grandmaster secret code psycho the zodiac himself that wasn't me on the tv show was this the zodiac telling the cops that the guy that had called in to talk to the lawyer was an imposter ransack almost fell out of his chair after 51 years it was as if the zodiac had risen from the grave the team could now decrypt the first part of the puzzle but the same method of code breaking didn't work for the other two parts since the first part was almost definitely correct it didn't make sense that the other sections couldn't be solved in the same way but then they hypothesized that the reason it didn't work was because the zodiac and actually made a mistake when he designed the cipher if that was the case it was no wonder no one could crack it you can't open a broken lock with a good key the team took into consideration that he'd made some spelling mistakes they corrected the mistakes and then used a slightly different system of moving down and to the right diagonally reading the symbols and they discovered something amazing it worked the zodiac really had made a mistake in his code and here it is the fully decrypted words of the zodiac himself from a code that remained unbroken for over 50 years he wrote i hope you're having lots of fun in trying to catch me that wasn't me on the tv show which brings up a point about me i'm not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner because i now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradise so they're afraid of death i'm not afraid because i know that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradise death it was true the man who called and spoke to melvin belly really was an imposter the zodiac had always been somewhat narcissistic in his writing he'd always bragged about being one step ahead of the cops he never seemed scared or repentant like how the collar sounded the zodiac perhaps suffering from a mental illness actually believed his victims could be waiting on him hand and foot in the afterlife it appears he didn't believe the heaven held dichotomy for good guys and bad guys the team didn't waste any time in contacting the fbi to alert them that they'd cracked the puzzle the fbi subsequently issued a statement saying it was true and while it's exciting and a huge accomplishment to finally have cracked the code it didn't actually get us any closer to understanding the true identity of america's most confounding serial killer the message doesn't really help the investigation at all which the fbi says is still ongoing we continue to seek justice for the victims of these brutal crimes wrote the agency but that's not the end of the zodiac story when it comes to codes there are two more ciphers that were sent by the zodiac that haven't yet been solved they are both very short and some people believe one of them could even be his name being short doesn't make a cipher easier though far from it because it's short there are fewer clues for a key the 340 cipher team has tried to crack those remaining puzzles but suspects that because it's so short unless new information is discovered it's likely a hopeless task and so while the code is cracked the identity of the zodiac killer remains a mystery people will continue trying though and who knows maybe one day someone will finally solve the last the masked maniacs mysteries and will finally learn the truth of just who the zodiac killer is i like killing people because it's so much fun those were the words embedded in a coded message sent by the zodiac in july of 1969 the letter was sent to the newspaper editors at the san francisco examiner this would not be the last encoded message with gruesome thoughts and details hidden within the zodiac is the most mysterious and elusive serial killer in united states history you and i are about to gather clues look at crime scenes and analyze hidden messages to try and discover who the zodiac really was let's delve deeper into the psyche of one of the most terrifying killers of all time over the years more than 2500 suspects have been put forth as the zodiac killer they range from unabomber ted kaczynski to members of the charles manson family in the 1990s suspect number one was arthur lee allen allen was a vallejo california school teacher it's clear that the zodiac could be anyone from an already known killer to a schoolteacher our mission is to figure out where on the spectrum the real zodiac killer might lie there are two suspects who have not been completely ruled out thus far and a third that's been recently accused of being the zodiac as investigators will look into the evidence and try to come to our own conclusions the first suspect we'll analyze as lawrence kane the zodiac clearly had an understanding of coding he also had an affinity for naval gear such as combat boots and firearms kane served in the naval reserves where he would have learned coding and had access to the basic naval gear that the zodiac used in 1962 lawrence kane was in a car accident that resulted in a serious brain injury this injury may have altered his ability to control urges it could have led to a personality disorder through unbalanced chemicals and hormones in the brain we know that the zodiac struggled with internal conflict he reached out for help in several of his letters even stating that he could not control his urges to kill it's been claimed by some including a retired police detective that kane's name appears in one of the zodiac ciphers the zodiac did write that he had embedded his name in the ciphers he taunted the authorities saying that if his code was cracked they would know who he was could kane have put his name in one of the ciphers because he was the zodiac or was it a coincidence perhaps it was just a mistake by the retired detective when trying to break the code this evidence does not seem to hold up for our investigation another connection between kane and the zodiac is through the murder of darlene ferran let's take a closer look into this connection and the crime scene left behind on july 4th 1969 in vallejo california a 22 year old mother named darlene farron and her friend michael mcgowan were murdered by the zodiac they stopped at blue rock springs park to enjoy independence day when interviewed after the attack michael said that a vehicle pulled into the lot they were parked in around midnight the driver got out and fired a nine millimeter handgun at the car michael was shot in the jaw shoulder and leg but lived to tell the story darlene was hit several times and passed away on the ride to the hospital at 12 40 the police received a call from a gas station pay phone the voice on the other line took responsibility for the shooting the voice of the monster on the other line said i want to report a murder if you go one mile east on columbus parkway you'll find kids in a brown car they were shot with a nine millimeter looker i also killed those kids last year goodbye the bluntness of the call was the most unsettling part it was after this confession that the first of the zodiac letters were received by the newspapers in california the first set of letters were postmarked on july 31 1969 three different envelopes were sent to three different newspapers the writer claimed responsibility for two shootings and provided grotesque details about the victims weapons and number of shots fired the writer also included one third of a cipher in the letters and demanded publication the zodiac threatened to kill again if newspapers did not publish the cipher and included the words i like killing people because it's so much fun this was the first cipher the zodiac created and it was his longest the cipher was 408 characters long and it was laid out in a 24 by 17 grid when police investigated the death of darlene farron her sister identified kane as a man who would bother darlene at the restaurant where she worked darlene's sister only identified kane from a photograph but if there was a connection between one of the zodiac's victims and kane that would be something we should take into consideration lawrence kane was also identified as having the closest likeness to the zodiac by a san francisco police officer who unknowingly saw the zodiac moments after the murder of a cab driver named paul stein paul stein was murdered by the zodiac on october 11 1969 stein picked up a man thinking it would be a routine cab ride but he was dead wrong on his way to the destination the zodiac shot him in the head and cut off a piece of his shirt the zodiac walked away from the scene of the crime just as police arrived the cops were mistakenly looking for a black man as the suspect they ignored the white man resembling the correct description racial profiling was common at this time in u.s history this murder was where the most famous sketch of the zodiac killer came from the case was considered just a routine robbery until the san francisco chronicle received another letter from the zodiac the letter began i am the murderer of the taxi driver the envelope contained a blood-stained piece of paul stein's shirt there could be no denying the zodiac was responsible in the letter the zodiac mocked the police for failing to catch him and threatened to shoot children on a school bus on november 8th and 9th the zodiac sent two more letters the latter being the longest message he wrote and claiming that police had stopped him near the crime scene but let him go this letter also included a recipe to make a bomb and a detailed diagram of the explosive it was clear that the zodiac had the technical know-how to make the device and was not afraid to use it perhaps lawrence kane learned basic engineering skills in the navy to allow him to construct the bomb the zodiac described the following month a letter addressed to famous attorney melvin belly was received in it we get a look at the psyche of the zodiac its writer stated he was afraid that he would kill again the zodiac asked belly to help as if he were fighting a battle within himself one side of his personality wanted to stop the mayhem the other personality the one clearly in control only wanted to kill more the zodiac ended the note with please help me i cannot remain in control for much longer these personality shifts could be due to brain trauma similar to what lawrence kane succumbed to in this car crash for right now though the connections between kane and the zodiac are superficial and more evidence is needed it's time to turn our investigation to another man who was suspected of being the zodiac killer his name was ross sullivan several physical features of sullivan are reminiscent of the zodiac he sported a crew cut and glasses similar to the man in a police sketch from the stein murder he also wore army jackets and military-style boots like those that left footprints at the lake berryessa stabbing let's delve further into the zodiac murder of september 27 1969 to see if we can uncover more clues brian hartnell and cecilia shepard were relaxing on the sandy shore of lake berryessa just north of napa california a hooded man with a white crossed circle stitched over his chest snuck up and held them at gunpoint he bound their wrists and once they were secured plunged a hunting knife into hartnell's back six times the zodiac then stabbed shepard 10 times to complete the crime the zodiac walked over to brian hartnell's car and used a pen to draw a crossed circle on the door he then wrote the dates and locations of the previous attacks he called the napa police and reported this horrific double murder among the evidence that was uncovered at the scene were military boot prints however there's no direct link to sullivan in this case except his similar attire but ross sullivan is connected to a different zodiac murder in a much more concrete way on october 30th 1966 sherry josephine bates left a note for her father saying she'd gone to the library at city college in riverside the next morning her volkswagen beetle was found abandoned in the library parking lot her body lay in an alley nearby between two unoccupied houses she'd been stabbed numerous times and her throat was slashed it was a bloody scene police found a timex watch and prince of military boots at the crime scene nothing had been stolen and no sexual assault had been conducted the next month a local newspaper received a typed letter titled the confession the murderer wrote miss bates was stupid she went to the slaughter like a lamb i'm not sick i'm insane these words made the authorities shudder they were dealing with a man who had lost touch with reality at first it was unclear if this was a zodiac killing in april of that year the police received another letter stating that bates had to die there will be more the letter was signed with a symbol resembling the letter z could the z stand for zodiac detectives later determined that the zodiac was to blame for the murder due to similarities between bates's murder and his other killings then the smoking gun arrived in a letter to the san francisco chronicle the zodiac confirmed the authority's theory that he had murdered bates the letter stated i do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity but they're only finding the easy ones there are a hell of a lot more down there a scary notion for the police to grapple with but what does sullivan have to do with this murder well ross sullivan worked at the riverside city college library where bates had gone to study and near where the body was found co-workers said that ross sullivan had made them uncomfortable and disappeared for several days after the murder again this is not conclusive evidence but it does link sullivan to one of the earlier zodiac killings ross sullivan also had mental health problems although we're now more aware of the role mental health plays in someone's actions in the 1960s less research on the topic was available in 1967 sullivan was hospitalized several times for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia these mental health diseases may have caused the dark personality of the zodiac to manifest itself with or without the knowledge of ross sullivan it would seem that sullivan has a clearer connection to the zodiac murder than lawrence kane again there is no conclusive evidence at this time but sullivan's actions do seem suspicious a more recent claim for who the zodiac killer was comes from a man named gary stewart stewart believes that his father was the zodiac it isn't every day that a son implicates his father of being a notorious serial killer in 2014 gary stewart published his book the most dangerous animal of all and in his book he outlined evidence as to why he believes his father was the notorious zodiac stewart grew up without knowing his father his mother jude gilford was a 14 year old fugitive married to her 27 year old husband earl van bass jr after stewart was born his father decided he had no interest in parental responsibility he left his newborn son in a louisiana apartment complex stairwell if nothing else van best was a terrible father upon being arrested for multiple crimes and negligence van best ended up in a california state mental hospital jude gilford put stewart up for adoption at the time it wasn't until gary stewart was a grown man that he had connected his father to the zodiac he first started making the connections when he was watching late night tv on the screen was the police sketch of the zodiac stewart instantly recognized the close resemblance to a picture of his father and the zodiac drawing gary stewart claims that not only were his father and the zodiac similar in their looks but in their interests as well he states that his father was interested in ciphers he also mentions that van best had a deep connection to the mikado the zodiac quoted the arthur sullivan opera in his letters maybe van best and the zodiac shared the same love for this opera because they were the same person gary stewart also claims that his father was in the right place at the right time van best lived right around the corner from where the zodiac hailed paul stein's cab and murdered him in 1969 these connections are circumstantial at best and no definitive evidence connects van best to being the zodiac later in his research stewart begins to become more conspiracy oriented he claims that since his mother eventually married a san francisco detective named rotia gilford that the police are covering up van best's identity this seems far-fetched but stewart says it may have been to protect rhoda gilford from being associated with the zodiac's first wife stewart believes that there is one piece of evidence that proves without a doubt his father was the zodiac in one of the zodiac's most intricate ciphers the word best appears this could be a coincidence or the cipher being read wrong but to stuart it is the smoking gun that his father earl van best jr was the zodiac however experts and law enforcement officers are less convinced and the case of the zodiac killer still remains open and unsolved it would seem there is just not enough evidence for us to make a definitive identification at this time something that keeps detectives and us at the infographic show up at night is did the zodiac ever stop or did he just take a break and change his mo after his last letter on march 22 1971 there was radio silence from the zodiac for almost three years it wasn't until 1974 that he resurfaced again the san francisco chronicle received a letter on january 29 1974 from the zodiac in it was a nightmare come to life the zodiac alluded to more murders in his note which read me 37 sfpd 0. this has been interpreted as the zodiac taking responsibility for 37 deaths in the san francisco police department arresting him zero times since 1974 no one has heard from the zodiac but this does not mean he was not or is not still out there what happened where did the zodiac go why did he stop killing or at least stop claiming his murders according to the fbi's national center for the analysis of violent crime serial killers may stop murdering others if something significant changes in their life one theory as to why the zodiac stopped is that the police were coming too close to catching him this may have scared him into changing his ways however this does not seem likely as he constantly mocked the police for not catching him another possibility is that the attention he was receiving from his letters and ciphers were a substitute for killing or it could have been something as simple as growing older and less able to carry out his murderous desires some psychologists have hypothesized that the zodiac may have recovered from an identity disorder or multiple personality disorder as he recovered he could have lost the urge to kill or perhaps he was institutionalized and we just don't know about it yet the scariest theory of all is that he just kept killing and never took responsibility for it he even later said in a letter postmarked november 12 1969 i shall no longer announce to anyone when i commit my murders they shall look like routine robberies killings of anger a few fake accidents etc it's impossible to tell if he kept good on this promise unless we find out who the zodiac was if nothing else the zodiac is still the stuff nightmares are made of we know of at least five confirmed murders he committed but it is possible he had 37 or more victims some of his ciphers still have not been cracked and may hold clues to his identity the zodiac killer case is still an open and ongoing investigation as if yet there is no definitive answer to who the zodiac was or if he is still out there december 20th 1968 around 10 15 pm 17 year old david faraday and 16 year old betty lou jensen parked at a gravel turnout a well-known popular lover's lane on lake hermann road in the small northern california town of benicia sadly the teenage sweethearts never made it home after their date they were found shot to death shortly after 11 pm thus began the reign of terror by the zodiac killer from december 1968 through october 1969 a serial killer who came to be known as the zodiac killer from the cryptic letters he sent to the press plagued the california bay area despite his brazen crimes and his clues to the authorities the zodiac killer was never caught a number of suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators over the years but there has been no definitive proof as to who the zodiac killer was there are a lot of reasons why the zodiac killer was never found but first a quick rundown of the depraved axe that made him so notorious nearly seven months after the murders in benitia the zodiac killer struck again on july 4th 1969 another young man and woman michael mageau and darlene farron were shot in vallejo california around midnight as they sat in a car parked at a golf course the killer actually called the police from a pay phone at about 12 40 am and reported the double murder also mentioning that he had killed the kids last year in reference to the benicia slayings majo survived the attack but wasn't able to provide a description to the police on july 31 1969 the zodiac killer sent letters to three local newspapers the san francisco chronicle the san francisco examiner and the vallejo times herald each of these letters contained a confession of the two murders and one-third of a cipher when assembled and cracked the cipher discussed how much the zodiac killer liked killing on september 27 1969 came the third attack one evening two college students brian hartnell and cecelia shepard were relaxing by the shore of lake berryessa about 25 miles from napa california when they were approached by a man wearing a homemade executioner's mask he claimed to be an escaped prison convict who was trying to get to mexico he needed the students money and car he tied them up and then without warning pulled out a knife and stabbed them then he used a marker to vandalize brian's car memorializing his killing before making his escape again the killer called the police from a pay phone to alert them about the attack meanwhile good samaritans had found the victims and they were rushed to the hospital miraculously hartnell survived his stabbing a fourth attack happened on october 11 1969 in the presidio heights area of san francisco the zodiac killer shot a cab driver paul stein and then cut off and stole a part of the cabbie's bloody shirt from then on the killer sent taunting letters to the press and the police referring to himself as the zodiac and discussing the mystical and intellectual basis of his motivation for the killings he also provided unknown details of his crimes made threats and offered puzzles and coded clues to future murder plots twice he even included pieces of stein's bloody shirt with his letters as proof the fourth attack was the final one for the next five years the zodiac killer continued to send letters to the media and authorities until 1974 though he may have sent correspondence until 1978 no one can be sure if all the messages received really came from the killer over time the authorities have interviewed nearly 2 500 people regarding the crimes due to the killer's communication with newspapers which somewhat sensationally printed his letters the public was highly interested in the zodiac killer even today tips still pour in and people have confessed to being the zodiac killer and made accusations to authorities that various family members or colleagues were the zodiac killer internet groups pour over every detail of the crimes in an attempt to crack the killer's identity so far only one of the four pictograms sent by the killer has ever been decoded one of the three unsolved puzzles allegedly provides the name of the zodiac killer here are some reasons as to why the zodiac killer was never found number one the locations the murder took place in the zodiac killer murdered his victims during the course of about a year over a wide ranging area the first two murders took place seven months apart in benicia and vallejo california though the two murder scenes were less than five miles apart they were in different municipalities and were therefore investigated by different police departments as was the third attack near napa and the fourth attack in san francisco four separate jurisdictions with different processes separately worked the cases during a time when each police department was an entity into itself which leads us to the next reason why the zodiac killer wasn't caught number two mishandled police work a variety of police mistakes were made with the zodiac cases during the zodiac killer's final attack witnesses called the police to alert them of a cab driver being shot by a middle-aged white male on the first report over the police radio the operator described the shooter as a black male because of the mistaken description two officers ignored a white man who crossed their paths as they were arriving to the crime scene in one of his letters the zodiac killer sent a swatch of the cabbie's bloodstained shirt and taunted the police for their mistake in not apprehending him when they had the chance an ongoing mistake that all the jurisdictions were guilty of was lack of information sharing during the 1960s there was very little interagency cooperation different jurisdictions were possessive of their cases red tape and egos got in the way even when the police wanted to share case files it was harder to share back then which once again brings us to the next reason why the zodiac killer wasn't caught number three the time period during the zodiac killer spree there was no ease of sharing information via technology there were no fax machines no computers no cellular phones no afis automated fingerprint identification system also the police may have had too much information and trouble parsing it once the zodiac killer's correspondence was published the police were inundated with a wide variety of tips from the public beyond all the technology and software which helps police gather data and analyze cases modern forensics was still in its infancy crime scene investigation csi was minimal and the evidence collected wasn't well preserved since then pieces of evidence have been endlessly handled by the police the zodiac case was so popular and had developed such a mystique that evidence was sought out by curious authorities not directly working the case over the years evidence has been rifled through taken home by retiring cops who wanted to continue to work the case and even stolen as souvenirs of course dna testing wasn't yet possible at the time of the crimes since then authorities have attempted to perform dna tests on some items known to have been handled by the zodiac killer such as the stamps from the letters he sent unfortunately since the evidence was poorly collected and has since degraded investigators haven't yet been able to build a complete dna profile from collected materials however testing is continuing also hampering the investigations was the fact that serial killers were poorly understood during the late 1960s the fbi was just beginning to study the behavior of serial killers and to profile them most police departments simply were not experienced with these types of crimes and had no set processes for working serial murders with unconnected victims that seemingly had little or no motive number four it's been hard to identify the zodiac killer because he had a fairly low victim count in one of his letters to the media the zodiac killer claimed to have murdered 37 victims officials can only confirm seven victims four men and three women with two of the men surviving their attempted murders in dispute are another four murders that were possibly committed by the zodiac killer and one more survivor the low body count made it hard for police to establish patterns when it came to the killer by comparison other well-known serial killers such as ted bundy or the green river killer murdered upwards of 30 people during the reign of the zodiac killer the manson family began their own spree killing eight people the main reason why the zodiac killer has become so notorious is his cryptic threatening and taunting letters many of which were printed in the local newspapers considering the similarity of the crimes the police might have eventually linked the first two attacks together the murder of the couples in benicia and vallejo but the mo for the stabbings of the third attack and the fourth the shooting of the cabbie don't fit until the zodiac killer taunted the police about the crime sfpd was investigating the cabbies murder as a robbery gone wrong without the zodiac killer announcing his murders linking them and threatening future crimes the murders have just been sad blips in police records number five intertwined with the low body count making it hard to notice patterns and identify the zodiac killer is the killer's mo or modus operandi serial killers tend to use the same method to murder each time refining their techniques based on previous crimes also they tend to pick the same type of victims the zodiac killer both stabbed and shot his victims and preyed on couples and a single person in his letters the killer threatened to blow up various locations and even included instructions for making a bomb showing that he was well acquainted with how explosives worked usually the method of killing is very personal to the serial killer and while they alter it as needed they rarely switch it to an altogether different method of murder once again the police wouldn't have connected the murder of the cabbie with the zodiac killer if he hadn't made a taunting confession in one of his letters the zodiac killer seems to defy the typical classifications the fbi has created for killers in fact he would be categorized as a mixed killer he displays both traits of cereal and spree killers as well as both organized and disorganized offenders which brings us to the next reason why the zodiac killer was never identified number six the zodiac killer may have been more than one person there have been many different theories as to the identity of the zodiac killer over the years the unabomber ted kaczynski was even bandied about as a suspect for a while the police only publicly named a single suspect arthur leigh allen a vallejo california school teacher who was institutionalized in 1975 for child molestation allen died in 1992 and in 2002 was exonerated when a relative of his provided a dna sample to test against possible zodiac killer dna found on a stamp there is definitely a camp of investigators that believe the zodiac killer is multiple people they point to the unusual mixed serial killer traits the changing mo and the intricate pictograms as proof that more than a single person was involved number seven the zodiac killer has managed to evade capture because he was simply lucky the zodiac killer committed his murders publicly and yet hardly anyone saw anything when he shot the cabbie he actually briefly lingered at the scene and was seen by some local teens in the poor light of a dim fall evening they weren't able to get a good look at him likewise it was from pure luck that the police operator misidentified his description also while walking away from the scene of that shooting the zodiac killer just happened to turn in a direction away from the officers arriving at the scene if he had gone the other way he would have met them head on during the stabbing at lake berryessa the killer had a prolonged interaction with his victims first he tied them up then stabbed them and then finally rode on their car the length of time spent at the crime scene increased the possibility of a third party showing up but no one did it's not known whether the zodiac killer purposely spread his crimes across multiple jurisdictions but even he couldn't have foreseen how different agencies would have failed to close ranks and communicate poorly number eight the final reason why the zodiac killer was never caught was because he abruptly stopped killing a hallmark of serial killers is their compulsion to murder rarely do serial offenders voluntarily cease killing sprees usually serial killers stop because they're caught and institutionalized in a prison or an asylum it's possible the zodiac killer might have stopped because he died some think he moved away from the bay area and continued to kill in another location or he may have continued to kill in the bay area but for reasons unknown kept silent about his crimes in the early 1970s a few unsolved murders happened in santa rosa california which some point to the zodiac killer form others believe that the zodiac killer quit because they were caught and jailed just for a different crime some think that the zodiac killer completed his mission and that's why he stopped murdering his real objective wasn't murder but to make society pay attention to him he succeeded at that perhaps even beyond his wildest dreams some 40 years later the zodiac killer has become an american legend our jack the ripper countless internet groups are devoted to him the police ended up diverting a significant amount of resources arrayed against him to chase obscure leads in an attempt to solve his puzzles he inspired and spawned at least two other serial killers that we know of perhaps more he's inspired several movies fiction and documentaries books and even songs even now the case has been reopened the police convinced that in their files is a clue that just has to be found to crack the case wide open and reveal the identity of one of america's most infamous serial killers [Music] so you're out on a date with your best gal and decide to pull into a lonely lover's lane for a bit of late night snuggling the glow of the stars above sets the romantic mood and as you pull each other in close you hear the crunching of tires on gravel from behind your car annoyed at having your romantic moment interrupted you look into the rear view mirror and see a pair of headlights parked directly behind your car followed by the opening of a car door a heavyset man gets out and starts approaching your car flashlight in hand at first you think that maybe it's just a cop checking to make sure yours is not another abandoned vehicle but you realize that whoever this person is they're alone as they get near your car door you see the flash of a pistol at their side and with a sinking feeling you realize that you're about to become another victim of the most infamous american serial killer of all time hello and welcome to another episode of the infographic shows you versus today we're putting you the average joe up against the zodiac killer britain has jack the ripper australia has john wayne glover in the united states has zodiac given himself the moniker in letters written to the press during which he taunted the police to try and discover his identity zodiac prowled northern california between december 1968 in october 1969 officially he is credited with the attempted murders of four men and three women all between the ages of 16 and 29 though unofficially zodiac himself claimed as many as 37 total murders in his letters to local newspapers zodiac's typical mo was to ambush couples parked or picnicking somewhere remote especially in well-known lovers lanes where young couples would go for a bit of privacy his first attack was against a young 16 year old couple out on their first date where he parked beside the couple before approaching their vehicle shooting the mail as he exited the vehicle once in the head and the girl five times in the back as she tried to run away six months later he struck again much in the same style shooting both victims while they were still in their vehicle zodiac would go on to phone the police that night and let them know of the murder and though the call was traced zodiac was long gone by the time police got to the pay phone he used a few weeks after the second set of murders zodiac sent a series of letters to three local newspapers taking credit for the shootings and including a 408 symbol cryptogram in which he claimed was his hidden identity he demanded that the letters be printed on the front page or he would go on a murder spree that next weekend killing anyone alone that he met until he had reached a body count of a dozen victims the cryptogram was solved just days after being published only it contained no personal information and instead a rambling claim that killing people was more fun than killing wild game and that he wouldn't give his identity because he was killing people in order to collect slaves for the afterlife clearly zodiac was very disturbed or at least just messing with the police zodiac would go on to strike again a month later targeting another young couple who this time were out on a picnic together he attacked both with a knife though the male victim would go on to survive and give a detailed eyewitness account of zodiac zodiac also called the police again but once more the trace would be far too late two weeks later zodiac would enter a cab in san francisco and shoot the cab driver in the head only to be witnessed by a bunch of teenagers it's believed that the police very nearly caught zodiac this time around but responding officers had received an apb to be on the lookout for a black suspect and thus zodiac slipped away tantalizingly close to having been caught zodiac would go on to taunt the public and police both once more sending letters to the san francisco chronicle and even calling in to a live tv show neither the letters or the calls to the tv show were helpful in catching zodiac though and after a five month hiatus zodiac struck again this time he flagged a car being driven by a young mother who was seven months pregnant off the road in the car was her 10 month old daughter and after he'd flagged them down he pulled up behind them and told the young mother that her rear tire was wobbling and loose he offered to tighten up the lug nuts for but instead he secretly loosened them when she tried to drive away her wheel came completely off and zodiac offered to help her get to a service station climbing into his car zodiac drove the two around for 90 minutes before finally the young mother was able to flee from the car along with her daughter the two hidden afield until zodiac finally gave up once more despite detailed eyewitness testimony zodiac's identity eluded the police after that attack zodiac would go on to strike two more times though eventually he came to be blamed for almost every mysterious disappearance or murder of young victims in 1974 zodiac sent his final letter in which he praised the exorcist which had recently been released as the best satirical comedy i have ever seen and signed the letter with the score me37 sfpd zero zodiac's identity has never been discovered and now he's back from the past with his eyes set on scoring a new set of victims so how are you going to defeat zodiac unlike most of our challengers in this series zodiac is just an ordinary guy so there's no superpowers or supernatural abilities to worry about what is known about zodiac is that he's clearly proficient with firearms and not afraid to get in close and dirty with a knife so how are you going to defeat him zodiac is as most killers and ambush predator preferring to trick his prey into a false sense of security before murdering them lucky for you this is a match to the death so zodiac's typical strategy of pretending to be a friendly stranger until he's close enough to strike isn't going to work out this is a simple cage match mano amano man versus man with no tricks or high powered weaponry to worry about first if you're able a concealed firearm is an obvious solution to the zodiac problem although in the real world it would have been of little use to most of his victims that's because as mentioned zodiac often ambushed his victims hiding under the guise of social norms and for those of you who scoff and think your concealed piece would have saved you then we'd like to know how often you pull guns out on random strangers that approach you to ask for directions or offer help with car troubles that was why zodiac was as successful as he was he didn't come out of nowhere gun drawn and ready to kill instead he lulled victims into a false sense of security or at least confused them as he blinded them with a flashlight pretending to be a cop in the best case scenario you might get a chance to go for your own piece but zodiac already has us out and aimed getting the drop on you so we're going to skip the obvious and say no firearms allowed simply because this would be a really really short fight instead we'll focus on zodiac's attacks where he used a knife which can be defended against quite easily the first thing to do in a life and death struggle is to mentally prepare yourself for pain this is something military operatives and professional fighters both do they psych themselves up and accept that in a fight against an opponent who's wielding a weapon you're gonna have to take some pain the key is figuring out how to take that pain and where you obviously don't want zodiac stabbing you in the chest with a knife so instead you want to use elbows and other hard bony areas of your body to deflect a stab or slash even your skull is surprisingly effective against a knife given the half inch thick shell of bone around your brain and hey better to get slashed or stabbed into some thick skull bone rather than straight into a jugular in your neck we're not saying it's ideal but it's better than bleeding to death instantly the key is to get zodiac into close enough quarters that his knife becomes a liability rather than a tool knives require at least about a foot swing or thrust distance to be dangerous so that physical distance you want to deny zodiac if possible get in close under a swing or deflect a stab with your forearms and quickly close the distance you want to get as close as possible to chest to chest with a zodiac giving him little room to maneuver his knife then get a hand on the weapon as best you can and this is the part that's gonna suck but if he does manage to stab you with it force him to keep it there not only will this minimize blood loss but it'll prevent him from repeating the stab although be warned it's gonna hurt like the dickens remember that we told you to prepare for pain once you've got a bit of control over the blade though you want to start targeting zodiac's vulnerable areas in order to incapacitate him at close quarters a sharp upwards thrusting head bite into the nose can shatter the delicate structure of the nose and cause serious pain along with spreading the shock upwards into the eyes which will immediately begin to water forget any fantasies about pushing nose bones into the brain and killing someone that way the nose is cartilage that's a pure myth because zodiac is a man you want to follow up your nose smash by grabbing onto his adam's apple and squeezing as hard as you can this prompts the body to immediately go into a panicked choking response turning his attention from hurting you into preventing you from choking it with zodiac vulnerable smash your knee into his groin as hard as you can repeating once or twice for good measure now you've got zodiac bloodied and bruised so next run we know this is supposed to be a death match but because zodiac was a real killer and someone who could be copycatted in the real world we feel it's our responsibility to be realistic for once the key to any street fight or any fight for your life is not to defeat your opponent it's to get away any self-defense professional will tell you as such so you should follow our and their advice and simply run as fast as you can as far away as you can heading somewhere public if you live to fight another day you've already won and forget any hero fantasies about bringing down a serial killer the dna evidence all over your body will do that for you and serial killers are best brought down by police detectives following our show on the infamous serial killer known as jack the ripper we thought we'd look at another equally fascinating crime story that of the zodiac killer that has baffled both investigators and the public alike these two beasts were not the only prolific killers never to be caught but perhaps the most well-known other serial killers that got away with it include the atlanta ripper india's stoneman the axemen of new orleans and one person that had the terrifying name of the babysitter there are plenty more but maybe none who led police on such a confounding wild goose chase as the person we are going to discuss today so wrap your heads around this episode of the infographic show the zodiac serial killer how did he evade the police i like killing people because it's so much fun these were the chilling words written in a letter by someone we know as the zodiac killer but where did the killing begin well the zodiac a name he gave to himself in the letters he sent to police claimed to have killed 37 people in total but that may not be the case police are pretty sure he killed at least five people and injured two others but they also say there is a possibility he was responsible for another 20 to 28 murders the earliest confirmed murder didn't take place until 1968 but it's widely believed that the zodiac was working much earlier than that the first confirmed murders were those of a young couple betty lou jensen and david faraday killed on december 20th 1968 the couple pulled into a place named lover's lane probably about to reach first base on what was said to be their first date they didn't get too far because a man approached their vehicle and shot the man in the head the girl ran but was shot five times in the back a few months later the zodiac would claim these murders as his own and he would share details only the killer could have known you can go back much earlier though to 1963 and again this terrorizer of the night picked on young people high school lovers robert domingos and linda edwards used senior ditch day to go for a sunbathe at gaviota state park in california they never made it home the boy's dad found the bodies after becoming worried about his son being out for a long time when he went to the beach to look for them he found both his son and the girlfriend tied up the boy had been shot 11 times and the girl nine times this may or may not have been our man did the zodiac kill 18 year old sherry josephine bates brutally stabbed several times and her throat slashed so hard it almost decapitated her that was in 1966 and it was some years later that police thought this too could have been the work of the zodiac police are sure the zodiac almost killed 19 year old michael magoo and did kill his 22 year old girlfriend darlene ferran both were shot in 1969 while sitting in their car at blue rock springs park in vallejo the killer later called the police and described exactly what had happened he finished the chilling call saying i also killed those kids last year goodbye he was referring to jensen and faraday perhaps the grizzliest confirmed crime was that of two lovers 20 year old brian hartnell and 22 year old cecilia ann shepherd the pair were relaxing at a lake in napa county california when a man in a hooded costume with the zodiac emblem sewed on it told them he was a prison escapee he bound them with clothesline while they were on their backs he then stabbed the boy six times in the back turned to the screaming girl and stabbed her 10 times hartnell actually survived the killer then went up to the couple's car and scrawled in penned some information about the other murders hartnell unfortunately wasn't able to give police much information about the man that almost took his life the last confirmation and perhaps the closest the zodiac came to being caught was when he shot 28 year old paul stein in the back of his head from his taxi cab in san francisco he only just got away as police approached the scene but for some reason the cops were looking for a black suspect the cops thought slaughter was a robbery until shortly after the san francisco chronicle received a letter signed from the zodiac the letter stated i am the murderer of the taxi driver and just to be sure the police believed him also inside the letter was a piece of the bloodstained shirt that stein had been wearing on the night people did see a man near the cab that night though and now police thought they had some idea concerning what he looked like the zodiac said that was a bad version of him stating in a letter that the night of the murder he was wearing at the skies there were many more suspected murders but we can't go through them all let's talk about these letters instead most of which were written with terrible handwriting the first letter sent in 1966 was titled the confession he gets straight to the point starting with the lines she was young and beautiful but now she is battered and dead she is not the first and she will not be the last still it's thought this could have been any delusional person perhaps not the actual zodiac killer many more letters are suspected to have come from the zodiac but others have been confirmed on july 31st it's thought the zodiac sent a letter to the san francisco chronicle san francisco examiner and vallejo times each newspaper had been sent one part of something called a cipher this may also be called a cryptogram and is a coded way of sending a message in this case it was a block of letters and symbols the zodiac was some trickster while he later wrote a letter saying the cipher contained his name it was actually later discovered to have said i will not give you my name he sent a series of letters sometimes with ciphers the first cipher when worked out contained a message part of which read the best part of it is that when i die i will be reborn in paradise and all those that i have killed will become my slaves he even wrote to chronicle reporter paul avery who had been working on the case it was a halloween card that contained the text peek-a-boo you are doomed this was a threat a matter that became serious for avery despite what the zodiac movie tells us it was later said by avery's friends and colleagues that the case didn't drive him to drugs and drink and his eventual death that part is fiction said the people the last letter received was on january 29th 1974 in this letter the zodiac wrote that the film the exorcist was a great satirical comedy he left a symbol that has never been explained and like that he was gone so why was he never caught well firstly some people do think the police had their man they just didn't have the sufficient evidence to get a conviction the prime suspect has always been arthur lee allen and he's the only one that police gain search warrants for several police officers have said they thought it was him robert greysmith the cartoonist at the san francisco chronicle who was very close to the case at the time of the murders wrote a book called zodiac and in it he puts allen as the main culprit police were all over him for almost 20 years and in the end had a lot of leads bloody knives in his car matching footprints at the murder scene a knowledge of ciphers a positive id from a survivor being seen close to one killing other people saying he had bragged about killing and had talked about naming himself zodiac he even had a history of abusing children and an apparent hatred for women although police said they just could not find enough evidence to convict him so perhaps it's as simple as that cops had their man but he slipped through their hands his handwriting didn't match and neither did his dna on the envelopes of the zodiac letters alan was found dead in 1992 at his home was it richard gaekowski a good fit for the sketch mentally unstable and most of all linked to the ciphers that were sent still the man's friends have given him solid alibis for some of the murders was it earl van best jr an absolute dead ringer for the zodiac sketch and his name seems to appear in the ciphers some people have said it might have been the unabomber aka theodore j kozinski but given his intellect modus operandi and of course his twisted but profound reason for killing it just wouldn't make sense one connection we suppose is that they both wrote to newspapers to spread the news of their wicked game was it ricky marshall who owned a typewriter and liked the same movies as the zodiac that's hardly a strong case was it mentally ill lawrence kane who knew coding whose name may have been in the ciphers and who was actually a colleague of one of the victims what about ross sullivan another mentally ill man that was close to the location of the murders and a good fit for the sketch and guess what the zodiac once mentioned the opera the mikado written by none other than gilbert and sullivan the list goes on but these guys have all been discussed widely by people that have followed the case professionally and also all those online sleuths we have these days there are plenty of zodiologists out there and many have differing opinions why was he never caught many hypotheses have been put forward from bad police work different police departments working on the case and not communicating well to good old plain luck on the killer side to the fact the killer was likely not related in any way to any of the victims they usually are even if it means they regularly catch the same bus he chose his locations carefully for the most part which were often totally remote and far from each other we might also add that back in the 60s and 70s the forensic technology was primitive compared to now these days it's likely his murders would not have only been on cctv but they'd be going viral after being posted on something like live leak even the lead investigator on the zodiac case doesn't know why they didn't catch him in the end his name was dave tashi and we'll leave you with something he said why didn't we get this guy i ended up with a bleeding ulcer over this case it still haunts me it always will he's dead now rest in peace dave so why do you think the zodiac killer was never caught let us know in the comments also be sure to check out our other video called jack the ripper why he was never found thanks for watching and as always don't forget to like share and subscribe see you next time

Channel: The Infographics Show

Views: 466,205

Rating: 4.8859968 out of 5

Keywords: zodiac killer, the zodiac killer, zodiac serial killer, compilation, zodiac killer compilation, videos, zodiac killer's cypher cracked, cypher, infographics, true crime, criminal, criminals, serial killer, killer, the infographics show, history, mystery, crime, police, evidence, evidence of your goodnesss, versus, zodiac killer cipher, zodiac killer mystery, unsolved mystery, the zodiac

Id: oUzkxg1ggHc

Length: 61min 2sec (3662 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021