Serial Killer #5: The Zodiac Killer

BREAKING NEWS!! The Zodiac killer has been found (maybe)! Yes, yes, I know I said I wanted to do lesser-known serial killers, BUT this was too important of a historical event for me to pass up writing about.

In case you didn’t know, the Zodiac Killer was just identified on October 6! His name is Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. This is possible the “real deal” because Gary’s full name was needed to decipher the anagrams sent as a taunt to the police.

So let’s talk about the murders; according to the letter sent by the Zodiac Killer to the police, he killed 37 people. Only eight cases have been confirmed. The fist killing would be of David Faraday, 17, who was shot once in the head at point-blank range dying within minutes. Victim two was Betty Lou Jensen, 16, who was shot five times in the back and killed instantly. According to police reports, they were approached in Faraday’s station wagon, which was out of the way on a gravel path. They were shot at in the car, which forced them to exit the vehicle. As Faraday got out, he was killed, and as Jensen fled, she was shot.

Our next two victims were Darlene Ferrin, 22, shot five times, and Mike Mageau, 19, shot four times. Mageau survived this attack and was the first person to describe the killer. Ferrin was married, so her husband was the initial suspect, but he was released after finding his alibi accurate. According to Mageau, the killer showed up in a car, so the two got their I.D. ready to show, thinking it was a cop. The man stepped out of the car and started shooting without warning. After five shots, the man walked back to his vehicle, but Mageau screamed because of how much pain he was in, so the man returned and fired two more shots. This is where he got a good look at the killer. He said he was 5′ 9″ and in his late 20’s to 30s, stocky build, round face, and had brown hair. About 45 minutes later, a call to the Vallejo Police department from a man who claimed responsibility for the murders and identified information about the previous kill wasn’t released to the press.

The case went cold for a couple of weeks. Then, on July 31, 1969, letters were sent to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner, and San Fransisco Chronicle from someone claiming to be the killer of these four victims and shared details that were not shared with the public, so they were details only the killer would have known.  Each letter contained 1/3 of a cipher that supposedly contained the killer’s identity if they were solved.

Our next two victims were Cecelia Shepard, 22, stabbed ten times, and Bryan Hartnell, 20, stabbed six times. Again you can see the overkill on women, but the men are just hurt enough to injure or kill them severely. This time, the couple was in a remote location by a lake where Shepard noticed a man coming at them in an unusual costume holding a gun. He looked to be 6′ and a heavy guy. He claimed to be escaping prison and in need of money and a car to go to Mexico; Hartnell offered his keys and wallet, both of which were not taken. After a couple of minutes of conversation, the man tied them up and started stabbing them. Hartnell was attacked first and then, Shepard. Neither died right away, but because an ambulance took so long to arrive on the scene, Shepard died 48 hours later, and Harnell is now an attorney. An hour after the attack, the Napa Police Department called a man claiming responsibility for the stabbings. The call was traced to a phone booth in downtown Napa and fingerprints were found.

Meanwhile, at the crime scene, police found a message on the victim’s car door that had the dates of the other victim attacks with a circle-cross symbol. Tire tracks were found, and shoe prints were found.  Later, Ted Bundy was a suspect of the case, but the fingerprints found cleared his name.

The next victim was not the usual male-female combination in a secluded area but rather a cab driver. His name was Paul Stine, 29, shot in the head once at point-blank range. This time witnesses described him as a 25-30-year-old 5’8  stocky build, reddish-brown hair, heavy-rimmed glasses, and dark clothing. But a dispatcher “mistakenly” described him as black instead of white, so two people matching that description were caught instead of the white man they saw walking away that would have fit the original report. 

They later realized the mistake and tried to go looking for the man, but they found no one. This case was thought to be a routine cabbie-killing, but the San Fransisco Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac containing a portion of Stines shirt, and it took credit for the killing. He even said he talked to a patrolman that night and led them in the wrong direction. The three witnesses to the crime who saw his face worked with the police to sketch him. It took the policeman who contacted Zodiac over a month to come forward and tell people.

These subsequent two cases are not confirmed victims of the Zodiac Killer, but the number of similarities makes it hard to believe it isn’t. Ray Davis, 27, was shot twice from behind in his cab with the same gun and ammo as the previous Zodiac killings. His body was found in a neighborhood he never drove in; it was upscale. Also, the cops could never find a motive to kill, just like all the other Zodiac victims. This on its own may not convince you, but here are some more facts that will convince you; the killer called the police in advance to warn them that Davis would be killed, then after the killing, another call was received from the killer threatening to target a random bus driver. This time, the bus was guarded, and the bus driver was not killed.

Our second possible victim is Cheri Jo Bates, 18, who was beaten and stabbed multiple times, and her throat was cut. Bates was visiting the library at her college, and police believed that her Volkswagen Beetle was disabled by her soon-to-be killer. Her car was about 100 yards away from the alley where she was killed. A Timex watch found was set at 12:24, so it is thought that 12:24 is the approximate time she was killed. Now how is this a possible Zodiac victim? A note was sent to the police taunting them, and another letter was sent to the newspaper just like the Zodiac Killer did. Another connection was a desk found in the library with a morbid poem scratched on the surface. To add to that,  a letter was sent to the victim’s father, and all of these letters have been connected to the Zodiac Killer.

There were many suspects throughout the years but here are the main four.

Richard Gaikowski was the first suspect. He served in the Army in the 1950s and learned how to heal a wound with the shirt as the Zodiac Killer did with the first killed cab driver. Also, Robert was working for the newspaper in 1963 and lived about five miles away from the first kill. There were many coincidences between the Zodiac Killer and Gaikowski. Fingerprints were not ever compared because Gaikowski did not consent, and until he was a suspect, no one could order them. He worked long nights on Wednesdays and never once was a Zodiac letter sent in on a Wednesday, but there was one on every other day of the week. He attended Stine’s funeral, and there was a cipher sent in that used the shortened version of Gaikowskis name “GIKE,” strange. Gaikowski was admitted to Mount Zion Hospital in San Fransisco, and similarly, the Zodiac Killer did not end in a letter for the three years he was admitted. The person that called into the police stations after the kills sounded just like Gaikowski did. He died in 2004 and was never convicted.

The next suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen. He first became a suspect in Bates’s murder. He was in the area at the time she was murdered and admitted it, but later, he denied being in the place at all. He took off an extra day the weekend she got killed; the thought is he either gathered information from the natural killer or needed his facial wounds to heal. He also had a typewriter with the same font as the notes.  Notes sent in anonymously about Bates had the Zodiac trademark and them another strange symbol that investigators say either look like “Z” or “32.” If it were the 32, it would relate to Allen because he was 32 years old and lived at 32 Fresno St. According to Allen’s friend, Don Cheney, Allen would say that he would like to: kill couples at random, taunt the police with letters, use the symbol of a circle and cross-like his watch has, call himself “Zodiac,” wear makeup to change his appearance, use a flashlight as night to see his victims, fool women into thinking there is something wrong with their cars to take them captive. Don told the police about this, and they got a warrant to see Allen’s trailer instead of his home and found no incriminating evidence. According to another friend, he talked about how hunting humans would be more fun than animals because “they actually have intellingance” later, the police received a note from Zodiac saying how killing humans is more fun than the wild game because they are the most dangerous animal. Allen got fired from his elementary school teaching job for molesting a kid, leading him into a downward spiral of drinking and depression. He lived with his parents, who lived within ten minutes of two of the crime scenes. A car used in one of the murders was the same car that a friend of Allen would occasionally lend to Allen. According to the victim Hartnell, his voice and appearance were the same as the killers. Allen died in 1992 from natural causes.

Our next suspect was Richard Reed Marshall, born March 13, 1926. He was born under the name Joe Don Dickey and would go back and forth between the two names. In the mid-1960s, Marshell moved to the San Fransisco area after being in the Navy. Marshell worked at different movie theaters and radio stations. On his 45th birthday, the Zodiac Killer wrote into L.A. Times. He became a suspect after saying suspicious comments on his ham radio. In the early 2000s, Marshell emailed the person who wrote the website zodiackiller.com (where I am getting this information) and got very angry that he described his 1974 housing situation as a warehouse when it was an industrial property. He threatened to sue the author, who seemed a little extreme. In 2008 the police said that he was not the Zodiac killer but didn’t specify how they knew that. He died in 2008.

Our last suspect (besides the newest confirmed suspect) is Lawrence Klein, born April 29, 1924, in New York. He had a long criminal rap sheet. He is suspected of following Darlene in the months before her murder, and possible victim Kathleen Johns identified Kane as her abductor. During the peak of the killings, Kane was 5’9″, and 160lbs, so he fits people’s descriptions. He was in a car accident in 1962, and according to a psychologist, he lost all ability to control self-gratification. He was arrested four months before the Zodiacs first killing. He died in 2010.

So how is Gary the true killer, you might ask? Well, nothing’s confirmed from what I can tell, BUT he has the same scars in multiple sketches. And honestly, he looks the most like the sketches. The case breakers are saying he it’s a solid suspect, but nothing is confirmed. It’s hard to confirm a case like this with old, old evidence and mostly dead suspects and victims. A babysitter for the Postes said Gary would hit his wife, Mary, if she made dinner the wrong” way. The first words Mary said to the babysitter were “Gary is a very bad man. And I am sorry I did not tell the cops about what he has done.” She also said that Gary taught her how to shoot guns and hide out in the woods. His background in the military was just like the others; he was an air force veteran. After the air force, he worked as a house painter. He had a relative that accused him of trying to kill them with a hammer. He had a darkroom that had some of the serial killers coded notes. I said before that Postes’s name was needed to solve some of the ciphers. Poste went to prison for pushing his wife down the stairs in 2016 and died in 2018.

This evidence is circumstantial, but all of these suspects could be the actual killer, but it is unlikely we will ever know the absolute truth of what happened in San Francisco in the late 60s to early 70s. Either way, it is fun to speculate and try and solve the mystery for ourselves the best we can.

Sorry for the long post! Next week I will get back to my everyday serial” killer talk!

Ignore my Works Cited.

“Live Updates as Zodiac Killer Mystery ‘Solved’ with Gary Poste Named as Suspect.” The U.S. Sun, The U.S. Sun, October 8 2021, https://www.the-sun.com/news/3808404/zodiac-killer-gary-poste-francis-solved-dna-code-suspects/.

Brandon May Follow. “Periaqueductal “ray Matter: A Potential March 26ker of Chronic Migraine.” Clinical Pain AdvisoMarch 26ch 26. 2019, https://www.clinicalpainadvisor.com/home/topics/migraine-headache/periaqueductal-g”ay-matter-a-potential-biomarke”-of-chronic-migraine/.

“Homepage – Zodiac Killer .CFebruary 9ODIAC KILLER .COM – Crimes, Letters, Codes, DNA, 9 Feb. 2021, https://zodiackiller.com/.

Mokhtar, Miriam. “NeuroU.S.omy, Periaqueductal GrayU.S.tatJuly 31[Internet]., U.S. National Library of MedicJuly 31ly 31 2021, https: “/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554391/.

Peake, Amber. “Who Was Gary “Francis PostOctober 7 and Death of Zodiac Killer Suspect.” The FoOctober 7ctober 7 2021, https://www.thefocus.ne” s/culture/gary-francis-post’-age/.

Sandercock, Henry. “The Zodiac Killer Has Been ‘Identified’ – but Is the Case Solved?” NationalWorld, NationalWorld, 7 Oct. 2021, https://www.nationalworld.com/news/people/who-is-the-zodiac-killer-how-gary-francis-poste-was-caught-as-cold-case-investigators-reveal-identity-3410854.