Police and investigators concur The Zodiac attacked seven people on four occasions in
California. Five victims died; two survived: • David Arthur Faraday (17) and Betty Lou Jensen (16) were shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road in
Benicia. • Michael Renault Mageau (19) and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin (22) were shot around midnight between July 4 and 5, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in
Vallejo. Mageau survived the attack; Ferrin died at
Kaiser Foundation Hospital. • Bryan Calvin Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Ann Shepard (22) were stabbed on September 27, 1969, at
Lake Berryessa in
Napa County. Hartnell survived; Shepard died from her injuries on September 29 at
Queen of the Valley Hospital. • Paul Lee Stine (29) was shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the
Presidio Heights neighborhood of
San Francisco. From 1969 to 1974, the Zodiac sent over twenty letters to newspapers, police,
Chronicle writer
Paul Avery, and attorney
Melvin Belli. In the first sentence of the third letter, the writer identified himself as, "This is The Zodiac speaking," and signed all his letters with a symbol resembling the
crosshairs of a
gunsight: . Four of the mailings included
cryptograms; only two have been solved. The letters were postmarked in San Francisco and
Pleasanton. The Zodiac's confirmed correspondence with date, recipient, and
incipit: •
July 31st 1969:
San Francisco Chronicle,
San Francisco Examiner, and
Vallejo Times. One-third of "Z408 cryptogram" enclosed with each letter. "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass..." •
August 4th 1969:
Examiner. "This is the Zodiac speaking." •
October 13th 1969:
Chronicle. Swatch of Paul Stine's shirt. "I am the murderer of the taxi driver..." •
November 8th 1969:
Chronicle. "Z340 cryptogram." The "Dripping Pen" card. "I though you would need a good laugh..." •
November 9th 1969:
Chronicle. Bomb diagram. "...I have killed 7 people". •
December 20th 1969:
Melvin Belli. Swatch of Stine's shirt. "...happy Christmass." •
April 20th 1970:
Chronicle. "Z13 cryptogram." "My name is..." •
April 28th 1970:
Chronicle. Greeting card. "I hope you enjoy yourselves..." •
June 26th 1970:
Chronicle. "Z32 cryptogram." "I have become very upset..." •
July 24th 1970:
Chronicle. "I am rather unhappy..." •
July 26th 1970:
Chronicle. "Being that you will not wear some nice ⌖ buttons..." •
October 5th 1970:
Chronicle. Thirteen-hole punch card. "You'll hate me..." •
October 27th 1970:
Paul Avery at
Chronicle. Halloween card. "From your secret pal..." •
March 13th 1971:
Los Angeles Times. "...I am crack proof." •
January 29th 1974:
Chronicle. The "Exorcist" letter.
Lake Herman Road murders The first murders retroactively attributed to the Zodiac were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen (16) and David Arthur Faraday (17) on December 20, 1968. Faraday was a student at
Vallejo High School, while Jensen was a student at Hogan High School. At 8:30 p.m. Faraday picked up Jensen, and the couple visited one of Jensen's friends. Sometime after 9 p.m., they drove to the outskirts of Vallejo and parked at a
lover's lane on Lake Herman Road, (coordinates: 38.09491126839322, −122.14408650431645), just inside the
Benicia city limits. Between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., a passing motorist noticed the couple parked on a gravel runoff near the gate to a water pumping station. The couple was spotted again at 11 p.m. This was another lover's lane, located just two miles from Lake Herman Road. Ferrin either parked or stalled 70 feet from the lot entrance. One bullet hit Mageau in the right arm, and the other hit Ferrin in the neck. Mageau tried to leave the car, but his door handle was missing or removed. The assailant returned to his car, opened the door, and did something Mageau could not see. As Mageau struggled to exit the vehicle, the stranger shot him and Ferrin two more times each. The killer hurried into his car and drove off. A golf course caretaker heard the shots around 12:10 a.m. In the Zodiac's later correspondence, he only ever refers to Ferrin as "girl".
First letters from the Zodiac to the
San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 1969. On August 1, 1969, the
Vallejo Times,
San Francisco Chronicle and
San Francisco Examiner all received letters written by someone taking credit for the attacks in Vallejo.
The three letters were nearly identical and began, "I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at
Lake Herman & the
girl last 4th of July." The three letters were rife with misspellings and presented the first definitive link between the two separate attacks in Vallejo. Enclosed in all three letters was a different
cryptogram. They combined to form a 408-symbol
cipher (
Z408). The writer claimed, "" He demanded the codes be printed on each newspaper's front page. If they were not, he threatened to "cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend." The
Chronicle published its third of the cryptogram inside the August 2 edition. In the accompanying article, Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz said, "We're not satisfied that the letter was written by the murderer". He requested the killer send more facts to prove his identity. On August 4, the
Examiner received
a letter with the salutation, "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." This letter marked the debut of the Zodiac persona. In this second letter to the media, the killer wrote at much greater length. He happily obliged Chief Stiltz's request for more information about both murders. He provided minute details about how he shot Michael Mageau. He described the golf course caretaker. Regarding the Lake Herman Road attack, he revealed that he had taped a flashlight to his gun in order to aim easily in the dark. The August 4 letter also referred investigators back to the Z408 cipher. The killer wrote, "when they do crack it they will have me".
Lake Berryessa murder At 4:00 p.m. on September 27, 1969,
Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Shepard (22) were picnicking at
Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. Sometime later, Shepard noticed a man watching them. When he emerged from behind a tree, he put on a black
executioner's hood with clip-on sunglasses. He wore a
bib with a white 3x3" symbol on it. He brandished a gun, which Hartnell believed was a
.45. The Zodiac said he escaped from jail after killing a guard and needed their car and money to travel to Mexico. Before tying up Shepard, the Zodiac made Shepard bind Hartnell with precut lengths of plastic clothesline. He tightened Hartnell's bonds because Shepard's knots were too loose. Hartnell still believed they were being robbed when the Zodiac drew a knife and stabbed them. Hartnell suffered six wounds and Shepard ten. The Zodiac hiked 500 yards to Knoxville Road, leaving several footprints for investigators to study. The killer drew the symbol on Hartnell's car door with a black felt-tip pen and wrote beneath it:After hearing the victims' screams, a fisherman and his son sought help. Hartnell untied Shepard's ropes with his teeth, and she freed him. Earlier that day, a suspicious man had been seen around Lake Berryessa by several people. A dentist and his son saw a heavyset man looking at them from a distance before he hurried off. Around 2:50 p.m., three women noticed a strange man as they stopped on their way to Lake Berryessa. After they had arrived to
sunbathe, they noticed the man again. Napa County detective Ken Narlow was assigned to the case from the outset and worked on solving the crime until his retirement in 1987. The Zodiac drove 27 miles from the crime scene to a car wash in downtown
Napa. He used a payphone to call the
Napa County Sheriff's Department at 7:40 p.m. He told the
dispatcher he wished to "report a murder – no, a double murder" and confessed to the crime.
Presidio Heights murder The last confirmed Zodiac murder took place two weeks after the Lake Berryessa attacks. Around 9:40 p.m. on October 11 in
downtown San Francisco, the Zodiac hailed a cab which was driven by a doctoral student named Paul Stine. The killer gave a destination in
Presidio Heights. When the taxi arrived at Washington and Maple streets, the killer asked to be driven another block. At Washington and Cherry around 9:55 p.m., the Zodiac shot Stine in the head with a handgun and took his wallet and car keys. The teenagers watched as the Zodiac wiped down the vehicle and rifled through Stine's clothes. He left behind two partial
fingerprints from his right hand. While the Zodiac was tending to the cab, the kids called the
San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). They described the criminal as a "husky" white man in a "dark or black jacket". The
dispatcher mistakenly alerted SFPD that the suspect was
Black. In 1976, he told the
Associated Press that Zodiac's letters were an "ego game". He believed the killer lived in the
San Francisco Bay Area, "He's a weekend killer. Why can't he get away Monday through Thursday? Does his job keep him close to home? I would speculate he maybe has a menial job, is well thought of and blends into the crowd...I think he's quite intelligent and better educated than someone who misspells words as frequently as he does in his letters." After working on the Zodiac case for seven years, Toschi started writing anonymous letters praising his own investigative work to
Chronicle columnist
Armistead Maupin. Two years later in 1978, Toschi was removed from the case and demoted to
pawn shop detail. He expressed regret for the hoax. That same year, Maupin also received a purported Zodiac letter. SFPD investigated whether Toschi wrote it as well and concluded he did not.
A.M. San Francisco interview On October 22, 1969, mental patient Eric Weill duped attorney
Melvin Belli into a conversation on
KGO-TV's
A.M. San Francisco. Investigators concluded Weill was not the Zodiac. He called the
Oakland Police Department and demanded to speak to Belli or
F. Lee Bailey on television. During the show, while using the name "Sam", Weill told Belli he would not reveal his identity for fear of being executed. He arranged a rendezvous with Belli on
Mission Street in
Daly City and did not show. Zodiac ciphers were
crowdsourced through a variety of websites, which led to gradual breakthroughs. Z340 was deciphered by an international team of private citizens on December 5, 2020. The cryptology group included American
software engineer David Oranchak, Australian
mathematician Sam Blake and Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke. In the decrypted message, the Zodiac denied being the "Sam" who spoke on
A.M. San Francisco and explained he was not afraid of the
gas chamber "because it will send me to paradice all the sooner." The team submitted their findings to the FBI's Cryptographic and Racketeering Records Unit, which verified the decryption and concluded the decoded message gave no further clues to the Zodiac's identity. Subsequent analysis confirmed the Z340 decryption using
unicity distance as a measure. On November 9, the Zodiac mailed
a seven-page letter to the
Chronicle. In his
postscript, he claimed he was stopped and questioned by two policemen three minutes after he shot Stine. He threatened to blow up a school bus and included a diagram of the bomb. The Zodiac boasted police would never catch him because "I have been too clever for them". One year after the Lake Herman Road murders on December 20, the Zodiac mailed
a letter to Melvin Belli. He enclosed another swatch of Paul Stine's shirt. He pleaded, "Please help me I am drownding...I can not remain in control for much longer." The Z13 cipher: The cryptologist Craig P. Bauer proposed the solution "
Alfred E. Neuman", the mascot of humor magazine
Mad. Ryan Garlick, a
University of North Texas computer science and engineering professor, used the key to the Z340 to get the solution "Dr. Eat a Torpedo". Garlick believes that this is an insult directed at D. C. B. Marsh, then president of the
American Cryptogram Association, who had publicly challenged Zodiac to reveal his full name in a cipher.{{Multiple images In the same letter, the Zodiac denied responsibility for the fatal bombing of an SFPD police station in
Golden Gate Park. He added, "there is more glory to killing a cop than a cid because a cop can shoot back."
June 1970 letter and map with its map of the Bay Area, June 26, 1970In a
letter to the Chronicle postmarked June 26, 1970, the killer was upset no one was wearing Zodiac buttons. He claimed, "...I punished them in another way. I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38." This may have been a reference to the murder of SFPD Sergeant Richard Radetich. He was shot through the window of his squad car by an unidentified gunman during a routine traffic stop. Radetich's murder is unsolved, but the SFPD denies that Zodiac is a suspect in the case. In 1981,
Gareth Penn deduced that when the map was divided as per the Zodiac's hint, three of his attacks aligned along one
radian. On one arm of the radian lay the
Blue Rock Springs and
Lake Herman Road murders. The other arm of the radian centered on Mount Diablo extended to the site of
Paul Stine's murder.
July 1970 letters In a
letter postmarked July 24, 1970 to the
Chronicle, the Zodiac again complained about no one wearing Zodiac-themed buttons. He claimed to have "a little list" of victims which included the woman and her baby he drove around for several hours. The details match
Kathleen Johns' description of her abduction on March 22, four months earlier. Two days later on July 26, the Zodiac mailed
another letter to the
Chronicle. He again parodied "As Some Day It May Happen (I Have a Little List)" from
The Mikado, adding his own lyrics about his potential victims. The letter was signed with a large Zodiac symbol and a new score: " = 13, SFPD = 0". The letter's postscript explained the Mount Diablo code from his previous letter.
October 1970 cards On October 7, 1970, the
Chronicle received a
three-by-five-inch card (nicknamed the "13
Hole Punch Card") signed by Zodiac with the symbol and a small cross reportedly drawn in blood. Thirteen holes were punched across the card, and its message was formed by pasting type from the
Chronicle. Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi agreed it was "highly probable" that Zodiac sent the card. On October 27, 1970, Paul Avery received a
Halloween card signed by "Z" alongside the symbol. The implication of a fourteenth Zodiac victim was speculated based on the phrase "4-teen" found in the card. His colleagues wore "I Am Not Avery" buttons. Shortly after the "Halloween Card", Avery also received an anonymous letter about the parallels between the 1966 murder of
Cheri Jo Bates and the Zodiac. Psychiatrist David Van Nuys theorized Zodiac stopped killing because he had
multiple personality disorder. It may have lessened over time as it often can, which would also explain the reduced intensity of Zodiac's letters. ==Letters of suspicious authorship==