- Joseph aka Giuseppe Bevilacqua, former manager of the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, was named as a suspect in both the Zodiac and Monster of Florence murder cases by Italian journalist Francesco Amicone in 2018. According to Amicone, Bevilacqua confessed to being the killer in both incidents on September 11, 2017. The investigations into Bevilacqua emanating from Amicone’s inquiry were closed in 2021 at the request of the Attorney in charge of the Monster investigation, Pm Luca Turco. “This journalistic inquiry is marked by ideas, assumptions, stated intuitions, and it does not contain any factual element likely to rise to the dignity of a clue,” Turco said in defending his request. Pm Turco also filed a lawsuit against Amicone for defamation of character against Bevilacqua.
- Richard Gaikowski, a newspaper editor, was the subject of a 2009 episode of the History Channel television series MysteryQuest. Gaikowski worked for Good Times, a San Francisco counterculture publication, at the time of the murders. His look matched the composite sketch, and a tape of Gaikowski’s voice was identified as the Zodiac’s by Nancy Slover, a Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac immediately after the Blue Rock Springs Attack.
- In his book The Black Dahlia Avenger, retired police investigator Steve Hodel claims that his father, George Hodel, was the Black Dahlia perpetrator, who murdered Elizabeth Short. The book prompted his father’s Los Angeles district attorney’s office to produce previously concealed files and wire recordings, revealing that the senior Hodel was certainly a main suspect in Short’s murder. In a letter published in the amended edition, District Attorney Steve Kaye stated that if George Hodel were still alive, he would be prosecuted for the crimes. In a follow-up book, Hodel suggested that his father was also the Zodiac Killer, based on a police sketch, the Zodiac letters’ closeness to the Black Dahlia Avenger letters’ style, and a questioned document study.
- Kathleen Johns, who claimed to have been kidnapped by the Zodiac Killer, identified Lawrence Kaye, afterwards Lawrence Kane, in a photo lineup. Don Fouke, a patrol officer who may have seen the Zodiac Killer after the death of Paul Stine, said Kane looked a lot like the man he and Eric Zelms saw. Kane worked at the same Nevada motel as Donna Lass, a suspected Zodiac victim. After sustaining brain injuries in a 1962 accident, Kane was diagnosed with impulse control disorder. He was arrested for prowling and voyeurism. In 2021, Fayal Ziraoui, a French-Moroccan business expert, claimed to have cracked the Z13 cipher, claiming that the solution reads “My name is Kayr,” a possible misspelling for Kaye. Others questioned Ziraoui’s ability to crack the code.
- Richard Marshall was accused of being the Zodiac Killer by police informants who claimed he had informally hinted at being a killer. Marshall lived in Riverside, California, in 1966 and San Francisco, California, in 1969, close to the Bates and Stine killings. He was a silent film fan and projectionist who screened Segundo de Chomn’s The Red Phantom (1907), a picture whose title was allegedly borrowed by the author of a 1974 Zodiac letter. “Marshall makes good reading but not a very good suspect in my judgment,” Detective Ken Narlow said.
- Louis Joseph Myers confessed to a friend in 2001 that he was the Zodiac Killer after learning that he was dying of liver cirrhosis, according to a story in February 2014.
- Upon his death, he demanded that his friend, Randy Kenney, report to the police. Kenney apparently had trouble getting cops to participate and take the allegations seriously after Myers died in 2002. Myers went to the same high school as victims David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen, and apparently worked in the same restaurant as victim Darlene Ferrin, therefore there are multiple possible links between him and the Zodiac case. Myers was stationed overseas with the military from 1971 to 1973, at which time no Zodiac letters were received. According to Kenney, Myers admitted that he targeted couples because he had a horrible split with a partner. While cops involved in the investigation are suspicious, they believe Kenney’s allegation is plausible enough to examine if he can offer reliable proof.
- Robert Ivan Nichols, also known as Joseph Newton Chandler III, was an identity thief who killed himself in Eastlake, Ohio, in July 2002. Investigators were unable to identify his family after his death, and it was determined that he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old kid murdered in a vehicle accident in Texas in 1945. The efforts to which Nichols attempted to conceal his identity fueled speculation that he was a dangerous criminal on the run. On June 21, 2018, the US Marshals Service announced his identification at a press conference in Cleveland. Some Internet sleuths speculated that he was the Zodiac Killer because he looked like the Zodiac in police sketches and had resided in California, where the Zodiac operated.
- Ross Because of the suspected link between the Zodiac Killer and the death of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, Sullivan became a figure of suspicion. Coworkers suspected Sullivan, a library assistant at Riverside City College, after he went absent for many days after the murder. Sullivan wore military-style boots with tracks similar to those found at the Lake Berryessa crime site and matched sketches of the Zodiac. Sullivan was admitted to the hospital several times due to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
- Dennis Kaufman claimed his stepfather Jack Tarrance was the Zodiac back in 2007. Kaufman handed up many artifacts to the FBI, including a hood identical to the Zodiac’s. According to news reports, the FBI’s DNA analysis of the objects in 2010 was judged inconclusive.
- Former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty claims the Zodiac Killer was a 91-year-old man named George Russell Tucker from Solano County, California. Lafferty located Tucker and presented an alleged cover-up for why he was not pursued using a group of retired law enforcement personnel known as the Mandamus Seven. Tucker died in February 2012 and was not identified because authorities did not believe he was a suspect.
- Gary Stewart claimed in his book The Most Dangerous Animal of All, published in 2014, that his quest for his biological father, Earl Van Best Jr., led him to the conclusion that Van Best was the Zodiac Killer. The novel was converted into a documentary series for FX Network in 2020.
In This Article...
When did the Zodiac killer come into being?
The New York Zodiac, Heriberto “Eddie” Seda (born July 31, 1967), is an American serial killer who terrorized New York City from 1990 to 1993. Seda killed three people and injured six others before being apprehended on June 18, 1996. (four critically). Seda is said to have admired the Zodiac Killer of San Francisco for eluding capture. Seda, a Brooklyn native, was characterized by police as a loner fascinated with astrology and death. On June 21, 1996, Seda was prosecuted in the case, found guilty in 1998, and sentenced to 232 years in prison.
What is the name of the Zodiac killer?
According to the Case Breakers, a group of more than 40 former police investigators, journalists, and military intelligence personnel, Gary Francis Poste is the Zodiac Killer. The investigation was based on forensic evidence, images discovered in Poste’s darkroom, and part of the serial killer’s coded notes, according to the investigators.
What was the origin of the Zodiac killer’s moniker?
The press began to refer to him as the ‘Zodiac Killer,’ but it is unclear why the killer chose that moniker.
In addition, he would sign his letters with a circle and a cross over it, which resembled a target or a coordinate symbol.
The signature symbols, according to authorities, were designed to symbolize coordinates that could indicate future killing locations.
Was it true that there were two Zodiac killers?
The Zodiac Killer was the moniker of an unidentified serial killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s. The case has been dubbed “America’s most famous unsolved murder case,” having become a part of popular culture and prompting amateur investigators to try to solve it.
Between December 1968 and October 1969, the Zodiac murdered five people in the San Francisco Bay Area, in rural, urban, and suburban settings. His known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper, where he targeted young couples and a lone male cab driver. Two of his intended victims made it out alive. The Zodiac claimed responsibility for the murders of 37 people, and he’s been linked to a number of additional cold cases, some in Southern California and others beyond the state.
The Zodiac came up with the term in a series of taunting letters and cards he sent to local media, threatening murder sprees and bombs if they didn’t print them. Cryptograms, or ciphers, were included in some of the letters, in which the killer claimed to be gathering his victims as slaves for the hereafter. Two of his four ciphers have yet to be cracked, and one took 51 years to crack. While various speculations have been proposed as to the identity of the killer, Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992, was the only suspect ever publicly recognized by authorities.
Despite the fact that the Zodiac stopped communicating in writing around 1974, the peculiar character of the case piqued international interest, which has persisted throughout the years. The case was deemed “inactive” by the San Francisco Police Department in April 2004, although it was reopened before March 2007. The investigation is still ongoing in Vallejo, as well as Napa and Solano counties. Since 1969, the California Department of Justice has had an open case file on the Zodiac murders.
When did Bundy come into being?
Ted Bundy, full name Theodore Robert Bundy, was an American serial killer and rapist who lived from November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont, until January 24, 1989, in Starke, Florida. He was one of the most renowned criminals of the late twentieth century.
Is it true that Jack the Ripper was ever apprehended?
According to forensic specialists, they have finally identified Jack the Ripper, the renowned serial killer who haunted London’s streets more than a century ago. Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber who was a prime police suspect at the time, has been identified by genetic tests disclosed this week. However, detractors argue that the evidence is insufficient to consider the matter closed.
The findings came from a forensic investigation of a stained silk shawl discovered close to the mangled remains of Catherine Eddowes, the killer’s fourth victim, in 1888, according to authorities. The shawl is flecked with blood and semen, the latter of which is thought to be from the killer. Four other women were murdered in London over the course of three months, and the perpetrator has never been identified.
Kosminski has previously been linked to the crimes. However, this is the first time the DNA evidence supporting the claim has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Jari Louhelainen, a biochemist at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, conducted the initial genetic testing on shawl samples several years ago, but he claimed he wanted to wait until the controversy died down before releasing the results. In his 2014 book, Naming Jack the Ripper, author Russell Edwards, who bought the shawl in 2007 and donated it to Louhelainen, utilized the unpublished results of the tests to identify Kosminski as the murderer. However, geneticists argued at the time that assessing the claims was hard due to a lack of technical specifics concerning the study of DNA samples from the shawl.
Up to a degree, the new study lays them out. Louhelainen and his colleague David Miller, a reproduction and sperm expert at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, describe extracting and amplifying DNA from the shawl in what they call “the most systematic and most advanced genetic analysis to date regarding the Jack the Ripper murders.” The studies compared mitochondrial DNA fragments extracted from the shawl with samples received from living descendants of Eddowes and Kosminski. They determine in the Journal of Forensic Sciences that the DNA matches that of a living cousin of Kosminki.
The study also reveals that the killer had brown hair and brown eyes, which is consistent with eyewitness testimony. The authors admit in their research that “these qualities are certainly not unique.” However, the researchers point out that blue eyes are currently more frequent than brown in England.
Critics are unlikely to be pleased with the results. The study omits key facts about the genetic variants that were discovered and compared between DNA samples. Instead, the authors use a graphic with a sequence of colored boxes to depict them. The shawl and current DNA samples matched where the boxes overlapped, they said.
The scientists claim in their research that the Data Protection Act, a British regulation designed to preserve people’s privacy, prevents them from disclosing the genetic sequences of Eddowes and Kosminski’s living relatives. They claim that the visual in the study is easier to understand for nonscientists, particularly “those interested in genuine crime.”
The authors should have included mitochondrial DNA sequences in the paper, according to Walther Parson, a forensic scientist at the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University in Austria. “Otherwise, the reader will be unable to assess the outcome. I’m curious where science and research are headed if we start presenting colored boxes instead of findings.”
Hansi Weissensteiner, a mitochondrial DNA expert at Innsbruck, also has reservations about mitochondrial DNA testing, claiming that it can only conclusively prove that two peopleor two DNA samplesare unrelated. “Mitochondrial DNA can only be used to rule out a suspect.” To put it another way, the shawl’s mitochondrial DNA may have come from Kosminski, but it could equally have come from the thousands of people who resided in London at the time.
Other skeptics of Kosminsky’s theory have pointed out that the shawl was never found at the crime site. They also believe it could have grown polluted over time.
The new tests aren’t the first to try to use DNA to identify Jack the Ripper. Patricia Cornwell, a crime writer in the United States, encouraged other experts to look for DNA in samples collected from letters allegedly delivered by the serial killer to police a few years ago. She said the killer was the painter Walter Sickert based on the DNA study and other indicators, despite many experts believe the letters were phony. The murderer could have been a woman, according to another DNA study of the letters.
What was the signature of the Zodiac killer?
He was a serial murderer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and that’s all we know about him.
In the mysterious letters he wrote to the press throughout his murder spree, he gave himself the moniker “Zodiac.”
The letters frequently began with the phrase “This is the Zodiac speaking,” and contained a variety of cryptograms and insults referring to his planned assassinations.
The letters also included the Zodiac Killer’s now-famous “signature,” a circle with a cross running through it.
Despite the fact that the detectives agree on seven verified victims (two of whom survived), the Zodiac has claimed credit for 37 killings.
Some have even speculated that the Zodiac may be responsible for a few more recent deaths in the San Francisco region.
Others believe the Zodiac Killer mystery is nothing more than a complex fake… But how can we be certain?
Is the Zodiac killer ever apprehended?
Between 1968 and 1969, the mystery Zodiac Killer is thought to have stabbed or shot at least five persons in Northern California. He was infamous for sending sarcastic messages and cryptograms with astrological symbols and references to cops and journalists. The killer known as the Zodiac has never been apprehended.
In Zodiac, who was the guy in the basement?
Robert Graysmith couldn’t resist his curiosity on a rainy September night in 1978.
An anonymous phone call about the identity of the Zodiac, the legendary Bay Area serial murderer, had been received by the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist a month before. At the outset of an hour-long chat, the mystery voice said, “He’s a person named Rick Marshall.” The serial killer’s spate of murders had gone unsolved since 1969, but Graysmith had a new clue. Marshall, a former projectionist at The Avenue Theater, had stashed evidence from his five victims inside movie canisters that he’d rigged to explode, according to the informant. The anonymous caller instructed Graysmith to locate Bob Vaughn, a silent film organist who worked with Marshall, before hanging up. Graysmith discovered that the booby-trapped canisters had recently been transferred to Vaughn’s house. “Get to Vaughn,” said the voice. “See if he warns you not to go near any of his movie collection.”
Graysmith went into Marshall’s history after years of working separately on the case and discovered significant coincidences. His new suspect was a fan of The Red Spectre, an early-century film mentioned in a Zodiac letter from 1974, and had used a teletype machine similar to the killer. Marshall’s felt-pen posters outside The Avenue Theater even contained calligraphy that was comparable to the Zodiac’s strange, cursive strokes. Graysmith witnessed Vaughn playing the Wurlitzer and the Zodiac’s crosshair symbol plastered to the theater’s ceiling on his occasional visits to the upscale movie house. There were just too many indications that overlapped. He needed to get to Vaughn’s residence. “We realized there was a connection,” Graysmith says. “I was paralyzed with fear.”
Graysmith’s nightmarish encounter was converted into one of the creepiest movie scenes of all time by filmmaker David Fincher almost three decades later. It happens near the end of Zodiac, as Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) drives Vaughn (Charles Fleischer) home in his bright-orange Volkswagen Rabbit through the rain. The atmosphere rapidly becomes unsettling once inside. Vaughn brings a scared Graysmith down to his dimly lit basement after revealing that he, not Marshall, is responsible for the movie poster handwriting. The floorboards above Graysmith groan as the organist looks through his nitrate film records, implying the presence of someone. Graysmith races upstairs to the closed front door, rattling the handle, before Vaughn slowly pulls out his key and opens it from behind, after Vaughn convinces his guest that he lives alone. Graysmith dashes into the downpour, as if he’s just escaped the hands of the Zodiac.
In the end, the encounter in the third act is a red herring. Vaughn was never thought to be a serious suspect. However, in a film full of routine cop work and dead ends, just five minutes of tense tension transform a procedural into actual horror. The moment represents a culmination of Graysmith’s neurotic preoccupation with the Zodiac’s identitya glimpse into the life-threatening lengths and depths to which he’ll go to solve the caseas well as a brief rejection of the film’s otherwise objective gaze. “It’s actually so distinct from the rest of the movie,” explains Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt. “It does give you that jolt that a lot of the movie is attempting to avoid.”
Simply put, the basement sequence is a classic Fincher adrenaline rush, bolstered by years of meticulous research, meticulous attention to detail, and last-minute studio foresight. Graysmith still gets shivers when he sees the movie, even though it was released thirteen years ago.