The arrest of the Golden State Killer , who was identified in after investigators used forensic genealogy to tie a former police officer to the decades-old rapes and murders, fueled hopes that the Zodiac might finally be identified.
But unlike that case, there is no confirmed DNA from any of the Zodiac killings. Police managed to create a partial profile by testing saliva traces from a stamp on a letter sent by the Zodiac, but that can only be used to rule suspects out. But the apparent breakthrough was not so clearcut. Reuse this content. In it, the Zodiac named himself for the first time and gave more details about the murders. A sketch depicting an unknown man reportedly seen at Lake Berryessa, on the day of the Shepard-Hartnell attack.
The next murder took place near Lake Berryessa on September This time, the victims, Bryan Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Shepard, 22, were tied up and stabbed instead of shot. Hartnell survived his injuries, but Shepard died two days later. During his next killing, the Zodiac diverged from his pattern even further and shot and killed a cab driver, Paul Lee Stine, 29, in Presidio Heights in San Francisco on October 11 after riding with him.
This time, a partial fingerprint in blood was found inside the car, along with a pair of gloves which were, however, considered to be too small to fit the man described by the witnesses. They were later linked to a female passenger of Stine. At first, the police were led to believe that the killer was black, which was later corrected. Before that, however, a pair of uniformed cops on their way to the crime scene spotted a man fitting the Zodiac's description dressed in a dark jacket and walking away from the crime scene mere minutes after the shooting.
Three days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter in which the Zodiac threatened to kill all the passengers of a school bus and included a piece of Paul Stine's bloody shirt. Though this was the last of the Zodiac's confirmed killings, he continued writing letters and claimed responsibility for several murders during this time. It is generally believed that he lied for attention. The prime suspect in the case, at least in the eyes of the public, was and remains Arthur Leigh Allen.
The authorities began investigating him after they were told by one of his old co-workers, Donald Cheney, that Allen had told him about an idea he had for a novel about a serial killer who called himself "Zodiac" and did several things the Zodiac Killer did or threatened to do, such as taping a flashlight to his gun and killing the passengers of a school bus though this story has been met with some skepticism in the present since Allen was accused of molesting one of Cheney's sons.
Also, Allen was a skin diver who had been to Lake Berryessa on several occasions. He also admitted to having had bloody knives in his car on the weekend of the stabbing but claimed that the blood came from a chicken he had killed for dinner. After a warrant for his trailer and handwriting was secured and carried out, his fingerprints were compared to the partial from the cab, his guns compared to the Zodiac evidence and his handwriting to that of the letters.
None of the tests came back a match and Allen was let go. In , Mageau was tracked down and shown a lineup of old photos of Zodiac suspects. After he fingered Allen as the killer, there were talks about formally charging him with the murders based on circumstantial evidence against him which were, in turn, heavily contested by others.
Allen died of natural causes before any trial could take place. To this day the case remains unsolved and the Zodiac killer's identity is still unknown. The Zodiac is known to have sent many cryptographic, taunting and puzzling letters to the authorities, the press and famed lawyer Melvin Belli. In these letters, the Zodiac made his intentions and wishes known, as well as, allegedly, his state of mind. In , he would identify a police suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, as the shooter, explaining that he had never previously been shown any photographs of possible candidates by officers, an astonishing oversight if accurate.
The Chronicle did run its portion of the cryptogram with a comment from Vallejo police chief Jack Stiltz expressing doubt that the writer was really the killer, inviting him to write in again with more details of his actions to prove his authenticity. A day later, high school teacher Donald Harden and his wife Bettye of Salinas, California, cracked the cryptogram and notified the newspapers. The attacker claimed to be a prison escapee and ordered Shephard to tie up her boyfriend with bonds made from the plastic clothesline he presented her with.
He then stabbed her ten times with a inch knife she would die from her injuries two days later. Hartnell was stabbed six times but survived. Their screams of agony prompted a nearby fisherman to alert park rangers. This time, the call turned out to have been made from a carwash 27 miles away from the scene, with the receiver found still dangling from its cord by a local radio reporter.
A sweaty palm print was retrieved but never successfully matched to a possible perpetrator. He just got bloody. Log In. Contact us Sign up for newsletters. Log In Register now My account. By Alex Finnis Reporter. October 8, pm Updated pm. The freshest exclusives and sharpest analysis, curated for your inbox Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem. More from News. Long Reads The secret court case 50 years ago that robbed transgender people of their rights ever since.
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