California's most elusive serial killer claimed his first confirmed victim on October 30, 1966, in Riverside. That evening, Cheri Jo Bates, and 18-year-old freshman at Riverside City College, emerged from the campus library to find her car disabled, the distributor coil disconnected. Police theorize that her killer approached with an offer of help, then dragged her behind some nearby shrubbery where a furious struggle ended with Cheri stabbed in the chest and back, her throat slashed so deeply that she was nearly decapitated.

In November 1966, a to the local press declared that Cheri "is not the first and she will not be the last." Following publication of an article about the case on April 30, 1967, identical letters were posted to the newspaper, police, and to the victim's father. They read: "Bates had to die. There will be more."

On December 20, 1968, 17-year-old David Faraday was parked with his date, 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen, on a rural road east of the Vallejo city limits in northern California. A night-stalking gunman found them there and killed both teenagers, shooting Faraday in the head as he sat behind the wheel of his car. Betty Lou ran 30 feet before she was cut down by a tight group of five shots in the back, fired from a .22-caliber automatic pistol.

On July 4, 1969, Michael Mageau, 19, picked up his date, 22-year-old Darlene Ferrin, for a night on the town. At one point, Mageau believed they were being followed, but Darlene seemed to recognize the other motorist, telling Mageau, "Don't worry about it." By midnight, they were parked at Blue Rock Springs Park when a familiar vehicle pulled alongside and the driver shined a bright light in their eyes, opening fire with a 9mm pistol. Hit four times, Mageau survived; Darlene, with nine wounds, was dead on arrival at a local hospital.

Forty minutes after the shooting, Vallejo police received an anonymous call, directing officers to the murder scene. Before hanging up, the male caller declared, "I also killed those kids last year."

In retrospect, friends and relatives recalled that Darlene Ferrin had been suffering harassment through anonymous phone calls and intimidating visits by a heavyset stranger in the weeks before her death. She called the strange man Paul and told one girlfriend that he wished to silence her because she had seen him commit a murder. Police searched for "Paul" in the wake of Darlene's slaying, but he was never located or identified.

On July 31, 1969, the killer mailed letters to three Bay Area newspapers, each containing one-third of a cryptic cipher. Ultimately broken by a local high school teacher, the message began: "I like killing people because it is so much fun." The author explained that he was killing in an effort to "collect slaves," who would serve him in the afterlife. Another correspondence, mailed on August 7, introduced the "Zodiac" name and provided details of the latest murder, leaving police in no doubt that its author was the killer.

On September 27, 20-year-old Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd, 20, were enjoying a picnic at Lake Berryessa near Vallejo when they were accosted by a hooded gunman. Covering them with a pistol, the stranger described himself as an escaped convict who needed their car "to go to Mexico." Producing a coil of clothesline, he bound both victims before drawing a long knife, stabbing Hartnell five times in the back. Cecilia Shepherd was stabbed 14 times, including four in the chest as she twisted away from the plunging blade.

Departing the scene, their assailant paused at Harnells car to scribble on the door with a felt-tipped pen. He wrote:



A phone call to police reported the crime, but by that time, a fisherman had already discovered the victims. Brian Hartnell survived his wounds, but Cecilia Shepherd was doomed, another victim for the man who called himself the Zodiac.

On October 11, San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine was shot in the head and killed with a 9mm automatic pistol. Witnesses saw the gunman escape on foot toward the Presidio, and police descended on the neighborhood in force. At one point in the search, two patrolmen stopped a heavyset pedestrian and were directed in pursuit of their elusive prey, not realizing that the "tip" had been provided by the very man they sought.

In the wake of Stine's murder, the Zodiac launched a new barrage of letters, some containing swatches of the cabbie's bloodstained shirt.

He also made phone calls to the Oakland Police Department. Successive messages claimed seven victims, instead of the established five, and the killer threatened to "wipe out a school bus some morning." He also vowed to change his method of "collecting souls": "They shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, & a few fake suicides, etc." Five days before Christmas, he wrote to prominent attorney Melvin Belli, pleading for help with the chilling remark that "I cannot remain in control for much longer."

On March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving with her infant daughter near Modesto, California, when another motorist pulled her over, flashing his headlights and beeping his horn. The man informed her that a rear tire on her car seemed dangerously loose; he worked on it briefly with a lug wrench, but when she tried to drive away, the wheel fell off. Her benefactor offered a lift to the nearest garage, then took Kathleen on an aimless drive through the countryside, threatening her life and that of her child before she managed to escape from the car, hiding in a roadside irrigation ditch. Reporting the abduction at a local police station, Johns noticed a wanted poster bearing sketches of the Zodiac, and she identified the man as her attacker.

Nine more letters were received from Zodiac between April 1970 and March 1971, but police were unable to trace further crimes in the series. On January 30, 1974, a San Francisco newspaper received the first authentic Zodiac letter in nearly three years, signing off with the notation: "Me-37; SFPD-0."

One officer who took the estimated body count seriously was Sheriff Don Striepke of Sonoma County. In a 1975 report, Striepke referred to a series of 40 unsolved murders in four western states, which seemed to form a giant Z when plotted on the map. While tantalizing, Striepke's theory seemed to fall apart with the identification of Ted Bundy as a prime suspect in several of the homicides.

On April 24, 1978, the Zodiac mailed his 21st letter, chilling Bay Area residents with the news that "I am back with you." No traceable crimes were committed, however, and Homicide Inspector Dave Toschi was later removed from the Zodiac detail on suspicion of writing the letter himself. In fact, while Toschi confessed to writing several anonymous letters to the press, praising his own performance on the case, expert analysts agree that the April note was, in fact, written by the killer.

Theories abound in the Zodiac case. One was aired by author "George Oakes" (a pseudonym) in the November 1981 issue of California magazine, based on a presumption of the killer's obsession with water, clocks, binary mathematics, and the writings of Lewis Carroll. Oakes claimed to know the Zodiac's identity and says the killer telephoned him several times at home. He blames the Zodiac for an arson fire that ravaged 25,000 acres near Lake Berryessa in June 1981, but California editors acknowledged that FBI agents "weren't very impressed" with the theory. Spokesmen for the California state attorney general's office went further, describing the tale as "a lot of bull."

Author Robert Graysmith also claims to know the Zodiac by name, calling his suspect "Robert Hall Starr" in a book published in 1986. A resident of Vallejo, "Starr" is described as a gun buff and suspected child molester, confirmed as a prime Zodiac suspect by several detectives (and flatly rejected by others). Graysmith credits Zodiac with a total of 49 "possible" victims between October 1966 and May 1981, three of whom survived his attacks. In addition to the six known dead and three confirmed survivors, Graysmith included 15 "occult" murders linked to one unidentified slayer in northern California and 15 other "astrological" murder victims killed in close proximity to a solstice or equinox - nine confirmed by police as the work of a single man. Of 40 "possible" victims listed by Graysmith, 39 were female, variously shot, stabbed, beaten, strangled, drowned, and poisoned… perhaps in accordance with Zodiac's promise to alter his method of "collecting slaves." At this time the case still remains open.
Link

Zodiac Killer Dedicated Site

Crime Library - Lots of Reading and Infomation
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Truely one of the more amazing serial killers out there. Going so long while taunting the public and police and never getting caught. I don't think it's Rick Marshall as the killer either. I think the police never even interviewed or maybe even noticed the real killer. Mainly because you don't go this long by drawing attention to yourself.

Here is an interesting blog about the zodiac....


http://huffcrimeblog.com/?p=504


There are times I feel a need to touch on some of my more lasting obsessions, true crime-wise. In part, I think the need is intellectual. It’s the historian in me (history was always my best academic subject in school, all the way through college, in fact), screaming to get out.

There is a certain excitement in covering a story that is happening now, of course. Writing and researching breaking news for my blog or for Court TV’s crimelibrary.com, I can be locked into my comfy leather office chair (bought at a local Salvation Army for a song, thank you very much), here at the old Huff homestead for 12-16 hours straight. Every time I’ve discovered something online relevant to a high-profile case that I’m certain no one has referenced yet, I get a big kick out of it, I admit.

But there are times I feel the need to address certain pet mysteries, even if others have already been picking them apart for years. I often hope I’ve got something to add, but do not guarantee you, the reader, that I do. In that sense, perhaps this is a little selfish of me. Then again, it’s my blog, and I’ll blather if I want to. Were I a cheesier individual than I am already, I’d insert a smiley there to let you know the preceding was meant in good humor.

Then again, maybe it’s the change in my schedule (sleeping at night, go figure), or the Krispy Kreme donuts my son and I gorged on this morning. Either way, here goes.


Chandler

He was an aging recluse when he committed suicide in the summer of 2002. In Eastlake, Ohio, the nearly-70-year-old employee of the Lubrizol Corporation put a .38-caliber Charter Arms handgun to his head and pulled the trigger.

At The Doe Network, a site devoted to tracking missing and unidentified persons, he is Case File 454UMOH.

I first wrote about this mysterious elderly gent almost a year ago. Two entries, in fact—“The Hope Only of Empty Men,” and “This is the Dead Land…(Zodiac/Joseph Newton Chandler III).”

The first entry, which should probably be required reading before you plow through the following, proposed that perhaps the old dude was The Zodiac Killer. The second entry followed up on a suggestion by another blogger who liked the idea. The mysterious Xymphora found that there appeared to be some couple murders in Ohio in the late ‘70s and ‘80s that were never solved. I’ve since learned that at least some of those Ohio murders were solved, after all, and the killer was known to authorities. That didn’t entirely scotch the idea, but it added a level of reality to things, something I always appreciate.

If you click on the thumbnails at the beginning of these first two sections of this entry, you will see sketch and photo comparisons I made between the photograph of the man known in life as “Joseph Newton Chandler” and the most well-known sketches of the Zodiac, provided by two cops who didn’t realize at the time that they were speaking to Zodiac after his last murder, of San Francisco cabbie Paul Stine, in October, 1969.

You also can see comparisons between Chandler and sketches of a man known to history as Dan (D.B.) Cooper, one sketch age-progressed—I have to admit, that is the most startling one.

Cooper was one of the first possibilities proposed for the real identity of Joseph Newton Chandler III when it was discovered that no one actually knew who the hell the guy really was.

If you aren’t a true crime afficionado or if you are new to my blog, I am probably speaking greek to you at the moment.

The following is quoted from an AP article published June 2, 2003:


Last July, a man identified as Joseph N. Chandler committed suicide in his apartment. It turned out he had stolen the identity of an 8-year-old boy who was killed with his parents in a 1945 car crash near Sherman, Texas.

The impostor was described by police as a loner in his 60s.

“We don’t know what or who he was hiding from or who he really was,” police Detective Lt. Tom Doyle said.

The man left $82,000 in a savings account, but didn’t leave a will. Police said family members listed on a rental agreement led to nonexistent people or addresses (...)

After police found his body last July 31, the county coroner discovered the man had colon cancer that soon would have killed him.

His closest friend, a former co-worker who knew little of the man’s past, was appointed by the court as executor of the estate. Two investigators he hired to notify heirs discovered the relatives they found were family members of the dead Texas boy.

Investigations learned that a man claiming to be Joseph Newton Chandler, of Rapid City, S.D., requested his first Social Security card in September 1978, at 41.

The man listed his parents as Ellen Christina Kaaber Chandler and Joseph Newton Chandler Jr. and said he was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on March 11, 1937-all information taken from the Texas boy.

Making identification more difficult, the body was cremated soon after an autopsy, and neither the suicide weapon nor items in the apartment had fingerprints clear enough to be of much use, police said…


Here’s what started me on the tack of thinking this old guy could be The Zodiac.

Argument


Next to Jack the Ripper, the anonymous serial killer of most lasting interest to many who study crime is Zodiac. The reasons are too many to enumerate here. That’s why I prefer to link Tom Voigt’s comprehensive site about Zodiac, www.zodiackiller.com. Some very intelligent online discussions about the still-unsolved series of Zodiac murders can be found on the message boards associated with Tom’s site, and Voigt has built up a pretty impressive online cache of documents and images related to the Zodiac as well. Anyone writing a book or even a news article about “Z” is remiss if they don’t check themselves with the info Tom Voigt has made available.

It is hard, if you read about either the Ripper or Zodiac, to not notice all the parallels between the crimes and the criminals. The ways the two murdered were radically different, of course. “Saucy Jack” rampaged through London’s poor Whitechapel District in the late 1880’s with a long knife, killing a number of prostitutes in the most gruesome manner possible. The young woman many think was his last victim, Mary Kelly, was completely eviscerated. Even today, well over 100 years later, the old sepia-toned photos of the Kelly murder scene are meant for only the strongest stomachs.

Zodiac was an assassin-style killer, even though many, including me, feel his reasons for killing were psychosexual in nature. The Zodiac preyed on male-female couples, young adults, often in secluded areas. In all his attacks save one, he used a handgun. Only in murdering Paul Stine did Zodiac change his method of operation. He killed a lone male on a city street, where he’d stuck to somewhat remote areas and reserved his worst attacks for the female members of the couples he’d targeted.

But in the 1960’s, when Zodiac was bringing his reign of terror down on Northern California, the historical record as to the Ripper’s actions was not as clear or detailed as it is may be today. The Whitechapel Fiend was a legendary killer, had been the subject of books, novels, movies. There was no internet, though, and anyone reading up on the Ripper had to rely on books in the library, many of them more fiction than fact, bent on playing up the gruesome and sensational aspects of the Ripper’s spree.

The first thing that got my attention was the name Joseph Chandler. The following is from Casebook.org, the website for “Ripperologists” that functions much like Tom Voigt’s site for people studying The Zodiac. The quote is from an article first published in the London Daily Telegraph on September 14, 1888—meaning it has been public record since then:


Joseph Chandler, Inspector H Division Metropolitan Police, deposed: On Saturday morning, at ten minutes past six, I was on duty in Commercial-street. At the corner of Hanbury-street I saw several men running. I beckoned to them. One of them said, “Another woman has been murdered.” I at once went with him to 29, Hanbury-street, and through the passage into the yard. There was no one in the yard. I saw the body of a woman lying on the ground on her back. Her head was towards the back wall of the house, nearly two feet from the wall, at the bottom of the steps, but six or nine inches away from them. The face was turned to the right side, and the left arm was resting on the left breast. The right hand was lying down the right side. Deceased’s legs were drawn up, and the clothing was above the knees. A portion of the intestines, still connected with the body, were lying above the right shoulder, with some pieces of skin. There were also some pieces of skin on the left shoulder. The body was lying parallel with the fencing dividing the two yards. I remained there and sent for the divisional surgeon, Mr. Phillips, and to the police-station for the ambulance and for further assistance. When the constables arrived I cleared the passage of people, and saw that no one touched the body until the doctor arrived. I obtained some sacking to cover it before the arrival of the surgeon, who came at about half-past six o’clock, and he, having examined the body, directed that it should be removed to the mortuary…

The name Joseph Chandler is not nearly as well-known to casual readers of Ripper history as that of Inspector Frederick Abberline, but Chandler still figures in the mix as the law enforcement officer who discovered Ripper victim #2, Annie Chapman.

That’s a tangential link, easily dismissed as coincidence, of course—I was fully aware of that when I found it. Still, hair stood up on the back of my neck when I saw it.

Then there are slight parallels in the dates of certain actions taken by both killers.

On September 27, 1969, the Zodiac attacked a couple at Lake Berryessa, north of San Francisco. This was the only time he used a knife, the only time he engaged his victims in any sort of conversation. He stabbed Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard, having stalked them as they lounged by the Lake. Hartnell survived, Shepard did not. The Zodiac was wearing a somewhat elaborate costume when he attacked, his characteristic crosshairs on a circle symbol sewn into the front of his cloak, which was otherwise a squared-off hood with eyeholes, those masked by clip-on sunglasses.

According to the Timeline at Casebook.org, Jack the Ripper completed his “double-event” on September 30, 1888. At 1:00 a.m. he slashed Elizabeth Stride, then 45 minutes later he attacked Catherine Eddowes.

The abbreviated timeline in the back of This Is The Zodiac Speaking, by Michael D. Kelleher and David Van Nuys notes that Zodiac murdered cabbie Paul Stine on October 11, 1969. Witnesses to the murder see Zodiac enter the front of the cab after shooting Stine, and it is apparent at the time that he took something from the victim.

Again, from the Casebook Timeline:


October 16, 1888—(...) George Lusk receives a package including the “From Hell” letter and half a kidney, [allegedly] from the body of Catharine Eddowes.

That’s right, a human kidney. The Ripper sent the Head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, a citizen’s organization formed after the Ripper’s spree began, a letter with a bloodly souvenir.

On October 14, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter from The Zodiac. It appears Zodiac may have sent the message the day after he shot Paul Stine, which would have been the 12th. Contained in the package was a letter, and a “souvenir”—a bloody swatch from Paul Stine’s shirt.

These aren’t the only coincidences between both series of murders. The victim long considered to be the Ripper’s penultimate kill was Catherine Eddowes. Very close to where she was murdered police found the mystifying graffito, “The Juwes are the men That Will not be blamed for nothing.” It is in dispute as to whether the Ripper really left that message, but it was established as part of the overall Ripper story early in the 20th Century, meaning anyone reading a great deal about Jack the Ripper in the 1960s would have been familiar with that detail.

Many seem to consider the Zodiac’s penultimate attack to be the one made at Lake Berryessa on Cecilia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell. There, on the driver’s side door of Hartnell’s car, Zodiac wrote the following:


Vallejo
12-20-68
7-4-69
Sept. 27-69-6:30
by knife.

The dates in question were all dates of attacks claimed by Zodiac in letters to the press up to that time.

Coincidence? Or was part of Zodiac’s game all along that he was using a playbook written back in the late 1880s, first acted out on chill and fog-bound nights in one of London’s poorest districts?

There was always an element of the prankster in Zodiac. The humor is missed by most familiar with his crimes, because Zodiac was only amusing himself. But in letters he quoted from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, a silly Asian-themed operetta first premiered in London in March, 1885. Zodiac’s favorite character was The Lord High Executioner, and in one letter, Zodiac even quoted, apparently from memory, from that character’s most famous aria, wherein the Executioner sings of a “little list” of people he has in mind to do away with, should the opportunity ever present itself.

An element of the prankster, and an element of the copycat.

It is worth referencing a similar killer, one who astounded and chilled many the world over when he recounted his crimes after his capture in February of 2005. Dennis Rader, the man we now know was the Bind, Torture, Kill (BTK) Strangler from Wichita, Kansas, seemed to pull a great deal from Zodiac’s playbook—sending taunting letters and poems to the local press. When asked about how he created his multimedia attack on the public consciousness, Rader admitted he’d just cribbed bits and pieces from poems and songs he found in books at the library. The Hollow Man Dennis Rader had very little creativity of his own to use… he simply cobbled together his approach from what he knew of serial killers past, at least as far as his communications with the press and police were concerned.

Could it be that Rader was even less original than this admission revealed, and the Zodiac Killer had already taken the same tack, using some of what he knew of the Ripper’s legacy as his template?

I didn’t want to retread what I’d already written almost a year ago. I did want it clear that my reasons for wondering if Joseph “John Doe” Chandler was Zodiac having the last laugh, after all were somewhat grounded. Think about it—in the end, we might have his face, a few more facts about him than before… and yet, we still don’t know his true name.

I don't think we ever really will know his name. I do hope he does however though surface, at least on his death bed or something. I'm dying to know.

The Zodiac has passed on. It is over for his time to kill on earth.

[size=5]There is a movie about the zodiak killer should be hitting your screens soon

i could swear that they caught the guy...
i think it turned out to be some guy living in a log cabin, which was full of small disected and mutilated animals. he had the zodiac symbol on a watch of his and it was found in other places as well.

ROFL. i just found this as i was googling the zodiac killer...



anyhow, i came up with this:
http://www.se7en-x.com/zodiac/allen.htm

What about this? :


DNA is pretty strong evidence. That same DNA on over 20 different letters.

There were only a handful of murders that the police found while the Zodiac Killer claimed more kills then the police found.

that picture looks like it's from the movie constantine,2005

here's a gallery: Click

the gallery doesn't have the best/great pictures though, and it doesn' t show
the sign.

yeah, i know. i was just saying that was the guy i was thinking of when i said they had supposedly caught him. he was a major suspect in the case. i for some reason thought they had proven him guilty.

This man/woman/thing is my idol.

The Zodiac Killer was always one of my favs.

Awesome post Kratos!

Zodiac has been around longer then that movie so no big surprise holleywood would steal something to make people think.



I think the closet person they thought was Rick Marshall. But with the Zodiac Killers heightened intelligence and methodological ways, I highly doubt a common investigator or even the FBI got close to Zodiac.



Indeed.



Ditto. I really dig this killer more then others. Went outside the norms of society but still had the skills to blend within to weave his ways in his life to not be caught and live. Quite remarkable and admirable.

Psychopaths/ serial killers generally DO have that ability.

So do i. It's called compartmentalizing.

Didn't the police have a suspect called Allen?

Yeah, I think his name was Arthur Leigh Allen or something along those lines. He was the one many people believe did it. Me and my dad were completely obsessed with the Zodiac killer. We had a theory that one or more of the crimes were done by a copy cat and the real zodiac took credit for it after the other one sent the stuff into the papers. . . I can't remember the whole "theory", that was years ago.

Anyways, Allen is dead now, so I guess, unless some miracle evidence appears, we won't ever really know if it was him or not. I liked to not believe it was him, there was another guy on the zodiac killer website that I liked better as a suspect. Of course, I probably just don't want to believe it was Allen, cause then the mystery would be solved and there wouldn't be anything left to speculate on.

Edit: here's the zodiac killer site for anyone who's interested http://www.zodiackiller.com/index2.html

Edit 2: Oh yeah, some of his cyphers were never figured out. the one that said it would reveal his name was partially solved, but a handfull of symbols were never "figured out" as far as I know. I had a theory and was working on it, but that was back during my "obsession". . .so now I can't remember what my progress was in "solving" the unsolved cyphers. Haha. I really ought to find my notes and start working on that again. . .

I am soooooo tired of glorifying serial killers! it sickens me. but that's besides the point right now, the zodiac killer certainly was a confusing killer, i'd heard on a special hosted by bill curtis, that police stopped a man leaving a park who fit the zk's description, but didn't apprehend him as the guy talked them out of it...