Zodiac Killer

For the New York City Zodiac copycat, see Heriberto Seda.

The cross-like symbol used by the Zodiac Killer.

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California for ten months in the late 1960s. He coined his name in a series of taunting letters he sent to the press until 1974. His letters included four cryptograms, three of which have yet to be solved.

The Zodiac murdered five known victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. No connections between them have ever been discovered. They appear to have been victims of opportunity, nothing more. While it is often claimed that the Zodiac knew his victims, there has never been credible evidence to suggest this was true. Numerous others have been thought to be Zodiac victims, but the evidence is scant at best.

The killer's identity remains unknown. The San Francisco Police Department marked its investigation "inactive" in April 2004, although the case remains open in other jurisdictions.

The Victims

Canonical

Although the Zodiac claimed in letters to the newspapers that he murdered as many as 37 people, investigators agree on only seven canonical victims, two of whom survived. They are:

• David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16: Shot and killed on December 20, 1968 on Lake Herman Road just within the city limits of Benicia.
• Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22: Shot on July 4, 1969 at Blue Rock Springs Golf Course parking lot on the outskirts of Vallejo; Darlene was DOA at Kaiser Foundation Hospital, while Michael survived.
• Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22: Stabbed on September 27, 1969 on what is today locally referred to as "Zodiac Island" at Lake Berryessa in Napa County; Hartnell survived six stab wounds to the back, but Shepard died of her injuries two days later at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa.
• Paul Lee Stine, 29: Shot and killed on October 11, 1969 in Presidio Heights in San Francisco.

Suspected

Many others have been identified as potential Zodiac victims, although the evidence is inconclusive and none are universally accepted as Zodiac victims. The more well-known suspected victims are:

• Robert Domingos, 18, and Linda Edwards, 17,: Shot and killed on 4 June 1963 at a beach near Lompoc, California. Edwards and Domingos were named as possible Zodiac victims due to the specific similarities between their attack and the Zodiac's attack at Lake Berryessa.
• Cheri Jo Bates, 18: Stabbed to death and nearly decapitated on 30 October 1966 at Riverside Community College in Riverside, California. Bates' possible connection to the Zodiac only came to light four years after her murder when San Francisco Chronicle columnist Paul Avery received a tip regarding similarities between the Zodiac killings and the circumstances surrounding Bates' death.
• Kathleen Johns, 22: Abducted on 22 March 1970 on Highway 132 by I-580, west of Modesto, California. Johns escaped from the car of a man who drove her and her infant daughter around on the backroads between Stockton and Patterson for some three hours. After escaping to the police station in Patterson, she saw the Zodiac's wanted poster and identified him as her kidnapper.
• Donna Lass, 25: Last seen 26 September 1970 in South Lake Tahoe, California. A postcard with an ad from Forest Pines condominiums (near Incline Village at Lake Tahoe) pasted on the back was received at the Chronicle on 22 March 1971 and has been interpreted by some as the Zodiac claiming Lass' disappearance as a victim, despite an incorrect count (in his 26 July 1970 letter, the Zodiac was already claiming thirteen victims; Lass should have been the fourteenth, not the twelfth, as the Pines card suggests). The postcard has not been conclusively linked to the Zodiac nor has Lass' body been found. There was no official investigation conducted due to jurisdictional disagreements between the South Lake Tahoe Police and the Sheriff's Department, and it is unknown whether a crime was even committed.

Timeline of Murders

Lake Herman Road

The Zodiac Killer came to police attention for the apparently random murders of Betty Lou Jensen' and David Faraday' on 20 December 1968, just inside the Benicia, California city limits.

The couple was on their first date and had planned to attend a Christmas concert at Hogan High, which was just a few blocks from Jensen's home, but decided to visit a friend and stopped at a local restaurant instead.

At approximately 10:15 p.m., Faraday and Jensen parked in a gravel turnout on Lake Herman Road. Shortly after 11 p.m., the Zodiac pulled into the turnout and parked beside them. At least one witness drove by moments later and saw both cars, but did not see anyone inside either vehicle. Moments later he heard what he thought was a gunshot, but wasn't sure since his radio was on.

The Zodiac shot Faraday once in the head and Jensen five times in the back as she ran away. Their bodies were found minutes later by Stella Borges, who lived nearby. She alerted Captain Daniel Pitta and Officer William T. Warner. Detective Sergeant Les Lundblad of the Solano County Sheriff's Department investigated the crime, but no solid leads developed.

Blue Rock Springs

Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot around midnight on 4 July - 5 July 1969 at the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course parking lot in Vallejo, four miles from the Lake Herman Road murder site. While they sat in Ferrin's car, another car drove into the lot and parked beside them, drove away almost immediately, then returned about ten minutes later. The Zodiac parked behind them to cut off escape and approached the passenger side door with a flashlight, which he used to blind them. He then shot them with a 9mm handgun.

At 12:40 am on 5 July 1969, a man anonymously called the Vallejo Police Department and reported the attack. He also took credit for the murders of Jensen and Faraday six and a half months earlier. The police traced the call to a phone booth at a gas station at Springs and Tuolumne, about three tenths of a mile from Ferrin's home and only a few blocks from the Vallejo Sheriff's Department.

Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mageau survived the attack despite being shot in the face, neck, and chest.

Ferrin was a waitress at Terry's Waffle House in Vallejo. In a popular book about the case seventeen years later, an unsubstantiated story was put forth that the Zodiac was a regular customer and one of her admirers. It is claimed she knew he was responsible for the Lake Herman Road (or other) murder(s) and that he killed her either to prevent her from turning him in to the police or because she was blackmailing him to stay quiet. None of these stories have any basis in fact, and can be traced directly to the low-budget 1971 movie, The Zodiac Killer, the 1979 novel The Zodiac Killer by Jerry Weissman, and a 4 May 1981 story by Bill Wallace that appeared in the Chronicle. Detectives John Lynch and Ed Rust of the Vallejo Police Department initially investigated the crime. Detective Jack Mulanax took over the case in the 1970s.

The Zodiac letters begin

On 1 August 1969, three letters prepared by Zodiac were received at the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner. The nearly identically written letters took credit for the three murders and also included one third of a cryptogram with a total of 408 characters which he claimed contained his identity. Zodiac demanded they be printed on the front page or he would go on a rampage and kill a dozen people that weekend. The threatened murders did not happen, and all three parts were eventually published.

On 4 August 1969, another letter was received at the San Francisco Examiner with the salutation, "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking". The letter was in response to Chief Stiltz of Vallejo asking him to write again with more details as proof that he was really the killer of Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin.

On 8 August 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California cracked the code, but it did not include his name. The letter read "I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANAMAL (sic) OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE (sic) IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAT WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE (sic) AND ALL THE I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI (sic) DOWN OR STOP MY COLLECTING OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE EBEORIETEMETHHPITI (sic)". The meaning of the final eighteen symbols was not determined.

Lake Berryessa

On 27 September 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking on the shores of Lake Berryessa, on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. Zodiac, wearing a black executioner's type hood (but square on top like a paper bag) with clip-on sunglasses over the eyeholes and a biblike device on his chest that had a white 3"x3" cross-circle symbol on it, approached them with a gun; Hartnell thought it was a .45. He claimed to be an escaped convict from Deer Lodge, Montana, where he had killed a guard and stolen a car; he told his victims he needed their car and money to go to Mexico. He had brought pre-cut lengths of plastic clothesline and told Shepard to tie Hartnell up, then he tied her up. The Zodiac checked Hartnell's bonds and found she tied him loosely, and so he tightened them. Hartnell initially thought it was only a weird robbery, but Zodiac drew a knife and stabbed them both, then hiked the 500 yards back up to Knoxville Road, drew the cross circle symbol on Hartnell's car door, and wrote beneath it: Vallejo 12-20-68, 7-4-69, Sept 27-69-6:30 by knife.

At 7:40 pm, Zodiac called Napa, California PD to report his crime; the phone booth was found minutes later at the Napa Car Wash, only a few blocks from the police station and 27 miles from the crime scene. A passing fisherman had already discovered the victims and summoned help, and Hartnell and Shepard were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa. Shepard lapsed into a coma and died two days later, but Hartnell survived.

Presidio Heights

File:Zodiac3.jpg

Police rendition

On 11 October 1969, the Zodiac entered Paul Stine's cab at the intersection of Mason and Geary Streets in San Francisco and requested to be taken to Washington and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights. For reasons unknown, Stine drove one block further to Cherry Street; the Zodiac shot him once in the head with a 9mm (a different weapon than the one used at Blue Rock Springs three months earlier), then took his wallet and car keys and tore off his shirt tail. He was observed by three teenagers across the street at 9:55 pm, who called the police as the crime was in progress. They observed the Zodiac wiping the cab down, either eliminating fingerprints or sopping up blood with the shirt tail, and then walk away towards the Presidio, one block to the north. The police arrived minutes later, and the teen witnesses explained that the killer was still nearby.

Two blocks from the crime scene, officer Don Fouke, also responding to the call, observed a man walking along the sidewalk then stepping onto a stairway leading up to the front yard of one of the homes on the north side of the street; the encounter lasted only five to ten seconds. His rookie partner, Eric Zelms, did not see the man. The radio dispatch had alerted them to look for a black and not a white suspect, so they had no reason to talk to the man and drove past him without stopping; the mix up in descriptions remains unexplained to this day. When they reached Cherry, Fouke was informed that they were in fact looking for a white suspect; Fouke realized they must have passed the killer. Fouke concluded that the Zodiac had resumed his original route and escaped into the Presidio, so they entered the base to look for him but the Zodiac had vanished. A search ensued, but nothing was found. The three teen witnesses worked with a police artist to prepare a composite of Stine's killer, and a few days later returned to produce a second composite. The Zodiac was estimated to be 35-45 years of age. Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case, and SFPD eventually investigated an estimated 2,500 suspects over a period of years.

On 14 October 1969, the Chronicle received yet another letter from the Zodiac, this time containing a swatch of Paul Stine's shirt tail as proof he was the killer; it also included a threat about shooting school children. It was only then that they knew who they were looking for a few nights before in Presidio Heights.

At 2:00 am on 22 October 1969, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called Oakland PD demanding that one of two prominent lawyers, F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, appear on Jim Dunbar's television talk show in the morning. Bailey was not available, but Belli appeared on the show. Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open, and eventually, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times and said his name was Sam. Belli agreed to meet with Sam in Daly City, but the suspect never showed up. Police officers who had heard the Zodiac listened to Sam's voice and agreed that he was not the Zodiac. Subsequent calls Sam made to Belli were traced to the Napa State Hospital, where it was learned that he was a mental patient there.

On 8 November 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters and on 9 November 1969, he mailed a seven-page letter in which he claimed that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he shot Stine. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on 12 November, including the Zodiac's claim; that same day, Don Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened that night. The 340 character cipher has never been decoded. Many possible "solutions" have been suggested, but cannot be accepted since they do away with codemaking conventions.

On 20 December 1969, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli and included yet another swatch of Stine's shirt; the Zodiac claimed he wanted Belli to help him.

Kathleen Johns

On the night of 22 March 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. She was seven months pregnant and had her ten-month-old daughter beside her. While heading west on Highway 132 near Modesto, a car behind her began honking and flashing its lights. She pulled off the road and stopped. The man parked behind her, stated her right rear tire was wobbling, and offered to tighten the lugs. After finishing his work, the man drove off, and when Johns pulled forward the wheel came off the car. The man stopped, backed up, and offered to drive her to the nearest gas station for help. She and her daughter climbed into his car. They drove past several service stations but the man did not stop. For some three hours he drove them up and down the backroads around Tracy, and when she asked why he wasn't stopping, he would change the subject.

When the driver stopped at an intersection, Johns jumped out with her daughter and hid in a field. He came out to look for her, but when a truck driver spotted the scene Johns' abductor sped off. Johns hitched a ride to the police station in Patterson. As she gave her statement to the sergeant on duty, she noticed the police composite of Paul Stine's killer and recognized him as the man who'd abducted her and her child. The sergeant, afraid the Zodiac might arrive at any moment and kill them all, had Johns wait in nearby Mil's Restaurant in the dark. Her car was eventually located; it had been torched and gutted.

There are many conflicting accounts of the Johns abduction. Most claim he threatened to kill her and her daughter while driving them around, but at least one police report disputes that. Johns' account to Paul Avery of the Chronicle indicates her abductor left his car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight; however, in the two reports she made to the police, she stated he did not leave the vehicle. Some accounts state Johns' vehicle was moved then torched, while others contend it was located where she'd left it. The variety of discrepancies and the fact that Johns' accounts of the event have changed greatly over the years has led many researchers to question if she was an actual Zodiac victim.

Further communications

The Zodiac continued to communicate with the authorities for the remainder of 1970 via letters and greeting cards to the press. In a letter postmarked 20 April 1970, the Zodiac supplied a thirteen-character cipher that he claimed held his name; it has never been solved. The Zodiac went on to state that he was not responsible for the recent bombing of a police station in San Francisco (referring to the 18 February 1970 death of Sgt. Brian McDonnell at Park Station in Golden Gate Park) but added "there is more glory to killing a cop than a cid [sic] because a cop can shoot back." The letter included a diagram of a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would use to blow up a school bus. At the bottom of the diagram was a taunting score: " = 10, SFPD = 0".

Zodiac sent a greeting card postmarked 28 April 1970 to the Chronicle. Written on the card was "I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my BLAST" followed by the Zodiac's cross circle signature. On the back the Zodiac threatened to use his bus bomb soon unless the newspaper published the full details he'd supplied. He also wanted to start seeing people wearing "some nice Zodiac butons [sic]".

In a letter postmarked 26 June 1970, the Zodiac stated he was upset he'd not seen people wearing Zodiac buttons. Since school was out for the summer, he claimed he'd punished them a different way: "I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38." It has been proposed the Zodiac was referring to the murder of Sgt. Richard Radetich a week earlier, on 19 June 1970. At 5:25 am, twenty-five year old Radetich was writing a parking ticket in his squad car when an assailant shot him in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. Radetich died fifteen hours later. SFPD disputes Zodiac's involvement. The murder remains unsolved.

Included with the letter was a Phillips 66 map of the Bay Area. Mount Diablo is circled and crossed, much like the Zodiac's traditional signature, with the numerals zero, three, six, and nine on the lines of the cross, looking rather like a clock face. A note beside the zero reads "is to be set to Mag. N." The letter concludes with a thirty-two letter cipher which, in conjunction with the map, is supposed to locate a bomb he'd buried set to go off in the autumn. It's signed " = 12, SFPD = 0".

In a letter to the Chronicle postmarked 24 July 1970, the Zodiac took credit for the Kathleen Johns abduction, four months after the incident.

In his 26 July 1970 letter, the Zodiac paraphrased a song from The Mikado, adding his own lyrics about making a "little list" of the ways he planned to torture his slaves in "paradice." The letter is signed with a large, exaggerated cross circle symbol and a new score: " = 13, SFPD = 0". A postscript adds that "The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians." Zodiac researcher Gareth Penn discovered in 1981 that a radian angle, when placed over the map, points to the locations of two Zodiac attacks. Penn's discovery is discussed further below.

Riverside

On 27 October 1970, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (who had been covering the Zodiac case for the paper) received a Halloween card signed with a letter 'Z' and the Zodiac's cross circle symbol. Handwritten on the card was the note "Peek-a-boo, you are doomed." The threat was taken seriously and received a front page story on the Chronicle. Soon after, Avery received an anonymous letter alerting him to the similarities between the Zodiac's activities and the unsolved murder of Cheri Jo Bates which occurred four years earlier at the city college in Riverside, California, more than four hundred miles south of San Francisco. He reported his findings in the Chronicle on 16 November 1970.

On 30 October 1966, Bates spent the evening at the campus library annex until it closed at 9:00 pm. Neighbors reported they heard a scream around 10:30 pm. Bates was found dead the next morning a short distance from the library between two abandoned houses slated to be demolished for campus renovations. The wires in her Volkswagen's distributor cap had been pulled out. She was brutally beaten and stabbed to death. A man's Timex watch with a torn wristband was found nearby. The watch had stopped at 12:24, but it is believed the attack occurred much earlier. Also discovered were the prints of a military-style shoe.

File:Zodiac Killer - first letter.jpg

The Confession

A month later, on 29 November 1966, nearly identical typewritten letters were mailed to the Riverside police and the Riverside Press-Enterprise. Titled "The Confession", the author claimed responsibility for the Bates murder, providing details of the crime not circulated to the public, and warned that Bates "is not the first and she will not be the last."

In December 1966, a poem was discovered carved into the bottom side of a desktop in the Riverside City College library. Titled "Sick of living/unwilling to die", the poem's language and handwriting resembles the Zodiac's letters. It was signed with what were assumed to be the initials "rh". Sherwood Morrill, California's top Questioned Documents examiner, stated it was his opinion that the poem was written by the Zodiac.

On 30 April 1967, the six month anniversary of Bates' murder, Bates' father, Joseph, the Press-Enterprise, and the Riverside police all received nearly identical letters. In handwritten scrawl, the Press-Enterprise and police copies read "Bates had to die there will be more," with a small scribble at the bottom which resembles the letter 'Z'. Joseph Bates' copy merely read "She had to die there will be more" with no scribble as a signature.

On 13 March 1971, the Zodiac mailed a letter to the Los Angeles Times. In it he gave credit to the police instead of Avery for discovering his "Riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there."

The connection between Cheri Jo Bates, Riverside, and the Zodiac remains uncertain. Riverside PD maintains that the Bates homicide was not the doing of the Zodiac, but concede some of the Bates letters may have been his work to falsely claim credit.

Lake Tahoe

On 22 March 1971, a postcard addressed to "Paul Averly," believed to be from the Zodiac, appeared to take credit for the disappearance of Donna Lass from South Lake Tahoe, California on 26 September 1970. Made from a collage of advertisements and magazine lettering, it featured a scene from an ad for Forest Pines and the text "Sierra Club," "Sought Victim 12," "peek through the pines," "pass Lake Tahoe areas," and "around in the snow." Zodiac's cross circle symbol was in the place of the usual return address.

Lass was a nurse at the Sahara Hotel and Casino. She worked until approximately 2:00 am on 26 September, treating her last patient at 1:40 am, and was not seen leaving her office. The next morning, her work uniform and shoes were found in a paper bag in her office inexplicably soiled with dirt. Her car was found at her apartment complex, and her apartment was spotless. Later that day both her employer and her landlord received phone calls from an unknown male who falsely claimed Lass had to leave town due to a family emergency. The police and sheriffs' office initially treated Lass' disappearance as a missing persons investigation, suspecting she simply left on her own. Lass was never found. An apparent grave site was discovered near the Claire Tappan Lodge in Norden, California on Sierra Club property, but excavation yielded only a pair of sunglasses.

Researchers are split on the question of Lass being an actual Zodiac victim. Some believe the Lass postcard was not prepared by the Zodiac, but rather, was sent by another person trying to pin blame on the Zodiac for his own crime. Another theory is that the card could actually be from the Zodiac in an attempt to claim credit for a murder he did not commit. Neither the South Lake Tahoe Police nor the Sheriff's Department (each of whom apparently believed the other should investigate) looked into her disappearance.

Santa Barbara

In a Vallejo Times-Herald story that appeared on 13 November 1972, Santa Barbara Sheriff's Detective Bill Baker (ret.) theorized that the murders of a young couple in Santa Barbara County may have been the work of the Zodiac.

On 4 June 1963 (five and a half years prior to the Zodiac's first known murders on Lake Herman Road), high-school senior Robert Domingos and his fiancée Linda Edwards were shot to death on a beach near Lompoc, California, having skipped school that day for "Senior Ditch Day". Police believed that the assailant had tried to tie up the victims, but when they freed themselves and attempted to flee, he shot them repeatedly in the back and chest with a .22-caliber weapon. He then placed their bodies in a small nearby shack and tried, unsuccessfully, to burn it down.

Some believe that the murders of Domingos and Edwards are the work of the Zodiac because of similarities between this case and the Zodiac's attack at Lake Berryessa.

The final letters

After the "Pines" card, the Zodiac remained silent for nearly three years. Then the Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac, postmarked 29 January 1974, praising The Exorcist as "the best saterical comidy" that he had ever seen. The letter included a snippet of verse from The Mikado and an unusual symbol at the bottom that has gone unexplained by researchers. Zodiac concluded the letter with a new score, "Me = 37, SFPD = 0".

The Chronicle received another letter postmarked 14 February 1974, informing the editor that the initials for the Symbionese Liberation Army, SLA, spelled out an old Norse word meaning "kill." The handwriting was not authenticated as the Zodiac's, however.

Another letter received by the Chronicle, postmarked 8 May 1974, had the author complaining that the movie Badlands was "murder-glorification" and asked the paper to cut its advertisements. Signed only "A citizen", the handwriting, tone, and surface irony are all similar to prior Zodiac communications.

The Chronicle received an anonymous letter postmarked 8 July 1974, complaining about one of its columnists, Marco Spinelli. The letter was signed "the Red Phantom (red with rage)". The Zodiac's authorship of this letter is debated.

Another four years passed without communication -- purported or verified -- from the Zodiac. A letter of 24 April 1978 was initially deemed authentic, but was declared by three other experts to be a hoax less than three months later. In recent years, however, the letter has been deemed in some quarters as authentic, despite the experts' opinions. Inspector David Toschi, the SFPD homicide detective who had been on the case since the Stine murder, was thought to have forged the letter, since Armistead Maupin, who wrote "Tales of the City," thought it sounded similar to "fan mail" he received in 1976 that he believed was authored by Toschi. While he admitted writing the fan mail, he denied forging the Zodiac letter and was eventually cleared of any charges. The authenticity of the letter remains in question.

Current status

The last SFPD investigators of the case were Homicide Detail Inspectors Michael N. Maloney and Kelly Carroll. They were the first to submit DNA evidence from Zodiac's letters for analysis, which resulted in a partial genetic profile. DNA testing conclusively ruled out their lead suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, and later Mike Rodelli's suspect, "Mr. X".

The SFPD marked the case "inactive" in April 2004, citing caseload pressure and resource demands. The case remains open in other jurisdictions.

Given the time in which the "canonical" murders occured, and the silence with respect to communications from the perpetrator coupled with no subsequent homicides matching the pattern, it's not unlikely that the Zodiac killer - whoever that person or persons may be - may be already be dead or, at least, may never be brought to justice, which will likely leave his riddles unsolved, the murders unsolved and the victims unavenged.

The Zodiac in pop culture

Movies

• The Zodiac Killer, directed by Tom Hansen and starring Hal Reed and Bob Jones, was released in April 1971.
• Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood, was filmed in San Francisco and released in December 1971. In the movie, which is very loosely based on the Zodiac case, the killer calls himself "Scorpio" (played by Andrew Robinson), who at one point kidnaps a school bus full of children and threatens to kill them all.
• The 1985 movie, The Mean Season, starring Kurt Russell, was heavily influenced by the Zodiac case.
• The fictional "Gemini Killer" in the movie The Exorcist III in 1990 was also loosely based on the Zodiac killer.
• In 1996, Edward James Olmos starred in the made-for-HBO movie, The Limbic Region, which is based on Robert Graysmith's 1986 book, Zodiac.
• Zodiac Killer, a 2005 digitally recorded movie by Ulli Lommel, is about a cat-and-mouse game between the real Zodiac and a young copycat in 2002 Los Angeles.
• The Zodiac, directed by Alex Bulkley, is about a fictional detective in Vallejo obsessed with investigating the real Zodiac. It opened on 17 March 2006 (on what would have been Darlene Ferrin's 59th birthday) on 10 screens nationwide, one of which was in Vallejo, less than a mile and a half from Blue Rock Springs where she was murdered.
• The most recent film to be based on the Zodiac case is Zodiac, a Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures joint production directed by David Fincher. Filming locations included San Francisco and Los Angeles, and it opened in theaters nationwide on 2 March 2007.

Television

• In the second season of the San Francisco cop show Nash Bridges in 1996, Don Johnson's police inspector is on the hunt for a killer copying the Zodiac's work from years before. "The Zodiac" ends with the real Zodiac making a taunting phone call to Bridges.
• The serial killer in the "The Mikado," a 1998 episode from the TV series Millennium, is based directly on the Zodiac.
• The Zodiac Killer was given a full feature episode on America's Most Wanted on 25 February 2007, which included full accounts of all canonical killings.

Novels

There have been a handful of novels either about the Zodiac Killer or based on him:

• The first was The Zodiac Killer: Still At Large in 1977 by Cliff Smith Jr.
• Jerry Weissman wrote The Zodiac Killer in 1979.
• The 1983 novel Legion, by William Peter Blatty, features a killer based on the Zodiac.
• T. Winter-Damon and Randy Chandler's Zodiac novel, Duet With the Devil, came out in 2000.
• Criminal profiler Michael Kelleher wrote Suspect Zero, a 2003 novel about the Santa Rosa coed murders, believed by some to be the work of the Zodiac.
• David Baldacci's 2004 novel Hour Game features a villain who bases killings on the Zodiac Killer's M.O., but claims that he isn't a copycat.

Graphic Novels

The Zodiac has appeared in graphic novels, comic stories, and a trading card set:

• Steven Friel wrote and illustrated "The Zodiac" in Killer Komix, a UK publication, in 1992.
• Jack Herman and Karen Herman wrote and Ed Quinby illustrated "The Zodiac," based on Graysmith's Zodiac; it appeared in Psycho Killers M.I.A. Special, Volume 1, # 2, in 1992.
• "The Zodiac Killer" was card # 83 in the 1992 trading card series, True Crime Series Two: Serial Killers & Mass Murderers.
• Crisis, an illustrated screenplay, is a 2002 story by Matthew Stuart Busch about the Zodiac terrorizing present-day Detroit.

Music

Many popular music groups have paid tribute to the Zodiac murders in both name and song:

• Zodiac Killers released the CD Scorpio Rising in 1992.
• "Body Thief" was performed by Faster Pussycat in 1992.
• Slayer did the song "Gemini" in 1996.
• Supercharger recorded a song in 1997 entitled "Zodiac."
• Macabre did a tribute song called "Zodiac."
• The Zodiac Killers, a San Francisco punk band, released The Most Thrilling Experience in 1999, Have A Blast in 2001, Society's Offenders in 2003 and Radiation Beach in 2005.
• Hip hop artist The Zodiac (real name Brent Whiting) released two CDs featuring songs about the Zodiac Killer, Zeta Omicron Delta in 2004 and JUNE XIIITH in 2006.
• Balzac made multiple music videos featuring the Zodiac Killer, including a short horror movie and a Zodiac-based concept-album under the band name Zodiac.

Further reading

• Beeman, William (writing as “Dr. Oscar Henry Jigglelance”) Jack the Zodiac Parts I & II (White Lite Publishing, Vallejo, CA, 1990).
• Davis, Howard, The Zodiac/Manson Connection (Pen Power Publications, Costa Mesa, CA, March 1997). ISBN 0-9629-0842-8.
• Graysmith, Robert, Zodiac (Berkley; reissue edition, January 2007). ISBN 0-4252-1218-1.
• Graysmith, Robert, Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer (Berkley; reissue edition, January 2007). ISBN 0-4252-1273-4.
• Kelleher, Michael D. and Van Nuys, David, “This is the Zodiac Speaking”: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer (Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, January 2002). ISBN 0-2759-7338-7.
• Oswell, Douglas and Rusconi, Michael, Dr. Zodiac: The Unabomber-Zodiac Connection (CD-ROM; Carfax Publishing, Dover, DE, 1998).
• Penn, Gareth (writing under the pseudonym "George Oakes") Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer, California Magazine November 1981, pp. 111-114, 166-170.
• Penn, Gareth, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
• Penn, Gareth, The Second Power: A Mathematical Analysis of the Letters Attributed to the Zodiac Murderer and Supplement to Times 17 (self-published booklet 1999).
• Rasmussen, William T., Corroborating Evidence II (Sunstone Press, 2006). ISBN 0-86534-536-8.
• Rowlett, Curt, Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy Chapter 9, The Z Files: Labyrinth13 Examines the Zodiac Murders (Lulu Press, 2006). ISBN 1-4116-6083-8.
• Rowlett, Curt, Decoding the Zodiac Killer, Issue 43, Paranoia (magazine), Winter 2007.

External links

• Two New Theories Regarding the Zodiac Case
• The Z Files
• Zodiac killer letters