THE ZODIAC KILLER ( A CASE OF UNSOLVED MYSTERIES)
The Zodiac Killer: Every year millions of people get involved in this criminal case which took place in Northern California in the late of the 1960s and in 1970.
It is known that the killer killed at least five people that can be related to his activity, but some officers suppose that Zodiac can kill up to 37 individuals.
The Zodiac was a lot scarier because he was using vague and obscure methods of communicating with the police and the press and to this day has never been caught, much less identified.
These and other efforts have so far yielded no result, which has bequeathed to the American criminal annals one of its most unsolved cases.
This case remains interesting for the public and for criminal investigators because of the nature of the murderer, his enigmatic 4 signs, and the consequences for criminal profiling and criminalistics.
The Zodiac Killer’s known victims where all attacked in or around the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1968 and early 1969.
The first fanatic attack was made on December 20 1968, high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday were shot dead at close range at a secluded road in Benicia California.
The second was on July 4, 1969; Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were attacked in Vallejo, California.
Unfortunately, Ferrin succumbed to her injuries but Mageau who was also injured was able to give a description of the gunman but no arrest was made.
A third event was on 27/09/1969 when Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were attacked using a knife within Lake Berryessa. Shepard later passed on due to the effects of the beating and shooting, while Hartnell was alive.
The last identified victim was slain on October 11, 1969, when 29-year old San Francisco taxicab driverPaul Stine was murdered with a blow to the head.
These acts were all carried out in a similar pattern the logger hunting young couples in remote areas however the murder of Paul Stine does not form part of this pattern.
One of the most bizarre features of the Zodiac Killer case was mail he used to send newspapers and police coded letters and symbols.
Starting in August 1969, but writing the letters from October 1969, the Zodiac boasted letters to local newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and The Vallejo Times-Herald, threatening to only stop killing if his letters were to be printed in the newspapers.
These letters were sometimes accompanied by ciphers. Some of these ciphers have up to this date not been deciphered in full.
Under these communications, the killer identified himself as “Zodiac” a name that would stick with him by the time he committed the actual crimes. Still one of the most famous ciphers are the 408-symbol cipher which was solved by amateurs Donal and Bettye Harden in 1969.
When decoding the message, several worrisome statements which were as stated below were decoded:
But this cipher didn’t disclose the actual identity of this mysterious fellow called Zodiac and others like the notorious 340-symbol cipher remained undecipherable for decades and were deciphered only in 2020.
The letters which were part of Zodiac comprised cryptograms and that was also horrible;
however, it was made more horrible by the fact that the killer was able to escape from the law despite creating so many leads for his capture.
Those were the details of the crimes that only the killer himself could know, thus strengthening his credibility of the killer. In one of his letters, the Zodiac was even generous enough to include a piece of the shirt stained with Paul Stine’s blood.
His sarcastic attitude plus his provoking enigmas introduced tranquility and enmity that surrounded the society and police for many years.
Zodiac terrorized and continued a sense of panic with his alleged killings of more people than the death toll reported whenever he was through and his threats to kill more individuals.
Nonetheless, during the investigations that involved the participation of the Vallejo Police Department, the San Francisco Police Department and others, the main suspect had never been arrested.
As this paper demonstrates, the Zodiac Killer story is best described as unprecedented and chilling, the case also left a significant imprint on the officers and the advancing tactic of the criminal profiling.
When detective work failed to unravel the mystery behind the killings, police looked at psychological profiling a relatively new concept then.
Experts in profiling opined that the Zodiac must have been a man who needed and enjoyed the recognition which came from domination over people and even the media because he got enjoyment from their fear.
The professional manner executed in the shootings together with the bizarre cryptograms indicate that the killer person was well informed in puzzle and mathematics.
The Zodiac also had a compulsive desire for power treadmill not only over the victims, but also over the public that occurred due to his regular interaction with journalists.
This case is therefore regarded as among the pioneering cases of using psychological profiling in chasing the serial killer.
The Zodiac killer has prompted numerous suspects over the last couple of decades, but none of the suspects have been positively identified as the killer.
Arthur Leigh Allen, a man from Vallejo, was one of the most well- investigated subjects because of the seemingly related circumstances.
Due to some similarities of the Zodiac case, his name was used frequently, and some of them believed that Allen was indeed the Zodiac killer.
Nevertheless, even though several of the clues pointed to him, such as his Zodiac brand wristwatch, and knowledge of cryptography, positive evidence or evidence that could put Allen at the scene of the crimes was never produced.
Although authorities tried to get DNA samples from stamps enclosed in Zodiac letters, none matched Allen, factors whose involvement remained inconclusive. Suspects have been accused over time, but none seems to offer the final investigation that detectives would want.
Over the years, however, invites based on forensic science have shown promise – especially in DNA and genealogy fields. The genealogical databases were successfully used to identify the Golden State Killer in 2018, and, therefore, the Zodiac Killer could also be identified with its help.
Yet, to date – in 2024, there are no advances in identifying the Zodiac members – though the information and new clues are still discovered.
Despite the lack of_solve of this case, the man which called himself Zodiac, and the way he communicated with the police and the public, attracts people’s attention at the present day; many books, docs, and films are devoted to the Zodiac Killer case.
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