California 1968 – 1969

“He didn’t just kill people – he also sent anonymous letters to newspapers, teasing the police to catch him.”

Most killers try to hide

The Zodiac Killer did the opposite.

He wanted to be famous.

He wanted to inspire fear, and for many years, things kept working the way he wanted them to.

Between 1968 and 1969, there was a serial killer who murdered at least five people in Northern California.

However, according to his letters, he had 37 victims.

“He attacked a couple who was in a car, shot a taxi driver to death in San Francisco, and contacted his victims in the daytime”

“Everything he did was well-planned and calculated.”

“But what made this murderer particularly unique and notorious was the fact that he sent letters.”

The murderer sent letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and Vallejo Times-Herald.

“He would separate his letters into parts and send them to different papers, demanding they be published on the first page, threatening a killing spree otherwise.”

“He would sign all the letters with the same symbol – the cross within the circle, similar to the sight from a rifle scope.”

The letters contained some kind of code.

According to the criminal, solving the code would reveal his identity.

“Both professional and amateur cryptographers attempted to solve it.”

“The cipher was solved by a high school teacher in a week,”

“One code remained unsolvable for 51 years,”

Finally, in December of 2020, amateurs solved the last one, and it contained ironic statements about the fun he had killing people.

However, the fourth and final cipher, called Z340, remains one of the most researched unsolved codes ever.

“The San Francisco Police Department worked on this case for years.”

Many suspects were investigated,

Arthur Lee Allen was the primary suspect according to many detectives,

“His handwriting matched, as well as the shoe size, and the Zodiac-brand watch that he had matches one mentioned in one of his letters”

However, in 2002, DNA testing ruled out his involvement.”

One of the messages said, “I love killing people”

“It’s so much fun”

“It’s more fun than hunting in the woods.”

By 1974, the letters stopped coming.

“Nobody knows whether the Zodiac Killer died, ran away, or simply got tired of it.”

The case was never closed, and the man responsible for at least five murders remains unknown.

It’s one of the most researched murder cases in American history, and the man behind it remains unpunished.