Josef Fritzl, aged 73, was arrested on April ,  on suspicion of serious crimes against family members and went on trial in Sankt Pölten, Austria on March , . He was charged with incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement and the negligent homicide of the infant Michael. After a four day trial from which the public and the media were largely excluded, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Case history

Austrian man kept daughter prisoner in cellar for  24 years

Police: Austrian children kept in dungeon were in ‘oppressive’ conditionsTrial date scheduled for Austrian man who kept his daughter in a dungeon for  yearsAustrian man who imprisoned daughter pleads guilty at start of trialJosef Fritzl was born on April ,  in Amstetten, Austria. In , at the age of , he married Rosemarie, , with whom he had seven children: two sons and five daughters including Elisabeth, who was born in . He reportedly began abusing Elisabeth in  when she was  11 years old.
After completing compulsory education at age , Elisabeth started a training course to become a waitress. In January , she ran away from home and, together with a friend from work, went into hiding in Vienna. She was found by police within three weeks and returned to her pare nts. She rejoined her training course and, upon completion in mid-, was offered a job in the nearby city of Linz.
Years of captivity
On August 29,1984 , Elisabeth’s father lured her into the basement of the family home under the pretense that he needed help with carrying a door. He sedated her with ether and moved her into a small concealed underground chamber.
After Elisabeth’s disappearance, her mother filed a missing person report. Almost a month later, her father handed over a letter to the police, the first of several that Elisabeth was forced to write while in captivity. The letter was postmarked Braunau. It stated that she was staying with a friend and was tired of living with her family, warning her parents not to look for her or she would leave the country. Her father told police that she had most likely joined a religious sect.
Over the course of the following  years, Fritzl visited her in the hidden cellar on average once every three days to bring food and other supplies. After his arrest, he admitted that he repeatedly had sexual intercourse with his own daughter and had done so against her will.
Elisabeth gave birth to seven children during her captivity. One child died shortly after birth, and three – Lisa, Monika and Alexander – were removed from the cellar as infants to live with Fritzl and his wife. They adopted Lisa, Monika, and Alexander; they became the three children’sfoster parents with the knowledge of local social services authorities. Officials said that Fritzl “very plausibly” explained how three of his infant grandchildren had appeared on his doorstep. The family received regular visits from social workers, who did not hear complaints or notice anything to arouse their suspicions.
Following the birth of the fourth child in , Fritzl enlarged the prison for Elisabeth and her children from  m ( sq ft) to  m( sq ft). The captives had a television, radio, and video cassette player. Food could be stored in a refrigerator and cooked or heated on hot plates. Elisabeth taught the children to read and write. At times in order to punish them, Fritzl shut off the lights to the basement or refused to deliver food for several days at a time.
Fritzl told Elisabeth and the three children (Kerstin, Stefan, and Felix) who remained in the cellar that they would be gassed if they tried to escape; investigators concluded that this was an empty threat to frighten the captives as there was no gas supply to the basement. Fritzl stated after his arrest that it was sufficient to tell them not to meddle with the cellar door or otherwise they would receive an electric shock and die.
According to his sister-in-law Christine, Fritzl went into the basement every morning at  o’clock, ostensibly to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms. Often he stayed down there for the night – his wife was not even allowed to bring him coffee. A tenant, who rented a ground floor room in the house for  years, said he heard noises from the basement but Fritzl said it was the gas heating system.
Discovery
On April 19,2008 , Kerstin the eldest daughter, fell unconscious, and Josef Fritzl agreed to seek medical attention. Elisabeth helped Fritzl carry Kerstin out of the dungeon and saw the outside world for the first time in  years. She was then made to return to the dungeon where she would remain for a final week. Kerstin was taken by ambulance to a local hospital (Landesklinikum Amstetten) and admitted in serious condition with life-threatening kidney failure. Fritzl later arrived at the hospital claiming to have found a note written by Kerstin’s mother. He discussed Kerstin’s condition and the note with Dr. Albert Reiter. Medical staff found aspects of the story to be puzzling and alerted the police on April , who then broadcast an appeal via public media for the missing mother to come forward and provide additional information about Kerstin’s medical history. The police then reopened the case file on missing Elisabeth. Fritzl repeated his story about Elisabeth being in a cult, and presented what, he claimed, was the “most recent letter” from her, dated January . It was posted from the town ofKematen.
The police contacted Manfred Wohlfahrt, a church officer responsible for collecting information on religious cults. Wohlfahrt raised doubts about the existence of the cult. He noted that Elisabeth’s letters seemed dictated and oddly written. The news covered some of these issues and Elisabeth watched the story on the cellar television. She pleaded with her father to be taken to the hospital. On April , Fritzl released Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs. Fritzl told his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come back after a -year absence. Governor Lenze told ORF that Fritzl had telephoned him and thanked him and the social services for looking after his family during his granddaughter Kerstin’s illness. Fritzl and Elisabeth went to the hospital where Kerstin was being treated on April , . Following a tip-off from Dr. Albert Reiter, that Fritzl and Elisabeth were at the hospital, the police detained them on the hospital grounds and took them to a police station for questioning.
Elisabeth did not provide police with more details until they promised her that she would never have to see her father again. Then, over the next two hours, she told the story of her  years in captivity. Shortly after midnight, police officers completed the three pages of minutes of the interrogation. Josef Fritzl was arrested on suspicion of serious crimes against family members, facing possible charges of false imprisonment, rape, manslaughter by negligence, and incest. During the night of April , Elisabeth, her children and her mother Rosemarie were taken into care.
Josef Fritzl confessed on April ,  to having imprisoned his daughter for  years and having fathered her seven children. Police said Fritzl told investigators how to enter the basement prison through a small hidden door, opened by a secret keyless entry code. Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, had been unaware of what had been happening to Elisabeth.
On April , , it was announced that DNA evidence confirmed Fritzl as the biological father of his daughter’s children.
Fritzl’s defence lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said that although the DNA test proved incest, evidence was still needed for the other allegations: “The allegations of rape and enslaving people have not been proven. We need to reassess the confessions made so far.”
In their May ,  daily press conference, Austrian police said that Fritzl had forced Elisabeth to write a letter the previous year indicating that he may have been planning to release her and the children. The letter said that she wanted to come home but “it’s not possible yet”.Police believe Fritzl intended to pretend he had rescued his daughter from her fictional cult. In the same press conference, police spokesman Franz Polzer said the investigation would probably last a few months, as police planned on interviewing at least  people who had lived as tenants in the Fritzl apartment building in the previous  years.
Dungeon
The Fritzl property in Amstetten is a building dating from around  and a newer building, which was added after , when Fritzl applied for a building permit for an “extension with basement”. In , building inspectors visited the site and verified that the new extension had been built according to the dimensions specified on the building permit. Fritzl had illegally created additional room by excavating space for a much larger basement, concealed by walls. Around  or , according to his statement, he started to turn this hidden cellar into a prison cell and installed a washbasin, a toilet, a bed, a hot plate and a refrigerator. In , he added more space by creating a passageway to a pre-existing basement area under the old part of the property, which only he knew of.
The concealed cellar had a  m (. yd) long corridor, a storage area, and three small open cells, connected by narrow passageways: a basic cooking area and bathroom facilities, followed by two sleeping areas, which were equipped with two beds each. It covered an area of approximately  m ( sq ft). The ceilings were no more than . m (. ft) high.
The hidden cellar had two access points: a hinged door that weighed  kg (, lb) which is thought to have become unusable over the years because of its weight, and a metal door, reinforced with concrete and on steel rails that weighed  kg ( lb) and measured  m (. ft) high and  cm ( ft) wide. It was located behind a shelf in Fritzl’s basement workshop, protected by an electronic code entered using a remote control unit. In order to reach this door, five locking basement rooms had to be crossed. To get to the area where Elisabeth and her children were held, eight doors in total needed to be unlocked, of which two doors were additionally secured by electronic locking devices.
Key events
The key events, in this case, are as follows:
Date Key event Fritzl begins sexually abusing his -year-old daughter, Elisabeth. to Fritzl begins to turn the hidden cellar into a prison cell.August , Fritzl lures Elisabeth, now  years old, into the basement and imprisons her.November Elisabeth has a miscarriage in the th week of pregnancy. The first child, Kerstin, is born, and lives in the cellar until . Stefan is born. He, too, stays in the cellar until . Lisa is born. In May , when she is nine months old, she is discovered outside the family home in a cardboard box, allegedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note asking for the child to be looked after.February The fourth child, Monika, is born. Fritzl enlarges the prison for Elisabeth and her children from  m² ( sq ft) to  m² ( sq ft).December Ten-month-old Monika is found in a stroller outside the entrance of the house. Shortly afterwards, a phone call is made to Rosemarie, apparently, from Elisabeth. The caller asks Rosemarie to take care of the child. However, it is assumed that Fritzl was able to use a recording of Elisabeth’s voice to make the call. Rosemarie reported the incident to the police, expressing her astonishment that Elisabeth knew their new and unlisted phone number.May Elisabeth gives birth to twin boys. One dies after three days; Fritzl removes his body from the cellar and cremates it. The surviving twin, Alexander, is taken upstairs when he is  months old. He is “discovered” in circumstances similar to those of his two sisters.December Felix is born. According to a statement by Fritzl, he kept Felix in the cellar, together with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, because his wife was not able to look after another child.April , Fritzl arranges for the critically ill -year-old Kerstin to be taken to a local hospital.April , During the evening, Fritzl releases Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs, informing his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come home after a -year absence. Later that evening, after an anonymous tipoff during a visit to the hospital, Fritzl and Elisabeth are taken into police custody where she reveals her decades-long imprisonment during questioning.March , After a  day trial in the town of St. Pölten, Fritzl pleads guilty to the charges of the murder by negligence of his infant son/grandson, Michael, as well as the enslavement, incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment of his daughter, Elisabeth, and is sentenced to life imprisonment.Aftermath
Elisabeth Fritzl and her family
After being taken into care, Elisabeth, all six of her surviving children and her mother were housed in a local clinic where they were shielded from the outside environment and received medical and psychological treatment. A local government official speculated on the need to give members of the Fritzl family new identities but emphasized that it was a choice for the family to make.
Owing to their lack of exposure to sunlight, the former captives were extremely pale and could not endure natural light. They were reported to have vitamin D deficiencies and were anemic. They were expected to have underdeveloped immune systems. The clinic head, Berthold Kepplinger, said that the family members needed to stay at the clinic for several months, and that Elisabeth and the two children held captive in the cellar required further therapy to help them adjust to the light after years in semi-darkness. They also needed treatment to help them cope with all the extra space that they now had in which to move about.
In May , a handmade poster created by Elisabeth, her children and her mother at the therapy facility was displayed in the Amstetten town center. The message thanked local people for their support. “We, the whole family, would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you for sympathy at our fate,” they wrote in their message. “Your compassion is helping us greatly to overcome these difficult times, and it shows us there also are good and honest people here who really care for us. We hope that soon there will be a time where we can find our way back into a normal life.”
Kerstin was reunited with her family on June , , when she was awakened from her artificially induced coma. Doctors said she will make a full recovery.
It was revealed that Elisabeth and her children were more traumatized than previously thought. During captivity, Kerstin tore out her hair in clumps, and was reported to have shredded her dresses before stuffing them in the toilet. Stefan was unable to walk properly, due to his height of . m ( ft  in), forced to stoop in the . m ( ft  in)-high cellar. It has also been revealed that normal everyday occurrences, such as the dimming of lights or the closing of doors, plunge Kerstin and Stefan into anxiety and panic attacks. The other three of Elisabeth’s children who were raised by their father are being treated for anger and resentment at the events.
In late July , it emerged that Elisabeth Fritzl ordered her mother Rosemarie out of the villa they have been sharing in a secret location set up for them by a psychiatric clinic. Elisabeth Fritzl was upset about “the huge issue of Rosemarie’s passiveness during Elisabeth’s upbringing — a tortured time when, she says, her brutal father Josef began abusing her when she was just  years old.”
In March , Elisabeth and her children were forced to move out of the family’s hide-away home and returned to the psychiatric clinic where medical staff had started trying to heal the family and unite the upstairs and downstairs siblings during the previous year. She was reported to be distraught and close to a breakdown after a British paparazzo had burst into her kitchen and started taking photographs.
On March ,  Elisabeth Fritzl attended the second day of the criminal trial against her father Josef, in preparation for a book she is to write about her ordeal.
After the trial, Elisabeth and her six children were moved to an unnamed village in northern Austria, where they are living in a fortress-like house. All of the children require ongoing therapy — the “upstairs” children who learned the truth about the lies that their father told them about their mother abandoning them and the abuse they received from their father/grandfather during their childhood, the fact that their siblings were imprisoned in the cellar which none of them knew about at first, and the “downstairs children” for their deprivation from normal development and lack of fresh air and sunshine and the abuse that they also received, as their mother Elisabeth had, from their father/grandfather when he visited them in the basement. All of the children might possibly have genetic problems common to children born of an incestuous relationship. Although Elisabeth is said to be estranged from her mother, Rosemarie — who accepted Fritzl’s story about Elisabeth joining a cult and did not pursue the matter further — Elisabeth allows her three children who grew up in Josef and Rosemarie’s house to visit their grandmother regularly. Rosemarie lives alone in a small apartment.
In June , an Austrian newspaper reported that Elisabeth Fritzl had begun a relationship with one of her bodyguards, identified only as Thomas W. The couple is living together.
Josef Fritzl

Mugshot of Josef Fritzl on the night of his arrest.Biography
Josef Fritzl was born on April ,  in Amstetten, Federal State of Austria, to Josef Fritzl, Sr. and Maria Fritzl. He grew up as an only child raised solely by his working mother. His father had deserted the family when Fritzl was four, and never again came into contact with him. His father, Josef Fritzl, Sr, later fought as a soldier in the Wehrmacht during World War II, and was killed in action in . His name appears on a memorial plaque in Amstetten.
After completing his education at an HTL technical college with a qualification in electrical engineering, he started work at a steel company in Linz. In , at the age of , he married Rosemarie, , with whom he had two sons and five daughters.
In , he served a sentence for raping a woman. After prison, he obtained a job in a construction material firm in Amstetten where he worked from –. Later, he became a technical equipment salesman, traveling throughout Austria.
In , he purchased a guesthouse and an adjacent campsite at Lake Mondsee. He ran it, together with his wife, until .
He retired from active employment when he became  years old in , but continued some commercial activities thereafter.
In addition to the apartment house in Amstetten, where he lived, he owned several other properties which he rented out.
Criminal record
Josef Fritzl was convicted for raping a -year old woman in the city of Linz in  and sentenced to  months in jail. According to an annual report for  and a press release of the same year, he was also named as a suspect in a case of attempted rape and known forindecent exposure. More than  years later, when he applied for the adoption of one child and foster care for two others, of children to whom his daughter Elisabeth had given birth, his criminal record was not made available to local social service authorities since it had been expunged in accordance with Austrian law.
Self-portrayal and psychiatric assessment
After his arrest, Josef Fritzl claimed that his behaviour toward his daughter did not constitute rape but was consensual. His defense lawyer Rudolf Mayer forwarded extracts from the minutes of his talks with his client to the Austrian weekly News for publication. According to these statements, Fritzl said that he “always knew during the whole  years that what I was doing was not right, that I must have been crazy to do such a thing, yet it became a normal occurrence to lead a second life in the basement of my house.”
Regarding his treatment of the family he had with his wife, he stated, “I am not the beast the media make me to be”. Regarding his treatment of Elisabeth and her children in the cellar, he explained that he brought flowers for Elisabeth and books and toys for the children into the “bunker”, as he called it, and often watched videos with the children and ate meals with Elisabeth and the children. Fritzl decided to imprison Elisabeth after she “did not adhere to any rules any more” when she became a teenager. “That is why I had to do something; I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world.” He suggested that the emphasis on discipline in the Nazi era, during which he grew up, might have influenced his views about decency and good behaviour. The chief editors of News Magazine noted in their editorial that they expected Fritzl’s statement to form the basis of the defence strategy of his lawyer. Critics said his statement may have been a ploy to prepare an insanity defence.
Reflecting on his childhood, Fritzl initially described his mother as “the best woman in the world” and “as strict as it was necessary”.Later, he expressed a negative opinion of his mother and claimed that “she used to beat me, hit me until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. It left me feeling totally humiliated and weak. My mother was a servant and she used to work hard all her life, I never had a kiss from her, I was never cuddled although I wanted it – I wanted her to be good to me.” Eventually, he also admitted he had later locked his mother in her room and bricked up her window after telling neighbors that she died, and kept her locked up until her death in .
In a report by forensic psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner, Fritzl’s mother is described as unpredictable and abusive. Fritzl referred to himself as an “alibi” child, meaning that his mother only gave birth to him to prove that she was not barren and could produce children. Fritzl claims that hispathological behaviour is innate. He admits that he planned to lock his daughter up during his prison stint for the earlier rape conviction so that he could contain and express his “evil side”. He said, “I was born to rape, and I held myself back for a relatively long time. I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter.” The forensic psychiatrist diagnosed Fritzl as having severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder and recommended that Fritzl receive psychiatric care for the rest of his life.
Recent reports have brought to light Fritzl’s premeditated plan to lock his daughter up not for discipline but for his own gratification.
Prosecutor’s investigation
In keeping with the agreement that she would never have to see her father again, Elisabeth Fritzl gave a videotaped testimony before Austrian prosecutors and investigators on July , . Christiane Burkheiser, a state prosecutor, and Josef’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, in an adjoining room took part in the process. Josef Fritzl was not present but remained in the Sankt Pölten jail. The testimony, which was not made public, was presented at Fritzl’s trial in March .
Judge Andrea Humer, who presided over the trial, stated medical experts reported Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were in “relatively good health”.
Lawyer Christoph Herbst who represents Elisabeth Fritzl and family, said “fortunately, everything is going very well,” as they spend time to answer the hundreds of letters sent worldwide. Felix, Kerstin, and Stefan, brought up underground with their mother, have learned to swim for the first time. And all of Elisabeth’s children attended a four-day summer camp organized by firefighters with , other young campers, in the later part of the summer in August . The children along with their mother also made day trips, including swimming outings, on which care was taken to keep them out of reach of the paparazzi and to protect their privacy.
On November , , authorities in Austria released an indictment against Josef Fritzl. He would stand trial for the murder of the infant Michael, who died shortly after birth, and face between  years and life imprisonment. He was also charged with rape, incest, kidnapping, false imprisonment and slavery, which carry a maximum -year term.
Excerpts of Elisabeth’s diary were leaked to the media on March , . Prosecutors confirmed that the diary was part of their evidence against Josef Fritzl.
Austria’s reputation
Describing the “abominable events” as linked to one individual case, then-Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer said he planned to launch an image campaign to restore the country’s reputation abroad.
Trial of Josef Fritzl
The trial of Josef Fritzl commenced on March ,  in the town of Sankt Pölten, presided over by Judge Andrea Humer.

Journalists during the Fritzl trialOn day one, Fritzl entered the courtroom attempting to hide his face from cameras behind a blue folder, which he was entitled to do under Austrian law. After opening comments, all journalists and spectators were asked to leave the courtroom, whereupon Fritzl lowered his binder. Fritzl pleaded guilty to all charges with the exception of murder and grievous assault by threatening to gas his captives if they disobeyed him.
In his opening remarks, Rudolf Mayer, the defending counsel, appealed to the jury to be objective and not be swayed by emotions. He insisted Fritzl was “not a monster,” noting that Fritzl had brought a Christmas tree down to his captives in the cellar during the holiday season.
Christiane Burkheiser, prosecuting her first case since being appointed Chief Prosecutor, pressed for life imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane. She demonstrated for jurors the low height of the ceiling in the cellar dungeon by making a mark on the door to the courtroom at m  cm ( ft .in), and described the cellar as “damp and mouldy,” passing around a box of musty objects taken from the cellar, whose odor made jurors flinch.
On the first day of testimony, jurors watched an -hour testimony recorded by Elisabeth in sessions with police and psychologists in July . The tape is said to have been so “harrowing” that the eight jurors did not watch more than two hours at a time. Four replacement jurors were on standby to replace any of the regular jurors in case they could not bear to hear any more of the evidence.
Besides the video testimony, Elisabeth’s older brother Harald testified, as did a doctor specialising in neonatal medicine and the court psychiatrist. Josef’s wife, Rosemarie, and Elisabeth’s children refused to testify.
Fritzl’s attorney, Rudolf Mayer, confirmed that a disguised Elisabeth sat in the visitors’ gallery during the second day of proceedings, at the time her video testimony was aired. “Josef Fritzl recognised that Elisabeth was in court and, from this point on, you could see Josef Fritzl going pale and he broke down,” Mayer said. “It was a meeting of eyes that changed his mind.” The next day, Fritzl began the proceedings by approaching the judge and changing his pleas to guilty on all charges.
On March , , Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for  years. He said that he accepted the sentence and would not appeal. Fritzl is currently serving out his sentence in Garsten Abbey, a former monastery in Upper Austria that has been converted into a prison. He is in a special section of the prison for the criminally insane.

click on the following link to download the docu on fritzl “story of the monster”

Confession: Josef Fritzl says he locked his daughter in a cellar for nearly 24 years

 

This is the man who today confessed that he imprisoned his daughter in an underground chamber for 24 years and fathered her seven children.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, was raped repeatedly since being lured into the dungeon built below the family home in a small Austrian town. Police said she had been “broken” by the experience.

Josef Fritzl, 73, admitted to police that all the children were his.

Three of them – Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five – were held captive with their mother in a series of windowless rooms and never saw the sunlight until they were freed on Saturday.

Incredibly, three others, Alexander, 12, Monika, 14, and Lisa, 16, were raised in the home by Fritzl and his wife. They were adopted by the couple and went to school, leading apparently normal lives.

The other child, a twin, died shortly after birth and the body burned by Fritzl in a boiler. Detectives today revealed details of the complex of rooms where Elisabeth was held since August 1984.

The three children kept prisoner with her were born there and are thought to have spent their entire lives underground.

Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, said: “He has now said that he locked up his daughter for 24 years and that he alone fathered her seven children and that he locked them up in the cellar.”

The case echoes that of Natascha Kampusch who was kept in a cellar by a paedophile in Vienna for eight years from the age of 10 until she escaped last year.

Police are now trying to discover how Fritzl managed to keep his daughter as a sex slave without the apparent knowledge of his 60-year-old wife Rosemarie at the three-storey house in Amstetten, 80 miles west of Vienna.

Elisabeth was this afternoon said to be suffering from a serious physical condition which was deteriorating.

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Bathroom: Bright decorations cannot disguise the ramshackle state of the hiding place 

Sinister: The narrow corridor that leads to the cramped cellar where Elisabeth Fritzl was locked up for 24 years 

Captive: This tiny door led into the sequence of underground rooms where the four were held 

Elisabeth, who was described as pale and malnourished with hair that had turned white, has told police she was held captive since shortly after her 19th birthday, having been abused by her father since the age of 11.

Detectives said she appeared “greatly disturbed” during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be protected.

Fritzl, an electrical engineer, had built a series of connected chambers, less than six feet high, behind a concealed door at the house.

The chambers had areas for sleeping, cooking and washing. Investigators said the basement labyrinth even contained a padded cell.

They refused to show pictures of rooms where the children had been born and hwere the four slept. It is believed the complex extended out beneath a plot of land at the rear of the family home.

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Elisabeth Fritzl, left, as a teenager and Monika, 14, one of her daughters allowed to leave the dungeon 

The only door to the complex was controlled by an electronic lock that only he knew the code for. Fritzl was arrested yesterday and the children have been taken into care.

His wife told detectives she was unaware of the imprisonment and years of sexual abuse taking place in the basement. Amazingly, the couple also rented rooms to lodgers who failed to notice that anything was amiss.

The three imprisoned children were taught to read and write by their mother with Fritzl passing clothing and food through a hatch. A tube provided ventilation.

Their extraordinary captivity only ended when Kerstin fell seriously ill and had to be taken to hospital nine days ago. Police said the 18-year-old had been “surprised” when Fritzl allowed her to go to the hospital.

It was the first time she had left the dungeon.

Doctors found a handwritten note in unconscious Kerstin’s pocket. It was from her mother — begging medics to save her daughter.

Baffled by the illness, the hospital launched an appeal for missing Elisabeth to come forward and provide her medical history. Fritzl freed Elisabeth and the other two children. Kerstin remains in a coma.

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Dark secret: The banal facade of Fritzl’s house in the Austrian town of Amstetten 

Prison: An aerial shot of the Fritzl house, where Elisabeth was held captive for 24 years 

Today police said that when he was arrested, he initially said “nothing” although he was now co-operating with officers.

“He led a double life for 24 years,” said Mr Polzer. “The family lived upstairs. He had children with his own daughter who lived downstairs.

“He did not want to give any details to officers who investigated it.”

Mr Polzer said of the underground chamber: “There are a number of rooms. Everything is very, very narrow and the victim herself, the mother of these children, told us that this was continually enlarged over the years.”

Police are looking at planning records to see if Fritzl ever notified authorities about the building work.

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Family of mystery: Daughter Lisa, who lived a normal life, Fritzl’s wife Rosemarie and his second son, Alexander at the age of 12 

Fritzl had fooled the authorities over the years by telling them that his ” missing” daughter had mysteriously returned on three occasions – in 1993, 1994 and 1997 – to dump three children on his doorstep.

He claimed each time she had left a note saying she was unable to look after them and persuaded authorities she had left to join a cult.

Fritzl and his daughter were picked up on Saturday close to the hospital where Kerstin is being treated.

He kept Elisabeth prisoner by telling her the cellar was booby trapped to explode if she attempted to escape.

Police took the retired electrician with them to discover not just the secret opening to the underground cell, which only he knew, but to slowly,carefully gain entrance because of the fear of hidden explosives.

Held captive: Natascha Kampusch 

The small, keyless door to the dungeon, barely three feet high and two feet wide, was concealed in a workshop in part of the cellar by a shelf filled with cans of paint and other containers.

“Behind the shelf was a door made of reinforced concrete, secured electronically and running on steel rails,” said local police official Heinz Lenze.

“Only the suspect ( Fritzl) knew the code.”

Once inside astonished police found a labrynth of tiny rooms and tight, narrow stone-lined passageways, with uneven floors and a ceiling no higher than 5ft6ins, that was continually renovated and enlarged over the years as Fritzl’s “family” grew.

The retired electrical engineer, desperate to keep his evil plan secret, dug out much of the basement with his bare hands, making regular trips to local building suppliers for materials. Foam insulation was liberally applied as an effective means of sound-proofing.

“It was a prison which he installed with skill and energy,” said Mr Lenze.

The only source of light for Elisabeth and the children was a harsh striplight overhead.

Quite aside from the appalling mental damage, doctors are also concerned to discover what damage has been done to their eyesight after a prolonged period underground.

A television, video recorder and a large radio were their only contacts with the outside world – apart from the hatch through which Fritzl passed them food that was cooked on ‘small hot plates’ on an ancient cooker, and clothes.

Some toys, paper and glue were also found in the dungeon to provided some distraction for the young captives. Their handwork can clearly be seen in the photo of the bathroom where, in an effort to alleviate their unimaginable torment, various poignant children’s drawings adorn the wall.

Mr Polzer said: “The lives of the three children in the cellar is in no way comparable with the lives of their three siblings.

“Since the day they were born they have never seen the light of day. They never had any doctor to care for them when they were sick.

“They learned to speak from their mother in isolation. They were pale, and experienced having to be nearby during the ordeal their mother was put through.”

The case has prompted widespread disbelief in Austria over how such abuse could have been repeated – and why it went unnoticed for so long by the authorities.

“The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong,” the newspaper Der Standard said today.

Questions are being asked about how neighbours could have failed to notice what was happening.

The Lonely Hearts Killers

The Honeymoon Killers
(1970) Poster for the cult film
about Raymond Fernandez
and Martha Beck directed by
Leonard Kastle.

“I’m no average killer!” Raymond Martinez Fernandez told Michigan cops on the day he was arrested. The slim, smartly dressed, balding man sat in the wooden chair between two detectives as he told a tawdry story of sex, lies and murder. He wiped his sweating forehead every few minutes with a white handkerchief supplied by his co-conspirator and obese sex slave, who looked on with wide-eyed admiration and love. For several hours he described their journey through a maze of deception and betrayal that ended with the deaths of as many as 17 women. “I have a way with women, a power over them,” he said. That power, he claimed, was achieved by the practice of voodoo.

Raymond Martinez Fernandez, 34, was born in Hawaii of Spanish parents. His rotund girlfriend, Martha Jule Beck, 29, who weighed well over 200 pounds, lovingly brushed his thinning hair back on his head as he told police how they killed their last victims in the town of Byron Center, Michigan on the night of February 28, 1949. Later, when the victim’s two-year-old daughter refused to stop crying over the loss of her mother, Martha drowned her in a tub of dirty water while Raymond looked on. After the murders, they decided to go to the movies where they munched on popcorn and drank a gallon of soda.

The day-by-day revelations about this bizarre couple had New York City’s press working overtime to keep up with the story that seemed too sleazy even by tabloid standards. Martha’s enormous size was the subject of never-ending speculation by the press who estimated her weight to be anywhere from 200 to over 300 pounds. This constant ridicule caused Martha to write a series of tearful, angry letters from prison to the media complaining of the unfair treatment she received from columnists like Walter Winchell and newspapers like The Daily News and the New York Mirror.

“I’m still a human, feeling every blow inside, even though I have the ability to hide my feelings and laugh,” she said, “But that doesn’t say my heart isn’t breaking from the insults and humiliation of being talked about as I am. O yes, I wear a cloak of laughter.”

Fernandez and Beck came to be known as the “lonely hearts killers” in the nation’s press. Their murder trial took place during the scorching hot summer of 1949 in Bronx Criminal Court where the salacious testimony of “abnormal sexual practices” caused a near riot among spectators. The Latino Lothario and the plump, love-sick girlfriend who killed lonely, sex-starved women was a story weirder and more intriguing than anything out of the trashiest pulp magazines of the 1940s.

Martha

 

Martha Beck

 

She was born Martha Jule Seabrook in 1919 in the town of Milton in northwest Florida. As a small child, Martha developed a glandular condition that caused her to physically mature faster than most children. By the age of 10, she possessed a woman’s body and the sexual drive of an adult. Unfortunately, she was already obese by that age and suffered ridicule from not only her classmates but from her domineering mother as well. It was claimed at Martha’s murder trial in 1951 that her brother sexually assaulted her at an early age. When she told her mother about the incident, she blamed Martha and beat her. Wherever she went thereafter, her mother followed her. If a boy showed any interest in Martha, her mother was sure to chase the boy away with a barrage of insults and threats. Throughout her teenage years, Martha was the focus of cruel jokes and insults which drove her further within herself. She became reclusive, withdrawn and had virtually no friends her own age.

Later, Martha attended a nursing school in Pensacola where she graduated first in her class in 1942. But because of her appearance, she was unable to gain employment in the nursing field. She was forced to take a job working for a mortician in a local funeral home preparing female bodies for burial. It was a surreal environment for Martha who was already remote and lonely. Tending to the bodies of the dead at all hours of the day and night, she may have found a strange solace in the company of those who could not hurt her with criticism and ridicule. She lived with the dead.

In 1942, desperate to begin a new life, she moved to California. She soon got a job at an Army hospital working as a nurse. But at night, Martha would frequent the city’s bars where she would pick up soldiers on leave and at times, have sex with some of them. As a result of one of these encounters, she became pregnant. The father was a soldier who was uninterested in her. When he discovered Martha was pregnant he attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself into a nearby bay. Unable to convince the father to wed and deeply ashamed that a man would rather die than marry her, she returned to Florida depressed and alone.

In Milton, Martha soon realized that she had to explain the pregnancy. She made up a story that she met and married a Navy officer in California. She bought a wedding ring and wore it proudly around town. Her husband would soon return from the Pacific and then everyone would meet him. Of course, that day could never happen so she had to come up with a remedy. She arranged to have a telegram sent to herself announcing that her husband was killed in action. She went into hysterics when she received the “news.” The town mourned for her and the story even appeared in the local papers. Martha received a great deal of attention and sympathy for her “loss.” In the spring of 1944, she gave birth to a daughter, Willa Dean.

A New Direction

 

Raymond Fernandez

 

He bought passage on another ship headed for Alabama. When the boat arrived at the port of Mobile, Fernandez did a stupid thing. He stole a large quantity of clothing and items from the ship’s storeroom that were clearly marked. When he tried to pass through customs, he was immediately arrested. He had no explanation for his conduct and when he was asked why he committed the theft, he said, “I don’t know. I can’t think. I can’t say why I did it. I just saw other men putting a towel or two in their bags, so I thought I’d do the same. Only I just couldn’t seem to stop.” He was sentenced to one year in the federal penitentiary in Tallahassee, Florida. While he was in prison, Fernandez became cellmates with a Haitian man. This man, a follower of the ancient religion Vodun, introduced Raymond to the practice of voodoo and plunged him into the world of the occult.

He became convinced that he had a secret power over women that originated with voodoo. His sexual powers were at their peak, he believed, when they were enhanced by the energy of the Vodun. Erroneously described as an evil religion, it is a derivative of several African religions, mostly Nigerian, some of which go back over 5,000 years. Raymond fell into the dark side of voodoo and believed that he was a oungan(priest) who could obtain his mystical powers from the Loa (spirits). He read the notorious “Haiti or the Black Republic,” written in 1884 and the source of a great deal of misinformation about the Vodun religion. It contained lurid descriptions of human sacrifice and tortures, which later captured the imagination of Hollywood filmmakers who produced films that perpetuated that myth. Fernandez told friends that he could make love with women from great distances by placing voodoo powders inside the envelopes. In his letters, he asked his victims to send a lock of their hair, an earring, or some personal item that he could utilize in voodoo rituals to strengthen his supernatural control. Unsuspecting women, he believed, then fell at his feet, consumed by the erotic sexual persuasion of Raymond Fernandez, voodoo houngan.

In 1946, Raymond was released from prison and moved to Brooklyn to live with his sister. His relatives were upset with his appearance, which had changed dramatically since the accident. He was mostly bald where before he had an abundance of rich, dark hair. The scar from the accident was plainly visible on the top of his head. Raymond locked himself in his room for days at a time and complained of painful headaches. During this period, he began to write dozens of letters to “lonely hearts” clubs where, through the mails, he began to seduce gullible females who were looking for men. Once he gained their trust, he would steal money, jewelry, checks; whatever he could embezzle. Then, he would disappear forever. The victims, often too embarrassed to complain, rarely reported the episodes to the police.

Death in La Linea

For months, Fernandez immersed himself in the world of lonely hearts clubs, writing letters to numerous women, often at the same time. In 1947, he began a correspondence with a Jane Lucilla Thompson who had recently separated from her husband. She was lonely, susceptible to kindness and ripe for the picking. After a letter-writing courtship, Jane Thompson agreed to meet Fernandez. In October 1947, they bought cruise ship tickets with Jane Thompson’s money and took a trip to Spain. For several weeks, they traveled together and booked hotel rooms as man and wife. They dined and took sightseeing trips across the Spanish countryside.

Fernandez, though, was still legally married to his first wife, Encarnacion Robles. Eventually, he found his way to La Linea where Encarnacion lived with his two kids. He introduced her to Jane and for a time, the unlikely three frequently dined out on the town. Things seemed to be going well, but on the night of November 7, 1947, something happened between the two women. It is believed that some type of a disagreement or fight erupted between Raymond and Jane at the hotel in La Linea. He was seen running out of the room late that night.

 

Jane Thompson

 

The next morning, Jane Lucilla Thompson was found dead in her room of unknown causes. Her body was removed and buried without an autopsy. Later, when suspicions of murder by poison were aroused, her body would be exhumed. Meanwhile, Fernandez skipped town, leaving his wife, the long-suffering Encarnacion, alone once more. He caught the next boat to the United States where he showed up at Jane’s old apartment in New York City. With the forged last will and testament of Jane Thompson in his hand, he took possession of the apartment and all the furnishings despite the fact that Jane’s elderly mother lived there.

During this tumultuous time, while Raymond traveled through Spain with Jane Thompson, dined with both women and then confiscated the New York City apartment from the mother of his latest victim, Fernandez continued his correspondence with dozens of women.

One of them was Martha Seabrook Beck.

In sunny Florida, Martha went about her business at the Pensacola Hospital where she was so good at her job, she was made supervisor of all the nurses in just six months time. Her professional career was finally on track but her social life and her yearning for romance was still at a dead end. After she wrote her first letter to Mother Dinene’s club, she waited nearly two weeks for a return letter. And each day she was disappointed when none arrived. But sometime before Christmas Day in 1947, she received her first and only reply.

The letter was from a Raymond Fernandez from West 139th Street in New York City. He said he was a successful and well-respected businessman who made his fortune in the import and export trade. The words were written in an elaborate manner, extremely courteous and seemed sincere. He wrote that he was a Spaniard who had recently left his country to come to America for better business opportunities. He now lived alone “here in this apartment much too large for a bachelor but I hope someday to share it with a wife.” Fernandez wrote that he knew Martha was a nurse and he wrote to her because “I know you have a full heart with a great capacity for comfort and love.”

It was too much for the starry-eyed Martha. She carried the letter with her everywhere she went and read it at every opportunity. She couldn’t believe how well he wrote and expressed himself. She immediately bought expensive stationery and began a two-week correspondence that included a dozen letters and an exchange of photographs. The photos were a little bit of a problem. Of course, Martha didn’t want to scare off the prospective Romeo with a full frontal view of her generous size. Instead, she sent Fernandez a group photo of all the nurses at the hospital in which she was partially hidden behind a row of friends. In the accompanying letter, she wrote “it doesn’t do me justice.”

She couldn’t have known that size or appearance was of little concern to Raymond Fernandez. By this time, he had already defrauded, tricked, deceived and stole from dozens of women across the country. He didn’t care if his victims were fat, skinny, old or young. He had only one criterion: they had to have assets. When he learned that Martha was a nurse, he assumed that she had money or a house or something of value. He knew that he would have to develop a relationship by mail and maybe a telephone call or two before arranging a face-to-face meeting. He had to build trust and inspire a level of sexual anticipation in his victims. Through repeated acts of trial and error, he built up a standard routine and he followed that script almost in every instance right up to the end.

When the victim realized that she had been “taken,” most times she was reluctant to call the police. There were strong feelings of humiliation, guilt and even complicity in the crime. And above all, the women did not want their names dragged into public view as “lonely hearts” seeking men through newspaper ads. The self-absorbed Fernandez just assumed that most women were satisfied with his sexual dexterity and imagined they simply accepted the theft as a valid price to pay for a few days or weeks of happiness with a wonderful lover like him.

After a few letters, back and forth, Fernandez performed the necessary step of asking Martha for a lock of her hair. With this hair, Fernandez was able to perform his voodoo ritual, which he believed would make Martha unable to resist his sexual charms. He followed directions from a book written by William Seabrook called Magic Island, a bible of voodoo and secret spells. He considered it a good omen that his favorite author and his latest victim shared the same name.

Martha was thrilled that a man would ask for a lock of her hair. That had never happened before. She happily sent a generous piece of her hair with the very next letter and doused it with a smattering of perfume. Maybe her turn had finally come, she may have thought. Maybe she imagined that Raymond Fernandez would be her knight in shining armor, her dream lover to take her away from the daily routine of bedpans and a life of drudgery.

Maybe her luck had finally changed.

Delphine and the Baby

Beck and Fernandez quickly left Valley Stream and headed west to Grand Rapids, Michigan where the next victim was waiting. For several weeks, Fernandez corresponded with a young widow named Delphine Downing, 41, who also had a two-year-old child, Rainelle. Delphine also knew Fernandez as “Charles Martin,” a successful businessman in the export trade who also had a special love for children. So when “Charles” wrote Delphine and told her that he was coming for a visit to Byron Center, a suburb of Grand Rapids, she was pleasantly surprised. She also didn’t mind when he said that he would be bringing his sister, Martha, along.

When they met, in late January 1949, Delphine was impressed with “Charles” and may have thought that she had a future with him. She liked his courteous manner and considerate attitude toward Rainelle. Before the month was out, he was having sex with Delphine, a development that had Martha quietly seething with rage. But Delphine’s happiness was short lived. One morning, she entered the bathroom and accidentally observed “Charles” without his toupee. She was shocked at his baldness and the ugly scar on the top of his head.

She accused Fernandez of fraud and deception. Fernandez turned on the charm to placate her, but nothing worked. Martha was still burning inside but remained quiet, hoping the situation would calm down. She convinced Delphine to take some sleeping pills. While the pills did their work, Rainelle began to cry, perhaps sensing that her mother was not acting normally. Martha, already furious with Delphine and Fernandez, suddenly grabbed the child and began to choke her into unconsciousness causing obvious bruises on her neck. Fernandez was angry.

“If she wakes up and sees Rainelle, she’ll go to the police!” he said.

“Do something, Ray!” Martha said. Fernandez went into the next room and retrieved a handgun that belonged to Delphine’s dead husband. He wrapped the pistol in a blanket and placed the muzzle against Delphine’s head. He pulled the trigger, sending a bullet into her brain, which killed her instantly. Rainelle watched the entire event from a few feet away. Then, they wrapped Delphine up in sheets and carried her into the basement. They dug a large hole and dumped the body in. Fernandez covered the grave with cement while Martha dutifully cleaned up the murder scene.

For the next two days, they made their plans to escape. They cashed in whatever checks that Delphine had and looted the house of all valuables. Meanwhile, Rainelle cried constantly and refused to eat. They talked over what should be done with the little girl but could not agree. Ultimately, Fernandez told Martha to get rid of her.

“I can’t do it, Ray, I can’t!” she pleaded. But Martha was already in too deep. She was accomplice to several murders and partner to dozens of frauds and thefts. She had no real home and had abandoned her own children to be with her Svengali lover. And now, after burying yet another body to hide their crimes, Fernandez wanted her to do the unthinkable. She may have tried to resist, but his power over her was complete. As Rainelle continued to sob, Beck and Fernandez transferred some of the water that had accumulated in the basement and filled an empty metal tub to the brim. Then, in an act of callous depravity, Martha picked up the child and held her under the water until she drowned. A few minutes later, Fernandez was digging another grave next to Delphine. Only this one was a lot smaller.

Although they were now free to leave town and move on, they chose not to. Instead, Martha and Raymond went to the movies. Later when they came back to the apartment, they began to pack their bags. There was a knock at the door and when Fernandez opened it, he found two stern-looking cops standing in front of him. Suspicious neighbors had called the police.

The Arrest

After they were arrested on February 28, 1949, Beck and Fernandez were brought to the Kent County D.A.’s office where they were questioned by the police and the District Attorney. Perhaps because they were already resigned to their fate, neither asked for an attorney nor did they attempt to avoid questioning. “I’m no average killer,” Fernandez said to investigators. Together they told a salacious story of sex, deception and murder to the police. They signed a 73-page confession in the presence of Kent County D.A. Roger O. McMahon who assured them they would never be turned over to the New York police. Fernandez and Beck were aware there was no death penalty in Michigan and were content to remain in Kent County rather than be extradited back to New York to face charges for the Fay killing.

“The electric chair scares me!” Martha said. With the promise that if they told the truth, Fernandez could be out of prison in six years with time off for good behavior, they cooperated fully with investigators.

Martha Beck

The next day, the Lonely Hearts murder case was in the nation’s headlines. It was page one in every big city newspaper. The N.Y. Times wrote, “3 ‘Lonely Hearts’ Murders Trap Pair; Body Dug Up Here.” Wherever Beck and Fernandez went while in custody, the photographers followed, hoping to catch a photo of America’s most dysfunctional couple. And just as soon, the process of dehumanizing Martha Beck began.

The papers called her “fat,” “simpering,” “Big Martha,” “a 200 lb. figure of wrath,” “the giggling divorcee,” “unattractive,” “a weird woman,” and other humiliating terms. Each newspaper story published during that period included her weight, which was falsely reported in nearly every instance. (Her actual weight at the time of her arrest was 233 pounds.) Unfortunately, the New York press has a long and shameful history of such reporting, particularly in murder cases where the accused is a female. From the time of Ruth Snyder in 1927, a woman convicted of murdering her husband, right up until the modern era, the city’s tabloids often lose every sense of objectivity when it comes to reporting on criminal trials in which the defendant is a woman. Snyder, especially, was vilified by the press in a way that is seldom seen for any criminal defendant, male or female. Her case became the journalism benchmark on how a woman can be totally demonized by newspaper reporting.

Raymond Fernandez in jail

Headlines such as “Reveal Lonely Hearts Blood Money Dealings,” “Hearts Killer Explodes at Attorney,” and “Fernandez Tells Strange Love Story” built an image in the public’s eye that the two defendants were already guilty and a trial was just a necessary formality. In a startling display of the media’s bias in this case, even just a cursory read of the press coverage before and during the murder trial reveals an expectation, even a demand, that Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez receive the death penalty. The pressure for them to die was building.

During the week of March 8, 1949, after several phone calls from New York Governor Thomas Dewey to the state of Michigan, a deal was cut with Kent County prosecutors. They would waive criminal charges for the Downing murders and permit New York to extradite the defendants to face charges in the Janet Fay murder.

The reason was simple: Michigan had no electric chair.

The Trial Circus

Martha Beck, attorney Rosenberg (mid-
dle) and Raymond Fernandez

Amidst a stunning, deadly heat wave that gripped the nation that summer, the trial of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez opened on June 28, 1949. A young Manhattan attorney, Herbert E. Rosenberg, was chosen to represent Martha and Raymond. Of course, one attorney to represent both defendants was a violation of ethics and unfair to the accused, but the decision was allowed to stand. A change of venue from Nassau County, Long Island, where the Fay murder was committed, was granted and the trial moved to the more spacious, more accessible Bronx Supreme Court near baseball’s famous Yankee Stadium. But nothing could save the spectators from the oppressive heat. Over the July 4th weekend in 1949, at least 881 people died nationwide from heat and accidents, a record that still stands today.

Judge Ferdinand Pecora sat on the bench, a stern but fair jurist who had a reputation of moving things along in his trials. The prosecutor was Nassau County District Attorney Edward Robinson Jr. who was on the case since the very beginning and participated in the deal to extradite the defendants back from Michigan. The prosecution began its case with a barrage of witnesses including the medical examiner, friends of Janet Fay from Albany and the landlord from Janet’s apartment. Michigan investigators followed them to the stand and forensic detectives later explained the substantial physical evidence to the court.

Raymond Fernandez took the stand on July 11, 1949. He denied any role in the Fay killing and said that he only met Martha a short time before by writing to lonely hearts clubs. He admitted confessing to the Michigan authorities but wished to retract the entire statement because he said he confessed only to save his sweetheart, Martha. In a soft voice and often smiling over at Martha as she nodded approvingly during his testimony, Fernandez appeared the picture of the sophisticated Spanish gentleman.

“All my statements were made for the purpose of helping Martha,” he said softly, exposing his gold lined front teeth. “I love her. It couldn’t be anything else,” he added.

But prosecutor Edward Robinson jumped all over Fernandez’s story by bringing up Jane Thompson, Delphine Downing, Rainelle Downing and Myrtle Young, all dead after meeting with Raymond Fernandez. Robinson kept after him in a shouting, blistering examination.

“Mr. Fernandez is not deaf!” said Martha from her seat after one exchange. But Fernandez scored points also, especially when he described the Michigan interrogation.

“Everybody was permitted to question me, including the newspapermen,” he said. “I didn’t know if I was coming or going. And the D.A. said that whatever I said would not be used against me.” Fernandez regained his composure and continued on, sensing that this point was one to dwell on. “They would look upon me as a murderer in New York and let her go,” he said. “As a man, I could take it better than a woman. If I cooperated, they said I would do six years and be paroled. Then I could do what I liked. If I didn’t cooperate, I would go to jail for life.”

Lurid Details

But the defendants had too much against them. The lengthy confession with all its gruesome detail came back to haunt them many times over. As the statement was read into the record, the courtroom gasped when they heard descriptions of the murders. “I can still hear it! The blood was dripping, dripping, dripping and the sound of it just sounded like it could be heard all the over the house!” Martha had told the Michigan investigators. While Fernandez was strangling Mrs. Fay, she said, her false teeth fell out. They had the presence of mind to dispose of them because “we realized in case her body was found, if the teeth were there, that would be a mode of identification.”

D.A. Robinson then asked Fernandez if he shot and killed Delphine Downing.

“That is true,” he said simply. But when asked if he killed Janet Fay, he denied it. At that point, Martha suddenly jumped out of her seat.

“I think at this time, your honor, I want to take the stand!” she shouted. Judge Pecora admonished her as her attorney pushed her down into the seat. Page after page of their confession, each one more damaging than the last, went on to describe their twisting journey through deception, sex, fraud and murder.

The testimony of Raymond Fernandez included descriptions of extensive sexual relations he had with his various victims. Much was made of a three-way strip poker game he played with Martha and Esther Henne, one of his victims. The last hand was played for who would have the pleasure of sleeping with Fernandez. Martha won. This type of testimony continued through the morning of July 21 and was so lurid that “unauthorized persons were not permitted to loiter outside the courtroom.” TheN.Y. Times said that “many of the would-be spectators, predominantly women, did without lunch in order not to lose their places.”

Andrew Kehoe
“Criminals are Made, Not Born.”
Was found painted at Kehoe’s farm.

ANDREW KEHOE
BORN : February 1, 1872
DIED : May 18, 1927
KILLED: 45 people
 Place: Bath, Michigan.

Andrew Kehoe, a farmer who served as treasurer of the local school board, was furious with new taxes levied to pay for the then 5-year-old school. He openly opposed the creation of the consolidated school in 1924, believing it would create financial problems.

For much of the spring in 1927, Kehoe strung wires and hid dynamite in the basement of the 250-student school about 10 miles northeast of Lansing.  He was able to do this because school administrators thought Kehoe, known for his penny-pinching ways, was doing odd jobs to save the school the expense of hiring an electrician.

Kehoe was pushed over the edge when the mortgage on his farm was foreclosed.  It seems that by wiring up the school he was punishing Bath’s citizens. In particular the one’s that had voted for the new tax, a tax that he believed had left him with not enough money to keep paying the mortgage of his farm.

So, A few minutes before 9:45 on May 18, 1927, apparently a sunny May morning, Kehoe entered the school. Most students were inside, finishing up exams the day before school was to recess for the summer.  It would seem he set a timing device for his ‘gift’ to the townsfolk of Bath.

The Mass Murderer – Baruch Goldsteen
Baruch Goldstein
Arab terrorists kill Israelis constantly – and the terrorists are quickly forgotten. One Jew, Boruch Goldstein, opened fire in a mosque over a year ago… and the world Jewish community hasn’t stopped talking about it. As far as point 1 above is concerned, the Arabs in the Cave Of Machpela on Purim morning a year ago were not engaged in physically attacking any Jews. Arguably, it should be noted that virulent anti-Jewish sentiment is regularly whipped up among the crowds of Moslem worshippers when they go to their Mosques. Anyone who lives in Israel can readily testify to the uneasiness and dread that greets all Jewish Israelis when Friday rolls around. Will the Arabs riot when they come out of the mosque on Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount) ? , is a question whose answer has all to often been anwered with a chilling “yes”.
Cho Seung-Hui

 
Cho Seung-Hui 23 years of age died April 16, 2007 from suicide, but not before he killed 32 innocent people on is way.  Cho Seung-Hui went on a total rampage killing 32 people at the Virginia Tech.  This shameless act by Cho is very disturbing.  Cho Seung Hui was a senior in VT Tech who add little or no friends, plus a girl and his room mates where claming a false sexual harassment suit on him, which was getting him kicked out.  This being, Cho Seung-Hui stupidly went to couple different dorms and started cowardly shooting fellow students, for revenge.  Cho Seung-Hui ruin lots of peoples lives on that Monday.

Cho Killed more people then any one person has killed in American History.  That being, Cho Sueng-Hui’s behavior was the largest school shooting of all time as well.

Cho Seung-Hui Videos – The videos of the Cho Seung-Hui School Shooting and Pictures

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	ABERNATHY Debbie May	*../../..	+../../..
	WA
	Victim of RIDGWAY_gary_leon

	ABIGOSIS Yvonne Marlene	*../../..	+../../..
	Vancouver
	Possible victim of PICKTON_robert_william

	ABOTSWAY Sereena	*1971/08/20	+../../..
	Vancouver
	“You were all part of God´s plan. He probably took most of you home. But he left us with a very empty spot.” From a poem written by Sereena ABOTSWAY about her friends that had disappeared from the Vancouver Downtown Eastside.
	Possible victim of PICKTON_robert_william

	ABRAHAM Sharon Nora Jane	*1965/09/15	+../../..
	Vancouver
	Possible victim of PICKTON_robert_william

	ADAMS Gemma	*//	+2006/../..
	Ipswich
	Victim of SUFFOLK Ripper

	Adelina	*//	+../../..
	Possible victim of HOFFMANN_marc

	AIME Laura	*1957//	+1974/10/31
	UT Salt Lake City
	Victim of BUNDY_theodore_robert

	ALLENBACH Elaine	*1965/04/26	+../../..
	Vancouver
	Possible victim of PICKTON_robert_william

	ALLEN Wendy Louise	*//	+../../..
	Vancouver
	Possible victim of PICKTON_robert_william

	ANTOSH Yvonne Shelly	*//	+../../..
	WA
	Victim of RIDGWAY_gary_leon

	ARSENEAULT Angela Mary	*1977/05/20	+../../..
	Vancouver
	Possible victim of PICKTON_robert_william

	ASKEW Betty	*1945//	+1995/../..
	Victim of BRITT_eugene_victor

	ATKINSON Patricia	*1945//	+1977/../..
	Bradford
	Victim of SUTCLIFFE_peter_william

	AUTHORLEE Martina Theresa	*//	+../../..
	WA
	Victim of RIDGWAY_gary_leon

	AVENT Pammy	*//	+../../..
	WA
	Victim of RIDGWAY_gary_leo

Back then, the streets of South Los Angeles, better known to the greater universe as South Central, were littered with the dead and the forgotten. The people were jaded; used to being ignored by the police, and were living with an even worse enemy: the crack epidemic.

The murders blended in—there were nearly 800 in 1985 in the city, according a Nightline report. In South L.A., over a four-year period, 52 prostitutes were killed—garnering them the nickname, the “strawberry murders,” after a street term for women who traded sex for drugs. According to The Vancouver Sun, a number people were convicted for some of the killings—but 34 of the 52 murders remained unsolved. The police told ABC News at the time, they believed the murders were the work of four or five different men. One of the killers, Michael Hughes, was caught. Another, Chester Turner was sentenced to death. Another, Louis Crane was convicted of strangling four prostitutes and later died in prison.

Sketch of suspect with age progression

But, it wasn’t until relatively recently that the Los Angeles Police Department realized that there was still a serial killer in their midst.

Nicknamed “the Grim Sleeper” by Christine Pelisek, the reporter for LA Weekly who broke the case, the unknown man was still at large on the streets of South L.A., looking for his next victim.

Until July 2010.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr. in 1988A suspect was identified by a “familial” DNA search of one million samples and ordered by Attorney General Edmund “Jerry” Brown—the DNA of the son of the suspect served as the initial clue for the LAPD. On Wednesday, July 7, they were issued a search warrant, by Thursday morning, the green house at 1728 West 81st Street in Los Angeles, had been turned into a crime scene and media circus. One Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was arrested and charged with ten counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

But for years—even just last week—it seemed the case might never be solved.

The victims
The murders linked to the killer first began in 1985, at the height of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. The first known victim was Deborah Jackson. She was 29 when she was found with three bullet wounds to the chest. She was a cocktail waitress, who, according to America’s Most Wanted, had left her friend’s apartment and was walking to the bus stop when she disappeared.

Victims from left to right: Debra Jackson, Henrietta Wright and Thomas Steele

Just over a year later, another victim, Henrietta Wright was found a few miles away from Jackson’s body. Like the other women, she had been sexually assaulted and shot.

Bernita SparksHot on the heels of Wright’s death, on August 14, 1986, another body was found. This one proved to be the anomaly—Thomas Steele, 36, who, LA Weekly reported, had once worked as a pimp, and who was in town from San Diego visiting family, was found in the middle of an intersection.

Many of the victims had been just going out to run an errand, or had been on their way to a party or a quick stop somewhere. Bernita Sparks, 23, had run out to grab some cigarettes on April 15, 1987, and never came home. She was found in the dumpster on Western Avenue the next day: Sparks’ cigarette run turned into a beating, strangulation and death by shooting.

America’s Most Wanted reported that Alicia “Monique” Alexander, 18, had been making a run to the store for her dad; she never returned and was found a few days later. Like others, she had been sexually assaulted and shot.

Mary Lowe, 26, had gone out on Halloween night in 1987 to the Love Trap Bar. Walking to or from her destination, at some point, the killer picked her up. She was found the next day in an alleyway on Western Avenue. According to America’s Most Wanted, a neighbor had spotted her getting into a reddish-orange Pinto, thus giving police one of their first clues. The neighbor also stated that the driver was male, young and black.

Victims from left: Alicia Alexander, Mary Lowe and Lachrica Jefferson

One victim seemed to signal that the killer was trying to communicate something to or by his victims: Lachrica Jefferson’s body was left in an alley, her faced covered with a napkin. The word “AIDS” was scrawled ominously on the napkin.
The sole survivor
Enietra MargetteThe cops had a break in the case on November 20, 1988, when Enietra Margette (a pseudonym given to the media) had an encounter with the killer. Like the others, she was walking to the store, on her way to a party, when she came across a well-dressed man driving an orange Pinto with white racing stripes which made it look much like a toy car. She told America’s Most Wanted and LA Weekly that he had asked her if she wanted a ride; she initially rebuffed him in a playful back and forth, before he persuaded her to enter the car. Once inside, LA Weekly reported, Margette was impressed. The car was well taken care, the man was clean cut, if not exactly her type, and she invited him along to the party she was going to. He stopped at the house he claimed to be his uncle’s, and got out a few minutes. Returning, though, his mood had changed: “He asked me, ‘Why did you dog me out?’” When she protested, he pulled a gun and fired.

He had shot her, and, though she noticed the blood, she didn’t panic—yet. She blacked out and when she woke up, a Polaroid camera was flashing in her face and the man was on top of her, raping her. She pleaded with him to take her to the hospital; he refused, saying that he couldn’t get caught, and pushed her out of the car while it was still in motion.

According the LA Weekly interview, Margette made her way back to the friend’s house and waited for them to come back from the party; she was taken to the emergency room, and managed to survive. In 2008, she began to give interviews to the press, first under the cover of the dark, then showing her face, using a fake name.

Margette told Newsweek that her assailant had called her by the name of a very well known neighborhood prostitute, for whom she’d been mistaken just a week before.

“I turned around and said, ‘What did you say?’ and as soon as I turned to face him, that’s when he shot me … I said, ‘Why did you shoot me?’ He said, ‘You dogged [insulted] me.’ I told him, ‘You don’t know me. You’ve got the wrong person.’ “

This, in tandem with the “AIDS” message on the napkin over Jefferson’s face seemed to indicate a person who was spiteful of prostitutes or prostitution in general. The bullet extracted from her wound was matched to those of prior victims of the “strawberry killings.”

Perhaps spooked by the close encounter, this was the last known attempt by the killer for many years: Eight victims over three years. And then, just like that, the assailant disappeared. People were still being murdered and dumped in alleys in South Central, of course. But, police would come to determine, none of the subsequent murders could be connected to the initial eight murders for 14 years.

Two suspects
Roger HausmannThroughout the investigation, only two suspects had reared their heads: one was Roger Hausmann, who the LA Weekly did an extensive profile on. Hausmann was an unlikely suspect—for one thing he didn’t match the profile of a middle-aged black man. According to the LA Weekly, Hausmann had been arrested for having sex with a minor but then married the minor in question. Unquestionably unsavory, he had been picked up throughout the years for assault, pimping, lewd acts against a child, carrying loaded and concealed weapons, among other petty crimes, according to an LA Weekly profile. It didn’t help that he had allegedly mouthed off to Fresnopolice about killing prostitutes, according to an LA Weekly story. But when his DNA was tested, he was off the hook. He wasn’t the killer.

Los AngelesSheriff’s Deputy Rickey Ross, though, was the first suspect pursued seriously by police.

In 1989, Ross was arrested in connection to the string of crimes now believed to be that of the ‘Grim Sleeper.’ He was arrested and found with a 9mm in February 1989, but after several months and an independent investigation discovered that the LAPD crime lab’s ballistics tests were inaccurate, the charges were dropped.

At first glance, Ross seemed like a good fit, especially considering the eyewitness details of Enietra Margiette. He was black and well dressed, but he didn’t look a whit like the picture she had conjured with the sketch artist. And though he allegedly had personal problems and was picked up by police with a prostitute, he wasn’t guilty. He was fired, and later sued the department for $400 million. The case was settled out of court.

A break in the case
In 2001, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks ordered that unsolved and cold case files be reopened and reexamined, particularly cases where there might be DNA evidence that could now be harnessed.

A few years later, in 2004, the LAPD caught a break, thanks to Detective Cliff Shephard. It was Shephard who was faced with the task of looking at the glut of South Los Angeles murder cases.

After a nearly 14-year period, the killer had struck again. This time, his method of murder was different: strangulation, instead of shooting. The victim was found three months after her disappearance on December 21, 2001, in March 2002.

Victims from left: Princess Berthomieux, Valerie McCorvey, Janica Peters

And the killers had made an unwise choice—a 14 year-old runaway, who had also been turning tricks, with an unusual name: Princess Berthomieux. It was evidence from her murder that turned the key for investigators and for the LA Weekly writer.

Shortly, thereafter, another woman was found in an alley—Valerie McCorvey had been strangled and raped. Her body was discovered on July 11, 2003.

Through a DNA sample, Shepard was able to match one of the oldest victims to the two newer murders. That, and the ballistics from Margette’s 1988 incident, led the police to believe that they had a serial killer on their hands who had resurfaced after 14 years, one of the longest hiatuses on record.

The most recent—and hopefully final victim—was Janecia Peters. She was found in a dumpster, wrapped in a garbage bag on New Year’s Day 2007. Unlike the others, she had been shot and strangled.

In 2006, LA Weekly published a story on the murder of Berthomieux and Detective Jeffrey Steinhoff, which connected her death to the others. According to Newsweek, the reporter for the LA Weekly had received a tip about a new batch of so-called dumping victims; it was Berthomieux’s case that provided the “aha!” moment in the media.

A year later Janecia Peters was murdered. When DNA found on her connected the case to the older murders, APD Chief William Bratton decided enough was enough. The 800 Task Force was created—so named for the number on the room they were in. Detective Dennis Kilcoyne was put in charge of the investigation, which remained a secret until the LA Weekly reported the case.

The paper gave the killer a nickname, one that would stick in the media and cause a renewed interest in the case: they dubbed him the “Grim Sleeper,” because he had been dormant for so many years. A headline was born.

Renewed interest
The story sparked a renewed interest in the case—international news media covered the serial killer with the awkward name. And many of the victims’ families and people in the communities were upset that they hadn’t been alerted to the fact that the murders were all seemingly connected until recently. After the damn broke, Kilcoyne told MSNBC.com. “We don’t know who he is, but his numbers are building. Once we are done, I am quite confident this will exceed anything we have ever seen in the city.”

Barbara WareHoping to strike while the iron was hot—the cops released a series of new and updated information—first, in February 2009, they released a 20-year old 911 call; then, in November 2009, they released three versions of a sketch based on Margette’s description, aged to represent the likely appearance of the assailant in his mid-50s. And, in May 2009, they plastered the city with billboards depicting all 11 of the victims and touting a $500,000 reward, the largest amount ever offered by the city of Los Angeles in a criminal case.

The February 2009 police news release focused on the case of Barbara Ware who had been found dead on January 10, 1987. That night, the police had received a weird call. The caller on the tape was calm and collected, especially for someone who claimed to be reporting a murder. He patiently told the operator the license plate number of a large blue and white van parked in an alley near 1346 East 56th Street.

“Yes, I’d like to report a murder, a dead body or something,” he began. “And the guy that dropped her off was driving as white and blue Dodge van,” and proceeded to give the license plate.

When the dispatcher was unable to understand the numbers and letters, he walked her through it.

“OK, are you saying ‘T’ like in Tom?”

“‘P’ like in puppy.”

“‘P’ What?”

“Like in Zebra?”

After he finishes the license plate description, he explains that it’s been 30 minutes since he saw the murder happen. “’cause I’m down the street at the bottom, so it happened about 30 minutes ago….. and, er, you know he like, he threw her out and the only thing that’s hanging out is this…like he threw a gas tank on top of her and, eh, and, eh, the only thing you can see out is her feet.”

When they ask for his name, he declines, saying, “Oh, I’m staying anonymous… I know too many people….Okay then. Bye-bye.”

With that he hung up. The police arrived in less than an hour to find the body exactly where it had been reported to be. According the LAPD’s news release, “the caller had described the Barbara Ware crime scene exactly how responding uniformed officers and detectives documented the scene.”

The van was found a few miles away, still hot from use. They were so close, yet so far. The van was registered to a church, The Cosmopolitan Church, but at the time of the original investigation, no connections were made between members of the church and the crime. Later, police had even gone so far as to exhume the body of the pastor and had a DNA test run on him. There was no match

A slice of pizza
Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.Still, the release of the 911 call didn’t appear to yield any new leads.

It was a long shot, but the order for use of familial DNA by Attorney General Brown led to the final break in the case. Familial DNA analysis led to Franklin’s son, who proved a partial match to the DNA on the bodies. According to the Los Angeles Times, the police interviewed the son, who fingered his dad, who though the LATimes reported that he’d done time in 93 and 2003 for stolen property and misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon in 1999, had so far eluded authorities.

After trailing Franklin, police got a sample of DNA off a slice of pizza he left at a restaurant, allowing them to link him physically to the evidence left on the victims.

The alleged mass murderer next door
Lonnie David FranklinAlmost immediately, the news reports began reporting the clichéd litany of neighbors’ comments to the revelation of a murder suspect among them:

“He seemed like such a nice guy.”

“He’s a very good guy. I don’t believe it,” Andre Wynn told the Associated Press.

One neighbor told the Los Angeles Times: “I’ve been here since 1976 — that’s how long I’ve known him. I’m not pretty shocked, I’m all the way shocked.”

Franklin was described by neighbors as the local handyman, the neighborhood mechanic whom residents would call instead of AAA.

Donna Harris, a neighbor, told ABC News “Everybody on the block, we all knew if anything was happening with anybody’s cars, he was always there for us,” before adding, perhaps ominously, “Especially the ladies.”

Dante Combs, a neighbor, told the Los Angeles Times that he was the type who would “put up your Christmas lights” and would help the elderly with errands.

True to the profile, he was 57. He had held a steady job for many years, as a trash collector, and was retired.

And it turned out that he had been under the nose of police the whole time. He had once worked at the 77th Street police station as a mechanic, according to AP reports.

Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement, “We never gave up on this investigation, not for one minute. Our detectives worked relentlessly following up on every lead they received. Their hard work has resulted in today’s apprehension of this vicious killer. I am hopeful that the hard work of these men and women will bring some closure to the families who tragically lost loved ones during the last 23 years.”

As Dante Combs told the Los Angeles Times, “As far as I know, he couldn’t be this man,” he said. “Then again, you never really know a man.”

Even though police investigated over 2,500 potential suspects, the case was never officially solved. There were a few suspects that stood out, but the forensic technology of the times was not advanced enough to nail any one of them conclusively.

This October, 1966 killing began a ghoulish series of murders that panicked the people of the San Francisco area. For years the Zodiac taunted the police with weird ciphers, phone calls, insulting and cryptic messages.

Before it was all over, this clever and diabolical killer changed the lives of eight people, only two of whom lived to tell the tale.

On the night of Sunday, October 30, 1966, long before anyone was to hear of the Zodiac, an 18-year-old student named Cheri Jo Bates was brutally murdered near the parking lot of Riverside City College’s library annex. Neither rape nor robbery seemed to have been a motive, as her clothes were undisturbed and her purse was present and intact.

Cheri Jo Bates

After disabling her lime green Volkswagen by pulling out the distributor coil and the condenser, then disconnecting the middle wire of the distributor, the zodiac killer had apparently waited for Bates to return to her car and try to start it, whereupon he made a pretense of unsuccessfully tinkering with the engine. 

After this ruse, and probably with the offer of a ride, he lured her into a dark, unpaved driveway between two empty houses owned by the college, where they spent approximately an hour and a half.  Exactly what they did during this time is uncertain, but eventually the man attacked her, slashing her three times in the chest area, once in the back, and seven times across the throat. 

Police determined that the murder weapon was a small knife with a blade about 3 1/2″ long by 1/2″ wide, but the wounds to Bates’ throat were so deep and brutal as to nearly decapitate her, severing her larynx, jugular vein, and carotid artery.  She had also been choked, beaten, and slashed about the face.

Found about ten feet from Bates’ body was a paint-spattered man’s Timex watch with a broken 7″ wristband, stopped at around 12:23 [see illustration], which one source claims was later traced to a military PX in England.  The paint was analyzed, and was found to be common exterior house paint.  Also found at the scene were the heel-print from a shoe that appeared to be close to size 10, as well as hair, blood, and skin tissue found in the victim’s hands and beneath her fingernails. Greasy, unidentified palm and fingerprints were also found in and on her car, about 200 feet away.

The watch, discovered at the crime scene.

Although the library closed at 9:00 p.m. (and books found in her car verify that she had been inside before then), two separate witnesses reported hearing an “awful scream” at around 10:30, followed by “a muted scream, and then a loud sound like an old car being started up” about two minutes later.  This time matches an estimation given by the coroner, and is generally accepted as the time of her death.

Judging by these details, the murder of Cheri Jo Bates would appear to be nothing more mysterious than a particularly vicious crime of passion, committed perhaps by a spurned suitor, an ex-boyfriend, or a subject somehow linked to Miss Bates. Certainly, the simple fact that Bates spent over an hour in the dark with the man who murdered her suggests that she knew and trusted him enough to converse more than casually.  It was not until almost exactly one month after the attack that the case approached a bizarre new level.

The First Letter
On November 29, 1966, carbon copies of an anonymous letter were mailed to the Riverside Police and the Riverside Enterprise. [see Illustration]   Typed using a portable Royal typewriter with either Pica or Elite typeface, it was entitled “The Confession,” and carried a “byline” that consisted of the word “BY” followed by twelve underscores.

Both copies were on low-quality white paper eight inches wide and torn at the top and bottom so as to be roughly squarish, and had been sent unstamped and with no return address from a secluded rural mailbox.  Presumably, the author planned on the letters being sent by Postage Due mail.

At least one of the details referred to in this letter had not been made public, and at the time, investigators agreed that it was most likely genuine, though this opinion has changed over the years.

This confession has been double-spaced to make reading easier.

THE CONFESSION

BY _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL BUT NOW SHE IS BATTERED AND DEAD. SHE IS NOT THE

FIRST AND SHE WILL NOT BE THE LAST I LAY AWAKE NIGHTS THINKING ABOUT MY NEXT

VICTIM. MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE BEAUTIFUL BLOND THAT BABYSITS NEAR THE LITTLE

STORE AND WALKS DOWN THE DARK ALLEY EACH EVENING ABOUT SEVEN. OR MAYBE SHE

WILL BE THE SHAPELY BRUNETT THAT SAID XXX NO WHEN I ASKED HER FOR A DATE IN HIGH

SCHOOL. BUT MAYBE IT WILL NOT BE EITHER. BUT I SHALL CUT OFF HER FEMALE PARTS AND

DEPOSIT THEM FOR THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE. SO DON’T MAKE IT TO EASY FOR ME. KEEP

YOUR SISTERS, DAUGHTERS, AND WIVES OFF THE STREETS AND ALLEYS. MISS BATES WAS

STUPID. SHE WENT TO THE SLAUGHTER LIKE A LAMB. SHE DID NOT PUT UP A STRUGGLE. BUT

I DID. IT WAS A BALL. I FIRST CUT THE MIDDLE WIRE FROM THE DISTRIBUTOR. THEN I

WAITED FOR HER IN THE LIBRARY AND FOLLOWED HER OUT AFTER ABOUT TWO MINUTES.

THE BATTERY MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT DEAD BY THEN. I THEN OFFERED TO HELP. SHE WAS

THEN VERY WILLING TO TALK TO ME. I TOLD HER THAT MY CAR WAS DOWN THE STREET

AND THAT I WOULD GIVE HER A LIFT HOME. WHEN WE WERE AWAY FROM THE LIBRARY

WALKING, I SAID IT WAS ABOUT TIME. SHE ASKED ME, “ABOUT TIME FOR WHAT?” I SAID IT

WAS ABOUT TIME FOR HER TO DIE. I GRABBED HER AROUND THE NECK WITH MY HAND OVER

HER MOUTH AND MY OTHER HAND WITH A SMALL KNIFE AT HER THROAT. SHE WENT VERY

WILLINGLY. HER BREAST FELT WARM AND VERY FIRM UNDER MY HANDS, BUT ONLY ONE

THING WAS ON MY MIND. MAKING HER PAY FOR ALL THE BRUSH OFFS THAT SHE HAD GIVEN

ME DURING THE YEARS PRIOR. SHE DIED HARD. SHE SQUIRMED AND SHOOK AS I CHOCKED

HER, AND HER LIPS TWICHED. SHE LET OUT A SCREAM ONCE AND I KICKED HER IN THE HEAD

TO SHUT HER UP. I PLUNGED THE KNIFE INTO HER AND IT BROKE. I THEN FINISHED THE JOB

BY CUTTING HER THROAT. I AM NOT SICK. I AM INSANE. BUT THAT WILL NOT STOP THE

GAME. THIS LETTER SHOULD BE PUBLISHED FOR ALL TO READ IT. IT JUST MIGHT SAVE THAT

GIRL IN THE ALLEY. BUT THAT’S UP TO YOU. IT WILL BE ON YOUR CONSCIENCE. NOT MINE.

YES, I DID MAKE THAT CALL TO YOU ALSO. IT WAS JUST A WARNING. BEWARE…I AM

STALKING YOUR GIRLS NOW.

CC. CHIEF OF POLICE
ENTERPRISE

Neither envelope bore a complete address; they were handwritten with a felt-tip pen in the following manner.

Daily Enterprise
Riverside Calif
Attn: Crime

Homicide Detail
Riverside

One fingerprint was found on the envelope sent to the RPD Homicide Detail, but it has never been matched to a suspect, and whether it was left by the author, a postman, or a police officer is unknown.

Riverside Police patch

The killer’s claim that “she did not put up a struggle” was contradicted by the numerous defense wounds on her hands and arms, as well as by the flesh and hair found beneath Bates’ fingernails. 

While a contemporaneous newspaper report reflects uncertainty as to whether the knife actually broke in her body,  no evidence of this event is reported in the autopsy report, and more recent pronouncements from RPD detectives are unanimous that the knife did not break.

Bates’ car had indeed been sabotaged in the manner described, which had not been fully revealed by the news media.  The phone call that is referred to near the end of the letter has never been elaborated on by authorities, though researcher Tom Voigt suggests that it was placed to the Riverside Press, rather than the police, and so went misunderstood and ignored.

The letters were delivered on the same day they were posted.  The next day, November 30th, both the Enterprise and the local police submitted their copies to the Riverside County Postal Inspector, who in turn notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Murder is not a federal crime, but extortion through the mail is, and the FBI briefly considered joining the investigation under this pretense.  However, since no specific victim of extortion was named or alluded to, there would be no federal aid in the investigation. 

In an unexplained turn of events, what appears to be a photocopy of the “Confession” was attached to an FBI report declassified in the 1990s, but the typescript and number of words per line are different from those in the well-known copy that appears in a photograph of the letter lying either on a detective’s or a reporter’s desk

Bates Had To Die
On the six-month anniversary of Bates’ death, the Riverside Press, the police, and the victim’s father (whose name and address had appeared in the local newspaper the day after the murder) were each sent nearly identical copies of another letter, this one written in pencil on lined notepaper.

Instead of a signature, two of the letters bore a symbol that resembled a letter Z joined with a numeral 3.  In what would become a hallmark of the Zodiac’s epistolary style, the envelopes were franked with excessive postage: in this case, they each carried two of the necessary four-cent stamps.  The letters sent to the police and Press read as follows:

BATES HAD
TO DIE
THERE WILL
BE MORE

The copy without the hieroglyph signature, sent to Joseph Bates, substituted “Bates” with “She.”  One latent fingerprint was developed on the letter sent to the Riverside Police Department, but its origins are not known, and it has never been matched to a suspect.

In mid-April 1967, a janitor at the RCC Library discovered a poem written on the underside of a folding school desk.  The desk had been in storage for an unknown period of time, but the contemporary receipt of the “Bates had to die” letters led many investigators to believe that the poem described Bates’ murder and was written by her killer.

Some amateurs, however, have noted that the style and tone of the letter indicate otherwise: one compelling theory is that that an unrelated student penned it following an unsuccessful suicide attempt.  The handwriting is of debatable resemblance to the three “Bates” notes or any other Zodiac printing and the date of its origin is unclear, so the entire issue remains open to interpretation.  The poem read:

Sick of living/unwilling to die
cut.
clean.
if red /
clean.
blood spurting,
dripping,
spilling;
all over her new
dress
oh well
it was red
anyway.
life draining into an
uncertain death.
she won’t
die.
this time
someone ll find her.
just wait till
next time.
rh   

The cryptic signature, “rh,” may have been a reference to RCC’s President at the time, R. H. Bradshaw.
Speculation
In the wake of Bates’ murder, Riverside Police worked the case under the assumption that Bates knew her killer, or at least that the killer knew her.  They even identified a likely suspect from a pool of viable candidates, an ex-boyfriend bitter over their breakup and resentful of her blossoming relationship with a football player. 

The RPD maintains a local man as their prime suspect in the murder, and in December of 1998 even went so far as to secure a warrant for samples of this man’s hair, skin, and saliva, which were sent to the FBI crime lab to be checked against the evidence found at the scene.  The FBI completed this analysis, but it did not implicate their local suspect as the killer.

When the Zodiac case exploded into national news in the fall of 1969, though, RPD Chief L.T. Kinkead nevertheless sent a 3-page synopsis of the local murder and the events that followed to investigators in Napa and San Francisco, a letter that seems to have been largely ignored. 

Chief L.T. Kinkead

It wasn’t until Paul Avery of the San Francisco Chronicle initiated a 1970 meeting between these investigators that they began to consider the elusive Bay Area serial killer as a possible culprit, though even then RPD Captain Irwin Cross “expressed doubt that the Zodiac [was] responsible”.
Despite the stylistic similarities between the aftermath of Cheri Jo Bates’ murder and the linked murders that would later take place in the San Francisco Bay Area, the current opinion of the Riverside Police Department and most other investigators is that the Riverside and Bay Area episodes were not related.  Opinion is split, however, as to who authored the 1966 and 1967 documents, and whether they were even written by the same person. The murder of Cheri Jo Bates remains controversial and there is no evidence to definitively exclude the Zodiac as the killer.

Vallejo
Solano County Sheriff’s Office Case #V-25564
Vallejo Police Department Case #243146

Vallejo and Benicia lie just north of the San Pablo Bay and the Carquinez Strait, about 20 miles northeast of San Francisco.  In the late 1960s, the area abutting the two rough-and-tumble, working-class cities was practically uninhabited, and even now only a few paved surfaces cross the barren expanses of southern Solano County above the Vallejo-Benicia Freeway.  One of these is Lake Herman Road, running from eastern Vallejo to northern Benicia by way of the unincorporated area between them.

Vallejo and Benicia

As early as 9:00 p.m. on Friday, December 20, 1968, a light-colored hardtop four-door, possibly a Chevrolet Impala, was seen parked near the gated entrance to the pumping station off Lake Herman Road just east of Lake Herman. The same car was also seen there at about 10:00 by a different witness. 

Between these two sightings, a young man and his girlfriend were parked in the same spot when a car heading west toward Vallejo slowed to a stop several yards past their car, then began to slowly back up toward them.  The car gave them both such a bad feeling that they immediately pulled out of the gravelly area and drove off toward Benicia.  The other car followed them until the first exit, which they took, watching the stranger continue east on Lake Herman Road.

David Arthur Faraday

At 11:10 p.m., David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were parked in the same place when they were shot to death near Faraday’s brown Rambler.  Having told Betty Lou’s parents that they were going to a Christmas concert, they had instead driven to the isolated lover’s lane and had been there for less than an hour when someone pulled in with them, exited his vehicle, and began firing into their car. 

Betty Lou Jensen

The killer was armed with either a .22 caliber rifle or, more likely, a handgun loaded with .22 LR ammunition. From light footprints and ballistic evidence, it appeared that the killer started from behind the car, shooting out the right rear window, then the left rear tire, then coming around to the front left.  The two teenagers scrambled out the passenger’s side door. 

Jensen, 16, left the car alive and must have started to run toward the road; her body was found less than 30 feet from the rear bumper.  The shot pattern — five rounds along the right side of her back, ranging from the space between the fifth and sixth ribs all the way down to the pelvis —suggested that the killer was either competent with firearms or had fired into her body as she lay wounded by a previous shot, as a coroner’s report states that the shots had come from no more than 10 feet away.  In any case, the grouping does not indicate marksman-like accuracy, or even the great degree of skill that is often attributed to the killer due to this particular murder, especially considering that two rounds missed the wounded girl as she fled.

Faraday was killed by a single close-range bullet to the head; researcher Mike R. of NJ points out that the position of Faraday’s body, with the boy’s feet by the rear wheel and his head pointing away from the front of the car at an angle of about 45 degrees, suggests that he was not killed while climbing out of the door but rather while standing by the right rear wheel.  All told, 10 shots were fired, but only eight rounds were accounted for.

The entire episode was over in a few heartbeats, and the killer left the scene immediately upon its conclusion.  This was determined by an almost minute-by-minute time line put together from the statements of several witnesses driving by the area between 9:00 p.m. and 11:15 p.m.  One of these witnesses, Stella Borges, may even have seen the killer’s car, described as a light-colored Chevrolet, headed toward Benicia just before she discovered Jensen’s and Faraday’s bodies.

Solano County Sheriff’s patch

Despite the best efforts of Solano County Sheriff’s Det. Sgt. Les Lundblad, assistance from half a dozen local law enforcement agencies, and a reward fund set up by students at the victims’ high schools, no killer was ever identified.  As author Robert Graysmith grimly noted in his seminal book, ZODIAC, “There were no witnesses, no motives, and no suspects”.

Ferrin and Mageau
Six months later, shortly after 12:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 5, 1969, Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, and Michael Renault Mageau, 19, were shot as they sat in Ferrin’s car in the parking lot of the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course.  According to Mageau’s statements to police in the days that followed, Ferrin had picked him up at his house about half an hour earlier, and they were going to get a bite to eat when Darlene said that she wanted to talk to him about something.  At Mageau’s suggestion, she turned around on Springs Road and headed east to Blue Rock Springs Park in Benicia, a spot popular with local teenagers cruising after dark.

Ferrin turned off the car’s headlights and motor but left the radio playing.  After just a few minutes, three cars occupied by some young revelers entered the parking lot briefly, laughing, yelling, and throwing firecrackers.  They drove off shortly thereafter, and Ferrin and Mageau were left alone again until about midnight, when another car, alone this time, pulled into the lot from the direction of Vallejo.  Its lone occupant turned off the car’s headlights and pulled up next to Ferrin’s car, six to eight feet away on her left. 

The car, a brown Ford Mustang or Chevy Corvair, idled there for a moment, and Mageau asked Ferrin if she knew the driver, to which she responded, “Oh, never mind.”  Mageau later said that he wasn’t sure whether this meant that she did or didn’t know the driver, but before he could inquire further the car pulled out and drove off at high speed back toward Vallejo.

After about five minutes, the brown car returned to the parking lot and pulled up behind and to the right of Ferrin and Mageau, about 10 feet back.  Leaving his headlights on this time, the driver exited his vehicle with a bright lamp or flashlight.  Obscuring his face by holding the light at arm’s length and shining it directly at them, he walked silently up to the passenger’s side door. 

From his manner, Mageau thought he might be a policeman, and was reaching for his ID when the man raised a handgun and fired five 9mm rounds through the window.  He shot first at Mageau, hitting him in the face and body: at such close range, several of the slugs tore through his flesh and entered Darlene. 

Fueled by pain and adrenaline, Michael kicked himself into the back seat, catching another bullet in his left knee.  The attacker then fired at Ferrin, hitting her in each arm and in the back as she turned away.  Mageau thought that the shots sounded quiet, perhaps fired through a silencer, but nearby resident George Bryant heard both the earlier firecrackers and the shots, and described the shots as much louder.

The killer was walking back to his car after this volley of shots when he heard Mageau begin to yell, either in pain or in rage.  He returned to Ferrin’s car, fired two additional shots at each of the victims, then turned around casually and got back in his own car. 

Mageau was able to catch a look at the man’s face in profile, and described him as short, about 5’8″ tall, but extremely heavyset.  Though “not blubbery fat”  the man was at least 195 pounds and had a large face.  In terrible pain but still conscious, Mageau managed to turn the car’s blinkers on in an attempt to summon aid, then opened the passenger’s side door and tumbled to the pavement. 

From there, he watched the attacker peel out, turn his car around, and drive back in the direction of Vallejo.  Though the Zodiac would later claim that he remained under the speed limit after the attack, both Mageau and George Bryant reported that he left the scene at a high rate of speed.

Several police cars and an ambulance soon arrived, summoned by more late-night teenaged drivers who had discovered the car and victims, but the aid they could offer was too little and too late for Darlene, who died in the ambulance with Mageau and Officer Richard Hoffman of the Vallejo PD.  Mageau went straight into surgery, but Darlene was not so lucky: she was pronounced Dead on Arrival at Kaiser Foundation Hospital at 12:38 a.m.
Phone Calls
Despite the killer’s subsequent claim that the attack was committed with a 9 mm Luger, this weapon was manufactured with an eight-round magazine, and the killer fired at least nine shots without reloading.  While a 32-round extended magazine for the Luger had been available for some time, Vallejo police believe the weapon was actually a 9 mm Browning High-Power, which carries thirteen rounds in its factory magazine, although the weapon could have been one of several 9-round 9 mm handguns available at the time.

Some of Ferrin’s close friends reported that she may have been stalked in the months preceding her death, or at least the recipient of some unwanted visits. Author Robert Graysmith’s account contends that she knew her killer. These views are not shared by most investigators, however, nor by Darlene’s widower, Dean Ferrin, who was never interviewed for ZODIAC and in subsequent conversation has stated that he noticed no unusual behavior or anxiety on his wife’s part in the months before her death. 

The alleged “stalker” in this case was likely a Vallejo man and would-be paramour who had been rebuffed several times by Darlene and who, by many accounts, did not take it in a gentlemanly fashion.  This particular individual was soon tracked down and interviewed by Vallejo detectives, who determined that he had been watching fireworks with his wife on the night of the Fourth, and had been at home in her company at the time of the murders. 

Stories that Ferrin and/or Mageau knew one or more of the other Zodiac victims are entirely unconfirmed, as are rumors that Mageau may have been hiding some knowledge of the killers identity or motive. 

His accounts of the night’s events, to both the police and the press, uniformly describe an unknown man who walked silently up to the car and started shooting.  These and other details were maintained through all recorded interviews with Mageau, whether in horrible pain after the incident, under heavy medication at the hospital, or in the spotlight of morbid local celebrity.

The lone indication that Ferrin may have known her killer — or may have been known to him — was a pair of calls made to Darlene’s home shortly after the murder.  When the calls were answered by Ferrin’s friends at the house, there was no voice on the other end.   One source close to the family claims that the calls were made by Darlene’s brother, Leo, who was waiting to hear from Darlene about an unrelated matter.

At 12:40, a pay phone call was made through the operator to Vallejo Police Headquarters. According to the police dispatcher, the caller’s voice was mature and without accent, and he spoke evenly and consistently as if reading from a script.

At one point, the dispatcher tried to ask the caller’s identity and location, but he would not be interrupted and said, “I want to report a double murder.  If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find kids in a brown car.  They were shot with a 9 mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Good bye” .

Robert Graysmith’s ZODIAC contains an apocryphal scene in which the caller hangs up, but is surprised by a call-back device on the police switchboard that causes the pay phone to start ringing.  This allegedly caught the attention of a chance passerby who watched the caller take the receiver off the hook, leave the booth, and drive off in a brown car.

This man, described in a subsequent letter from the killer, was sought by both the police and local newspapers to no avail, indicating that Graysmith may simply have been elaborating on a bogus detail provided by the Zodiac to create confusion.  When the police were able to trace the call to a pay phone at Tuolumne Street and Springs Road, they found that the booth in question was just a few blocks away from the Vallejo Sheriff’s Office.

Cryptic Message
A few weeks later, on July 31, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, and Vallejo Times-Herald each received letters laying claim to the Vallejo murders.  Enclosed with each letter was one-third of a cryptogram, to be published on each newspaper’s front page by August 1.

Not only were the author’s claims bolstered by an intimate knowledge of the two crime scenes, he also promised another murder spree if his request was not met.  Though worded slightly differently, each letter shared the same salient facts, and each was closed with the crossed-circle design that would become the Zodiac’s signature.  The first to be transcribed in its entirety was the one sent to the Vallejo Times-Herald:

The cryptogram sent to the Times-Herald

Dear Editor

I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman and the Girl last 4th of July. To Prove this I shall state some facts which only I+ the police know.

Christmass
1 Brand name of ammo Super X
2 10 shots fired
3 Boy was on back feet to car
4 Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west

4th of July
1 Girl was wearing patterned pants
2 Boy was also shot in knee
3 Brand name of ammo was Western

Here is a cyipher or that is part of one.  The other 2 parts of this cipher have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner + the S.F. Chronicle.

I want you to print this cipher on your frunt page by Fry Afternoon Aug 1-69, If you do not do this I will go on a kill rampage Fry night that will last the whole week end.  I will cruse around and pick off all stray people or coupples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people. 

The killer’s letter to the Chronicle was similar, but gave an additional impetus to publish the code: “In this cipher,” he wrote, “is my identity.”  The 3-Part Cryptogram was solved in less than a week by a North Salinas, CA, high school teacher and his wife.

Despite the claims of the Chronicle’s letter, it did not appear to reveal the killer’s identity.  Their solution was submitted to the Vallejo PD on August 8, verified by the Cryptographic Unit at Skaggs Island Naval Communications Center, and published on August 9 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Vallejo Times-Herald.

The cryptogram sent to the San Francisco Chronicle

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 DANGEROUE ANIMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE

IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL

THE BEST PART IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND ALL THE I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES

I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR STOP MY COLLECTING OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE EBEORIETEMETHHPITI

The letters covering the cipher blocks were checked unsuccessfully for fingerprints by the Vallejo and San Francisco police; they found none, though one print may have been developed on a cipher-block.  As happened after the Bates murder, local police contacted the FBI for aid in the investigation, and as in the Bates case the federal interest here was possible extortion. In fact, many FBI reports still classify the case under the original extortion heading.
The Zodiac Killer
A little-known letter containing a key to the cryptogram was sent anonymously to the Vallejo Police on August 10, one day after the Harden solution was made public.  It was postmarked San Francisco, and the typewritten address was to a VPD sergeant. 

The key was handwritten on a sheet of white paper, and was accompanied by a short typewritten note on a 3×5 index card expressing hope that “the enclosed key will prove beneficial to you in connection with the cipher letter writer.”  It was signed ” concerned citizen.”  The key was described in an FBI report as “generally valid” and “substantially accurate”,  but this is unsurprising since the author probably read the decryption in the newspaper and simply made his own key letter by letter.  One useful palmprint was found on the envelope, but it was never matched to any individual.

By August 2, all three cipher blocks had been printed. “We’re not satisfied that the letter was written by the murderer, but it could have been,” said the Vallejo Chief of Police Jack E. Stiltz, requesting another letter “with more facts to prove it”.  In response, a second letter was mailed to the San Francisco Examiner  on August 1 or 2, and received on August 4.  It was in this three-page letter that the killer first referred to himself as “The Zodiac.”

Cryptogram sent to the San Francisco Examiner

This is the Zodiac speaking. In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I have had in Vallejo, I shall be very happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police having a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up; when they do crack it, they will have me.

On the 4th of July: I did not open the car door. The window was rolled down all ready. The boy was origionaly sitting in the frunt seat when I began fireing. When I fired the first shot at his head, he leaped backwards at the same time, thus spoiling my aim.

He ended up on the back seat then the floor in back thashing out very violently with his legs; that’s how I shot him in the knee. I did not leave the cene of the killing with squealing tires + raceing engine as described in the Vallejo paper. I drove away quite slowly so as not to draw attention to my car.

The man who told police that my car was brown was a negro about 40-45 rather shabbly dressed. I was in this phone booth having some fun with the Vallejo cop when he was walking by. When I hung the phone up the damn thing began to ring & that drew his attention to me + my car.

Last Christmass In that epasode the police were wondering how I could shoot + hit my victims in the dark. They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well lit night + I could see silowets on the horizon. Bullshit that area is srounded by high hills + trees. What I did was tape a small pencel flash light to the barrel of my gun.

If you notice, in the center of the beam of light if you aim it at a wall or ceiling you will see a black or darck spot in the center of the circle of light about 3 to 6 inches across. When taped to a gun barrel, the bullet will strike in the center of the black dot in the light. All I had to do was spray them as if it was a water hose; there was no need to use the gun sights. I was not happy to see that I did not get front page coverage.

No address

Police were unsuccessful in developing latent fingerprints on the first set of letters; perhaps as a result, this latest letter was submitted directly to the FBI crime lab, which determined that the letter was written on Woolworth’s “Fifth Avenue” brand paper.  The lab found useful prints on its second and third pages, but they have never been matched to a suspect.
Lake Berryessa
Napa County Sheriff’s Department Case #105907

The next attack came on Saturday, September 27, 1969, on the western shore of Lake Berryessa, about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco in Napa County.  At about 3:00 p.m., three young women from Angwin had just pulled into a parking area near the lake when a man driving a light blue, two-door Chevrolet with California plates, probably a 1966 model, pulled up beside them, drove forward a short distance, and then backed up so that he was right next to their car.  Without leaving his car, he sat looking downward, as if pretending to read something.

The women walked down to the lakeshore and had been sunbathing for about half an hour when they noticed the same man watching them.  They later described him as “clean cut and nice looking,” about six feet tall and over 200 pounds, with short dark hair parted on the side.  He wore a black short-sleeved sweatshirt over a tee shirt with dark blue or black slacks.  He watched them silently for another 20 minutes or so, smoking cigarettes, then walked off.  When the women returned to their car at around 4:30, the stranger’s car was gone.

Napa County Sheriff’s Department patch

The Napa County Sheriff’s Department briefly investigated another encounter at the lake.  It occurred at about 6:30, when a local dentist and his son well north of the crime scene noticed a man walking nearby who met the general description given by the young women.  When this man saw the father and son and realized that he had been noticed, he turned around and walked away from them.  It was initially thought that he might have been involved in the Zodiac’s next attack, but detectives determined that the unidentified man did not have a car in the area, and it would have been impossible for him to arrive at the crime scene in time.

Shepard and Hartnell
Cecelia Shepard

Cecelia Ann Shepard and Bryan Calvin Hartnell, two college students who had also made a spontaneous trip from Angwin, were picnicking at Twin Oak Ridge,  a peninsula on the western shore of the lake, at twilight when they were approached by a man later described as 5’8″ to 6′ tall, dark-haired, and heavyset, wearing a dark jacket and dark clothing that seemed sloppy or dishevelled. 

Cecelia, who saw the man first, noted that he was wearing glasses.  He seemed to Hartnell at the time to be “in his thirties and fairly unremarkable”, though the young man would describe a larger and possibly younger individual after getting a closer and more dangerous look.

Before getting too close to the couple, he ducked behind one of the two nearby trees, put on an unusual four-cornered hood, and emerged about 20 feet away.  The hood was well sewn, black, and had a bib that fell almost to the man’s waistline.  Embroidered on it was the crossed-circle design that had appeared in the 3-Part Cryptogram and its cover letters and would serve as the Zodiac’s signature in most of his letters to come.

Holes had been cut for the eyes and mouth, and though clip-on sunglasses had been added to further protect the killer’s identity, Hartnell caught a glimpse of greasy brownish hair through the holes in the mask.  On his belt, he wore a long knife in a wooden sheath and an empty leather holster.  A large semiautomatic pistol was in his right hand and he pointed it at Shepard and Hartnell as he spoke.

Brian Hartnell

“I want your money and your car keys,” he said in a calm monotone.  “I want your car to go to Mexico”.  Hartnell handed him the keys to his Volkswagen and all the change from his pockets.  The man pocketed the coins and dropped the keys on the picnic blanket, then holstered his weapon.  Hartnell made a vague offer of help to the man in order to escape injury, to which the man responded, “No.  Time’s running short.”  The man then stated that he was an escaped convict from the Pacific Northwest, that he had killed a prison guard there, and that he had “a stolen car and nothing to lose. I’m flat broke.”

Though the town mentioned by the killer is generally given as Deer Lodge, Montana, a reliable source reports that the state was not Montana but Colorado.  An early interview with Hartnell has the badly wounded student saying that he can’t remember the exact name of the town, but that it “had some double name, like Fern Lock or something.” 

His interviewer suggests “Lodge,” and Hartnell agrees.  “Deer Lodge” was then suggested as a northwest city with a federal penitentiary, and the victim said, “That could be it, I guess”.  Subsequent inquiries to the northwestern authorities revealed that there had been no such jailbreak or murder.  Hartnell, who survived the attack, said that the man’s voice was unremarkable, sounding neither educated nor illiterate, and though Hartnell could not detect an accent, he said the killer did have a slight lilt or drawl to his voice.

Still hoping for a peaceful resolution, Hartnell tried to relax the man by talking to him, and they spoke for a few minutes about his car before the man removed some of the clothesline from his belt and ordered Shepard to hogtie her friend.  Hartnell balked at the idea, and the man began to shout, “Get down!  Right now!”

Shepard acquiesced, and as she did so, she took out her wallet and tossed it to the man, who ignored it.  When she was finished, the hooded man tied her up and tightened the knots that she had used on Hartnell.  It was at this point that the young man noticed that his attacker’s hands were shaking, and that he seemed very nervous.  “I’m going to have to stab you people,” the stranger told them.

“I couldn’t stand to see her stabbed,” Hartnell responded.  “Stab me first”.

“I’ll do just that,” the killer replied.
Evidence
The knife he used was double-edged and about a foot long, possibly a bayonet.  It has been described as looking made or repaired by hand, with wooden handle slabs, two brass rivets, and white tape where the guard would normally be. 

Hartnell was stabbed six times, and a retired police source confirms a fatal ten times for Shepard, who died of her wounds two days later.  Leaving them both for dead, the attacker walked to Hartnell’s nearby car and, using a black magic marker, inscribed his crossed-circle logo and the dates of his Bay Area attacks on the door.

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

Detectives later found a series of clear footprints leading to and from the scene of the attack.  The shoes that formed them were determined to have been Wing Walkers, a style of low-cut military boot, size 10 ½.  Set deep in the sand, the prints suggested a heavy man.

Just as he had after the Blue Rock Springs attack, the killer later drove to a pay phone and placed a call through the operator to the local police.  The call came through to the Napa Police Department switchboard at 7:40 p.m., a little over an hour after the attack.  The call was traced to a pay phone outside a car wash at 1231 Main Street in Napa.  As in the case in Vallejo, the booth was near the station.

Evidence technicians later found a clear palm-print on the receiver, the print man was so nervous that he smudged it during the lifting process and any evidentiary value was ruined.   In a calm voice, the caller said, “I want to report a murder — no, a double murder.  They are two miles north of Park Headquarters.  They were in a white Volkswagen Kharmann Ghia.” 

White Volkswagen Kharmann Ghia, similar to the victims’ car

When the switchboard operator asked where he was calling from, he said quietly, “I’m the one that did it.”  Then, perhaps to facilitate a trace or perhaps to avoid the kind of attention he had recounted in his letter to the Examiner, he simply dropped the receiver and walked away, never again to refer directly to this attack.
San Francisco
SFPD Homicide Case #696314

Paul Stine
On the night of Saturday, October 11, 1969, San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine picked up a fare at the corner of Mason and Geary Streets in Union Square headed for the Presidio, which lies at the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula.  The destination that Stine entered in his log and called in to his dispatcher was at the corner of Washington and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights.

The cab was parked one block west, however, at the intersection of Washington and Cherry Streets, when the passenger shot Stine point blank in the right side of the head.  Whether the killer had made the trip in the front seat or got in front after the murder is uncertain, but witnesses saw him in front as he removed the dead man’s wallet and keys, and then cut a large piece from the back of his shirt which he soaked in blood and took with him as he walked slowly north on Cherry Street.

Three teenage siblings on the second floor of 3899 Washington, directly across the street from the cab, happened to spot the killer as he cut Stine’s shirt and suspected foul play.  They watched him exit the cab and wipe down parts of the cab’s interior and exterior, briefly leaning on the driver’s side door frame.

They called the police, who logged the call at 9:58 p.m. and broadcast an incorrect description of the killer as a black male.  Consequently, when patrolmen Donald Foukes and Eric Zelms responded in a radio car and noticed a heavyset white man sauntering east on Jackson Street, they made no effort to apprehend him.  Despite the intensive search of the area that followed, the killer’s head start allowed him to escape, probably to a nearby getaway car.
The Suspect
Foukes made a statement about his recollection of the incident, recorded in an SFPD memo dated November 12,1969: “The suspect that was observed by Officer Foukes was a WMA 35-45 Yrs about 5′ 10″, 180-200 lbs.  Medium heavy build — Barrel chested — Medium complexion — Light-colored hair possibly greying in rear (May have been lighting that caused this effect.)  (Navy or royal blue) Elastic cuffs and waistband zipped part way up.  Brown wool pants pleated type baggy in rear (Rust brown).  May have been wearing low cut shoes.

“Subject at no time appeared to be in a hurry walking with a shuffling lope, Slightly bent foreward head now.  The subject’s general appearance to classify him as a group would be that he might be of Welsh ancestry.”

During shooting for a documentary on the case in the mid 1980s, Foukes stated that “The individual I saw that night was a white male adult approximately 35 to 45 years of age, 5 feet 10 inches, 180 to 210 lbs.  Since we were looking for a negro male adult, we proceeded on Jackson Street toward Arguello, continuing our search.  As we arrived at Arguello Street, the description was changed to a white male adult. 

Believing that this suspect was possibly the one involved in the shooting, we entered the Presidio of San Francisco and conducted a search on West Pacific Avenue on the opposite side of the wall in the last direction we observed the suspect going.  We did not find the suspect.”

Mel Nicolai, a former Special Agent for the California Department of Justice who worked on all but the Lake Herman Road Zodiac murders, is quoted as saying that Foukes’ and Zelms’ first broadcast description of the man they saw was even taller, between 6′ and 6’2″, and over 200 lbs.

An apocryphal passage in Robert Graysmith’s book Zodiac has the officers going so far as to stop the man and ask him if he had seen anything strange in the past few minutes, but this conversation is not noted in any of the subsequent police reports.  In no known interview does either Foukes or Zelms mention any exchange of words with the unidentified subject, and the story may have been based only on a forthcoming letter from the killer. 

While dramatic, the Zodiac’s account of the night’s events cannot be confirmed, and may well be a prevarication.  On the other hand, such an encounter and its repercussions would be a tremendous embarrassment to the SFPD on several levels, and if this incident did in fact occur then a concerted effort would certainly have been made to keep it under wraps.

The bullet that killed Stine was mistyped at the scene as a .38, but later ballistics tests determined it to be a 9 mm.  It was not, however, the same 9 mm used for the Blue Rock Springs attack. 

The latent impressions of thirty fingers, three palms, and one lower finger or palm were found in and on the cab.  Found on the passenger’s side front door handle, the finger/palm print was relatively clear and crime lab technicians believed it was left by the killer, though the possibility exists that one of the police, firemen, or lab technicians at the scene could inadvertently have left it. 

Certain other prints, none of such clarity, were actually left in blood, and “are also believed to be prints of the suspect,” according to a San Francisco Police memo. 4  In any event, none of these prints have yet matched any of the millions filed in the National Crime Identification Computer database maintained by the FBI.  Also recovered from the cab was a pair of men’s leather gloves in a size 7 (XXL), though it remains uncertain whether they were left by the killer.
Threats
Two days later, the Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac claiming responsibility for the murder.  The return address on the envelope was the crossed-circle design, and enclosed with the letter was a swatch of Paul Stine’s bloody shirt.  Three latent fingerprints were developed on the paper by the SFPD crime lab, but remain unmatched to any suspect.

This is the Zodiac speaking.  I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St + Maple St last night, to prove this here is a blood stained piece of his shirt. I am the same man who did in the people in the north bay area. The S.F. Police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcicles seeing who could make the most noise. The car drivers should have just parked their cars and sat there quietly waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the frunt tire + then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.

The Zodiac would send three swatches of the bloody fabric, but 104 square inches of Paul Stine’s shirt are still unaccounted for.

Thus far, authorities had observed the Zodiac to follow a few vague patterns. He had always attacked after sundown on weekends, always attacked young couples in or near their cars, and always attacked in remote suburban areas near water. If he could now break his pattern by shooting a lone 29-year-old male in downtown San Francisco, they felt, then there was no reason why he couldn’t follow through on his threat to “wipe out a school bus;” within days, Bay area bus drivers had received special instructions on how to react if fired upon.

The school bus threat was one that the Zodiac would return to in different forms.  At the urging of the San Francisco Police, the Chronicle suppressed the threat for a week; on October 18, a police composite sketch based on the teenage witnesses’ testimony was amended according to the descriptions given by the responding patrolmen at Cherry Street and was distributed with the full content of the letter.

It was during this time that the Zodiac case began to garner exceptional press coverage, and tips to the killer’s identity poured in from points as far as Houston, Atlanta, and St. Louis.  At the same time, homicide detectives along the West Coast began to consider the Bay Area killer as a suspect in their unsolved cases.  Among these were L.T. Kinkead and H.L. Homsher of the Riverside, CA, Police Department, and they forwarded a summary of the 1966 Bates murder to investigators in Napa, Solano, and San Francisco Counties. 1  The summary was lost in the shuffle for over a year.
Taunting Police
The Zodiac’s next mailing was sent to the Chronicle in early November in an envelope stamped with double the necessary postage and the instruction “Please Rush to Editor.”  Inside were a “Jesters” brand greeting card and another lengthy cipher.  This letter marked the first appearance of what appeared to be a body count, a number that rose steadily with each new mailing.  No evidence of any kind, however, suggests that the Zodiac was responsible for any murders beyond the six commonly attributed to him.  The Zodiac also sent a second swatch of Paul Stine’s bloody shirt in November, but it is unclear whether it was enclosed with this letter or the one that followed it.

This is the Zodiac speaking I though you would need a good laugh before you get the bad news you won’t get the news for a while yet

PS could you print this new cipher on your frunt page? I get awfully lonely when I am ignored, so lonely I could do my Thing!!!!!!

Des July Aug Sept Oct = 7

A few days later, he sent a longer letter that included a schematic drawing of a “death machine” that he claimed to have rigged and ready.  It was designed to blow up buses. The Chronicle received both of these letters on Monday, November 10, 1969, and passed them on to police after making copies for themselves.  A source at SFPD was “of opinion one or more latent prints may be developed” on this letter, but no finding was ever made public.1

This is the Zodiac speaking up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people. I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. So I shall change the way the collecting of slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone. When I committ my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc.

The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.

1 I look like the description passed out only when I do my thing, the rest of the time I look entirle different. I shall not tell you what my descise consists of when I kill

2 As of yet I have left no fingerprints behind me contrary to what the police say in my killings I wear transparent fingertip guards. All it is is 2 coats of airplane cement coated on my fingertips — quite unnoticible + very efective

3 my killing tools have been boughten through the mail order outfits before the ban went into efect. Except one & it was bought out of the state. So as you can see the police don’t have much to work on. If you wonder why I was wipeing the cab down I was leaving fake clews for the police to run all over town with, as one might say, I gave the cops som bussy work to do to keep them happy. I enjoy needling the blue pigs. Hey blue pig I was in the park — you were useing fire trucks to mask the sound of your cruzeing prowl cars. The dogs never came with in 2 blocks of me + they were to the west + there was only 2 groups of parking about  10 min apart then the motor cicles went by about 150 ft away going from south to north west

p.s. 2 cops pulled a goof abot 3 min after I left the cab. I was walking down the hill to the park when this cop car pulled up + one of them called me over + asked if I saw anyone acting suspicious or strange in the last 5 to 10 min + I said yes there was this man who was runnig by waveing a gun & the cops peeled rubber + went around the corner as I directed them + I disappeared into the park a block + a half away never to be seen again. [This section has been marked off with the note "must print in paper."]

Hey pig doesnt it rile you up to have your noze rubed in your booboos?

If you cops think I’m going to take on a bus the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your heads. Take one bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer + 1 gal of stove oil & dump a few bags of gravel on top + then set the shit off + will positivily ventalate any thing that should be in the way of the blast.

The death machine is all ready made. I would have sent you pictures but you would be nasty enough to trace them back to developer + then to me, so I shall describe my masterpiece to you. The nice part of it is all the parts can be bought on the open market with no questions asked.

1 bat. Pow clock — will run for aprox 1 year
1 photoelectric switch
2 copper leaf springs
2 6V car bat
1 flash light bulb + reflector
1 mirror
2 18″ cardboard tubes black with shoe polish inside + oute

the system checks out from one end to the other in my tests. What you do not know is whether the death machine is at the sight or whether it is being stored in my basement for future use. I think you do not have the manpower to stop this one by continually searching the road sides looking for this thing. + it wont do to re roat + re schedule the busses because the bomb can be adapted to new conditions.

[Here the Zodiac's crossed-circle has been modified with five Xs drawn along the symbol's left side]

Have fun!! By the way it could be rather messy if you try to bluff me.

PS. Be shure to print the part I marked out on page 3 or I shall do my thing.

To prove that I am the Zodiac, Ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my collecting of slaves.

No explanation was given for the marks along the Zodiac symbol’s perimeter, but it was assumed that each one represented a murdered victim.  At this time, the Bates murder had not yet been linked to the Zodiac, and this has been seen as a suggestion that the Bay Area killer was not responsible for the murder in Riverside.  This drawing remained unpublished until 1996, when Douglas Oswell and Michael Rusconi posted it on the World Wide Web. 2
Melvin Belli
Famed personal injury lawyer Melvin Belli, who had been the butt of a Zodiac hoax earlier in the year, received a Christmas card at his home on December 27. It was forwarded to his office where a secretary opened it and found yet another piece of Paul Stine’s bloody shirt.  The back of the envelope was decorated with the greeting “Mery Xmass + New Year.”

Melvin Belli
Dear Melvin

This is the Zodiac speaking I wish you a happy Christmass. The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach out because of this thing in me won’t let me. I am finding it extreamly dificult to keep in check I am afraid I will loose control again and take my nineth + posibly tenth victom. Please help me I am drownding. At the moment the children are safe from the bomb because it is so massive to dig in & the trigger mech requires so much work to get it adjusted just right. But if I hold back too long from no nine I will loose complet [crossed out] all controol of my self + set the bomb up. Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer.

Perhaps out of wishful thinking, it was assumed that the killer wrote this letter in a rare lucid moment, but a cursory examination of the original document and the envelope it arrived in plainly shows that it was meticulously arranged, with a perfect left margin and uniformly spaced lines.  Even the crossing-out of the word “complet” seems too neat to be spontaneous.  The author can also be seen to deliberately alter his handwriting, though his natural style appears to show through near the end.

Despite the gratuitous publicity events that Belli staged in the weeks that followed, the Zodiac never contacted him again.  Nothing more was heard from the killer for three months.
Highway 132
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s patch

San Joaquin County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office Case #70-7475

Early in the evening of Sunday, March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns, 23, was driving with her infant daughter Jennifer on Highway 132 in San Joaquin County, several miles west of Modesto, when a man in a light-colored American car started honking his horn and blinking his lights at her.  Driving alongside her car, he said that one of her wheels was wobbling and volunteered to fix it.  He followed her as she pulled over at Bird Road, a turn-off just west of Interstate 5, then got out with a lug wrench and pretended to tighten the nuts on her right rear wheel.  In fact, he removed them, and when Johns tried to drive off, the whole wheel spun loose.  Again, the man offered help, this time in the form of a ride to a nearby service station.

She accepted, and they continued in the man’s car westward on 132 until he pulled into a Richfield station at Chrisman Road.  It was closed, and there followed an hour and a half or more of silent and apparently aimless driving through the city of Tracy and its rural environs.  As they passed occasional other service stations, she asked a few times “What’s wrong with this station,” or “Why can’t we go in that station,” to which he replied that it was not the right one.  A police report states, “she said she was very scared of this man, did want to get out, but did not tell him to stop the vehicle or let her out”. 1

Ms. Johns soon realized that the stranger wasn’t taking her to any service station, and asked him if he always went around helping people like this.  The man responded, “By the time I get through with them, they won’t need my help”. 2 From time to time he would slow down, as if he were about to pull over, and then would speed up again. Finally, he stopped the car short at a stop sign, and Johns took the opportunity to escape.  She held her baby tightly and jumped from the car, running across a nearby field and up an embankment where she hid in the shadows.  The man turned his headlights off, moved his car a few feet, and waited silently without leaving the car.  After about five minutes, he turned his lights back on and drove away.

The Zodiac wanted poster

Ms. Johns was soon picked up by a passing Samaritan.  When she made it to the local police station in Patterson, Ms Johns recognized the man who had sabotaged her wheel as the man in the composite sketch of the Zodiac, which appeared in a Wanted poster that hung prominently in the office. The desk sergeant, perhaps terrified at the prospect of a confrontation with a villain on the level of Dr. Octopus or the Joker, had Johns wait alone in a nearby cafe for several hours until her car could be returned.  The sergeant broadcast the car’s last known location, and a Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Deputy found it thoroughly burned and still smoldering — the abductor had returned to the car and set it on fire, destroying everything inside.  Some sources report that Johns’ car was moved to another location before being torched.  However, the car’s hubcap was found nearby, meaning that if the car had been moved then the man responsible had gone to the unlikely trouble of bringing it with him, if not reattaching the hubcap, driving to the new location, removing the hubcap again, and discarding it before igniting the car.  Given that the police reports make no mention of any trouble finding the car near the Interstate intersection, it seems safe to assume that the car was never moved.

Ms. Johns’ accounts of the night’s events have varied over the years, and differ from interview to interview.  The most dramatic version, and the most familiar, is the one recounted in a San Francisco Chronicle article by Paul Avery that appeared eight months after the incident, 3 which has the man overtly threatening both the woman and her baby, and getting out of his car with a flashlight after her escape.  This version of the story is the one that appears in Robert Graysmith’s ZODIAC.  It should be remembered that Ms. Johns told two seperate police officers shortly after her abduction that the man simply closed the car door and drove away. 4  Moreover, articles published in the Modesto Bee and San Francisco Examiner in the days after the incident match the police reports.  In the late 1990s, after identifying two different and dissimilar men as her abductor, Johns admitted that she couldn’t even remember if she had been legally married at the time, and that her memory could not be trusted to make a case against any particular suspect.
More Threats
The abduction attempt near Modesto was the last time anyone knowingly saw the Zodiac in person.  His letter-writing campaign, however, was to continue for some time.  The next mailing was sent to the Chronicle on April 20th, and included a short code and the plans for a modified bus bomb.

This is the Zodiac Speaking By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you?  My name is –

I am mildly cerous as to how much money you have on my head now.  I hope you do not think that I was the one who wiped out that blue meannie with a bomb at the cop station.  Even though I talked about killing school children with one.  It just wouldn’t doo to move in on someone else’s teritory.  But there is more glory in killing a cop than a cid because a cop can shoot back.  I have killed ten people to date.  It would have been a lot more except that my bus bomb was a dud.  I was swamped out by the rain we had a while back.

The new bomb is set up like this

PS I hope you have fun trying to figgure out who I killed

[crossed-circle] – 10     SFPD – 0

Although the word “cerous” in this letter is routinely corrected as a misspelling of “curious,” it is in fact an English word defined by Webster as “Of, relating to, or containing cerium.” Cerium is the most abundant of the rare-earth elements, number 58 on the periodic table. The phrase “blue meanie” is almost certainly a reference to the uniformed ogres in The Beatles’ animated film, The Yellow Submarine, which was released in 1968; it soon gained popularity as a counter-culture euphemism for police.

The latest bus threat went unreported until later that month, when a note arrived at the Chronicle demanding its publication. Postmarked 28 April 1970, the note was written on a “Jolly Roger” brand greeting card featuring a cartoon prospector riding a dragon and the pun “Sorry to hear your ass is a dragon.”

The dragon postcard

I hope you enjoy your selves when I have my Blast

P.S. on back

If you don’t want me to have this blast you must do two things.  1 Tell everyone about the bus bomb with all the details.  2 I would like to see some nice Zodiac butons wandering about town.  Every one else has these buttons like, [peace symbol], black power, Melvin eats bluber, etc.  Well it would cheer me up considerably if I saw a lot of people wearing my buton.  Please no nasty ones like Melvin’s

Thank you

An unspecified number of latent fingerprints were developed on this card and its envelope by San Francisco Police evidence technicians shortly after its receipt.  One SFPD Inspector noted that, while the envelope prints could have been left by a mail carrier, the prints on the card itself were probably those of the Zodiac 1

The slogan “Melvin eats bluber” may have its roots in an old novelty button favored by at least one college English professor that read “Melville Eats Blubber.”  The bomb threat was finally revealed to the public on April 29, 1970, but the schematics (described as “dubious” 2) were not published until 1986, when they were reproduced in Graysmith’s ZODIAC.

The next letter was sent to the Chronicle on June 26.  It contained another code and a Phillips 66 road map of the Bay Area, which was annotated with a stylized clock face drawn on the summit of Mount Diablo.  The design was basically the Zodiac’s crossed-circle with a zero at the top, a numeral three on the right side, a six at the bottom, and a nine on the left.  According to the annotation, the zero ” is to be set to Mag. N.”

This is the Zodiac Speaking

I have become very angry with the people of the San Fran Bay Area.  They have not complied with my wishes for them to wear some nice [crossed-circle]  buttons.  I promiced to punish them if they did not comply, by anilating a full School Buss.  But now school is out for the summer, so I punished them in another way.  I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38.

The Map coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb is set.  You have untill next Fall to dig it up.

The only Bay Area shooting in recent memory that had been committed with a .38-caliber weapon was that of SFPD Officer Richard Radetich, who was shot to death in his car while writing out a traffic ticket six days before this letter was postmarked.  A witness to the murder identified ex-convict Joseph Wesley Johnson, a black man who bore no resemblance to any description of the Zodiac, as the shooter, and SFPD officials were adamant that the letter’s claim was false.  Most investigators agree that the Zodiac was capitalizing on Radetich’s murder and wrote the letter without the knowledge that police had already identified a suspect.
The Summer of ’70
A short note that seemed to confirm Kathleen Johns’ claim was sent to the Chronicle on July 24, 1970.  Although several Bay Area newspapers had reported on Johns’ abduction, only the relatively small Modesto Bee included the detail that her car had been burned, and many cite this as evidence that it truly was the Zodiac that Ms. Johns rode with.  Sent with this note was a lengthy perversion of the song “I’ve Got a Little List” from Gilbert & Sullivan’s musical, The Mikado.  Its postscript refers back to the June letter and its unsolved 32-character cipher.

This is the Zodiac speaking

I am rather unhappy because you people will not wear some nice [crossed-circle] buttons.  So now I have a little list, starting with that woeman + her baby that I gave a rather interesting ride for a coupple howers one evening a few months back that ended in my burning her car where I found them.

[Crossed-circle]

As someday it may happen that a victom must be found.  I’ve got a little list.  I’ve got a little list, of society offenders who might well be underground who would never be missed who would never be missed.  There is the pestulentual nucences who whrite for autographs, all people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs.  All children who are up in dates and implore you with im platt.  All people who are shaking hands shake hands like that.  And all third persons who with unspoiling take thos who insist.  They’d none of them be missed.  They’d none of them be missed.  There’s the banjo seranader and the others of his race and the piano orginast I got him on the list.  All people who eat pepermint and phomphit in your face, they would never be missed.  They would never be missed And the Idiout who phraises with inthusiastic tone of centuries but this and every country but his own.  And the lady from the provences who dress like a guy who doesn’t cry and the singurly abnomily the girl who never kissed.  I don’t think she would be missed Im shure she wouldn’t be missed.  And that nice impriest that is rather rife the judicial hummerist I’ve got him on the list All funny fellows, commic men and clowns of private life.  They’d none of them be missed.  They’d none of them be missed.  And uncompromising kind such as wachamacallit, thingmebob, and like wise, well-nevermind, and tut tut tut tut, and whatshisname, and you know who, but the task of filling up the blanks I rather leave up to you.  But it really doesn’t matter whom you place upon the list, for none of them be missed, none of them be missed.

[Another giant crossed-circle, more than half the page]

PS.  The Mount Diablo Code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians.

A radian is a specific angular measurement based on the transcendental number pi.  It is equal to a circle (or 360 degrees) divided by 2pi (or 6.23818…).  The resulting degree, whose legs are equal in length to the length of the arc they form, is equal to 57.29578… degrees.

Two days later, exactly one month after the Mount Diablo letter, the Zodiac sent his thirteenth mailing, devoted to the tortures that his slaves would undergo in the afterlife. The penultimate sentence is another corruption of The Mikado.

This is the Zodiac speaking

Being that you will not wear some nice [crossed-circle] buttons, how about wearing some nasty [crossed-circle] buttons.  Or any kind of [crossed-circle] buttons you can think up.  If you do not wear any type of [crossed-circle] buttons, I shall (on top of everything else) torture all 13 of my slaves that I have waiting for me in Paradice.  Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream + twich and squirm.  Others shall have pine splinters driven under their nails + then burned.  Others shall be placed in cages + fed salt beef untill they are gorged then I shall listen to their pleass for water and I shall laugh at them.  Others will hang by their thumbs + burn in the sun then I will rub them down with deep heat to warm them up.  Others I shall skin them alive + let them run around screaming.  And all billiard players I shall have them play in a darkened dungen cell with crooked cues + Twisted Shoes.  Yes I shall have great fun in flicting the most delicious of pain to my slaves

[Giant crossed circle, about half the length of the page] = 13
The Halloween Card
After a few months’ silence, October brought two more cards from the Zodiac.  One, a postcard with a collage on its face and 13 holes punched through it, was postmarked on October 5, 1970.  In words and letters cut from magazines and newspapers it was addressed simply to “San Francisco Chronicle, S.F.” and read:

Dear Editor,
You’ll hate me, but I’ve got to tell you.
The pace isn’t any slower! In fact it’s just one big thirteenth
13
“Some of them fought it was horrible”
P.S. There are reports city police pig cops are closeing in on me. Fk I’m crackproof, What is the price tag now?

Zodiac

Though originally dismissed as a hoax, certain phrases from this card are repeated in later confirmed Zodiac letters, particularly the word “crackproof,” which would appear in a letter to the Los Angeles Times five months later.  The juxtaposition of the letters “FK” also repeat in the Zodiac literature, frequently in the two long ciphers and in the hieroglyph that closes the “Exorcist” letter of 1974. Literary analysis notwithstanding, the card was soon judged to be genuine because it announced a body count of 13 — the number given in the Zodiac’s last letter, which had not been made public.

The Halloween greeting card

The other mailing, sent October 27, was a customized Halloween greeting card, and it was addressed personally to Paul Avery at the Chronicle, though his name was misspelled on the envelope as “Averly.”  Inside the envelope, written twice very lightly in the shape of an X, was the comment “Sorry no cipher.”  In addition to signing the card with a “Z” and the customary crossed-circle, the Zodiac drew an unusual symbol (also used as a return address on the envelope), 13 eyes, and the message “Peek-a-boo, you are doomed.”  Kathleen Johns, the woman abducted on Highway 132, stated in an interview that she had received a similar card, ostensibly from the Zodiac, at about the same time: she claims to have forwarded the card to Avery, but no mention of a second card has ever been reported. 1  Johns attributes the card to a crank, since her name and address appeared in the newspaper shortly after her abduction, but the timing of the card and description that she gave of it suggest the strong possibility that it was genuine and somehow lost in the case’s sea of details.
The Riverside Connection
The card to Avery was widely considered a threat on his life, and the Chronicle ran a front page story about it on October 31. Among the mail that this generated was an anonymous letter from Riverside urging Avery to investigate a link with the still-unsolved Bates murder. Graysmith transcribes it in ZODIAC:

Please forward the contents of this letter to the detective in charge of “The Zodiac Murder Case.” I hope this information will also help you, as we would both like to see this case solved. As for myself, I wish to remain anonymous and I know that you will understand why!

A few years ago in Riverside, California, a young girl was murdered, just about, I believe, on “Halloween” evening! I could write a much longer letter, citing the similarities between Zodiac’s case and this murder, which occurred in Riverside but if the police department cannot see said comparative similarities between these two cases, then I will take a “slow boat to China,” even if these two crimes were committed by two different people! I think, after all the facts are studied, regarding both of these cases, if police have not already investigated these possibilities and are not already aware of the “Riverside case,” then, even so perhaps they should look into it….

Letters to newspapers, “similar erratic printing” find out about these two different cases ….Give Captain Cross a call on the phone, he knows that “I do not quit.”

Mr. Avery, I will give you a call in the near future, please look into the case, the Riverside police have a wealth of information, so does San Francisco, let us hope that they are not too proud to work together, and if they already are, let us hope that there has been an exchange of information….

After locating a year-old letter from the Riverside Chief of Police to a Napa County detective that had similarly linked the Bates murder with the Zodiac, Avery visited the Riverside police and reviewed their evidence.  Intrigued by the letters sent to the police and press, not to mention what appeared to be a “Z” used as a signature in some, he instigated a meeting between their detectives and detectives from Solano, Napa, and San Francisco counties, who compared notes on the Bates murder and each of the known Zodiac attacks up to that point.  Authorities from Northern California, particularly SFPD Inspector Bill Armstrong, felt that there was a link between the Bates murder and the Zodiac crimes, and that they were most likely committed by the same man.  State handwriting analyst Sherwood Morrill checked the writing on the desk and envelopes against the killer’s letters to the Chronicle and found that they were “unquestionably the work of Zodiac”. 1  Riverside police, particularly Capt. Irvin Cross, were less certain and “reaffirmed [their] skepticism”, 2 probably because they had not released the full details of the crime to their counterparts upstate — the number of stab wounds received by Bates, strongly suggesting what is known as a “rage killing,” was not announced publicly until May of 2000.  The Riverside story broke on November 16, 1970, when Avery’s article was printed in the Chronicle.

The official position of the Riverside Police Department and most independent investigators as of 1998 is that Cheri Jo Bates was not a Zodiac victim.  RPD maintains a local man as their suspect, and considers the Zodiac murders entirely unrelated, though they do concede the possibility that the Bay Area killer authored one or more of the letters sent in southern California.
The LA Times Letter
The next letter came after an uncharacteristically long five-month silence. Posted on March 22, 1971, with two upside-down 6-cent stamps, it was the only letter the Zodiac ever sent to the Los Angeles Times, and it was the first to be sent from outside San Francisco: it had been postmarked in Pleasanton, 15 miles east of the Bay.

This is the Zodiac speaking

Like I have allways said, I am crack proof. If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses + do something. Because the longer they fiddle + fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my after life. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason I’m writing to the Times is this, They don’t bury me on the back pages like some of the others.

SFPD-0    [crossed-circle]-17+

In an interview with researcher Mike Butterfield, an RPD detective stated that there is a suspicion within his department that the author of the anonymous 1970 letter to Paul Avery linking the Zodiac to Riverside might also have counterfeited this letter. 1 Adding to this apparent mystery is the fact that another source has reported that SFPD Inspector David Toschi was also under suspicion for writing this letter. 2  There are no available facts to bolster either hypothesis.

A week later, the Zodiac sent another postcard, though an agent of the US Postal Service recognized and intercepted it before it was delivered.  The intended recipient was unclear: it was marked to Paul Avery’s attention (again misspelled as “Averly”), but the address side bore no specific address — just the names “The Times,” “S.F. Examiner,” and “San Francisco Chronicle” clipped from the respective newspapers.  A hole was punched through the upper left corner in lieu of a return address, above which the author had written the word “Zodiac.”  Around the hole itself were four lines drawn in a fashion similar to the crossed-circle design used by the killer.  The entire perimeter of the card had been notched by a hole-punch.  The front of the card was decorated with a sketch of a condominium complex that had been under development at Incline Village, NV, near Lake Tahoe, by Boise/Interlake between 1967 and 1970. The same picture had appeared in the Chronicle three days earlier in an advertisement for the complex, known as Forest Pines. 

While the handwriting on this postcard is similar to that on confirmed Zodiac letters, it is not unmistakably the same, and the possibility exists that it is a forgery.  The use of the hole-punch and the misspelling of Paul Avery’s name, however, are both traits of confirmed Zodiac cards and letters.

If this card was indeed genuine, it marked the last communication from the Zodiac for almost three years.
1974 Reappearance
The Zodiac resurfaced in 1974, when he wrote a series of letters to the Chronicle over a period of six months and with postmarks from around the Bay Area.  Though ultimately identified through analysis of the envelopes and handwriting, these four letters were different from the others in that the author had abandoned his usual salutation (“This is the Zodiac speaking”) and signature (the crossed-circle design).

The first was sent on January 29 from San Mateo or Santa Clara, just south of San Francisco, and referred to the recently released movie The Exorcist as “the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen.”  It also included a quote from The Mikado (about a “dicky-bird” whose “blighted affection” drives it to suicide) and an inscrutable drawing that resembled a hieroglyph of some sort.

I saw and think “The Exorcist” was the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen. Signed, yours truley:
He plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the suicide’s grave
titwillo titwillo titwillo
PS.  If I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I’m capable of doing.

Me-37 SFPD-0

In addition to a single 8-cent Eisenhower stamp, the Zodiac had placed on the envelope two USPS stickers: one bore a picture of a clock set to 12:55 or 11:05 with the advice to “mail early in the day,” and the other was a reminder to use the recently-introduced ZIP code.  Probably from the same packet, the killer also stuck two short paragraphs about the stamps and their packaging: “Stamps in this book have been gummed with a matte finish adhesive which permits the elimination of the separation tissues …. This book contains 25 — 8-cent stamps — four on this pane and seven each on three additional panes.  Selling price $2.00.”  Although this letter fell under brief suspicion as a possible forgery in mid-1978, it was verified as genuine by a panel of handwriting analysts from various agencies throughout California.
Final Letters
The next letter arrived at the Chronicle on February 14, 1974, seven days after the Symbionese Liberation Army had kidnapped Patty Hearst. It was transcribed by the Chronicle in August 1976.  Though its postmark is unclear in published photographs, an FBI report states that it was sent from San Rafael.1

Dear Mr. Editor,

Did you know that the initials SLAY (Symbionese Liberation Army) spell “sla,” [the word "sla" is written in script] an old Norse word meaning “kill.”

A friend

The terms “Old Norse” and “Old Icelandic” refer to the same tongue, but there is debate among scholars over which is more appropriate. Some use the former in respect to the language’s Norwegian origins, but most use the latter because most of the surviving texts were written in Iceland. Gareth Penn, a former student of medieval literature and historical linguistics, points out that the Nordic “sla” in fact means “to strike,” and goes on to list the English language dictionaries which name it as a cognate of the English “slay” without giving its original definition, and with Norse rather than Icelandic named as the original tongue: Webster’s Third International; Chambers’ Dictionary; the Oxford English Dictionary; the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology; and Eric Partridge’s Origins. “All are scholarly, not popular”, 2 writes Penn, who suggests that the gleaning of this misinformation came as the result of a higher education than the SFPD and armchair profilers everywhere had attributed to the Zodiac.  For their part, the FBI seems less than certain that this letter was written by the Zodiac.3

* * *

Three months later, on May 8, a postcard was sent to the Chronicle from Fremont, about 25 miles southeast of San Francisco, across the Bay.  The message side expressed “consternation” at newspaper ads for the movie {Badlands}, which was inspired by spree murderers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate.  The pre-stamped address side read “Editor, SF Chronicle, 5th + Mission, San Fran”. 4

Sirs — I would like to expression my consternt [this word is crossed out] consternation concerning your poor taste + lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie “Badlands,” featuring the blurb: “In 1959 most people were killing time. Kit + Holly were killing people.” In light of recent events, this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable) why don’t you show some concern for public sensibilities + cut the ad?

A citizen

* * *

The final letter was postmarked in San Rafael on July 8, 1974. The return address on the envelope was simply “RP.”  In a looping, obviously disguised script, it was an attack on the conservative Chronicle columnist Count Marco Spinelli.

Editor–

Put Marco back in the, hell-hole from whence it came — he has a serious psychological disorder — always needs to feel superior. I suggest you refer him to a shrink. Meanwhile, cancel the Count Marco column. Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I –

The Red Phantom
(red with rage)

The San Francisco news media presented these last two letters as genuine, but SFPD Insp. David Toschi advised the FBI confidentially that he had doubts as to their authenticity. 5 After examination, the FBI Laboratory reported that, while some characteristics of the “Badlands” and “Count Marco” letters were inconsistent with the writing of the confirmed Zodiac letters, “these inconsistencies are not sufficient to eliminate the writer of the Zodiac letters” as the author of the late 1974 letters.  The Laboratory went on to state that “similarities were noted which would indicate that [these letters] were probably prepared by the writer of the Zodiac letters”. 6

San Francisco police have not verified a Zodiac letter since 1974.
The 1978 Letter
On April 24, 1978, a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle was mailed from either Santa Clara or San Mateo County by someone very familiar with the Zodiac case and literature.  Although this letter was initially thought to be genuine, and though some continue to believe that it was in fact the killer’s final message to the citizens of the Bay Area, the modern consensus among law enforcement agents and most researchers is that the letter was a counterfeit.

The handwriting on the envelope was recognized by a copyperson at the newspaper, and the letter made its way almost immediately to journalist Duffy Jennings.  Jennings had taken over the Zodiac beat from Paul Avery, who was now at the San Francisco Examiner.  After immediately preserving his scoop with photographs of both the letter and its envelope, Jennings phoned Inspector David Toschi, the only detective working San Francisco’s end of the Zodiac case.  Toschi was out serving subpoenas, so Jennings hand-delivered the originals to the Hall of Justice where they were routed instead to Deputy Chief of Police Clem DeAmicis.  The letter read:

Dear Editor
This is the Zodiac speaking I am back with you.  Tell herb caen I am here, I have always been here.  That city pig toschi is good but I am bu [crossed out] smarter and better he will get tired then leave me alone.  I am waiting for a good movie about me.  Who will play me.  I am now in control of all things.
yours truly:
[crossed circle] guess
SFPD – 0

When Toschi arrived back at headquarters, he was summoned directly to DeAmicis’ office where the two men conferred and Toschi was granted custody of the letter.  Sherwood Morrill, the former state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation handwriting expert that had authenticated most of the Zodiac letters for Toschi and the SFPD, had retired in late 1973, and Toschi’s first move was to call John Shimoda of the US Postal Service crime lab to confirm the Zodiac’s authorship.  It is unclear why Toschi called Shimoda rather than the current chief of the state’s questioned documents section, Robert Prouty.  In any case, Shimoda confirmed it as the Zodiac’s handiwork, and Toschi delivered the letter to a fingerprint expert at the SFPD crime lab, who found no trace of prints or any other useful evidence on the single page or its envelope.
Controversy
In order to fully understand the controversy that still surrounds this letter, we must take a look at its context.  At the time of its receipt at the Chronicle, Inspector Toschi, a 25-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department, was probably the most high-profile law enforcement agent in the Bay Area.  While the charismatic Toschi had many supporters in city government and the local media, he had also made his share of enemies, who felt that his flashy demeanor and his yen for publicity were unprofessional and could lead to a conflict of interest.  Further, rumor around City Hall had it that Supervisor Dianne Feinstein would tap him as Police Chief in her bid for the Mayor’s seat, and this would certainly mark him as a threat to SFPD Chief Charles Gain and his deputy, Clem DeAmicis.

In the fall of 1976, local author and columnist Armistead Maupin had written a serial for the Chronicle about a fictitious SFPD detective chasing an unknown killer similar to the Zodiac.  The story’s protagonist, Inspector Tandy, received advice and mentoring in the serial from none other than Toschi.   At about this time, Maupin received three notecards from what appeared to be private citizens complimentary to Toschi and urging that he appear more often in the story.  A good journalist, Maupin attempted to verify the notes and found that the names did not belong to San Francisco residents.  Toschi was well known for the short notes he sent to various reporters and politicians, and Maupin began to suspect that it was he who had sent the cards.  Seeing them as harmless, if not entirely honest, Maupin kept the notes under wraps until April 1978, when the only Zodiac letter to mention Toschi by name arrived at his newspaper, sparking suspicions that Toschi had graduated to something akin to fraud, counterfeiting a Zodiac letter.  Maupin and the agent he had hired to publicize an unrelated book approached Sergeant Jack O’Shea, head of the SFPD Intelligence Unit, with their suspicions.  O’Shea and Toschi’s boss, Lieutenant Jack Jordan, head of the Homicide Bureau, determined that Toschi had written the fan letters.  Both men would eventually be disciplined, O’Shea more severely, for not reporting this knowledge immediately.

Chief Gain has said that he was not told of Toschi’s phony letters until late June 1978, but the late April transfer of two detectives from Special Investigations and the Gang Task Force to the Zodiac case may have been a sign that Toschi was already under suspicion as the author of the latest letter.  Exactly what transpired within the Hall of Justice is unknown, but on July 10, Chief Gain held a press conference to announce two nominally disparate events: the discovery that the Zodiac letter might be a forgery, and the transfer of Toschi to the Pawnshop Detail in light of the phony fan letters to Maupin.  At no time was it explicitly stated that Toschi was suspected of writing the Zodiac letter, but the implication could not be missed, especially when it was announced that two handwriting experts were checking Toschi’s hand against not just the questioned April document but also the heretofore accepted “Exorcist” letter of January 1974.  The official rationale for announcing Toschi’s embarrassing transfer was to “counter and negate” 1 Maupin’s claims — as Toschi put it, “not to put the department on the defense, they would go on the offense”2 — but despite a brief revival of state and federal interest, no convincing negation was ever launched.
Possible Authors
By August, no fewer than four experts, including Keith Woodward, former chief of the LAPD’s document department; Robert Prouty, the specialist bypassed by Toschi in April; his BCII colleague Terrence Pascoe; and John Shimoda, the Postal Service expert who had initially confirmed the letter; had determined that the April letter was a fake, “a carefully drawn copy of the true Zodiac printing …. constructed by a person that had access to printed letters of the Zodiac”.1  The lone holdout to this finding was the retired Sherwood Morrill, whose bitter statements to the media revealed a determined loyalty to Toschi and a great disrespect for Gain. The letter of January 1974, which had also fallen under suspicion, was deemed to be genuine.

Speculation as to the author of the 1978 letter has focused on three possibilities.  The first, of course, is the Zodiac himself, though even the untrained eye can see that the words and characters seem to have been meticulously drawn rather than written in the semi-manic freehand used by the killer in his earlier missives.

Second is Toschi, and rumors have even suggested that he was identified as the author by DNA testing in the 1990s, though there have certainly been no official pronouncements to that effect by the SFPD or any other source.  An FBI memo from August 1978 states that analysis of the April letter was discontinued “in light of recent disclosures … indicating that David Toschi had authored one or more ‘Zodiac’ letters” 2 though it must be remembered that the FBI received this indication from the SFPD, and not through its own investigation.  In fact, Toschi was eventually reinstated to his post as a homicide Inspector. 

Finally, author Robert Graysmith had enough knowledge of the Zodiac literature to forge such a letter, and even had a motive — he had been shopping his novel about the case for two years already in 1978, though it would not see print until nine years later.  In this book, Graysmith describes a photo enlarger setup that he claims could have been used to write the original Zodiac letters, but would have served quite well to forge the latest one.  It may be worth mentioning at this point that Graysmith had been disciplined for plagiarism during his time as a cartoonist for the Chronicle.  In any event, he has lobbied quite vocally on Toschi’s behalf, maintaining in his book and in subsequent interviews that, whoever wrote the letter, it wasn’t Toschi.  San Francisco Police remain tightlipped on the issue, saying in 1999 that “The Police Department has never made a statement on [accusations that Toschi faked a Zodiac letter] one way or another.  We will confirm that not all the Zodiac letters are authentic”. 3
A Look at Lake Berryessa
The Lake Berryessa attack offered several examples of odd behavior on the part of the Zodiac.  There is, for instance, the four-cornered hood that he put on just before approaching the couple: its design is rare, if not unique, and the killer made no attempt to explain it either to the students or to the press. Presumably, he wished to conceal his identity, but this could have been accomplished less ostentatiously with a ski mask or similarly common item.  As a reason for attacking Shepard and Hartnell, he had a fabricated story about escaping from prison in the northwest, yet signed the car door with his easily recognizable crossed-circle logo and murder chronology.  It should be noted that he omitted from this chronology the Riverside murder, which was not attributed to him until 1970, leading many to view this omission as evidence that the Zodiac was not, in fact, responsible for the murder of Cheri Jo Bates.  He told the students that he wanted their money and car keys, but took only Hartnell’s pocket change and left the keys and the girl’s wallet on the picnic blanket, and tied them up and stabbed them rather than simply shooting them with the pistol he had pointed at them earlier.  Finally, he never took credit for this attack in a letter as he had for the Vallejo and San Francisco attacks.

The FBI’s Crime Classification Manual describes three forms of offender behavior at the crime scene.  “Modus Operandi” is defined as the actions necessary to commit a crime and ensure a successful escape.  The two Vallejo attacks, for instance, show a consistent blitz-style MO using a handgun and followed by a quick, controlled retreat. The MO at Lake Berryessa is superficially closer in style to the Riverside attack, which was executed with a knife and preceded by some kind of verbal interchange between killer and victim, but the differences are apparent on examination: Bates’ killer was ill-prepared for his attack, using only a small pocketknife on a young woman who fought back vigorously, whereas the Zodiac went to great lengths to immobilize his victims at the lake.  In fact, it seems that the man who killed Cheri Jo Bates wasn’t even sure that he would kill her, having conversed with her for over an hour before he lost control and stabbed her — at Lake Berryessa, there can be little doubt as to the Zodiac’s intentions.  Modus Operandi is learned, pragmatic behavior, and can be improved upon with experience, as shown by the foresight evinced by the killer when he foiled a potential call-back from the Napa police switchboard by leaving the phone off the hook.  The Zodiac also became more audacious in attacking at dusk in an open area, though he was careful to choose one that was fairly isolated.  Willful alteration of the crime scene in order to confuse or mislead investigators is called “staging,” and is usually seen in cases where the killer and victim are acquainted with one another: oftentimes, the offender will attempt to make the crime appear to be a random rape or robbery gone wrong.  This phenomenon does not seem present in the Zodiac case, unless one counts the letters as a form of staging, having been deliberately crafted to give an impression of their author as a dyslexic Gilbert and Sullivan fan. Any action taken by the offender that is unnecessary to the crime’s completion, or is performed solely to gratify his own psychological needs, is called “personation.”  The elaborate hood, the jailbreak lie and the demand for money and car keys are examples of personation. Repeated examples of the same personation by the same offender are called a “signature,” and this occurred both clinically and literally on the car door: the crossed-circle design appeared at the foot of every letter from the Zodiac between 1969 and 1971. The phone call was another aspect of the signature, mirroring calls made to police in Riverside and Vallejo, and totally unnecessary to his escape.

The killer’s choice of the knife over the pistol, in conjunction with his use of the unusual hood, is generally cited as evidence that the Berryessa attack was one of ritual significance to the killer.  This may be true — the hood remains unexplained except insofar as it was probably meant to instill terror in his victims, and by Hartnell’s account the Zodiac seemed to lose control during the assault on Shepard.  However, the fact that he had this time chosen a location as open as the lakeside may have led to the tactical decision to use the knife, a silent weapon perhaps brought along for such a contingency.

There are some who remain unconvinced that the Berryessa attack was an authentic Zodiac incident, citing numerous deviations from the general pattern of the other Bay Area attacks.  There is, in truth, no conclusive evidence tying the Zodiac to this incident as there is for the Vallejo and San Francisco murders.  The handwriting on Hartnell’s car is identifiably similar to that in the Zodiac’s letters, but the door-writer’s posture rules out a definitive authentication by the layman.  Regardless, the differences between the lakeside incident and the other Bay Area attacks — which include the time of day, the lingering, the weapon, and the absence of a follow-up letter offering proof of the author’s culpability — are to most investigators outweighed by the circumstantial evidence of similar handwriting, weight, and general description, not to mention the phone call after the incident.  Behaviorally, the variations in MO and signature can be ascribed to the growing boldness, calculation, and self-gratification of a developed serial killer.  Moreover, if the true Zodiac were not in fact responsible, his drive for publicity would almost certainly compel him to deny the charges or offer a false confirmation as he did for the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates.  A Zodiac copycat at Lake Berryessa would have to have been the right height and weight; he would have had to study and superbly forge the killer’s handwriting; and he would have had to exhibit an understanding of the killer’s need for situational control, at the same time being careful to leave none of his own personation at the scene.  Meanwhile, the true Zodiac would have had to suppress his most identifiable character trait.  While intriguing, this hypothesis requires a suspension of disbelief that is simply too great for most investigators.
By Jake Wark
Fingerprint Evidence
One aspect of the legend that has grown like moss on the long-unsolved Zodiac case is that the killer was meticulous in his efforts to deprive the police of any physical evidence. Often, the Zodiac’s claim in November 1969 that he wore “transparent fingertip guards” made of airplane cement is cited as evidence that he was clever enough to foil what was then law enforcement’s most conclusive evidence against a suspect. That boast, however, is repeated in contradiction with the facts reported by numerous investigators and recorded in dozens of local, state, and federal documents.

An examination of reports filed by the San Francisco Police Department, the Vallejo Police Department, the Napa County Sheriff’s Department, the California Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation reveals that the Zodiac may actually have been rather sloppy both in the construction of his letters to the press and at the scenes of some of his attacks. At least two lifts were taken from the July, 1969, letter to the Vallejo Times-Herald, and it appears that an additional print was found on the cipher-block sent to the San Francisco Examiner, both part of the killer’s very first mailing. Additionally, two “fingerprint[s] of value”  were developed on the second and third pages of the killer’s next letter, his August 1969 missive to the Examiner. These were developed by the FBI Laboratory, whose Latent Fingerprint Section would perform almost all of the ensuing print work for the case and store it under Latent Case #A-10042.

The Napa County Sheriff’s Department found several finger- and palm-prints following the attack at Lake Berryessa. While the numerous impressions found on Bryan Hartnell’s Kharmann Ghia were mentioned only in passing and are probably unrelated to the attack, four prints of note were found among 35 developed in the phone booth where the Zodiac placed his call to the Napa Police Department. Of particular interest was a clear palm-print found on the receiver – it was still off the hook, and the print was still wet, indicating that it had been left by the last person to use the phone, presumably the killer. To evidence technician Harold Snook’s great shame, however, the print was not given enough time to dry, and it was ruined in the lifting process.

The three youths who witnessed the immediate aftermath of Paul Stine’s murder watched as the killer proceeded to wipe down certain areas of Stine’s cab. He was, no doubt, trying to obliterate any prints he may have left – an action that would be pointless if his fingertips had been covered with guards. Further, while the witnesses were specific in their description of a wiping action, they saw nothing that could be interpreted as the planting of false prints from the time the killer exited the cab to the time he left the area. Regardless, SFPD crime lab technicians developed dozens of prints in and on the cab. Among these were several that, according to an SFPD memo, “show traces of blood [and] are believed to be prints of the suspect”.  Most of these came from the post between the driver’s side front and rear doors. In addition, wrote an SFPD Inspector, “latent prints from right front door handle are also believed to be prints of the suspect”. It should be noted that these prints featured the loops, whorls, and textures that would be missing if the killer’s fingers were coated in airplane cement or any other medium.

The letter that followed this attack, claiming Stine as a victim, also bore fingerprints: another FBI report says that SFPD “stated that latent prints were obtained from the [10/13/69] letter”.

Only in the next letter, sent November 9, 1969, did the Zodiac make any claim about masking his fingerprints. Again, this claim would be counterproductive if, as some theorists maintain, the Zodiac had left false prints in the cab: after all, why would the killer go to the trouble of leaving such a red herring only to deny that it existed? A more reasonable explanation is that the Zodiac knew the police had not only handwriting and fingerprints, but now a good physical description, as well, and the “transparent guards” claim was a desperate bid to instill doubt in the SFPD. Nonetheless, prints were found on the killer’s greeting card of April 28, 1970, and according to a San Francisco detective, “the latents were not made by persons handling the card after its receipt”.

A 1969 FBI report categorized SFPD’s prints into “thirty latent fingerprints, three latent palm-prints, and one latent impression (fingerprint from lower joint area of a finger or palm print)”. Only two, belonging to Paul Stine and an unidentified police officer or newspaperman, were ever identified. The number of fingerprints submitted to the FBI Lab by San Francisco and Vallejo Police was later raised to 38, a figure that does not include the lifts made by the Napa County Sheriff’s Department. While the great majority of these prints are probably unrelated to the case, there is a high degree of probability that some of them do belong to the killer, and that he could be identified through a match with one or more of them.

Law enforcement confidence in the prints appears to be high. Literally hundreds of suspects were checked against them, including Arthur Leigh Allen, the most widely known. In Allen’s case, Vallejo Police requested that the FBI “expeditiously compare” his prints to the two latents developed on the August 1969 Examiner letter, and “further requested [the FBI] to compare Allen’s fingerprints with all latent prints developed in the Zodiac investigation as time permits.” There was no match and Allen was “dismissed as a suspect”, shedding light on the faith that both local and federal authorities maintain in their evidence.
By Jake Wark
A Tip
In the years since Robert Graysmith’s seminal book ZODIAC touted “Robert Hall Starr” as the top suspect in the unsolved murders of five San Francisco Bay Area residents, it has become increasingly difficult to discuss the Zodiac case without also discussing Arthur Leigh Allen. Allen, the Vallejo resident and convicted child molester who served as the inspiration for the pseudonymous “Starr,” died in 1992 under a cloud of speculation that he was the notorious serial killer who put five bullets in the back of a teenage girl as she ran for her life. He was never charged for those murders, however, and despite the best efforts of some investigators, not a single piece of evidence was ever developed that could tie him to the Zodiac crimes. In fact, Allen’s alleged links to the case have been found time and again to be false, coincidental, or attributable to Allen’s deviant personality.

Arthur Allen first came to the attention of the Vallejo Police Department in early October 1969, though the circumstances of his candidacy are unclear. Detective John Lynch’s first and only report on Allen does not mention how Allen became a possible suspect, but a cursory look at VPD reports from the time shows that even the shakiest accusations were considered grounds for a police interview in conjunction with the murders of Betty Lou Jensen, David Faraday, Darlene Ferrin, and Cecelia Shepard. For a time, rumor held that Allen had received a speeding ticket near Lake Berryessa on the night of Shepard’s murder, but it was later determined that this event never occurred. Whatever lead instigated Lynch’s interview, it can safely be assumed that it was not accompanied by any significant evidence, as the conversation was quite brief and the detective was not particularly aggressive. 1 In all likelihood, Arthur Leigh Allen was simply one of dozens of Vallejo locals who had been fingered by a friend, an enemy, an acquaintance, or a relative based on little more than a hunch. Too tall and too bald to match the Zodiac’s decription, he was quickly forgotten.2

The tip that launched Allen to the top tier of possible Zodiac suspects came almost two years later. On July 15, 1971, southern California businessman Santo Panzarella approached the Manhattan Beach Police Department with the information that Allen had made incriminating statements to Donald Cheney, Panzarella’s partner, that would seem to indicate that Allen was the Zodiac killer. Intrigued, two MBPD detectives visited Cheney and Panzarella at their place of business, and were told a remarkable story.
Donald Cheney
Cheney, who had been friends with Allen for years until he moved to southern California, told the detectives that he and Allen had had a conversation in Allen’s Fresno Street basement in December 1968 that started on the topic of recreational hunting but soon took a turn for the bizarre. Allen brought up Richard Connell’s classic short story The Most Dangerous Game, the tale of a mad count that hunts shipwrecked travelers on his private island for sport, which has been published in dozens of fiction anthologies and is popular at the grade school level. Allen is said to have greatly enjoyed the story, and allegedly identified with the count.

After broaching the idea of hunting humans, Allen is said to have given a hypothetical account of how he would commit a series of murders in lovers’ lanes. He allegedly described how he would “use a revolver or pistol with a flashlight attached to same for illumination and an aiming device, [and] would walk up and shoot people… Allen also talked about shooting the tires of a school bus and picking off the ‘little darlings’ as they came bouncing off the bus”, 1 and went on to say that he would send harassing notes to the police. If this was not enough, Allen also allegedly stated that he would call himself “Zodiac.”

According to the MBPD report, “Cheney replied, ‘Zodiac … why that, why not something else?’ Arthur Allen at this time became very emotional and stated, ‘I like the name ‘Zodiac’ and that’s the name I’m going to use’”. 2

On its face, Cheney’s account appears damning – after all, if Allen made these comments in December 1968, then he had displayed knowledge of the Lake Herman Road murders that no one but the Zodiac would have until August 1969. The Zodiac’s threat to shoot at a school bus did not come until even later, in October of that year. We can forgive minor quibbles, such as the misquote of “little kiddies” as “little darlings;” the police, rather than the newspapers, being named as the recipients of the forthcoming letters; and the missing definite article that the killer unfailingly used as part of his moniker. There is, however, the question of Cheney’s timing: why did he wait two years to come forth with this information?

Cheney moved to southern California in January 1969, and it is possible that he did not hear about the second Vallejo attack and the letters that followed it. However, the Zodiac case exploded into national attention following Paul Stine’s murder in downtown San Francisco, and it is unlikely that anyone in the state of California could have avoided hearing about the unknown killer who stalked lovers’ lanes, wrote taunting letters to the newspapers, and called himself “the Zodiac,” and apparently Cheney was no exception. By their own admission, “Mr. Panzarella and Mr. Cheney had read and seen articles in the newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, concerning the ‘Zodiac’ killings”. 3 Ignorance, then, is no explanation for his silence. We must infer from his account that none of the Zodiac reports registered with Cheney, and that he never again thought of Allen as a possible killer until 1971, when he heard about an obscure and totally unrelated series of unsolved murders in Grass Valley, CA, a small town about 150 miles north of San Francisco and Vallejo. According to Cheney and Panzarella, it was “the recent killings in the Grass Valley Area by an unknown suspect [that] brought the suspicions to a focus.”

We must wonder how the Grass Valley murders would jog Cheney’s memory as regards Allen and the suspicious conversation, when the almost daily reports out of San Francisco detailing a killer identical to the one Allen described did not. We must also wonder why, if Allen was indeed the Zodiac, he would reveal the identifying details of his murderous exploits within days of their commission. Certainly, he could not expect Cheney’s memory to be as bad as it appears to be; the slaying of Jensen and Faraday on December 20, 1968, dominated the Vallejo media for weeks. The Zodiac did take certain risks, but situational control was one of his hallmarks. Such a concern would almost certainly rule out anything as foolish as overtly detailing his crimes, especially to someone who might have suspicions about him already – Allen had touched Cheney’s young daughter inappropriately on a camping trip years before, and Cheney had complained to Allen’s brother about it. (In one report, a VPD detective wrote, “This might be a motive why Cheney would make such an accusation against Arthur Allen”) 4
The Case Against Arthur Allen
Arthur Allen, by most accounts, was something of an eccentric. Described as “anti-establishment”, 1 he was rejected as a VPD applicant at age 19 and received a discharge other than honorable from the US Navy at 25. He owned several handguns and allegedly kept one in his car at all times. He was also a pedophile, and had lost jobs, alienated friends, and would be committed to Atascadero State Hospital because of this disorder. Cheney was not the only person to whom he had spoken about the Zodiac murders: Allen made no secret of his 1969 interview with Det. John Lynch, and bragged openly that he was a Zodiac suspect. He also appeared to have an interest in abnormal psychology, studying Mental Hygiene and working at Atascadero before his incarceration there. It is not too great a stretch of the imagination to think that Allen, with his interest in guns, law enforcement, and the criminal mind, might simply have been interested in the shocking local murder and brought the topic up one night with Cheney. He may even have recognized the apparent lack of motive in the case, and commented on “The Most Dangerous Game” to explain it as sport.

The Chief of Manhattan Beach Police contacted the San Francisco Police Department soon after the interview, and SFPD Inspector William Armstrong spoke to Cheney on July 26. During the eleven intervening days, Cheney began what has become an interesting trait of recovering memories that are increasingly elaborate in their indictment of Arthur Allen. He began by backdating the conversation by one year, telling Armstrong that it took place in December 1967, rather than 1968. 2 He then remembered that Allen had asked about how one could disguise one’s own handwriting, and claims to have offered Allen advice on that subject. 3 In subsequent interviews, Cheney has also remembered that Allen had not initiated the conversation by bringing up Connell’s short story, but by declaring that he was looking to change careers, and would like to become a police officer. In the event that this plan fell through, Cheney said, Allen allegedly stated that he could become a criminal instead, and would elude detection by committing murders that had no motive. 4 This story was changed yet again when Cheney stated that Allen couched his statements in plans to write a crime novel. 5 Then he added Allen’s alleged idea to disable a woman’s car by removing the lug nuts from one of her wheels. 6 (This story is an obvious allusion to the abduction of Kathleen Johns in March 1970, which has not been confirmed as a genuine Zodiac incident. Johns has positively ruled Allen out as the man who disabled her car and took her on a frightening ride through rural San Joaquin County. 7) Finally, Cheney has said that his inspiration to notify the police came not from the Grass Valley murders as previously stated, but from reading a newspaper article about the Zodiac’s threat to kill “little darlings” – not even the Zodiac’s actual phrase – which he linked with Allen’s similar words. 8 It has become clear over time that Cheney’s account cannot be relied upon for accuracy. A number of likely explanations come to mind, not the least of which is that his memory of events had simply become mixed up over the years, incorporating one or more genuine conversations with news accounts he had read or heard. The one explanation that does not seem credible is the one offered by Cheney himself.

Allen’s Interview
Armstrong put these issues aside and notified the Vallejo Police Department. After some background investigation, it was agreed that detectives from both jurisdictions would contact Allen together and interview him as a suspect.

The interview took place at Allen’s place of employment in early August, and was an almost humorous example of a suspect running circles around the detectives interrogating him. Allen displayed a great knowledge of the pop culture references used by the Zodiac as well as the media reports about the killer, but nothing about the crimes themselves. He denied the incriminating conversation that Cheney described, but did acknowledge reading “The Most Dangerous Game” and stated that it had made an impression on him. He offered an alibi for his whereabouts on the day of the Lake Berryessa attack in the form of a serviceman from Treasure Island – this may have been an oblique reference, lost on the investigators, to the 1933 film Charlie Chan at Treasure Island, in which the Chinese detective matches wits with a San Francisco villain named “Doctor Zodiac.” He claimed to have spoken with his neighbor, Mr. White, upon returning home that afternoon – a possible reference to Ranger William White, who had appeared on television the day after the lakeside murder to discuss the crime scene. Allen also mentioned “the two knives I had in my car with blood on them” without any prompting from police: the blood, he said, “came from a chicken I killed”. 1 There has been speculation that this is a reference to Brian Hartnell’s words just before he was brutally stabbed by the Zodiac: according to Ranger White’s statements, quoted liberally by the local media, Hartnell asked to be stabbed before his friend because he was chicken and couldn’t bear to see her in pain. It has become clear with the declassification of Napa police reports that these were not Hartnell’s words, and that they were attributed to him for the media’s benefit. Finally, when asked for his whereabouts in October 1966, Allen responded, “You mean about the Riverside killing?” 2 Had this statement come any time before November of 1970, it may have carried weight as evidence, but the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates had been linked to the Zodiac for almost a year, and made front page news around California when the story broke.

The detectives commented on Allen’s wristwatch at some point during the interview. It was an expensive Sea Wolf model, made by the Swiss manufacturer Zodiac, whose logo is a crossed-circle. Allen responded that he received it as a gift in the summer of 1969. Allen’s brother was later asked about it and said that his mother gave it to him for Christmas in 1967. In a parting shot at the detectives and police in general, Allen stated with doubtless irony that “he wished the time would come when police were no longer referred to as ‘pigs’”. 3  The Zodiac had used the epithet on occasion, notably in his seven-page letter of November 1969, and it was dutifully publicized by the San Francisco Chronicle on November 12, 13, and 26, garnering front page status twice.

In every case, Allen can be seen to exploit the media reports of the crimes and letters in an effort to tease his interviewers. While this behavior and the taunting letters that the Zodiac sent to the newspapers have been compared, Allen can just as easily be seen to speak from the comfortable knowledge that he would never be tied to the crimes because he was not the killer. Only the brand of Allen’s wristwatch suggested knowledge of the Zodiac events before they took place, and even this item was assigned undue suspicion by Allen himself, who told police that he had received it just before the killer took his name. None of his remarks – or remarks attributed to him by any reliable source – betray knowledge of the crimes beyond the common understanding held by anyone who had followed the news accounts of the case. In 1971, the number of people with such understanding numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
No Evidence
In the absence of any other promising leads, however, San Francisco and Vallejo police saw Allen as the most viable of their Zodiac suspects. On September 14, 1972, a search warrant for his Santa Rosa property was issued, and detectives were soon combing through his trailer and cars looking for firearms, ammunition, clothing, and any other evidence that could link him to the crimes or letters. Nothing of the sort was found. 1 Major case prints – inked impressions of the entire hand, fingertip to palm – were taken, as were samples of his left- and right-handed writing. All were tested by state experts against the Zodiac evidence. In no case was there a match. California handwriting analysts even went so far as to state that Allen’s writing “definitely was not that of the Zodiac killer”. 2 He was given a polygraph test and passed it.

The matter seemed resolved until 1986, when author Robert Graysmith leveled his pen at Allen in his groundbreaking case study, ZODIAC. Once a best seller and now in its 29th printing, ZODIAC has been cited as a source by almost every subsequent work on the case. Graysmith was tipped to Allen’s suspect status by local authorities, and carried on an unofficial investigation of him in the early 1980s without significant findings. Nonetheless, Allen remained the favorite of San Francisco detectives, and Graysmith followed suit, exaggerating the marginal links between Allen and the Zodiac case and mixing rumor with fact to convince the reading public that there was no doubt as to the killer’s identity. The world knew him as “Robert Hall Starr,” but to anyone who had met him, there could be no mistaking Allen.

In December 1990, when Ralph Spinelli was arrested for armed robbery in Lake Tahoe, NV, his bid for leniency included a tip to the Zodiac’s identity: none other than Arthur Leigh Allen. Facing 30 years in prison, Spinelli claimed that Allen had told him in 1969 that he was going to San Francisco to kill a cabdriver. Perhaps not coincidentally, Allen’s only arrest before his child molestation charge was for a fight with Spinelli. Under pressure following the success of Graysmith’s book, and with the knowledge that Allen’s Vallejo property had not been searched in 1972, VPD took advantage of Spinelli’s negligible tip and searched Allen’s Fresno Street basement. Seized were bomb-making materials, newspaper clippings, several firearms, a knife, a typewriter, and Allen’s Zodiac watch. Of these, the knife and one handgun could have been Zodiac evidence (it is widely believed that the Zodiac was not responsible for the murder of Cheri Jo Bates or the typewritten confession that followed it), but neither led to charges or an arrest, and it can be assumed that they were unrelated. Allen’s prints were submitted to the FBI Laboratory, and again the comparison came back negative. According to one newspaper report, “Allen was dismissed as a suspect”. 3
Still A Favorite
The wealth of factors pointing to Allen’s innocence has led many armchair investigators to approach the record looking for loopholes in the truth. When Allen’s fingerprints didn’t match the crime scene prints, doubt was cast on their legitimacy despite law enforcement’s confidence in them. When his handwriting didn’t match the Zodiac’s, a photo-enlarger setup was proposed. When Allen passed a grueling 10-hour polygraph test, he was labeled a sociopath who could beat the machine. One wonders what it would take to get around an exclusion based on DNA evidence, should such evidence arise.

In proposing incriminating circumstantial evidence, Allen’s accusers add their own loopholes. Allen can be “placed” in Riverside in 1966 – but can just as easily be “placed” in Santa Rosa. Cheney’s account is often cited – but not his egregious timing or the numerous changes in his story. Spinelli’s story is also given credence – but his acrimonious relationship with Allen, imminent prison time, and 20-year silence are played down. Allen is said to have had access to a car like one seen by a victim – but the truth is that Allen had lost access to that car when he was fired from a job three months before the attack. 1 Allen had mysterious coded letters in a strongbox – but they were sent to him by a patient at Atascadero.  The Zodiac letters are said to have stopped while Allen was at Atascadero – but the letters stopped eight months before Allen was incarcerated, and the one received upon his release was a phony. A convicted child molester, Allen was, like the Zodiac, interested in “little kiddies” – but pedophiles that kill outside of their target group are incredibly rare. In the aggregate, the coincidences are compelling, but when each is scrutinized, the case against Allen becomes a ball of string: pull on it, and it falls apart.

In the final analysis, only one article exists that could serve to tie Allen to the Zodiac case, and this is the Sea Wolf wristwatch given to him by his mother. She died January 10, 1989. Hardly a conclusive link to the murders, or evidence of anything except a mother’s generosity, it was seized by Vallejo police during their 1991 raid on Allen’s apartment. Despite his repeated requests, it was never returned. Legally blind, stricken with diabetes and kidney failure, the target of a campaign of innuendo that dogged him to the last, Arthur Leigh Allen died without it 18 months later.
What’s Going on with the Zodiac?
By Katherine Ramsland

When the Zodiac investigation was in full swing, there had been some 2,500 suspects to process. Over the years, the police narrowed their search to a handful of men, and the prime suspects had many attributes in common: appearance, displeasure with the police, certain aspects of their lives, specific skills, and a totality of circumstances that logically fit.

The new movie singles out the most popular suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, a child molester who died at age 58 in 1992 from failing health. He’d been fingerprinted, subjected to a grueling polygraph, searched, interrogated, and induced to give hand-writing samples. Even a year before his death, police were still investigating him, although he protested his innocence. It wasn’t far-fetched that he might be the guy, given all the facts and apparent coincidence, so upon his death, investigators retrieved brain tissues for DNA testing. The technology at the time failed to prove anything.

Arthur Leigh Allen

After Allen’s death, the Vallejo police named him their prime suspect in the murders in that area, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. They were hopeful when a videotape turned up among Allen’s possessions postmortem, labeled with the capital letter “Z,” yet it apparently contained no additional evidence against him, just a litany of insults directed at law enforcement.

Yet, that brings up a key question: with all the taunting letters and meticulous ciphers that Zodiac sent, why would he simply die and leave nothing behind to show how clever he was?  That seemed to be high on his list of egocentric priorities. One theory, based on a doctor’s report, was that Allen had multiple personality disorder during the 1960s, but then recovered.

Then in 2000, as covered on A&E’s Cold Case Files, San Francisco PD homicide inspectors Kelly Carroll and Michael Maloney took over the now-cold case, collecting the scattered pieces of evidence together from other jurisdictions. With more precise DNA technology available than before, they had Cynde Holt in the SFPD lab analyze the envelope seals and stamps from authenticated Zodiac letters for traces of saliva to compare against Allen’s frozen brain tissue. With PCR methods, Holt replicated a partial DNA print large enough to eliminate suspects, though not to make a conclusive match. Still, it was better evidence than they’d had before.

In October 2002, the findings were announced. Allen had been eliminated as a donor of the DNA on the envelopes. At this time, they announced that they had three more letters to test, which could assist with creating a complete DNA profile, but those, too, failed to yield convincing evidence. But that result did not end Allen’s association with this case.
Mystery Has its own Allure
By Katherine Ramsland

Allen was known to dislike licking stamps, according to the Web site, zodiackiller.com, so the police compared the saliva DNA to a close associate who had once told investigators many of the details that had put them on Allen’s trail in the first place. That man was eliminated as well.

Allen’s palm print did not match prints lifted from Zodiac-related items, either, or his handwriting. In fact, there has never been a way to conclusively pin the crimes on him.

But there have been other good suspects, too, who have fallen by the wayside. There was stocky, bespectacled, former navy man Richard Marshall, a movie buff and fan of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals. He had a bad temper and was hostile toward women; he also had training in codes and could sew.

More interesting was the suspect identified by Gareth Penn, a Zodiac buff who spent an inordinate amount of time with the binary calculations and codes in the Zodiac letters, both authentic and perhaps not so. He pinpointed an academic on the East Coast who often traveled to the relevant areas.

Theodore ‘Ted’ Kaczynski

In addition, we’ve heard about links to a former member of the Manson family, to Theodore Kaczynski, to a man identified by his own brother as the enigmatic killer, and even to the Beltway Snipers. Nearly four decades after the initial crimes, it’s become a regular obsession for some people to try to figure out the Zodiac’s identity. A few have even shouldered the challenge of revisiting the mathematical calculations, noting the errors made in earlier attempts, but so far, these efforts have proven nothing conclusive.

Many still favor Allen as the suspect and explain away the lack of matches to physical or biological evidence, saying he had an accomplice who sent the letters. It’s hard to give up a theory on which one has spent so much time and energy.

In any event, in 2004, the SFPD officially made the case “inactive” for the murder of cabdriver Paul Stine, citing workload and lack of leads. The other murder cases remain open.

Like that of Jack the Ripper, this case remains in limbo until police can develop a full DNA profile that matches someone, and also like Red Jack’s spree, it will probably inspire mystery buffs in the future to name suspects not yet imagined. Yet as any of the nearly 200 falsely convicted people who have been exonerated with DNA evidence can tell you, even a seemingly comprehensive totality of logic and circumstances can be misleading.

 
Footnotes
Riverside Footnotes

1.F. Rene Modglin, Pathologist’s Autopsy Protocol, 22 December 1966.  This report is exhaustive and contains no mention of the 42 stab wounds alleged by some researchers.
2.Various sources describe the weapon as either 1.5″ or .5″ inches wide; the California Department of Justice describes it as both in the same report.  The tiebreaker is the autopsy report, which specifies the dimension.
3.Doug Oswell, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 11 December 2000; Tom Voigt, www.ZodiacKiller.com 17 December 2000.
4.The shoes may have been military in origin, but were not Wing Walkers, as has been reported by other sources.
5.”RCC co-ed, 18, slain on campus” (Riverside Press, 31 October 1966)
The First Letter Footnotes

1.FBI Laboratory Worksheet, 15 May 1974
2.While one-time Chief Document Examiner Sherwood Morrill determined that the typewriter was a portable Royal using Canterbury shaded Elite typeface, researcher Tom Voigt cites an early FBI report dated 1 December 1966 that identifies it as “most probably” a Royal Merit using Pica typeface.
3.”Police send murder confession to state’s crime experts” (Riverside Press, 1 December 1966)
4.Tom Voigt and Mike Butterfield, citing Det. Steve Shumway et al, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 30 November 2000
Howard Davis, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 9 March 2001

Another Letter Footnotes

1.FBI Laboratory Worksheet, 24 April 1974
2.FBI Laboratory Worksheet, 3 May 1974
3.Mike from OK, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 7 April 2001
4.”Lawmen exchange Bates, Zodiac data” (Riverside Press, 19 November 1970)
Vallejo Footnotes

1.Autopsy report, Office of the Coroner of Solano County, 21 December 1968
2.Mike R. of NJ, email to the author, May 2000
3.Tom Voigt, www.ZodiacKiller.com, December 1998
4.Robert Graysmith, Zodiac, p.12

Ferrin and Mageau Footnotes

1.Ed Rust, Vallejo Police Department report, 6 July 1969
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
Phone Calls Footnotes

1.Robert Graysmith, Zodiac, p. 38; Calif. Department of Justice, Special Report: Zodiac Homicides, 1971.
2.John Lynch, Vallejo Police Department Report, 5 July 1969; John Lynch, Vallejo Police Department Report, 6 July 1969; Ed Rust, Vallejo Police Department Report, 7 July 1969
3.John Lynch, Vallejo Police Department report, 11 July 1969
4.Richard Hoffman, Vallejo Police Department Report, 5 July 1969; Ed Rust, Vallejo Police Department Report, 6 July 1969; “Badly Wounded Youth Holds Key to Gun Mystery” (Vallejo Times-Herald, 6 July 1969); Dave Peterson, “Killer’s Sole Survivvor Talks” (Vallejo News-Chronicle, 19 August 1969).
5.Sgt. Odiorne, Vallejo Police Department Report, 5 July 1969.  Contrary to the account offered by author Robert Graysmith, there is no evidence that calls were made to Darlene’s or Dean’s families.
6.Pam Huckaby, February 1998
7.Nancy Slover, Vallejo Police Department report, 8 July 1969
8.The booth was not across the street from Darlene’s Virginia Street house, as depicted in Graysmith’s Zodiac.  Acoording to researcher Ed N, it was “down the street, around the corner, and about eight … blocks north along Tuoloumne at the intersection of Springs, about half a mile” from the Ferrin residence.
Cryptic Message Footnotes

1.”A ‘Murder Code’ Broken” (San Francisco Chronicle, 9 August 1969)
The Zodiac Footnotes

1.FBI Lab report, 18 August 1969; FBI Lab report 20 August 1969
2.FBI Lab report, 20 August 1969
3.”Coded Clue in Murders” (San Francisco Chronicle, 2 August 1969)
4.Ed N, www.ZodiacKiller.com, September 2000.  While researcher Tom Voigt quotes a California Department of Justice report stating that this letter was received by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chronicle never reports receiving it.  An article in the competing Examiner, however, does mention that it was received at the Examiner (Vallejo Threats: ‘Cipher Killer’s’ New Letter,” San Francisco Examiner, 4 August 1969), indicating that the DOJ made a minor mistake.  This would appear to be borne out by an FBI Airtel dated 6 August 1969 which lists an “undated three page letter… sent anonymously to the San Francisco Examiner.”
Lake Berryessa Footnotes

1.Ray Land, Napa County Sheriff’s Department Report, 29 September 1969
2.Kenneth Narlow & Richard Lonergan, Napa County Sheriff’s Department Report, 5 October 1969.  This account appears to be the inspiration for a similar but apocryphal story in Graysmith’s Zodiac.
Shepard and Hartnell Footnotes

1.The location given by Robert Graysmith as the site of the attack is incorrect.  Twin Oak Ridge, confirmed by Ken Narlow as the true site, is actually a short walk north of the peninsula diagrammed in ZODIAC (Mike R, 1999)
2.Robert Graysmith, ZODIAC, p.317
3.Ibid., p.68
4.Brian Hartnell, interview with Det. Sgt. John Robertson, Napa County Sheriff’s Department, 28 September 1969
5.Kenneth Narlow & Richard Lonergan, Napa County Sheriff’s Department Report, 5 October 1969
6.Brian Hartnell, interview with Det. Sgt. John Robertson, Napa County Sheriff’s Department, 28 September 1969
7.Ibid.
8.Kenneth Narlow & Richard Lonergan, Napa County Sheriff’s Department Report, 5 October 1969.  Hartnell’s oft-quoted statement, “I’m chicken,” may have been an embellishment added by Ranger William White, who used the phrase on television shortly after the attack. No record of the word is shown in any interview with Hartnell.
Evidence Footnotes

1.Tom Voigt, ZodiacKiller.com, September 2000.  Of all the prints found, the palm print was “the only one they had confidence in,” according to Voigt.
The Suspect Footnotes

1.Robert Graysmith, “Subject: The Zodiac Killer” (APBNews.com, 7 December 1999)
2.Crimes of the Century, HBO, 1988
3.Tom Voigt, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 1999
4.Insp. Toschi or Armstrong, SFPD Intra-Departmental Memorandum, 19 October 1969
5.California Dept. of Justice, Special Report: Zodiac Homicides, 1971
Threats Footnotes

1.Chief LT Kinkead, letter to Sheriff Earl Randol, 20 October 1969
Taunting Police Footnotes
1.FBI Airtel to Identification Division, 10 November 1969
2.The diagram can now be found in their CD-ROM, Dr. Zodiac.
Highway 132 Footnotes

1.Officer Bauer, San Joaquin County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office report, March 1970
2.Ibid.
3.Paul Avery. “New Clues Link Zodiac to Earlier Killing,” San Francisco Chronicle, 16 November 1970
4.Officer Bauer, San Joaquin County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office report, March 1970; Jim Lovett, Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department report, 23 March 1970
More Threats Footnotes

1.FBI Airtel from San Francisco SAC to Identification Division, 8 May 1970
2.Robert Graysmith, ZODIAC, p. 148
The Halloween Card Footnotes

1.Kathleen Johns, interview with Howard Davis and Johnny Smith, 1 January 1998
The Riverside Connection Footnotes
1.Paul Avery, “Zodiac Link is Definite” (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1970)

2.”Lawmen exchange Bates, Zodiac data” (Riverside Press, Nov. 19, 1970)
The LA Times Letter Footnotes

1.Mike Butterfield, “My Riverside Activity,” February 1999
2.Tom Voigt, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 2000
Final Letters Footnotes

1.Report of the FBI Laboratory, 8 March 1974
2.Gareth Penn, TIMES 17, p. 300
3.Report of the FBI Laboratory, 8 March 1974
4.FBI Airtel from San Francisco SAC to FBI Laboratory, 16 August 1974; FBI Laboratory Worksheet, 6 September 1974
5.Report of the FBI Laboratory, 8 March 1974
6.Report of the FBI Laboratory, 8 September 1974
Controversy Footnotes

1.Mike Weiss, “New Zodiac Disclosures” (SF Chronicle, 14 July 1978)
2.Ibid.
Possible Authors Footnotes

1.”Four experts term Zodiac letter fake” (SF Examiner, 3 August 1978)
2.FBI memorandum, 23 August 1974
3.Jim Edwards, “Was Zodiac Killer Given Time to Cover Tracks?” (APBNews.com, 7 December 1999)
A Tip Footnotes

1.Det. John Lynch, Vallejo Police Department report, 6 October 1969
2.Sgt. Jack Mulanax, Vallejo Police Department report, 9 August 1971
Donald Cheney Footnotes

1.Charles W. Crumly, Manhattan Beach Chief of Police, in a letter to Insp. David Toschi, 19 July 1971
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
4.Sgt. Jack Mulanax, Vallejo Police Department report, 11 August 1971

The Case Against Arthur Allen Footnotes

1.Charles W. Crumly, Manhattan Beach Chief of Police, in a letter to Insp. David Toschi, 19 July 1971
2.Insp. William Armstrong, affidavit for search warrant, 14 September 1972
3.Ibid.
4.Tom Voigt, interview with the author, 15 December 2000
5.Tom Voigt, www.ZodiacKiller.com,8 January 2001
6.Ibid.
7.Tom Voigt, www.ZodiacKiller.com, 18 February 2001
8.Tom Voigt, interview with the author, 15 December 2000
Allen’s Interview Footnotes

1.Sgt. Jack Mulanax, Vallejo Police Department report, 9 August 1971
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
No Evidence Footnotes

1.Capt. Roy Conway, affidavit for search warrant, 21 February 1991
2.Ibid.
3.”Signs point to Vallejo man,” Vallejo Times-Herald, 1 August 1991
Still A Favorite Footnotes

1.Sgt. Jack Mulanax, Vallejo Police Department report, 11 August 1971
Jake Wark’s site: with further information about the Zodiac murders
Tom Voigt’s site: is another source of information on the Zodiac murders

Although the majority of such internet-related suicide pacts have occurred in Japan^[1][2][3], similar incidents have also been reported from other countries including China, South Korea, Germany, Australia, Norway, the United Kingdom^[4], Canada, the United States, and Sweden^{[citation needed]}.

The first known Internet-related suicide pact occurred in Japan in October 2000, with a later February 2003 incident, involving a young man and two young women, that “became a landmark incident of Internet suicide pacts in Japan due to heavy media coverage”. ^[5]

Despite the alarmed response of the media, however, Internet-connected suicide pacts are still relatively rare^{[citation needed]}. Even in Japan, where most of such pacts have occurred, they still represent only 2% of all group suicide-pacts, and less than 0.01% of all suicides combined. However, they do seem to be on the increase in that country: 34 deaths from such pacts occurred in 2003; at least 50 are estimated to have occurred in 2004; and 91 occurred in 2005. ^[6][7][8] One notable example would be Hiroshi Maeue, who on March 28, 2007, was sentenced to death by hanging, alleged to have murdered three participants in a suicide pact. ^[9]

An article published in the British Medical Journal in December 2004, by Dr Sundararajan Rajagopal, Consultant Psychiatrist from St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, highlighted the emergence of the relatively new phenomenon of cybersuicide pacts, addressing it from a psychiatric perspective.^[10] Dr Rajagopal commented “The recent suicide pacts in Japan might just be isolated events in a country that has even previously been shown to have the highest rate of suicide pacts. Alternatively, they might herald a new disturbing trend in suicide pacts, with more such incidents, involving strangers meeting over the Internet, becoming increasingly common^{[citation needed]}. If the latter is the case then the epidemiology of suicide pacts is likely to change, with more young people living on their own, who may have committed suicide alone, joining with like-minded suicidal persons to die together”.

[edit] Compared to traditional suicide pacts

An article published by the Canterbury Suicide Project^[11] makes some notable comparisons between the nature of “traditional” suicide pacts and more recent Internet-related suicide pacts (or, as described in the article, “cyber-based suicide pacts”). It points out that, traditionally, suicide pacts have been extremely rare; usually involve older individuals (50–60 years old) and very few adolescents; and tend to be between individuals with family or marriage-type relationships and differing, but complementary, psychiatric pathologies. On the other hand, the growing number of Internet-related suicide pacts are almost the exact opposite: they involve young people almost exclusively; tend to be between complete strangers or individuals with platonic friendship-type relationships; and the common characteristic between them would seem to be clinical depression.

The article also points out that the trend of Internet-related suicide pacts is changing the way that mental-health workers need to deal with depressed and/or suicidal youngsters, advising that it is “prudent for clinicians to ask routinely if young people have been accessing Internet sites, obtaining suicide information from such sites, and talking in suicide chat rooms”