In 1969, one secret letter after another was sent to the San Francisco newspaper, and the letters were filled with mysterious passwords. Two of the four passwords remain undeciphered, one that took 51 years to crack, and the sender calls himself Zodiac, a zodiac serial killer.
This is what the serial murder mystery "Zodiac Killer" that shocked the world first appeared in the public eye. He constantly wrote complex codes, terrible threats and crazy demands to send to the media, the police station and even the prosecutor's office.
He claimed to have killed 37 people, but the police were forever one step behind him, watching in horror as the death toll grew, and the entire American population panicked, and the serial killer was never caught.
His true identity has become one of the biggest mysteries in the history of criminal investigation, and countless documentaries and movies have emerged, but the image of the killer has become more and more blurred with time.
In October 2021, an investigative team of 40 former law enforcement officers and detectives announced a blockbuster piece of news – the killer has been found!
In June 1963, a couple of high school students in Southern California went to a beach park to sunbathe, who knew that they would never return. The boy's father went to the beach to look for the children, only to be horrified to find the bodies of the two children abandoned in a nearly destroyed shack.
The two were tied to ropes and hit 11 and 9 times by 22-caliber bullets, respectively, with marks of intense struggle before dying and traces of explosive explosions in the house. There has been no progress in the police investigation.
Three years later, Bates, an 18-year-old girl, left a note to her father telling him that he was going to the library to study. The next morning, her Beetle car was found near the library, and the body was abandoned around. There was a men's watch at the scene, a shoe print on a military boot, no damage to the victim's property, no trace of sexual assault, and the police could not grope for the motive for the killing.
After Bates was killed, police and local media suddenly received a handwritten letter from him claiming to be the killer, informing Bates that he must be killed, and predicting that more victims would come. The police believe that this is the key to solving the case, but no one thought that the crazy "flirtation" of the zodiac against the police has just begun.
On Christmas Eve 1968, another couple of high school students was killed. It was supposed to be their first date, and the girl told her parents she would be home by 23:00. Shortly after leaving the house, a passing driver spotted the couple's car near a dating resort near Lake Hermann Road.
The girl was shot 5 times from behind and died on the spot. The boy was shot in the head and died. The police did not initially link the case to the Zodiac killer.
However, when the evidence was collated, it was found that the bullets on the deceased's body were the same as those in the 1963 beach murder, and the bombs installed on the car were also the same as those in the beach huts, and the killing methods were extremely similar, and the police began to suspect that this was a serial murder in the Zodiac.
To his horror, the killer sent a second letter as if he had an eye ready to see through the movements of the police. In the letter, he generously admitted that he was the murderer of Bates' murder and mocked the incompetence of the police: "You have only solved the easier puzzles, and there are many, many more below." ”
Sure enough, the Zodiac Killer began to commit frequent crimes. In July, police received anonymous calls from public telephone booths. One man said, "I'm going to report it, and you drive a mile east along Columbus Park Avenue and you'll find the kids sitting in a brown car." They were killed by a 9 mm Ruger pistol. I also killed some kids last year, goodbye. ”
Police tentatively went to the scene of the police, and everyone was horrified when they saw a young waitress and her male friend die in a car at the corresponding location. The woman in the car was shot multiple times, and the treatment was ineffective, and the man was shot in the jaw, shoulder and leg, and later survived.
This familiar modus operandi – he's back.
The police are in a hurry to collect evidence and exclude suspects, but they can't catch up with the killer's crazy plan. In September, the police, who were still devastated by the last murder, received another call to the police, and it was still the man.
He instructed the police to find the crime scene and left a message of "I did it", and the world evaporated. When the police arrived at the scene, they saw another student couple killed while treading on Lake Berryessa in California. The woman died on the spot, and the man survived the rescue.
According to survivors' accounts, while resting, they were abducted by a man holding a gun, wearing a hoodie and embroidered with crosses and circles on his chest. The men tied them up with pre-cut clotheslines and, without warning, stabbed a large knife into the boy's back 6 times and the girl's back 10 times. Before leaving, he drew the same sign on the victim's car as on his chest.
The killer apparently enjoyed teasing the police, and to make the "game" more fun, he sent several password letters to the media and police, threatening to "kill again if he doesn't make headlines."
After deciphering some of the codes, the police found that the murderer called himself "Zodiac", which is the origin of the murderer's code name. But in an era when there were no cameras, it was completely impossible to bring him to justice.
What's even more frightening is that in the next case, the police found that the murderer seemed to know exactly what step the police had investigated. A 28-year-old male taxi driver picked up a passenger who was going to an upscale neighborhood in San Francisco.
The driver did not expect that this ordinary-looking man was the frightening zodiac killer in the newspaper. At an intersection, he was killed and shot. The killer calmly took off the dead's clothes and even greeted a police officer who had gone to the scene on the way.
Because of the lack of clothing, the police believed it was a robbery. But a few days later, the office received a taunt from the Zodiac. It begins with a thunderous declaration on a sunny day: "I am the one who killed the taxi driver." He then ridiculed the police for stopping him on the road and interrogating him before letting him go, and provided the police with his own bomb-making recipe, and the envelope was the dead man's blood-stained shirt.
He also sent a letter to a prominent lawyer, hoping that the lawyer would help the police catch him so that he would not be "more and more unable to control the killing." In the face of bloody evidence, the police had to believe that their struggle with the Zodiac was far from over.
In late March 1970, new victims did appear.
The 22-year-old pregnant mother and her young daughter drove back to their mother's house when a male driver signaled them to stop. The man kindly told the woman that the tires in the back of their cars were loose.
While pretending to help repair the car, the man deliberately unscrewed the mother and daughter's rear wheels, and shortly after the mother started the car, she stopped again because the wheels fell off. He pretended to be a good person and invited his mother and daughter to take their cars to the gas station for careful repairs.
After getting into the car, the man showed a vicious face and threatened to kill the mother and daughter. The resourceful mother grabbed her daughter and jumped out of the car in the back seat of the fast-moving car. After the mother called the police, she described the appearance of the bad guy, the portraitist completed the sketch of the murderer according to the confession, and the people at the police station looked at the black in front of them —the portrait was exactly the same as the zodiac described by the survivors.
A few months later, the Zodiac wrote to the media, mentioning that he had recently taken an "interesting journey" with a mother and daughter, confirming that the crime was also committed by him. He also revealed his name and other crime sites through passwords, but many of the important information could not be interpreted.
In May 1970, it had been 7 years since the first appearance of the Zodiac, and no one expected that this would be his last appearance.
Donna, a 25-year-old woman, works close to the murder scene of the taxi murder. She evaporated after the night shift and the car was abandoned near her apartment. Some people around Donna received a call from a man before she disappeared.
The man said that Donna was about to leave the city because of an emergency at home. Donna's whereabouts are unknown and she is believed to have been killed by the Zodiac. But in the three years that followed, the Zodiac did not commit any more crimes or make any letters public.
There is a news circulating in the United States that the zodiac killer is dead.
Three years later, the Zodiac finally appeared, writing in a letter to the police department: "You are wrong, I am not dead, nor sick", and attaching three lines of iconic riddles at the end, which the code analyst deciphered and found that it read: "Albany Medical Center (where Donna works), this is just the beginning." ”
In the corner is the circular sign of the Zodiac. But since then, no more criminal acts have been discovered. For 50 years, the police still haven't identified a single suspect.
With the passage of time and the disappearance of the Zodiac, this sensational case was left unsolved by the police. For half a century, detective enthusiasts have been working hard to find the true identity of the Zodiac.
Just like "Memories of Killing", mistakes are made again and again, failures are repeated, and existing suspects are excluded again and again, entering a dead end, but the development of science and technology and unremitting efforts may eventually solve the mystery of history.
In 2018, the U.S. police, through the latest DNA identification technology, caught the famous serial killer "Golden State Murderer" who had absconded for 44 years, which inspired the police investigating the Zodiac, who tried to extract the DNA of the Zodiac from the letters he sent, but eventually sank into the sea.
In the last few days of 2020, hope burns again. A code-breaking team that included programmers and mathematicians from the United States, Belgium, and Australia decided to overcome the unsolved ciphers left by the zodiac because of the lockdown with nothing to do.
After months of trying, they finally uncovered one of the most mysterious cipher letters in the Zodiac 50 years ago. Unfortunately, the content is basically mocking the police, but it still gives people hope.
In October 2021, the Unsolved Cases Investigation Team sent a lengthy report that determined they had discovered the true identity of the Zodiac killer — Gary Francis Poste, a veteran of the Air Force and painter.
Poste was consistent with the zodiac appearance seen by witnesses, with scars on its head. In Bates' murder, Bates's hands had pulled off several of the killer's hairs, which matched the color of Poste's hair and were awaiting further genetic comparison.
Bates' murder scene also left behind a painted men's watch purchased at a U.S. military base, in line with poste veterans and painters' career experience. The shoe prints on the military boots at the scene of the crime are also the same style and size as the one Poste wore.
After the incident, Poste was also found to have been treated with a gunshot wound at the veterans hospital near the crime, and the investigation team deduced that he may have injured himself by mistake during the killing.
The most important proof is that the Zodiac Killer once wrote in a letter: "My name is XXXXX", the second half of which is a complex password. The password can only be unlocked if he knows his real name. After the investigation team brought the name Gary Francis Poste into MeSince, it really turned the originally unreadable MeSince into a text that could be read...
Investigators also interviewed Poste's relatives and friends, who told the investigator that Poste often tortured and killed small animals, and also organized a criminal gang, Poste often forced friends to commit crimes with him, and he even witnessed Poste burying murder weapons.
In order to break away from the criminal gang, the friend, named Schmitz, had to provide Poste with years of financial and emotional and security support and help him keep secrets. At the same time, Poste's wife, daughter-in-law, and son also suspect that he has an excessive fascination with guns and crime, that is, the zodiac killer.
Even in the photos of Poste that can be found on Facebook, someone has long used the word "zodiac" to describe him.
The results of this investigation are shocking, because before this, Poste had never been suspected of killing anyone, let alone the police suspected that he was a zodiac serial killer who killed 37 people. Sadly, Poste died three years ago, an ending that doomed some truth to be buried in the dust forever.
At present, the FBI denies that "Poste is the zodiac killer" as an official conclusion, because Poste's death has led to the lack of direct evidence in the investigation, and the FBI has still not announced the closure of the case.
But this breakthrough new development still makes people feel a little comforted. Poste, along with his grandson and son, could theoretically do some DNA comparison with the biological evidence at the scene of the crime, and perhaps it won't be long before the truth is revealed.
Claiming to have killed 37 people, he will play with the police and the media, and he will be revealed one day like one unsolved killer after another. Even if they can no longer do justice in their dead or old bodies, their souls are destined to belong to hell forever...