The Elusive Zodiac Maniac. The story of an unidentified serial killer

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:45

On the night of July 4-5, 1969, a telephone rang at the police station in the American city of Vallejo. A male voice said that he had just killed two people. The unidentified person then claimed that the death of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, who were found dead on a country highway last year, was also his doing.

From that moment on, a series of brutal murders began, committed by a maniac who introduced himself as the Zodiac. He claimed to have 37 murders to his credit. Extensive materials have been collected on the case of a serial killer. There are even fingerprints and a voice recording, but his true identity has not yet been established.

Killer Handwriting

The United States police know how to investigate this kind of crime, but several episodes recorded in California between December 1968 and October 1969, as well as the murder of Cheri Jo Bates1966, and remained undisclosed. All cases are united by a common handwriting:

All crimes were committed on the street, in secluded places where couples in love traditionally meet.
The victims of the killer are young people.
The Zodiac maniac attacks at dusk or at night.
Prefers weekends and holidays.
Robbery or sexual motives excluded.
Used weapons - edged weapons, firearms, etc.
All victims were in cars or near their car.
The places where the maniac Zodiac operated are somehow connected with water.
The criminal is interested in publicity, so he reports his atrocities in letters and by phone.

The police officers who investigated these cases believe that the killer either died at the hands of another potential victim who turned out to be smarter than him, or died from drugs, or hid in prison under a completely different article than murder, because for such a crime The US has the death pen alty. Other versions exist.

First official casu alties

The murder of Jensen and Faraday was the first in the Zodiac case. For him, it became, as they say, a test of the pen. All subsequent crimes of the maniac, one way or another, echo the first. This was noticed by both the police and the newspapers, who later also became participants in the terrible script written by the Zodiac.

Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday just started dating. They had known each other for a long time through a mutual friend, Sharon. The girls were in the same class and were friends, and David regularly drove them home from school. The pretty companion Sharon liked the young man with a cheerful character and friendly manner of communication. David was not overly shy, but knowing Betty's strict morals, he was afraid that she would reject him.

The fact is that Betty's older sister, Meloni, got married very early due to an unplanned pregnancy. The marriage was unsuccessful and soon broke up. So that the youngest daughter does not repeat the sad fate of her sister, the parents directed their efforts to keep their daughter in the bosom of the family for as long as possible. But it is pointless to resist the call of nature, and sixteen-year-old Betty fell in love. Her heart was won by a high school student from Vallejo. Betty and David lived in neighboring towns. According to local tradition, schools regularly held competitions, concerts and competitions, where they invited students from nearby educational institutions, and they were in Vallejo (David studied here), Hogan (Betty studied here) and Benicia. The roads in America are excellent, everyone has a car, if not several, - all this helps to quickly solve the problem with distances.

David, the beauty and pride of the school, an example for the younger ones, an athlete, the soul of the company, the secret dream of all the young ladies of Vallejo, Hogan and Benicia, gave his heart to the safemorka. Safemores in the United States are called sophomores or students in the eleventh grade of high school. At the time of the novel, David was already a junior, that is, a twelve-grader, a senior student. His plans stretched further than life in a town of 20,000 people. The young man plannedgo to university, get a college education, get a good job, get married and help my mother raise two younger brothers and sister.

The tragedy that happened to a couple in love shook the whole district. An advertisement was placed in the local newspaper to raise funds for the investigation and capture of the criminal. The crossroads of two roads, once a favorite place for secret romantic dates, young couples began to avoid, considering it cursed.

On the eve of the misfortune, David and Betty decided it was time to move on from simple meetings in a cafe to a more serious relationship. Sharon advised them to retire to Blue Rock Springs Park or go to St. Catherine's Hill, but the lovers chose Herman Lake, more precisely, the bend at the intersection of two roads - to the pumping station and Lake Herman Road, popularly referred to as "lovers' corner". Betty told her parents that she was going to a singing party for the upcoming Christmas. It was nine o'clock when their Rambler, borrowed from David's mother, took the couple on a romantic date. First there was dinner in a small restaurant, and an hour later the young people were already hugging, lying on the reclined car seats.

Chronology of the crime and investigation

The first witness driving along this road saw two empty cars and then heard what sounded like a gunshot. Zodiac parked his car very close to the Rambler to block the side doors. When cars appeared on the road, he ducked, so people thought that there was no one in it.

The following witnesses, and these were seventy-year-old Stella Borges and her daughter, nicknamed Baby Stella, drove past the scene of the tragedy at the very moment when the Zodiac maniac had just fled the scene of the crime. The women saw corpses, broken car windows and rushed at maximum speed to get away from the terrible sight. Panicked, they honked their headlights and horns, hoping to draw attention to themselves. Finally, they saw the policeman and told him everything.

The signal was given to Sergeant Bidu and his partner Stephen Arment. They were closer than others to the "corner of lovers." After 15 minutes, the police were already examining the crime scene. David leaned halfway out of the car. In his hand was a school ring. The young man was still breathing, but died on the way to the hospital. He was killed with one shot to the skull. The only bullet hole was behind the left ear. Betty died before the police arrived. She lay at a distance. The girl tried to run away from the criminal, but five shots in the back stopped her a few steps from the car. Several shots shattered the windows in their car and pierced the roof.

The version of the attack with the purpose of robbery disappeared almost immediately. Most likely, the Zodiac maniac made the first shot in order to attract attention to himself. Then he demanded to give him valuable things. Apparently he tried on and decided what to do with the guys. When they began to make excuses and stick a ring on him, he fired the first shot. Betty jumped out of the car and he finished her off on the street.

The case was assigned to Detectives Les Lundblood and Russell Butterbach. Murder they don'tuncovered, but collected a lot of material, which allowed their colleagues to subsequently determine the handwriting of the criminal. In addition, the following year, on July 31, in a letter to the Times Herald, the serial killer Zodiac confirmed his guilt, describing how he de alt with lovers and indicating the brand of cartridges for his pistol. They were rifle cartridges - a remarkable detail, and no one except the police knew about it. This was not written in the papers.

Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magieu (Majot)

The attack on Darlene Ferrin and Michael Magew is the second crime committed by the Zodiac. The killer has not yet adopted a sonorous pseudonym, but has already begun to take steps to become famous and demonstrate his fearlessness and uniqueness.

The incident happened on July 4, 1969, when the whole city was celebrating Independence Day. Over the roar of fireworks, no one heard the pistol shots that rang out in Blue Rock Springs Park. At 0010 hours, the Zodiac called the police station and reported the murder, and also added that he also committed last year's crime in the "lovers' corner".

This time the victims were 22-year-old Darlene and her young lover Michael Maguey. They were sitting in Darlene's husband's father's Chevy when the Zodiac drove up to them. The killer jumped to conclusions - the guy was only wounded. The bullets hit him in the face, neck and chest. Woman died 20 minutes after making a phone call in an ambulance.

Darlene had a second marriage to Dean Ferrin. In 1968, the couple had a daughter, and two months before the sadevents the family bought a new house. From the photograph, Darlene is very reminiscent of Betty Lou Jensen. Most likely, the similarity is a mere coincidence. Nothing says that the maniac was hunting for women of the same type of appearance. Michael Mague is not like any of the victims. He arrived at his date with Darlene wearing three trousers, a T-shirt, a heavy shirt, and three sweaters. The man explained this to the police by saying that he was very worried about his thinness and in this way tried to give himself volume.

Darlene's adultery caused a lot of noise in Vallejo. Subsequently, the sister of the deceased, Pamela, in order to justify a relative, confused the investigation, suggesting that Darlene's husband was involved in the attack on her lovers. In order to exclude the motive of revenge on the part of the deceived spouse, the police checked Dean Ferrin's alibi. Unfairly stipulated was acquitted.

First Letters

Obviously, the serial killer Zodiac craved fame, because his crimes did not follow the traditional motives - profit, sex or revenge. The desire to become the main topic of conversation among the inhabitants of the whole city, to read about himself in the media, made him start a correspondence with journalists. At the end of July, three local newspapers, the Valleio Times-Herald, the San Francisco Examine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, received the Zodiac letters, which were parts of the same text, cryptograms, and explanations regarding the above crimes. He promised that information about his personality was encrypted in cryptograms, demanded that letters be published on the front pages, inOtherwise, he threatened to kill 12 more people next weekend. It was not possible to establish what codes the Zodiac (the killer) wrote after the first revealed texts. It is likely that in some cases this was simple gibberish, intended to lead the investigation astray or to show that he is so smart that his ciphers are too tough for anyone.

Contact established with police and journalists

August 1, the San Francisco Chronicle printed a statement by Jack Stills on the back page. The head of the police department of the city of Vallejo expressed doubts about the identity of the criminal and asked the author of the cryptogram to provide additional information about himself. Two other newspapers also published letters and ciphers.

The response to the publication was a new letter to the editors of the San Francisco Examine. The perpetrator clearly enjoyed the hype he caused and the fact that the police were following his lead. It was in this letter that he signed the name Zodiac. The pseudonym, in its essence, is very strange, and has nothing to do with crimes. He also said that deciphering the cryptogram would reveal information about his personal data.

The whole of Northern California joined in solving the encrypted messages. The Gardens of Salinas were the first to decipher the killer's texts. They contained a lot of grammatical errors. They said that he was collecting slaves who would serve him in the afterlife - the criminal was clearly mocking. He did not provide any information about himself, explaining this by his unwillingness to help the investigation.

Brian Hartnell andCecilia Ann Shepard

The next crime happened on September 27, 1969. College students Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell were on the shores of Berjesa Lake when a man wearing a hood covering the top and bottom of his head stepped out of the bushes. On the eyes - sunglasses, and on the chest - something like an apron with a pattern in the form of a circle crossed out with a cross. The strange man took a gun from his pocket and handed Cecilia a rope, ordering her to tie up Brian. Otherwise, he promised to kill both. The young man took it as a joke, but the alien showed a full magazine of cartridges. Cecilia tied up her companion and the stranger tied her up. Then he took out a long knife and inflicted several blows, first on Brian, and then on her. Before leaving, the killer, nicknamed the Zodiac, took a black felt-tip pen and drew a circle on the car of the unfortunates, crossed out with a cross, and wrote the dates of the three previous crimes.

After he was done, he called the police department and told them what had happened. A few minutes later, the duty squad determined the location of the telephone booth. When the police arrived, the tube was still damp. She was fingerprinted, but later they were not useful, because they were not in the filing cabinet.

The wounded were taken to the hospital. Brian survived, but Cecilia fell into a coma and died a few days later.

Paul Stein

The murder of Paul Stein, a taxi driver, took place in San Francisco. The crime is even more mysterious than the previous ones. If the taxi driver had reported to the control room that he had takenpassenger and would name the route, then everything would be easier, but it was the so-called left side job. The Zodiac killed Stine the same way he killed David Faraday, with a shot to the head behind the ear. Witnesses, three teenagers, saw how he put the driver with his head on his knees and did something with a knife. As it turned out, he cut off a piece of blood-soaked shirt from the shot, and the boys thought that this black man was cutting off the head of a taxi driver. They mistook the Zodiac for a black man because of the dark mask pulled over his face. The police arrived quickly and even ran into a white man who was asked if he had seen a black man with a gun. He, and this was the Zodiac himself, pointed them in the wrong direction. Later, he called the police and laughed at the stupidity of the law enforcement officers.

Three days later, on October 14, 1969, another letter arrived in the Chronicle. The zodiac wrote that he planned to kill schoolchildren. To do this, he will shoot through the wheel of a school bus, and then begin to kill children coming out of it. In order to leave no doubt about his identity, he described Stine's death in detail and enclosed a fragment of the man's shirt in the envelope.

A week later, the Zodiac called the Oakland Police Department and said he wanted to be on Jim Dunbar's TV talk show. Well-known lawyers must be present in the studio. Through them, he will conduct a telephone conversation. Melville Belley agreed to come. On the show, someone who called himself the Zodiac called and said his real name is Sam. The call came from a psychiatric hospital, and Sam was a normal patient with no connection to a serial killer.

Then in November, two more Zodiac letters arrived in the Chronicle. One of them contained another cryptogram, but it has not yet been deciphered, and on December 20, the criminal sent Bellai's lawyer a Christmas card and a second piece of Paul Stein's shirt.

Kathleen Jones

Kathleen Jones was 20 at the time of the crime. She was driving her own car to visit her mother in Petulama. The woman was 7 months pregnant. Her 10-month-old daughter was traveling with her. On the highway in the Modesto area, she was overtaken by a car that gave signals, asking to stop. Kathleen obeyed. The driver of the honking car said that her right rear wheel was wobbly, offered his help and corrected the problem. As soon as the woman left the track, the wheel fell off. The man soon drove up again and offered to take her to the nearest gas station, where she would be given more efficient assistance. They drove past several gas stations, but the man did not stop. Then he, according to Jones, stopped at an intersection and said that he would kill her along with the child. The woman jumped out of the car and rushed into the thickets of tall grass. The criminal looked for Kathleen, but did not find it and left.

In the police station, where she soon turned, hung an identikit who attacked Paul Stein. She recognized him as her companion. The testimony of the woman is questionable, as she was constantly confused and changed information about the circumstances of the incident.

Cheri Jo Bates

The murder of Cherie Jo Bates was claimed by the Zodiac, but the police doubt the veracity of this statement. The manner of the criminal is too muchdifferent from the handwriting of the Zodiac.

The first doubt about the involvement in the death of the girl of the same person who committed the above murders is the date of the crime.

An eighteen-year-old girl died in October 1966. She lingered in the library of her college and at dusk walked through a deserted area with abandoned houses. Cherry was first beaten and then stabbed to death with a short dagger. The wounds were inflicted directly on the carotid artery and larynx, and Shepard and Hartnell's Zodiac hit erratically and never hit the throat. Most likely, the maniac took responsibility for the crime he did not commit in order to confuse the police.

Attributing this atrocity to the Zodiac is forced by letters sent by him to the girl's father, to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper and to the Riverside Police Department. The handwriting matches that of the Zodiac, but some of his messages were typed and others handwritten. The only embarrassing thing is that the letters were sent six months after the death of the girl. This is not like the Zodiac - he did not like to wait and always contacted the police immediately after the murder.

The story of the Zodiac - the killer is full of secrets. Some journalists suggested that completely different personalities operated under the name of the famous maniac. All the blame lies with the newspapers and the under-professional cops who gave out too much information to the general public.