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The full episode, in writing.
A bloodstained scrap of shirt arrives at the San Francisco Chronicle newsroom, wrapped in a letter from someone calling himself the Zodiac. The shirt has been cut from the body of Paul Stine, a cab driver murdered just days earlier. Alongside the grisly trophy, the letter contains a precise detail only the killer could know: the exact way Stine was shot, and where the fatal bullet entered his head.
David Faraday was seventeen. On the night of December 20, 1968, he was out with Betty Lou Jensen, sixteen. They were parked on Lake Herman Road, just outside Benicia, a quiet Northern California town. Their bodies were discovered before midnight by a passing driver. David had been shot once in the head as he sat in the car. Betty Lou ran, but was shot five times in the back as she tried to escape, collapsing ten yards from the car. No money had been taken. The only thing missing was David’s class ring. The killer left no fingerprints, no shell casings, no clue to suggest why these teenagers were targeted.
Over the next ten months, a series of attacks and letters gripped the Bay Area in fear. Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were attacked while parked at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo, just after midnight on July 4, 1969. Darlene was twenty-two, a waitress and young mother. Michael, nineteen, survived long enough to describe the shooter as a heavyset white man in his late twenties to early thirties, with short, light brown curly hair. The gunman fired five shots into the car, paused, then returned to fire four more as Michael cried out in pain. This time, the killer called Vallejo police from a payphone. He calmly confessed, describing the car, the crime, and even giving directions to the scene, then hung up.
The Zodiac’s first letters arrived on August 1, 1969. Each of the three major Bay Area newspapers—Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco Examiner—received a letter in distinct handwriting, each containing a third of a cryptogram: 408 symbols in all. The killer demanded the ciphers be printed on the front page. He threatened to kill again if ignored. Each letter began with the chilling line: “This is the Zodiac speaking.”
Donald and Bettye Harden, a schoolteacher and his wife in Salinas, solved the 408-symbol cipher in less than a week. The code’s message was a disturbing ramble about the thrill of hunting people, who he called “the most dangerous animal of all.” He claimed murder gave him life. The message ended abruptly, with seventeen symbols that have never been decoded.
On September 27, 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were relaxing on the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County, about sixty miles north of San Francisco. The couple noticed a man walking toward them, dressed in an executioner’s hood with clip-on sunglasses. Pinned to his chest was a large, white bib decorated with a cross-circle symbol. The man carried a gun and a pre-cut length of clothesline. He told them he was an escaped convict from Montana, needed money and a car, and just wanted to tie them up. After binding Bryan and Cecelia, he drew a knife and stabbed them both, repeatedly. He then strolled up to Bryan’s Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and used a black felt pen to draw the cross-circle symbol on the door, adding the dates of the previous attacks and the time: “Sept 27 69 6:30 by knife.” Cecelia died two days later. Bryan survived to describe the costume and the attack.
On October 11, 1969, Paul Stine, a twenty-nine-year-old cab driver and student, picked up a fare in downtown San Francisco. His trip ended in the upscale Presidio Heights neighborhood. At the corner of Washington and Cherry Streets, the passenger shot Stine in the head, rifled through his pockets, and took his wallet, keys, and a piece of his shirt. Three teenagers watched from a window across the street, seeing the killer calmly wipe down the cab, walk away, and disappear around the corner. Police arrived within moments, but were mistakenly told to look for a black male; the actual suspect was white. The killer slipped through the dragnet.
Two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter containing a bloody scrap of Stine’s shirt. The Zodiac claimed credit, mocking the police for failing to catch him. This proof ended any doubt about the connection between the attacks.
On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed another cipher, 340 symbols in length. This code remained unsolved for over fifty years. It was finally cracked in 2020 by a team of codebreakers who discovered the killer had written: “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me... I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice [sic] all the sooner.”
The Zodiac did not stop with confirmed murders. On March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns, a young mother, was driving near Modesto with her infant daughter. She was flagged down by a man who insisted her tire was loose, then offered her a ride. Once inside his car, he threatened to kill her and the baby, but she managed to escape. Later, she identified her abductor as matching the composite sketch of the Zodiac.
Throughout 1969 and 1970, the Zodiac continued to send letters, ciphers, taunts, and threats. On July 26, 1970, he mailed a letter with a map marked by a cross-circle symbol and a 32-character cipher. He hinted at a bomb location, though no device was ever found. On October 27, 1970, a Halloween card arrived at the Chronicle, raising his number of claimed victims to fourteen.
By 1971, the killer wrote to the Los Angeles Times, boasting of seventeen victims. He continued to correspond sporadically, with the last confirmed Zodiac letter arriving on January 29, 1974. In it, he praised the film “The Exorcist” and increased his claimed tally to thirty-seven murdered. No one has ever confirmed more than the original five deaths and two attempted murders.
Local law enforcement—including the Vallejo Police Department, the San Francisco Police Department, and the Napa County Sheriff’s Office—investigated the murders. The FBI’s San Francisco field office was involved in processing evidence and handling the Zodiac’s mailed threats. After the Stine murder, police recovered latent fingerprints from the cab’s dashboard and a partial bloody print from the driver’s side door. None matched a known suspect.
Ballistics linked the attacks at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs Park: both used a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol. Shell casings at the later scene matched the earlier killings. At Lake Berryessa, the costume, handwritten door message, and a phone call to police all pointed to the same killer, despite the change in weapon and method.
The killer’s use of ciphers complicated the investigation. The 408-symbol cipher was cracked after just a week, but the 340-character cipher, sent in 1969, remained a mystery until 2020. The solution, produced by private citizens rather than law enforcement, revealed no clues to the killer’s identity. Other ciphers, including the 32-character code and seventeen unsolved symbols from the first letter, remain unbroken.
Detectives tracked down hundreds of leads. The most prominent suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen, a Vallejo resident and convicted child molester known for violent fantasies. Allen’s home was searched. Handwriting samples, fingerprints, and even his typewriter were compared to the Zodiac’s letters. No physical evidence tied him to the crimes. He wore a Zodiac-branded watch, owned a typewriter similar to the one used in some letters, and once told friends he wanted to kill couples “to collect slaves for the afterlife”—a theme echoed in the ciphers. But he was never charged, and DNA from envelope seals did not match Allen.
The Zodiac taunted law enforcement in his correspondence. He claimed to be in possession of a bomb, gave detailed instructions for its construction, and threatened to attack school buses. He drew diagrams of bus routes and described how “just shoot out the front tire and pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.” No bomb was ever found, and no children were harmed.
Witnesses at the Paul Stine murder described the suspect as a white male, mid-thirties, stocky, with a crew cut and glasses. A composite sketch was released and widely circulated, but no one was arrested. Despite the killer’s arrogance and willingness to communicate, he exploited random targets, varied his weapons and methods, and left little forensic trace.
The Zodiac leveraged the media to stoke panic. Newspapers received dozens of letters, some genuine, many hoaxes. The killer’s codes, threats, and shifting victim claims forced police to pursue hundreds of false leads, stretching resources thin. The lack of a clear pattern made profiling difficult.
On December 20, 1969, the Zodiac claimed in a letter that he had planted a bomb at a police station. No attack occurred. This false claim was typical of his correspondence—part threat, part misdirection. He often claimed responsibility for crimes he had not committed, inflating his tally of victims.
The Halloween card sent to the San Francisco Chronicle was decorated with an image of a skeleton and the words “peek-a-boo, you are doomed.” The card contained a running tally of “14” for claimed victims, along with cryptic symbols. Police took the note seriously, but found no new leads. As the months passed, letters became less frequent.
The final confirmed Zodiac letter, dated January 29, 1974, referenced “The Exorcist” film and raised his claimed victim total to thirty-seven. It read, in part, “me-37 SFPD-0,” mocking the failure to catch him. After this, authentic Zodiac communications stopped. Some later letters were received, but their authenticity is disputed.
Profiler Gregg McCrary, a former FBI agent, noted that the Zodiac often targeted couples. He suggested the killer may have resented relationships and experienced envy or jealousy, driving him to attack young men and women out alone. This pattern was visible in the first three attacks, all against pairs of teenagers or young adults.
Over the decades, the Zodiac case has generated more than 2,500 official suspects. DNA collected from stamps and envelope seals has been tested against a number of individuals, including Arthur Leigh Allen, but has never produced a match. Some handwriting experts believe the letters were written by different people, but this theory is disputed.
The case remains open. The FBI and local law enforcement continue to investigate, reviewing cold case files and retesting evidence with modern forensic techniques. The Zodiac’s ciphers still attract codebreakers worldwide, with two remaining unsolved: the 32-character cipher sent with the bomb map, and the final seventeen mysterious symbols at the end of the first solved letter.
The Zodiac’s crimes revealed major weaknesses in law enforcement coordination between city and county jurisdictions. Different agencies failed to share information promptly, costing investigators valuable time. The killer exploited these gaps, moving easily from one county to the next.
The Zodiac’s ability to capture public attention was amplified by his use of media. He threatened more attacks if his letters were not published, and the newspapers complied, printing his ciphers and taunts on the front page. This fueled public panic and encouraged copycat threats.
The killer’s apparent fascination with codes and puzzles, as well as his willingness to reveal details only the police should know, suggested a level of planning and intelligence unusual among serial murderers. The Lake Berryessa attack, where he created a distinctive costume and marked the car door with his symbol, displayed a flair for theatricality.
The murder of Paul Stine was unique among Zodiac crimes. It was the only confirmed killing that occurred within a city, with multiple eyewitnesses, and where the killer took a physical trophy—a piece of the shirt—to prove his identity. He later mailed this to the press, demonstrating his desire to control the narrative and gain notoriety.
The abduction of Kathleen Johns stands out for its deviation from the killer’s pattern. Here, the Zodiac targeted a mother and infant, engaged in conversation with his victim, and ultimately failed to kill. This event expanded the range of his targets and deepened the sense of fear in the region.
The successful decryption of the 340-character cipher in 2020 was accomplished by a team of amateur codebreakers using modern computing power. The message inside mocked police attempts to catch him and revealed no new information about his identity. The Zodiac wrote: “I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice all the sooner.”
Despite more than half a century of investigation, the Zodiac’s identity remains unknown. The confirmed victims—David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard, and Paul Stine—never received justice. Two survivors, Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell, lived to describe the killer’s face and voice, but their accounts did not lead to an arrest.
The Zodiac’s cross-circle symbol became an icon of terror in California. It appeared on his letters, on the costume at Lake Berryessa, and on crime scene evidence. Law enforcement agencies cataloged dozens of possible meanings for the symbol, but never determined its true significance.
The unresolved status of the case, despite the involvement of federal and local authorities, demonstrates the limits of forensic science before the era of DNA profiling and digital evidence. The killer’s careful avoidance of fingerprints and his use of gloves thwarted even the best investigators of his day.
The FBI’s San Francisco field office has stated that the investigation remains open and unsolved. The Zodiac’s ciphers, letters, and the details of his crimes continue to challenge law enforcement and amateur sleuths alike.
The fact that two of the Zodiac’s ciphers remain unbroken after more than fifty years makes this case one of the most enduring puzzles in American criminal history.