The Zodiac Killer:
The Zodiac Killer is one of the great unsolved serial killer mysteries of all time, taking only second place to Jack the Ripper.
Even though police investigated over 2,500 potential suspects, the case was never officially solved.
The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who stalked parts of Northern California from December 1968 through October 1969. Through a series of cryptic letters he sent to the press and others, he disclosed his insanity which motivated the killings, offered clues to future murder plots and adopted the name Zodiac.
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.
To this day, police and journalists receive tips on the murders. And there's a thriving cottage industry of enthusiastic amateur Zodiac sleuths, some of whom have devoted their lives to the mystery.
The Zodiac's first claimed murders were in Benicia, Calif., and nearby Vallejo. In both cases the killer pulled up next to a young couple parked in a car and shot them point-blank. Later he stabbed a couple picnicking at Lake Berryessa, in Napa County, and shot a cab driver in San Francisco. He often called police from pay phones to report his crimes.
When it comes to American serial killers, the Zodiac hardly rates. He once hinted that he had killed 37 people, but the confirmed number of his victims is six, spread over late 1968 and 1969.
Yet the Zodiac managed to frighten the entire Bay Area, not merely with his killings but with his threats to blow up school buses or shoot the children as they got off the bus.
Police in Vallejo, where the Zodiac killed three people and wounded another, have long considered the chief suspect to be Arthur Leigh Allen, who died of cancer at age 58 in 1992 without ever being charged. Allen also is the preferred suspect of Robert Graysmith, the former Chronicle political cartoonist whose book on the killings was the foundation for the new movie, "Zodiac."
Police in San Francisco, where the Zodiac killed a cab driver, had their doubts about Allen as a suspect, but the department essentially washed its hands of the case three years ago and now does not talk about it. Mike Rodelli, a New Jersey researcher who has spent nearly 10 years delving into the case and has impressed some longtime Zodiac experts with his findings, is convinced the killer is a well-known San Francisco businessman now in his 80s.
Perhaps the most intriguing theory of what happened to the Zodiac is the one put forward by David Van Nuys, a Sonoma County psychologist who co-authored a book on the killer. Van Nuys believes the Zodiac suffered from multiple personality disorder and got better as the years went along -- and eventually, he simply stopped killing.
"This is the Zodiac speaking," was how he began his letters, which included a distinctive symbol -- two crossed lines through a circle, resembling a telescopic sight's crosshairs.
The papers published the letters and a code that the Zodiac appended to them. In August, a high school teacher in Salinas, Donald Harden, said he and his wife, Bettye, had cracked the code.
"I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest," the message said.
His last authenticated letter was to The Chronicle in January 1974, in which he threatened to do "something nasty" if the paper didn't print the message. He signed off, "Me -- 37/SFPD -- 0."
The mystery inspired several films and television shows. Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood is loosely based on the Zodiac case. In 2007, the film Zodiac, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr, focused on police attempts to catch him.
Despite working through 2,500 suspects, the San Francisco Police Department have never caught the killer or even arrested anyone.
Fascinating isn’t it. You think you can crack the code?