Zodiac Killings Research Paper

“The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.”(Rockefeller, 2016) Little did investigators know that this would be true. The Zodiac Killings are one of the most famous and mysterious cold cases that people now are still trying to solve. Throughout the timeline there was always a couple of months in between each killing along with a month in between when each letter or cipher was sent. Everyone was scared to leave their house because they might be the next victim. The Zodiac tormented the newspapers and police departments in the Bay Area and terrorized the citizens as well. Through the years of the killings, the police, were never never one step closer to finding out what happened; if anything they were always one

At the time no one knew who the killer was or that this was the start to multiple killings. The fourth of July in 1969 was when the next attack was. Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau were in blue Rock Springs Park when they were each shot with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol . Unfortunately Darlene didn’t survive the attack, but Mike lived and was able to provide a description of the assailant. During that same night a man called the Vallejo Police Department. He identified the murder weapon and claimed responsibility for the killing and the murders on Lake Herman Road that happened in December.(Report, 2007) On July 31, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle and the Vallejo Times-Herald all received letters. Each of the letters contains one-third of an encoded message, also known as a cipher, by someone claiming to be the killer. all were signed with a crossed circle symbol which is also the logo used on the Zodiac watch brand. In a letter, sent to the San Francisco examiner on August 4, 1969, the killer first uses the greeting, that gave him his official name that everyone will remember still to this day, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” Four days later a couple, Donald and Bettye Harden solved the cipher of the Zodiac describing