Ever since Jack The Ripper stalked London, serial killer have held almost irresistible attraction for the media. The advantage of a serial murderer for circulation is that each new victim compounds public fear that they themselves may be in danger. The more bizarre the killings the greater the fear– and interest. The relationship between the media and the serial murderer can be symbiotic: The relentless coverage of such crimes renders the killer a public persona he might not otherwise have– the name "Jack The Ripper," after all, was a coinage of the British press– while providing the media with circulation it might not other have. Consider, the case of "The Zodiac," which engendered thousands of news stories, television investigation, and two movies.The confirmed attacks took place in Northern California between 1968 and 1969 . The first victims were two teenage high school students, Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on a secluded lover’s lane in the town of Benicia. At about 11pm on December 20, 1968 they were found shot to death. There was no apparent motive for the killing, no clues. About a half-year later, on July 4th 1969, two other youths, Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22 were attacked in the parking lot of a park in Vallejo, California. Ferrin was shot to death but Mageau was only wounded,
Both seemed to be isolated cases until August 1, 1969.. Then the killer himself linked the two attacks in letters sent to the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner. Each letter contained one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram, which, the writer tauntingly (and falsely) claimed, revealed his identity. He not only invited these newspapers to investigate his murders but warned that unless each paper printed his letter on their front page he would shoot "a dozen people over the weekend." The Chronicle immediately published its third of the cryptogram, and there were no murders that weekend.
The next letter received by the San Francisco Examiner provided non-public details about the two attacks. It was signed "The Zodiac," which gave the media a vivid name for their headlines.
In his next attack on September 27, 1969, the killer wore a Zodiac costume, consisting of a black hood, clip-on sunglasses, and a bib with the cross-hair Zodiac symbol in the letters. With a gun in one hand and pieces of a clothesline in the other, he attacked Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard near Lake Berryessa in Napa County. After ordering Shepard to tie up Hartnell, he stabbed them both repeatedly. Leaving them in a pool of blood, he then drew his Zodiac symbol on Hartnell's car door. Although Shepard died , Hartnell survived to tell the story,
The final confirmed murder was in San Francisco on October 11th, The victim was taxi driver Paul Lee Stine. According to three teen witnesses, the passenger shot Stine and then calmly cut off part of his victim's bloodstained shirt, and escaped .
Apparently he committed this murder to get incriminating evidence. He added bloody swatches from Stine's shirt to his next round of letters to newspapers. He then demanded that a renowned defense lawyer, either F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, await his call on the Jim Dunbar television show. Belli came on the show and in front of a television audience arranged to meet the call-in claiming to be the Zodiac in Daly City. The caller did not show up but Belli received in the mail another swatch from Stine's shirt with a letter asking for his professional help. That was the last Belli heard from him.
Even after the murders stopped in 1970, the journalistic fascination with the case lingered on. Letters of unknown provenance continued to be received by newspaper. Some contained ciphers, that though they could not be deciphered, made good news stories. And since the Zodiac had taken credit for no less than 37 murders. reporters mined the police cold case files for similar killings. This search yielded many reports about other intriguing murders and disappearances that could have been done by the Zodiac, but no forensic evidence was found actually linking them. Even when DNA analysis became readily available in the 1990s, investigators were unable to match the DNA found in the saliva on the stamps of any of the letters to any crime scene or suspect. Nor was any murder weapon ever found. So the Zodiac murders remain unsolved.
Theories of the case can be found here.
