Did the Zodiac Killer Throw a Baby Out the Window

"	I like killing people because it is so much fun.	"
	— The Zodiac Killer

The Zodiac Killer also referred to every bit The Zodiac or only Zodiac was an enigmatic serial killer active in California in the late 1960s and 1970s. As infamous as he was, he merely has a confirmed body count of five, though he is suspected of committing as many as thirty-seven murders in full.

ane Case History
- 1.1 First attacks and letters
- one.ii Afterwards murders
2 Letters
3 Modus Operandi
4 Contour
five Physical Description
half dozen Suspects
7 Known Victims
- vii.one Confirmed
- vii.2 Possible
8 Copycats
9 Gallery of Letters
ten Notes
eleven On Criminal Minds
12 On Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders
13 Sources
14 References

Case History

First attacks and letters

The first known confirmed Zodiac murders took place on Dec 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road in California. The victims were David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, xvi, both of which were shot with a .22 handgun. The Zodiac then remained inactive until July 4 the following yr, when he shot some other couple, Michael Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22, while they were seated in a parked car on the parking lot of the Bluish Stone Springs Park in Vallejo. Mageau survived, though he suffered astringent injuries, and was able to provide a clarification. On August 1, the Vallejo Times-Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle received well-nigh-identical letters from the Zodiac in which he took credit for the murders, proving his guilt by stating several facts about the crime scenes, such as what the victims were wearing, how their bodies were positioned and what brand of ammunition he used. The only signature was the Zodiac's symbol. The letters also contained one role of a three-part aught designed past the Zodiac, who ordered all iii papers to publish the ciphers on their front end pages and threatened to go on a killing spree over the weekend if they didn't comply. All three papers published the zippo, which was cracked after a piddling more than a calendar week by teachers Donald and Betty Harden. In the decoded message, the Zodiac claimed to take been killing in order to collect slaves for his afterlife. The next Zodiac letter came the day earlier the cipher was croaky. In information technology, the Zodiac named himself for the first time and gave more than details about the murders.

After murders

A sketch depicting an unknown man reportedly seen at Lake Berryessa, on the twenty-four hours of the Shepard-Hartnell attack

The next murder took place near Lake Berryessa on September 27. This time, the victims, Bryan Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Shepard, 22, were tied upwards and stabbed instead of shot. Hartnell survived his injuries, but Shepard died two days later. During his next killing, the Zodiac diverged from his pattern even further and shot and killed a cab driver, Paul Lee Stine, 29, in Presidio Heights in San Francisco on October 11 afterward riding with him. This time, a fractional fingerprint in claret was constitute inside the automobile, along with a pair of gloves (which were, however, considered to be too small to fit the human described by the witnesses. They were later linked to a female person passenger of Stine). At get-go, the police were led to believe that the killer was blackness, which was later corrected. Before that, yet, a pair of uniformed cops on their style to the criminal offense scene spotted a human plumbing fixtures the Zodiac's clarification dressed in a dark jacket and walking away from the criminal offence scene mere minutes after the shooting. Three days later, the San Francisco Relate received a letter in which the Zodiac threatened to impale all the passengers of a school bus and included a slice of Paul Stine's bloody shirt. Though this was the last of the Zodiac's confirmed killings, he continued writing letters and claimed responsibleness for several murders during this time. It is generally believed that he lied for attention.

The prime number suspect in the case, at least in the eyes of the public, was and remains Arthur Leigh Allen. The government began investigating him after they were told past one of his old co-workers, Donald Cheney, that Allen had told him nigh an thought he had for a novel about a series killer who called himself "Zodiac" and did several things the Zodiac Killer did or threatened to practise, such as taping a flashlight to his gun and killing the passengers of a schoolhouse bus (though this story has been met with some skepticism in the present since Allen was accused of molesting one of Cheney's sons). Also, Allen was a pare diver who had been to Lake Berryessa on several occasions. He also admitted to having had encarmine knives in his car on the weekend of the stabbing just claimed that the claret came from a chicken he had killed for dinner. Afterward a warrant for his trailer and handwriting was secured and carried out, his fingerprints were compared to the partial from the cab, his guns compared to the Zodiac evidence and his handwriting to that of the messages. None of the tests came back a match and Allen was allow become. In 1991, Mageau was tracked down and shown a lineup of old photos of Zodiac suspects. After he fingered Allen equally the killer, there were talks most formally charging him with the murders based on coexisting evidence confronting him (which were, in plow, heavily contested past others). Allen died of natural causes before any trial could have place. To this day the case remains unsolved and the Zodiac killer'southward identity is however unknown.

Letters

For images, see below

The Zodiac is known to have sent many cryptographic, taunting and puzzling messages to the authorities, the press and famed lawyer Melvin Belli. In these messages, the Zodiac made his intentions and wishes known, besides as, allegedly, his state of mind. In some, he would include odd drawings, mosaics of photos, and astrological charts. The kickoff letters included a nothing which, he claimed, hid his identity. It eventually revealed a disturbing slice where he antiseptic his motivations, only it didn't include annihilation that could be identified as a name. Below are some of the letters The Zodiac sent to the SFPD and the local newspapers. To appointment, almost none of his ciphers have been definitively solved. The exceptions are the initial 408 character cipher, which was solved not long after the newspapers received information technology by Donald Harden, a high school history teacher in Salinas, and his wife Bettye Harden, and the and so-called 340 Cipher, which was solved in 2020 past David Oranchak, an American software engineer, Sam Blake, an Australian mathematician, and Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian computer programmer.

Modus Operandi

From the accounts of the few survivors of known Zodiac attacks, it is generally believed that the Zodiac dressed in black article of clothing of various types (depending on the month), and, at least on one occasion, wore a nighttime hood decorated with the Zodiac symbol.

His methods varied also, with some victims being dispatched by an automatic pistol (of several types) or bladed weapons, virtually notably what was probably a military-manner knife. According to one of his letters, he, during the Christmas killings, had a pencil-sized flashlight taped to his gun in order to be able to shoot in the dark.

The Zodiac's usual blueprint of assail was to target Caucasian teenage couples, strike when they were in some secluded area (mostly lover's lanes) and/or in a car and kill them past either shooting them or stabbing them with a knife. His method of approaching them is known to have varied. When he attacked Mageau and Ferrin, he merely walked up to the motorcar and started shooting at them without proverb a word, while, during the Hartnell-Shepherd stabbing, he approached them pretending to be a robber before instructing Shepherd to tie upward Hartnell with some pre-cut lengths of rope and and then tying her upwards himself. During the latter killing, he claimed to be an escaped convict who had killed a guard and needed their motorcar and money so he could flee to Mexico. When he killed Paul Stine, he got into his taxi, shot him in the head with a 9mm, took his wallet, car keys, and a bloodied piece of his shirt, the latter of which he would afterwards transport to The Chronicle. He besides, most likely intentionally, acted in locations were jurisdictions overlapped, as a mean of slowing downward the authorities. In i of his letters, he claimed to take killed some of his victims "by fire" and "past rope". Though cases involving strangulation were linked to the Zodiac (the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders), no cases involving arson were ever linked to him.

After the Ferrin-Mageau and Hartnell-Shepard attacks, he called whichever police department was closest to where the attacks occurred from a pay telephone and claimed responsibility for the crimes.

Profile

The Zodiac Killer was profiled by John Douglas in his book, The Cases That Haunt The states, as being a narcissistic and paranoid social misfit and loner, who was mainly driven by the need for attending, power and, near of all, credibility. He felt the urge to bear witness his intellectual superiority, in order to compensate his own feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. The UNSUB had also a self-witting compulsiveness, significant that he was obsessed with others underestimating him and unappreciating his skills, being also convinced that society wronged him. In all likelihood, he spent the majority of his life with his female parent, with whom he had a difficult relationship at best, and was not very successful with women. It was accounted probable that he had some relations with both Riverside Higher (where Cheri Jo Bates, a suspected Zodiac victim, was killed. Douglas was indeed fairly sure to attribute this murder to him) and Deer Lodge, Montana (the location of the prison house he allegedly named during the Hartnell-Shepard assault. Yet, the validity of this merits is doubtful, every bit the prison proper noun was simply deduced by a policeman who interrogated survivor Bryan Hartnell).

He may have spent some time in the armed services, probably in the Air Forcefulness or the Navy, where he was likely trained in codes. If this be the case, he would have been shortly discharged out of medical reasons or no reasons given, because he couldn't cutting in such a structured, disciplined environs long-term. He liked and was familiar with weapons, being probably a hunter, and had technical expertise, demonstrating skill with numbers and codes. The UNSUB as well might have had a private work surface area, where he kept the materials he needed for his writings and printing coverage of his crimes. He probably complained, with a confidant of some kind (near likely another loner), about law enforcement demonstrating incapacity in the Zodiac instance.

In his letters, as in his crimes, the offender displayed a double nature: well-educated and highly intelligent, although illiterate, and highly organized, although, at least in some instances, disorganized (he left survivors, fingerprints and was seen past several witnesses, including two policemen). This combination provides a mixed representation. It is too credible, from his communications, that the Zodiac was prone to mood swings: sometimes being cleverly taunting, sometimes falling from grace, trying to recoup his fear and inferiority complex through virulent words or gross tauntings.

It was deemed probable by Douglas that, every bit the Zodiac was constantly trying to sophisticate himself and his Modus Operandi, the nearly probable cause for his sudden stop was his own fear of running out of luck, after having been presumably spotted and interrogated by two uniformed patrolmen, just minutes after the murder of Paul Stine. It cannot be excluded, also, that the Zodiac committed suicide afterward the murders ended.

Murray Miron, a criminologist and colleague of Douglas, upon analyzing the alphabetic character Zodiac sent to Melvin Belli on Dec 1969, ended that the UNSUB was suffering from astringent depression, and that he was going to eventually commit suicide. Douglas, in plough, although convinced that the Zodiac did feel even more lone and alienated around Christmas time, and like-minded with the fact that he would take committed suicide one day, thought the letter was a play for sympathy.

A theory, proposed by Anglo-Canadian criminologist Lee Mellor (proponent of the expressive/transformative violence theory), was that the Zodiac, by sending letters and leaving messages on the criminal offense scenes, was dealing with a process of identity negotiation. Due to his feelings of inadequacy, he wasn't capable of having an acceptable identity and suffered from recurring crisis, trying to recompose his fragmented identity in the guise of a self-styled, self-named killer. The majority of the expressive/transformative criminals analyzed by Mellor was single, sustained having never grown upwardly, presented an unstable vocation and masculinity, and were obsessed with police force and military civilisation.

Criminologist Donald Lunde theorized the Zodiac was a sexual sadist whom killed as a substitute of sex.

Physical Description

Sketch of the Zodiac based on witness reports.

Survivors and witnesses of the Zodiac attacks described him as:

Approximately v' 8" to five' 10" in elevation.
Curly chocolate-brown or light scarlet brown hair worn in a crew cut.
Wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses and commonly wore dark clothing, usually wool trousers and night navy bluish or blackness windbreaker jacket, with distinctive military machine jump boots known as "Fly Walkers".
Medium or slightly stocky build.
Ane survivor describes the Zodiac as having an odd gait; that is, he had a peculiar, lumbering or heavy walk.
Boot prints found at the Hartnell-Shepherd crime scene were size 10½.
Survivor Bryan Hartnell describes the Zodiac's phonation equally "Slow and measured" and having a unique sound and cadence with a monotone.

Suspects

Arthur Leigh Allen (1933-1992)

Arthur Leigh Allen, the prime suspect.
- Dishonorably discharged from the U.Southward. Navy.
- Simple school teacher and janitor.
- Lifeguard.
- Sail maker.
- High I.Q.
- Was allegedly in Riverside when Cheri Jo Bates was murdered.
- Thought to exist the "Lee" Linda Ferrin, Darlene Ferrin'southward sis, referred to as "best friend with Darlene".
- Admitted to having had bloody knives in his automobile on the weekend of the Zodiac's stabbing at Lake Berryessa, but claimed that the blood came from a chicken he had killed for dinner.
- Was taller than the description of the perpetrator of the Mageau-Ferrin shooter and was balding at the time, which the perpetrator was not described equally being.
- Was in jail for child molestation during the time of the alleged Zodiac'south 1971-74 hiatus. Nonetheless, some suggested Zodiac's hiatus to have started well before Allen was incarcerated.
- Named "Robert Hall Starr" in Graysmith's not-fiction book Zodiac.
- All the same generally considered the prime doubtable in the case in the eyes of the public, in no pocket-sized role due to Graysmith'south book and the movie adaptation.
- His guns, fingerprint, and handwriting were all compared to the example evidence, just he was cleared. Also, in 2002 a DNA comparison was fabricated betwixt a postage from a Zodiac letter and Allen's Dna and came dorsum negative, though Allen had stated that he never licked his stamps because the glue made him feel sick.
- In 1991, survivor Michael Mageau pointed him out when shown a gear up of Zodiac doubtable photos from the time of the killings. Mageau's identification was, in plough, deemed inconsistent past the authorities.
- Robert Graysmith's example against Allen in his books, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked (and, by extension, the inspired David Fincher's motion-picture show of the same name as the first book), was heavily criticized and/or contradicted by facts and both people involved in the investigations and Zodiac Killer scholars. Graysmith himself was accused of having mixed facts and fiction (or unverified and contradictory circumstancial evidence) in order to sustain his theory that Allen was the culprit. To this day, only Allen's claim of having a bloody knife in his car, on the twenty-four hour period of the Lake Berryessa attack, is considered a possible link, among few others, to him being the Zodiac.
- On three/xiii/1971, Arthur Leigh Allen was pulled over by police for a traffic violation in San Francisco. That same day, 3/13/1971 a Zodiac Letter of the alphabet was mailed, not from San Francisco simply from Pleasanton, CA and not to the Chronicle just to the LA Times. This would be the kickoff and last from these locations. Pleasanton, CA is about an hour away from San Francisco.

Jack Tarrance (1928-2006)

Jack Tarrance
- Honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Forcefulness and Navy.
- Ham radio operator.
- Steel company worker.
- General Electric examination foreman.
- Laundry Attendant.
- Was reported past his stepson, Dennis Kaufman.
- Kaufman turned over several pieces of evidence, including:
  - A hood like to the one described by one of the Berryessa victims.
  - Handwriting samples.
  - Undeveloped photo film reels, i of which independent gruesome images.
  - A pocketknife covered with dried blood.
  - A taped phone conversation in which Tarrance may indirectly hint that he was the Zodiac.
- DNA testing by the FBI proved inconclusive.

Lawrence "Larry" Kane (1924-2010)

Lawrence "Larry" Kane
- Matched the Zodiac clarification, although approximately.
- Strongly attached to his mother.
- U.S. Navy sailor.
- Attended Navy'southward Radio Materiel School, where he trained in enciphering and deciphering Navy codes.
- Worked various white neckband jobs.
- Known as a peeping tom, prowler and con artist. Was arrested for these and other crimes.
- Suffered an accident in 1962 which, co-ordinate to medical reports, compromised his "command of cocky gratification".
- Lived in the vicinity of the spot where, approximately, Zodiac was picked upwardly past Paul Stine on the night he was shot.
- Lived and worked in S Lake Tahoe, from where a suspected Zodiac victim, Donna Lass, disappeared. He too worked in the vicinity of Lass' workplace. Co-workers said Kane and Lass knew each other.
- Identified by Darlene Ferrin's sisters, Pam and Linda, as the man whom harassed Darlene before her murder. However, both identified several other people before Kane (George Waters, a man known equally "Lee" and William Grant), so their claims are deemed doubtful.
- Identified, although non with absolute certainty, by ane of the policemen who presumably spotted to the Zodiac minutes after the murder of Paul Stine.
- Likewise identified past Kathleen Johns, a suspected Zodiac victim, equally the homo whom abducted her and her girl.
- Retired Vallejo Detective Ed Rust believes Kane to be the killer, as well equally Donna Lass being one of his victims.
- Identified by Donna Lass' friend, Larry Lowe, as having being interested in astrology.
- Described past people around him (including his friend John Miles) as "an egotist".
- Diagnosed in 1943 with "psychoneurosis hysteria".

Bruce Davis (1942-Present)

Bruce Davis
- Erstwhile Manson Family fellow member.
- Was cleared along with other members of the "Family unit" briefly suspected to be behind the murders.

Richard "Rick" Marshall (1928-2008)

Richard "Rick" Marshall
- According to some acquaintances, lived in Riverside at the fourth dimension of Cheri Jo Bates' murder.
- U.S. Navy sailor.
- Had code training.
- Silent movie theater projectionist.
- Movie buff.
- Ham radio enthusiast.
- Was known to have had a bad temper with women.
- Named "Donald Jeff Andrews" in Graysmith's non-fiction book Zodiac.

Louie Myers (1951-2002)

Louie Myers
- Admitted on deathbed to being the Zodiac Killer.
- Went to the aforementioned loftier schools as the kickoff confirmed male person and female person victims.
- Worked at the aforementioned building as the 2nd female person victim.
- Had access to the blazon of war machine boots the Zodiac is known to have worn through his father'due south job.
- Served in the U.South. Army.
- Worked as a long haul truck driver.
- Had a criminal record in Vallejo for petty, unrelated crimes such as theft and disorderly conduct.
- Was stationed at a military base in Federal republic of germany during the Zodiac's alleged hiatus.
- Did non fit the description of the Zodiac given by witnesses.

Earl Van All-time, Jr. (c. 1936-1984)

Earl Van Best, Jr
- Named as a doubtable past his son, Gary L. Stewart, in his book, The Most Dangerous Creature of All, in 2014.
- Rare volume dealer.
- Was convicted of raping a pocket-sized and certificate and wire fraud and incarcerated for years in a maximum security facility for the criminally insane and San Quentin.
- Similar to the Zodiac'south physical clarification.

Richard Gaikowski (1936-2004)

Richard Gaikowski
- Matched, approximately, the Zodiac description.
- Served in the U.S. Army
- Worked as an Investigative reporter for a Contra Costa newspaper. Also worked for a rival newspaper to the one Darlene Ferrin's hubby worked for, in Albany, NY, while both Gaikowski and Darlene lived there.
- Known as a film buff, drug user and anti-police activist.
- Gaikowski had the habit of shortening his terminal proper noun to iv letters and apply multiple spellings, such as "Gike" or "Gaik". The discussion "GYKE" can clearly be seen in Zodiac's iii-part cipher mailed on July 31, 1969.
- An establishment of the counterculture newspaper he worked for, The Good Times, was located near the Paul Stine murder scene. Also his cousin lived in the nearings.
- Paul Stine's sister recognized Gaikowski every bit having attended her blood brother's funeral. Neither Gaikowski nor Paul knew each other.
- Was diagnosed with a mental illness presently before the Zodiac alleged hiatus. When the Zodiac reemerged he was operating a storefront theater in San Francisco.
- Nancy Slover, the law dispatcher who spoke with the Zodiac in July 1969, identified Gaikowski's voice as beingness the same as the Zodiac's vox.
- In 1986, the Napa Canton Sheriff'south Dept. briefly investigated Gaikowski. Meanwhile, the California Dept. Of Justice adamant that Gaikowski'southward handwriting had consistencies with Zodiac'southward handwriting and more than samples of Gaikowski's printing were requested. Those samples were determined to not be a lucifer.
- Considered as the prime number suspect past Zodiac Killer scholar Tom Voight.
George Waters
Michael O'Hare
- Public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley
- Was accused of being the Zodiac Killer by Gareth Penn, a true offense author and amateur detective, starting around 1981 in amateur newsletters and self-published books.
William Grant
Ross Sullivan
- Library assistant at Riverside City College, attended by possible Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates. His coworkers suspected him of the murder, noting that he had gone missing for several days after it happened.
- Hospitalized multiple times for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
- Resembled the sketch of the Zodiac's face.
- Wore military machine-style boots with footprints similar to the ones the Zodiac had left backside at the Lake Berryessa offense scene.
Notes:
- Serial bomber Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was briefly considered a suspect for being the Zodiac Killer since he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area betwixt 1967 and 1969, the period of the Zodiac's confirmed killings, while he was teaching geometry and calculus at the University of California, Berkeley. He was investigated as a doubtable in 1996, merely was ruled out by the FBI and the SFPD in part by fingerprint and handwriting comparisons, but also because he had been exterior of California on known key dates related to the Zodiac.
- David Carpenter, a serial killer in his own correct, was also considered a suspect, simply had been in jail during the first confirmed killing and was cleared in handwriting and fingerprint comparisons.
- Edward Edwards, also a serial killer, was allegedly assumed to have matched the Zodiac'southward physical clarification, although he was living in northern California during the murders, and these allegations have been disputed.

Known Victims

Copycats

To date, there take been 2 infamous killers who emulated the Zodiac Killer:

Heriberto "Eddie" Seda, a.k.a. "The New York Zodiac"
- b. July 31, 1967
- Was inspired by the Zodiac Killer
- Shot ten people, three of which died
- Targeted his victims based on their Zodiac signs
- Used nada guns
- Arrested after non-fatally shooting his one-half-sis in the back
- Is currently serving time in jail for murder and attempted murder
- Encounter full article hither
"Seito Sakakibara"
- Japanese
- Fourteen years sometime at the time of his abort
- Real proper noun unrevealed due to Japanese child protection laws (though a leak revealed it is possibly Shinichirou Azuma).
- Killed a ten-year-old boy and an xi-year-one-time girl
- Also claimed to have assaulted three other girls
- Wrote letters with a linguistic communication similar to that of the original Zodiac
- Released after several years of imprisonment
- Meet full article here

Gallery of Letters

Notes

Some believe that the Zodiac copied his symbol from a spotter, whose make was called "Zodiac". Arthur Leigh Allen, the prime suspect, received a Zodiac Sea Wolf lookout as a Christmas gift not long before the murders began.
Information technology has likewise been theorized that the Zodiac was, to some extent, inspired by The Most Dangerous Game, a 1924 short story nigh a wealthy count, Zaroff, who traps people on his private isle and hunts them in the woods for sport. A phrase from his get-go null, "...considering man is the most dangerous animate being of all...[sic]", supports this theory. Prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen admitted to beingness a fan of the story, saying it had made an impression on him. The story can be establish here.
The Zodiac Killer has several similarities to the Phantom Killer, the unidentified perpetrator of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946. In both cases, the killer was masked, targeted couples, killed the majority of their victims by shooting them and attacked them when they were in or almost their cars in lover'southward lanes, neither killer was defenseless, and they had almost identical trunk counts. The most obvious difference between the two is that the Zodiac wrote several taunting letters to the police and media while the Phantom did not brag well-nigh his crimes in any such fashion. Another is that in that location are no clear signs that the Zodiac was sexually motivated while the Phantom sexually assaulted a female victim with his handgun.
The Zodiac was active around the same time and in the aforementioned country as a suspected serial killer who committed the "Astrological murders". The victims, who were women, were killed in diverse ways, including strangulation, drowning, throat cutting, and bludgeoning, sometimes after beingness drugged, and were connected by the fact that they were dumped in ravines and were killed around astrological events, such equally the winter solstice, equinox, and Fri the 13th. One of the Zodiac'due south alleged victims, Donna Lass, was a nurse who disappeared in Lake Tahoe before the autumnal equinox and was never seen again. While constabulary enforcement believes there is a connection between the murders, some conjecture that the Zodiac may take had something to practice with them.
The Zodiac example was an inspiration for the first Muddy Harry moving picture. The killer of that movie writes letters to the authorities and calls himself "Scorpio", a zodiac sign, and the only name he is referred to. Near the cease of the flick, he takes a school bus total of children hostage, a reference to how the Zodiac threatened to kill the passengers of a school bus. Other fictional film villains inspired by the Zodiac include "The Gemini Killer" from The Exorcist Three and "The Scorekeeper" from The Limbic Region. The Zodiac also seems to provide some inspiration for the character The Black Hood from the 2d season of the TV series Riverdale since both are killers who dress in black,´and write messages to the media in which they proper noun themselves, have credit for murders and include possessions taken from victims. As well, one of the Black Hood's crimes is shooting a pair of high school students in a car, similar to the Zodiac'southward set on on Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin.

On Criminal Minds

Season Ane
- "Unfinished Business organisation" - The Zodiac is first mentioned by Reid in this episode, where the episode's unsub, Walter Kern, has his signature of sending taunting letters and puzzles to the authorities compared to the Zodiac's habit of sending messages, too equally changing their 1000.O. Nonetheless, Reid incorrectly states the Zodiac went from stabbing his victims to shooting them. Kern may have besides been based on the Zodiac - Both were series killers who primarily targeted women (though the Zodiac Killer too killed men), used a gun at some point (the Zodiac Killer shot some of his victims, while Kern only pistol-whipped and used his to control his victims), took things from their crime scenes, and wrote taunting messages containing some sort of puzzle to the police.
- "A Real Rain" - The Zodiac was mentioned as an example of killers with an alternating victimology when information technology was believed the electric current unsub was killing his victims at random. In this reference, Gideon also incorrectly stated that the Zodiac killed for xxx years without always getting caught.^[3]
Flavour 4
- "Normal" - When Norman Hill admits to his wife that he is the Road Warrior, his wife, thinking Norman is merely joking, sarcastically confesses to existence the Zodiac.
- "Omnivore" - Both the Zodiac and BTK are compared to the Reaper by Hotch, who states all three were "highly intelligent, disciplined, sadistic killers who name themselves in the press". On a side annotation, which was perhaps coincidental, both the Zodiac and Dennis Rader claimed to accept fantasized about enslaving their victims in the afterlife; the Zodiac (possibly falsely) expressed this belief in his get-go nada and BTK claimed during police force interrogation to have had that fantasy as well. George Foyet, the aforementioned Reaper, besides appears heavily inspired past the Zodiac. Like the Zodiac, he wore a black mask in his outings, his primary targets were couples, he usually either shot or stabbed his victims, and adopted a symbol (the Middle of Providence) equally his "trademark". The Zodiac also threatened to impale a jitney full of people, which Foyet actually does, and both also had victims who survived near-fatal attacks and provided vague descriptions of their assailants (though in Foyet'due south instance, the attack was staged, in which he was his own victim, designed to throw the authorities off his trail). Also, Foyet's 7th victim, the only victim confirmed to be killed solitary, might be an obscure reference to the Zodiac's murder of Paul Stine, his only lone victim.
Flavor Seven
- "True Genius" - The Zodiac was also featured prominently in this episode, in which the unsub copies his killings with dandy accuracy (even wearing the same kind of hood and boots that he wore during the Lake Berryessa killings) and tries to pass himself off as the genuine killer past planting evidence such as a encarmine piece of textile (whose blood type was identical to that of Paul Stine's) and an old crime scene photo of a (fictional) suspected Zodiac victim.
Season 8
- "Pay It Forwards" - The Zodiac was mentioned equally an example of series killers who cease killing and disappear.
Season Ten
- "Fate" - The Zodiac was mentioned when Garcia reveals to Rossi that Joy Struthers, a truthful crime writer living in San Francisco, wrote a volume about the killer.
- "Nelson's Sparrow" - The Zodiac was mentioned by Rossi and Gideon in a flashback set in 1978 (nine years after the Zodiac's last confirmed murder). In this reference, both mention his taunts to the police force in comparing to the unsub they are investigating.
Season Eleven
- "Tribute" - The Zodiac's constabulary sketch was seen on the cover of the book America's Deadliest Killers, which was read past Michael Lee Peterson.
Season Thirteen
- "Neon Terror" - The Zodiac was mentioned again.
- "Cure" - The Zodiac was mentioned again and is besides likely the basis of the episode's killer, Rafael Taveras - Both are serial killers who wore dark disguises, targeted victims of both genders, attacked them at night, tied them up with rope before stabbing them to death, had signatures involving leaving symbols they derived from other sources and cryptograms that got more complex with every murder, used grandiose language, made taunting phone calls to police force, and gave themselves nicknames to farther reinforce their crimes and presentation of them.
Flavor Fifteen
- "Family Tree" - The Zodiac was mentioned by Simmons while discussing with Rossi about how Everett Lynch and other serial killers go fallow.

On Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

Season Ii
- "Il Mostro" - The Zodiac was mentioned.

Sources

Wikipedia's commodity nearly the Zodiac Killer
Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, 1986 - ISBN 0-425-09808-seven
America's Most Wanted listing of known suspects
zodiackiller.com
CBS News written report clip most Tarrance
New York Daily News article on suspect Louis Myers
Susan D. Mustafa'southward article about the Zodiac's victims
Notice A Grave article about the Zodiac's victims
Zodiac Revisited's article virtually the Zodiac'southward suspected victims
ALLEN: The Picture | Zodiac Killer Facts - Separating Fact & Fiction
Zodiackiller.com
SF Chronicle article nigh the solving of the 340 Zippo

References

↑ The deaths share many characteristics of the Zodiac'south confirmed murders, such every bit the victims existence a teenage couple killed in a lover's lane and the killer forcing the female victim to tie up the male similar the Zodiac did at the Lake Berryessa stabbing, though the murders oasis't been officially continued to the Zodiac Killer
↑
Facts that connect her murder to the Zodiac are:
- Months afterwards the murder, letters stating, "Bates had to die" were sent to local constabulary and media. A letter stating, "She had to dice" was also sent to her father. Additionally, a type-written confession using some phrases the Zodiac later used was found in the university where she had studied besides as a macabre poem scribbled into a lath describing the murder in detail.
- Local investigators take good circumstantial evidence on a currently unidentified male person, just considering he was never charged with the murder, the case remains unsolved. One possibility is that the unnamed man was in fact the killer and the Zodiac tried to take credit for the murder.
- A possible Zodiac link, besides the letters, was that a size viii-10 military machine way heel impress was found on the scene along with a wristwatch that was traced to a military post, possibly in England, and whose wristband suggested that the owner had a ca. 7-inch wrist; some suspect that the Zodiac may have been English due to some of his spellings, a size ten½ armed services style bootprint was found at the Hartnell-Shepherd law-breaking scene and the gloves found in Stine'southward cab were size vii.
↑ The Zodiac was confirmed to exist agile in 1968 and 1969, while his offset suspected victims were killed in 1963 and his final suspected victim disappeared in 1970. Combining the years he was active with those of the deaths or disappearances of suspected victims (if ane were to positively attribute all of them to the Zodiac), the Zodiac would've been active for simply a total of seven years.

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Source: https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/The_Zodiac_Killer