The Zodiac Killer, also called The Zodiac, is a person who has not been identified. This person killed at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. The killer attacked three couples and a taxi driver in Benicia, Vallejo, parts of Napa County, and San Francisco. Two of the seven people the Zodiac targeted survived.

The Zodiac sent letters to newspapers in the Bay Area. In these letters, he claimed responsibility for the murders, shared details only the police knew, and threatened to bomb places and kill more people if his letters were not printed. He also included secret codes called cryptograms. Two of the four cryptograms were solved in 1969 and 2020, but the other two remain unsolved. The last letter the Zodiac sent was received by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1974. In that letter, he said he had killed 37 people.

Many theories exist about who the Zodiac was, but the only person the police named as a suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen. He was a former teacher and had been found guilty of sexual crimes. He died in 1992. The Zodiac’s crimes, codes, and letters have made this one of the most famous unsolved cases in American history. The case is well-known in movies, books, and other media. People around the world still try to find out who the Zodiac was.

In 2004, the San Francisco Police Department closed the case temporarily. However, they reopened it in 2006. Today, the California Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the city of Vallejo, and the sheriffs of Napa and Solano counties still consider the case open.

Murders and correspondence

Police and investigators agree that the Zodiac attacked seven people in California during four separate events. Five victims died, and two survived.

From 1969 to 1974, the Zodiac sent more than twenty letters to newspapers, police, a writer named Paul Avery, and an attorney named Melvin Belli. In the first sentence of the third letter, the writer wrote, "This is The Zodiac speaking," and signed all his letters with a symbol that looked like the crosshairs of a gun. Four of the letters contained secret codes; only two of these codes have been solved. The letters were sent from San Francisco and Pleasanton.

The Zodiac's confirmed letters include dates, recipients, and the beginning of each letter:

The first murders later linked to the Zodiac were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen (16) and David Arthur Faraday (17) on December 20, 1968. Faraday attended Vallejo High School, while Jensen attended Hogan High School. At 8:30 p.m., Faraday picked up Jensen, and the couple visited one of Jensen's friends. After 9 p.m., they drove to the outskirts of Vallejo and parked near Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits. Between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., a motorist saw the couple parked near a water pumping station. The couple was seen again at 11 p.m.

Between 11:05 and 11:10 p.m., Faraday and Jensen were attacked. Police believe the attacker parked his car about ten feet next to Faraday’s car. He fired several shots at Faraday’s car as he walked to the driver’s side. None of the shots hit Faraday or Jensen. The couple tried to escape through the passenger door; Jensen succeeded. As Faraday was leaving, the killer shot him in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. The attacker chased Jensen, firing six shots at her back. Only one missed. Police believe the attack lasted two to three minutes.

At 11:10 p.m., a motorist found the couple’s bodies and called police. Jensen was dead. Faraday was still alive but died later at the hospital. No witnesses or usable tire or footprints were found. Police had no clear motive for the attack, only that it was the work of a "madman." Despite a thorough investigation, no suspects were identified. The murders received widespread media coverage.

Darlene Ferrin (22) and Michael Mageau (19) were shot shortly after midnight on July 4, 1969. Ferrin worked at a local restaurant in Vallejo, where she met Mageau. On July 4, they went on a date despite Ferrin being married. After 11:30 p.m., Ferrin received a phone call at her house and arrived at Mageau’s house around 11:50 p.m.

After leaving Mageau’s house, the couple noticed a man in a light-colored car following them. Ferrin drove toward Lake Herman Road and turned into an empty parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park, another lover’s lane. She parked about 70 feet from the lot entrance. Another vehicle parked about 80 feet to their left. The driver turned off his headlights and sat motionless. Mageau asked who the driver was, but Ferrin told him not to worry. The stranger then drove away.

Five minutes later, the stranger returned, parked next to Mageau’s side of the car, and got out. He shone a flashlight into Ferrin’s car. Thinking he was a police officer, the couple rolled down Mageau’s window. Without speaking, the stranger fired a 9mm pistol into the car. One bullet hit Mageau in the right arm, and another hit Ferrin in the neck. Mageau tried to leave the car but found his door handle missing or removed. The attacker returned to his car, opened the door, and did something Mageau could not see. As Mageau struggled to exit, the stranger shot him and Ferrin two more times each. The killer drove off. A golf course caretaker heard the shots around 12:10 a.m. No clues were left behind.

Three teenagers arrived, saw the injured couple, and called for help. Police arrived at 12:20 a.m. Twenty minutes later, Ferrin died at the hospital. Mageau survived and described the attacker as a heavyset white man about 5'8" tall, weighing 195–200 pounds, with a large face and curly light brown hair. The killer wore dark clothes and no glasses. These details were not enough to identify a suspect. Moments after 12:40 a.m., the Vallejo Police Department received a phone call from a payphone near headquarters. The caller said:

"I want to report a double murder. If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye."

Serial killers often take time to reflect on their actions. Authors Michael Kelleher and David Van Nuys suggested that the seven months between the attacks on Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs Park was a "cooling off period" for the Zodiac.

Some people believe Darlene Ferrin knew her killer. Kelleher and Nuys say this idea comes from Robert Graysmith’s 1986 book Zodiac. He argued for a connection based on interviews with Ferrin’s friends. However, no proof of a direct link has been found.

Mageau gave different accounts about whether Ferrin knew her killer. At the hospital, he said he did not know the murderer. Later, he claimed the attacker’s name was "Richard." Ferrin’s sister said one of Darlene’s boyfriends was named Richard. In the Zodiac’s later letters, he only referred to Ferrin as "girl."

In Graysmith’s account, Ferrin and Mageau were chased until their car hit a log and stalled. A detective noticed the car

Letters of suspicious authorship

Many unconfirmed letters from the Zodiac were sent to the media. On August 1, 1973, a letter was mailed to the Albany Times Union in New York. The return address showed a symbol. The writer claimed they would kill again on August 10. A three-line code in the letter was meant to reveal the name and location of the victim. FBI code breakers translated the code as "[redacted by the FBI] Albany Medical Center. This is only the beginning." No murder matched the details in the letter, and the handwriting did not clearly match the Zodiac's.

The Chronicle received a letter postmarked February 14, 1974, stating that the Symbionese Liberation Army's initials formed an Old Norse word meaning "kill." The SLA had recently kidnapped Patricia Hearst, a newspaper heiress. The handwriting was not confirmed as the Zodiac's.

A letter to the Chronicle, postmarked May 8, 1974, claimed that the movie Badlands (1973) was "murder-glorification" and asked the paper to remove its advertisements. Signed by "A citizen," the handwriting, tone, and sarcasm were similar to the Zodiac's letters. The Chronicle also received an anonymous letter postmarked July 8, 1974, criticizing antifeminist columnist Marco Spinelli. The letter was signed, "the Red Phantom (red with rage)."

In 2007, an American Greetings Christmas card was found in the Chronicle's photo files. It had a postmark from 1990 in Eureka. The card was given to Vallejo police. A photocopy of two United States Post Office keys on a magnet key chain was included. The handwriting on the envelope resembled the Zodiac's, but a forensic document examiner concluded it was not authentic. The discovery generated excitement among Zodiac researchers. It suggested the killing spree may not have ended with death or imprisonment, and the Zodiac might still be alive.

Other possible victims

There is no agreement about how many people the Zodiac Killer killed or how long he committed crimes. In 1976, SFPD detective Dave Toschi said, "We know for sure he killed at least six," and the Zodiac had "a personal boxscore of 37." Robert Graysmith estimated 49 victims. Many murders and attacks in the 1960s and 1970s were thought to be Zodiac crimes, but none have been proven.

On April 9, 1962, a man called the police in Oceanside, California, and said, "I am going to pull something here in Oceanside and you'll never be able to figure it out." At 11:10 p.m. on April 10, cab driver Raymond Davis (29) told his dispatcher he was taking a fare to South Oceanside. The next day, his body was found near the mayor's house in St. Malo, a gated community in Oceanside. Days later, the suspected killer called the police again, saying, "Do you remember me calling you last week and telling you that I was going to pull a real baffling crime? I killed the cab driver and I am going to get me a bus driver next." After this call, the police began to place armed guards on buses.

In 2019, the unsolved murder was connected to the Zodiac when Kristi Hawthorne, the Director of the Oceanside Historical Society, was researching St. Malo for another project. She found a story about Davis' murder and further research showed several similarities to the Zodiac killings. Davis' murder happened 7 years before Paul Stine's. Both cabbie murders involved wealthy neighborhoods. Both victims were 29 years old. The ammunition used was .22 caliber, which matches the Lake Herman Road attack. The taunting of police and the threat against buses also matched previous Zodiac behavior. Hawthorne shared her findings with the Oceanside Police Department, which started an investigation.

On June 2, 1963, an unidentified sniper fired two shots from a .22 caliber gun at a group of teenagers on the beach at Tajiguas in Santa Barbara County, California. No one was hurt. On June 4, Robert George Domingos (18) and his fiancée Linda Faye Edwards (17) were shot dead by an unidentified person on a beach in Gaviota State Park, near Tajiguas. They were skipping school for Senior Ditch Day. On June 5, their parents called the police after they did not return home. During a search, police found Edwards' purse and other belongings inside Domingos' car.

Police believed the killer tried to tie the couple with pre-cut rope, the same method used in the Lake Berryessa attacks. It is likely the victims broke free and ran, so the killer shot them in the back and chest. Domingos was shot 11 times, and Edwards 8 times. The killer placed their bodies in a small shack nearby and tried to burn it. The firearm used was probably a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle, like the ones used in the Tajiguas and Lake Herman Road incidents. The bullets matched the Zodiac's. The lot number of the .22 ammunition was traced to a purchase in April from a store in Santa Barbara. The same lot number was also found at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc. Investigators looked into purchases of the ammunition at both locations.

In a 1972 press conference, Santa Barbara County Sheriff John Carpenter said, "there now appears to be a high degree of probability" that the Zodiac committed the murders. He added, "although the anticipated response to this statement would be one of skepticism, let me say that we do not make this assertion frivolously." When SFPD detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi investigated the murders in 1972, Toschi said a connection was possible. A classmate of Domingos and Edwards, who later became a clinical psychologist and police officer, said in 2011, "I believe the murders were the work of the Zodiac killer, but I can't prove it."

On February 5, 1964, Johnny Ray Swindle and Joyce Ann Swindle (both 19), a newlywed couple from Alabama on their honeymoon, were shot while walking along Ocean Beach in San Diego. A sniper with a .22 caliber long rifle shot them five times from a nearby cliff. The killer then shot each of them once in the head at close range. Similar to the Zodiac murders, Johnny was shot behind the ear. Despite multiple bullet wounds, he survived for hours and died at the hospital. Joyce died almost instantly from shots to her back, left arm, and head. The killer took Joyce's necklace, Johnny's wallet, and a Timex watch—the same brand found at the Cheri Jo Bates crime scene, and assumed to belong to Bates' killer.

Johnny's mother said she could not think of him having any enemies. His sister thought the Zodiac might have been the killer. Police investigated a 51-year-old man living in a nearby beach shack, a teenager accused by a priest of being violent, and a 19-year-old Marine from San Diego who killed his parents and sister in Illinois. Police thought the Swindles were victims of a "thrill killer" and saw a connection with the Domingos and Edwards murders. In both the Santa Barbara and Ocean Beach killings, victims were shot from a distance, then again at close range. Both the Ocean Beach and Lake Herman Road murders used a .22 Remington Arms Model 550-1 rifle, but the ballistics did not match between the cartridges found at the two scenes. The San Diego Reader noted that the murders at Lake Berryessa, Santa Barbara, and Ocean Beach were all near bodies of water.

On October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year-old student at Riverside City College (RCC), spent the evening at the campus library annex until it closed at 9:00 p.m. Neighbors reported hearing a scream around 10:30. Her father reported her missing, and she was found dead the next morning at 6:30 a.m. She was found near the library, between two abandoned houses. She had been beaten and stabbed to death. The wires in her Volkswagen's distributor cap were pulled out. A man's paint-spattered Timex watch with a torn wristband was found nearby. The watch stopped at 12:24, but police believe the attack happened much earlier.

One month later, on November 29, nearly identical typewritten letters were mailed to Riverside police and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, titled "The Confession." The author claimed responsibility for the Bates murder, providing details not released to the public. The author warned that Bates "is not the first and she will not be the last."

In December 1966, a macabre poem was carved into the bottom of a desktop in the RCC library. Titled "Sick of living/unwilling to die," the poem's language and handwriting resembled that of the Zodiac's letters. It was signed with what were assumed to be lowercase initials (r h) below. During the 1970 investigation, Sherwood Morrill, California's top "questioned documents

21st-century developments

In April 2004, the San Francisco Police Department noted that the Zodiac case was marked as inactive due to heavy workloads. By March 2007, the case was reactivated. It is still considered open in Riverside and Napa County.

In 2018, the Vallejo Police Department tried using GEDmatch to help solve the Zodiac case but did not find clear results. The FBI was still looking into the case in 2021. However, Voigt stated that the case is no longer being investigated as of 2025.

Suspects

In 2009, The Guardian reported that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) looked into about 2,500 people who might be connected to the Zodiac killer. Only about six of these people were considered serious suspects by the department. In 2022, Richard Grinell, who manages the website Zodiac Ciphers, said, "there are probably 50 or 100 suspects named every year."

The only person ever officially named by the police as a suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen. He was a former elementary school teacher and had a criminal record for sexual offenses. Allen died in 1992 and denied being the Zodiac. He was questioned by police from the beginning of the investigation and faced multiple search warrants over a 20-year period. In 2007, Robert Graysmith said that some detectives believed Allen was the most likely suspect. However, in 2010, Dave Toschi said that all the evidence against Allen "ended up being negative." Other people who have been considered possible suspects by professional or amateur investigators include Earl Van Best Jr., Gary Francis Poste, Giuseppe Bevilacqua, Lawrence Kane, Paul Doerr, Richard Gaikowski, Richard Marshall, and Ross Sullivan.

Legacy

This is the case that has remained unsolved for many years. The killer’s taunts to the police, the puzzles he sent to the press, and his disappearance in the early 1970s helped make the Zodiac case famous. In some ways, the case became more well-known than the crimes themselves. – Michael Taylor

In 2020, the Chronicle described the Zodiac case as "the most famous unsolved murder case in American history." The unusual nature of the killings has kept people around the world interested for many years. A group of people called "Zodiologists" formed after the crimes. They try to solve the case and meet informally each year. Many websites collect information about the crimes and the ciphers the killer used.

Numerous books and documentaries have focused on the Zodiac. The first major book written by an amateur was Zodiac (1986) by Robert Graysmith. He worked as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle while the Zodiac sent letters to the newspaper. Graysmith gathered his research into a detailed investigation that is still used as a reference by others. John Bowman later published The Allen Files, which included Arthur Leigh Allen’s military records. This was followed by Zodiac Killer: Fact Vs. Fiction.

Many theories exist about who the Zodiac was. In Zodiac, Graysmith referred to Arthur Leigh Allen as "Robert Hall Starr" to protect Allen’s identity and avoid legal problems. In 2002, Graysmith wrote directly about Allen in Zodiac Unmasked. Linking victims to the Zodiac is also a common activity. One Zodiologist has claimed to be a target of the killer. Since 2013, some online users have joked that United States Senator Ted Cruz was the Zodiac.

The Zodiac inspired other killers, such as Heriberto Seda in New York City and Shinichiro Azuma in Japan, who both called themselves "the Zodiac." In 2021, an anonymous person sent letters to media outlets in Albany using the name "Chinese Zodiac Killer."

Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik, who killed Cassie Jo Stoddart in 2006, mentioned the Zodiac as one of their inspirations in their homemade videos.

The first movie about the Zodiac Killer was made two years after his last confirmed murder during his letter-writing campaign. Tom Hanson’s The Zodiac Killer was created to try to catch the killer. The film premiered on April 19, 1971, in San Francisco. Audience members were given a survey asking, "I think the Zodiac kills because…" They were asked to complete the sentence, with a promise that the best answer would win a motorcycle. The responses were secretly compared to the Zodiac’s handwriting. Volunteers were hired to detain anyone whose handwriting matched the killer’s. The plan continued for several showings, and during one screening, volunteers confronted a suspect but released him due to lack of proof.

The Zodiac has influenced villains in many movies, including Scorpio in Dirty Harry (1971), the Gemini Killer in The Exorcist III (1990), John Doe in Seven (1995), and the Riddler in The Batman (2022). The Zodiac case is also the subject of the film Zodiac (2007), directed by David Fincher, who also directed Seven. Fincher grew up in the Bay Area during the Zodiac killings. The film was based on Graysmith’s books and focused on Graysmith and Paul Avery’s investigation over 23 years. The filmmakers researched the case thoroughly, interviewing people involved. The movie suggested Arthur Leigh Allen was responsible, which increased public interest in the Zodiac.