Doubles
With the increased interest in the Zodiac killings from four decades ago, it’s useful to draw up a profile using the information we now have from psychological analysis. The crime series involved multiple homicides; two assaults with intent to kill, possibly two counts of kidnapping with intent to kill, a cat-and-mouse game with authorities, and repeated terroristic threats over the course of several years. We’ll examine the facts from the incidents and victimologies.
The first incident on December 20, 1968, near Vallejo, California, was the shooting of two high school kids out on a first date, David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16. When found, Faraday lay dying inside the car, while Betty Lou had gotten out and run away. She was shot five times from behind and killed.
A spent .22 shell casing lay on the right front floorboard, and nine expended .22 casings were found on the ground near Faraday’s head. There were impressions of shoe prints in front of the car, going toward the passenger side. The Super X copper-coated bullets were from a .22-caliber J. C. Higgins 80 model or Hi Standard model 101.
From what we know, David Faraday was a scholar and varsity athlete, while Bette Lou was a hard-working student with a good reputation. She had told her parents that she and David were going to a Christmas carol concert, but they had decided instead to join other kids that night on Lake Herman Road. It’s not clear why she lied or possibly changed her plans.
The next shooting of a couple in that area occurred on July 4 the following year, when Darlene Ferrin, 22, and Michael Mageau, 19, were both shot in their car. Mageau survived, although it seems likely he wasn’t meant to.
Then at 12:40 A. M. the Vallejo Police Department received a call from a man speaking in a calm voice. As he reported the shooting, he provided the location and a description of the car. “They were shot with a 9-millimeter Luger,” he stated, adding. “I also killed those kids last year.” An investigation indicated that this call had originated from a public phone booth just outside the Vallejo Sheriff’s office and within sight of Darlene’s new residence. The weapon used appeared to be a Browning 1935 High Power. In addition, Darlene’s husband, parents and brother all received a phone call around 1:30 that morning from someone who said nothing but breathed heavily.
Under questioning (when he was able to talk), Mageau changed his story several times, but indicated that he and Ferrin had been followed from the time she had picked him up. He recalled that the shooter had used a bright light to blind them, but Mageau had seen that he had short brown hair and appeared to be in his late twenties. At five-foot-eight, he looked to weigh a hefty 200 pounds.
In terms of possible links, Darlene, a gregarious and popular girl, had known Faraday and Jensen, and had been a student at Betty Lou’s high school. Darlene lived with her second husband Dean and their little girl Dena, but flirted freely with other young men, like Mageau. She apparently had the attention of an older heavyset man who sent her gifts, but no one knew who he was or if he’d been in the area that night.
In August 1969, the editors of three San Francisco-area newspapers each received letters and 1/3 of a strangely coded cipher, meant to be published by all three so the code could be put together. The writer signed each part with a crossed-circle symbol and claimed to be the Vallejo killer. He had used more postage than necessary to send the three parts.
Each section consisted of eight lines of seventeen symbols, which included a variety of items, from Greek symbols to Morse code to navy semaphore, and even a few astrological symbols, notably Taurus. When translated, it read:
I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN. IT IS MORE FUN THAT KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERIENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTIOG OF SLAVES FOR AFTERLIFE. EBEORIETEMETHHPITI
A letter arriving a week later indicated that this man called himself “the Zodiac” and he described his MO: He’d used a small penlight taped onto his weapon that assisted him to see his targets in the dark. His expressed enjoyment of killing suggested another attack, which occurred on September 27, 1969.
At Lake Berryessa, a stocky man wearing a black executioner’s hood spied on and then approached Cecelia Ann Shepard and her friend, Bryan Hartnell. He instructed Bryan to bind Cecelia Ann before he viciously stabbed both with a long knife, aiming his frenzy at the girl. She was stabbed ten times, dying at the scene, but Bryan survived to describe the attacker.
As he approached, he appeared to be around six feet and to weigh over two hundred pounds. On his left side hung a foot-long knife, on his right an empty gun holster, and he held a semiautomatic pistol. Several lengths of clothesline hung from beneath his jacket. His voice placed him in his late twenties and he claimed to be an escaped convict.
The masked attacker stopped to call the police and claim credit. The call was traced to a pay phone four and a half blocks from the police station and 27 miles from the crime scene. A palm print was lifted from this phone.
At the scene, a footprint was found that had been made by a size 10 ½ military wing walker. There was also writing in black felt-tip on the door of a car, along with a cross-hair symbol. The message was:
Vallejo
12-20-68
7-4-69
Sept 27-69-6:30
by knife
Two weeks later, this same person seems to have been the one who shot and killed cab driver Paul Stine in San Francisco, leaving two bloody fingerprints in the cab. He tore off a piece of Stine’s shirt and began wiping down the inside of the cab. As he left the cab, he wiped off the door and its handle, then opened the driver’s door and wiped off the dashboard. The 9-mm pistol used turned out to be rare: only 143 semiautomatics of this type had been sold in that general area during the past three years. But it was different from weapons used at the earlier scenes. It was soon clear that this man wanted to use the murder to hold a large city hostage.
The San Francisco Chronicle received a letter in mid-October 1969, in an envelope with excess postage, that contained a piece torn from Stine’s shirt and that issued a threat against school children. It was an arrogant missive, criticizing the police. It was also similar to the “Dear Boss” letter sent in 1888 by Jack the Ripper that contained part of a victim’s kidney. It seems that the Zodiac had a prior inspiration and perhaps hoped to become just as famous as the nineteenth-century killer.
In this note, Zodiac demanded to speak to a renowned area attorney, Melvin Belli, and a meeting by phone was arranged, but while calls came in they were not necessarily from the Zodiac. Perhaps he decided it was too risky or perhaps it was all part of his game.
Until 1984, the Zodiac (or someone using his style) kept in contact with the police and the Chronicle, but despite claiming 37 victims, his killing spree seemed to end with five or six. There were records, between 1966 and 1984, of 26 letters attributed to the Zodiac, although experts disagree over whether he was the author of all of them. Yet from those that do appear to originate from this offender, we can tell a few things.
It appeared that the killer had some degree of training in explosive devices, cryptography, chemistry, and guns. He was also a fan of astrology, popular movies, and the musicals of Gilbert and Sullivan. His letters usually had a taunting quality, as did his phone calls. Two letters contained diagrams of devices he said he planned to use but then didn’t. It was commonly thought at the beginning that the letters were in the Zodiac’s own handwriting. Later, the theory was that he was using samples of alphabet letters taken from other people. He then used a tracing and enlarging device to reprint them.
In certain letters, he gave the impression of being an uneducated man: misspelling common words and using poor grammar. Yet it was clear that he was well-read and did research. Besides Zodiac, the letters were also signed as “a friend,” “a citizen,” “Z,” and “Red Phantom.” These were possibly diversions or a means to make the game more interesting to him.
In November 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle received more letters with more pieces of Stine’s shirt, and in December, Zodiac sent a Christmas greeting to Melvin Belli, also with a piece of Stine’s shirt. Clearly, he sought attention, although it’s also possible that he was seeking help, as he claimed.
A letter in June 1970 contained another cipher which promised yet another important clue. The writer said that “something interesting” would be found if the police placed a radian on Mount Diablo, a San Francisco Bay area landmark. A month later he said, “The Mount Diablo Code concerns radians & # inches along the radians.” He’d earlier said that a bomb was buried along the radian. (A radian is a unit of angular measure used by engineers and mathematicians.) Apparently, this offender enjoyed mathematical calculations. But he seemed to end his spate of killings with Stine. Perhaps the killings failed to satisfy him in the manner he claimed, or perhaps he was arrested for something else. It’s not clear whether he was related to a few other incidents.
The Zodiac was also linked by some with an earlier murder in Riverside, California. Cheri Jo Bates was an 18-year-old college freshman from Riverside Community College who lived with her father. On October 30, she went to the school library. During the time she was studying, a man who apparently had a grudge against her tampered with her car, removing the distributor coil and condenser. Then he waited for her to come out, whereupon he engaged her in conversation for a while before stabbing her to death. Cheri Jo’s throat was cut in one quick motion, which sliced through her jugular and voice box. From three additional slashes, she had been nearly decapitated and was also stabbed twice in the chest and kicked in the head.
Days after this slaying, police received a typed anonymous confession, all in caps, from someone claiming he had done this in revenge for her rejection. Six months after the murder, the local Riverside Press Enterprise ran a story. The next day, the police, the paper, and Joseph Bates all received handwritten letters, ostensibly from the killer, saying, “BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE Z”
A handwriting expert confirmed the link between the letter and the Zodiac confessions, as well as the handwriting found on a desktop in the RCC library: Someone scratched in a poem about killing and blood.
In addition, after the other murders, there was also a kidnapping. On the evening of Sunday, March 22, 1970, a pregnant Kathleen Johns left for a trip with her infant daughter. A driver blinked his lights and honked his horn. As the 1957 maroon and white Chevrolet station wagon pulled alongside, the driver yelled through his window, telling her that her rear tire was wobbling. She stopped and the thirtyish man offered to help by tightening the tire. Instead, he disabled her vehicle, then kidnapped Johns and her child and threatened to kill them.
She managed to escape and gave police a description. The man wore thick-rimmed glasses, black bell-bottom trousers and shined shoes, like Navy shoes. Yet as neat as he was, she said, the white Chevy’s interior was a mess. His hair was brown, cut in a crew cut. He had a medium build, possibly weighing 155 to 165 pounds. His voice was monotone, without emotion or accent. When Mrs. Johns spotted a composite drawing of the suspect who allegedly had killed Paul Stine she screamed, “That’s him!”
When the police returned her to her car, they found it moved to another road and completely burned from the inside. The man had put the wheel back on to move it.
Despite the fact that some officials doubt there was any connection, and Johns’s “memory” of the man changed several times, in a Zodiac letter in July 1970, he described giving “an interesting ride” to a woman and her baby. He also mentioned burning the car, but it’s possible that he’d read the newspaper account and wanted to add this incident to his portfolio of crimes.
There were several viable suspects at the time, and there are even several new ones today. Yet none has yet been a match to the fingerprint or DNA profile.
The killer constantly changed his method of operating and openly admitted that murder was sport for him. The attacks occurred at dusk or after dark, on weekends, often around holidays, with different weapons and apparently with no motive save violence itself. Clearly, the killer wanted credit for them and he turned most of his rage against females.
Possible motives were to prove his superiority, get attention, control the investigation, create a terroristic climate, and relive the crimes via media reports. Going after couples, which he did three times, could indicate that he was envious or jealous because he did not (or could not) have that kind of relationship. It might also have been to show that he was not afraid to confront a male, although the fact that he targeted three couples when he could have only shot lone females or lone males indicates resentment about relationships.
He liked to ambush his victims, yet for him none of these incidents were high risk crimes. While they were out in the open, they were not risky. Even when he set himself up for a potential risk, by being interviewed by phone, for example, he usually withdrew. Yet it’s possible that he believed he was taking a risk, so he could congratulate himself when he did not get caught. Maybe he viewed these crimes as proof of his skill in stealth. He might have fantasized about himself being more daring than he actually was. By all witness accounts, he appeared to be late twenties to early thirties, heavyset, strong, and aggressive. It wouldn’t be surprising that his fantasies of being a skilled “hunter” grew from an immature and insecure mind.
Nevertheless, the man who called himself the Zodiac was organized, intelligent and meticulous. If we take the reference to the Zodiac seriously, we find several symbols in his initial cryptogram that look like the symbol for Taurus the bull, which could identify his approximate birth date. He obviously liked astrology and might have viewed himself as fated by the stars. Those close to him would probably have heard him engage in knowledgeable discussions about astrological symbols and meanings.
Among the most engaging aspects of the crimes for him was to be able to taunt the authorities from a superior perspective and to watch the police make fools of themselves. This often indicates a person who feels uncertain about his intelligence, so to reassure himself, he plays games with others. The Zodiac needed to think he was smarter than even the best detectives, and he probably exaggerated the risks he took in order to affirm his smug sense of superiority. People who knew him would have been familiar with his arrogance, as well as his shortcomings and insecurity.
He used a lot of diversionary tactics, such as making threats that turned out not to be true, or posing cryptic mysteries. This is a form of what’s called “duping delight.” He’s excited by duping others. The puzzles he presented probably meant nothing, but this man enjoyed knowing that a whole city full of people, as well as a number of law enforcement agencies, were at work on whatever code or clue he sent. That would have given him a thrill, knowing that the resolutions were merely dead-ends, and yet people would keep trying to find out what they meant. The closer they thought they were to identifying him, the more it would have amused him.
He enjoyed the control he exerted because he was in charge; he was running the investigation, more or less, as though he was the supervisor. He might have had pretensions of being a police officer, but for some reason been barred from this profession. This way, with these threats, he got to order them about. When he moved from the Vallejo area into San Francisco for his murders, he acquired a greater venue for control, along with the ability to spread the terror and feel more powerful. For him, it was all about that. He exerted control over his victims, and he did the same with anyone who was concerned about becoming a random victim.
He especially enjoyed controlling the newspapers and the police agencies of a town the size of San Francisco. He liked knowing they got into tiffs over territory and investigative squabbles. To his mind, that was more evidence of how stupid they were, and each day that went by without them catching him reinforced this opinion and sense of superiority. Every communication he sent fueled that fire.
Yet he may have grown bored over time. Like BTK, he seemed to have gone into a dormant period, perhaps several. The complicating factor is the copycat contagion. We can’t tell which letters are definitely him or from someone muddying the waters, and we don’t know if the Zodiac did in fact kill more people as he claimed to have done.
If we try to figure out his background – for example, if he had military training – we’re faced with his diversionary tactics: the codes could have been bait that he picked up from a hobby or they could have been learned during a military stint. We have plenty of examples from him of meaningless directions, but we have no way to know which of his clues actually provides a means of identifying him.
I think he might have had minimal success at other things, at best. He might have had some kind of job or basic education, but in his own mind he was superior to those things, and since he couldn’t milk much grandiosity from them, he turned to killing and bragging about it. He probably felt immortalized from all the publicity and from the books that had been written about him. If he’s still alive today, he might get some satisfaction that, all this time later, his crimes can still command a huge international audience. Now he’s really somebody — like Jack the Ripper.
The idea proposed that he might have known one of the victims and wanted to muddy the waters to keep people thinking her murder was a random stranger attack might be viable, but there’s more pathology driving him than just covering up a crime. Some guys have callous disregard, making a crime look like a random act, but this guy was overtly aggressive. I don’t think he was psychotic. If he were really crazy in a disorganized way, he’d probably have been caught, because he couldn’t have kept it together.
Ultimately, I think, for Zodiac, these crimes were about getting notoriety. He immediately called them in, knowing he had gotten away and the police would likely come up empty-handed. That was as much of the thrill for him, perhaps more, than any other part of the incidents. It’s like the case of the Tamiami Strangler in Florida; when the police didn’t connect the victims, he wrote numbers on them. If one calls in one’s own murders, he’ll ensure that he’ll get the credit. Zodiac might have lurked around the area to watch the response. That’s the payoff. Watching the investigation would excite him. He might even chat up the cops at times, like Ed Kemper did. That way, he could be part of it, he could learn what the police knew, and he could enjoy how stymied they are. He’d go home and ponder that, enjoying it over and over to fuel his narcissism. Then he’d want to go out and do it again.
Even when he wasn’t killing, he’d know that the letters would keep up the terror and excitement, so he got the same effect without having to take the risks. That makes it clear that fame and a sense of superiority were probably more exciting to him than the violence itself. He just wanted to be known as a notorious killer. It was probably the only thing he ever accomplished.