He was a serial killer with the mind of a savvy ad-man. His symbols were instantly recognizable, and carried with them a mysterious, fearful sense of foreboding:
As I mentioned earlier in this entry, the BTK Strangler, who began his rampage in Wichita the same year Zodiac seemed to disappear, 1974, seemed to also emulate Zodiac and therefore the Ripper, but perhaps without the intelligence of the former or the barely controlled savagery of the latter.
Zodiac as a killer was more like an assassin than either BTK or the Ripper. Most of the victims were struck while together as a couple, and Zodiac's main weapon of choice was the handgun. If another killer was most similar in actual M.O., it was David Berkowitz, New York's "Son of Sam" killer [crimelibrary.com link]. Both Berkowitz and Zodiac liked to kill couples who were parking or hanging out. Only at Lake Berryessa, near Napa, California, did Zodiac use a knife as the instrument of death.
It was obvious too that even though Zodiac tended to target couples, his main target was the woman - in two instances the man was killed, but victims Bryan Hartnell and Mike Mageau survived Zodiac attacks. Zodiac's final known murder was a man, strangely enough - San Francisco cabbie Paul Stine. It was after the Stine murder that Zodiac came closest to being caught - according to a letter from Zodiac, a patrol car actually stopped him as he walked casually away from the scene and asked him if he'd seen anyone fitting the erroneous description of the suspect the police had at that moment; an african-american man.
The tone of Zodiac's letters was that of an arch and intellectual egomaniac - their distribution in the press and Zodiac's status as still unknown may have gone a long way towards the modern fictional image of the serial killer as a larger-than-life mastermind, a genius a la Hannibal Lecter.
And Zodiac was smart, and shrewd. Of the ciphers he sent police and press, only one was ever decoded, by a San Francisco-area math teacher and his wife. He was a little more artistically aware than many of his kind; some of the letters parodied lyrics from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Mikado, others seemed to echo the tone of Jack the Ripper's communications to London police in the late 1880's.
Zodiac liked to boast that he was 'crack-proof,' and he basically was.
A man clever enough to pose ciphers that challenged even federal agencies like the FBI, a man so keen on Gilbert and Sullivan that it appeared he could parody lyrics he knew by heart, was also clever enough to understand his place in the history of murder. Though Zodiac's murders were completed in a very different manner from "saucy Jacky," - the Ripper preferred to not just stab but slash and gut his victims, all prostitutes working the Whitechapel district of London - the killers were very alike in the way they teased those seeking to bring them to justice, and alike in the fear they inspired in the awed public reading of their crimes, reading the killer's own words. I believe Zodiac was a student of the Ripper in this way - "Ripperology" was already a thriving field of research in the late '60's - books investigating the Whitechapel Monster were being written virtually from the time he disappeared after his last known murder, the truly gruesome obliteration of pretty young Mary Jane Kelly on November 9, 1888.
Article comments
1 - Embersage
Steve, As usual I am impressed with your work. Your right about the fact that we have been discussing Dennis Rader's obsession with the Zodiac Killer. I have been working along side you as well as the others on these cases for a while now. We may never know the face behind the mask. Yet he has left us with some answers, as Rader tried to do. Hiding them in puzzles and codes. We may never have all the answers to who and why. Yet we will keep on searching. For in knowledge there is power.
2 - kat self
I have been blogging on crime rant.com. I have compiled a massive file linking B.T.K. tot the unsolved Zodiac murders. I have uncovered interesting tibits such as a Zodiac letter and a map made by B.T.K. both sighed with the initals r.H. and a Japanese connection on two Zodiac writings. There's plenty of more solid connections too. I'd like to see B.T.K. prosecuted for all his crimes. I'd like to blog with like minded researchers.
3 - intelligert
It's a mnisconception to think that it takes a genius to pose such ciphers. A 7 year old would be capable of doing this. If you have only a couple hundred of letters it's very difficult to break it.
How can you claim his letters had an intellectual appeal? they are more like from a smart annoying boy.
And btw, the cipher was solved by a teacher-couple. Imagine, the wife had a profession herself - crazy times those 60ies!!!
best wishes.