1969 Verbal Portrait of a Suspect
In the US, Case Breaker's high-profile unsolved cases said they most likely identified a serial killer named Zodiac, who hasn't been caught for over 50 years. According to investigators, this is US Air Force veteran Gary Francis Post, who died three years ago.
However, the police and the FBI did not support the version of the investigators, saying that the case was still open.
In 1968-69, the Zodiac committed five murders and two attempted murders in the state of California. Then he sent messages to the local press addressed to the police, which, in addition to the mocking texts, contained ciphers.
The zodiac wrote that his name was encrypted in one of the codes. He also hinted that special attention should be paid to the 340-character cipher.
Only at the end of 2020, a group of decryptors managed to crack this code, but nothing concrete was found that could help identify the killer.
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At the same time, Case Breaker investigators believe that some anagrams point to Gary Francis Post. In addition, the group says his photograph is largely the same as a composite of the Zodiac, compiled in the 1960s.
In particular, such a remarkable feature as a scar on the forehead coincides.
The Case Breaker Group is a voluntary group that assists in the investigation of unsolved criminal cases. It includes more than 40 retired investigators and intelligence officers, as well as journalists.
In this case, the official investigation disagrees with the group's findings. According to the federal police, there is not sufficient reason to consider Gary Post as the zodiac.
In any case, he could not have been brought to trial since he died in 2018.
The elusive zodiac and its victims
In the late 1960s, the FBI was involved in the capture of the Zodiac in hot pursuit in the late 1960s, along with the police. The investigation still finds it difficult to say why the experienced detectives did not manage to get on the trail of the killer.
He left footprints, and two of his victims survived and described him. A number of Californian newspapers also failed to trace the sender of the letters.
In one of the messages, the Zodiac claimed to have killed 37 people, but officially he is credited with five victims and two attempts:
- December 1968 – a man and a woman are killed in their car
- July 1969 – attack on another couple in a car: woman killed, man survived
- August 1969 – Stabbed couple attacked near a lake near San Francisco, man survived
- October 1969 – Taxi driver Paul Steen is shot dead in San Francisco and is considered the last victim of the Zodiac.
The motives for all these crimes have not been established.
In Case Breaker, it is believed that the Zodiac began to kill earlier than officially believed. According to investigators, he was responsible for the murder of Sheri Joe Bates in Riverside County, California, in 1966. At first, this sacrifice was indeed attributed to the Zodiac, but later the Riverside police abandoned this version.
The mystery remains
The story of a serial killer formed the basis of the detective drama “Zodiac” (2007) starring Robert Downey Jr.
The FBI department in San Francisco reacted to the version of Case Breaker investigators about the identity of Gary Francis Post with an official message published in the San Franciso Chronicle: “The case of the serial killer of the Zodiac remains open. At the moment we can not provide any new information.”
California police supported the FBI's position.
The main and only suspect in the murders under the nickname Zodiac remains a native of Vallejo, California, Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992. At the same time, the investigation admits that this is only an intermediate version, and the identity of the Zodiac is still not known for certain.
This high-profile, unsolved case formed the basis of two filmocratins – the thriller “Dirty Harry” (1971) with Clint Eastwood as the leading investigator of the tough police officer and detective drama “Zodiac” (2007) with Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo.
