Zodiac Killer suspects
The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area, operating in rural, urban and suburban settings.
"[3] While many theories regarding the identity of the Zodiac have been suggested, the only suspect authorities ever publicly named was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992.
Investigators agree on seven confirmed assault victims, all in Northern California, of whom five died and two survived: The Zodiac coined his name in a series of taunting messages that he mailed to regional newspapers, threatening killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed.
[4] The only man ever named by the police as a suspect is Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died of a heart attack in 1992.
[5][7] Allen had been interviewed by police from the early days of the Zodiac investigation and was the subject of several search warrants over a twenty-year period.
[13] Allen lived in Vallejo, where he worked minutes away from the home of Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin and from the scene of one of the killings.
[2] Jack Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department wrote that Allen had been fired as an elementary school teacher after allegations of sexual misconduct with students in March 1968.
Actor Mark Ruffalo, who portrayed Toschi in the 2007 film about the Zodiac, commented:[15] If you get into who these cops were, you realize how they have to take their hunches, their personal beliefs, out of it.
[16] Graysmith reports that a Vallejo police officer pulled Allen over for speeding and noticed a bloody knife in his car on the day of the attack.
[18][19] Allen was interviewed again on August 4, 1971, this time by Detective Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department and Inspectors Toschi and Bill Armstrong of SFPD.
[18] Nancy Slover, the police dispatcher who received the call from the Zodiac after the Mageau-Ferrin shooting, said in the documentary that Allen did not sound like the man with whom she spoke.
[2] Shortly before his death, Allen wrote a letter to Rita Williams, a reporter from San Francisco station KTVU who had just interviewed him.
Voigt claimed that this had been confirmed by Holt as well as an unnamed retired SFPD inspector, and that this discovery reaffirmed Allen's status as a viable suspect.
"[36] The release of David Fincher's film about the Zodiac case in 2007 prodded the Seawater family to reexamine their memories of Allen.
Phyllis Seawater's maiden name was "Hensley", and at the time the letter had been sent, Connie was living in New York State, just a few hours from Albany.
Six months after production, director Kief Davidson stated that he thought Stewart's father was not the Zodiac, while executive producer Ross Dinerstein remained uncertain about Van Best's potential involvement.
[38] In 2021, the Case Breakers, an independent group made up of around forty "former law enforcement officials, academics, journalists, and former military intelligence workers,"[40] claimed they had identified Gary Francis Poste, a man who died in 2018, as both the Zodiac and the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates.
[44] He had a history of violence; he pushed his wife into a wall, breaking her pelvis, and a male relative claimed Poste tried to attack him with a hammer.
[40] Tom Voigt called the claims "bullshit", noting that no witnesses in the case described the Zodiac as having forehead scars.
Julin's solution for the codes contained Poste's name and gave the coordinates of a specific pine tree in a section of a campground in Zephyr Cove, Nevada.
[59][61] Anonymous law enforcement officers investigating the Zodiac told the San Francisco Chronicle they did not believe the solutions were correct.
"[63] Doerr's daughter read Kobek's book with the intent of suing for libel, but came away impressed with his research, adding in interviews that her father had at times been violent and abusive.
[3] Doerr was a member of the Minutemen, a right-wing militant group that sent out threatening letters to supposed communists using a symbol that resembled the Zodiac's.
[3][63] In his fanzine Pioneer, Doerr references the same formula for an ANFO bomb later given by the Zodiac, which Kobek argues was not widely known before the Internet and the publication of The Anarchist Cookbook in 1971.
In Hobbitalia #2, Doerr praised the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group of medieval cosplayers, which could explain the executioner-style costume used at Lake Berryessa.
Doerr also made a list of books he wanted to sell, including The Strange Ways of Man, which describes headhunters killing victims so they could have slaves in the afterlife.
[65] Gaikowski himself told Napa County detective Ken Narlow that he was not in the United States at the time of the Lake Herman Road murders, but was unable to prove this as he had lost his passport.
[26] According to Voigt, the FBI investigated Gaikowski but dismissed him as a suspect upon hearing the claim he had been out of the country, despite allegedly losing the passport.
Sullivan, a library assistant at Riverside City College, was suspected by co-workers after he engaged in disturbing behavior and went missing for several days following the murder.
Sullivan resembled sketches of the Zodiac, as he sported a crew cut and wore glasses and military-style boots with footprints like those found at the Lake Berryessa murder scene.
