Case File: Zodiac Killer

In the summer of 1963, “Surfin’ Safari” by the Beach Boys was on the radio, President John F. Kennedy was in the White House and the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Like other high school seniors, Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards took advantage of “Senior Ditch Day” on June 4 to visit the beach in Santa Barbara County.

When neither of them returned home, Robert’s father went searching for them and made a gruesome discovery: Their bodies, bound with rope, had been dragged into a small seaside shack. Both had been shot multiple times.

This double murder has been attributed to the Zodiac Killer for a number of reasons, including his habit of approaching unsuspecting couples in quiet or isolated areas and shooting them with a .22 caliber weapon. But in 1963, there were no other murders that compared to the killing of Domingos and Edwards—at least, not yet.

In 1964, newlyweds Johnny and Joyce Swindle were strolling along Ocean Beach in San Diego County when a sniper with a .22 caliber weapon shot at them from a beachside cliff. They were later shot at close range and robbed of some belongings, including Johnny’s Timex watch.

These Southern California murders weren’t considered related, and there’s still no definitive proof that they were committed by the Zodiac Killer. In 1966, however, the body of 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates was found in Riverside, Calif., with multiple stab wounds and her throat slashed. A man’s Timex watch was also found at the scene.

One month after Bates’s murder, almost-identical letters were received at the Riverside Police Department and the local newspaper. The letters—titled “The Confession”—included details about the murder that hadn’t been released to the public and stated that Bates “is not the first and she will not be the last.”

The letters were just the first of several sent over the next few years that suggest a relationship between these early killings and several murders that followed. Shortly before Christmas of 1968, teenagers David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were murdered with a .22 caliber handgun while parked on Lake Herman Road in the Bay Area town of Benicia.

In 1969, during the July Fourth holiday, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot in Vallejo, Calif., while parked in a “lover’s lane” area close to that on Lake Herman Road. Mageau survived, but was only able to offer scant identifying information to police. One month later, several news outlets received a nearly identical letter stating, “I am the murderer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass [sic] at Lake Herman and the girl on the 4th of July …”

Like the letters received after Bates’s murder, the author included details unknown to the public, such as the brand of ammunition used. The letters were also signed with two crossed lines inside a circle, a crosshair-like symbol that soon came to be associated with “the Zodiac,” as he now identified himself.

Moreover, each letter included a cryptogram and a threat that if the letters and cryptograms were not published on the front page of the newspapers, the Zodiac Killer would “cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people.”

The published cryptograms were unsolved until Donald and Bettye Harden, a couple living in nearby Salinas, cracked the code. In it, the murderer described killing people to collect slaves for his afterlife in paradise.

The Zodiac Killer struck again in September 1969 while college students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were on the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County. After stabbing the couple with a knife, a man wearing a black executioner's hood drew a crosshairs symbol on the door of Hartnell’s car, along with dates and times of his other murders.

That evening, a man called the local police to report a double murder at Lake Berryessa, saying, “I’m the one who did it.” A similar call had been received after the July deaths of Ferrin and Mageau in Valencia. Hartnell survived the stabbing by playing dead, but Shepard died two days later.

By now, police and fearful citizens throughout Northern California were on high alert for anyone who might be the Zodiac Killer. And in October 1969, taxi driver Paul Stine was shot to death in San Francisco. Though the murder initially thought to be a robbery, when a letter arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle with a piece of Stine’s shirt, police knew the Zodiac Killer had struck again.

The letters and cryptograms to newspapers kept coming, and each missive varied slightly in tone, ranging from demanding and threatening to distressed and pleading. In a letter to famed attorney Melvin Belli, the Zodiac Killer wrote, “Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer.”

After 1970, the letters and postcards claiming to be from the Zodiac Killer started to slow down, and investigators are uncertain if correspondence and murders that occurred during the 1970s can actually be attributed to him.

In March 1970, Kathleen Johns, who was seven months pregnant, and her 10-month-old daughter were abducted in Central California by a man who drove them around for several hours and threatened to kill both Johns and her child. She managed to escape by jumping out of the moving car and hiding in an irrigation ditch.

That July, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac Killer: In it, he specifically mentioned the Johns’ abduction. A few other letters and coded messages were received by the end of 1974, but nothing since that time has been considered authentic, and several “copycat” letters and crimes have been identified.

At least five murders have been attributed by authorities to the Zodiac Killer, though in his correspondence, he claimed to have killed 37. A number of deaths in California have been linked to him, but establishing a direct connection has proved difficult.

In September 1970, for example, nurse Donna Lass disappeared from the Lake Tahoe area on the California-Nevada state line. A postcard sent to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in March 1971 showed the Lake Tahoe area with some cryptic messages like “sought victim 12.” A skull discovered in the Lake Tahoe area in 1986 was determined by DNA profiling in 2023 to belong to Lass.

Several men have been suspected of being the Zodiac Killer, but there was never enough evidence to arrest them.

Arthur Leigh Allen remains the only individual named by police as a suspect. Allen, who died in 1992, was a convicted sex offender who lived in Vallejo, Calif., had a watch with a Zodiac crosshairs symbol, used the same kind of typewriter as the Zodiac Killer and was identified by survivor Mageau as the man who shot him.

But other evidence obtained from Allen, including DNA samples and fingerprints, didn’t match those of the Zodiac Killer, so he was never formally charged.

Additional suspects—including Earl Van Best Jr., a Bay Area resident who was identified by his son as a prime suspect, and Gary Francis Poste, who was tied to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates by a team of investigators called the Case Breakers—died before they could be investigated thoroughly.

Thousands of leads and potential evidence have come forward over the years since the first murders by the Zodiac Killer. None, however, have yielded conclusive evidence and the case officially remains open.

The killings have inspired numerous films, including the 1971 Clint Eastwood classic Dirty Harry and 2007’s acclaimed Zodiac starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and the television documentary series The Most Dangerous Animal of All, based on the best-selling book by Gary L. Stewart.