The Zodiac Killer Has Been Identified
After decades of investigation and hunting, investigators may have found the true identity of the infamous Zodiac Killer, who is known as one of the most prolific serial killers in America.
Fox News reported that a team of more than 40 detectives, journalists and military intelligence officers, known as the Case Breakers, believes that a man by the name of Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018, was one behind the numerous murders in San Francisco in the 1960s.
While there have been many identified as the supposed Zodiac Killer over the years, the Case Breakers reportedly found new evidence and photos in Poste's darkroom that led them to believe he was the murderer. For example, there was a photo showing scars on the late Poste's forehead that matched scars featured on an old sketch of the Zodiac, and the letters of his full name were also the key to unlocking some alternate messages.
"So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent who works on cold cases, told Fox News. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."
The Code Breakers also linked Poste to the 1966 killing of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, Calif. While the murder took place hundreds of miles south of the Bay Area two years before the first identified Zodiac killing, and Bates was initially not reported as a victim of the Zodiac in the '60s, the group now definitively claim that Bates was indeed the sixth victim.
The Zodiac Killer was officially linked to five murders but claimed, through a series of coded letters and riddles sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, that there were actually 37 slayings.
There have been a number of documentaries and films made about the infamous Zodiac Killer, including Zodiac, the 2007 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Jr. and Mark Ruffalo.