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Zodiac Killer Stalked Victims Much Like
DC Sniper
From a news story by
CNN San Francisco Reporter Rusty Dornin
March 2003
He stalked and killed with knives and guns. Once he even dressed as
an executioner. The man called himself the Zodiac. Beginning in 1968,
he killed five people in Northern California. He claimed to have killed
many more.
Like the Washington, D.C. sniper, there seemed to be no motive. Victims
were random. He also threaten to gun down young children but he never
did. And the Zodiac craved publicity. He would taunt police writing
letter after letter, often in code, to the newspapers. He too focused
on fear.
A sheriff from 1969 says, "We think that he... it appears to us
that he is killing just for the thrill."
"This is the first lette." Forensic scientist Susan Morton
still thinks so. She knows every palm print and period penned by the
Zodiac. She says, "If you read these letters, he was getting a
tremendous thrill out of terrifying the public."
The original investigators have retired, but thirty-three years later,
San Francisco homicide inspector Kelly Carroll deals with new tips,
new clues and new technology. San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine was
the Zodiac’s last known victim shot to death inside his cab in
1969.
"This is Paul Stine's shirt", says Carroll while showing the
bloody shirt from the evidence file.
The Zodiac cut out a piece of his shirt then mailed part of it to the
newspaper with a letter to verify his identity. Underneath the stamps
on that letter [was] partial DNA from saliva.
Arthur Allen in 1991 said,"I'm not the damn Zodiac."
Even in the 1970's, Arthur Allen was one of the prime suspects. But
he was never charged. He died in 1992 denying it. DNA found under those
stamps was compared just last week to DNA from Allen's corpse.
"From the licking of one of these stamps, you were able to determine
that one of the prime suspects is no longer a suspect?" asks Rusty
Dornin.
"It does not match the DNA profile that we developed from a piece
of brain tissue from Arthur Lee Allen's autopsy," replies inspector
Carroll.
[It’s] a thirty-three year-old case that's had more than twenty-five
hundred other suspects and tips that keep on coming.
"Everyday, in fact, if you hear the phone ringing, it's probably
mine and it's probably somebody calling with a clue or some lead on
this," replies Carroll.
Police believe the killings stopped in 1969. The letters continued until
1974. A serial killer never caught, and today, no one even knows if
Northern California's feared Zodiac killer -- is dead or alive.
For additional information,
look at these Web sites:
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