Thoughts on the Zodiac Killer
By Mike Rodelli
NEW ZODIAC PROFILE 121708
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Forty years ago this week, on the night of December 20, 1968, two teenagers, David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were shot
to death at a lover’s lane on a lonely section of Lake Herman Road in Solano County, California. This unlit, desolate, two lane byway snakes its way between the
communities of Vallejo and Benicia just northeast of San Francisco. The profound
darkness of that night was broken only by the faint light of a crescent moon
towards which the three astronauts of Apollo 8 were hurtling throughout that evening.
The killer would later boast of having cleverly taped a pencil flashlight to
the barrel of his gun in order to shoot his victims. Six months after this
crime took place, in a parking lot near Blue Rock Springs Park, a recreational
area in the city of Vallejo that was also a secluded lovers’ lane at night,
another couple was shot. This time the young man, Mike Mageau, 19, survived
but a 22 year-old woman, Darlene Ferrin, died of her wounds. A half-hour after
the attack, an anonymous caller phoned the Vallejo Police Department. Chillingly,
he took credit for the Blue Rock Springs attack--and for the murders of David
Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. The caller seemed to want to taunt the police, not
just boast of his crimes, given that the phone booth was just down the street
from the station house.
All three of these murders remain unsolved to this day, as
do the two others attributed to one of the most intelligent, elusive and
inscrutable serial killers that law enforcement has ever encountered. To this
day, his crimes reverberate around the world in books, motion pictures and, since
the 1990s, on the Internet and even more recently on the website YouTube. All
of these victims were attacked by a man who struck terror into the hearts of
the people of the Bay Area and at times paralyzed the entire region with fear.
He called himself the Zodiac killer.
The identity of the Zodiac killer remains one of the great
unsolved mysteries of the 20th Century. The case is still avidly
researched-- and hotly debated--by amateur investigators around the world. Zodiac
is believed to have killed five people in less than a year. But it was not the
nature of his murders, which were horrific and brutal in and of themselves,
that fuels such rabid and undying interest in the case. Rather it is the twenty
or so hand printed letters, cryptograms and bomb diagrams the killer wrote, in
which he claimed credit for the murders, terrorized the public with threats of
killing schoolchildren with a “bus bomb,” and taunted his pursuers—the police--
for not being smart enough to catch him that set Zodiac apart from other serial
killers. In these letters, Zodiac even kept a running “box score,” indicating
a steadily increasing number of unnamed victims, with the police always
haplessly stuck at “zero” for failing to catch him.
At one of his crime scenes (at Lake Berryessa in the famous Napa
Valley wine country), Zodiac dressed himself up in a bizarre and frightening
“executioner’s outfit” complete with an unusual black hood, and with a bib across
his chest that bore the enigmatic symbol that he used to sign his letters: a
circle with an overlying cross that is known to this day as a “Zodiac symbol.”
Around his waist he wore a belt with a holster and gun, along with a knife in a
scabbard. His shoes were Wing Walkers, which were used by Navy airmen to walk
on the wings of airplanes. In that costume, Zodiac’s appearance had a definite
military theme to it, which did not escape the attention of the investigators
charged with the task of identifying and arresting him.
The Zodiac killer held the entire San Francisco Bay Area in
his grip of fear beginning with his first taunting phone call and letter in
July 1969 and ending when he disappeared without a trace after he sent his
final known letter in May 1974. Most students of the case believe that he
stopped killing after the murder of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine on October 11, 1969. On that night, he came close to being apprehended by the San Francisco
Police Department, which may have gotten him to rethink his murderous ways.
However, in his ensuing letters the Zodiac continued to claim more and more
victims. The police were never able to substantiate these claims. In giving
up on murder and concentrating on his letter writing Zodiac seems, in the eyes
of many, to have broken a widely held belief about serial killers: namely, that
once they get started on their murderous careers, they cannot stop the killing
unless they are either captured or killed themselves.
The shadow cast by the Zodiac’s crimes is a long and dark
one from which the area has not completely emerged to this day. The case still
cries out for a solution, even though forty long years have now passed since David
and Betty Lou both fell victim to Zodiac’s 22 caliber Super-X slugs on that
cold December night.
Since 1969, law enforcement has considered—and
rejected--approximately 3,000 different suspects. People have more than
willingly offered up their friends, neighbors, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons,
uncles, grandfathers and stepfathers as suspects. One of the biggest mysteries
of all in the case even today is one that can usually be answered very shortly after
someone commits a murder: What was the motive for the crimes? Before the
advent of behavioral profiling, which can provide insight into the mind and
personality of a given killer, murder had to have a logical and easily
discernable motive: greed, anger, jealousy, robbery, revenge, or rage. More
importantly, once they knew what the motive was for a crime, police investigators
could begin to assemble a list of possible suspects who may have had the motive,
means and opportunity to commit it. But Zodiac’s crimes were, on the surface
at least, completely devoid of a discernible motive—except for the publicity he
seemed to crave through his letters. However, killing just for publicity was
completely unheard of in the 1960s. Without a concrete motive to go on, the
police were essentially left scratching their heads--and chasing their tails—in
pursuit of the Zodiac killer. Initially, the “usual suspects” from the area were
routinely rounded up and questioned. However, none of them proved to be a
match for the killer, who continued to taunt his pursuers even as they searched
in vain for him.
In his first taunting letter, which he sent to three local
newspapers on July 31, 1969, the killer (who had not yet given himself the name
“Zodiac”) included his first cryptogram--a coded message set forth in seventeen
obsessively neat columns by eight rows of symbols derived from the Greek
alphabet, Navy semaphore, letters of the alphabet, and astrological signs, with
some arcane symbols mixed in. He had cleverly divided up the message into
three parts and mailed one section of the code with each letter. In the
accompanying cover letters, which were signed with the killer’s soon to be
famous crossed-circle symbol, he claimed that when you solved the code, it
would reveal his “idenity.” However, when the code was quickly broken by a
high school history teacher and his wife no name popped out. Intriguingly, however,
the last eighteen symbols were found to be nothing more than “gibberish” that
remains unsolved to this day. Nobody has ever been able to make any solution
to that coded message (or to the “gibberish” at the end of it), which has
become a sort of a “reflecting pool” in which clues to hundreds or even thousands
of different suspects has supposedly appeared, or any of Zodiac’s three other
coded messages, convincing enough to lead to a definitive solution of the case.
Also in that first coded message, the Zodiac killer provided
a couple of “motives” for his crimes, which were likely more of a peek into his
dark psyche (and, more significantly, subtle hints at his possible knowledge base)
than true reasons for killing. He stated that he was killing people “…because
man is the most dangerous game of all.” He also stated that when he died, he
would be “reborn in paradice (sic)” and his hapless victims would become his “slaves”
in that afterlife. The phrase “the most dangerous game” is also the title of a
short story and movie about a crazed hunter who lives on a remote island and
hunts people for sport: man as the most dangerous game. The notion of
collecting “slaves for the afterlife” can come from various sources, such as some
Pacific religions or even a tenth century book by an Arab emissary, the Ibn
Fadlan, on his travels through the Middle East that culminated with his living
with Viking warriors in modern day Scandinavia.
Zodiac’s motives were so obscure, in fact, that the 1971
Clint Eastwood classic movie “Dirty Harry,” which essentially borrowed its
entire story line from the Zodiac case, had to invent a logical motive for its
villain (cleverly named “Scorpio,” after a sign of the Zodiac, so as not
to completely plagiarize the real life killer!), in order for the movie to be
palatable to the viewing public In “Scorpio’s” first letter, which was written
in hand printing that very closely resembled that of Zodiac, the killer made it
clear why he was shooting innocent San Franciscans: He wanted a ransom of
$100,000 in order to stop the carnage. Zodiac, much to the dismay of the
police, never made any such simple and rational demands. Rather, in his first
letters he demanded that the three newspapers publish his code sections or he
would simply go out and randomly kill a dozen more people over the ensuing weekend.
With none of the usual motives to go on, the police began
looking at the type of person they instinctively felt would commit such
crimes. Clearly, Zodiac had to be “a mental person who is sick,” a
“pathological, psycho killer,” or a “frothing psychopath…a hot-eyed maniac,” in
the words of investigators and the press. He knew that “he ha[d] a
problem...definitely.” After all, Zodiac simply had to stand out from
other people. Aside from “the usual suspects,” they began investigating acquaintances
of the victims, known murderers, various low lives, drug dealers, petty
criminals, people who had been in the military, military men who had also spent
time in mental facilities, sex offenders, etc. The records of Atascadero State Mental Hospital were combed for possible suspects. To do the things Zodiac had
boasted of doing, he simply had to be “weird” or “strange” in outward appearance.
They looked for a “semi-literate” individual, due to the many misspellings of
simple words that appeared in Zodiac’s letters. One amateur investigator went
to Lake Tahoe and asked people who knew a purported Zodiac victim if they knew of
anyone who was “odd” or “different” and who “stood out” from other people.
This is the subset of the population in which the search for Zodiac has more or
less centered for many years.
In recent years, with the advent of behavioral profiling, a
new picture of the killer has emerged. A composite vision of Zodiac was that
he was a “nobody,” a “loser” and “paranoid loner” who felt “powerless” and
helpless in his miserable life, so he created the Zodiac persona to “compensate”
for his feelings of inadequacy. He committed the crimes and then assuaged his
low self-esteem by demonstrating his “superiority” (which was in reality a compensation for his inadequacy) to the police by taunting his pursuers and terrorizing the
public. He was a person who was unpopular in his youth, unattractive in
appearance and who lived in a world of “fantasy,” which fueled his crimes. He
was quite simply an “insignificant nobody,” who was stricken with dyslexia or
some sort of learning disorder, and who created an alter-ego that he named
Zodiac so that he could overcome his own inadequacies. As a result, he
probably held a low paying, thankless job and went through everyday life completely
unnoticed by most of the people around him. By inference, surely, the last
person the current profile of Zodiac would point to is a financially successful
individual of power, political influence and wealth.
To date, neither law enforcement nor amateur investigators
have successfully identified the Zodiac killer through their efforts using
either of the above two approaches. But what is the true profile of the
Zodiac killer? Was he really a pathetic, unpopular, reclusive loser, who was driven
by fantasy and who was compensating for his feelings of powerlessness, as
current thinking postulates? Or is it possible that the profile being used by
law enforcement and the general public is off-base? To state the problem
another way, if Zodiac were someone other than the type of person the
police and others have focused on for forty years would he have simply slipped
right through the fingers of law enforcement? Is this what has happened?
When Richard Walter speaks, people listen. And the people
who do the listening are behavioral profilers from all over the world. Along
with the highly respected forensic sculptor, Frank Bender, and a highly
decorated former Philadelphia police officer, lie detection expert and FBI
agent named William Fleischer, Walter is the co-founder of the prestigious Vidocq
Society in Philadelphia. The Society, which was formed in 1990 to help police
departments around the world solve their toughest cold cases, is named after
the legendary 19th Century criminal-cum-detective, Eugene François
Vidocq. Vidocq, who is credited with first recognizing the value of such
things as fingerprints, ballistics and footprints in criminal detection, was
also the first director of the French national police, the Surête. The Society
boasts an elite membership of 82 full members, one for each year of Vidocq’s
long and diverse life, as well as 100 associate members. These members, who
come from 17 US states and from about a dozen countries around the world,
constitute some of the world’s most gifted minds in criminal detection.
The members of the Society come from every conceivable discipline:
a medical examiner, a forensic bite mark expert, an interrogation expert, a
blood spatter expert, a private investigator, and others of equally diverse but
distinguished backgrounds. They gather once each month at the Down Town Club in
Philadelphia to dissect and discuss only the most difficult of unsolved murders.
Society members are often called upon to view graphic crime scene photos of
some of the worst depravities man can commit against his fellow man, which they
somehow manage to do while dining on an exquisite and sumptuous gourmet meal.
After reading over their website in 2004, I decided to approach
the Vidocq Society for assistance with the Zodiac case. I sent an email to
their media contact person, Mr. Fred Bornhofen, who is by day the head of his
own security firm. I received a reply from Mr. Bornhofen referring me to the
group’s behavioral profiler, a man named Richard Walter, of whose reputation I
was completely unaware. However, that was soon to change.
Richard Walter is one of the most respected behavioral
profilers (or as he prefers to say, “Crime Scene Analysts”) among his peers in
the world. He has been called “the living Sherlock Holmes,” and his opinion is
much sought after. His is not a household name because he chooses to fly well
below the radar of publicity, unlike some of his better-known counterparts. However,
don’t allow Walter’s reclusive nature to fool you. He is a “profiler’s
profiler,” and when other behavioral profilers worldwide have a case they can’t
solve, they often turn to him for help in getting on the right track. When
pressed for an answer, which he provides with reluctance, Mr. Walter thinks he
has either solved or helped to solve over one hundred cases over the course of
his career.
Mr. Walter regularly consults for the FBI, Scotland Yard, the
Hong Kong police, as well as police departments all across the U.S. He is a member of the Royal Society of Forensic Medicine. He has even lectured
Scotland Yard on one of their most famous unsolved cases—Jack the Ripper. He
is close friends with Dr. Robert Keppel (who was an integral part of both the
Green River and Ted Bundy serial killer investigations) and Robert Ressler, who
was the dean of profilers at the FBI in Quantico, Virginia in its heyday.
In 1988, America’s Most Wanted engaged both Walter
and fellow Vidocq Society member Frank Bender to help solve the case of John
List, a New Jersey man who killed his entire family in 1971. After Mr. Walter
provided the behavioral profiling and Mr. Bender did a sculpture of what List
might look like after seventeen years on the run, it took all of ten days for
List to be captured living a quiet life under a pseudonym in Virginia. The
profile and sculpture were correct right down to the type of eyeglasses List
would be wearing when he was apprehended.
Although the average person may not be familiar with his
name, Richard Walter is actually credited with helping to found the discipline
of behavioral profiling through the years of work he did interviewing criminals
in the Michigan State prison system. During that time, he conducted over
22,000 interviews with inmates. These interviews help form the theoretical basis
of modern criminal profiling. His opinion, needless to say, carries a lot of
weight. And as I was to learn very quickly just after Christmas of 2004, he
vehemently disagrees with the existing profile of the Zodiac killer.
Walter is now speaking out on the Zodiac case. And what he
has to say is sure to rock the foundations of an investigation that has been going
nowhere fast since the late 1960s.
The first thing that Mr. Walter asked me to do when I approached
him about the Zodiac case was to write down for him the details of the Zodiac’s
crime scenes without any personal opinion or references to any given suspect.
After reading over the details (or “bits” as he likes to call them), Mr. Walter
laughed and said that not only did he think that the existing profile of the
Zodiac killer was off, it was off by a full 180 degrees! He told me that based
on the existing profile he was not surprised that the Zodiac killer had never
been identified and captured.
Zodiac’s crime scenes demonstrate the work of a killer who
took control of a situation very quickly, killed his victims and then got away with
equal rapidity. This is evident at three of Zodiac’s four murder scenes. His
M.O. (method of operation) was (in two cases) to simply walk up to a couple and
shoot them for no apparent reason. At Lake Herman, although the police do not
know exactly what happened because there were no surviving eyewitnesses, the
detailed and painstaking investigation showed that the crime took place in a very
small window of opportunity between 11:14 PM and 11:20 PM, and most likely much
less time than that, since Zodiac was gone without a trace by the time the next
car ventured past the crime scene. At Blue Rock Springs, Zodiac simply walked
up to the car and started shooting without uttering a single word (which is
probably what also happened at Lake Herman). In a third instance, he did have
to bide his time riding in a Yellow Cab from downtown San Francisco to the
Presidio Heights section of that city, but then presumably shot cab driver Paul
Stine at point blank range immediately after the driver had arrived at the
destination Zodiac had requested and put the car’s transmission in “Park.”
Even at Lake Berryessa, where Zodiac dressed up in the bizarre executioner’s
outfit and spent up to a half an hour engaging in a conversation with the
victims, he approached the kids with a gun and quickly subdued and hogtied them
with pre-cut lengths of hollow plastic clothesline, once again taking immediate
control of the situation. He also left the crime scene immediately after he
stabbed the couple pausing only to write a taunting message on their car door. In
short, Zodiac was always in complete control at his crime scenes.
Mr. Walter’s conclusion based on Zodiac’s actions is that
Zodiac was an “organized, non-sexual, power-assertive killer.” The
“power-assertive killer” is a designation he helped create in a journal article
he wrote with Dr. Robert Keppel in 1999. This type of perpetrator is one that
deals from a position of power and whose crimes are committed to increase
his feelings of power, not to ease or compensate for feelings of powerlessness,
as suggested by other profilers. What he desires is power that is limited only
by the bounds of his own imagination. A power-assertive, in short, is
someone who is already intoxicated with power and who craves more and more of
it. A sensation of power is what the killer derives from his crimes and is
therefore the elusive motive for the Zodiac murders. A power-assertive is the
antithesis of the fantasy-based, “pathetic loser” of a killer, who is
“compensating for his feelings of inadequacy” by inventing the Zodiac persona.
In short, in Richard Walter’s view, Zodiac was the exact
opposite of the type of person the police and amateurs alike have been
chasing since 1969! And that old profile would seemingly anticipate virtually
all of the individuals who have ever come to the fore as “prime” suspects as
being the Zodiac killer, such as the chronic underachiever, Arthur Leigh Allen
(who is probably the best known Zodiac suspect due to the books of Robert
Graysmith and the 2007 David Fincher movie based on those books, Zodiac)
or known criminals, such as the small time crook, Larry Kane, or Manson family
member Bruce Davis. It also does not seem to fit Jack Tarrance, who was
described by his own family as a criminal drifter who subsisted on a series of
menial jobs. Scant few suspects out of the ones that have made it to the
consciousness of the public since 1969, in fact, would fit the profile of a power-assertive
killer, since everyone has seemingly been looking for someone who was
compensating for feelings of powerlessness, not for someone who is, as Walter
feels, already intoxicated with power.
It is when Walter expands on his description of a power-assertive
killer that we truly begin to see Zodiac’s face emerge from the mists of forty
years. Zodiac would have viewed himself as being “apart” from other people
(i.e., aloof), condescending and with a sense of superiority. He would have
loved the use of irony, as do all power-assertive killers. (This is evidenced
in the letters and droll greeting cards he sent to the Chronicle. One
of these cards made a tongue-in-cheek reference to the gap in his letters from
October to November, 1969. He chose a card that said, “Sorry I haven’t
written, but I just washed my pen…and I can’t do a thing with it!” The
accompanying artwork showed a pen dripping with water and hanging from a string
to dry.)
For a power-assertive killer, a murder “isn’t over until he
says it is over.” In other words, as long as he is deriving satisfaction out
of a crime, it never ends in his mind. This situation can go on for years and
can lead the killer to take actions to “celebrate” or commemorate the murder in
his private life. Also, the hallmark of a power-assertive is that the crime
“doesn’t count unless someone knows about it.” Clearly, this concept
captures the very essence of the behavior that separates Zodiac from other
killers: his steady stream of boastful, taunting letters, which seemed to be an
integral part of his crimes and which became the main focus of his activities
after October 1969.
For the usual power-assertive killer, letting other people
know about his involvement in a crime would usually mean boasting about it to
some stranger at a bar, etc. However, Zodiac was no common serial killer and
wanted as many people as possible to know of his acts. So rather than boasting
to some individual or a group of individuals over a drink, he may well have
scattered subtle clues to his true identity as a serial killer throughout
things that he did in his personal life, such as in dates that he held in
common with the killer and that he commemorated in some way, or in his business
dealings, etc.
A power-assertive is self-indulgent, grandiose, and
narcissistic, and he craves complete control over both people and things in his
life. He has an insatiable appetite for stimulation, examples of which might
be an obsession with drugs, fast cars, partying, skydiving, and/or womanizing, etc.
He eschews emotion and views normal human interactions and feelings of love as
signs of weakness and vulnerability, which he cannot allow in his life because vulnerability
undermines his sense of power. He has a huge ego and is deathly afraid of “not
being important.” He has a need for “glory and recognition.” He is jealous of
intimacy, which he fears and has to destroy. He has a “winner take all”
attitude towards life and business would also tend (due also to his aloofness
and feeling of “being apart” from other people) to prefer to compete in
individual sports, examples of which might be judo, skiing, golf, karate, track
and field, etc.). His murders are considered “recreational,” in that he does
not need to kill. He chooses to kill. And for that reason, he
can stop killing if it suits his needs. This would explain Zodiac’s seemingly
problematic behavior after October 1969 and the murder of Paul Stine, which is
widely believed to have been his last.
Mr. Walter also views Zodiac as being an “organized” killer,
as have other profilers before him. An organized killer is characterized by:
planning his crimes (using the flashlight at Lake Herman and bringing his own
pre-cut lengths of rope to ties up the victims at Lake Berryessa), using a ruse
or con (as his “escaped convict/need your wallet and car keys” ruse at Lake
Berryessa), a high level of control over victims (seen at all crime scenes),
adaptive behavior (killing with guns at three of his crime scenes but using a
knife at Lake Berryessa, possibly to avoid being trapped on the exposed
peninsula if someone heard multiple gunshots), the use of restraints (as at
Lake Berryessa), using his own vehicle or that of victim (used own car or
victim’s cab for crimes), removal of personal items (which can occur even if
the crime is not a sexual one, as in cabbie murder when he took Stine’s wallet
and car keys), altering or staging the crime scene (as in, according to one eyewitness
to the murder of cabbie Paul Stine, sitting the cab driver up behind the wheel
after the murder in order to stage the scene), and bringing his own weapon and
taking it with him when he leaves (all crime scenes). But the most critical behavior attributable
to an organized killer with regard to the Zodiac case is that an organized
killer will obliterate evidence at crime scenes and also be very careful
about not leaving evidence that might identify him on anything that might fall
into the hands of the police.
The type of killer that would result from the profile that
has been in place for many years, that of an “insignificant nobody” who had
feelings of powerlessness would be one who is obsessed with and driven by fantasy.
This type of killer would be much different from Zodiac. This type of killer
would also leave behind him much different crime scenes than did Zodiac. Walter
does not believe that Zodiac was a fantasy-driven killer. (A power-assertive
killer like Zodiac is not driven by fantasy.) According to Walter, a “fantasy-driven”
killer would also be a “disorganized” type of killer, which Zodiac clearly was
not. (A disorganized killer would be sloppier and therefore would be more
prone to leaving clues about himself on his letters or at his crime scenes.) A
fantasy-driven killer would not kill couples, since he focuses his attention on
and stalks an individual who meets his fantasy. He also would not be a traveler
and would not kill in secluded places, as Zodiac generally did. A
fantasy-driven killer’s crimes tend to take place close to his area of control
and comfort. This does not generally describe the crimes of the Zodiac killer.
Richard Walter believes that in order for the Zodiac case to
be solved, a “paradigm shift” in thinking must take place both within law
enforcement and in the mind of the public. Police investigators and amateur
researchers alike need to refocus their energy and stop pursuing common
criminals and other people who generally fit an outdated notion of who the
killer was and what drove him to kill. Moving forward in the investigation, we
must now focus on suspects who have demonstrated that they are true
power-assertive personalities in their everyday lives. In other words, the
list of suspects essentially has to be inverted: those who were previously
considered “prime suspects” under the old profile must now go to the bottom of
the list, while those power-assertive personalities who were considered
“unlikely suspects” or “above suspicion” must be moved towards the top of the
list. Power-assertive personalities in everyday life can include police
officers, political power brokers and successful businessmen. These are
generally people who, while they truly do fit Richard Walter’s profile of the
Zodiac killer, would have been almost completely transparent in the
investigation to date because of their job descriptions, wealth, station in
life, status in the community, etc.
Walter equated a behavioral profile to a road map saying,
“If you are trying to drive from New York to Los Angeles and have the wrong map
in your car, you’ll always end up in Shreveport.” In other words, no matter how
many times, one time or three thousand times, you come up with a suspect that
does not fit the Zodiac profile of a power-assertive personality, you’ll never be
able to put a face on the Zodiac killer.
(Note: Richard Walter and the
Vidocq Society are going to be the subject of a book by best-selling author and
four time Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist Mike Capuzzo, which is entitled The
Murder Room. It will be available in bookstores in early 2009.)
| INTRO | NEW INFORMATION | DNA | ZODIAC LETTERS AND DNA | FACTS ABOUT MR. X |
| NEW ZODIAC PROFILE 121708 |