The cold case team has identified the Zodiac Killer, tying him to another murder.
A team of cold-case specialists claims to have identified the Zodiac Killer, one of America’s most prolific serial killers who terrorized towns in the San Francisco area during the late 1960s with a series of gruesome slayings and impenetrable riddles.
The Case Breakers, a group of over 40 former law enforcement detectives, journalists, and military intelligence personnel, have also investigated other unsolved crimes, including the D.B. Cooper hijacking heist, the disappearance of former labor union boss Jimmy Hoffa, and others. The gang believes the killer is responsible for an unrelated slaying hundreds of miles away.
The Zodiac Killer has been linked to five deaths in the San Francisco area between 1968 and 1969. Unlike the majority of serial killers, the Zodiac used intricate ciphers in letters to press and police enforcement. In the years afterwards, the slayings have produced books, films, and documentaries, and amateur and professional sleuths have poured over the case in an attempt to identify the culprit.
The Case Breakers has now confirmed that the Zodiac Killer was identified as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. Years of investigation unearthed fresh forensic evidence and photographs from Poste’s darkroom. The team stated one photograph shows Poste’s forehead scars matching those on a depiction of the Zodiac.
Among the other clues are interpreting letters sent by the Zodiac revealing him as the killer, according to Jen Bucholtz, a retired Army counterintelligence agent who specializes in cold cases. Poste said Fox News that the letters of her complete name were erased from one note to expose an additional message.
“So, in order to interpret these anagrams, you need to know Gary’s full name,” Bucholtz explained. “I just don’t believe anyone could have figured it out any other way.”
Poste is also suspected of murdering Cheri Jo Bates on Oct. 31, 1966, in Riverside, Calif., hundreds of miles south of the San Francisco area and two years before the first Zodiac-related crime happened. Bates, 18, was discovered dead in an alleyway on the Riverside City College campus after her father reported her missing to police.
