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TRAIL OF CARNAGE
Was the Zodiac Killer ever identified?
The Zodiac Killer gave himself his nickname in the press
THE Zodiac Killer was a murderer who claimed to have been responsible for the deaths of 37 people.
Although he is only known to have claimed five victims between 1968 and 1969, police believe the true number is much higher.
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The killer has never been caught, but authorities have several theories about his identity.
When the murders began in the 1960s though, the authorities became embroiled in a dangerous game as the murderer sent them coded letters and clues.
An unknown killer
The Zodiac Killer targeted three couples and a lone taxi driver but only two of them survived his gun and knife ambushes.
He named himself "Zodiac" in his fourth letter to the press on August 7, 1969, which read: "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking."
From that moment on, the press called him the Zodiac Killer.
He would also sign his letters with a circle and a cross through it, which authorities believed signaled future killing locations.
In the letters, he claimed to have murdered 37 people.
A major breakthrough was made in 2020 by two software engineers and a cryptographer, when they cracked the Zodiac Killer’s cypher.
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They were able to interpret a message from the Killer that taunted the police, saying “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me”.
He also explained his reasoning for the murders with “I now have enough slaves to work for me”, as he believed his victims would be his slaves in the afterlife.
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A possible suspect
A group named The Case Breakers claimed to have solved the case in 2021.
The group was made up of ex-journalists, military intelligence workers, law enforcement officers and academics.
They claimed that the man responsible for the string of brutal killings is Gary Francis Poste.
The group also claim to have linked Gary to a sixth killing hundreds of miles away that has never before been connected to the Zodiac.
The Case Breakers said they discovered Poste's identity after years of digging through new forensic evidence and his darkroom.
In one note, removing the letters of Poste's full name revealed an alternate message, according to former Army counterintelligence agent Jen Bucholtz.
"So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," Bucholtz told Fox News.
"I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."
They believe this is further proof that Gary was the Zodiac Killer.
Gary died at the age of 80 in August 2018 after being diagnosed with sepsis, dysphagia and vascular dementia.
He was alive for 50 years after the Zodiac murder spree and was never caught or charged.
Chilling new theory that unsolved Zodiac murders may have been the work of multiple killers
Another Zodiac Killer suspect
The only named suspect in connection with the Zodiac Killer case was convicted sex offender Arthur Leigh Allen, who lived minutes away from the first victim in the murderer’s crime spree.
He was named as the Zodiac Killer by a survivor of one of the attacks, but another witness said that Allen was 100lbs too heavy to be the killer.
When Allen died, a police search in his house found that he had a watch that could have identified him as the killer.
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The Zodiac Sea Wolf wristwatch, belonging to Allen, had a logo which matched the Zodiac Killer’s symbol.
Also, when Allen was arrested in 1974 for “lewdness” with an underage boy, the killings and letters stopped.
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