Criminal Minds by Jeff Mariotte Read Free Book Online

“This is the Zodiac speaking.” It was the first time he had revealed the name he’d picked for himself, but it was a name that would remain in the awareness of Bay Area residents for decades to come. The letter also contained details about the first two shootings, confirming that the person who had committed those murders had written this letter.
    On September 27, two college students, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard, picnicking at Lake Berryessa in nearby Napa County, saw a man approaching them. He ducked behind a tree and emerged wearing a four-cornered black hood with a bib that extended down to his waist, with the Zodiac’s crossed-circle design embroidered on it. On his belt he wore a knife in a sheath and an empty holster. With a gun in his hand, he walked up to the young couple and demanded money and their car keys. In the end, he didn’t take much money, just pocket change from Hartnell, and he left the car keys behind. But he made Shepard tie up Hartnell with a clothes-line, then he stabbed them both: Hartnell six times and Shepard ten. Hartnell survived the attack, but Shepard died two days later.
    This time the Napa Police Department got the call. “I want to report a murder—no, a double murder. They are two miles north of Park Headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.” The switchboard operator asked him to identify himself, and he said simply, “I’m the one that did it.” Then he left the phone off the hook and walked away. He never again referred to this murder in any of his communications. The variations in MO and the fact that he didn’t bring it up again led some people to believe that the murders were committed by a different perpetrator, someone trying to confuse the police by making reference to the Zodiac’s crimes and his symbol, but the authorities believe that there are enough evidentiary links to attribute this one to the same man.
    On October 11, a San Francisco cabbie named Paul Stine picked up a passenger in Union Square and drove him to the upper-class Nob Hill neighborhood. There the passenger shot him in the side of the head, took his wallet and keys, and removed a section of Stine’s shirt, with which he mopped up some of Stine’s blood. In later communications, Zodiac sent portions of the shirt to confirm his identity.
    Stine’s murder was the last death positively connected to the Zodiac Killer. After that, a long succession of letters arrived. In June 1970, Zodiac claimed that he had shot an unidentified man in a car. He didn’t say precisely where or when that shooting took place, but the investigators believed that he might have been referring to the murder of a police officer in his car the week before. The last verified Zodiac letter showed up in 1974.
    Police questioned and eliminated twenty-five hundred suspects without ever bringing charges against anyone. A man named Arthur Allen, a convicted pedophile with a collection of handguns and known interests in law enforcement and the criminal mind, was considered a serious contender, but no physical evidence ever connected him to the crimes, and he was eventually discounted.
    In 2008 a man came forward to claim that while searching the belongings of his deceased stepfather, Jack Tarrance, he had found a bloody knife and the homemade black hood from the Lake Berryessa assault. In 2009, a Bay Area woman reported that her father was the Zodiac Killer and that at seven years of age, she had accompanied him on some of his crimes and had helped him write and mail his many letters. This woman has also claimed to be an illegitimate daughter of President John F. Kennedy and a witness to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
    These claims, and all of the other theories that have been offered throughout the years, have never been proven to anyone’s satisfaction. Although the San Francisco Police Department has labeled the murder of Paul Stine an inactive case, Zodiac’s other murders remain officially