Signs of the Times

During my sophomore year of high school, in 1993, I discovered the book Zodiac by Robert Graysmith in our small public library. It was the original 1986 hardcover, encased in a library-issue clear jacket and appropriately carded. I flipped through the book and was immediately arrested by the drawings and by Graysmith’s detailed appendices at the back. These appendices, grouping every conceivable detail about this singular and unsolved case, were so extensive it was a day before I flipped back to the frontispiece and began reading the book proper. Within a week, I had reached armchair expert status on the case. I passed the book to a friend of mine and upon reading it, he put forward the idea that we should review the material and solve the case ourselves. This effort exhausted itself within a week, but years later, when I returned to revisit the case, I realized that our failed effort to solve the case and identify Zodiac (I eschew the definite article) was not out of the ordinary. Untold thousands, through the years and with the advent of the internet, had made the same attempt. What is it about this case that creates this shared impulse, across the country and over fifty years, to solve this mystery? Why did the killer do what he did? Why did this happen? I will answer these questions. For those unfamiliar with case, here are the basics.

The Facts of the Case

From 1966 to 1969, the state of California was subjected to a series of violent killings and threatening letters, both from the same individual, who identified himself as The Zodiac. Federal and local law enforcement investigated the killings, but came up with no prosecutable suspects. The murders remain unsolved.

Murders

-On October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo Bates, a high school student, was stabbed to death in Riverside, CA.

-On December 20, 1968, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, teenagers, were shot to death in and around their parked car in Benicia, CA.

-On July 4, 1969, Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin were attacked in their car in Vallejo, CA. Both were shot multiple times. Mageau survived, Ferrin died.

-On September 27, 1969 Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shephard were attacked at a lakeside picnic in Napa County, CA. Both were stabbed multiple times. Hartnell survived, Shephard died.

-On October 11, 1969, Paul Stine, a taxi cab driver in San Francisco, CA was killed in his cab with a single gunshot to the head.

There is some dispute as to whether Cheri Jo Bates can be counted as a definite victim; I am counting her as a definite victim.

There are also unsolved incidents which are considered possible, but not conclusively proven, Zodiac attacks.

-On June 4, 1963, Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards were shot to death near Gaviota, CA.

-On March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns and her infant daughter were abducted in the vicinity of Modesto, CA and escaped their assailant about an hour later.

-On September 6, 1970 Donna Lass disappeared in Stateline, NV. her body was not recovered. The San Francisco Chronicle received a Zodiac-esque postcard referencing the incident on March 22, 1971.

In his final letter to the news media, Zodiac claimed a “score” of 37.

Communication With the Police and the Public

Zodiac communicated with the police and the public via telephone, letter, post card, and greeting card. From 1966 to 1970, there were roughly fifteen to twenty communiques, depending on the source, between the killer and the public and/or law enforcement.

Why Zodiac?

What is it about this particular case that captured the popular imagination, not just during the span of the crimes but now, in the 21st century? The years bring new generations that are ensnared by the case. The demand for information has produced a supply of documentary evidence, via Zodiac web sites, completely unavailable during the time I was doing my amateur sleuthing on the case. What gives this particular killer his cultural staying power? There are two reasons. The first is obvious: he didn’t get caught. He succeeded where so many other criminals and killers failed. He avoided detection and arrest. The case remains unsolved. As impractical and unlikely as it may be, there is a natural desire on the part of the enthusiast to be the one who writes the final chapter, who succeeds where the others failed, who makes that heretofore unmade connection.

To explain the second reason, I must explore the changing nature of America’s response to serial murder, both culturally and strategically. Lastly, a word on the typical serial murderer is in order.

While the United States was familiar with multiple murderers, the concept of a man killing strangers for obscure psychological/sexual reasons was not common currency. Then, starting in the late 1960’s, the country experienced a surge of lurid killings: Manson, Bundy, Brudos, Gacy and all the rest. America accepted and slowly integrated the randomness, the sordidness, and the gruesome nature of this type of killer. While this subset of murder carved it niche in the American psyche, it was still not the cultural phenomenon it is today. Then came Hannibal Lecter.

Lecter first appeared in Thomas Harris’s 1981 novel Red Dragon and then secured fame and mythical status with 1988’s The Silence of the Lambs and the follow on film adaptation directed by Jonathan Demme. Anthony Hopkins’ Lecter recast the figure of the serial murder from sicko or crazed loner to a man of the upper class, a bon vivant. Brilliant, urbane and still capable of acts of savage violence, Lecter is a character for the ages. He stands as a stark example of the outer limits of man’s potential in the roles of both animal and god. Lecter, however, is a fiction. The most impressive thing about the typical serial murderer is how such an unremarkable chunk of humanity can cause so much suffering.

The typical serial murderer is neither sophisticate or evil genius. He is of average to subaverage intelligence. The so called genius of killers like Manson and Bundy collapses under close scrutiny. These men moved through life through deception and manipulation, managing their lives and relationships in a manner that afforded them more or less total control of their environment. If anything, their feelings of grandiosity hastened their downfall. On the other end of the spectrum, Gary Ridgeway’s lack of intellectual ability facilitated his killing women for decades. He simply had few if any people to talk to and then rarely spoke to them; he simply avoided detection by not expressing himself.

These conflicting ideas – the cultural figure of the genius serial killer and the reality of the stunted, unremarkable but terribly destructive loser – are key to understanding why Zodiac continues to fascinate over fifty years later.

The man who called himself the Zodiac was clearly highly intelligent. He understood and communicated in codes. He understood the rudiments of police work and killed across multiple jurisdictions, creating administrative headaches for the investigating officers. He was technically proficient with weapons, using different guns and knives, enhancing them with a homemade suppressor (Mageau/Ferrin) and a crude weapon mounted light (Faraday/Jensen). He quoted from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and made references to current movies of the time, Badlands and The Exorcist. He taunted the police and had a flair for the dramatic. In short, if ever a serial murderer fit the fictional mold of the diabolical genius eluding authorities and terrorizing the populace, it was this man.

The mixture of competence and skills gave the mystery man staying power over the years. As I grew older, I read more and more about serial murder and developed a clearer and more accurate perception of this type of killer and his relationship to society. The pedestrian nature of most serial killers inspired horror, but it was a moral horror at the pain and lost lives in relation to the generally pathetic examples of humanity who become serial killers.

Zodiac was different. Inasmuch as you can divorce and admire intelligence and craft separate from its purposes, there was something to admire about this skill and intelligence, even when turned to destructive ends. And something to fear as well. If I were living in Vallejo or the Bay Area in 1969, I would have been scared. You had a clever and well armed man out there, murdering apparently random people with impunity. Who wouldn’t be afraid?

Which brings me to the police themselves. In this case as well as others, too much credit is given to the perpetrators and deducted from the police. Serial murder is now part of the cultural lexicon. People have a general concept that the FBI has specialists who hunt this type of criminal. But in the late 1960s, this was not the case. The killers of the late 1960s through the 1980s benefitted from a proficiency gap on the part of American law enforcement. The various organizations that investigated the Zodiac were using tried and true police work to solve, generally speaking, a new type of crime. A criminal killing strangers for obscure reasons not apparent to the investigators. No snitches to turn to, no obvious deduction through seeing who benefits from the crime. The various detectives and investigators floundered in the dark. They amassed an enormous amount of raw information, but it was largely aimless, directed in this or that direction and never struck a target with anything approaching authority.

Why did he do it?

Zodiac killed for sexual satisfaction and revenge. There are all the marks of a sadist in his communications and his actions. I will not touch on the developmental aspects but simply say where an average person seeks sexual gratification through sex or pornography, a man like Zodiac is only excited and satisfied by inflicting fear and pain. It plays itself out in the fantasy life before it takes shape in the world of people and action. Zodiac, like others of his type, took the next step from fantasy to reality. And the next one. We know the killing was what he wanted it to be because he did not finish after one or two. He continued to kill until he stopped for reasons we will probably never know or understand.

The other great motivator for Zodiac was revenge. One can imagine that Zodiac’s intelligence was a double edged sword, that he experienced pain and rejection on a Dostoevskyan level. The sources of pain are obvious, easily discovered by working backward from both his individual attacks and the reign of terror he worked to instigate in California. Zodiac attacked courtship. He attacked the physical intimacy of young people. He attacked romantic love. He attacked youth. He destroyed the Girls, who bore the brunt of the worst of his violence. He defeated the boys who got the Girls, rendering them impotent with bursts of gunfire and knife wounds. He attacked the institutions tasked with safeguarding the body politic, mocking them publicly in print and defeating them tactically by refusing to get caught. He attacked the very fabric of society when he threatened to blow up a bus and massacre school children. While there is certainly a sadistic sexual element to Zodiac’s crime spree, it is impossible to miss the spitefulness of it - that this terrorism was the act of a wounded outsider.

The Big Why – Giving the Victims Their Due

When people ask ‘why’ in the wake of the suffering of individual murder or mass murder or serial murder, it indicates that they haven’t been paying attention all along. The psychological architecture from killer to killer is more alike than different and even if the motivations are not explicitly stated, they can be easily deducted. The answer, if one really explores it, battens on one’s sensibilities. These chain reactions of terrible events are set in motion by the most insignificant people for the most banal reasons. It would be easier to accept if people were killed by great and diabolical forces, but underneath the posturing and games and even the violence (which is never actual combat), is a monstrous nothingness, a sniveling, tiny creature who does not have the courage to fight men or love women. Zodiac, with all his intelligence and ability, is no exception to this rule.

Mere onanistic pleasure as a reason to cause pain and suffering is the final indignity to the victims of serial murder. But this twisted brand of murder is only a foothill in the Himalayan range of murder, and every bit as senseless. Murder over a pair of shoes, murder because a driver spat out the window and on another driver, murder over transient passions like jealousy and rage, murder in the name of abstractions like the ethnonationalism of fascism or the egalitarianism of communism. Murder in the name of hatred, murder in the name of love. Murder due to misfiring electrical impulses in the cerebrum. Murder for the most absurd reasons. Murder for no reason.

Who Is He?

He is a white male who murdered five people and escaped justice. He is almost certainly dead or close to it. At this point, in my nearly three decades of absorbing and considering this case, I am not concerned about the actual and ultimate identity of the killer. The relationship triangle between the killer, his victims both real and potential, and the police is what interests me. The cultural nuances – the appearance of a clean cut killer in San Francisco (‘the killer looked like the FedEx man’, said director David Fincher), the menace on the dark edges of a society loosening its grip on the minds and bodies of its young people – are what interest me. A name on a page no longer interests me. Time or fate will have to produce a new amateur sleuth, or a new piece of technology that will make the final connection and close the book on one of the most singular cases in the history of American crime.