Serial Killer Week: Zodiak Killer


Unsolved serial killer cases are the things of nightmares. Is the killer next door? Did you marry him? Are your kids running into him on a playground?

In the late 60s and early 70s, a new serial killer came to public attention in Northern California as he taunted the police by sending letters to the press. He sent them cryptograms and only one of the four was definitively solved.  Although he claimed 37 victims, it's thought there were more.

Most of the victims were shot, some were stabbed. One brave woman was driving with her baby when the killer made her pull over, telling her that her tire was messed up. He ended up hijacking her and the baby and drove them around, not allowing them their freedom. At an intersection, she jumped out with her baby and hid in the bushes. 



The final letter from the Zodiak Killer was in 1974. There have since been decades for folks to conjecture about who the killer was. One police officer thought he knew who the killer is, a man who is now in his 90s in Northern California and was angry because his wife had cheated on him. Another suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen who lived in the right place, used the right kind of typewriter and wore a zodiac watch. In the early 2000s a DNA database sample was made from an envelope used by the killer who had licked it and used his saliva. This case might not have been solved, but it has continued to intrigue people with the taunting coded letters and attention-seeking behavior. It has even inspired a few movies -



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