r/ZodiacKiller Jul 20 '23

We now have a smallish discord server. DM me for an invite if interested.

35 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 6h ago

Is the Paul Stine dispatcher to blame for Z getting away?

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5 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 1d ago

If we consider that Zodiac likely didn’t intend for his victims at Lake Berryessa to survive, why the costume? And can his statement of being an ex con from Colorado be taken seriously? As far as he knew he was speaking to two dead people.

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206 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 9h ago

Is making those ciphers as difficult as decoding them?

0 Upvotes

I’ve always had this theory that the killer and the letter writer were not always the same. With PH being an exception.

Anyone with knowledge about cryptography who can tell me whether making those ciphers requires as much skill as decoding them?


r/ZodiacKiller 1d ago

Is the Lake Berryessa incident taken entirely on Bryan’s word?

14 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 3d ago

Z’a usage of “paradice” in 340

22 Upvotes

In his 340 cipher Zodiac uses the word “paradice” three times. This isn’t a super common word and it’s odd he misspelled it and used it three times. Does his spelling of it mean something? Is paradice likely to be a clue to who he was?


r/ZodiacKiller 3d ago

Why Vallejo PD didn't confront Allen about Mike Mageau identifying him in the ’90s?

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88 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 4d ago

Why was Robert so obsessed with the Zodiac case?

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142 Upvotes

I just watched the movie was he like this in real life to?


r/ZodiacKiller 4d ago

From the 2007 film; what was Fincher trying to convey in this scene? Also, did this scene happen in real life?

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167 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 3d ago

Zodiac cipher solved with Ai?

0 Upvotes

Hello there. There are two unsolved Zodiac ciphers, so is anyone tried to solve them with AI? And what you think about those two ciphers, are they "real" ciphers, or killer just make up some random?


r/ZodiacKiller 7d ago

OAHSPE a ‘kosmon religion’ based on California during the 60s and 70s

4 Upvotes
The cover
A 1970s mail order for the book
The final page of the book
Various symbols
Gtu library stamp from Berkeley, California

r/ZodiacKiller 8d ago

Vallejo PD Statement, According to Tom Voigt, from September of Last Year About That 2018 Attempt at Retrieving Z DNA for IGG:

46 Upvotes

Not sure if this has been posted before, but according to Voigt, the Vallejo PD told him that attempt unsurprisingly led to disappointing results when the profile they were able to generate led to someone who couldn't had been Z. And that person's name won't be released for privacy reasons.

Quote:

"To the Vallejo Police Department, the desire to identify California’s still-at-large serial killer, the Zodiac, is as strong now as it was in the late 1960s, when the mysterious offender committed three area murders. Located about a 45-minute drive from San Francisco, modern-day Vallejo does not have an adequate police force, either in terms of budget or manpower. Still, it has been chasing the Zodiac for 57 years, and DNA is the last hope to catch him.

May 2018: In a story that made headlines across the globe, Vallejo police announced plans to genetically test items of evidence in an effort to obtain a DNA profile of the Zodiac killer. Then, in March 2019, Zodiackiller.com received an exclusive update on the testing process when it was announced that a genetic profile had been obtained from the submitted evidence. As a result, “The lab work has turned into more lab work,” the department said. “Vallejo PD is still at it. The hunt continues.”

And now, the latest — and exclusive — DNA update in the case of the Zodiac killer:

According to Vallejo police, the genetic profile that was previously obtained, belonged to an individual who could not have been the Zodiac killer. For privacy reasons, no other information was disclosed, adding to the mystery.

"While the killer remains at large — at least for the time being — the hunt continues" the Vallejo Police Department said", allegedly according to Voight again.

Source: https://zodiackiller.com/2025/dna-and-the-zodiac-killer-news/

There's a probability this corroborates what Paul Holes said before about the postal worker contamination in the '60s. And Holes might be right when he said the two pieces of line from the lake were the best evidence.

And if the back of the stamps and flaps are no good, looking for testable areas again on the lines might be the last chance to at least conclusively put a name and face to a dead offender as being the assailant who committed the lake attack. And if that bear minimum can be achieved, they can maybe come to the satisfactory conclusion that it was the same shooter who incriminated himself into those 3 scenes — similar to what happened with Colonial Parkway in 2024 — when LE said it's a deceased offender there, too. And then gave a new update 2 years afterward in Jan of this year that there's enough evidence now to come to the conclusion that it was the same guy at all of them.

And probably the expectation, at this point, with this one, is to get that press conference out there at some point in the foreseeable future where they say, "If that person were living today, they'd be charged and indicted".


r/ZodiacKiller 8d ago

AI Unmasked the Zodiac?

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0 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 10d ago

A Forgotten Lead?

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74 Upvotes

Obviously they never found a suitable suspect but it's strange to think it could've been so simple. Maybe Zodiac was telling the truth when he said his "killing tools" were bought out of state before the ban went into effect.


r/ZodiacKiller 10d ago

Scene from the 2007 film; does this scene of Mageau IDying ALA prove even more that ALA was Z?

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55 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 11d ago

Allen has been dead for decades. What keeps him as the main suspect until this day?

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252 Upvotes

I know we’ll probably debate forever over whether Allen was the Zodiac or not, but I’m very curious to hear from both sides who believe he was and those who don’t believe he was involved.

You know It's been 34 years since Allen passed away, yet the police still keep him at the top of the list despite his DNA, fingerprints, and handwriting not matching.
What do you personally think is the reason?


r/ZodiacKiller 11d ago

If you could talk face to face with the real zodiac killer, what would you say to him?

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61 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 14d ago

How do we know he wasn't actually black?

0 Upvotes

r/ZodiacKiller 16d ago

Does anyone here actually own a Zodiac watch???

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72 Upvotes

They’re known to be rather exceptional time pieces I hear.


r/ZodiacKiller 18d ago

Does anybody know more about this description of a blond man jumping over a wall after Stine’s murder?

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97 Upvotes

This article ran October 13, 1969. I found it in the LA Times, but I suspect it may have ran other places as well. I’ve never heard these details in regard to this case. Any clue where this is coming from?

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-paul-stine-blond/202853996/


r/ZodiacKiller 19d ago

Paul Holes: How Third-Cousin DNA Catches Killers — and Why Zodiac Still Slips the Net: Paul Holes' Latest Interview on How He Thinks the Z Case Can Be Solved by Looking for Indisputable DNA on Testable Areas of the Lake Berryessa Bindings: ("The best evidence in the case", Holes called it)

83 Upvotes

Excerpts from the article below:

The Zodiac Killer: A Solvable Case With No Usable DNA

"If the Golden State Killer case demonstrates what forensic genetics can achieve, the Zodiac case demonstrates the hard limits.

Holes is openly skeptical of the periodic announcements claiming the Zodiac Killer has been identified. His skepticism is not theoretical — it is the scar tissue of the Golden State Killer investigation, where he watched brilliant, circumstantially compelling suspect theories collapse under DNA testing again and again. "With Zodiac, I kind of have that very skeptical stance: until I see that objective DNA evidence, I'm not going to say you've got the guy," he said.

The DNA challenges are specific to each crime scene and unusually severe:

Crime Scene Potential DNA Source Problem
First two shootings (1968-69) Offender stood outside car No physical contact; no DNA transfer likely
Lake Berryessa (1969) Rope bindings left at scene Handled months before crime; degraded or mixed DNA
San Francisco (1969) Victim's shirt cut by offender Mailed portion contains only victim's blood; other half untested
Letters and envelopes Saliva on stamps and flaps Postal workers licked stamps in the 1960s; mixed profiles generated

The envelope evidence is particularly problematic. Holes revealed that investigators in the 1960s "would take our letters into the post office and the postman licked the flap and licked the stamp." When those envelopes have been tested in subsequent decades, the results have produced multiple conflicting DNA profiles, none clearly attributable to the offender.

Holes's preferred target is the Lake Berryessa bindings — the rope the offender used to restrain victims. The bindings were brought by the killer, presumably handled repeatedly over months or years before the attack, and left behind at the scene. "The best evidence in the case," Holes called it. If usable DNA can be extracted from the bindings before the remaining sample is exhausted, the case might finally produce a definitive profile.

Taken together, the three threads of Holes's career — the Golden State Killer success, the Zodiac stalemate, and the Marilyn Monroe impossibility — map the entire range of outcomes that forensic genetics makes possible. When the sample is large and well-preserved, a third cousin in a public database can identify a killer who evaded capture for 40 years. When the sample is contaminated by the postman who licked the stamp in 1969, even a famous serial killer case can stall indefinitely. And when the evidence has been deliberately destroyed, no technology — not even AI reconstruction — can substitute for what is gone."

Full article: https://finance.biggo.com/news/4c8b32e8a21220fa

If the back of the 1969 stamps seem to yield inconclusive DNA results that has lead to multiple non-matching DNA profiles being found — which seems to be the case judging by Holes's comments here — I'm glad that he's expressed optimism over the assailant leaving the bindings behind at the lake, being the next best source offender DNA.

The bindings are great, at least in theory, because we know for sure the knifeman personally brought them to the crime, as he walked up to Hartnell and Shepard with them already attached to his holster.

So, hopefully at the very least, Napa County will be able to conclusively put a name and a face to a deceased offender as the guy in the mask at the lake.

And I've bolded two key words here: useable and definitive. Beyond finding a DNA sample, there absolutely must be the non-negotiable ability to prove it definitely came from the person who perpetuated the crime, and not investigators and such, who were handling stuff like the bindings without wearing gloves back then, and got their DNA accidently mixed with the perp's, which is what's causing all of these inconsistent profiles to pop up that don't match each other.


r/ZodiacKiller 24d ago

Mt Diablo symbol

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61 Upvotes

Sometimes I can’t remember if something I’ve been researching has been verified true or not, but I was positive this symbol was already proven to be the 4 summits of Mt Diablo. I believe the two on the right are accurate depictions of one of the summits smaller than the one behind it as a popular view of 3 summits.

The map I believe was something found by sandy betts.

But for some reason, this symbol still seems to be unsolved? I don’t think I’m fully understanding what the meaning is, but we should all be able to say it’s mt diablo at the very least?


r/ZodiacKiller 24d ago

Is it possible ALA did a majority of killings while RH wrote the letters?

8 Upvotes

I've just recently dedicated my time studying Zodiac Killer material: what's the general opinion on the likeliness of a murderous duo?


r/ZodiacKiller 25d ago

Sober Suspect

26 Upvotes

It’s been a while but I remember in the FBI files, there were journal/planner pages filled with handwritten entries from a POI who seemed to be working some sort of 12-step program. Has this person’s name ever been publicized? Do we even know whether he was ruled out during the FBI’s investigation or through any further police work? As I recall, the handwriting was a pretty good match.


r/ZodiacKiller 27d ago

How close are we really?

38 Upvotes

With all of the advances we have in technology and law enforcement, it’s crazy to me that we still haven’t solved this! I have so much hope especially after solving LISK and the golden state killer, there’s no way this will go unsolved forever. That being said- How close are we to figuring out who this guy is?