Sophomore Thesis: The Zodiac Killer
Kelly Robinson
Sophomore Thesis
The Zodiac Killer
Not much is known about the Zodiac Killer other than general knowledge of the patterns killers and psychopaths seem to follow. The mystery that is The Zodiac Killer continues to befuddle law enforcements, forty years later, as the murders occurred in the 1960’s-70’s. Even the letters that he sent in were coded so well that investigators were unable to discover the important information hidden by taunting symbols and marks. But, it is not impossible to solve this strenuous case, in spite of all the possibilities of suspects and amount of time passed.
The Zodiac Killer from California is the second most famed, unsolved murders behind Jack the Ripper. And, he was truly deranged. He taunted …show more content…
police with letter, phone calls and cryptic puzzles that reveal important clues. In the present day, these simple actions would be enough to solve the case. But, in the 1960’s-70’s, the forensic technology was not as advanced. In one letter, he expressed that he believed that all those whom he killed would be his slave in the afterlife. He also quoted, sickly, “I like killing people because it is so much fun” and that killing is “Better than getting your rocks off with a girl”. The authorities concluded that the Zodiac murders in replace of sexual intercourse (Grimm, Laura. "Zodiac Killer." Biography). Also, with the pattern of killing women/couples, it is assumed that the murderer was perhaps extremely bitter over the ending of a relationship, and was taking it to the next level (Gutierrez-Folch, Anita. "Zodiac Killer Case Reopens…”).
The elusive killer who has yet to be found, forty years later, claims to have killed at least thirty-seven people, men and women. But the authorities only have proof of his killing of five. The first supposable murder was Cheri Jo Bates, a young woman from Riverside, California; Although, he may have killed earlier victims, he turned in the first letter after this killing. He started off disabling her Volkswagon as she was in the library. The killer pulled out the distributor coil and condenser, and cut the middle wire in the distributor. When Bates attempted to operate the vehicle it didn’t work, so the killer slyly offered assistance in doing so. When he couldn’t, he offered her a ride, leading her into a dark area in between two buildings. There, one and a half hours were spent, making investigators assume that they knew each other previously because there was no sign of sexual assault while viewing the body. She was found thereafter, dead with one slash from a knife in her back, three in her chest, and seven in her throat. The wounds were so deep that she was nearly decapitated (Wark, Jake. "The Zodiac Killer.").
There has been little progress in the investigation due to the fact that even forty years later, investigative officials are still no closer to solving the crime.
Over two thousand five hundred suspects have been cleared over the last forty years, and new suspects are still being found regularly. Bay area law enforcement say that they still get at least one tip a week as to whom the killer is. Forensic investigators have proceeded to utilize behavioral analysis, fingerprint analysis, criminal background file searches and cryptanalysis. Still, no results have been concluded from these methods ("The Zodiac Killer." …show more content…
FBI).
There are very few successes that arose from this case. It is not even certain that the few letters that were analyzed were even written/sent-in by the murderer. In frustration with law enforcements inability to solve the case, some even come to the conclusion that the Zodiac didn’t even kill Cheri Jo Bates. Some begin to wonder if the Zodiac is even real. The number one suspect in the case was Arthur Leigh Allan, a child molester who was tipped in by Ralph Spinelli, an old rival. Even this lead is not very likely because usually murderers do not kill outside of their target area. But, in searching his house the police found bomb-making materials, newspaper clippings, firearms, a knife, a typewriter, and a Zodiac watch. At first when his handwriting didn’t match that of the zodiac killer, he was dismissed as a suspect. But when the case reopened with him as a suspect, again, he beat the polygraph test. Instead of deciding him not the killer, he was labelled a sociopath who could beat the grueling 10 hour test. Even without the sufficient evidence, he was pinned as the killer, but not incarcerated due to the lack of proof (Moyer, Justin. "And The Zodiac Killer Is..." ).
Louis Myers is another possibility. After his death from liver failure in 2001, Randy Kenney claimed that Myers admitted to the murders when he found out that he was going to die. Kenney expressed his genuine feelings that Myers was telling the truth and that he was to wait until after he died to turn Myers in. His proof was that when the zodiac said “look for teen” he meant that the killer, Myers, was a teenager, not that the targets were adolescences. Kenney says that the insane killings were simply over a bad break up in high school. But, Tom Voigt, an avid researcher of the zodiac and the man who runs the website, says that Myers by no means was a murderer. It is thought that the cryptic messages left by the zodiac point towards Richard Gaikowski: “This is one of the more interesting newer leads on Zodiac suspects. What I find most compelling is that in the cipher where he says he won't reveal his name, the four symbols at the end of the sentence GYKE translate to AUSE, which when combined is a close phonetic spelling of Richards last name (GYKEAUSE- Geikowski)”. Also, for some strange reason, the police refuse to even test this theory, they will not DNA test him.
Or perhaps the killer is Rick Marshall, who physically matches the described murderer, in drawn pictures.
Marshall lived in Riverside in 1969, the year of Cheri Jo Bates death, later living in a basement in San Francisco. This residence was strangely close to the only San Francisco zodiac crime site. Lawrence Kane is another notable suspect. Pam Huckaby, sister of Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin, believes that Kane stalked Darlene in the months before the murder. Another Zodiac victim, Kathleen Johns, identified Kane as her abductor. Kane was in a car accident in 1962 and a psychologist diagnosed him as “Losing his ability to control self-gratification.” This could also be taken as losing his ability to control desired actions, such as killing and sexual assault (Voigt, Tom. "The Zodiac
Killer.").
Due to the multitude of possibilities, narrowing the search down has been extremely difficult. Will we ever find out who this sick murderer is? It can’t be Arthur Leigh Allan because he passed the polygraph test, and other suspects are based purely on suspicion, not on fact. The final conclusion is that the Zodiac Killer is Rick Marshall. Surviving victims thoroughly described the physical appearance of their attacker as policemen drew a sketch of what seems to be the killers’ looks. Strangely enough, Marshall almost perfectly matches this police sketch. Also, his locations at the times of Zodiac crimes are very peculiar. He just so happened to live in Riverside, California the same year that Cheri Jo Bates was murdered. Thereafter he moved to San Francisco. This residence was in a basement, just minutes away from another zodiac crime site. The current evidence in investigations for the Zodiac leads mostly to Marshall, although there is not sufficient evidence to incarcerate him.
Sophomore Thesis
The Zodiac Killer
Not much is known about the Zodiac Killer other than general knowledge of the patterns killers and psychopaths seem to follow. The mystery that is The Zodiac Killer continues to befuddle law enforcements, forty years later, as the murders occurred in the 1960’s-70’s. Even the letters that he sent in were coded so well that investigators were unable to discover the important information hidden by taunting symbols and marks. But, it is not impossible to solve this strenuous case, in spite of all the possibilities of suspects and amount of time passed.
The Zodiac Killer from California is the second most famed, unsolved murders behind Jack the Ripper. And, he was truly deranged. He taunted …show more content…
police with letter, phone calls and cryptic puzzles that reveal important clues. In the present day, these simple actions would be enough to solve the case. But, in the 1960’s-70’s, the forensic technology was not as advanced. In one letter, he expressed that he believed that all those whom he killed would be his slave in the afterlife. He also quoted, sickly, “I like killing people because it is so much fun” and that killing is “Better than getting your rocks off with a girl”. The authorities concluded that the Zodiac murders in replace of sexual intercourse (Grimm, Laura. "Zodiac Killer." Biography). Also, with the pattern of killing women/couples, it is assumed that the murderer was perhaps extremely bitter over the ending of a relationship, and was taking it to the next level (Gutierrez-Folch, Anita. "Zodiac Killer Case Reopens…”).
The elusive killer who has yet to be found, forty years later, claims to have killed at least thirty-seven people, men and women. But the authorities only have proof of his killing of five. The first supposable murder was Cheri Jo Bates, a young woman from Riverside, California; Although, he may have killed earlier victims, he turned in the first letter after this killing. He started off disabling her Volkswagon as she was in the library. The killer pulled out the distributor coil and condenser, and cut the middle wire in the distributor. When Bates attempted to operate the vehicle it didn’t work, so the killer slyly offered assistance in doing so. When he couldn’t, he offered her a ride, leading her into a dark area in between two buildings. There, one and a half hours were spent, making investigators assume that they knew each other previously because there was no sign of sexual assault while viewing the body. She was found thereafter, dead with one slash from a knife in her back, three in her chest, and seven in her throat. The wounds were so deep that she was nearly decapitated (Wark, Jake. "The Zodiac Killer.").
There has been little progress in the investigation due to the fact that even forty years later, investigative officials are still no closer to solving the crime.
Over two thousand five hundred suspects have been cleared over the last forty years, and new suspects are still being found regularly. Bay area law enforcement say that they still get at least one tip a week as to whom the killer is. Forensic investigators have proceeded to utilize behavioral analysis, fingerprint analysis, criminal background file searches and cryptanalysis. Still, no results have been concluded from these methods ("The Zodiac Killer." …show more content…
FBI).
There are very few successes that arose from this case. It is not even certain that the few letters that were analyzed were even written/sent-in by the murderer. In frustration with law enforcements inability to solve the case, some even come to the conclusion that the Zodiac didn’t even kill Cheri Jo Bates. Some begin to wonder if the Zodiac is even real. The number one suspect in the case was Arthur Leigh Allan, a child molester who was tipped in by Ralph Spinelli, an old rival. Even this lead is not very likely because usually murderers do not kill outside of their target area. But, in searching his house the police found bomb-making materials, newspaper clippings, firearms, a knife, a typewriter, and a Zodiac watch. At first when his handwriting didn’t match that of the zodiac killer, he was dismissed as a suspect. But when the case reopened with him as a suspect, again, he beat the polygraph test. Instead of deciding him not the killer, he was labelled a sociopath who could beat the grueling 10 hour test. Even without the sufficient evidence, he was pinned as the killer, but not incarcerated due to the lack of proof (Moyer, Justin. "And The Zodiac Killer Is..." ).
Louis Myers is another possibility. After his death from liver failure in 2001, Randy Kenney claimed that Myers admitted to the murders when he found out that he was going to die. Kenney expressed his genuine feelings that Myers was telling the truth and that he was to wait until after he died to turn Myers in. His proof was that when the zodiac said “look for teen” he meant that the killer, Myers, was a teenager, not that the targets were adolescences. Kenney says that the insane killings were simply over a bad break up in high school. But, Tom Voigt, an avid researcher of the zodiac and the man who runs the website, says that Myers by no means was a murderer. It is thought that the cryptic messages left by the zodiac point towards Richard Gaikowski: “This is one of the more interesting newer leads on Zodiac suspects. What I find most compelling is that in the cipher where he says he won't reveal his name, the four symbols at the end of the sentence GYKE translate to AUSE, which when combined is a close phonetic spelling of Richards last name (GYKEAUSE- Geikowski)”. Also, for some strange reason, the police refuse to even test this theory, they will not DNA test him.
Or perhaps the killer is Rick Marshall, who physically matches the described murderer, in drawn pictures.
Marshall lived in Riverside in 1969, the year of Cheri Jo Bates death, later living in a basement in San Francisco. This residence was strangely close to the only San Francisco zodiac crime site. Lawrence Kane is another notable suspect. Pam Huckaby, sister of Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin, believes that Kane stalked Darlene in the months before the murder. Another Zodiac victim, Kathleen Johns, identified Kane as her abductor. Kane was in a car accident in 1962 and a psychologist diagnosed him as “Losing his ability to control self-gratification.” This could also be taken as losing his ability to control desired actions, such as killing and sexual assault (Voigt, Tom. "The Zodiac
Killer.").
Due to the multitude of possibilities, narrowing the search down has been extremely difficult. Will we ever find out who this sick murderer is? It can’t be Arthur Leigh Allan because he passed the polygraph test, and other suspects are based purely on suspicion, not on fact. The final conclusion is that the Zodiac Killer is Rick Marshall. Surviving victims thoroughly described the physical appearance of their attacker as policemen drew a sketch of what seems to be the killers’ looks. Strangely enough, Marshall almost perfectly matches this police sketch. Also, his locations at the times of Zodiac crimes are very peculiar. He just so happened to live in Riverside, California the same year that Cheri Jo Bates was murdered. Thereafter he moved to San Francisco. This residence was in a basement, just minutes away from another zodiac crime site. The current evidence in investigations for the Zodiac leads mostly to Marshall, although there is not sufficient evidence to incarcerate him.