BY KATHY WILLIAMS, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Fox News reported on Oct. 6 that investigative specialists who work with cold cases had a new link to who the infamous Zodiac Killer may be.
The cold case specialist group goes by “The Case Breakers” and includes more than 40 members with backgrounds in law enforcement investigation, journalism and military intelligence. The Case Breakers claimed a man named Gary Francis Poste is the Zodiac Killer and linked him to a sixth murder.
The Zodiac Killer is the alias given to the unidentified man responsible for five murder cases that occurred in the Northern California area in the late 1960s. The name came from the killer sending various news publications letters containing messages containing cryptograms. The author of these letters accredited himself with several murder cases such as the shooting of David Arthur Faraday,17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, at Lake Herman Road.
“The San Francisco Examiner” was the newspaper that received a direct greeting from the murderer by getting a letter with “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking,” as the salutation. Along with the killer identifying himself for the first time, the letter included details of the Lake Herman Road murders and the murder of Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, who was shot at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo.
The Zodiac Killer was claimed to have killed Paul Lee Stine, 29, and Ceclia Ann Shepard, 22; however, The Case Breakers are claiming a new sixth murder victim.
Cheri Jo Bates, 18, was killed on Oct. 31, 1966 in Riverside, CA. She was found dead in an alleyway on the Riverside City College campus. A 1975 memo to Riverside police is said to have claimed Bates was a victim of the Zodiac Killer, and The Case Breakers have linked many coincidences between Bates and Poste.
In a video by “Fox News,” Tom Colbert, the head of The Case Breakers, said, “We have counted six different similarities to the Zodiac at the murder scene,” when discussing the Riverside incident. Colbert and his team want investigators to compare Bate’s DNA to that of Poste but have been unsuccessful in their requests.
The Case Breakers have also claimed that Poste was in the area of the murder of Bates. He was an Air Force veteran that was 15 minutes away from the scene of the crime at a hospital. Detectives were able to find a military-style heel print that could have been that of Poste’s. It also shares similarities to prints of the Zodiac Killer’s. A wristwatch with a paint splatter on it was also uncovered at the murder scene of Bates. Poste had painted homes for more than 40 years.
The Zodiac Killer has become a figure in pop culture and has had several movies inspired by the Califorian serial killer, “Dirty Harry” and “Zodiac” being two. Film is not the industry that has been influenced; for example, the hard rock band Guns N’ Roses had a code at the bottom of the cover art of their album “The Spaghetti Incident?” that was in the Zodiac’s symbols. The Zodiac Killer has also been analyzed by several podcasters and had its own desiccated season in the podcast “Monster: The Zodiac Killer.”
