Why Was the Zodiac Killer Never Caught? Examining the Infamous Cold Case and Potential Suspects — and What Police Are Still Trying to Decipher Today

The identity of the Zodiac Killer remains a mystery nearly six decades after their murder spree shook America.

The serial killer murdered at least five people in northern California in the 1960s and attempted to murder two others.

Despite only seven confirmed attacks, however, the murderer bragged in cryptic letters to reporters and law enforcement about killing at least 30 individuals. The San Francisco Police Department still lists the Zodiac murders as a cold case.

No one has ever been charged with the slayings credited to the Zodiac Killer, and the case is still open today. On Oct. 23, Netflix released the three-part true crime docuseries, This Is the Zodiac Speaking, which unpacks the infamous murders and investigates the only suspect ever publicly named.

Find out what the Zodiac Killer did, why the Zodiac Killer was never caught and who some possible suspects are — including a popular suspect who was only ruled out decades later.

What did the Zodiac Killer do?

The Zodiac Killer is confirmed to have murdered five people and attempted to murder two others, all between 1968 and 1969 in Northern California.

The first confirmed slaying was on Dec. 20, 1968, shortly after 11 p.m., when the Zodiac Killer pulled up next to David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16. Faraday and Jensen were parked in a “lover’s lane” in Benicia, Calif., according to This Is the Zodiac Speaking. The killer ordered them out of the car at gunpoint and shot them each to death.

On the evening of July 4, 1969, Michael Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22, were parked at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo, Calif., when a car pulled up alongside theirs, idled for several minutes, then left. The car returned about 10 minutes later, this time pulling up and parking behind them. The couple were shot with a 9 mm. pistol from behind while in their vehicle. Ferrin died, while Mageau survived with serious injuries.

Beginning on Aug. 1, 1969, The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times Herald newspapers began publishing letters and cryptograms they received from the Zodiac Killer, who threatened more violence if his missives didn’t make the front page.

On Sept. 27, 1969, the Zodiac Killer, wearing a black executioner-style hood, bound and stabbed Bryan Hartnell, 20, and his friend Cecelia Shepard, 22, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, Calif. The killer then drew a zodiac symbol on the door of Hartnell’s car and wrote the dates and locations of his three prior slayings. Hartnell survived the attack, but Shepard died at a local hospital. That evening, the killer called the Napa Valley Sheriff’s office to report the attack.

The Zodiac Killer’s last known slaying came on Oct. 11, 1969, in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood. The murderer hailed a cab and then shot the driver, Paul Stine, 29, to death.

The Zodiac Killer continued sending letters and ciphers to newspapers and law enforcement for years and has still never been caught.

Why was the Zodiac Killer never caught?

Possibly the biggest reason why the Zodiac Killer has never been caught is that modern forensic and DNA evidence-gathering tools weren’t available during his murder spree.

“It really comes down to DNA. Without it, you have nothing,” Detective Terry Poyser of the Vallejo Police told The Sacramento Bee in 2019. “It’s a 50-years-old case.”

Further complicating the investigation is the relatively nondescript nature of the police sketch of the killer, as well as the fact that few witnesses and survivors were able to get a clear look at the Zodiac Killer’s face before he took off. Even the Zodiac Killer’s ciphers, which followers of the case and cryptographers have studied for years, may not actually contain many clues.

That said, developments gradually continue to be made in the case: Authorities are hopeful that eventually they’ll find a DNA match through genealogy (similar to how the Golden State Killer case was solved), and in December 2020, one of the killer’s ciphers was decoded after 51 years.

Did anyone survive the Zodiac Killer?

Mageau and Hartnell each survived their Zodiac Killer attacks. The young women they were with when they were attacked (Ferrin and Shepard) did not survive.

Who was the Zodiac Killer’s last victim?

Stine was the Zodiac Killer’s last confirmed victim. However, the killer boasted of killing more than 30 other victims, so it’s possible that there were more after the Oct. 11, 1969 slaying of the cab driver.

Who has been accused of being the Zodiac Killer?

Arthur Leigh Allen

Arthur Leigh Allen is the only Zodiac Killer suspect police ever publicly named, and he’s also the most famous.

Allen was a Navy veteran until his honorable discharge in 1959, then became an elementary school teacher. Only circumstantial evidence pointed to Allen: He wore a Zodiac Sea Wolf brand watch and had the same shoe size as a boot print found at a Zodiac Killer crime scene. He lived minutes away from where Ferrin was shot in Vallejo, Calif., and Mageau chose Allen’s photo from a lineup as his assailant, according to The East Bay Times. The San Francisco Examiner reported that Hartnell also identified Allen as his shooter, though Hartnell’s attacker wore a hood.

However, Allen’s handwriting wasn’t close to the Zodiac’s, and his fingerprints didn’t match any left at any of the Zodiac crime scenes, The East Bay Times reported. Later DNA testing also ruled him out as a suspect.

In 1975, Allen, who was the prime suspect in the David Fincher film Zodiac and in Robert Graysmith’s books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked, was institutionalized for sexually abusing children. Allen died in 1992.

Joseph “Giuseppe” Bevilacqua

A journalist in Italy alleged that a retired Army sergeant named Joseph “Giuseppe” Bevilacqua confessed to being both the Zodiac Killer and the “Monster of Florence,” but Bevilacqua recanted both alleged admissions, KQED reported. Some sleuths alleged that one of the Zodiac’s ciphers contained a reference to Bevilacqua, but Italian police reportedly closed their investigation into Bevilacqua in 2021.

Paul Alfred Doerr

Author Jarett Kobek believes Paul Doerr may be the Zodiac Killer.

In his book How to Find Zodiac, Kobek claims that Doerr wrote a letter to a sci-fi magazine complaining about the postal service and recommending to use one-cent stamps as a means of protest — and one of the Zodiac Killer’s letters, postmarked around the same time that the letter to the magazine was published, was mailed using six one-cent stamps, Los Angeles Magazine reported. Doerr also self-published his own magazines, in which he wrote about using ciphers inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s books and instructions for making bombs using ingredients and materials also cited in a Zodiac letter — and both Doerr’s article and the Zodiac Killer’s letter contained the same mistake.

Doerr served in the military and claimed to have fought in World War II and the Korean War, though military records reportedly didn’t show any foreign deployments. He was also the member of a militia group that sent threatening letters to suspected Communists in the 1960s containing crosshair symbols similar to those in the Zodiac’s writings, and, his daughter Gloria told Los Angeles Magazine, was almost always armed with guns and knives wherever he went. He also taught Gloria cryptology and was allegedly physically abusive to her. She also said that three of the killings took place at common teen hangout areas that she visited often.

Police never looked into Doerr, who died at age 80 in 2007.

Guy Ward Hendrickson

Guy Ward Hendrickson was entered into the Zodiac Killer suspect conversation in spring 2009, when his stepdaughter Deborah Perez alleged that he was the murderer. Perez recalled riding along in Hendrickson’s vehicle for some of the slayings and claimed to have Stine’s eyeglasses in her possession. However, according to The O.C. Register, the police ruled out Hendrickson as a suspect and said that the eyeglasses Perez turned over to them were not actually Stine’s.

Richard “Rick” Marshall

Cheri Jo Bates was murdered in 1966 in Riverside, Calif., hundreds of miles from the area where the rest of the Zodiac’s attacks took place. However, some Zodiac sleuths featured in the History Channel miniseries The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer as well as Netflic’sThis Is the Zodiac Speaking, have linked Bates’ murder to the Zodiac Killer for several reasons: Some suspects were in the Riverside area at the time and a military-style boot print at the murder scene. Most compelling, per the History Channel series, was a typewritten letter was sent to The Riverside Press describing specific details of Bates’ killing that were never released to the public, as well as handwritten notes to police and Bates’ family all signed with a “z”-type symbol.

Richard Marshall lived in Riverside in 1966 and moved to San Francisco, not far from where Stine was killed. Marshall reportedly was a fan of old movies, including The Red Phantom, mentioned in one of the Zodiac’s letters, and owned a typewriter and felt-tip pens similar to those used in the Zodiac’s messages.

However, in a 1989 interview, Marshall denied any involvement, and investigators claimed that while there are a few coincidences, Marshall wasn’t a match.

Napa County sheriff’s detective Ken Narlow told the History Channel, “Marshall makes good reading but not a very good suspect in my estimation.”

Louis Joseph Myers

Louis Joseph “Louie” Myers became a potential Zodiac Killer suspect in 2014 when his friend, Randy Kenney, told reporters that Myers confessed to the murders.

Kenney told ABC News Fresno that Myers made the admission when he was dying of cirrhosis in 2001.

“He said, ‘I killed some people. I’m the guy [they’re] looking for. They’ve been looking for me for over 30 years. I’m the guy that’s The Zodiac Killer,'” Kenney recalled, adding that Myers made the revelation so Kenney could write a book about it and give proceeds to victims and survivors of the attacks. Another of Myers’ close friends, Bob Robitaille, said that Myers confessed to him in 1976 that he was the killer.

Kenney claimed that Myers had several connections to the victims: He went to high school with Jensen and Faraday and worked at a restaurant with Ferrin; Kenney alleged that Myers told him he killed Stine to rob him for drug money.

According to military records obtained by ABC Fresno, Myers served in the military in Germany from June 1971 to January 1973, during which the Zodiac Killer didn’t send any letters or ciphers. Myers also worked in a military surplus store in Vallejo, Calif., creating a potential link to the boot prints found at one of the Zodiac’s crime scenes.

Kenney said that Myers was around 17 years old when the Zodiac’s reign of terror began, and that Myers told him he targeted couples because he was angry about a failed relationship of his own. Myers also allegedly told Kenney that the crosshairs symbol found on some of the Zodiac Killer’s letters was actually a Celtic cross — and that authorities also misinterpreted another clue in the killer’s writing.

“The Halloween card said ‘look for a teen,'” Kenney told ABC Fresno. “Alright? And at that time the authorities just thought it meant 14 victims. But it meant ‘look for a teen.’ ”

That said, police officers who first responded to the slayings doubt Myers was the killer, noting that his physical appearance doesn’t match any of the sketches or descriptions from survivors and witnesses.

Gary F. Poste

In 2021, an investigative team called The Case Breakers, composed of former police officers, military intelligence personnel and journalists, announced that they believed they solved the mystery of the Zodiac Killer.

The team named Gary F. Poste as the murderer, Fox News reported, and also alleged that he killed Bates.

Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence officer, said that Poste’s name was featured in some of the notorious ciphers, and that when the letters of his name were removed, an alternate message formed.

“So you’ve got to know Gary’s full name in order to decipher these anagrams,” Bucholtz told Fox News. “I just don’t think there’s any other way anybody would have figured it out.”

The team also cites evidence, including a 1975 FBI memo claiming that the Zodiac Killer was responsible for Bates’ murder, as well as photos from Poste’s darkroom showing him having similar scars to police sketches of the Zodiac Killer. One particular coincidence the Case Breakers say points to Poste is that he was treated for a gun-related injury 15 minutes from where Bates was murdered. Poste was an Air Force veteran, and the team also alleges that military-style bootprints matching his size were found at more than one of the Zodiac Killer’s crime scenes.

Evidence the team lacks, however, is forensic and DNA material that authorities possess, which investigators have previously said will be necessary to determine the culprit once and for all.

Ross Sullivan

Followers of the Zodiac case believe Ross Sullivan can be a potential suspect due to his possible link to the Bates murder case. Sullivan worked at the Riverside, Calif., library, and coworkers said he made them uncomfortable and that he disappeared for several days after Bates’ slaying in 1966, according to the History Channel. He also reportedly bore some physical resemblance to sketches of the killer thanks to his eyeglasses and crew cut.

Sullivan moved to northern California — where all of the other known Zodiac killings took place — in 1967. He was hospitalized several times for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and often wore military-style boots (like the print found at at least one of the crime scenes). Some Zodiac Killer case followers also noted that one of the killer’s letters mentioned The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, which could possibly be a reference to Sullivan’s own name.

In the History Channel special The Hunt for Zodiac Killer, police noted that Bates’ killer stalked her, disabled her vehicle, killed her with a knife and left military-style boot prints at the scene of the crime, similar to some Zodiac murders.

Sullivan reportedly died in 1977, after which the killings and letters ceased.

Jack Tarrance

Dennis Kaufman accused his late stepfather Jack Tarrance of being the Zodiac Killer. CBS 13 reported that Tarrance bore a close physical resemblance to police sketches of the serial killer, and that Kaufman found large, blood-stained knives behind and rolls of film containing violent and gruesome photos likely of murder victims. He also claimed that Tarrance owned a black hood with a zodiac symbol on it.

Tarrance served in the Air Force and Navy and was trained in cryptology.

Kaufman also believes that Tarrance may have killed as many as dozens of other people, including Kaufman’s mother. A 2019 DNA profile of Tarrance proved inconclusive when compared with the DNA profile available of the Zodiac Killer, per KQED.

Earl Van Best, Jr.

In 2014, author Gary Stewart alleged that his birth father, Earl Van Best, Jr., was the Zodiac Killer.

In Stewart’s book The Most Dangerous Animal Of All, he interviewed over 500 people, including forensic scientists and handwriting analysts to make the case that his father was the prolific and evasive murderer: He alleges that Best’s fingerprint may match a print at one of the Zodiac’s crime scenes, and handwriting experts noted that Best’s handwriting was nearly identical to the penmanship in the killer’s letters and cryptograms. He was denied access to DNA and forensic evidence, however, and as such hasn’t been able to compare Best’s DNA to the killer’s.

Stewart never knew his birth parents until 2002, when his birth mother, Judith Gilford, contacted him. When Gilford was 14 years old, she ran off with Best, then 27, and gave birth to Stewart in February 1963. Best was eventually arrested and charged with raping a minor, as well as wire fraud and document fraud, and spent several years at San Quentin Prison.

Best was released on parole in 1965, and the first known Zodiac Killer attack occurred in December 1968. Stewart believes that Best targeted victims who looked like Gilford.

“I still don’t have all the answers,” Stewart previously told PEOPLE. “I never will. But I’ve got all the answers I want and I’m truly ready to get on with my life.”