The Zodiac Killer shot or stabbed seven people in Northern California between December 1968 and October 1969. Five of them died. He mailed letters and coded messages to Bay Area newspapers, signed many of them with a crosshairs symbol, and later claimed 37 victims. Police confirm four attacks. Nobody has ever been charged, and the FBI has said the case remains open.
Below are the four attacks, the four ciphers, the men who were suspected, and the claims that did not hold up. The sources are listed at the end. If you came for the Zodiac Killer shirts, they are in the shop.
The four attacks police confirm
The San Francisco Chronicle's 2023 case summary says authorities have "only confirmed four attacks. Five victims were killed and two survived." The attacks took place in Solano County, Napa County, and San Francisco, over ten months.
Lake Herman Road, December 20, 1968
David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were on their first date. They parked in a gravel turnout on Lake Herman Road, near Benicia. A man came up to the car and fired a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Both teenagers died. The Solano County Sheriff's Department handled the case, and KRON news footage shot the next day is kept in the San Francisco State University library archive.
Blue Rock Springs, July 4, 1969
Darlene Ferrin, 22, and her friend Michael Mageau, 19, drove to a quiet parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo to talk. According to the Chronicle, a car pulled up beside them, left, and came back a few minutes later. The driver fired through the window. Ferrin died. Mageau lived.
Less than four weeks later, letters claiming both attacks arrived at three newspapers.
Lake Berryessa, September 27, 1969
Cecelia Shepard, 22, and Bryan Hartnell, 20, were sitting on a blanket at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. A man came out of the bushes wearing a hooded costume with a crosshairs symbol on the chest. Napa County deputy Dave Collins told the Napa Valley Register in 2007 that Shepard said the man told them, "I'm an escaped convict from Montana." He had Shepard tie up Hartnell with clothesline, tied her up, and then stabbed them both with a knife.
Shepard was stabbed five times in the back and five times in the front, Collins said. On the door of their car, the attacker wrote the Zodiac symbol and the dates of the earlier attacks near Vallejo. Hartnell survived and was able to describe the costume in detail. Shepard never regained consciousness and died two days later.
Presidio Heights, San Francisco, October 11, 1969
Paul Stine, 29, was driving a taxi on a late shift. A man hailed him on Geary Street and rode to Presidio Heights, where he shot Stine with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. The killer then mailed a piece of Stine's shirt to the Chronicle with a letter taking credit. The blood-spattered door of the cab is among the San Francisco Police Department's Zodiac evidence. This was the last of the four confirmed attacks.
The letters, and where the name came from
The first letters went out on July 31, 1969, to the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald. Each paper got part of a cipher, and the letters claimed the first two attacks. They were not signed "Zodiac." That name first shows up in a letter to the Examiner on August 4, 1969. The Chronicle says it has never been determined why he picked it.
There are 22 known letters, and 17 of them went to the Chronicle. In them he claimed to have killed 37 people. Police confirm five deaths. The letter the Chronicle printed on January 31, 1974, is generally believed to be the last one he sent.
The four Zodiac ciphers
The FBI says four ciphers are attributed to the Zodiac. Two have been solved. Two have not.
The 408 cipher, July 1969: solved in about a week
This is the cipher that was split among the three papers. Within about a week, Donald Harden, a schoolteacher from North Salinas, and his wife Bettye sent their solution to the Chronicle, according to cipher historian Craig Bauer. Bettye guessed the message would contain the word "kill," maybe even the phrase "I like killing." She was right.
The 340 cipher, November 1969: solved in 2020
The 340 was mailed to the Chronicle on November 8, 1969, and stayed unsolved for 51 years. In December 2020, three amateur codebreakers cracked it. David Oranchak is a web designer in Virginia who had worked on the Zodiac codes since 2006. Sam Blake is a mathematician in Australia. Jarl Van Eycke is a programmer in Belgium. The trick, the Chronicle explained, was that the words ran diagonally down the page and sometimes shifted over a column.
The FBI said it received the solution on December 5 and "independently verified the decryption." The message opens, "I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me," and goes on to say he is not afraid of the gas chamber. Investigators had hoped one of the ciphers would give his name. The Chronicle reported there is no such name in the 340.
The 13-character cipher, April 1970
A letter mailed April 20, 1970, says "My name is" and then gives 13 letters and symbols. The Chronicle wrote in 2023 that no one has been able to solve it. A 2025 claim about this cipher is covered in the suspects section below.
The 32-character "map code," June 1970
This one was sent on June 26, 1970, with a map of the Bay Area. The killer wrote that the map and the code "will tell you where the bomb is set." A crosshairs symbol on the map is centered on Mount Diablo. Craig Bauer, a math professor at York College of Pennsylvania and the editor of the journal Cryptologia, still treats it as an open puzzle in his History.com write-up.
Who police suspected
Arthur Leigh Allen
Arthur Leigh Allen, a Vallejo man, is still the only suspect investigators have ever officially named, the Chronicle reported in 2023. He was never charged. He denied being the Zodiac in one of his last interviews, and he died of heart disease in 1992, at age 58.
DNA has not settled anything. In 2002, Cydne Holt of the San Francisco police DNA lab worked on a partial profile from a stamp on a Zodiac letter for ABC's Primetime. She "immediately eliminated" Allen. She also said the profile was "not enough to positively identify anyone as Zodiac." In 2018, SF Weekly reported a forum post by Tom Voigt, who runs a Zodiac website, saying the sample came from the outside of the stamp. If that is true, the DNA may not be the killer's at all.
A three-part Netflix series, This Is the Zodiac Speaking, made the case against Allen again in October 2024. It follows the Seawater family, who met Allen in 1961. David Seawater says that when he asked Allen if he was the Zodiac, Allen told him, "Yes, it was me." Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry says Allen's identification as the killer "has never been substantiated."
Gary Francis Poste
In October 2021, a group called the Case Breakers said Gary Francis Poste, an Air Force veteran and house painter who died in 2018, was the Zodiac. Part of their case was anagrams they said spelled his name in the ciphers. The FBI's San Francisco office answered, "The Zodiac killer case remains open. We have no new information to share at the moment." San Francisco police said the same. Sources at both agencies told the Chronicle the evidence "does not appear to be conclusive." Oranchak, one of the 340 solvers, said it "seems ... unlikely that the name is actually in there."
Marvin Margolis
In December 2025, the Los Angeles Times reported that Alex Baber, a self-taught codebreaker from West Virginia, says the 13-character cipher hides the name "Marvin Merrill." That was an alias used by Marvin Margolis, who had been on the list of suspects in the January 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. Margolis died of cancer in July 1993. Baber called his finding "irrefutable." The Los Angeles Police Department told Newsweek that the Short investigation "remains open." In September 2026, the San Francisco Standard reported that the LAPD declined to comment on the findings and San Francisco police did not respond.
Cheri Jo Bates is not a confirmed Zodiac victim
Cheri Jo Bates, an 18-year-old college student, was killed in Riverside, California, in 1966. Britannica notes her death is "sometimes attributed" to the Zodiac. Riverside police disagree. In 2021, Officer Ryan Railsback told NBC News that authorities "ruled out any connection" between her murder and the Zodiac. "We don't know how we can be any more clear," he said.
Is the Zodiac case still open?
Yes. In December 2020, an FBI spokeswoman in San Francisco called it "an ongoing investigation." In October 2021, the FBI told NBC News, "The case remains open and there is no new information to report." Britannica's entry, archived in December 2025, says "the FBI investigation remains ongoing." The Chronicle reported in 2020 that police in San Francisco, Solano County, and Napa County still take tips. For other cases with no arrest, see our list of serial killers who were never caught.
The Zodiac on screen and in print
The case inspired Dirty Harry, the 1971 Clint Eastwood film, according to Britannica. Robert Graysmith wrote the 1986 book Zodiac, and David Fincher's 2007 film of the same name, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., is based on it. Graysmith believed Allen was the killer. Netflix released This Is the Zodiac Speaking on October 23, 2024. For more, see our guide to true crime documentaries and our list of serial killer movies based on true stories.
Zodiac Killer FAQ
Was the Zodiac Killer ever caught?
No. Nobody has been arrested or charged. The only suspect police ever officially named, Arthur Leigh Allen, died in 1992 without being charged.
How many people did the Zodiac Killer kill?
Police confirm five deaths in four attacks. Two more people, Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell, survived. In his letters the killer claimed 37 victims, but no agency has confirmed any beyond the five.
Has the Zodiac cipher been solved?
Two of the four have. The Hardens solved the 408 cipher in 1969, and the FBI verified a solution to the 340 cipher in December 2020. Neither one gives a name. The 13-character and 32-character ciphers have no solution that investigators have confirmed.
Who was the main Zodiac suspect?
Arthur Leigh Allen of Vallejo. He was never charged, he denied it, and a 2002 DNA test did not match him, though that test has since been questioned.
More true crime
The Zodiac is one of the famous serial killers people still argue about. Read more about San Francisco serial killers, notorious serial killers in California, unsolved murders, and common serial killer traits.
Sources
- Ocenada, Ryan, and Kevin Fagan. "Zodiac Killer: Why sleuths are still obsessed with S.F.'s most notorious serial killer." San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2023. sfchronicle.com.
- "Double Murder of Faraday and Jensen (Zodiac)." KRON news film record, December 21, 1968, J. Paul Leonard Library, San Francisco State University. library.sfsu.edu.
- Dorgan, Marsha. "In the wake, of the Zodiac." Napa Valley Register, February 18, 2007, archived copy. web.archive.org.
- Huffman, Jennifer. "New Zodiac killer documentary revisits murders in Napa County and elsewhere." Napa Valley Register, November 3, 2024. napavalleyregister.com.
- Bauer, Craig P. "The Zodiac Ciphers: What Cryptologists Know." History.com, published November 8, 2017, updated February 10, 2026. history.com.
- Fagan, Kevin. "Zodiac '340 Cipher' cracked by code experts 51 years after it was sent to the S.F. Chronicle." San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 2020. sfchronicle.com.
- Dewberry, Sarah. "FBI confirms 1969 Zodiac Killer's '340 Cipher' solved." Denver7 (E.W. Scripps), December 11, 2020. denver7.com.
- Claburn, Thomas. "FBI confirms Zodiac Killer's 340 cipher solved by trio of amateur math and software codebreakers." The Register, December 12, 2020. theregister.com.
- "Will DNA Solve 1969 Zodiac Killings?" ABC News Primetime, October 17, 2002. abcnews.go.com.
- Bishari, Nuala Sawyer. "Yesterday's Crimes: The Zodiac Killer DNA Profile That Never Was." SF Weekly, March 21, 2018. sfweekly.com.
- Chamings, Andrew. "Independent 'investigators' claim this man is the Zodiac Killer." SFGate, October 6, 2021. sfgate.com.
- Fagan, Kevin. "Zodiac Killer case solved? Case Breakers group makes an ID, but police say it doesn't hold up." San Francisco Chronicle, October 6, 2021, archived copy. web.archive.org.
- Blankstein, Andrew, and Wilson Wong. "'The case remains open': FBI rebuts claim Zodiac Killer case is solved." NBC News, October 7, 2021. nbcnews.com.
- Goffard, Christopher. "An amateur codebreaker may have just solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac killings." Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2025. latimes.com.
- Rahman, Khaleda. "Were Zodiac Killer and Black Dahlia murderer the same man? What we know." Newsweek, December 23, 2025. newsweek.com.
- Kelly, George. "AI-assisted Zodiac findings draw scrutiny, skepticism, support." San Francisco Standard, September 2, 2026. sfstandard.com.
- Jenkins, John Philip. "Zodiac killer." Encyclopaedia Britannica, archived December 7, 2025. web.archive.org.
