Ali Casanova

ramirezdahmerbundy:

The Zodiac Killer terrorized San Francisco during a nine-month spree that began in December 1968. Before he was finished, five people were dead and two more desperately wounded. His motive? “I like killing people because it’s so much fun,” he explained in an anonymous letter. The first to die was a teenage couple, shot dead in a Lovers’ Lane. Six months later, he gunned down another young couple, killing the young woman with nine blasts from a 9mm pistole (the young man, shot four times, survived). Forty minutes later - in what would be the first in a series of chilling communications from the killer - the police received an anonymous phone call from a gruff-voiced man: “If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to a public park, you will find the kids in a brown car. They have been shot with a 9mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Good-bye.” While panic spread through the area, the killer began sending letters to local newspapers, signed with the astrological symbol of the zodiac. Each letter contained a line of cipher. Decoded by a local high school teacher, the cryptic lines formed a single message that explained the killer’s motivations: “I will be reborn in Paradise, and then all that I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.” Two months later, Zodiac (as he was now called) set out to collect some more slaves. Wearing a black hood with eye slits and the zodiac symbol painted on it in white, the killer accosted a young couple at gunpoint, bound them with rope, then attacked them with a hunting knife. The young man survived with five wounds in the back, but the girl - stabbed fourteen times - died. His last known victim was a San Francisco cab driver, who was shot once in the back of the head. Before fleeing the crime scene, the killer tore off parts of the victim’s shirt. Shortly afterward, the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle received an envelope. Inside was a swatch of the cab driver’s shirt and a letter from Zodiac in which he promised to “wipe out a school bus some morning.” Fortunately, he never made good on this threat. Nor as far as anyone knows - did Zodiac ever kill again.

There have been many theories about his identity, but one has gotten more traction than others. In his 2002 book, Zodiac Unmasked, author Robert Graysmith claims that the killer was a convicted child molester and all-around misfit named Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992. Others, however, point out that neither Allen’s fingerprints nor his handwriting match the evidence left behind by the murderer. In the end, Zodiac’s identity remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern crime.

(via acollisioncoursetohell)