Zodiac Killer ID'd By Cold Case Team; FBI Memo IDs 6th Victim

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A cold case team made up of more than 40 former law enforcement investigators, military intelligence officers and journalists said it has identified the "Zodiac Killer," a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s.

In a series of cryptic messages mailed by the killer, who labeled himself Zodiac, the cold-blooded killer taunted law enforcement officers and created a persona that has endured for more than a half-century.

The cold case team also revealed an FBI memo that linked a homicide in Riverside County to the Zodiac Killer.

The team called itself the Case Breakers. It identified Gary Francis Poste as the killer in a post on the group's website. Poste died in 2018.

"My FBI guys say it's irrefutable. It's a match," Case Breakers member Tom Colbert told Fox. "We have six people that he has confessed to that he was the Zodiac. Three of them on our court affidavits."

The Case Breakers uncovered new forensic evidence and photos from Poste's darkroom, including an image showing scars on Poste's forehead that matched scars on a San Francisco Police Department sketch of the Zodiac, the group said.

Jen Bucholtz, a member of the team and a former Army counterintelligence agent, pointed to letters sent by Zodiac that revealed him as the true killer. If you removed the letters of Poste's full name from a note sent by Zodiac, an alternate message is revealed, she told Fox.

"So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," she said. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."

Just last year, one of the Zodiac Killer's coded messages was solved.

Zodiac claimed to have commited five killings in the Bay Area in 1968 and 1969. The FBI has published hundreds of pages of investigative notes about the case.

The first killing happened in December 1968, when two teenagers were shot to death in a car in Benicia. The victims were David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16.

A man and woman were shot in Vallejo in July 1969. Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, died. Michael Renault Mageau, 19, survived.

Two college students were stabbed while picnicking at Lake Berryessa in September 1969. Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22, died, but Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, survived more than a half-dozen stab wounds.

The final killing attributed to Zodiac happened in October 1969, when cab driver Paul Lee Stine, 29, was shot to death near the Presidio in San Francisco.

But Zodiac once claimed to have murdered 37 people.

The Case Breakers team said it linked him to the death of Cheri Jo Bates, 18, in Riverside County in 1966. Her body was found on a college campus after her father reported her missing. The Case Breakers found a 1975 FBI memo that attributed the Bates killing to Zodiac based on a letter he mailed from Pleasanton in 1971.

The Zodiac Killer case has been the subject of numerous articles, books, movies and documentaries since the 1960s.

If Poste is the killer, he got away with murder.

Read more on Case Breakers.

Read more on Fox News.

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