While one codebreaker claims the Zodiac killer's own cyphers identifies him as a known suspect, a team of 40 former law enforcement investigators say physical and forensic evidence points to a different person. The so-called Case Breakers say they've identified a former US airman and house painter from California's Sierra foothills, who died in 2018 at the age of 80, as a "very strong suspect," per the San Francisco Chronicle and ABC Australia. They claim his name is needed to decipher an anagram and he had scars on his forehead consistent with the San Francisco Police's sketch of the Zodiac killer.
Though authorities haven't backed the theory (Newser is not naming him since police have not established him as a suspect), the man's former daughter-in-law tells the Chronicle that she believes the Code Breakers are correct. Of the 1969 police sketch, she notes, "I saw that and thought, 'That's him.' Totally." The Zodiac killer, who taunted authorities with letters, cyphers, and bloody evidence sent through the mail, is believed to be responsible for at least five murders in the Bay Area from 1968 to 1969. But the Case Breakers claim their suspect also killed 18-year-old student Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside County, Calif., in 1966.
The team says the former house painter is implicated by a paint-splattered watch purchased from a military base that was found at the scene of Bates' murder, per Fox News. It also says a heel print at the scene matched the style and size of three other prints found at other Zodiac crime scenes. They're hoping DNA can be sought and tested. Riverside Police, however, maintain Bates was not murdered by the Zodiac killer. Spokesperson Ryan Railsback says the only possible connection is a handwritten letter sent through the mail that claimed responsibility for Bates' death, per CNN.
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"If you read what [the Case Breakers] put out, it's all circumstantial evidence," he tells the Chronicle. "It's not a whole lot." Case Breakers team member Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent, tells Fox that removing the letters from the man’s full name from one anagram revealed an alternate message. But David Oranchak, who helped crack the Zodiac's 340 Cipher, has his doubts. The San Francisco Police Department and the FBI have not endorsed the new theory, saying the case remains an open investigation. (More Zodiac killer stories.)
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