Zodiac Killer ‘revealed’ news – Gary F Poste ‘was obsessed with killing animals’, friend says, as FBI keeps case ‘open’

SUSPECT- RICHARD GAIKOWSKI

Newspaper editor Richard Gaikowski has before been named as a possible suspect.

At the time of the murders, he worked for Good Times, a San Francisco counterculture newspaper.

Staff at the paper were busiest on Wednesday, the only day the killer didn't send mail, it's reported.

Nancy Slover, the Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac shortly after an attack, said his voice matched the killer's.

San Francisco Police Department ruled Gaikowski out as a suspect, however.

SUSPECT- LAWRENCE KANE

Lawrence Kane was pinpointed as a suspect when Kathleen Johns - who claimed to have been abducted by the killer - picked him out of a photo line up.

Patrol officer Don Fouke, who possibly saw the killer following Stine's murder, said Kane closely resembled the man he encountered.

He also worked at the same hospital in Nevada as Donna Lass - a potential victim of the Zodiac.

Kane was diagnosed with impulse-control disorder after suffering brain injuries in an accident in 1962. He died in 2010.

SUSPECT- RICHARD MASHALL

Richard Marshall was accused of being the killer by police informants as they claimed he hinted at being the Zodiac.

He lived in Riverside in 1966 and then San Francisco in 1969, close to the murder scenes of Cheri Jo Bates and Paul Stine.

His fingerprints, however, did not match those collected from scenes or letters.

SUSPECT- ROSS SULLIVAN

Ross Sullivan emerged as a suspect through a possible link between the Zodiac and the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside.

He was a library assistant at Riverside City College and coworkers were suspicious when he disappeared for several days after the killing, especially as he resembled sketches of the murderer.

Sullivan moved to Santa Cruz in 1968 and was hospitalized several times for  and schizophrenia, before dying in 1977 at the age of 36.

FRIEND'S TESTIMONY CONTINUED

Years later Will began to suspect that Poste could be the Zodiac after watching a true crime documentary on serial killers, TMZ said.

Will cut ties with Poste in 2014, after noticing his resemblance to sketches of the Zodiac.

He said he tried to bring his theory to police but wasn't taken seriously, until the Case Breakers heard his explanation last year.

By that time, Poste had long been dead.

POSTE WAS 'OBSESSED WITH KILLING ANIMALS'

The friend named Will spoke to the Case Breakers team during their .

Will said he spent two decades backpacking with Poste in Northern California after they formed a relationship when Poste helped him sort out a legal matter,  reported.

He was 18 years old when Poste first invited him on a hunting trip in 1987, nearly 20 years after the  carried out his string of murders.

Will said Poste's violent streak was on full display during their trips as he killed animals "indiscriminately" and treated their carcasses in a manner he described as "chilling."

SIXTH VICTIM?

The Case Breakers have asserted that the Zodiac is also responsible for a sixth killing in Riverside, California, on October 31, 1966.

Cheri Jo Bates was 18 years old when she was found dead in an alley on the Riverside City College campus.

In 1967, police received a handwritten letter which later led them to believe Bates' killing may have been committed by the Zodiac.

That theory was quashed in 2016 when investigators received an anonymous note from someone who claimed they'd written the earlier note as a "sick joke."

However, the Case Breakers have maintained that the Zodiac did kill Bates and claim investigators have blocked them from comparing her DNA to Poste's.

CIPHERS POINT TO POSTE

The team said the Zodiac's ciphers also point to Poste.

In one note, removing the letters of Poste's full name revealed an alternate message, according to former Army counterintelligence agent Jen Bucholtz.

"So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," Bucholtz told .

"I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."

CASE REMAINS OPEN

"The Zodiac Killer remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco Division and our local law enforcement partners."

While authorities continue their search, the Case Breakers crew is confident that Poste is the Zodiac.

The team - comprised of more than 40 former law enforcement investigators, journalists and military intelligence officers - said they discovered Poste's identity after years of digging through new forensic evidence and his darkroom.

340 CIPHER CONTINUED

The Chronicle credited a group of citizen coding experts who submitted their findings to the FBI.

“Last weekend, a team I’m on solved the 340 and submitted it to the FBI,” coding expert David Oranchak said. “They have confirmed the solution. No joke! This is the real deal.”

The FBI acknowledged the achievement in a statement, writing: "The  is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac killer was recently solved by private citizens.

340 CIPHER

The case was revived in December 2020 when the San Francisco Chronicle revealed it had solved the 340 cipher it received back in November 1969.

"I am not afraid of the gas chamber," the killer wrote, according to a Chronicle journalist, noting the serial killer gave no name when he penned it a whopping 51 years ago.

The coded letter – full of letters, numbers and symbols – read: “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me.

“I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me.”

HOW DID THE ZODIAC KILLER EARN HIS NAME?

The killer earned his nickname by signing his fourth letter to the press with "Zodiac" on August 7, 1969.

In it, he wrote: "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." 

From then on the press called him the 'Zodiac Killer' - but it is not known why the killer gave himself that name.

He also signed his letters with a circle and a cross over it, resembling a target or a coordinate symbol.

Authorities believe that the signature symbols were meant to represent coordinates possibly indicating future killing locations.

However, authorities have never fully decoded the symbols.

HOW WAS GARY IDENTIFIED?

Prior to their discovery, The Case Breakers had been searching for Zodiac's identity for years, which led them to discovering new forensic evidence and photos from Poste's personal darkroom linking him to the Zodiac case.

According to , the letters of Gary Francis Poste's name were completely removed from one of the Zodiac's anagrams, adding that his full name had to have been known in order to figure out the code.

Over the years, authorities had previously believed that the Zodiac Killer was actually an alleged pedophile named Arthur Leigh Allen, but they were never able to prove it.

 was also a potential suspect but authorities were also never able to prove there was any connection.

MORE POSSIBLE VICTIMS

Hartnell and Mageau are the only two who survived.

Ray Davis and Cheri Jo Bates were also identified as possible victims but authorities were never able to link them together.

At one time,  claimed he had 37 victims all together.

Following the deaths of his five victims, the killer was also known for .

SEVEN VICTIMS

Zodiac's killing spree lasted from 1968 to 1969 and during that time, he had 

His victims include:

• Paul Stine
• Cecelia Shepard
• Bryan Hartnell
• Darlene Ferrin
• Mike Mageau
• David Faraday
• Betty Lou Jensen

WHAT IS POSTE'S CAUSE OF DEATH?

Just hours  as the potential killer,  obtained a copy of his death certificate.

According to the media outlet, Poste died from sepsis, septic shock, dysphagia and vascular dementia.

The certificate also revealed that he suffered from hypertension, osteoporosis, hypothyroidism and atrial fibrillation.

Poste died on August 23, 2018 at the age of 80 and had his remains scattered in the Sierra Mountains.

His death certificate indicates that he was also married but his wife's identity remains unclear.

HOW ACCURATE IS ZODIAC PART 2

That's also not the only flaw in Graysmith's theory.

In 2002, a "partial DNA fingerprint" was discovered on one of the Zodiac letters.

The print was run against Allen's DNA profile and ultimately determined to not be a match. 

Also in October 2021 cold case cops believe they have unearthed the REAL Zodiac killer.

HOW ACCURATE IS ZODIAC?

The film raises the big question - did Zodiac get it right?

The evidence that the film presents against Allen is all real and fact-checked but, as mentioned earlier, is circumstantial.

There's no concrete evidence that officially connects Allen to the crimes.

ARTHUR LEIGH PART 3

He is asked to look at a series of mugshots to potentially identify his assailant.

The victim ultimately picks out a picture of Allen.

However, text on the screen then informs us that before Allen could be questioned about the killings, he died of kidney failure.

ARTHUR LEIGH PART 2

While circumstantial evidence seems to indicate his guilt, the physical evidence, such as fingerprints and handwriting samples, do not implicate him.

In 1983 Graysmith visits a hardware store where Allen is working and we see his face darkening as he realises who the reporter is and why he's there.

The film's epilogue then cuts to one of the Zodiac's surviving victims, now older.

ARTHUR LEIGH

The Zodiac movie is set in the 60, where fear grips the city of San Francisco as a serial killer called Zodiac stalks its residents.

Investigators (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards) and reporters (Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr) become obsessed with learning the killer's identity and bringing him to justice.

Meanwhile, Zodiac claims victim after victim and taunts the authorities with cryptic messages, ciphers and menacing phone calls.

The film ends with reporter Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal) tracking down a man called Arthur Leigh Allen, who he is convinced is the Zodiac killer.

DISTINCTIVE FOREHEAD SCARS CONTINUED

“The renowned sleuths have recovered new physical and forensic evidence, signed up eyewitnesses, filed court affidavits, and secured decades of pictures from Poste’s former darkroom,” the release states.

“That includes photographic proof, as a former FBI agent put it, of ‘irrefutable’ scars on our Zodiac’s forehead – spotted by 3 witnesses and an observing cop, then later passed on to the 1969 SFPD sketch artist.”

DISTINCTIVE FOREHEAD SCARS

As part of a press release, The Case Breakers shared a copy of a news article about a car crash in Clinton, Indiana, in 1959.

An airman from the Rocksville radar station was killed in the crash and a second man was seriously injured.

The team believes the second man was Poste and the crash is how he got his distinctive forehead scars.

PULLING BACK ON POSTE

The Case Breakers, a team of over 40 volunteers consisting of cold case specialists from law enforcement, military, academic and legal backgrounds, announced their find on Wednesday.

However, law enforcement is claiming Poste, a man who died in 2018, at least five people in the 1960s.

Police instead are saying they receive hundreds of tips a year regarding the decades-old cold case, but the Case Breakers believe Poste is "a very strong suspect" in the death of a teenage girl hundreds of miles away that has never been linked to the Zodiac.

However, local police in both Riverside and San Francisco have said the group's claims consisted of "circumstantial evidence."

NEIGHBOR HEARD POSTE PUSH WIFE DOWN THE STAIRS

 pushed his wife down the stairs.

Brian Pladsen, 68, said: “I was gone in Belize when I guess he pushed her (Mary) down the stairs or something.

“That’s what I heard but I’m not really positive what went on.

“I’m pretty sure he spent time in jail for that.”