The identity of the Zodiac Killer, a murderer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s, has been a curious mystery among the public for years. At his height, the killer taunted the media and the authorities by sending cryptic and coded notes.
Fast-forward to today, the cold case might have a breakthrough thanks to a task force led by former FBI agents and retired law enforcement officials.
According to reports, the cold-case task force known as the Case Breakers had managed to uncover the identity of the Zodiac Killer and names Gary Francis Poste as the notorious killer. Poste reportedly died way back in 2018. The Case Breakers also tied Poste to a sixth murder in Southern California.
The break in the case came when the Case Breakers came across new forensic evidence. They found photos taken from Poste’s darkroom show scars on his forehead which allegedly matches the scars on a sketch of the Zodiac by the San Francisco Police Department.
The group also claimed that deciphering the coded letter sent by the Zodiac reveals Poste’s name as the killer. In the letters, he claimed to have killed as many as 37 people. Cracking the code also led the team to discover an alternate message based on Poste’s full name.
“So you’ve got to know Gary’s full name in order to decipher these anagrams,” former Army counterintelligence agent Jen Bucholtz said to Fox. “I just don’t think there’s any other way anybody would have figured it out.”
Despite all these information, the FBI maintains that the Zodiac Killer case is still open. According to Deadline, San Francisco police also issued a similar comment.
In a report by ABC, Mr Poste’s former daughter-in-law Michele Wynn totally believes the Case Breakers accurately identified the Zodiac Killer. She said the police sketch from the 1969 was like “a bell-ringer for me.”
“Being around him, knowing his demeanour and his shadiness and twistedness — I have an intuition, I can read people,“ she told the Chronicle.
“It’s my birthday today, and this all coming out is a great birthday present for me.”
