“I like killing people because it’s so much fun.”
In July of 1969, a letter arrived at The San Francisco Examiner newspaper containing those chilling words in a coded message.
The sender: the soon-to-be-notorious Zodiac, killer terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s
That identity has stymied law-enforcement officials, professional code breakers and armchair criminologists for nearly five decades.
Between December 1968 and October 1969, three (3) women and four (4) men were attacked in San Francisco and Northern California.
All were murdered except for two (2) of the men,
The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters and cards sent to the local Bay Area press. The letters included four (4) cryptograms.
Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.
The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) marked the case "inactive" in April 2004, but re-opened it at some point prior to March 2007.
The California Department of Justice has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.[
THE ZODIAC claims he killed 37 people. There’s really only proof of 7.

The murder of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards, in June 1963 is believed to be one of the first Zodiac killings.
The couple were brutally shot while fleeing on a Santa Barbara beach. It was a sunny day and the couple were relaxing on Senior Ditch Day when the killer approached them with a .22 rifle and shot them as they fled. Eleven times in the back for Robert and eight times for Linda.
The murders of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards have not been widely confirmed as Zodiac Killer victims, probably due to the time period and location, although some similarities do exist between this case and the Zodiac Killer attack at Lake Berryessa. In both instances a lone couple callously attacked near a beach used by fishermen.

Riverside, California was a safe place to raise children. The illusions of relative safety crumbled Halloween morning of 1966 when a pretty, wholesome coed was found brutally slain on her college campus.
Cheri Jo Bates was a freshman at Riverside Community College. Cheri Jo was an outgoing girl who was “popular but not cliquish.” She had no enemies that anyone knew about and was the apple of her father’s eye. Cheri Jo, the quintessential girl next door, had recently become engaged to Dennis Highland, her boyfriend of two years.
On Oct. 30, 1968, she spent part of the day with her father and then went to the library to study.
By 5:30 am the next day when she hadn't come home, her father reported her missing. Less than an hour later they found her mutilated body near the library.
The killer disabled Cheri’s car by ripping out the middle distributor coil. When she tried to start it, he likely offered to help. We will see this in another case many years later.
Cheri Jo’s case went silent. No further clues came for four years. The investigating team believed they identified the killer, but couldn’t convict him based on the evidence in their possession.
Riverside police never gave the suspect’s actual name, just the alias “Bob Barnett.”
Police believed Cheri Jo had a relationship with Bob.

On August 1, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle and Vallejo Times-Herald each received an identical handwritten letter in an envelope without a return address. Beginning,
“Dear Editor: I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman,” the letters contained details from the Zodiac Killer’s murders that only the killer could have known.
The killer went on to threaten further attacks if the letters weren’t printed on the front page of the papers.
The first murders widely attributed to the Zodiac Killer were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits.
The couple, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, were on their first date and planned to attend a Christmas concert at Hogan High School about three blocks from Jensen's home.
According to the police report, the victims were apparently approached while inside Faraday's station wagon. Shots were fired into the vehicle in an apparent effort to force them out.
Jensen exited the front passenger door first, followed by Faraday. Faraday was shot as he emerged from the car, Jensen was then shot as she fled on foot.
: While Faraday and Jensen are traditionally considered definite Zodiac victims, there have been many other suspects in this case.

Twenty-two-year-old Darlene Ferrin was a wife, mother and a popular waitress at a Vallejo restaurant.
On the night of July 4, 1969, she picked up friend Michael Mageau and stopped her brown Corvair in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park.
Later Michael said that a car pulled into the parking lot, left and then came back minutes later.
The driver got out of the car, shined a bright light and fired into the Corvair with a 9mm handgun. Michael was shot in the jaw, shoulder and leg;
Darlene was hit several times.
There was no indication of robbery or sexual molestation. There were no witnesses. This is common with all Zodiac killings.
For the next few weeks, the investigation went nowhere.
Then, on July 31, 1969, letters were sent to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle.
The letters claimed to be from the killer of Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin.

The next 2 cases - Lake Berryessa and Paul Stine will be covered in depth in Episode 33.