ZODIAC UNMASKED
Notorious Calif. killing spree pinned on dead man
A cold-case task force claims it has identified the notorious Zodiac Killer, who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s and taunted authorities with cryptic notes.
The Case Breakers, a group of former FBI agents and retired law-enforcement officials, has identified the infamous killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018, Fox News reported.
The investigators also tied the infamous serial killer to a murder in Southern California.
The Zodiac Killer had already been linked by the FBI to five murders in 1968 and 1969 in the San Francisco area.
During his spree, the madman sent a series of letters to local newspapers, in which he coined his nickname and threatened more slayings if the messages weren’t printed. Some letters included ciphers — with some puzzles still unsolved decades later.
One cipher received by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969 was cracked only in December, revealing a message that said the killer wasn’t scared of being executed if caught.
But years of digging led to new forensic evidence in the case, including photos from Poste’s darkroom that show scars on his forehead that match scars on the sketch of the Zodiac, the team told Fox News.
Deciphering letters sent by Zodiac also revealed Poste as the killer, who had claimed to have slaughtered as many as 37 people.
In one note, the letters of Poste’s full name were removed to reveal an alternate message, a Case Breakers investigator said.
“So you’ve got to know Gary’s full name in order to decipher these anagrams,” former Army counterintelligence agent Jen Bucholtz said.
“I just don’t think there’s any other way anybody would have figured it out.”
The team also believes Poste killed Cheri Jo Bates on Halloween in 1966, some 400 miles from San Francisco and two years before the first slaying was linked to the Zodiac Killer.
Bates, 18, was found dead with more than 40 stab wounds in an alleyway on the campus of Riverside City College after her father reported her missing.
Authorities got a handwritten letter the following year that led police to later believe Bates’ slaying might be tied to the Zodiac Killer — until investigators got another anonymous letter in 2016 claiming the earlier note was a “sick joke.”
“The author admitted that he was not the Zodiac Killer or the killer of Cheri Jo Bates and that he was just looking for attention,” Riverside police said.
The Zodiac Killer was ultimately never linked to Bates’ murder — and the case still remains open, Riverside police said.
However, the Case Breakers believe Poste is a “very strong suspect” in Bates’ murder and are urging investigators to compare her and Bates’ DNA.
A wristwatch with paint splatter thought to have been worn by the killer was recovered at the scene of Bates’ murder — an ominous clue as Poste had painted homes for more than four decades, according to the cold-case squad.
In addition, a heel print from a militarystyle boot at the murder scene matched his and others found at the Zodiac crime scenes.
FBI investigators had even identified Bates as the Zodiac Killer’s “sixth victim” in a 1975 memo obtained by the team.
The first known slayings linked to the Zodiac Killer occurred in December 1968 when a couple was shot dead in a car in Benicia, Calif.
Another couple was shot in Vallejo in July 1969, with the man surviving. Later that year, a couple was stabbed near a lake and the man survived, and a cabdriver was gunned down in San Francisco.
An FBI spokesperson told The Post on Wednesday that the bureau would look into the Case Breakers’ claims regarding Poste.
Meanwhile, San Francisco police told Fox News they could not comment on potential suspects in the Zodiac investigation because it is ongoing.
A $50,000 reward was offered earlier this year by the Riverside Police Department for a conviction in the unsolved Bates slaying.