7 guns found at suspect’s home
“Chinese Zodiac Killer” accused of mailing threats to media, White House
Investigators found seven guns and a high-capacity magazine in the home of a man who called himself the “Chinese Zodiac Killer” and allegedly mailed more than 100 threatening letters — including one to the White House — boasting of past murders, rape, consumption of human flesh and plans for a “killing spree,” a federal prosecutor in Albany said Tuesday.
Jesse Bartlett, 45, who allegedly bragged of a “kill list” topped by the homeless, runaways and immigrants, admitted he mailed the letters after his arrest on May 19, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Wentworth-ping said at a detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Christian Hummel.
The prosecutor said the walls of Bartlett’s home in Lafargeville, Jefferson County, contained messages for the FBI. Court documents show Bartlett, a school bus driver, repeatedly threatened to murder an unidentified bus driver. And Wentworth-ping said Bartlett, who holds interests in the occult and black magic, identified himself as Aleister Crowley, a late British occultist, on the trail registries of the Adirondack mountains that he referenced in one of his threatening letters.
In April 2010, the prosecutor said, Bartlett fatally shot a former friend he said invaded his home and threatened to kill him. Bartlett was cleared of wrongdoing, calling it self-defense. Wentworth-ping argued it showed Bartlett has used guns in the past to take a life.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Michael Mcgeown-walker asked the judge not to hold the 2010 shooting against his client. In April 2010, the Watertown Daily Times said a grand jury cleared Bartlett of killing the man, Keith E. Brabant, 33. That week, Bartlett told the newspaper that Brabant, his former best friend in high school, was “freaking out like he was on meth.”
Mcgeown-walker convinced Hummel that his client — who has a daughter, elderly parents and lacks a passport — is not a flight risk. But the judge said he
had “grave concerns” about the danger that Bartlett posed to the community. On Thursday of last week, five rifles and two shotguns along with the high-capacity magazine and other ammunition were found in his home. Prosecutors also said Bartlett had stated that he is “a sexual predator” and is “on the hunt for your women at all times.”
Hummel ordered Bartlett to remain in the Albany County jail, where the judge said he wanted him to receive a psychiatric evaluation.
In December, after Capital Region television news stations received letters from the purported “Chinese Zodiac Killer,” the FBI in Albany asked media outlets to be on the lookout for similar letters. The Times Union — which in August 1973 received a cryptic letter from a person claiming to be the Zodiac Killer in California — did not receive such a letter.
The criminal complaint said Bartlett mailed letters throughout New York state, as well as New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington, D.C. In detailing Bartlett’s deeds, the FBI agent’s affidavit left little to the imagination.
On July 20, 2021, Bartlett allegedly mailed a letter to a media outlet in Melville, Long Island, the location of Newsday.
The letter said: “I HAVE ALREADY KILLED SOMEONE IN THE NEW YORK AREA. HEAR MY PROPHECY: I WILL KILL AGAIN. HELL WANTS MORE SOULS. I AM A SEXUAL PREDATOR AND A KILLER AMONG THE LIVING. I AM NOT HIDING. I AM VERY EASY TO FIND …BECAUSE I NEED TO BE FOUND. BUT I MUST *TEST YOU.”
It said: “I WILL MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF ANYONE WHO
REFUSES TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC OF MY EXISTENCE.”
On Aug. 21, the letter to the White House said: “I MADE IT CLEAR THAT I WOULD MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF ANYONE WHO HAS KNOWLEDGE OF ME THAT REFUSES TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC OF MY EXISTENCE.”
The complaint said Bartlett mailed threatening letters to a Binghamton media outlet, a municipality in New Jersey, the New York State Police and, in February, to a retail company in Syracuse. In the Syracuse letter, Bartlett allegedly stated: “EACH MONTHLY LETTER CONTAINS MY CURRENT KILL COUNT — AND WHETHER OR NOT I FEASTED ON THE FLESH OF MY VICTIMS.”
On May 12, the FBI began to close in on Bartlett. The agent said investigators watched and filmed Bartlett as he dropped 21 envelopes into U.S. Postal Service bins in Watertown and Clayton.
Three days later, Bartlett allegedly dropped 21 more letters off at the Watertown bin. Investigators found 42 letters in the bins all sent by the self-described “Chinese Zodiac Killer” mailed to law enforcement offices, politicians and religious institutions, the complaint said.
The May 12 letters were consistent with earlier ones but this time they were signed under the name of Crowley.
On May 15, Bartlett warned investigators that their time to catch him was nearly out, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit filed in a criminal complaint.
“I GROW WEARY OF YOUR INABILITY TO CAPTURE ME AND TO INFORM THE PUBLIC OF MY PRESENCE,” Bartlett allegedly wrote.
Instead, the agent stated, it was Bartlett’s letter-writing spree that was about to end. On Thursday, the FBI charged Bartlett with mailing threatening communications, a federal crime that carries up to five years in prison
upon conviction. Unlike the notorious Zodiac Killer, who was blamed for killing five people and wounding two others in the late 1960s in the San Francisco area,
Bartlett has not been charged in any homicide cases.