After a while, a car, possibly a blue Valiant, pulled up next to David’s 1961 brown and beige four-door station wagon, and a man got out. "Framed only in silhouette, the man appeared to be stocky in build and slightly heavy, with an eerie sense about him" (Tina 3). The man requested that the teens get out of their car, but they refused. Upon hearing David and Betty’s refusal, the man pulled out a gun, and fired a round into the rig

Some of the most interesting, and at the same time terrifying, things about the Zodiac, were his intelligence and cunning. The Zodiac always killed on weekends. Incidentally, these weekends were always near holidays (Halloween, Columbus Day, Tabernacles, Christmas, etc.). Every time a murder was committed by the Zodiac, it was near a body of water or in a place that had a water type name (Lake Herman Pumping Station, Lake Berryessa, Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, Riverside, etc.). All of the killings coincided with the phases of the new moon. Saturn was visible as an evening star on all the nights of the murders. His insignia, the crossed circle, represented the season’s solstices (summer and winter) and equinoxes (vernal and autumnal). When the Zodiac’s letters to the police and papers are chronologically put in order to where they were sent, a giant "Z" is traced across the San Francisco landscape. Last, but not least, the Zodiac made references to the "radian" in one of his letters to the police. He also mentioned Mount Diablo in the same letter. When a radian was traced onto a piece of transparency paper, and then intersected with Mount Diablo, the resultant legs of the radian passed through every Zodiac murder location, even 400 miles to the south where Cheri Jo Bates was killed. After analyzing the two suspects thoroughly, I feel that the evidence strongly points to Lawrence Kane, rather than Arthur Leigh Allen as the Zodiac killer. The evidence against Allen seems to show that he was most likely just a deranged psychotic, claiming responsibility for the killings only to be the center or everyone’s attention, and cowering and recanting his story once confronted by the police.

ht rear window, shattering it with incredible force. He then moved to the front of the car and fired another round into the left tire. Stricken with panic, David and Betty rushed out of the car, but the man was there to meet them. Betty was able to scramble out, but David wasn’t so lucky, as he was met with the cold, hard barrel of a gun pressing behind his left ear. "The shot made a deafening blast, as the bullet entered David’s head at a horizontal angle, blowing it apart" (Tina 3).

From then on, after each new killing, the Zodiac mailed a letter to one of the local area papers, or the police, taunting and playing with them, as well as claiming responsibility for the murders. In all, the Zodiac killer claimed responsibility for thirty-seven murders, but the police could only identify seven as positively being Zodiac victims. After many years of research on the subject though, it has been found that the Zodiac may have been responsible for as many as fifty-six homicides.

One of the final incidents of the proven Zodiac crimes was committed on March 22nd, 1970. Kathleen Johns and her daughter Jennifer, who was ten months old, had left for a trip to see Kathleen’s sick mother, who lived a few towns away. Kathleen was also seven months pregnant with her second child at the time.

The Zodiac was one of the most cold and calculating murderers of the twentieth century. His gruesome and violent ways of killing, along with the coinciding of his murders with moon phases, star appearances, radians, and the astrological chart, among other things, also make him the most terrifying murderer of the twentieth century. The scariest thing of all is that this maniac was never caught, and if not dead, is still living somewhere, potentially threatening the lives of the peaceful people around him.

Some topics in this essay:
Kathleen Johns, David Betty, Michael’s Mike, Betty Darlene, Allen Zodiac, Leigh Allen, Heights CA, Bryan Hartnell, Lake Berryessa, Bryan’s Cecelia, david betty, san francisco, car road, zodiac killer, claiming responsibility, jo bates, cheri jo, lake berryessa, cheri jo bates, tina 3, managed survive attack, arthur leigh, rock springs golf, springs golf course, october 30th 1966,