Z is for ...the Zodiac Killer

The Zodiac Killer first caught my youthful attention in an article in Argosy magazine.

The concept of a 'serial killer' was unknown to me, even a 'single time' killer did 

not exist in my child's world. The only killers I knew of were mean and hungry

beasts who occasionally got into the hen house and killed one of my friends.

Movies of that time were not obsessed with violence. Westerns and Vincent

Price movies had horror, but they did not have gore. My first introduction to 

gore was Hitchcock's "The Birds", which really scared me, as no movie

had done before, and it has only one gory scene.

Then came the Zodiac. A killer cloaked in a black hood ( thankfully far away) 

who sometimes used a gun, sometimes a sword, who sometimes killed at night,

and sometimes killed in the warm light of day.

 

He killed most of his victims for no discernible reason other than to make the 

 police seem inferior. He may have known his first victims, but many were strangers

 he chose for his game. A game of clues and ciphers contained in letters written to 

local papers. He wanted attention, indeed he was angry if they did not print

his story on the front page. He wanted to taunt law enforcement because

they had not caught him. Even as his killing ended (as far as we know) in 

1969, he continued to send letters to newspapers, leaving more cryptic

clues...or perhaps they were deliberate leads that would lead nowhere?

They never did catch him, although there have been potential suspects

identified and investigated through the years. If he is still alive, he must

be an old man. Perhaps he is dead, otherwise he probably could

not resist responding to the books and movies about him.

He would bask in the attention.