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Copyright © 2012 by Marianne Koerfer
Cover art by Charlotte McWade
Cover design by Patrick Sauber & Pamela Mical
ISBN 978-0-7414-8092-7 Paperback
ISBN 978-0-7414-8093-4 eBook
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to my loving children
CONTENTS
The Zodiac Murders and Attempts
Introduction
Chapter One—The Manifestation of a Killer
Chapter Two—The Collector
Chapter Three—The Movies
Chapter Four—The Killer’s Prey
Chapter Five—Ciphers—Symbols—Clues
Chapter Six—The Masterpiece
Chapter Seven—Writing Habits
Chapter Eight—The Mikado
Chapter Nine—Apparition of a Killer
Epilogue
Zodiac Letters
Warren Earl Estes
Estes Family Time Line
Acknowledgments
Sources and References
ZODIAC MURDERS AND ATTEMPTS
RIVERSIDE
ALVORD SCHOOL DISTRICT
January 1963: Victims are four hundred students, five to twelve years old, who survived food poisoning ingested through school lunches.
RIVERSIDE
October 30, 1966: Victim Cheri Jo Bates, 18, stabbed to death after Zodiac disabled her vehicle and lured her away into a darkened area between two vacant houses across from the Riverside Community College Library. No sexual assault.
SOLANO COUNTY
BENICIA, LAKE HERMAN ROAD
December 20, 1968: Victims Betty Lou Jensen, 16, and David Faraday, 17, shot to death while parked in a lover’s lane just outside of Vallejo. No sexual assault.
VALLEJO
BLUE ROCK SPRINGS
GOLF COURSE LOT
July 4, 1969: Victim Darlene Ferrin, 22, shot to death. Victim Michael Mageau, 19, multiple gunshots, survived the attack while parked in a lover’s lane in Vallejo. No sexual assault.
NAPA COUNTY
LAKE BERRYESSA
September 27, 1969: Victim Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22 stabbed to death. Victim Bryan Hartnell, 20, multiple stab wounds, survived attack while relaxing on the ground near the edge of the lake. Zodiac wore executioner hood. No sexual assault.
SAN FRANCISCO
YELLOW TAXI CAB
October 11, 1969: Victim Paul Lee Stine, 29, shot to death by one gunshot wound to the head in his taxi cab while pulled over in a residential neighborhood. No sexual assault.
STANISLAUS COUNTY SHERIFF
HIGHWAY 132 by I-580
WEST OF MODESTO
March 22, 1970: Victim Kathleen Johns, 22, and her ten-month-old baby daughter, kidnapped and escaped from Zodiac vehicle after being driven around by the killer, who disabled her vehicle at the side of the road. No sexual assault.
INTRODUCTION
The infamous self-named Zodiac serial killer managed to hold hostage the entire San Francisco North Bay area and finally the City of San Francisco itself from December of 1968 through October of 1969. While the actual killings stopped in 1969, the fear continued on into another decade that was filled with Zodiac’s terror threats.
The salutations “Dear Editor” and “This is the Zodiac speaking” reluctantly became anxiously awaited opening lines of the correspondence from hell that the killer mailed to a variety of entities he felt the need to taunt. His targets were the newspapers in and around the towns where the murders were committed and the police agencies working the homicide cases. In December of 1969, Zodiac sent a letter to the high-profile San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli stating, “I cannot reach out for help because of this thing in me won’t let me [sic]” when in fact the Zodiac well knew that he himself was “the thing.”
In January of 1974, after a two-and-a-half-year silence, the last letter confirmed by the FBI as having been written by the person calling himself the Zodiac was received by the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. I have included in this book all the confirmed letters, cards, diagrams, and envelopes that are publicly available as they contain the most important clues to solving the Zodiac case. The letters appear in chronological order and should be read through before reading this book as I continuously refer to Zodiac’s writings.
Zodiac sent a combination of at least twenty-one letters and cards filled with dangerous rants. Two of the correspondence included diagrams of a bomb he threatened to make to blow up a school bus loaded with children. He further threatened to go on weekend killing rampages if the newspapers did not print his letters in their editions. Along with ciphers and greeting cards that contained threatening messages, Zodiac despicably included bloody pieces of his last known victim, taxi driver Paul Stine’s, shirt. The killer had ripped a swatch from the back of Stine’s shirt before leaving his body slumped on the front seat of his taxi … dead from one nine-millimeter shot to the head.
This book, however, is not about the killings, but rather it is a biographical profile of the killer—the killer who sought out innocent young couples as they sat in parked vehicles in lover’s lanes or enjoyed a relaxing late September afternoon on a blanket in the grass at the edge of a lake. Attacked by multiple gunshots or multiple stab wounds, all were left for dead. Valuable information was obtained, however, from some of the victims who survived the vicious attacks and also from eyewitnesses, including two San Francisco police officers who encountered the Zodiac the night of the Stine taxi driver murder and several teen witnesses who saw the killer wiping down the taxi at the murder site. All had witnessed the killer calmly walk away from the attack area.
This same killer, on a dark Halloween Eve in 1966 in Riverside, California, may have also murdered eighteen-year-old student Cheri Jo Bates after she left the Riverside Community College Library. The killer disabled the victim’s vehicle, then menacingly lurked in or around the library waiting for the young student to exit the building and attempt to start her vehicle. When the vehicle would not start, the killer offered the vulnerable girl a ride home. But instead of a ride, he lured his innocent prey to a darkened gravel and dirt area between two vacant houses where he brutally stabbed her to death. At one point during the killing, he would “kick her in the head to shut her up,” as stated in an anonymous unsigned confession letter received by the Riverside Police Department on November 29, 1966. The deed was consistent with the Riverside County Coroner’s report. The killer then walked away, leaving this young, innocent girl with multiple stab wounds, nearly decapitated, lying dead and bloodied on the ground.
There are two particular motivations that have driven me to answer the question “Who was the Zodiac killer?” The first is the haunting vision of Cheri Jo Bates’s murdered body left alone all night on the ground of a darkened alleyway, victim of an unimaginably cold, brutal act made even more horrific by the brazen killer bragging in a mocking confessi
on letter that he “kicked her in the head to shut her up.” I needed to know what evil caused this kind of heinous behavior directed toward this innocent young girl. This particular crime became very personal to so many because among all the victims, the only person mentioned by name in the Zodiac’s letters is Cheri Jo Bates … the killer sent two letters stating “Bates had to die.” Only in a third letter mailed to the girl’s father did the killer state, “She had to die.” By stating she instead of Bates, the killer heartlessly implied to the girl’s father, “You know who I am talking about”—a statement that tells me the killer of Cheri Jo Bates either knew this particular young victim or was in some way close to the crime.
The second motivation is the arrogance of this killer. In a November 9, 1969, letter to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, Zodiac wrote, “The police shall never catch me because I have been too clever for them.” In another letter to the Chronicle on April 20, 1970, Zodiac sarcastically asked, “By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you?” Then, on March 13, 1971, in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Zodiac stated, “Like I have always said I am crackproof.” Zodiac’s overconfident, arrogant attitude has finally brought his identity out … because I have cracked him.
Although, at this time, the Zodiac case is over forty-five years old, it still remains within a life cycle of memory of many who knew the killer. If we begin with the 1966 killing of Cheri Jo Bates, that living memory is still with us—Warren Estes was forty years old in 1966 and had sweet-talked his way into the lives of many young students, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts, all decades younger than himself. The recollections of Warren Estes by the people who did know him or knew of him ranged from vague to vivid, and there were many who knew him by reputation only. There were many accounts told to me, however, that were exact in recall. I paid particular attention to those stories and considered the information factual. Some accounts of his strange behavior you just could not make up. It was no coincidence that people who did not know each other related the same depraved stories to me, and I was compelled to accept these particular accounts as factual. I have made every effort to sort out, clarify, and report on these accounts to produce this profile of Warren Earl Estes, whom I believe to be the Zodiac killer.
Throughout my three years of research, I was determined to base my decisions on the most accurate facts available, as I am well aware that arriving at a decision based on the wrong facts will lead to the wrong decision. This was by no means an easy task as there are so many conflicting police reports and witness statements to analyze. I have chosen to not include many names of persons involved as there are only three key players in this work, and they are Warren Earl Estes himself, his father, Fred Estes, and his mother, Florence Estes. It was within this dysfunctional household that the monster was created … everyone else came afterward.
The Zodiac case is as notorious as the Jack the Ripper case, but they are not similar in their killing styles. Both have been unsolved for many years, with the Ripper case already eighty years old when Zodiac was active. The Ripper was active for four months in 1888, from August to November, with five gruesome killings and just as gruesome letters written to the police and the newspapers with the killer signing his letters as “Jack the Ripper.” Zodiac killed for eleven months, from December 1968 to October 1969, and identified himself in his letters as “The Zodiac.” More killings may be attributed to these killers as there was no shortage of murders being committed in 1888 London or in 1968–1969 California. But what there was a shortage of in both cases were viable suspects, even after the police had investigated over 2,500 Zodiac tips.
The investigators in the Zodiac case were piecing together a motive after the first three sets of young couples were murdered, but when the Zodiac suddenly and unexpectedly murdered a lone taxi driver, drastically changing the killing pattern, the investigators had to rethink the killer’s motivations. Serial killers never satisfy their desire to kill, but this killer, changing his choice of a victim, had now complicated the job of the criminal profilers. Zodiac never killed again after the taxi driver murder, and I will reveal why later in the book. It is hard for anyone to grasp the workings of the deviant criminal mind. As a sane person, you just cannot walk in a killer’s shoes. The killings are so senseless and the acts so distorted that the terms criminal and insane are not powerful enough to convey what is going on inside a killer’s head.
By the time the Zodiac case was sorted out, six different law enforcement agencies were involved in the manhunt. The FBI had a jurisdictional problem and could not get involved with investigating the murders, but they were able to open an extortion case (FBI ZODIAC Extortion Case No. 9-49911) after the Zodiac promised to annihilate a school bus full of children if the people of the San Francisco Bay Area did not wear some nice Zodiac buttons.
Dan Olson, unit chief of the FBI’s Questioned Documents Handwriting Analysis Unit and the Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit works on the Zodiac’s unsolved ciphers. Dan has reached out to the public, encouraging anyone to contact him if they think they may have a solution or possible means of solving the remaining ciphers.
Careful analysis of the Zodiac letters yields many facts about the killer, and I have found these letters to be a diary of what the killer was doing besides killing, often presenting what he was doing at the time of the writing and what he planned to do in the future. His writings are influenced by obvious mood swings that range from anger to childish behavioral excuses. It is further obvious that the killer has surrendered to his inner demons and is locked into a rampaging vendetta. As I focused on these letters and cards as diary entries, a unique profile of the killer soon emerged, and the search was on for a teacher well versed in astronomy, not astrology, and when found he would have an elaborate collection … and he did.
I decided to start my search for the killer at the point of the earliest hint of Zodiac—the year and place Cheri Jo Bates was murdered, 1966 in Riverside, California. This was also the year the Confession letter was received, postmarked Riverside, California, and the desktop poem was found in the Riverside Community College Library storage room. Four months later, in April of 1967, the three Bates letters were mailed and also postmarked Riverside, California. I knew the police had exhausted their search of the Bay Area, so I did not want to start there. The unbelievable truth is that I sat down at my computer and entered “Riverside California Astronomy” in the search box and, in thirty seconds, I had opened the site of a local astronomy club and looked at their “History” selection. Suddenly, there he was—just as I had imagined him. I put my finger on the screen—I could not help touching the image. I immediately put a name to that image, and within an hour I would find out that this man was indeed a teacher, an astronomer, and a collector. I had to stop, sit back, and ask myself, “Did this actually happen?” I started out asking what was going on in Riverside in 1966 and wound up in the middle of a revelation. The real research was now about to begin.
Not being familiar with the state of California, I had to study the state’s geography, transportation systems, economy, government, and social essence from 1900 through 1979, the years the Estes/Miller families would have been active in Riverside. I had to think of myself in that era to keep grounded in the times surrounding the Zodiac. I began like all intense research begins: writing letters, making phone calls, searching archives, and following every lead along the way. Three years and thousands of pages of notes later, I arrived at this book.
Along with presenting Warren Earl Estes as a viable Zodiac suspect, a great deal of this book is dedicated to explaining and answering many of the questions that Zodiac searchers have been trying to solve over the years. All my deductions were developed by the undeniable meshing of the suspect and the killer. Information contained in the Zodiac letters and Warren Estes’s documents, especially the handwriting in these letters and documents, coupled with years of intensive research and analysis that included interviews with numerous persons who had direct contact
with the suspect or had documented his behavior, soon began to yield this biographical profile. Much of Warren Estes’s and Zodiac’s behaviors and travels are pertinent to many different experiences of the suspect killer. For this reason, the book is not in a strict chronological order as many points needed to be repeated to explain or enhance other discoveries and incidents as they intertwine to form this criminal biographical study.
CHAPTER ONE
THE MANIFESTATION OF A KILLER
Growing Up Zodiac—Childhood
Education—Family & Formal & Military
Professional Hobbies—Astronomy & Herpetology & Entomology
Warren Earl Estes was born on November 5, 1926, in Riverside, California, where as an only child he would reside throughout his lifetime with his parents, Fred Earl Estes and Florence (Miller) Estes. This child of the desert would, however, during the last strange fifteen years of his life, shuffle himself between the Riverside family home and the Estes’s family retreat property located in the still barren desert area of Joshua Tree, San Bernardino County. In 1926, the population of Riverside was only twenty-five thousand people. Located sixty miles east of Los Angeles and twelve miles southwest of San Bernardino, the city was surrounded by lush orange groves. The main streets blended stately Victorian houses with ever-growing businesses. Today, the city of Riverside boasts a population of over three hundred thousand people with a sprawling land mass of ninety-eight square miles.
Fred Estes’s family had migrated from Arkansas to Riverside, California when he was six years of age, the oldest of three children. Fred graduated from Riverside Polytechnic High School in 1920 and attended Pomona College. He would go on to teach biology and mathematics at the local junior high school and the high school later finishing his career employed by the United States government as a mathematician at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory in Norco, California. Fred married Florence Miller, a local Riverside girl said to have the most beautiful skin. She would later become a school librarian with a curious dabbling into the hereafter. The Millers were an original early Riverside family. Florence’s father, Albert W. Miller, came to Riverside in 1895 and tried his hand at inventing. He developed and manufactured an early 1903 “machine” that was built at his Magnolia Car Factory. The machine, said to be able to operate at a swift twenty-five miles per hour, never made a successful run of it, and eventually the defunct car factory was converted into apartments. The building has since burned down.
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