excellent find I'll post a write up and then it's the infamous ZODIAC

Deaths of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon I

Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon were two Dutch students who disappeared on April 1, 2014, while hiking in Panama. After an extensive search, portions of their bodies were found a few months later although how they died could not be determined. The circumstances and aftermath of their disappearance have resulted in much speculation about the cause of death.

Lisanne Froon, 22, was described as aspiring, optimistic, intelligent, and a passionate volleyball player, and Kris Kremers, 21, as open, creative, and responsible. Both grew up in Amersfoort. Froon had graduated with a degree in Applied Sciences from Deventer the previous September, and Kremers had just completed her studies in Cultural Social Education, specializing in Art Education at the University of Utrecht. Only a few weeks prior to leaving for Panama, Froon had moved in with Kremers in a dorm room in Amersfoort, and they worked together at the Café/Restaurant 'In den Kleinen Hap'. They both saved up money for six months and planned to go to Panama together on a special trip to learn Spanish, as well as to do something of significance for the locals, particularly volunteering with children. The trip was also supposed to be a reward to Froon for graduating.

Kremers and Froon arrived in Panama for a six-week vacation on March 15, 2014, on a flight from Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. They toured Panama for two weeks before arriving in Boquete, on March 29, 2014, to begin volunteer work with children for one month, while being accommodated by a local host family. On April 1, 2014, they went on a hike at around 11:00 am nearby the clouded forests that surrounded the Baru volcano, possibly the trail of Pianista, not far from Boquete, while reportedly being accompanied by their host family's dog Blue. They apparently wrote on ******** that they intended to walk around Boquete. It was also reported that they had been seen having brunch with two young men (who were reportedly Dutch) before they went on the trail.[10][11]

Disappearance and search
The local host family became alarmed when their dog Blue returned home alone that night without the young women. Froon's parents stopped receiving messages from her via the mobile instant messenger application WhatsApp, which Froon and Kremers both used daily to keep in contact with their families back in the Netherlands. On April 2, Froon and Kremers had an arranged appointment to meet with their tour guide Feliciano at 8:00 am so he could guide them on the trails. After failing to meet Feliciano, he and Eileen, a young German woman from the language school, visited the police station at around 7:30 pm. They went to the girls' host family to find most of their belongings and no sign of them having returned. A few hours earlier, Eileen had also tried calling Froon's mother Diny to ask where Froon was, to which Diny replied, "She is in Panama."[12] Two hours later, Feliciano and Eileen returned to the police station to declare that Froon and Kremers were missing. The next day, on April 3 at 8:00 am, Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil (SINAPROC) began aerial searches over the forest. Local tribes and farmers around Boquete had also started looking for the young women. On April 6, the parents of Kremers and Froon flew to Panama along with police, special forces with dog units, and detectives from the Netherlands to do a full-scale search of the forests for 10 days. Despite the efforts, Kremers and Froon were not found. Their parents then offered a $30,000 reward for anybody that could help identify their whereabouts.[13][14][7]
Around 10 weeks after the initial search, a Ngobe woman turned in a backpack to the authorities. She claimed to have found it while tending her rice paddy by a riverbank near her village of Alto Romero, in the Bocas del Toro region, about 12 hours by foot from the Continental Divide. The Ngobe woman also said she was sure it had not been there the day before. It was identified as Froon's blue backpack. The contents of the backpack were 2 pairs of cheap sunglasses, $83 in cash, Froon's passport, a water bottle, Froon's Canon Powershot SX270 camera, 2 bras, Froon's Samsung Galaxy S III, and Kremers's iPhone 4. Everything seemed well packed, dry, and left in good condition. The case, however, took a dark turn when data from the girls' phones and from Kremers's camera revealed that the young women had tried for some hours after the start of their hike to get in contact with police by dialing 112 (police line in the Netherlands) and 911 (police line in Panama), confirming that something had happened to the young women.[3][15][13]

Mobile phones Edit
Kremers had an iPhone 4 and Froon had a Samsung Galaxy S III. After the retrieval of Froon's backpack, the phones were among some of the contents still inside the backpack and undamaged. Investigators had retrieved the logs of the phones to show that the women had tried on both phones to make multiple emergency calls. The first distress call had been made just hours after beginning their hike: one from Kremers's iPhone at 04:39 pm and shortly after that, one from Froon's Samsung Galaxy at 04:51 pm. None of the calls had gone through due to a lack of reception in the area except for one 911 call attempt on April 3 that lasted for a little over a second before breaking up. After April 5, Froon's phone battery became exhausted after 05:00 am and was not used again. Kremers's iPhone would not make any more calls either but was intermittently turned on to search for reception. After April 6, multiple attempts of a false PIN code were entered into the iPhone; it never received the correct code again. One report showed that between the 7th and 10th of April, there were 77 emergency call attempts with the iPhone. The phone was last turned on on the 11 April at 10:51 am and turned off for the last time after an hour at 11:56 am.[16][17]

Date of Call iPhone 4 (Kremers) Samsung Galaxy S III (Froon)
1 April 16:39 – attempt 1 (112) 16:51 – attempt 1 (112)
2 April 18:14 – attempt 2 (112) 06:58 – attempt 2 (112)
10:53 – attempt 3 (112 & 911)

3 April 09:33 – attempt 3 (911)
16:00 – check signal 1

13:50 – check signal 1
16:19 – check signal 2

4 April 09:33 – check signal 2
13:42 – check signal 3

no activity
5 April 10:50 – check signal 4
13:37 – check signal 5

04:50 – check signal 3
05:56 – switch on; battery empty; no further activity

6 April 10:26 – check signal 6 (no PIN)
13:37 – check signal 7 (no PIN)

--
11 April 10:51 – check signal 8 (no PIN)
11:56 – switched off after 1:05 h; no further activity

--
Froon's Canon Powershot SX270 Camera Edit
Froon's camera has photos from April 1 that show the young women had taken a trail at the overlook of the Continental Divide and wandered into some wilderness hours before their first attempt to reach 911, but with no signs of anything unusual. It would not be until a week later after being declared missing on April 8 that Froon's camera was used again to take 90 flash photos between the time of 01:00 am and 04:00 am at rate of a photo every 2 minutes and most of the 90 photos were taken deep in the jungle and in near-complete darkness. A few photos show that they were possibly near a river or a ravine. Some of the visible photos show a twig with plastic bags and candy wrappers on top of a rock, another photo of what looks like toilet paper and a mirror on another rock, and another that shows the back of Kremers's head with what possibly looks like blood by her temple. It has not been clarified what the meaning or purpose of these photos are.[3][18][15]
Second search and recovered human remains Edit
The discovery of the backpack led to a new wave of intense searches along the Culubre.[19] Two Ngobe women from a search party had discovered Kremers' jeans shorts which were zipped and neatly folded on top of a rock on the opposite, or eastern, bank of the tributary, a few kilometers away from the bank where Froon's backpack was discovered. Two months later, even closer to where the backpack was discovered, a boot with a foot inside was found along with a part of a pelvis bone, reportedly behind a tree. In a short time span, over 33 bones would be discovered at the same river bank, with long distances between them. DNA testing in the Netherlands eventually confirmed that they were the bones of Froon and Kremers. Of the 33 bones discovered, 28 were those of Froon's left foot. It still had the foot and ankle of Froon in the sock within the boot. The pelvis bone belonged to Kremers. It has also been noted, that while Froon's bones still had some skin attached to them, Kremers's bones appeared to have been bleached.

Zodiac Killer I


The symbol used by the Zodiac Killer to sign his correspondence

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.
Victims 5 confirmed dead, 2 injured, possibly 20–28 total dead (claimed to have killed 37)
Span of killings
1960s–1970s
Country United States
State(s) California, possibly also Nevada
Suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) marked the case "inactive" in April 2004, but re-opened it at some point prior to March 2007.[2][3] The case also remains open in the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa County and Solano County.[4] The California Department of Justice has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.
cont...

Zodiac Killer II

Victims

Confirmed
Although the Zodiac claimed 37 murders in letters to the newspapers, investigators agree on only seven confirmed victims, two of whom survived. They are:

David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16: shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, within the city limits of Benicia. Coordinates: 38°5′41.61″N 122°8′38.24″W
Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22: shot on July 4, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. While Mageau survived the attack, Ferrin was pronounced dead on arrival at Kaiser Foundation Hospital. Coordinates: 38°7′33.56″N 122°11′27.94″W
Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22: stabbed on September 27, 1969, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived eight stab wounds to the back, but Shepard died as a result of her injuries on September 29, 1969. Coordinates: 38°33′48.29″N 122°13′54.43″W
Paul Lee Stine, 29: shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. Coordinates: 37°47′19.47″N 122°27′25.54″W
Suspected
The following murder victims are suspected to be victims of Zodiac, though none has been confirmed:

Robert Domingos, 18, and Linda Edwards, 17: shot and killed on June 4, 1963, on a beach near Gaviota. Edwards and Domingos were identified as possible Zodiac victims because of specific similarities between their attack and the Zodiac's attack at Lake Berryessa six years later. Coordinates: 34°28′11.20″N 120°10′7.14″W
Cheri Jo Bates, 18: stabbed to death and nearly decapitated on October 30, 1966, at Riverside City College in Riverside. Bates's possible connection to the Zodiac only appeared four years after her murder when San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery received a tip regarding similarities between the Zodiac killings and the circumstances surrounding Bates's death.[6] College coordinates: 33°58′19″N 117°22′52″W
Donna Lass, 25: last seen September 6, 1970, in Stateline, Nevada. A postcard with an advertisement from Forest Pines condominiums (near Incline Village at Lake Tahoe) pasted on the back was received at the Chronicle on March 22, 1971, and has been interpreted as the Zodiac claiming Lass's disappearance as a victim. No evidence has been uncovered to connect Lass's disappearance with the Zodiac Killer definitively.[7]
There is also a suspected third escapee from the Zodiac Killer:

Kathleen Johns, 22: allegedly abducted on March 22, 1970, on Highway 132 near I-580, in an area west of Modesto. Johns escaped from the car of a man who drove her and her infant daughter around the area between Stockton and Patterson for approximately 1½ hours.[8] Junction 132/I-580 coordinates: 37°38′16.14″N 121°23′55.22″W

The Lake Bodom Murders

In a nutshell, 4 campers go camping, everyone dies except one and no one knows what happened.



It's very interesting considering there are numerous people who could have done it, but no one was found guilty. Even if it happened in the 60s, there still was arrests done regarding this case in2004!On top of the obvious suspect, the only survivor Nils Gustafsson, there were these guys too:

Pauli Luoma
Luoma was a runaway from a nearby work department. Police caught him soon after the murders and questioned him. They found out that he had a valid alibi. He was reportedly in Otaniemi at the time of the murders.

Pentti Soininen
Pentti Soininen, a maintenance man, was convicted of several violent crimes in the late 1960s. At the age of 24, while in jail in the county of Kuopio, he confessed that he had committed the Lake Bodom murders. On the fateful night, Soininen, aged 15, resided near the murder site. The police interrogated him, but his confession was not given much weight. Soininen was a psychopath who could be incredibly cryptic, especially while under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Soininen's long criminal record included theft, assaults, and robberies. In 1969, Soininen hanged himself at Toijala, in a prisoner transport station.

Valdemar Gyllström
One of the prime suspects of the murders was Karl Valdemar Gyllström, a kiosk keeper from Oittaa. He was known to have hated campers and behaved aggressively. He drowned in Lake Bodom in 1969, and while drunk he confessed the murders to his neighbor before his death. Gyllström filled the well in his courtyard a few days after the murders and therefore Gyllström's house and the courtyard were studied in depth. Nothing incriminating, however, was found. On the other hand, it is possible that all of the articles were hidden or destroyed. For example, Gyllström's relatives have said that the murder weapon is in the filled-in well. According to the police, Gyllström had an alibi for the night of the murders, which was given by his wife. Gyllström's wife said that she was awake the whole night and that her husband had not been away from home. However, the wife had said before her death that her husband had threatened to kill her if she told the truth.

Hans Assmann
Most suspicion has focused on the alleged KGB spy, Hans Assmann. On 6 June 1960, Assmann came to the Helsinki Surgical Hospital and exhibited particularly odd behavior. He appeared dishevelled, with black fingernails and his clothes covered in red stains. Assmann may have lied to hospital staff about the cause of his appearance. He also pretended to be unconscious and was aggressive and nervous. His clothing matched the description of the Lake Bodom murderer. Assmann cut off his longish blond hair after details regarding the appearance of the murderer were reported in the news. He lived within five kilometres of Bodom, which was only a short distance from the shore of Lake Bodom.

Assmann's behaviour could have suggested guilt at the time, especially as was noted by Surgical Hospital Curator Jorma Palo, as well as other hospital staff. The police had only a brief meeting with Assman, but found little since they did not want to cross-examine doctors and did not take Assmann`s stained clothing for examination; in spite of the fact that the doctors in attendance were certain that the stains were composed of blood. Later, Palo wrote three books about Assmann and the murders. Former Detective Chief Inspector Matti Paloaro also suspected that Assmann was responsible for five other murders. He has been linked to unsolved Finnish homicides such as Kyllikki Saari's murder in Isojoki and the Tulilahti double murder in Heinävesi.

always neg for this one.. proven she was donkey brained and suffered from more than one...

Generation why did an excellent podcast on this excellent contribution

Zodiac Killer III

Lake Herman Road attack
The first murders widely attributed to the Zodiac Killer were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits. The couple were on their first date and planned to attend a Christmas concert at Hogan High School about three blocks from Jensen's home. The couple instead visited a friend before stopping at a local restaurant and then driving out on Lake Herman Road. At about 10:15 p.m., Faraday parked his mother's Rambler in a gravel turnout, which was a well-known lovers' lane. Shortly after 11:00 p.m., their bodies were found by Stella Borges, who lived nearby. The Solano County Sheriff's Department investigated the crime but no leads developed.[9]

Utilizing available forensic data, Robert Graysmith postulated that another car pulled into the turnout, just prior to 11:00 pm and parked beside the couple. The killer apparently exited the second car and walked toward the Rambler, possibly ordering the couple out of the Rambler. Jensen appeared to have exited the car first, yet when Faraday was halfway out, the killer apparently shot Faraday in the head. Fleeing from the killer, Jensen was gunned down twenty-eight feet from the car with five shots through her back. The killer then drove off.[10]

Blue Rock Springs attack Edit
Just before midnight on July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau drove into the Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo, four miles from the Lake Herman Road murder site, and parked. While the couple sat in Ferrin's car, a second car drove into the lot and parked alongside them but almost immediately drove away. Returning about 10 minutes later, this second car parked behind them. The driver of the second car then exited the vehicle, approaching the passenger side door of Ferrin's car, carrying a flashlight and a 9 mm Luger. The killer directed the flashlight into Mageau's and Ferrin's eyes before shooting at them, firing five times. Both victims were hit, and several bullets had passed through Mageau and into Ferrin. The killer walked away from the car but upon hearing Mageau's moaning, returned and shot each victim twice more before driving off.[11]

On July 5, 1969, at 12:40 a.m., a man phoned the Vallejo Police Department to report and claim responsibility for the attack. The caller also took credit for the murders of Jensen and Faraday six-and-a-half months earlier. The police traced the call to a phone booth at a gas station at Springs Road and Tuolumne, about three-tenths of a mile from Ferrin's home and only a few blocks from the Vallejo Police Department.[12]

Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mageau survived the attack despite being shot in the face, neck and chest.
Letters from the Zodiac
On August 1, 1969, three letters prepared by the killer were received at the Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The San Francisco Examiner. The nearly identical letters took credit for the shootings at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs. Each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram which the killer claimed contained his identity. The killer demanded they be printed on each paper's front page or he would "cruse [sic] around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend."[14]

"I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is thae when I die I will be reborn in paradice and thei have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or atop my collectiog of slaves for my afterlife ebeorietemethhpiti"

— The solution to Zodiac's 408-symbol cipher. The meaning, if any, of the final eighteen letters has not been determined.[15]

The Chronicle published its third of the cryptogram on page four of the next day's edition. An article printed alongside the code quoted Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz as saying "We're not satisfied that the letter was written by the murderer" and requested the writer send a second letter with more facts to prove his identity.[16] The threatened murders did not happen, and all three parts were eventually published.

On August 7, 1969, another letter was received at The San Francisco Examiner with the salutation "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking." This was the first time the killer had used this name for identification. The letter was a response to Chief Stiltz's request for more details that would prove he had killed Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin. In it, the Zodiac included details about the murders which had not yet been released to the public, as well as a message to the police that when they cracked his code "they will have me."
On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California, cracked the 408-symbol cryptogram. It contained a misspelled message in which the killer said he was collecting slaves for the afterlife. No name appears in the decoded text, and the killer said that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.

Zodiac Killer IV

Lake Berryessa attack
On September 27, 1969, Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking at Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. A man approached them wearing a black executioner's-type hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white 3"x3" cross-circle symbol on it. He approached them with a gun, which Hartnell believed to be a .45. The hooded man claimed to be an escaped convict from Deer Lodge, Montana, where he had killed a guard and stolen a car, explaining that he needed their car and money to go to Mexico. He had brought precut lengths of plastic clothesline and told Shepard to tie up Hartnell, before he tied her up. The killer checked, and tightened Hartnell's bonds after discovering Shepard had bound Hartnell's hands loosely. Hartnell initially believed it to be a weird robbery, but the man drew a knife and stabbed them both repeatedly. The killer then hiked 500 yards back up to Knoxville Road, drew the cross-circle symbol on Hartnell's car door with a black felt-tip pen, and wrote beneath it: "Vallejo/12-20-68/7-4-69/Sept 27–69–6:30/by knife."[18][19]

At 7:40 p.m., the killer called the Napa County Sheriff's office from a pay telephone to report this latest crime. The phone was found, still off the hook, minutes later at the Napa Car Wash on Main Street in Napa by KVON radio reporter Pat Stanley, only a few blocks from the sheriff's office, yet 27 miles from the crime scene. Detectives were able to lift a still-wet palm print from the telephone but were never able to match it to any suspect.[20]

After hearing their screams for help, a man and his son who were fishing in a nearby cove discovered the victims and summoned help by contacting park rangers. Napa County Sheriff's deputies Dave Collins and Ray Land were the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the crime scene.[21] Cecelia Shepard was conscious when Collins arrived, providing him with a detailed description of the attacker. Hartnell and Shepard were taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa by ambulance. Shepard lapsed into a coma during transport to the hospital and never regained consciousness. She died two days later, but Hartnell survived to recount his tale to the press.[22][23] Napa County Sheriff Detective Ken Narlow, who was assigned to the case from the outset, worked on solving the crime until his retirement from the department in 1987.

Presidio Heights attack
Two weeks later on October 11, 1969, a passenger entered the cab driven by Paul Stine at the intersection of Mason and Geary Streets (one block west from Union Square) in San Francisco requesting to be taken to Washington and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights. For reasons unknown, Stine drove one block past Maple to Cherry Street; the passenger then shot Stine once in the head with a 9mm, took Stine's wallet and car keys, and tore away a section of Stine's bloodstained shirt tail. This passenger was observed by three teenagers across the street at 9:55 p.m., who called the police while the crime was in progress. They observed a man wiping the cab down before walking away towards the Presidio, one block to the north.[25] Two blocks from the crime scene, Officer Don Fouke, responding to the call, observed a white man walking along the sidewalk and stepping onto a stairway leading up to the front yard of one of the homes on the north side of the street; the encounter lasted only five to ten seconds.[26] The radio dispatcher had alerted to be on the lookout for a black suspect, so they drove past him without stopping; the mix-up in descriptions remains unexplained to this day. A search ensued, but no possible suspects were found. The three teen witnesses worked with a police artist to prepare a composite sketch of Stine's killer; then, a few days later, this police artist returned, working with the witnesses to prepare a second composite sketch of the killer.

Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case. The San Francisco Police Department investigated an estimated 2,500 suspects over a period of years.[27]

Communication from the Zodiac
On October 14, 1969, the Chronicle received another letter from the Zodiac, this time containing a swatch of Paul Stine's shirt tail as proof he was the killer; it also included a threat about killing schoolchildren on a school bus. To do this, Zodiac wrote, "just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out." At 2:00 p.m. on October 20, 1969, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called Oakland PD demanding that one of two prominent lawyers, F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, appear on the local television show A.M. San Francisco, hosted by Jim Dunbar. Bailey was not available, but Belli did appear on the show. Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open, and eventually, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times and said his name was "Sam". Belli agreed to meet with him in Daly City, but the suspect never showed up.

On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. The 340-character cipher has never been decoded.[28] Numerous possible solutions have been suggested, but none can be claimed as definitive.

On November 9, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter stating that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he shot Stine. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12 including the Zodiac's claim;[29][30] that same day, Officer Don Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened the night of Stine's murder. On December 20, 1969, exactly one year after the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli that included another swatch of Stine's shirt; the Zodiac said he wanted Belli to help him.

Is that a good podcast, I've already listened to casefile and sword and scale, could go for a new podcast.

it's really good they cover lots and lots of cases another good one is true crime garage

I also listen to Casefile, as well as many other true crime podcasts. Generation Why is my personal favourite. They do their research, rarely miss anything and are reasonable guys who don't sensationalize the cases.

Zodiac Killer V


Modesto attack
On the night of March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. She was seven months pregnant and had her 10-month-old daughter beside her.[32] While heading west on Highway 132 near Modesto, a car behind her began honking its horn and flashing its headlights. She pulled off the road and stopped. The man in the car parked behind her, approached her car, stated that he observed that her right rear wheel was wobbling, and offered to tighten the lug nuts. After finishing his work, the man drove off; yet when Johns pulled forward to re-enter the highway the wheel almost immediately came off the car. The man returned, offering to drive her to the nearest gas station for help. She and her daughter climbed into his car.

During the ride the car passed several service stations but the man did not stop. For about 90 minutes he drove back and forth around the backroads near Tracy. When Johns asked why he was not stopping, he would change the subject. When the driver finally stopped at an intersection, Johns jumped out with her daughter and hid in a field. The driver searched for her using his flashlight telling her that he would not hurt her, before eventually giving up. Unable to find her, he got back into the car and drove off. Johns hitched a ride to the police station in Patterson.[8]

When Johns gave her statement to the sergeant on duty, she noticed the police composite sketch of Paul Stine's killer and recognized him as the man who abducted her and her child.[33] Fearing he might come back and kill them all, the sergeant had Johns wait, in the dark, at the nearby Mil's Restaurant. When her car was found, it had been gutted and torched.[33]

Most accounts say he threatened to kill her and her daughter while driving them around,[34] but at least one police report disputes that.[8] Johns' account to Paul Avery of the Chronicle indicates her abductor left his car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight;[35] however, in one report she made to the police, she stated he did not leave the vehicle.

Further Zodiac communications
Zodiac continued to communicate with authorities for the remainder of 1970 via letters and greeting cards to the press. In a letter postmarked April 20, 1970, the Zodiac wrote, "My name is _____," followed by a 13-character cipher.[36] The Zodiac went on to state that he was not responsible for the recent bombing of a police station in San Francisco (referring to the February 18, 1970, death of Sgt. Brian McDonnell two days after the bombing at Park Station in Golden Gate Park)[37] but added "there is more glory to killing a cop than a cid [sic] because a cop can shoot back." The letter included a diagram of a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would use to blow up a school bus. At the bottom of the diagram, he wrote: "Zodiac Killer symbol.svg = 10, SFPD = 0."[36]

Zodiac sent a greeting card postmarked April 28, 1970, to the Chronicle. Written on the card was, "I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my BLAST," followed by the Zodiac's cross circle signature. On the back of the card, the Zodiac threatened to use the bus bomb soon unless the newspaper published the full details he wrote. He also wanted to start seeing people wearing "some nice Zodiac butons [sic]."[38]

In a letter postmarked June 26, 1970, the Zodiac stated he was upset that he did not see people wearing Zodiac buttons. He wrote, "I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38."[39] The Zodiac was possibly referring to the murder of Sgt. Richard Radetich, a week earlier, on June 19. At 5:25 am, Radetich was writing a parking ticket in his squad car when an assailant shot him in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. Radetich died 15 hours later. SFPD denies the Zodiac was involved in this murder; it remains unsolved.[37]

Included with the letter was a Phillips 66 roadmap of the San Francisco Bay Area. On the image of Mount Diablo, the Zodiac had drawn a crossed-circle similar to the ones he had included in previous correspondence. At the top of the crossed circle, he placed a zero, and then a three, six, and a nine. The accompanying instructions stated that the zero was "to be set to Mag. N."[40] The letter also included a 32-letter cipher that the killer claimed would, in conjunction with the code, lead to the location of a bomb he had buried and set to go off in the fall. The cipher was never decoded, and the alleged bomb was never located. The killer signed the note with "Zodiac Killer symbol.svg = 12, SFPD = 0."

In a letter to the Chronicle postmarked July 24, 1970, the Zodiac took credit for Kathleen Johns' abduction, four months after the incident.[41] In a July 26, 1970 letter, the Zodiac paraphrased a song from The Mikado, adding his own lyrics about making a "little list" of the ways he planned to torture his "slaves" in "paradice". The letter was signed with a large, exaggerated cross circle symbol and a new score: "Zodiac Killer symbol.svg = 13, SFPD = 0".[42] A final note at the bottom of the letter stated, "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians."[43] In 1981, a close examination of the radian hint by Zodiac researcher Gareth Penn led to the discovery that a radian angle, when placed over the map per Zodiac's instructions, pointed to the locations of two Zodiac attacks.[44]

On October 7, 1970, the Chronicle received a three-by-five inch card signed by the Zodiac with the Zodiac Killer symbol.svg and a small cross reportedly drawn with blood. The card's message was formed by pasting words and letters from an edition of the Chronicle, and thirteen holes were punched across the card. Inspectors Armstrong and Toschi agreed it was "highly probable" the card came from the Zodiac.

I'll give it a try.

Zodiac Killer VI

Zodiac letter to Paul Avery
On October 27, 1970, Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (who had been covering the Zodiac case) received a Halloween card signed with a letter 'Z' and the Zodiac's cross circle symbol. Handwritten on the card was the note "Peek-a-boo, you are doomed." The threat was taken seriously and received a front-page story on the Chronicle.[6] Soon after receiving this letter, Avery received an anonymous letter alerting him to the similarities between the Zodiac's activities and the unsolved murder of Cheri Jo Bates, which had occurred four years earlier at the city college in Riverside in the Greater Los Angeles Area, more than 400 miles south of San Francisco.[46] He reported his findings in the Chronicle on November 16, 1970.

Riverside attack Edit
On October 30, 1966, 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates, a student of Riverside Community College, spent the evening at the campus library annex until it closed at 9:00 p.m. Neighbors reported hearing a scream around 10:30 p.m. Bates was found dead the next morning, a short distance from the library, between two abandoned houses slated to be demolished for campus renovations. The wires in her Volkswagen's distributor cap had been pulled out. She was brutally beaten and stabbed to death. A man's Timex watch with a torn wristband was found nearby.[47] The watch had stopped at 12:24,[48] but police believe the attack occurred much earlier.
A month later, on November 29, 1966, nearly identical typewritten letters were mailed to the Riverside police and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, titled "The Confession". The author claimed responsibility for the Bates murder, providing details of the crime that were not released to the public. The author warned that Bates "is not the first and she will not be the last."[49] In December 1966, a poem was discovered carved into the bottom side of a desktop in the Riverside City College library. Titled "Sick of living/unwilling to die", the poem's language and handwriting resembled that of the Zodiac's letters. It was signed with what were assumed to be the initials rh. During the 1970 investigation, Sherwood Morrill, California's top "Questioned Documents" examiner, expressed his opinion that the poem was written by the Zodiac.[50]

On April 30, 1967, exactly six months after the Bates murder, Bates' father Joseph, the Press-Enterprise, and the Riverside police all received nearly identical letters: in a handwritten scrawl the Press-Enterprise and police copies read "Bates had to die there will be more", with a small scribble at the bottom that resembled the letter Z. Joseph Bates' copy read "She had to die there will be more", this time without the Z signature.[51]

On March 13, 1971, five months after Avery's article linking the Zodiac to the Riverside murder, the Zodiac mailed a letter to the Los Angeles Times. In the letter he credited the police, instead of Avery, for discovering his "Riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there."[52]

The connection between Cheri Jo Bates, Riverside and the Zodiac remains uncertain. Paul Avery and the Riverside Police Department maintain that the Bates homicide was not committed by the Zodiac, but did concede some of the Bates letters may have been his work to claim credit falsely.
Lake Tahoe disappearance
On March 22, 1971, a postcard to the Chronicle, addressed to "Paul Averly" and believed to be from the Zodiac, appeared to claim responsibility for the disappearance of Donna Lass on September 6, 1970.[7] Made from a collage of advertisements and magazine lettering, it featured a scene from an advertisement for Forest Pines condominiums and the text "Sierra Club", "Sought Victim 12",[54] "peek through the pines", "pass Lake Tahoe areas", and "around in the snow". Zodiac's cross circle symbol was in both the place of the usual return address and the lower right section of the front face of the postcard.[55]

Lass was a nurse at the Sahara Tahoe hotel and casino. She worked until about 2:00 a.m. on September 6, 1970, treating her last patient at 1:40 a.m. Later that same day, both Lass's employer and her landlord received phone calls from an unknown male falsely claiming Lass had left town due to a family emergency.[56] Lass was never found. What appeared to be a grave site was discovered near the Clair Tappaan Lodge in Norden, California, on Sierra Club property, but an excavation yielded only a pair of sunglasses.[citation needed] No evidence has been uncovered to connect the Lass disappearance with the Zodiac Killer definitively.

Santa Barbara attack Edit
In a Vallejo Times-Herald story appearing on November 13, 1972,[57] Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office Bill Baker (ret.) postulated that the murders of a young couple in northern Santa Barbara County might have been the work of the Zodiac Killer. On June 4, 1963, high school senior Robert Domingos and fiancée Linda Edwards were shot dead on a beach near Lompoc, having skipped school that day for "Senior Ditch Day". Police believed that the assailant attempted to bind the victims, but when they freed themselves and attempted to flee, the killer shot them repeatedly in the back and chest with a .22-caliber weapon. The killer then placed their bodies in a small shack and then tried, unsuccessfully, to burn the structure to the ground.


Final Zodiac letter
After the "Pines" card, the Zodiac remained silent for nearly three years. The Chronicle then received a letter from the Zodiac, postmarked January 29, 1974, praising The Exorcist as "the best saterical comidy [sic] that I have ever seen". The letter included a snippet of verse from The Mikado and an unusual symbol at the bottom that has remained unexplained by researchers. Zodiac concluded the letter with a new score, "Me = 37, SFPD = 0".[59]

Later letters of suspicious authorship Edit
Of further communications sent by the public to members of the news media, some contained similar characteristics of previous Zodiac writings. The Chronicle received a letter postmarked February 14, 1974, informing the editor that the initials for the Symbionese Liberation Army spelled out an Old Norse word meaning "kill".[60] However, the handwriting was not authenticated as the Zodiac's.[61]

A letter to the Chronicle, postmarked May 8, 1974, featured a complaint that the movie Badlands was "murder-glorification" and asked the paper to cut its advertisements. Signed only "A citizen", the handwriting, tone, and surface irony were all similar to earlier Zodiac communications.[62] The Chronicle subsequently received an anonymous letter postmarked July 8, 1974, complaining of their publishing the writings of the antifeminist columnist Marco Spinelli. The letter was signed "the Red Phantom (red with rage)". The Zodiac's authorship of this letter is debated.[63]

A letter, dated April 24, 1978, was initially deemed authentic, but was declared a hoax less than three months later by three experts. Dave Toschi, the SFPD homicide detective who had worked the case since the Stine murder, was thought to have forged the letter, because author Armistead Maupin believed the letter to be similar to "fan mail" he received in 1976 which he believed was authored by Toschi. While he admitted to writing the fan mail, Toschi denied forging the Zodiac letter and was eventually cleared of any charges. The authenticity of this letter remains unverified.

On March 3, 2007, an American Greetings Christmas card sent to the Chronicle, postmarked 1990 in Eureka had recently been discovered in their photo files by editorial assistant Daniel King.[64] Inside the envelope, with the card, was a photocopy of two U.S. Postal keys on a magnet keychain. The handwriting on the envelope resembles Zodiac's print, but was declared inauthentic by forensic document examiner Lloyd Cunningham. However, not all Zodiac experts agree with Cunningham's analysis.[65] There is no return address on the envelope nor is his crossed-circle signature to be found. The card itself is unmarked. The Chronicle turned over all the material to the Vallejo Police Department for further analysis.

Zodiac Killer VII

Arthur Leigh Allen

Robert Graysmith's book Zodiac advanced Arthur Leigh Allen as a potential suspect based on circumstantial evidence. Allen had been interviewed by police from the early days of the Zodiac investigations and was the subject of several search warrants over a 20 year period. In 2007 Graysmith noted that several police detectives described Allen as the most likely suspect.[66] However, in 2010, Toschi stated that all the evidence against Allen ultimately "turned out to be negative.”[67]

On October 6, 1969, Allen was interviewed by detective John Lynch of the Vallejo Police Department. Allen had been reported in the vicinity of the Lake Beryessa attack against Hartnell and Shepard on September 27, 1969; he described himself scuba diving at Salt Point on the day of the attacks.[68] Allen again came to police attention in 1971 when his friend Donald Cheney reported to police in Manhattan Beach, California that Allen had spoken of his desire to kill people, use the name Zodiac, and secure a flashlight to a firearm for visibility at night. According to Cheney, this conversation occurred no later than January 1, 1969.[69] Jack Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department subsequently wrote Allen had received an other than honorable discharge from the US Navy in 1958, and had been fired from his job as an elementary school teacher in March 1968 after allegations of sexual misconduct with students. He was generally well-regarded by those who knew him, but was also described as fixated on young children, angry at women and apparently never had a girlfriend or wife.[70] In September 1972, San Francisco police obtained a search warrant for Allen's residence.[71] In 1974 Allen was arrested for committing lewd sex acts upon a 12 year old boy;[72] he pleaded guilty and served two years imprisonment.

Vallejo police served another search warrant at Allen's residence in February, 1991.[73] Two days after Allen's death in 1992, Vallejo police served another warrant and seized property from Allen's residence.[74]

Other evidence against Allen included: A letter sent to the Riverside Police Department from Bates' killer was typed with a Royal typewriter with an Elite type, the same brand found during the February 1991 search of Allen's residence. He owned and wore a Zodiac brand wristwatch. Allen lived in Vallejo and worked minutes away from where one of the first victims (Ferrin) lived and where one of the killings took place.[75]

In 2002, SFPD developed a partial DNA profile from the saliva on stamps and envelopes of Zodiac's letters. SFPD compared this partial DNA to the DNA of Arthur Leigh Allen.[76][77] A DNA comparison was also made with the DNA of Don Cheney, who was Allen's former close friend and the first person to suggest Allen may be the Zodiac Killer. Since neither test result indicated a match, Allen and Cheney were excluded as the contributors of the DNA, though it cannot be stated definitively that it is DNA from the Zodiac on the envelopes.[78]

Retired police handwriting expert Lloyd Cunningham, who worked the Zodiac case for decades, added "they gave me banana boxes full of Allen's writing, and none of his writing even came close to the Zodiac. Nor did DNA extracted from the envelopes (on the Zodiac letters) come close to Arthur Leigh Allen."[79] Note that while police often use document examiners during investigations, court rulings on the scientific validity of handwriting analysis have been mixed to negative.

In April 2004, the SFPD marked the case "inactive", citing caseload pressure and resource demands, effectively closing the case.[81][82] However, they re-opened their case sometime before March 2007.[3][83]

The case is open in Napa County[84] and in the city of Riverside.
In 2007, a man named Dennis Kaufman claimed that his stepfather Jack Tarrance was the Zodiac.[86] Kaufman turned several items over to the FBI including a hood similar to the one worn by the Zodiac. According to news sources, DNA analysis conducted by the FBI on the items was deemed inconclusive in 2010.[87]

In 2009, a lawyer named Robert Tarbox (who, in August 1975, was disbarred by the California Supreme Court for failure to pay some clients)[88][89] said that in the early 1970s a merchant mariner walked into his office and confessed to him that he was the Zodiac Killer. The seemingly lucid seaman (whose name Tarbox would not reveal due to confidentiality) described his crimes briefly but persuasively enough to convince Tarbox. The man said he was trying to stop himself from his "opportunistic" murder spree but never returned to see Tarbox again. Tarbox took out a full-page ad in the Vallejo Times-Herald that he claimed would clear the name of Arthur Leigh Allen as a killer, his only reason for revealing the story thirty years after the fact. Robert Graysmith, the author of several books on Zodiac, said Tarbox's story was "entirely plausible".

In 2009, an episode of the History Channel television series MysteryQuest looked at newspaper editor Richard Gaikowski (1936–2004). During the time of the murders, Gaikowski worked for Good Times, a San Francisco counterculture newspaper. His appearance resembles the composite sketch, and Nancy Slover, the Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac shortly after the Blue Rock Springs Attack, has identified a recording of Gaikowski's voice as being the same as the Zodiac's.[90]

Retired police detective Steve Hodel argues in his book The Black Dahlia Avenger[91] that his father, George Hill Hodel, Jr., was the Black Dahlia killer whose victims include Elizabeth Short. The book led to the release of previously suppressed files and wire recordings by the Los Angeles district attorney's office of his father which showed that he was a prime suspect in Short's murder. District Attorney Steve Kaye, subsequently wrote a letter which is published in the revised edition stating that if George Hodel were still alive he would be prosecuted for the crimes.[92] In a follow up book, Hodel argued a circumstantial case that his father was also the Zodiac Killer based upon a police sketch, the similarity of the style of the Zodiac letters to the Black Dahlia Avenger letters and questioned document examination.[93]

On February 19, 2011, America's Most Wanted featured a story about the Zodiac Killer. A picture has recently surfaced of known Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin and a man who closely resembles the composite sketch, formed based on eyewitness' descriptions, of the Zodiac Killer. Police believe the photo was taken in San Francisco in the middle of 1966 or 1967. Police hope someone can identify the man in the photo.[94]

Former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty said the Zodiac killer was a 91-year-old Solano County, California man whom he called by the pseudonym "George Russell Tucker".[95] Using a group of retired law enforcement officers called the Mandamus Seven, Lafferty discovered "Tucker" and a cover-up for why he was not pursued.[96] "Tucker" died in February 2012 and was not named because he was not considered a suspect by police.[97]

In February 2014, it was reported that a man named Louis Joseph Myers had confessed to a friend in 2001 that he was the Zodiac Killer, after learning that he was dying from cirrhosis of the liver. He requested that his friend, Randy Kenney, go to the police upon his death. Myers died in 2002, but Kenney allegedly had difficulties getting officers to cooperate and take the claims seriously. There are several potential connections between Myers and the Zodiac case. Myers attended the same high schools as victims David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Myers also allegedly worked in the same restaurant as victim Darlene Ferrin. Myers also had access to the same sort of military boot whose print was found at the Lake Berryessa crime scene. Furthermore, during the 1971–1973 period when no Zodiac letters were received, Myers was stationed overseas with the military. Kenney says that Myers confessed he targeted couples because he had had a bad breakup with a girlfriend. While officers associated with the case are skeptical, they believe the story is credible enough to investigate.[98]

In May 2014, a book written by Gary Stewart titled, The Most Dangerous Animal of All: Searching for My Father ... and Finding the Zodiac Killer, was released, claiming his biological father, Earl Van Best, Jr., was the Zodiac Killer, without any confirmed evidence.

In popular culture
The Zodiac Killer's crimes, letters, and cryptograms to police and newspapers inspired many movies, novels, and television productions.

dididnt read everything. But bet it was natives who fuked their chit up.

Disappearance of Brian Shaffer



Brian Shaffer (born February 25, 1979)[1] was a medical student at The Ohio State University. On the night of March 31, 2006, he went out with friends to celebrate the beginning of spring break; later he was separated from them and they assumed he had gone home. However, a security camera near the entrance to a bar recorded him briefly talking to two women just before 2 a.m., April 1, and then apparently re-entering the bar. He has not been seen or heard from since. The case has received national media attention.
Born February 25, 1979
Pickerington, Ohio, US
Disappeared April 1, 2006 (aged 27)
Columbus, Ohio
Status Missing for 11 years, 5 months and 8 days
Citizenship United States
Education B.S., Microbiology
Alma mater The Ohio State University
Occupation Medical student
Height 6 ft 2 in (188 cm)
Weight 170 lb (77 kg)
Parent(s) Randy and Renee

Shaffer's disappearance has been particularly puzzling to investigators since there was no other publicly accessible entrance to the bar at that time. Columbus police have several theories as to what happened;[3] some interest and suspicion has been directed at a friend of Shaffer's who accompanied him that night but has declined to take lie detector tests related to the incident.[4] While foul play has been suspected, including the possible involvement of the purported Smiley Face serial killer,[5] it has also been speculated that he might be alive and living somewhere else.

Shaffer grew up in Pickerington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, the state capital, where The Ohio State University (OSU) is located, the older of Randy and Renee Shaffer's two sons. He graduated from the local high school in 1997 and went to OSU for his undergraduate work. Six years later he graduated with a degree in microbiology.
Following that, he began studies at Ohio State University College of Medicine in 2004. During his second year there, in March 2006, his mother Renee died of myelodysplasia.[7] His friends say that although he appeared to be handling it well, her death was hard for him.[5]

Renee was not the only woman important in Brian's life. He had become romantically involved with a fellow second-year medical student, Alexis Waggoner. She, along with their families and friends, believed that Brian would probably be proposing marriage to her later that year, most likely on a trip to Miami the couple had planned for spring break at the beginning of April.[5]

Tropical locations such as Miami were attractive to Brian; he liked the relaxed lifestyles. He told his friends that despite his decision to pursue a medical career, his real ambition was to start a band playing music in the vein of Jimmy Buffett.

bro, for the zodiac look into ross sullivan. the college connection, poem, what people said, and he looks exactly like what people say the zodiac looks like. the pic is like identical. the widow peak, mouth, eyes, glasses. they say the zodiac was over 210lbs, so was this guy, he was like 250.

but so many years later its prolly impossible to know who really did.

Disappearance of Brian Shaffer II

On March 31, a Friday, classes at OSU ended for spring break the next week. Brian and Randy Shaffer, his father, celebrated the occasion by going out for a steak dinner together earlier that evening. The older man noted that his son seemed exhausted from having pulled all-nighters earlier in the week cramming for some important upcoming exams. He did not think Brian should go out with a friend, William "Clint" Florence, later that night as he planned to do, but did not express his reservations to his son.[5]

At 9 p.m., Brian met Florence at the Ugly Tuna Saloona, a seafood restaurant and bar in the South Campus Gateway complex on High Street. An hour later, Brian called Waggoner, who had returned to her home in Toledo to visit with her family before the two went to Miami, and told her he loved her. He and Florence went bar-hopping, visiting several other drinking establishments and working their way down to the Arena District. At each stop the two had one shot each of hard liquor, according to Florence.

After midnight, the two met Meredith Reed, a friend of Florence's, in The Short North. She gave them a ride back to the Ugly Tuna Saloona, where they had started the night, and joined them there for a last round.[5] While the three were there, Brian separated from his companions. Florence and Reed had been trying to find him, repeatedly calling him. They left with other patrons when the bar closed at 2 a.m., waiting outside for Brian. When he was not among the departing crowd, they assumed he had gone back to his apartment without letting them know.[3]

Waggoner and Randy Shaffer both tried to call Brian later that weekend but he did not answer. On Monday morning he missed the flight to Miami he and Waggoner had scheduled long before. He was reported missing to the Columbus police.
Police began their search for Brian at the Ugly Tuna, the bar where he had last been seen. Since the area around South Campus Gateway was somewhat blighted, with a high crime rate, the bar had installed security cameras. They reviewed the footage, which showed Brian, Florence and Reed going up an escalator to the bar's main entrance at 1:15 a.m. Brian was seen outside of the bar around 1:55 a.m., talking briefly with two young women and saying goodbye, then moving off-camera in the direction of the bar, apparently to re-enter. The camera did not record him leaving shortly afterwards when the Ugly Tuna closed; that was the last time he was seen.[5]

It was possible, investigators realized, that he could have changed his clothes in the bar or put on a hat and kept his head down, hiding his face from the camera. The cameras might also have missed him—one panned across the area constantly, and the other was operated manually. He might have also left the building by another route. However, the building's only other exit, a service door not generally used by the public, opened at the time onto a construction site that officers believed would have been difficult to walk through while sober, much less intoxicated, as Brian likely was at the time.[5]

Since Columbus has the most security cameras of any city in Ohio, more than Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo combined, officers next looked to the footage from other bars to see if cameras there could explain how Brian had left the Ugly Tuna. However, footage from cameras at three other nearby bars showed no trace of Brian.[7]

The search began to fan out from the Ugly Tuna, with officers, sometimes accompanied by police dogs, looking closely in the street, inspecting dumpsters and other waste containers and asking residents if they had seen him. Flyers of Brian's picture, showing a tattoo on his upper right arm of a stick figure logo from the cover artwork for the single of "Alive"[7] by Pearl Jam, one of his favorite bands, and noting a distinctive fleck in one of his irises, were posted widely. The police even persuaded the city to let them into the sewer system and search there.[5]

No useful information was uncovered. At Brian's apartment on King Avenue six blocks from the Ugly Tuna, his car was still parked outside. Inside, nothing appeared amiss.[5]

After searching miles away from the bar in every direction, police began to consider other possibilities besides an accident or foul play. Since his mother had recently died, it was speculated he had gone away temporarily to grieve in solitude. Yet, his disappearance proved permanent. No evident reasons appeared for him voluntarily disappearing.[5]

Those who had seen Brian that evening, including his father, were asked to take lie detector tests. Reed and Randy Shaffer passed theirs, as did reportedly all the others, while Florence refused. The two women Brian had last been seen talking to were later identified; they said in 2009 that they had never been asked to take one themselves.[4]

Waggoner called Brian's phone every evening before going to bed for a long time after the disappearance. Usually it went to voicemail, but one night in September it actually rang three times. "I kept calling it to hear it purely because it was one of the best sounds I have ever heard, even if no one picked up", she wrote on her MySpace page. Cingular, Brian's wireless provider, said it might have been a glitch that caused a different phone to ring. His phone was not GPS-enabled so its location could not be determined.[8] A ping from the phone was detected at a cell tower in Hilliard, 14 miles (23 km) northwest of Columbus.[7]

The police received many tips, none of which resulted in any breakthroughs in the case. At a Pearl Jam concert later that year in Cincinnati, lead singer Eddie Vedder took time between songs to ask for tips in Brian's disappearance, but none of those were useful either. Possible sightings in Michigan, Texas and even Sweden were investigated.[5]

Randy Shaffer, who had recently suffered the death of his wife, continued the search for his son on his own. A psychic he consulted told him Brian's body was in water near a bridge pier. He and Derek, Brian's brother, along with some other citizens who had become interested in the case, bought waders and spent much of their free time along the shores of the Olentangy River, which flows through Columbus adjacent to the OSU campus, searching in vain for the body near bridges.[5]

This possibility also led police to briefly consider the heavily disputed Smiley face murder theory. Brian Shaffer, under this theory, would be the killer's only victim whose body had not yet been found. Columbus police eventually rejected any connection to the alleged killer in Brian's case, following the lead of most law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that have looked into it.

In September 2008, during a heavy windstorm in Central Ohio, Randy Shaffer was out in the yard of his Baltimore home clearing debris. A branch blew off from a nearby tree and fatally struck him. Neighbors found his body the next morning and called police.[9]

After his obituary ran online, a condolence book was posted. One of the signatures in it said "To Dad, love Brian (U.S. Virgin Islands)". This suggested Brian might have left Columbus for a new life elsewhere.[6] However, upon further investigation, the note was found to have been posted from a computer accessible to the public in Franklin County; it was determined to be a hoax.[5]
Shortly after Randy Shaffer's death, Neil Rosenberg, attorney for Florence, wrote to Don Corbett, a private investigator who has volunteered his time to help the Shaffer family find Brian, regarding his client's ongoing refusal to take a lie detector test. Rosenberg intimated that he had learned that the Columbus police investigating the case believed Brian was alive.[4]

In April 2009, The Lantern, Ohio State's student newspaper, disclosed the exchange. "If Brian is alive, which is what I'm led to believe after speaking with the detective involved, then it is Brian, and not Clint who is causing his family pain and hardship," Rosenberg wrote. "Brian should come forward and end this." Florence, he said, did not have anything to hide, he had merely told everything he knew from the beginning and did not see the value of doing so again.[4]

Rosenberg's assertions notwithstanding, many of those who were close to Brian have criticized Florence for not being forthcoming enough. "As soon as the detective started getting involved, that's when he pretty much had no contact with anybody," recalled Derek Shaffer, Brian's brother and last surviving immediate family member. "I've always thought he definitely knows something–just won't come forward with it." He believes it is still possible that Brian is alive, and Florence knows where he might have gone. Shaffer’s girlfriend at the time, Alexis Waggoner, also thinks Florence is withholding information. However, she believes it's likely that her former boyfriend is dead. "I can't imagine he would have just done that."[4]

In 2014, the Columbus police said they were still receiving at least two tips a month on the case via the local Crime Stoppers hotline, though none had proven useful. The evidence in the case filled four boxes of files. One of the original investigators, Andre Edwards, told Columbus Monthly that after extensive review of the camera footage at the Ugly Tuna from the night Brian disappeared, he could "say with 100-percent certainty" that Brian did not leave via the escalator. Police say they have three theories of the case but declined to discuss them even generally with the magazine.

It wasn't. This is another one of those Elisa Lam type cases that's solved and not a mystery, yet people won't stop talking about it.

They got lost, one of them got injured, and eventually they both died from exposure. It's still a really creepy, sad case though considering how long they were alive after going missing and their proximity to the search crews.

Zodiac Killer Bonus:

Ross Sullivan, Zodiac Suspect Quick Study-
This is done to save you from sorting thru 100+ pages (although I recommend you do that). I will be updating it over the next few days until it’s complete.This will be a locked thread, not meant for replies, but instead, it's just introducing people to Ross.

On October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo Bates is murdered in Riverside, CA. outside of the Riverside College Library.

30 Days later, a typed ‘confession letter’ was mailed by somebody claiming to be her Killer.


2 Months later, a morbid poem etched on a desk in the library was found by a Custodian. Finding it so creepy and morbid, it was turned over to the Riverside PD in case it was connected to the Bates case.

6 Months after the murder, anonymous handwritten letters stating, “Bates had to die”, were mailed to the newspaper, the police, and to Cheri’s Father.

Police scoured the Library, the college, students, and staff, not to mention people in Cheri’s life. They came up with a Suspect that they think killed Cheri, but did not have evidence to charge him. (48 years later, despite crime scene DNA not matching him, they still suspect him)

Fast-Forward to 1970. The Zodiac Murders are making headlines in San Francisco, 6 hours north of Riverside. A story on the threat by zodiac against SF Chronicle reporter, Paul Avery, makes the papers in the Riverside area. A man named Phil Sins reaches out to Paul Avery, and lets him know that the Bates case may be the work of Zodiac due to the similarities in the letter writing in her case compared to the Zodiac case. Avery headed down to Riverside and met with police, and after being allowed to discuss the case and see the evidence, came away thinking Zodiac really may be responsible. Avery was allowed to actually take the letters north to have them examined by Sherwood Morrill. Morrill was head of questioned documents for the CA DOJ, and was the lead Guy in examining all of the Zodiac case letters, and documents. Morrill determined that the Bates case letters, and the desktop poem, were “unquestionably” the work of Zodiac.


The connection made news in the SF Bay area, and Zodiac went silent for months before finally breaking his silence. Zodiac wrote a letter stating that he had to give the police credit for stumbling across his "Riverside Activity", and that "they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there".

This was a major clue because if Morrill was right, the Zodiac Killer had lived or worked in Riverside, CA between 1966 & 1967. This would dramatically shrink the Suspect pool, and finding somebody that had been connected to Riverside, and specifically to the library where the desk was found would be important. Additionally, police had a potential major lead to aide their Riverside search. Zodiac had been witnessed by multiple people, including a Police officer, following his murder of Cabbie, Paul Stine in October, 1969. The Police officer described great details of Zodiac, right down to a specific 'widow's peak' hairline. As a result, a sketch was made of the Zodiac. So, in addition the Riverside connection and writing link, they had a face to work with.



The RCC Library Staff picks their best Suspect in the Bates case-

Dave Peterson of the Vallejo Times Herald, was an expert on the Zodiac case. Wanting to follow up on the Riverside clue, he contacted the Riverside College Library staff to see if they had anything to offer, and as it turns out they did...a Suspect, Ross Sullivan, and he worked right in the Library. I think this happened in the 1970's.

The Library staff immediately suspected Ross of being involved in Cheri Jo Bate's murder. Ross was very odd acting, strange, and creepy. He had written a morbid poem which made the staff uncomfortable. The Librarians stated that the day after Cheri's murder, Ross did not show up, and was out for several days. This made them even more suspicious. Ross Sullivan, in the middle of 1967, transferred to northern CA to go to college in Santa Cruz.

Dave Peterson did some digging into Ross, and found an arrest for him in Feb,1968 in Santa Cruz.

In the mid to late 1970's, Peterson contacted SFPD Inspector, Dave Toschi who was in charge of the Zodiac investigation there, and asked him to look into Ross Sullivan.


Peterson had knowledge of Ross Sullivan's February,1968 arrest in Santa Cruz,as seen here:



It is not known at this time just how much Ross was checked into by Police, or if his Prints were ever compared to Zodiac's.
In the 1990's, Zodiac researcher Howard Davis contacted both Dave Peterson, and the RCC Librarian who had told Peterson about Ross Sullivan. He did some digging, but not much came from it, and Ross as a Suspect got set pushed aside, and essentially forgotten.

About 2 years ago, I did some 'house cleaning' sorting thru every bit of Suspect info I had in the Zodiac case. I was determined to try and check and clear as many names as possible. I went back thru the list and found Ross Sullivan's name. I was familiar with it, but I too had overlooked it. I determined Ross Sullivan died in Santa Cruz in 1977.


After a bit more digging, I determined that Ross had gone to Glendale High School, class of 59 in Glendale CA. One of the members of this site found the yearbook photos, and when I finally laid eyes on Ross, I was speechless. He was the closest match i had ever seen to the Zodiac sketch, right down to the very specific widow's peak hairline described in detail by the police Officer that saw Zodiac.
Image

This started a mission to find out as much as possible about Ross Sullivan, and to see if he could be the Zodiac. So far, all we knew was he was connected to the RCC Library, and looked remarkably like the Zodiac sketch. To this point, there had never been a suspect that could be positively placed in the RCC Library, and the fact he looked exactly like the sketch seemed very promising.

The search for info on Ross Sullivan-

Next to nothing was known at this point about Ross Sullivan at this point. There was practically nothing on the net about him, and he had been dead for over 35 years. Posts were made on various Zodiac related sites, and luckily, a man that had attended High school with Ross's Brother, Tim, came forward. This Man was able to provide us with very detailed information about Ross, and it all checked out, and what we found certainly caught our attention.

It turned out that Ross's Brother Tim, married a Girl named Bonnie. Bonnie was good Friends with possible 1966 Riverside Zodiac Victim, Cheri Jo Bates. It was also learned, that allegedly, Ross's Brother Tim, believed that Ross was the Zodiac Killer. No other details about Tim's beliefs is available, and Tim is now deceased so we can't ask him.

We verified that Ross was a paranoid schizophrenic who had been in mental institutions at various times. In 1973, a mental conservatorship was put in place for Ross in Santa Cruz. This meant that due to his mental illness, Ross could no longer take care of himself. Ross died of natural causes in 1977 in Santa Cruz, CA.

Much more information is needed regarding Ross, which we are trying to find. The Zodiac Killer killed Victims in Vallejo, Napa, And San Francisco, CA from December, 1968 to October, 1969. Additionally, he mailed letters to newspapers from August 1969 until July, 1974. All of these letters were postmarked in the SF or Alameda County areas. It's important to note, Zodiac wrote letters on a fairly regular basis from August 1969 until March, 1971. His letters then stopped without warning until his next letter was received in January, 1974.

Verified links to the areas of Vallejo, Napa, or San Francisco will likely be important in linking Ross to the Zodiac case. Additionally, verifying Hospital stays, etc may also be of help, especially any that may have kept him from writing letters between March, 1971 and January, 1974

Strong avi to post content, OP. You sure you're not a serial killer?

The ice box murders

Where and when: Houston, in June 1965.

What: Fred and Edwina Rodgers, 81 and 79, respectively, were murdered and then placed in their refrigerator on Father’s Day, 1965.

Why is it so creepy? Fred and Edwina had actually been killed one week prior to being placed in their “ice box.” Edwina had been beaten and shot, and Fred had his head crushed and his organs flushed down the toilet in their home. Their son Charles, 43, is the main suspect in the case, but he disappeared after the act and is not directly linked to the murders as a result.

June 23, 1965: Houston patrolmen asked to check up on an elderly couple find a house on Driscoll Street empty. But almost as an after thought, they check the kitchen.

“Opened up a refrigerator and seen nothing but meat stacked in it. My partner standing next to me made the comment that it looked like somebody had butchered a hog,” Charles Bullock said. “We didn’t know it was a body until we got ready to close the refrigerator and we could see the head down in the bottom of the vegetable bin.”

Two bodies in the icebox — 81-year-old Fred Rogers and his 79-year-old wife, Edwina. But the third resident of the house, their 43-year-old son Charles Rogers (then and now the only suspect) was gone.

“I’ve never been able to understand how someone could commit an act like this and then disappear off the face of the earth,” Houston investigator Hugh Gardenier said.

lol nah couldn't even dream of it just interesting stuff true crime.

Edmund Kemper

Serial killer Edmund Kemper murdered six young women in the Santa Cruz, California, area and several members of his family.

Born on December 18, 1948, in Burbank, California, Edmund Kemper, at age 15, killed both his grandparents to "see what it felt like." Upon release, he drifted, picking up and releasing female hitchhikers. But he soon stopped letting them go, killing six young women in the Santa Cruz, California, area in the 1970s. In 1973 he killed his mother and her friend before turning himself in.

Troubled Childhood

Edmund Kemper was born on December 18, 1948, in Burbank, California, the middle child of E. E. and Clarnell Kemper. After his parents’ divorce in 1957, he moved with his mother and two sisters to Montana. Kemper had a difficult relationship with his alcoholic mother, as she was very critical of him, and he blamed her for all of his problems. When he was 10 years old, she forced him to live in the basement, away from his sisters, whom she feared he might harm in some way.

Signs of trouble began to emerge early. Kemper had a dark fantasy life, sometimes dreaming about killing his mother. He cut off the heads of his sisters' dolls and even coerced the girls into playing a game he called "gas chamber," in which he had them blindfold him and lead him to a chair, where he pretended to writhe in agony until he "died." His first victims were the family cats. At ten he, buried one of them alive and the second, 13 year-old Kemper slaughtered with a knife. He went to live with his father for a time, but ended up back with his mother, who decided to send the troubled teenager to live with his paternal grandparents in North Fork, California.
Grandparents' Murder

Kemper hated living on his grandparents' farm. Before going to North Fork, he had already begun learning about firearms, but his grandparents took away his rifle after he killed several birds and other small animals. On August 27, 1964, Kemper finally turned his building rage on his grandparents. The 15-year-old shot his grandmother in the kitchen after an argument, and when his grandfather returned home, Kemper went outside and shot him by his car and then hid the body.

Afterward, he called his mother, who told him to call the police and tell them what happened. Later, Kemper would say that he shot his grandmother "to see what it felt like." He added that he had killed his grandfather so that the man wouldn't have to find out that his wife had been murdered. For his crimes, Kemper was handed over to the California Youth Authority. He underwent a variety of tests, which determined that he had a very high IQ, but also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Kemper was eventually sent to Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security facility for mentally ill convicts.

Release

In 1969, Kemper was released at the age of 21. Despite his prison doctors' recommendation that he not live with his mother, because of her past abuse and his psychological issues involving her, he rejoined her in Santa Cruz, California, where she had moved after ending her third marriage to take a job with the University of California. While there, Kemper attended community college for a time and worked a variety of jobs, eventually finding employment with the Department of Transportation in 1971.

Kemper had applied to become a state trooper, but he was rejected because of his size—he weighed around 300 pounds and was 6 feet 9 inches tall, which led to his nickname “Big Ed.” However, he did hang around some of the Santa Cruz police officers. One gave him a training-school badge and handcuffs, while another let him borrow a gun, according to Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman. Kemper even had a car that resembled a police cruiser.

The same year he began working for the highway department, Kemper was hit by a car while out on his motorcycle. His arm was badly injured, and he received a $15,000 settlement in the civil suit he filed against the car’s driver. Unable to work, Kemper turned his mind toward other pursuits. He noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking in the area. In the new car he bought with some of his settlement money, Kemper began storing the tools he thought he might need to fulfill his murderous desires, including a gun, a knife and handcuffs.

Edmund Kemper II

The Co-ed Killer

At first, Kemper picked up female hitchhikers and let them go. However, when he offered a ride to two Fresno State students—Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa—they would never make it to their destination. Their families reported them missing soon thereafter, but nothing would be known of their fates until August 15, when a female head was discovered in the woods near Santa Cruz and was later identified as Pesce’s. Luchessa’s remains, however, were never found. Kemper would later explain that he stabbed and strangled Pesce before stabbing Luchessa as well. After the murders, he brought the bodies back to his apartment and removed their heads and hands. Kemper also reportedly engaged in sexual activity with their corpses.

Later that year, on September 14, 1972, Kemper picked up 15 year-old Aiko Koo, who had decided to hitchhike rather than wait for the bus to take her to a dance class. She would meet the same fate as Pesce and Luchessa.

In January 1973, Kemper continued to act on his murderous impulses, picking up hitchhiker Cindy Schall, whom he shot and killed. While his mother was out, Kemper went to her home and hid Schall’s body in his room. He dismembered her corpse there the following day and threw the parts into the ocean. Several parts were later discovered when they washed up on shore. He buried her head in his mother's backyard.

On February 5, 1973, Kemper used a campus parking sticker his mother had given him to facilitate a double-murder. He drove to the university, where he offered a ride to two students, Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu. Shortly after picking them up, he shot the two young women then drove past the campus security at the gates with the two mortally wounded women in his car. After the murders, Kemper decapitated his two victims and further dismembered the bodies, removed the bullets from their heads and disposed of their parts in different locations. In March, some of Thorpe’s and Liu’s remains were discovered by hikers near Highway 1 in San Mateo County.

At the time of Kemper's murders, two other serial killers, John Linley Frazier and Herbert Mullins, were also perpetrating their own crimes in the area, resulting in Santa Cruz receiving the ignominious nickname the “Murder Capital of the World” in the press. For Kemper's part, he was dubbed the “Co-ed Killer” and the “Co-ed Butcher.”

Mother's Murder

In April 1973, Kemper committed what would be his last two murders. On Good Friday, he went to his mother’s home, where the two had an unpleasant exchange. Kemper attacked his mother after she went to sleep, first striking her in the head with a hammer, and then cutting her throat with a knife. As he had with his other victims, he then decapitated her and cut off her hands, but then also removed her larynx and put it down the garbage disposal.

After hiding his mother's body parts, Kemper called his mother’s, friend Sally Hallett and invited her over to the house. Kemper strangled Hallett shortly after she arrived and hid her body in a closet.

Kemper fled the area the next day, driving east until he reached Pueblo, Colorado, where on April 23 he made a call to the Santa Cruz police to confess his crimes. At first, they did not believe that the guy they knew as “Big Ed” was a killer. But during subsequent interrogations he would lead them to all the evidence they needed to prove that he was in fact the infamous "Co-ed Killer."

Trial and Imprisonment

Charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, Kemper went on trial for his crimes in October 1973. He was found guilty of all of the charges in early November. When asked by the judge what he thought his punishment should be, Kemper said that he should be tortured to death. He instead received eight concurrent life sentences. At present, Kemper is serving his time at California Medical Facility in Vacaville.