There will be killing ’till the score is paid.

—Homer, The Odyssey

Thus far, we have discussed mass and spree killers of the type whose smoldering anger and resentment are ultimately tipped over into acts of explosive, deadly rage. We reviewed cases in which this was impetuous and immediate, and ones in which individuals methodically plotted and then acted, often in horrifying and spectacular ways. The reader may have noted that the killings, while cruel, were generally expeditious, almost invariably carried out with firearms. In such cases, we are left with multiple people robbed of their lives as some egocentric, spiteful point is made by a socially invisible, angry individual who suddenly breaks in upon the public, demanding its undivided attention.

As we move into Categories 15 and 16, we are dealing with spree and mass murderers of an even more vicious and prolific type, who kill multiple people as part of a wider campaign, often with an inhuman degree of cold-bloodedness. While their killings are sometimes slow in nature—for instance, by poison or repeat stabbings—the goal is not to torture victims, which would place a killer at a higher level of the scale. Psychopathy and sheer amorality are typically obvious here, for all to see, and not concealed beneath a superficial layer of charm, as we observed in the case of Sante Kimes.

CATEGORY 15

As we grope for some explanation or motive underlying spree and mass homicides, we sometimes discover that the aim was initially one associated with a lower ranking on the scale, such as jealousy, but, after the object of that more focused rage is dead, the killer's fury burns on in a more generalized way, branching out to affect other people, often including strangers. Some killers ranked here are calculating schemers, simply profiting from their victims, but they murder so frequently and with such indifference to human life that a ranking of Category 14 is insufficient.

In other cases designated to Category 15, the crime is motivated by sheer pleasure or the desire to stir up anarchy, sometimes masquerading as spiritual zealotry. As we discussed in the context of Category 3, this was the case for Charles Manson and several members of his cult. We see, in such types, more than a hint of sour grapes related to their unhappy lots in life. Did Manson want rich and beautiful people killed to stir up Helter Skelter, or was he actually envious of them, having been an abandoned nobody who craved fame, beauty, and power for himself?

Not surprisingly, we almost invariably find that Category 15 killers were maltreated or neglected early in their lives, either from the very start or after some major life event unexpectedly altered their fates. It is not uncommon for these types to have been totally abandoned by parents, sexually exploited, or emotionally or physically abused. Such individuals sometimes feel so cheated by their circumstances that they believe themselves to be entitled to disregard the rights and needs of others, taking whatever they wish from them, without compassion or regard for human life. They display a universalized disdain for humankind and society itself, due to anger at those who hurt them and bitterness toward those to whom life has dealt better hands. In short, as nobody cared about them, they do not care about other people. Since society did not welcome or incorporate them, they do not care about society. They were randomly born into situations in which they were treated cruelly or unfairly, so now, they randomly burst into the lives of those who have been more fortunate, to level the proverbial playing field. Furthermore, rejection by the world makes them feel immune to its rules and moral codes. Manson, for instance, completely redefined right and wrong, the concept of family, the nature of human relationships, and traditional religious beliefs, all in a concerted effort to subvert commonplace society at large.

We see several of these elements in the case of Andrew Cunanan, born in San Diego, California, in August of 1969. He was the youngest of four children born to a Filipino navy man turned stockbroker and his Italian American wife, who suffered from chronic depression. Their marriage was strained, and the young and precociously intelligent Cunanan often took refuge in his bedroom, where he memorized Bible verses and read comic books, romantic adventure novels, and volumes of the encyclopedia. These traits made him an object of pride for his parents, who spoiled him with special privileges, although he alleged that his father sometimes harshly physically disciplined him in childhood, leaving bruises on his body. He attended La Jolla's prestigious Bishop's School, where he earned high grades and demonstrated proficiency in seven languages.1 His admirable academic performance further contributed to a burgeoning sense of exceptionalism.

Following a sexual encounter with a male at the age of thirteen, Cunanan began identifying as gay. Two years later, he was donning disguises to gain entry to gay bars, posing as a variety of alter egos. He adopted pseudonyms that he felt sounded less ethnic, including Andrew DeSilva, inspired by the name of a prominent art dealer.² He proved so adept at the talent of making himself look older or like someone from a wide array of ethnic backgrounds that he could even fool people with whom he had socially interacted the night before. After graduating from high school, ironically voted Most Likely to Be Remembered in his yearbook, Cunanan began studying history at the University of San Diego, where he grew increasingly flamboyant and desperate for attention and validation from others. He acquainted himself with the finer things in life, obsessed with the idea of amassing tremendous material wealth. Cunanan discovered that he could charm wealthy, older men—all, perhaps, surrogates for his father—who brought him to social functions and showered him with gifts, including, on one occasion, a $30,000 car. He also began earning income by way of prostitution and sometimes dabbling in illicit drugs. This lifestyle contrasted sharply with the ailing financial state of his family, since his father was struggling to maintain stable employment. Eventually, his father fled back to the Philippines following embezzlement charges, and his mother was forced to move into a lower-class neighborhood. After she and Cunanan had a violent fight, in which he dislocated her shoulder, he dropped out of college and went to live with his father in Manila. Finding himself ashamed of his father's destitution, and longing for the high life he had been living in California, he promptly relocated to San Francisco. There, he worked as a high-end prostitute for older men, which sometimes included diplomats.3

From the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, Cunanan became involved with several wealthy men, who sometimes moved him into their homes, under the pretense of his working as a secretary or personal assistant. One of his johns introduced Cunanan to sadomasochistic sex, in which the latter assumed the role of a well-polished slave. He also appeared in several pornographic films with violent themes.

As his social circles expanded, Cunanan began making the rounds at operas, plays, and ritzy soirées. He was supposedly introduced at a restaurant opening to the extravagant fashion icon Gianni Versace. He would tell the story, which may have been a complete fabrication, for years, boasting that he knew the designer on a personal basis.⁴

In 1996, Cunanan fell in love with Jeffrey Trail, a US Naval Academy graduate, who disappointed him by suggesting that their relationship should be a purely platonic one. Then, when Trail moved to Minnesota with a new significant other, Cunanan was emotionally devastated. He fell into a deep depression, piling on considerable weight and disregarding the polished personal appearance that had previously been his livelihood. Feeling physically run down, he began to wonder if he had contracted HIV, but, after undergoing testing, he never returned to the physician to review the results. They were, in reality, negative. Struggling to make ends meet, Cunanan took to petty theft and dealing prescription painkillers, which he sometimes blended with vodka and consumed himself.⁵

Later that year, when Cunanan learned that Trail had separated from his companion, he traveled to Minneapolis to see him for a week-long visit. There, he met Trail's friend David Madson, a handsome architect, with whom he rapidly became smitten. Upon Cunanan's return to California, he continued to mingle with the rich and famous, meeting a number of celebrities, including Madonna, who allegedly left him feeling slighted by paying him no mind. Around this same time, he developed an erotic preoccupation with actor Tom Cruise, covering his walls with posters of the star. Friends started noticing that he was further neglecting his physique and might be ill. At this point, he was abandoning hopes of securing his next wealthy benefactor.6

In April of 1997, Cunanan also became concerned that Trail and Madson might have become romantically involved, prompting a quarrel with Trail over the telephone, during which Cunanan unsettled him with a death threat. For Cunanan, it added insult to injury to consider that Trail and Madson were both professional, successful men while he was financially struggling, perhaps reinforcing the narcissistic notion that only wealthy and attractive people merit love and attention. Seething at the thought of being second best, he made his mind up to visit Minneapolis again, where Madson collected him at the airport. Once they had arrived at Madson's home, Madson and Trail repeatedly tried to explain to Cunanan that his fears were unfounded. During the conversation, a heated argument broke out, culminating in Cunanan fatally smashing Trail's skull with thirty blows from a claw hammer grabbed from a kitchen drawer. Madson helped him to roll up Trail's remains in an Oriental carpet, but it is unknown whether he was forced or did so of his own accord. Over the next two days, the two went about their business, as if nothing had transpired. Madson's unannounced absence from work prompted the superintendent of the building to enter the apartment, where he discovered Trail's blood-soaked body. Cunanan and Madson then took off in Madson's jeep, with Trail's gun in Cunanan's possession. Off Interstate 35, north of Minneapolis, Cunanan suddenly pulled off on a road leading to an abandoned farmhouse. There, he demanded that Madson exit the vehicle and promptly shot his companion of the past few days through the eye, head, and back. It is unclear if Cunanan was inclined to murder Madson because he could serve as a witness in the killing of Trail, or if his death was part of an act of cruel, jealousy-fueled revenge.⁷ What is certain is that his rage was not extinguished at that time, instead expanding to include deeds that were even more horrifying.

By May 4, Cunanan, with Minnesota behind him, had grown tired of sleeping in Madson's jeep and decided to stop in Chicago. Entering the city's celebrated Gold Coast area, he managed to gain entry to the home of the beloved seventy-two-year-old real estate developer and philanthropist Lee Miglin. It is unknown whether the cash-poor Cunanan originally intended merely to rob the victim, but he proceeded to slaughter him—a man who may have been a symbol of all he envied—with unspeakable viciousness. In the garage, he bound Miglin's wrists with electrical cord and wrapped his head in duct tape, leaving only a small space just below the nostrils. With the elderly victim unable to see what was about to happen to him, Cunanan repeatedly stabbed him with a screwdriver and pruning shears before slashing his throat with a gardener's bow saw. Cunanan's frenzy culminated with him getting into the man's Lexus and repeatedly running over his already mutilated body, crushing his bones beneath the wheels. Cunanan then hid the corpse beneath the car and helped himself to the victim's food and bed. The following morning, he gathered up some cash, a pricey wristwatch, and a leather jacket before speeding off in Miglin's Lexus.8

Five days later, Cunanan found himself at Finn's Point National Cemetery, an American Civil War burial ground, located in Pennsville, New Jersey. There, he held up the forty-five-year-old caretaker, William Reese, forcing him to hand over the keys to his pickup truck. He then shot the victim point-blank in the head, execution-style, as Reese sat at his office desk. Of note, there was no overkill here, as in the case of Miglin. This time, the apparent motivating factors were the practical ones of wishing to continue his flight in a new vehicle, untraceable to his previous murders, and eliminating a witness. However, Cunanan got sloppy, as is often the case with egocentric killers, leaving copious amounts of incriminating evidence in the now abandoned Lexus. This included his passport, as well as the screwdriver he had used to butcher Miglin. After this fourth murder, Cunanan made his way down to Miami Beach, Florida.⁹ He rented a hotel room there under his old DeSilva alias, frequenting gay bars and viewing sadomasochistic pornography for nearly two months before killing for the final time. In the meantime, he was placed on the FBI's ten most wanted list,¹⁰ which may very well have felt to Cunanan like something of an achievement. One can imagine him when he learned of this development, pathetically honing in on the word “wanted” and the fact that he was one of only ten in this criminal elite. To make himself even more “wanted,” he would have to find a way to top his already spectacular murder spree, which was making him front-page news throughout the terrified and bewildered country.

On July 12, 1997, Gianni Versace, Cunanan's supposed “friend” and a well-known resident of South Beach, arrived with his entourage for a visit to his mansion, Casa Casuarina. Learning of his appearance, Cunanan decided to stake out in front of the star's home. Three days later, as Versace was unlocking the gate after a morning outing, Cunanan abruptly walked over and fired a bullet into his back. As the beloved designer lay mortally wounded on the sidewalk, Cunanan shot him a second time, at point-blank range through the head, before stealthily slipping away from the scene. Versace died shortly thereafter at a nearby hospital.11

Police gradually traced Cunanan's multistate trail of death and were beginning to close in on him. Reese's stolen truck, recovered in a garage, was found to contain a list of other celebrities the killer had wished to target, including Madonna and Julio Iglesias, both subsequently alerted to the threats on their lives.¹² Cunanan took to hiding out on a houseboat parked in Miami Beach's Indian Creek. Eleven days after the murder of Versace, a caretaker went to check on his client's boat, unexpectedly encountering the holed-up killer. As the confused visitor left, he heard what he thought was a single gunshot. A SWAT team surrounded the boat, waiting for hours for some movement from the man they were convinced was Cunanan. Eventually, an assault crew fired tear gas canisters and barged in, only to find the killer faceup in bed, shot through the mouth with the same semiautomatic handgun he had used to kill Madson, Reese, and Versace, in a bloody suicide.¹³

Following Cunanan's death, there was some speculation that he might have been set off by the false belief that he had contracted HIV.¹⁴ This fear, so the story went, prompted him to seek revenge against those he felt might have infected him with the disease, as well as any older, wealthy man who reminded him of those who sought his bedroom services. In reality, we will never know the killer's actual motivations, which he took with him to the grave. Examining the case as a whole, what seems to have begun as a jealousy killing, in the case of Trail, appears to have given way, under the weight of some intense personal crisis involving narcissistic injury, to a reckless murder spree with an assortment of possible motives. These might have included the elimination of witnesses, in the cases of Madson and Reese; displacement of deep-seated rage in the killing of Miglin, perhaps related to envy of his success or resentment of the father who failed him; and the desire to obtain lasting fame, in the assassination of a beloved fashion guru. As observed with Mark David Chapman, the murder of a celebrated person inextricably binds the killer and celebrated person together in history. Perhaps the core of the case of Andrew Cunanan is best captured by a penetrative line of poetry penned by William Wordsworth, just as true today as it was two centuries ago: “What is glory? In the socket, see how dying tapers flare! What is pride? A whizzing rocket that would emulate a star.”

A second case ranked at Category 15—and a particularly macabre one—is that of serial killer Dorothea Puente, dubbed the “Death House Landlady,” born in January of 1929 in Redlands, California. There are conflicting details regarding her childhood, due to her proclivity to fabricate elements of her personal history. She was one of anywhere from seven to eighteen children born to alcoholic parents. Her father, who sometimes held a gun to his head and threatened to commit suicide in front of Puente and her siblings, died of tuberculosis when she was eight years old. Her mother, an abusive prostitute, died in a motorcycle accident when Puente was nine or ten. After moving through several homes, she was sent to an orphanage, where she was allegedly sexually assaulted.¹⁵

At age sixteen, while working in a milkshake parlor by day and as a prostitute by night, she married a soldier named Fred McFaul, who had just returned from military service in World War II. In 1946, they had a daughter, followed by a second in 1948. One was sent to live with relatives, and the other given up for adoption. In late 1948, McFaul left her for unclear reasons, and she was later sentenced to a year in jail when it was discovered that she was forging checks to buy clothing and accessories. When she was released after a mere six months, she immediately violated the terms of her parole by skipping town. She was then impregnated during a casual sexual encounter with a stranger and had another daughter, also put up for adoption. In 1952, she married a Swedish man, Axel Johansson, with whom she lived in Sacramento during a stormy relationship of fourteen years. Flare-ups were typically prompted by Puente's appetites for drinking, gambling, and extramarital affairs.¹⁶ Puente liked to tell improbable tales about meeting an array of celebrities during their time together, including John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis, and the glamorous film star Rita Hayworth. Later in life, Puente would claim to have spent time with Clint Eastwood, Ronald Reagan, and Spiro Agnew, among other luminaries. She would even relate that her husband was the brother of heavyweight boxing champion Ingemar Johansson, which, of course, was patently untrue.17

In 1960, Puente was arrested for working in a brothel, claiming she had no clue it was a house of ill repute and that she was simply visiting a friend. She was jailed for ninety days. She then spent another ninety days behind bars on a vagrancy charge. Puente, who was able to play the role of a loving, devoted caretaker, found work as a nurse's aide, looking after elderly and disabled persons in private homes, before shifting to managing boarding houses. In 1966, she and Johansson divorced, and, two years later, just shy of age forty, she married twenty-one-year-old Robert Jose Puente in Mexico. They opened a halfway house, which was shut down due to outstanding debts, and the two separated after just two short years. Not long before they divorced, they had acquired a three-story, sixteen-bedroom care home in Sacramento, which Puente took steps to secure for herself prior to the separation. Her fourth marriage, in 1976, was to Pedro Montalvo, a violent alcoholic to whom she had rented a room. It lasted a matter of months.¹⁸

Around this time, Puente began frequenting bars, seeking out the elderly, alcoholics, and people addicted to drugs who were receiving government benefits, warmly welcoming them to her boarding house. She earned a sterling reputation for her apparent humanitarianism and willingness to work with challenging individuals. It was eventually discovered that she was, in fact, forging boarders’ endorsements on benefit checks and pocketing the money. In 1978, Puente was charged with thirty-four counts of treasury fraud and prohibited from operating a boarding establishment. She returned to working as an in-home caregiver, but little changed in her behavior. In the early 1980s, the unfeeling schemer drugged three women with tranquilizers to swipe checks, cash, and valuables from their homes. Once, she slipped a sedative into the drink of a seventy-four-year-old man and, as he swam in and out of consciousness, ransacked his home, removing a diamond ring from his finger as she strolled out the door. She was arrested for these crimes and sentenced to five years in prison. Unfortunately, despite the opinion of a state psychologist that she was dangerous and lacking in remorse, she was released for “good behavior” after just three years.19

In 1982, Puente opened another boarding house, unlicensed and in flagrant violation of the terms of her probation. In April of that year, a sixty-one-year-old friend and business partner, Ruth Monroe, began renting a room and, shortly thereafter, died of an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. It has been alleged that this may have been Puente's first homicide and that she cleverly hornswoggled police into believing Monroe had committed suicide in the context of acute depression.²⁰

Several weeks later, seventy-four-year-old Malcolm McKenzie, whom Puente had drugged and robbed, reported her to the authorities, and she was sentenced to five more years in jail. She passed the time corresponding with Everson Gillmouth, a seventy-seven-year-old retiree in Oregon. Released after completing only three years of her sentence, she and Gillmouth met and promptly made plans to marry. Puente convinced him that, beforehand, they should open a joint bank account. In November of 1985, Puente paid a handyman to build a two-by-three-by-six-foot box, supposedly for storage purposes, and, later, after she had filled it with mysterious contents and nailed it shut, he was called back to dump it along a riverbank. It was just some worthless junk, she explained. When the box was discovered by a fisherman months later, it was found to contain Gillmouth's horribly decomposed carcass. In the meantime, Puente continued to collect his pension. She told his concerned family that he was ill and would contact them as soon as he felt up to it. She also handed off the victim's truck to the repairman, saying it had been left behind by an old boyfriend.²¹

Three years later, police visited Puente's boarding house to inquire about a missing tenant, Alberto Montoya, who was developmentally disabled and who suffered from schizophrenia. Investigating some disturbed soil on her property, they discovered the remains of seventy-eight-year-old tenant Leona Carpenter. Seven bodies of victims who were suffocated after being drugged with sleeping pills were eventually disinterred, to which Puente remarked, plausibly feigning shock and bewilderment, “I don't know what to tell you.” In reality, the corpses were being used to fertilize Puente's routinely complimented flowers and avocado tree. As police investigated, they initially did not suspect her, and she fled to Los Angeles, where she befriended an elderly pensioner in a bar. Then, when it was announced on television that the authorities had come to believe she might be responsible for multiple homicides, the man turned her in and she was returned to Sacramento. She was charged with nine murders, convicted of three, and sentenced to two life sentences. At the time of her arrest and trial, people could hardly detect any glimmer of a psychopathic multiple murderer in the diminutive, white-haired landlady of a Victorian boarding house, who whipped up large meals for the downtrodden and adopted stray cats. When the death penalty was under consideration, one juror reportedly remarked, “Executing Puente would be like executing mine [sic] or your Grandma.” The killer displayed no remorse whatsoever, uniformly denying her guilt in the most emphatic of terms. She died in prison of natural causes in 2011, aged eighty-two years.22

CATEGORY 16

Category 16 is the ranking for self-centered, psychopathic individuals who commit two or more acts of extreme violence. This may include attempted or completed murder, but someone displaying a pattern of highly vicious acts even without homicide, such as intentionally disfiguring or crippling a victim, can be categorized here. Consequently, this will often be the most appropriate ranking for offenders who repeatedly commit rape or sodomy with adults or children but do not kill their victims, as well as individuals who commit two or more acts of necrophilia, in the absence of murder. Repeat rapists or necrophiles who do commit homicide will be ranked at Category 17 or higher, depending on a number of distinguishing factors we will discuss in the coming chapters. It is critical to note that if any of the individual's monstrous acts are intended for the purpose of any degree of torture of one or more human beings, a designation of no lower than Category 18 is required. However, the torture, killing, mutilation, or sexual maltreatment of animals, in the absence of any torture of human beings, can be assigned here.

Some repeat murderers in this category are so-called “masterminds” of superior intelligence who can evade capture for long stretches of time, possibly even for their entire lives. These types tend to be loners with remarkable technical skills, sometimes adept at communicating in code or building explosives. They also tend to employ clever techniques of concealing fingerprints, footprints, DNA, and other potential evidence. Their attacks are generally so random and vicious that an entire geographic area is set on edge, and they sometimes take extended breaks between killings, leaving the public terrified as it waits for the next terrible crime to transpire. These killers are sometimes motivated by a sheer loathing of society, which they consider a mass of ignorant, unthinking fools, while others are attention seekers with a lust for power over others. Unable to attain celebrity status through socially acceptable means, this type is resolutely willing to do so through homicide.

Other crimes in this category are so gruesome in nature that they will shock and horrify those who hear about them. Consider, for instance, the case of Norman Roderick Harrell, a truck driver and avid hunter about whom little is known, beyond the grisly double homicide of which he was convicted at age forty-five. In May of 1993, fed up with demands for child support payments from forty-three-year-old Diane Magdeline Hawkins, a former girlfriend with whom he had a son, he slashed her throat, cut open her torso, and tore out her heart, intestines, and lungs. He then stabbed her thirteen-year-old daughter, Katrina Denise Harris, twenty-seven times in a bed, mostly in her head, with such ferocity that the knife was broken off in the girl's skull. She was nearly decapitated. Her heart, which was also cut out, was never recovered. Hawkins left behind five other children, one of whom, a twenty-two-month-old named Kiki, was found crying, seated alongside the blood-soaked remains of her older sister. At his trial, jurors were shown a hunting manual belonging to Harrell, in which instructions were given for “gutting” an animal, which closely resembled the manner in which he had butchered Hawkins and Harris.23 Evidence suggested these murders were not carried out in the heat of some suddenly sparked passion but, unfathomably, plotted in advance. Thinking and scheming in private, the killer did not select some quick and tidy means of eliminating two people he found to be irksome but opted to slaughter them with sickening brutality. Indeed, as we move along the scale, we must steel ourselves for the degree of unspeakable evil we will encounter in its upper limits, to which a story like Harrell's is but a prelude. For now, let us discuss three other Category 16 cases that illustrate the wide variety of crimes designated to this ranking.

Terry Driver was born in rural British Columbia in January of 1965. We do not know much about his parents, save that his father was a decorated Vancouver police officer. His relationships with his parents were reportedly positive ones, which, if true, would make him something of an outlier with regard to both the Gradations of Evil scale and criminology. There is some indication that he may have found himself craving the attention of his constantly busy father. He was reportedly diagnosed with “minimal brain dysfunction” and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in early childhood, although he has denied recollection of any hyperactive behavior in his youth. Due to aggressiveness, he was placed in a special school for troubled youths from ages six to eleven while his younger siblings remained at home. At about twelve, he developed behavioral tics, including flexing his neck and shaking his head. He completed high school as part of a career preparation program in printing, going on to find work as a press operator. He attempted to join law enforcement, following in his father's footsteps, but was rejected. Afterward, he began monitoring the neighborhood in the manner of a cop, listening to one of his father's police radios and making hundreds of calls to a law enforcement tip line to report petty thefts and other crimes. If one imagines all members of law enforcement as stand-ins for Driver's father, it is understandable that he might crave their constant attention—eventually, at any cost whatsoever. At twenty-four, he was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, and, a year later, he was married, eventually fathering two children.24

In Abbottsford, near Vancouver, in October of 1995, two sixteen-year-old friends, Tanya Smith and Misty Cockerill, were accompanying one another to a party at Cockerill's boyfriend's house. It was late at night, and they were chatting about superstitions surrounding the fact that it was Friday the thirteenth. Cockerill would later recall making an “inappropriate joke” to the effect of, “Watch some guy is going to jump out of the bushes and try to rape us.” They laughed it off and continued strolling toward their destination. Suddenly, they stopped in their tracks at the sound of a man's voice—Driver's—asking if they wanted to “party,” which they ignored. He asked again, and they turned, frozen with fear to notice that he was wielding an aluminum baseball bat. Shoving them into some bushes, he demanded that they remove their clothing, and Cockerill began to beg for their lives. Trying to figure out how to stall or escape him, she feigned an asthma attack, which failed to move or convince Driver, who callously laughed at her. The girls were on the ground, and, as he stood behind them, opening his pants, Cockerill struck him. Driver then bludgeoned her seven times in the head as she slipped into unconsciousness. She woke up hours later with a mixture of blood and cerebrospinal fluid streaming from one ear. Profoundly dazed, she wandered into a nearby hospital, where the sight of her prompted the triage nurse to scream in horror. Catching a glimpse of her own reflection in a window, she passed out a second time. Seven fragments of her skull were later found lodged in the surface of her brain. Four days later, Cockerill was informed by doctors that her friend had not survived the assault. Driver had raped and savagely beaten her, tossing her alive into the Vedder River, where she eventually drowned to death.25

Driver attended Smith's funeral with his two young children, playing the role of a baffled, concerned citizen. Over the next seven months, he made repeat calls to police, now not offering tips about local crimes but promising future attacks and taunting that they would never find him. Again, if we interpret all police officers as emblematic of his father, then it was he, symbolically, who would have to come looking for the attention-starved killer. Driver sneaked into the cemetery where his victim was buried, defacing her headstone with a sexual obscenity, a threat to the survivor of his attack, and the promise, “She wasn't the first, she won't be the last.” After prying the grave marker from the ground with a crowbar, he first thought to place it near the river, where he had raped and murdered the teenager. Instead, he placed it on the news cruiser of a local radio station and phoned the operator, instructing him to step outside to see what he had left in the parking lot. Driver would later confess that he took pleasure in the ensuing media coverage.²⁶

Days later, a local woman phoned the authorities, saying that a letter weighted with a pair of pliers had been hurled through her window, shattering the glass. Written on the envelope was, “From the Abby Killer, call 911.” Like many attention-seeking offenders, Driver had adopted a catchy sobriquet that might be utilized in the press. In the enclosed missive, he spoke lewdly about the attacks on Smith and Cockerill and boasted of three prior assaults on Abbotsford women. When he mentioned having bitten Smith's nipple, a fact held back from the public, police knew he was, indeed, the killer. Details of the other referenced crimes also emerged. It was further alleged that Smith's killer had sexually assaulted a twelve-year-old girl after grabbing her from behind as she waited outside a friend's house, but she was able to slip away; that he attacked a second female from behind and struck her in the face; and that he had bludgeoned a third with a blunt instrument, leaving her unconscious and bleeding with a nearly fatal skull fracture.27

Two of the victims had been able to provide descriptions to police, which, paired with a voice recording from one of Driver's taunting calls, were released to the public. The killer's mother, Audrey Tighe, recognized his voice and informed the authorities. He was arrested in May of 1996 and ultimately convicted of the first-degree murder of Smith and the attempted slaying of Cockerill. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for twenty-five years. In 2000, Driver was convicted for attacks on two of his other victims and designated a dangerous offender, allowing for his indefinite incarceration. Cockerill, making the most of a horrible experience, from which she reportedly still physically suffers, heroically took up work as a bereavement counselor, assisting families of the victims of homicides.²⁸

In Category 16, we also find the unusual case of Gwendolyn Graham and Cathy Wood, a female couple who committed five serial murders together, as part of a “love bond” between them. Our information about their backgrounds is somewhat limited. Graham was born in California in August of 1963 and raised in Tyler, Texas. She was described as “quiet and respectful” during her school days and as always looking somewhat sad. She would later make the claim, never substantiated, that she was a victim of sexual advances made by her father. At twenty-four, she took a job as a nurse's aide at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her superior there was Wood, also an aide, who was born in March of 1962. Wood married in adolescence, and, when she and her husband separated seven years later, she was left completely alone. Graham and Wood hit it off right away, and, by 1986, a romance had developed between them.²⁹

Wood reportedly fell passionately in love with Graham, who was the more dominant and sexually experimental. For erotic reasons, Graham enjoyed binding her and choking her to the point of near loss of consciousness.30 By January of 1987, this was no longer enough. The pair began achieving sexual thrills by collaborating to smother elderly female patients at the nursing home, sometimes just before making love. Note that the erotic stimulation did not arise from raping or sexually assaulting the victims, which would have warranted a ranking of Category 17, rather than 16. In their first murder, Graham entered the room of a woman with Alzheimer's disease, selected because of her inability to defend herself, and suffocated her with a washcloth as Wood kept watch. The killers felt that their shared knowledge of the crime prevented either one from leaving the relationship, thereby strengthening the bond between them. Over the next four months, they repeated the ghastly routine four more times. The patients, who ranged from ages sixty-five to ninety-seven, were all suffering from some form of dementia and totally incapacitated. Each was asphyxiated by Graham with a washcloth held to her mouth and nostrils while Wood stood guard. The couple turned the selection of their victims into a macabre game, aiming to choose women whose initials collectively spelled “MURDER.” When this proved challenging, they decided to count each killing as a “day,” and Wood penned a poem to Graham in which she pledged, “You'll be mine forever and five days.” Graham reportedly began collecting souvenirs from the victims in order to relive their deaths, including a handkerchief, an ankle bracelet, a brooch, and a set of dentures, although these mementos have never been recovered.³¹

By April of 1987, the women's relationship was beginning to sour. Wood was uncomfortable with the notion of killing on her own to demonstrate her love to Graham and felt relieved and fortunate when she was transferred to another shift at the facility. In the meantime, Graham began dating another female coworker, traveling with her to Texas and leaving Wood feeling abandoned for the second time in her life. Graham found hospital work back in Tyler. Eventually, Wood confessed her crimes to her estranged husband, and, several months later, she related the killings to the authorities. Both women were arrested in December of 1988.³²

During the subsequent trial, Wood copped a plea bargain, testifying, in exchange for a reduced sentence, that it was the domineering, hotheaded Graham who planned and carried out the killings while she merely served as the lookout. Graham protested her innocence, claiming that the murders were part of a “mind game” of Wood's. Despite the absence of physical evidence, the jury was compelled by testimony from Graham's new lover, who reported that Graham had informed her of the five homicides at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home. Graham was found guilty on five counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder, resulting in five life sentences—that is, forever for five “days.” Wood, charged with one count of second-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, was sentenced to twenty years on each count.33 A book about the case by Lowell Cauffiel alternatively portrays Wood as a psychopathic schemer who may have concocted the entire story to put Graham away for life in retaliation for leaving her for another woman, or else committed the murders herself and then framed Graham for crimes of which she was innocent.³⁴ However, this is not the version of the facts accepted by the jury that deliberated the case in 1989.

Our final Category 16 case is of the attention-obsessed “mastermind” type, described in the opening of this chapter. Few criminals have entered the public imagination to the degree of the never captured Zodiac Killer of the 1960s and 1970s, with his taunting letters, infernal cryptograms, and techniques for cleverly evading detection. He inspired the fictitious cold-blooded psychopaths in two popular movies, 1971's Dirty Harry and 1990's The Exorcist III; was the subject of David Fincher's acclaimed 2007 film Zodiac and over a dozen books; has been referenced by rock and heavy metal song lyrics; and is believed to have influenced at least two copycats, the New York–based serial killer Heriberto Seda,³⁵ and Japanese child murderer Seito Sakakibara.³⁶ We imagine this is all just as the egomaniacal Zodiac would want it. While there have been thousands of suspects in the case since 1968, including a very small handful who were seriously considered,³⁷ the Zodiac Killer is either still at large or deceased. As a result of his anonymity, we have no pre-offense biographical information to provide. However, we have a wealth of information about his traits and motivations from eyewitness accounts, observations of his various crime scenes, and his own words, culled from the copious letters and cards he mailed to the press and a high-profile lawyer.38

Zodiac's first murder may have been that of eighteen-year-old Cheri Jo Bates on October 30, 1966, although this is a matter of some debate. At approximately 9:30 p.m., the eighteen-year-old was beaten and repeatedly stabbed to death with a short-bladed knife in an alley on the campus of California's Riverside City College. There were no indications of robbery or sexual assault, and police could identify no witnesses. After studying in the college library, Bates had walked to her car, which had been intentionally disabled in advance by her methodical and patient killer. A struggle apparently transpired. Police found a Timex watch on the ground, believed to be torn from the killer's wrist, and a footprint from a size 8 to 10 military-style boot in the earth nearby. Almost exactly one month later, an anonymous confession, containing details of the crime held back from the public, was mailed to the Riverside Police Department and a local newspaper, the Press-Enterprise. Written in all capital letters, it read, in part,³⁹

SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL

BUT NOW SHE IS BATTERED AND

DEAD. SHE IS NOT THE FIRST AND SHE WILL NOT BE THE LAST

I LAY AWAKE AT NIGHTS THINKING ABOUT MY

NEXT VICTIM. MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE

BEAUTIFUL BLOND THAT BABYSITS NEAR

THE LITTLE STORE AND WALKS DOWN THE

DARK ALLEY EACH EVENING ABOUT SEVEN.

OR MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE SHAPELY BLUE

EYED BRUNETT [sic] THAT SAID NO WHEN I

ASKED HER FOR A DATE IN HIGH SCHOOL.

BUT MAYBE IT WILL NOT BE EITHER. BUT I

SHALL CUT OFF HER FEMALE PARTS AND

DEPOSIT THEM FOR THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE

SO DON'T MAKE IT EASY FOR ME. KEEP

YOUR SISTERS, DAUGHTERS, AND WIVES OFF

THE STREETS AND ALLEYS.

MISS BATES WAS STUPID. SHE WENT TO

THE SLAUGHTER LIKE A LAMB. SHE DID

NOT PUT UP A STRUGGLE. BUT I DID.

IT WAS A BALL.

The killer proceeded to describe how he disabled the victim's car by pulling out the middle wire from the distributor. He then waited in the library for her to leave and followed her, watching as she drained the battery with each attempt to start the engine. He offered her a lift in his own vehicle, supposedly down the street, as they chatted amicably. We can envision, at once, that the killer must have seemed trustworthy and innocuous, with no hint of the brutality he had been meticulously plotting all along. As they were strolling along, he suddenly said, “It's about time,” to which she asked, “About time for what?” His response was that it was about time for her to die. He explained that, after he pounced on Bates, he did feel her breast, but—and this is critical for our understanding of his motivations—he was more focused upon murdering her as an act of retaliation for rejection:

ONLY ONE THING WAS ON

MY MIND. MAKING HER PAY FOR THE BRUSH OFFS [sic]

THAT SHE HAD GIVEN ME DURING THE YEARS PRIOR.

SHE DIED HARD. SHE SQUIRMED AND SHOOK

AS I CHOKED HER, AND HER LIPS TWITCHED.

SHE LET OUT A SCREAM ONCE AND I KICKED

HER HEAD TO SHUT HER UP. I PLUNGED THE KNIFE

INTO HER AND IT BROKE. I THEN FINISHED THE

JOB BY CUTTING HER THROAT. I AM NOT SICK.

I AM INSANE. BUT THIS WILL NOT STOP

THE GAME. THIS LETTER SHOULD BE PUBLISHED

FOR ALL TO READ IT.

If the account was true, Bates may have known her killer. It seems unlikely, however, that she would have willingly accompanied him to his car at 9:30 at night, if she had repeatedly turned him down for dates in the past. It is more probable that they were strangers and that he had known her from afar. She was probably merely a symbol for the killer—an object of focus and displacement for years of rejection by a number of members of the opposite sex, whom he had clearly come to despise. We see evidence of this in the fantasy of mutilating female victims’ genitalia. In addition to the scheming, cold-blooded nature and misogyny we can induce from the facts of the Bates case and the detailed confession, the killer's reference to the process of stalking and slaying female victims as “the game” is revealing: it suggests that he drew pleasure from the predatory process, as a means of asserting dominance and control over women. We also see enjoyment in the manipulation of police and the press, and a desire to use the media as a means of provoking fear and attention from the general public. A profound egocentricity is observed in these features of the case, as well as in his demand that his letter be published for “all to read.” Indeed, in March of 1971, Zodiac wrote to the Los Angeles Times, apparently confessing to the murder of Bates,40 but, as we shall see, it was not unlike him to take credit for unsolved crimes possibly perpetrated by other people, as a means of building up his victim count and developing his frightening public persona.

In December of 1966, six months after the Bates murder, a poem was discovered in the Riverside City College library, etched into the surface of a desk, in handwriting that would later be attributed to Zodiac. Note the lack of capitalization and poor grammar, almost certainly contrived by an obviously intelligent individual:⁴¹

Sick of living / unwilling to die
cut.
clean.
if red /
clean.
blood spurting,
dripping,
spilling;
all over her new
dress.
oh well,
it was red
anyway.
life draining into an
uncertain death.
she won't
die this time
someone'll find her.
just wait till
next time.
rh

The significance of the two letters at the close of the poem has never been determined. They may be the author's initials, although they are not those of any seriously considered Zodiac suspect.

Several months later, on April 30, 1967, the police and Press-Enterprise received copies of another anonymous letter, this time handwritten. The woman's grieving father received a third copy: “BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE.” Each was signed with an indecipherable letter or number, resembling a “2” or, intriguingly, a “Z.”42 It should be noted that, in 1970, analysis by handwriting expert Sherwood Morrill linked the desktop poem and 1967 letters to the individual who later identified himself as Zodiac,⁴³ suggesting that, if he did not murder Bates, he was at least in the Riverside area, insinuating himself into the case.

Two years after the murder of Bates, there was a double homicide in Vallejo, California, for which Zodiac would also eventually take credit, demonstrating knowledge of the crime scene that only the perpetrator and police would know. Shortly after 11:00 p.m. on December 20, 1968, seventeen-year-old varsity athlete David Faraday and sixteen-year-old Betty Lou Jensen were sitting in his station wagon on a graveled parking area along remote Lake Herman Road, on the city's outskirts. It was their first date, and the area was commonly used by young people as a lovers’ lane. Suddenly, someone approached, firing two bullets into the left side of the car in what appears to have been an effort to herd them out of the vehicle's right door. As Faraday emerged, the stranger pressed the barrel of his gun behind the boy's left ear and pulled the trigger, exploding his skull. He fell into the rear of the car, where he expired. Jensen fled on foot and was pursued by the attacker, who, from ten feet behind under a cloak of almost complete darkness, shot her five times in the back, in a remarkably tight pattern. She died on the road, about thirty-three feet from the car. It would later emerge that he had taped a small flashlight to the scope of his gun, allowing him to see precisely where a bullet would penetrate the victim. There were no signs of robbery or sexual assault, and no witnesses were identified.⁴⁴ Many facts of this double homicide are noteworthy, in light of our discussion of the misogyny and the enjoyment related to the manipulation and hunting of people seen in the Bates case. The killer seemed less interested in the male victim, who was promptly eliminated, and the female victim was pursued, probably thrilling the shooter by screaming and displaying unimaginable terror as she fled in the dark. There was also a similar boastful confession, provided to both the police and multiple newspapers. It came following another murder, which occurred nearly seven months later.

Just after midnight, at the close of Fourth of July festivities, on July 5, 1969, Darlene Ferrin, a twenty-two-year-old waitress, was sitting with nineteen-year-old laborer Mike Mageau in the isolated parking lot of Vallejo's Blue Rock Springs Park. As they sat talking, a car abruptly pulled up behind theirs and the driver approached them, holding a powerful flashlight. Imagining him to be a police officer, they readied themselves to show identification. Without warning, the stranger pumped three bullets into Ferrin and two into Mageau with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. When Mageau howled in pain, the assailant returned to fire two more shots at each victim. This afforded Mageau a look at the attacker. Ferrin expired about a half hour after the shooting, and Mageau recovered and provided authorities his description of the killer. He was a Caucasian male in his late twenties to early thirties, five feet eight or five feet nine in stature, with a stocky build, a round face, and brown hair.45

There was, as in the previously described crimes, no robbery or sexual assault. Minutes after Ferrin's death, the police department in Vallejo received a call from a man claiming responsibility for the “double murder.” After directing the dispatcher to the scene of the crime, he added, “I also killed those kids last year,” and closed with a deep, taunting “Good-bye” before hanging up the phone. The call was later traced to a phone booth directly in front of the sheriff's office, implying that Zodiac was not only brazen but also interested in observing the police activity he had stirred up. Notably, the killer was also able to view Ferrin's home from the booth.⁴⁶ Moreover, the victim's husband, along with his parents and brother, began receiving phone calls consisting of only heavy breathing within an hour and a half of her murder, long before the story was circulated in the press.⁴⁷ These facts suggest that the killer may have personally known Ferrin or, at the very least, been stalking her. Let us also note that, as in the Faraday-Jensen case, the perpetrator was more focused on the female in this shooting, as indicated by her being shot more times and Mageau receiving less serious injuries, which allowed him to survive the assault.

On the last day of July in 1969, three newspapers, Vallejo's Times-Herald, and San Francisco's Examiner and Chronicle, all received letters from someone who took credit for both the Lake Herman Road double homicide and the attack on Ferrin and Mageau, correctly specifying the ammunition used, the number of shots fired, the positions of the bodies, the location of a wound to Mageau's knee, and the pattern on the dress Ferrin had been wearing. He also sent each paper one-third of a complex cipher, comprised of 408 mysterious-looking symbols, and claimed his identity was contained therein. The author threatened that if the cryptograms were not published, he would go on a spree and murder a dozen people. The ciphers were subsequently printed.48 While the Office of Naval Intelligence, CIA, FBI, and NSA struggled to decode them, Donald Gene Harden, a history and economics teacher, sat down to give it a go, later assisted by his wife, Bettye. She cleverly surmised that the egocentric type of individual probably behind the killings and the codes would begin with the word “I.” She also envisioned that he would use the word “kill” so that the opening phrase might be something like, “I like killing.” Her intuitions were on the mark. With that phrase decoded, the remainder of the cryptogram gradually gave up its secrets. The murderer had developed a substitution cipher, in which each letter of the alphabet had been replaced by a letter or symbol. They discovered that the creator had laid a series of clever traps. He used one symbol fifteen times to lead code breakers into incorrectly concluding that it stood for E, the most commonly used letter in the English language. For the actual letter E, he employed seven different symbols. He also appeared to intentionally misspell words. The disturbing message, which lacked punctuation, probably as another ruse to impede deciphering, read, in part,⁴⁹

I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE

BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH

FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN

KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST [sic] BECAUSE

MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE [sic]

ANAMAL [sic] OF ALL TO KILL

SOMETHING GIVES ME THE

MOST THRILLING EXPERIENCE

IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING

YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL

The author went on to explain that he was killing to collect slaves to serve him in the afterlife. This was probably a red herring to mislead investigators into believing that he was delusional or driven by occult spiritual beliefs, but we do not know this for certain. Even if it were a total fabrication of Zodiac's, the thematic content of his stated motivation was revealing of his grandiosity and hunger for power and domination.

It is interesting to note that his message made a reference to Richard Connell's haunting 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which Count Zaroff, a merciless hunter who is weary of shooting beasts, lures people to a secluded island to hunt them instead.50 It is interesting to note that both Zaroff and Zodiac begin with the uncommon letter Z. The killer's final point in the excerpt provided here lays bare that he was less interested in sexual thrills than he was in the rush of adrenaline he experienced while pursuing and killing a victim, and the superiority he felt while doing so. Despite his promise to provide his name, the author refused to give it in the actual solution. A week after sending the ciphers, he would again write to the Examiner, opening with what would thereafter be his ominous nom de plume: “This is the Zodiac speaking.” He proceeded to provide more uncirculated details about the Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs crimes.⁵¹

Zodiac's most bizarre attack took place on September 27, 1969. Two Pacific Union College students, twenty-year-old Bryan Hartnell and twenty-two-year-old Cecelia Ann Shepard, were relaxing on a blanket on a remote patch of shoreline along glorious Lake Berryessa near Napa. Shepard spied a stocky man watching them, who slipped into a grove of trees, only to reemerge and move closer and closer toward them. He was stalking his quarry. After slipping behind another tree, he popped up again, having donned a midnight black ceremonial hood, with a rectangular shape and a panel that came down over his chest. It was emblazoned with a cross-circle symbol that might evoke the image of a gun snipe. The man's eyes were disguised with clip-on sunglasses, which covered two eyeholes in the mask. On the right side of his belt was a gun holster and, on the left, a ten- to twelve-inch blade in a sheath. On the whole, the costume—not necessary for homicide but probably part of some elaborate psychological fantasy—gave Zodiac the macabre look of a medieval executioner. Several of its features have reminded some of Count Zaroff's hunting attire in RKO's 1932 film adaptation of Connell's story.

The mysterious stranger approached Hartnell and Shepard, holding out a semiautomatic pistol. The couple engaged him in conversation, and he claimed he was a prison escapee who had killed a guard and needed money to flee to Mexico. This was no doubt a fabrication to conceal what were his actual intentions from the start—it makes little sense to wear such an elaborate outfit to a routine robbery. It is also peculiar that the attacker waited only moments before revealing his actual objective. One wonders why he would bother to make pretense of a theft for such a brief period of time, unless catching the victims off guard with a sudden violent assault was part of the thrill for him. The lie may also have served the function of keeping the victims as calm and manageable as possible, until they were incapacitated. To that end, Zodiac demanded that Shepard bind Hartnell with clothesline, which he pulled from his back pocket, before the attacker did the same to her. Then, as Shepard and Hartnell lay on their stomachs, the costumed man abruptly began stabbing them with his lengthy blade. He assaulted Hartnell first, piercing his back six times as Shepard looked on in horror.52 She was, in turn, stabbed twenty-four times. Following stabs to her back, she rolled over in pain and was pierced in each breast, the groin, and the stomach.⁵³ The fact that she was stabbed so many more times than Hartnell and in a more vicious manner further supports the notion that Zodiac may have felt more rage toward female victims, but whether there was a sexual element displayed here, in the mutilation of her female parts, is open to speculation. After the brutal attack, Zodiac quietly strolled away, hiking five hundred yards back up to the road, where he drew his cross-circle symbol on Hartnell's car door with a felt-tip pen, and above it notations regarding the locations and dates of his various attacks. He then phoned the Napa County Sheriff's Office from a payphone to report the crime.⁵⁴

Shepard was conscious enough to describe the attacker when deputies arrived. She lapsed into a coma and died two days later. Hartnell, bleeding heavily, survived.⁵⁵ At the scene of the crime, investigators discovered size 10 1/2 prints made by Wing Walker boots. As these are special footwear used by military personnel to walk on the wings of planes, it was postulated that Zodiac may have had a military background.⁵⁶

Two weeks later, on the night of October 11, 1969, a passenger boarded a taxi in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. The driver, twenty-nine-year-old Paul Stine, was driving a cab to make ends meet while earning his doctoral degree in English. After they arrived at the intended destination, the corner of Washington and Maple Streets near the Presidio, the car was either redirected or mistakenly wound up a block away, at Washington and Cherry Streets. This repositioning of the cab, while seemingly insignificant, has, in fact, been a matter of considerable conjecture. Whatever the reason, the passenger proceeded to press a 9mm semiautomatic pistol to Stine's head and pull the trigger, killing him at the scene before taking his wallet and keys, probably to falsely suggest a robbery to police, and a large portion of his striped shirt. Bloody fingerprints, potentially left by the killer, were recovered by investigators. They also interviewed three child witnesses, who saw the horrific episode unfold from a window. Police did encounter a man lumbering along Cherry, but, because their dispatcher had mistakenly told them to be on the lookout for an African American suspect, they never stopped and questioned him. It was, in fact, Zodiac. When the error was caught, they were able to give a physical description that matched what had already been established about the multiple murderer.57 The Stine killing was originally interpreted as a petty theft that had gone badly, but, two days later, Zodiac sent a letter to the Chronicle, taking credit for the shooting and—lest anyone doubt him—enclosing a swatch of the cabbie's blood-soaked shirt. The killer also upped the ante, creating pandemonium by threatening to shoot out the front tire of a school bus, “then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”⁵⁸ One envisions the power he might have felt, manipulating the police and the newspapers, and the nameless masses, through which he glided like an unseen serpent. By moving to a new, larger city and murdering a random male, rather than attacking a couple, Zodiac had altered his modus operandi so that now nobody could feel safe from the unknown killer. This may very well have been his purpose in slaying Stine.

On November 8, 1969, Zodiac mailed a greeting card to the Chronicle, containing a 340-character cryptogram that has never been solved. The postscript to his note in the card read, “Could you print this new cipher on your front page? I get awfully lonely when I am ignored, so lonely I could do my thing!!!!!!”⁵⁹ The following day, he sent a letter to the same paper, claiming that, since the police had told “lies” about him, he would no longer announce his murders, making them look like routine killings and accidents.60 Indeed, as already noted, the Stine murder was initially understood as a commonplace stickup, gone awry. Celebrated FBI profiler John Douglas, reconsidering this development in the case decades later, wondered whether Zodiac was frightened or had his ego impugned by his close encounter with police on the night of the Stine shooting. He posited that Zodiac might have sought to overcompensate for this with the terrifying school bus threat and by emphasizing that the cops were incapable of catching him because he was too slippery for them. The killer boastfully explained that, on the night of the Stine shooting, officers actually had stopped and spoken to him, and he sent them off on a wild goose chase. Moreover, he might have been scared enough to stop killing—while still craving constant, wide-scale attention and power. In making his statement about no longer announcing his killings and making them appear like garden-variety crimes, Zodiac cleverly made it possible to take credit for any unsolved case he wished. He could now keep everyone wondering, confused, and frightened, without having to commit any risky additional murders.⁶¹ Zodiac also enclosed a hand-drawn, plausible-looking diagram of a bomb, calling it a “death machine” and his “masterpiece,” and taunting that it would be a tremendous challenge to try to locate it.⁶²

On the one-year anniversary of the Faraday-Jensen murders on December 20, 1969, Zodiac mailed a letter to eminent attorney Melvin Belli, enclosing another portion of Stine's shirt. He claimed that he wanted the lawyer's help, saying that a “thing” in him would not allow him to reach out and he was finding it “extreamly [sic] difficult to hold it in check.”⁶³ It is unclear whether this was a sincere cry for help or, as Douglas has surmised, a ploy for sympathy during a probably lonely holiday season.⁶⁴ At any rate, he never actually connected with Belli for assistance.

Consistent with the hypothesis that Zodiac was interested in artificially elevating his victim count while not actually perpetrating additional crimes, he boasted of ten murders in an April 20, 1970, letter to the Chronicle, whereas only five could be accounted for, if Bates is included in the sum.⁶⁵ Two months later, he wrote to the Chronicle again, enclosing a thirty-two-symbol cipher and a map of the San Francisco Bay area with a cross-circle drawn over Mount Diablo, surrounded by mysterious numbers. He claimed the two clues would lead to the location of a bomb, supposedly buried and set to detonate in the autumn—which never transpired. Zodiac also boasted that he had killed twelve victims, vaguely claiming credit for shooting “a man sitting in a parked car,”66 a possible reference to the recent, never solved killing of police sergeant Richard Radetich.⁶⁷ This execution was supposedly an act of retribution for noncompliance with a request Zodiac made in late April that people wear buttons featuring his cross-circle symbol.⁶⁸ He claimed in yet another letter sent to the paper on July 24, 1970, that, as further payback for this slight, he carried out an unsolved crime reported in the press, involving a woman named Kathleen Johns.⁶⁹ Elements of the case, which ring true to Zodiac's patterns, have kept debate alive about whether he was, indeed, responsible for her harrowing experience of March 22, 1970.

That night, Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma, seven months pregnant and sitting alongside her ten-month-old daughter. On a highway near Modesto, a man in a car behind her began honking and flashing his headlights, prompting her to pull off the road. The driver pulled up, explaining, with credible concern, that he had noticed her right rear wheel wobbling. He offered to tighten the lug nuts. After doing so, the apparent Good Samaritan drove off and Johns began to merge back onto the highway. Just then, the purportedly tightened wheel detached itself, and the stranger returned, now offering the stranded woman a lift to the nearest service station. She boarded his car with her young daughter. It struck Johns as odd that they, in fact, sped past several stations without stopping and that he would change the subject whenever she pointed this out. At some point, she asked, “Do you always go around helping people on the road like this?” He reportedly responded, “When I get through with them, they don't need any help.” They drove for about thirty minutes, back and forth around the back roads of the town of Tracy, until he abruptly turned to her and remarked, “You know you're going to die. You know I'm going to kill you.” To this he added, “I'm going to throw the baby out.” When the driver stopped at an intersection, Johns sprung from the car with her daughter and hid in a field, prompting the driver to pursue them with a flashlight while calling out that she had no need to fear him. This calls to mind the false reassurances given to Hartnell and Shepard before they were viciously stabbed at Lake Berryessa. The driver ultimately gave up on finding Johns and her infant and left the scene. Her car was later discovered, torched and gutted out. While speaking with investigators after the ordeal, Johns reportedly recognized the face on a Zodiac wanted poster in the police station as that of the man who had taken her and her child on the terrifying ride.70 If the Bates murder of 1966 was, indeed, the work of Zodiac, the similar method of posing as a kindhearted stranger who offers a lift to a young woman whose car he has sabotaged does make this case worth considering.

Zodiac sent the Chronicle one of his most peculiar letters on July 26, 1970.⁷¹ Returning to his narcissistic wish to see people wearing Zodiac pins and his alleged belief that he would someday be the master of those he has killed in the afterlife, he made a new threat, which revealed a sadistic nature, not readily detected from his expedient murders that involved no intentional prolongation of pain. He also upped his supposed victim count to thirteen. He wrote,

If you do not wear any type of buttons, I shall (on top of everything else) torture all 13 of my slaves that I have waiting for me in Paradice [sic]. Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream + twich [sic] and squirm. Others shall have pine splinters driven under their nails + then burned. Others shall be placed in cages + fed salt beef until they are gorged then I shall listen to their pleass [sic] for water and I shall laugh at them. Others will hang by their thumbs + burn in the sun then I will rub them down with deep heat to warm them up. Others I shall skin them alive + let them run around screaming.

Then, attempting a theatrical, creative turn, the killer began paraphrasing the song “The Punishment Fit the Crime” from W. S. Gilbert's and Arthur Sullivan's 1885 comic operetta The Mikado. He altered part of the “little list” laid out in the lyrics to provide a litany of things he would like to do to slaves and, in a sense, to everyone who had ever irked or slighted him:

And all billiard players I shall have them play in a darkened dungen [sic] cell with crooked cues + Twisted Shoes. Yes I shall have great fun inflicting the most delicious of pain to my slaves.

Zodiac then switched from parodying the titular emperor in the operetta to paraphrasing Ko-Ko, the lord high executioner of Titipu. It is interesting, as we consider Zodiac's identification with this character, to note that, prior to earning this lofty, murderous position, Ko-Ko was a rather insignificant individual who had worked as a tailor. We do not know if Zodiac was a tailor—certainly, his outfit at Lake Berryessa does suggest some skill with sewing—but, at any rate, it is easy to see why the concept of a commonplace person suddenly holding the power of life and death in his hands might have appealed to him. Part of Zodiac's revamped ditty ran,

As some day it may hapon [sic] that a victom [sic] must be found. I've got a little list. I've got a little list, of society offenders who might well be underground who would never be missed who would never be missed.

The list ends, “But it really doesn't matter whom you place upon the list, for none of them be missed, none of them be missed.” It is interesting to note that, while the tune was intended to communicate the smallness and worthlessness of possible future victims, it could also be interpreted as referring to Zodiac himself—to his own feelings of invisibility. Note that Zodiac followed up his petty tirade with unrelated comments about his Mount Diablo code and the bomb he had allegedly hidden underground. This seems in accord with the aforementioned hypothesis by Douglas, regarding the killer's compensation for feelings of inferiority, with dramatic, violent threats.

On October 27, 1970, Paul Avery, the Chronicle reporter covering the Zodiac case, received a disturbing Halloween card featuring a skeleton on the cover, with the words, “From Your Secret Pal: I feel it in my bones, you ache to know my name, and so I'll clue you in.” Inside, the printed message read, “But, then, why spoil the game! BOO!” Zodiac had pasted a skeleton alongside the text, suspended in the fashion of a crucified person. He marked the card up with his cross-circle symbol; the words “Paradice” [sic] and “Slaves,” surrounded by “By Fire,” “By Gun,” “By Knife,” and “By Rope”; images of peering eyes; and the ominous threat, “Pee-a-boo, you are doomed.” Soon thereafter, Avery received an anonymous letter, which first brought to light the possible link between the Cheri Jo Bates murder and the Zodiac case.72

Four months after Avery unearthed the Riverside case, Zodiac wrote, for the first time, to the Los Angeles Times, the paper with the largest circulation in California, which comes as no surprise. Needling the authorities for their failure to apprehend him, he wrote, “I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside [sic] activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason that Im [sic] writing to the Times is this, They [sic] don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others.” After confessing to a crime he may not have committed, he gave his latest probably grossly exaggerated victim tally of “17+.”73 After this, Zodiac fell silent for years—perhaps due to incarceration or a period of treatment in a psychiatric hospital.

The next confirmed letter from Zodiac was sent to the Chronicle in late January of 1974. This time, he praised William Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist, based upon William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel of the same name, as “the best satirical comidy [sic] that I have ever seen.” In addition to more dark Mikado humor, he included a peculiar, never explained symbol and the new murder tally of “37.”⁷⁴ Six months later, the killer penned an anonymous note to the same paper, in his distinctive penmanship, but lacking the usual probably intentionally misspelled words, which helps to establish that he was feigning poor spelling all along. He expressed “consternation” concerning the paper's “poor taste” and “lack of sympathy” in running ads for Terrence Malick's 1973 film The Badlands, loosely based upon the real-life 1958 killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, and set in the year following their actual crimes. The advertisements read, “In 1959, most people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people.” Zodiac remarked, “In light of recent events, this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable).” Two months later, Zodiac appears to have sent another anonymous note to the Chronicle, this time voicing pseudo-concern about anti-feminist columnist Count Marco Spinelli. “Put Marco back in the hell-hole from whence it came—he has a serious psychological disorder—always needs to feel superior—I suggest you refer him to a shrink.” This was, of course, the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, and was probably penned in an ironic tone for the killer's own amusement.⁷⁵

With that, the mysterious Zodiac seems to have vanished for good—assuming, of course, that he did not, in reality, go on killing and making his crimes look like routine ones that no one would ever think to link with him. Indeed, on several occasions, there has been speculation that homicides by other serial killers might, in fact, be the work of Zodiac. This has included, for instance, the case of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski,76 a three-time murderer with a similar “mastermind” profile. Zodiac's case in San Francisco was marked “inactive” in 2004 but then reopened in 2007. It remains active in Napa and Riverside.⁷⁷ At the time of this writing, investigators are working with a private laboratory that is hoping to create a DNA profile of the killer, using envelopes from two of his letters. Such a profile might allow for the identification of Zodiac through a genealogy website, a technique that, in 2018, led to the establishment of Joseph James DeAngelo as a suspect in another decades-old California cold case, that of the Golden State Killer.⁷⁸

Douglas, reflecting upon the way the killer slipped into silence and the unlikeliness of his reemergence, postulated that Zodiac may have committed suicide, due to a sense that there were no more victims to claim and no reason to perpetuate the dialogue.⁷⁹ We may never know. Whether or not the man who called himself Zodiac is ever named, he has long achieved just what he seems to have been hoping for: lots of people “tortured” and fascinated by the grand, Sphinx-like riddle of his words and actions, as he lives on, well past his criminal career, in a sort of folklore afterlife.