The Zodiac Killer claimed responsibility for 37 murders. But what if he never existed at all?
The enduring mystery of the Zodiac Killer has terrified and tantalised the world for more than half a century. There has been no shortage of theories about the killer, but a new Peacock series explores a singular question: What if there was no ‘Zodiac Killer’ at all? Sheila Flynn writes
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They were an Eagle Scout and a pretty 16-year-old high school junior on their first official date, dolled up and excited as they headed out on the evening of 20 December 1968 in California. David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen represented everything wholesome about their Bay Area community, but their names would soon take on a new and more sinister significance both in their hometown and beyond. The teenagers were shockingly and tragically shot dead just hours into their date; they became the first known victims of the notorious Zodiac Killer, who went on to claim responsibility for more murders and whose identity remains a mystery to this day.
But what if the high schoolers were killed by someone else – and were never victims of the Zodiac in the first place? And what if the serial killer’s years-long reign of terror was actually ... a myth?
Those are the questions at the heart of Peacock’s new docuseries Myth of the Zodiac Killer, which explores a fringe theory of author and professor Thomas Henry Horan, who in 2020 published The Myth of the Zodiac Killer: A Literary Investigation.
“There is no evidence that connects any two of these murders, let alone connects all of the murders and let alone connects them to the letters,” Mr Horan says in the series, explaining that he became interested in the case “because nobody has come close to cracking this for over 50 years.”
A former insurance investigator who worked in educational publishing before pursuing a career in academia and literature, Mr Horan says that he “was curious: Did these letters really line up with the actual evidence?”
“So I spent hundreds of hours reviewing that material,” he continues in the Peacock series. “And the more I studied these letters and compared them to the actual facts in each case, I made a very surprising discovery. It wasn't just that the story that we're all familiar with about the Zodiac Killer was wrong, it's the truth about the Zodiac Killer case is more bizarre and more interesting than anybody ever suspected.
“There was no serial killer,” he says. “There was no single killer involved in these murders. And the person writing the letters didn't commit any of the murders. The Zodiac Killer, is a fictional character. He’s a literary invention.”
Five murders have been connected to the person claiming to be the Zodiac, and communication from the purported murderer boasts of dozens more. David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, as mentioned, were the first, killed on 20 December 1968. Darlene Ferrin and Michael Renault Mageau were attacked on 4 July 1969 in Vallejo; 22-year-old Ferrin was killed, but her companion survived the shooting.
The first letters claiming responsibility for the murders arrived at San Francisco newsrooms just a few short weeks after the Vallejo attack, including the “cross-circle logo” that would come to be associated with the serial killer, though the writer did not yet use the term “Zodiac.” The author included details of the crimes and a cipher which contained his identity (and was solved a week later by a schoolteacher and his wife.)
When authorities appealed for more information, the writer followed up with his first use of the infamous phrase: “Dear Editor, This is the Zodiac speaking.”
Then, on 27 September 1969, college students Cecelia Shepard, 22, and Bryan Hartnell, 20, were tied up and stabbed repeatedly in Napa County. Both were able to give descriptions of the assailant, though Cecelia later tragically succumbed to her injuries. There was no letter following the attack, though a message was left on the door of the victims’ car detailing the dates of the two previous murders. The following month, 29-year-old taxi driver Paul Stine was shot and killed after picking up a passenger in San Francisco.
After his death, a letter writer claiming to be the Zodiac sent bloody scraps of the taxi driver’s shirt to newspapers as proof of his identity. Various communications purporting to be from the serial killer would continue to arrive intermittently until 1974, though the authenticity of many of the letters has been fiercely debated over the years.
“As an English professor, these Zodiac letters were what got me interested in the case in the first place,” Mr Horan says in the Peacock series. “They were fascinating. They’re short, but they’re very well written. And this series of letters, very artfully crafted, created this compelling character. He was cold, calculating, ruthless; he was perfectly conscious of his actions. He chose to be evil.
“But the initial response was skepticism” from police, he says, who “expressed a lot of healthy skepticism – but the public now are getting information from a person claiming to be the killer. I think the fear was that the public would believe these letters, and I think that’s what happened. The more time that goes on, they believe more and more in the Zodiac, and it really does start to skew their investigations towards certain suspects, away from certain suspects.”
Filmmaker Andrew Nock set about investigating Mr Horan’s theories that the five victims could have been killed by other criminals with other motivations, tracking down friends and family and even possible suspects for on-camera interviews. The author points to the different weapons, the different victimology, the different circumstances. Some witnesses provided descriptions that are vastly different from an instantly recognisable police sketch. Mr Horan theorises the first couple could have been killed by drug dealers; the taximan could have fallen victim to a robber preying on cab drivers at the time; Darlene Ferrin could have been murdered by an ex-con ex-husband.
“Maybe he’s not guilty, but you do have a prime suspect who is worthy of further investigation,” Mr Horan says of Ferrin’s ex, Jim Phillips. “But by the time the police catch up with him, there’s now this runaway narrative that the murders are committed by one person who’s been writing these letters. And the police couldn’t prove that Jim was the so-called Zodiac Killer, so they lost interest ... the letters are probably the number one reason none of these victims ever got any justice, and here’s a perfect example: If the letter writer isn’t the killer, then we need to rethink everything we know about this case. And unlocking the mystery of those letters and ciphers is the key to blowing this whole case wide open and proving if there really was a Zodiac Killer.”
Mr Nock actually tracked down Mr Phillips, who now goes by another surname, conducting a deeply weird interview during which the victim’s former husband claims to have been a military cryptologist and to have threatened Ferrin the last time he spoke to her. The filmmaker also had the letters analysed by experts in computational linguistics to see if, like Mr Horan, they believed they could have been written by multiple authors. The docuseries also includes interviews with other Zodiac experts, one of whom says he turned down a debate with Mr Horan because “you might as well debate a ham sandwich.”
There have been definite opinions for decades about the truth and fiction within the Zodiac mythology; new technology and investigators have pointed to multiple suspects as the possible serial killer. Many a name has been associated with the murderer, and detectives both professional and amateur continue to chip away at ‘Zodiac’s’ codes; one cipher was only solved in 2020, by a trio of amateur codebreakers in three countries.
“The deeper you dive into the Zodiac story, and the more of the onion you peel, you don’t really get to the core of what happened,” Mr Nock says in the series. “You just get to a muddier place, because with every Zodiac expert that you speak to, it’s clear that their theory on what happened in the so-called Zodiac crimes is the strongest theory.
“Even when there’s solid evidence in front of them that challenge their position, they’re unmovable. The problem with that is, when you’re so entrenched in an idea, like the notion that a single person committed all four of these horrible crimes, and the same person wrote all of the letters, and the evidence proves otherwise, what you get is a cold case that stretches on for 50-plus years, and then there’s no justice for any of the victims.
“Professor Horan may be eccentric, but he’s studied every document publicly available on this case,” the filmmaker says. “And it’s impossible not to walk away wondering: Was there ever a Zodiac Killer?”