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An article on Michelle's obsession with the case

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An article on Michelle's obsession with the case

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wk 6 - shalini

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Michelle McNamara Hunted, and Was Haunted by, the Golden State Killer (Published 2018)

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McNamara died before she completed her book about the serial killer; her husband, Patton Oswalt, didn’t want her work to be in vain.

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unsolved cases that reopened because of true crime podcasts 

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unsolved cases that reopened because of true crime podcasts 

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wk 6 - trilena; similar to what Michelle McNamara did

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These 10 Unsolved Cases Were Reopened Because Of True Crime Podcasts And Their Supporters

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There’s apparently some at-home Sherlock Holmeses out here bringing some justice to the world.

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Question 1: One appears to have more value, thus being higher on the pyramid because without the base, you cannot have the other. Without being happy, it's much harder to be safe -> metal health etc.

Question 6: The book ended very sadly and underwhelming. This relates to the book because McNamara's Esteem and Cognitive needs weren't met. She was safe but she suffered an overdose due to her obsession with the case.

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wk 6 nathan

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The Golden State Killer suspect became part of their family ⁠— and slowly revealed his violent side

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To Bonnie, Joe DeAngelo was an energetic and worldly veteran with an appealing swagger. But soon, everything changed.

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wk 5 nathan

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The official, confirmed list of EARONS attack locations taken straight from Law Enforcement and rigorously fact-checked through property records, police reports, phone records, etc. Some of the [...]

One of the interesting parts of the East Area Rapist's MO was that he seemingly made many, many "hang-up" phone calls to victims, usually in the weeks before an attack but sometimes after. What wasn't as common were the [...]

One of the primary control methods that the EAR used was ligatures -- usually shoelaces. It also seemed to provide sexual gratification, at least when it came to [...]

The EARONS crime spree spans ten years and roughly 60 attacks. Unfortunately, not only has a lot of evidence has been discarded, but the attacks were happening [...]

The paint evidence is one of the most significant and most misunderstood pieces of evidence in the EARONS case. Not only does it give a specific clue about a possible profession[...]

"I need food and money for my van." This phrase was spoken over and over again in EAR attacks. While the mention of a specific vehicle might seem like a red herring, it's interesting to note that[...]

One of the most curious and surprisingly common aspects of an EAR attack often involved the assailant breaking down into tears and sobbing, sometimes mentioning his mother and sometimes[...]

Specifically what we're looking at here is the fairly unique M.O. element where the EAR would tell victims to "Play with it". He would often bind his victims' hands very tightly and then forcing them to play with his penis with their hands tied behind their back. It's worth looking at which attacks this peculiar behavior occurred at to see if any patterns emerge.

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The official, confirmed list of EARONS attack locations taken straight from Law Enforcement and rigorously fact-checked through property records, police reports, phone records, etc. Some of the [...] One of the interesting parts of the East Area Rapist's MO was that he seemingly made many, many "hang-up" phone calls to victims, usually in the weeks before an attack but sometimes after.

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5) No, the needs of a higher level cannot be met unless the needs of a lower level are met. The lower level provides a baseline or a foundation to build upon. You cannot have love unless you have safety.

6) The Cognitive needs of McNamara were set aside to pursue this, this led to her health declining, and an overdose.

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5 Questions we would ask the author
Do you have a day job, how do you have so much time?
Did you feel any complications in your body?
Did you know you were going to die?
What did you think about the resolution of the case?
What would you say to the GSK?

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wk 5 - trilena

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When McNamara first became obsessed with the killer, he was known as EAR/ONS, short for East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker. That's because he committed two series of crimes, raping at least 50 women in northern California in between 1976 and 1979 and then killed at least 10 people in southern California in between 1979 and 1986. It was only in 2001 that DNA testing showed the same person was responsible for both series of crimes.

Through her research, McNamara knew everything about him, from his physical appearance ("young - anywhere from 18 to 30 - Caucasian, and athletic, capable of eluding capture by jumping roofs and vaulting tall fences") to his personality ("nervous and fidgety yet brazen").

"He paused in the middle of one rape to go to the kitchen and eat apple pie," she wrote. "Sometimes after he violated someone, the bound, blindfolded victim would later recall hearing him in another room of the house, sobbing. Once, a victim remembered hearing him cry out over and over again: Mummy. Mummy. Mummy."

He attacked women in their bedrooms, targeting those who lived in upper-middle-class suburbs. He liked to keep his victims in a state of perpetual fear. One of his signature threats was, "I'll be gone in the dark."

McNamara felt that the killer needed a catchier name to draw more public attention to his crimes, so she called him the Golden State Killer. The name stuck.

Even back in 2013, when McNamara wrote the article for Los Angeles Magazine, she suspected she was getting too obsessed.

"I wonder at times if I need to step back," she said.

But she didn't. The magazine article grew into a book, I'll Be Gone In The Dark. McNamara believed the case was solvable, and felt compelled to solve it. Every time a promising lead went nowhere, it hit her hard. Having always been a restless sleeper, she found herself developing insomnia. When she could sleep, she had nightmares. She struggled with anxiety.

Oswalt knew that McNamara was stressed, but thought she was managing it. He didn't know that she was taking prescription drugs to help her cope. Among those drugs were the stimulant Adderall and the powerful painkiller Fentanyl.

"It's so clear that the stress led her to make some bad choices in terms of the pharmaceuticals she was using," Oswalt told the New York Times in 2018. "She just took this stuff on, and she didn't have the years of being a hardened detective to compartmentalise it."

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While Michelle McNamara was hunting the Golden State Killer, her own life was falling apart.

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When McNamara first became obsessed with the killer, he was known as EAR/ONS, short for East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker. That's because he committed two series of crimes, raping at least 50 women in northern California in between 1976 and 1979 and then killed at least 10 people in southern California in between 1979 and 1986.

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wk 5 shalini

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Boca Recovery Center | Addiction Treatment Built Around You

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One of the biggest killers in the United States today comes from prescription drug overdoses. Many people who are prescribed the medications were done so legally. Different medications help with different symptoms of mental illness, and some are made to help people with chronic pain. The problem with many of these medications is that they can become highly addictive, and some can become a fatal combination. In 2016, actor and comedian Patton Oswalt lost his wife, and he recently opened up about the cause of death.

Michelle McNamara was a true crime writer who married the comedian and actor Patton Oswalt. Patton is known for his standup comedy, voice acting in movies like Ratatouille and many other television and movie appearances. In 2016, at the age of 46, Michelle McNamara passed away in her sleep, and it was a shock to Patton as well as the rest of the world. This seemingly healthy wife and mother died suddenly, and there were no answers as to the cause of death until recently.

Patton Oswalt recently opened up about the cause of death, and it looks to have been an accidental overdose. Michelle McNamara was on a combination of Adderall, Xanax and Fentanyl. This cocktail of medications can be very lethal as two of them are very powerful depressants. It turns out that these medications were prescribed to Michelle, but it is still unknown if she had a dependency issue.

The United States prescribes more narcotic medications than any other country on earth. One can't help but think how these other countries are dealing with issues like mental health and pain management. Other countries seem to be doing fine in each of these categories, but the United States continues to prescribed these highly addictive, highly dangerous medications for different symptoms.

The medications that Michelle McNamara was on are for different types of symptoms. Adderall is prescribed to those who suffer from ADD or ADHD, and it's a stimulant. The medication helps a person focus, but many people also use this medication in the same way a person would use cocaine. It helps the person stay awake, and it can also reduce the effects of alcohol. Xanax is a very powerful benzodiazepine prescribed for anxiety disorders. This medication depresses the nervous system greatly when used in excess, and it can lead to many health issues and even overdose.

Fentanyl is one of the most potent narcotic pain medications out there, and for some reason it's being prescribed more and more. Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine, and it's 50 times more potent than heroin. This medication is supposed to only be prescribed to people with extreme forms of chronic pain. This medication alone can lead to fatal overdoses.

The problem with the disease of addiction is that it's the only illness that makes you think that you're doing fine. It takes a moment of clarity or an intervention from your loved ones to really see that you have a problem. If you've started to see that you're losing control of your use of prescription medications, Boca Recovery Center is here to let you know that you don't have to live that way anymore. Give us a call today to find out about how our addiction treatment program can help you begin a new life.

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One of the biggest killers in the United States today comes from prescription drug overdoses. Many people who are prescribed the medications were done so legally. Different medications help with different symptoms of mental illness, and some are made to help people with chronic pain.

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4) If a person cannot move up the pyramid, they will never experience growth, however, the value of a person doesn't change in our opinion. No matter how useful they are, they still have room for growth.

6) This chart relates to our boo because the killer has targeted couples, families, everyone. Their Safety Needs are not met as well as their Belonging and Love Needs are tarnished.

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How the Golden State Killer was caught using DNA analysis

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How the Golden State Killer was caught using DNA analysis

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wk 4 - shalini

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If you're white, live in the United States, and a distant relative has uploaded their DNA to a public ancestry database, there's a good chance an internet sleuth can identify you from a DNA sample you left somewhere. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that by combining an anonymous DNA sample with some basic information such as someone's rough age, researchers could narrow that person's identity to fewer than 20 people by starting with a DNA database of 1.3 million individuals.

Such a search could potentially allow the identification of about 60% of white Americans from a DNA sample-even if they have never provided their own DNA to an ancestry database. "In a few years, it's really going to be everyone," says study leader Yaniv Erlich, a computational geneticist at Columbia University.

The study was sparked by the April arrest of the alleged "Golden State Killer," a California man accused of a series of decades-old rapes and murders. To find him-and more than a dozen other criminal suspects since then-law enforcement agencies first test a crime scene DNA sample, which could be old blood, hair, or semen, for hundreds of thousands of DNA markers-signposts along the genome that vary among people, but whose identity in many cases are shared with blood relatives. They then upload the DNA data to GEDmatch, a free online database where anyone can share their data from consumer DNA testing companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com to search for relatives who have submitted their DNA. Searching GEDMatch's nearly 1 million profiles revealed several relatives who were the equivalent to third cousins to the crime scene DNA linked to the Golden State Killer. Other information such as genealogical records, approximate age, and crime locations then allowed the sleuths to home in on a single person.

Geneticists quickly speculated this approach could identify many people from an unknown DNA sequence. But to quantify just how many, Erlich and colleagues took a closer look at the MyHeritage database, which contains 1.28 million DNA profiles of individuals looking at their family history. (Erlich is chief science officer of the ancestry DNA testing company.) If you live in the United States and are of European ancestry, there's a 60% chance you have a third cousin or closer relative in this database, the team projected. Their success rate was similar when they did searches for 30 random profiles in GEDmatch. (The odds drop to 40% for someone of sub-Saharan African ancestry in the MyHeritage database.)

Assuming you have a relative in one of these databases, what are the chances police could find you from an unidentified DNA sample, the way they nabbed the alleged Golden State Killer? To find out, Erlich and colleagues combined the MyHeritage database information with family trees, and demographic data such as rough age and likely geographic location. On average, that allowed them to use a hypothetical DNA sequence to home in on 17 "suspects" from a pool of about 850 people, the team reports today in Science.

GEDmatch likely only encompasses about 0.5% of the U.S. adult population, but millions of Americans are using DNA ancestry testing services. Once the GEDmatch figure rises to 2%, more than 90% of people of European descent will have a third cousin or closer relative and could be found in this way. "It's surprising how small the database needs to be," says population geneticist Noah Rosenberg of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was not involved with the work.

Rosenberg and colleagues showed last year that a profile in a consumer DNA database can be matched up with the same person's profile in law enforcement forensic DNA databases, even though they use a different, smaller set of DNA markers. Today in Cell, they report that more than 30% of individuals in the forensic databases can also be linked to a sibling, parent, or child in a consumer database. The two types of databases combined could make it even easier to find a suspect from a DNA sample. The linked consumer DNA profile could also reveal physical appearance or medical information for a criminal or their relatives, such as genes for eye color or a disease, even though the forensic databases aren't supposed to contain that kind of information. "More can be done with them than has been claimed," Rosenberg says.

Although these studies are encouraging news for solving crimes, they raise privacy concerns for law-abiding citizens, Erlich says. One possible solution suggested by his team is that the consumer DNA testing companies digitally encrypt a customer's data and that GEDMatch only allow these encrypted files to be uploaded. That way a law enforcement agency couldn't upload DNA sequence data from its own lab without an ancestry company's cooperation. (The police can't just pretend to be a customer and send crime scene DNA samples to companies like 23andMe because the company's sequencing machines typically can't process scant, degraded DNA samples.)

Erlich also thinks U.S. officials need to revisit federal rules protecting people who volunteer for research studies. A recently revised guideline for biomedical researchers, called the Common Rule, assumes that a research participant can't easily be identified from their anonymized DNA profile. But in its paper, Erlich's team used GEDMatch to identify a woman who was part of a study using her anonymized DNA profile and birth date, which is often publicly available to researchers.

Genetic policy experts agree that changes to how genealogy databases and DNA sequencing firms operate or are regulated are needed. The digital signature might be "a partial solution," says law professor Natalie Ram of the University of Baltimore in Maryland. But all the players in the direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing industry would have to agree to this scheme, she notes. "If not, we're back to square one."

Instead, she and others recently argued in Science that states and Congress should pass laws limiting situations where law enforcement can use genealogy databases to find suspects. It may be reasonable for a murder case, but not for a petty crime, Ram says. "Finding the right balance is important."

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We will find you: DNA search used to nab Golden State Killer can home in on about 60% of white Americans

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If you're white, live in the United States, and a distant relative has uploaded their DNA to a public ancestry database, there's a good chance an internet sleuth can identify you from a DNA sample you left somewhere.

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The main conflict of this book is person vs. society. This conflict is much more significant than just the speakers story as it goes through the lives of each person, it demonstrates more of a feeling than something physical. https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/the-effects-of-homicides-and-economics-on-human-and-social-biology-a-mental-health-challenge-for-a-society-1522-4821-1000202.php?aid=55718

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www.omicsonline.org/scholarly/mental-health-statistics-journals-articles-ppts-list.phpPaul Andrew Bourne1*, Angela Hudson-Davis2, Charlene Sharpe-Pryce3, Cynthia Francis4, Ikhalfani Solan5, Dadria Lewis3, Vivienne L. Quarrie3, Marsha Pabarue3, Shirley Nelson6, Rachael Irving7, Howard Anderson3
¹ Socio-Medical Research Institute, Jamaica

² Capella University, USA

³ Northern Caribbean University, Mandeville, Jamaica

⁴ University of Technology, Jamaica

⁵ South Carolina State University, USA

⁶ Barnett's Private Resort, Bahamas

⁷ University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

Visit for more related articles at International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience

Abstract

Introduction: Violence, particularly homicide, continue to plague Jamaica making it one of the countries with the highest murder rate worldwide with escalating violent espisodes which contribute to the leading cause of death among young males. Yet, homicide is not listed among the major causes of deaths in Jamaica and left out among the non-communicable diseases causing deaths. Objective: The aims of this research is to narrow the gap in the literature by evaluating from an empirical viewpoint the effects of homicides on human and social biology of theliving from a mental health perspective. Materials and Methods: The data for this study were taken from various Jamaica Government Publications including the Demographic Statistics, which provided data on mortality, population, and deaths. Jamaica Constabulary Force and Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica (ESSJ) provided the data for murders; gross domestic product per capita (i.e., GDP per capita) and suicide. Data were recorded, stored and retrieved using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows, Version 21.0. The level of significance that is used to determine statistical significance is less than 5% (0.05) at the 2-tailed level of significance. Ordinary least square (OLS) regressions were used to determine models or factors of health-care seeking behaviour. Stepwise regression was also used to the contribution of each variable leading to the final model. Results: Homicide is strongly correlated with health demands (rxy = 0.681). Of the five variables entered in the OLS regression, three emerged as factors of health-care seeking behaviour (i.e., self-reported physical illness, exchange rate and lninflation rate). This explained 83.6% of the variance in the dependent variable. Of the three factors, only one was positively correlated with dependent variable and the other two were inversely correlated with HSB. A very strong direct statistical correlation existed between the exchange rate and HSB (rxy = 0.832, P < 0.0001) with the other factors being held constant. Conclusion: Homicide must be included in human and social biology, mental health and demographic discourse as it accounts for premature deaths, psychiatric disorders and social disruptions.

Keywords
Homicide, macroeconomic variables, psychology of economics, mental health
Introduction

Violence has reached a pandemic proportion in our world. Some nations more than others are plagued by violent crimes, particularly homicide. Countries such as Jamaica, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and El Salvador (Boxill et al., 2007; Schiller, 2011; Manwaring, 2007; Blake, 2002; Krug et al., 2002) are among those nations with the highest rates of homicide in the world. In a World Health Organization (WHO) study, it was noted by Krug et al. (2002) that youth homicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean are the highest in the world (e.g., 84.4 per 100,000 in Colombia, 50.2 per 100,000 in El Salvador, and 41.8 in Puerto Rico compared to 11.0 per 100,000 in the United States).Furthermore, it was reported that the majority of the nations with a youth homicide rate in excess of 10 per 100,000 are in the developing world, and, that "those experiencing rapid social and economic changes" (Krug et al., 2002, p. 25). This dilemmatic situation plagues Jamaica making it one of the countries with the highest murder rate worldwide with escalating violent espisodes which contribute to the leading cause of death among young males (Smith & Green, 2007).

Jamaica is a developing country and is geographically smaller than Colombia, El Salvador and Puerto Rico yet has had youth homicides rates that are comparable and/or even greater than those nations mentioned; this violence discourse continues to be based in criminology and sociology, with little references to the epidemiology of homicide as well as the psychology of homicide on the living.Smith and Green perspective concurred when they expressed that "Youth violence has been correlated with predictors such as low self esteem, poor social problem solving skills and low empathy" (p. 419).

According to Krug et al. (2002), "The human cost in grief and pain, of course, cannot be calculated. In fact, much of it is almost invisible" (p. 3), which is possibly the justification for the empirical inquiry on the matter in the area of public health and epidemiology in the Caribbean. Despite this reality, violence is a public health phenomenon and homicide, which is a component of violence, must be studied with the same degree of intensity similar to that of noncommunicable diseases. The number of deaths caused by some noncommunicable diseases such as malignant neoplams, ischaemic heart diseases, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension are equally comparable to deaths caused by homicide in Jamaica (see Table 1). Inspite of the similarity in the number of cases of homicide and four of the major non-communicable diseases causing deaths annually in Jamaica, homicide is not listed among the 10 leading causes of deaths and is not seen as a disease. However, research provides enough evidence that homicide should be among the top causes of deaths in Jamaica as well as placed among ten non-communicable conditions causing deaths.

Source: In Demographic statistics, various years (i.e. By Statistical Institute of Jamaica)

Table 1: Deaths Caused by selected Non-communicable Diseases and Homicide in Jamaica, 2005-2012

The reason that many of the developing nations that are experiencing the homicide epidemic is due to the rapid socioeconomic changes, one being trust or mistrust (Krug et al., 2002). In a cross-sectional nationally representative survey of some 1,595 Jamaicans 18 years and older, Boxill et al. (2007), found that 57.1 percent of respondents reported that people are 'somewhat trustworthy', and only 14.1 percent indicated 'very trustworthy'. Another cross-sectional national study of some 1,338 Jamaicans conducted at the same time as that of Boxill et al. (2007) found that interpersonal trust was 7.7 percent among Jamaicans (Powell, Bourne, & Waller, 2007). The reality is, interpersonal trust in Jamaica is relatively low and when this is added to the fact that 69.4 percent of Jamaicans indicated that the country is governed in favour of the rich; 25.1 percent said their economic situation is better off than 12 month prior and 55 percent believed that the country is 'going in the wrong direction,' and, 44 percent indicated that crime and violence is the leading nation problem (Powell, Bourne & Waller, 2007) with the context of the closeness between the numbers of death by homicide and certain deaths caused by non-communicable conditions, the epidemiology of homicides from a psychological perspective warrants immediate investigation.

An extensive search of the literature by the researchers did not find any study that has specifically examined the epidemiology of homicide from a pscyhological perspectives in the English-Speaking Caribbean. The aims of this research is to narrow the gap in the literature by evaluating from an empirical viewpoint the effects of homicides on human and social biology of theliving from a mental health perspective, using national data for Jamaica from 1989 to 2013.

Materials and Methods

The data for this study were taken from various Jamaica Government Publications including the Demographic Statistics, which provided data on mortality, population, and deaths. Jamaica Constabulary Force and Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica (ESSJ) provided the data for murders; gross domestic product per capita (i.e., GDP per capita) and suicide. The period for this work is from 1989 through to 2013. Data were recorded, stored and retrieved using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows, Version 21.0. The level of significance that is used to determine statistical significance is less than 5% (0.05) at the 2-tailed level of significance. Ordinary least square (OLS) regressions were used to determine models or factors of health-care seeking behaviour. Stepwise regression was also used to the contribution of each variable leading to the final model. Hence, the OLS table examine all variables at once and statistically significant variables to a final factor model of health-care seeking behaviour. As such, the contribution of each factor is a simple subtraction of the current R ² from the immediate preceding R ² value, with the first R ² representing the more or most influential factor. Prior to the use of the OLS, the researchers tested for normality of the variables (i.e., linearity and skewness including Durbin-Watson test). Those variables that skewed (negatively or positively, S k> ± 0.8) were logged to restore normality by way of natural logarithm (log e or ln). Hence, for this, study the following variables were logged poverty, inflation, and unemployment rates, which explained the use of lnPoverty Rate; lnInflation Rate; and lnUnemployment Rate. We also tested for the likelihood of Type I and Type II Errors, by using one-tailed and twotailed test of significance. Data are compared across groups and so in cases where an analysis was made with either.
Operational Definitions
Death: The absence of life.

Study period: The studied period is 1989 to 2013, which means that there are 2.5 decades thereby. The decades are 1990-1999, and 2000-2009.

Homicide (or Murder): the unlawful killing (a crime causing death without a lawful justification) by another person(s) within a particular geopolitical zone (excluding police killings or homicides). For this work, murders represent the total number of murders for each year.

Health-Care Seeking Behaviour is the percentage of people seeking medical care.

Findings

Figure 1 depicts the annual homicides for Jamaica from 1989 to 2013. In 2013, the number of homicides stood in triple digits (1,200 or 44.2 per 100,000 population), with homicide reaching its peak in 2009 (1,680 or 62.3 per 100,000 population). Historically, the first time homicides reached triple digits in Jamaica was in 1997 (1, 034 or 40.8 per 100,000 population), and only three times since then has it fallen below 1,000 (953 or 37.2 per 100,000 population in 1998; 849 or 32.9 per 100,000 population in 1999; 887 or 34.3 per 100,000 population in 2000; 975 or 37.1 per 100,000 in 2003). In fact, since 1989 in Jamaica, homicide has been increasing at a steady rate (see Figure 1 or Annex- Table 1A).

Further analysis of the homicide rate, in Jamaica, revealed that on a daily basis approximately 5 people were murderd in 2005 compared to 3 in 2013 (See Annex- Table 1A).

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics of selected macroeconomic variables, murder rate, self-reported physical illness rate (%) and HSB. Over the two and one-half decade (1989-2013), the murder rate in Jamaica stood at 18.5 per 100,000 (in 1989) to the highest of 63.2 per 100,000 (in 2009) compared to the highest inflation rate of 80.2% (in 1991) and the least of 5.7% (in 2006). Comparatively, poverty was at its highest in 1991 (44.6%) and at its lowest in 2007 (9.9%). The average murder rate for the studied period was 40.4 per 100,000 ± 13.1 per 100,000 (95% CI: 35.0-45.8 per 100,000). In 1991, poverty and inflation rates in Jamaica were at their zeniths, with poverty averaging 21.2% ± 7.9% (95% CI: 17.7-25.2) over the 25 years. Concurrently, on average, 12.2% ± 2.5% (95% CI: 11.1%- 13.4%) of Jamaicans reported a physical illness and 59.7% ± 8.98% (95% CI: 55.6-63.8) sought medical care. During the zenith of poverty and inflation in Jamaica (in 1991), 47.7% of Jamaica sought medical care, which is the second lowest in the studied period with the least being 38.6% in 1990. However, when murder was at its peak in Jamaica (in 2009), 77.1% of Jamaicans sought medical care which is unprecedent over the studied period. Simply put, when homicide rose to it zenith in 2009, 77 out of every 100 Jamaicans sought medical care compared to 54 per 100 Jamaicans in 1989 when homicide was at it lowest point (18.5 per 100,000).

Table 2: Descriptive Statistics of selected Macroeconomic Variables, Murder rate, Self-reported Physical Illness Rate (%) and HSB

Table 3 presents Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Matrix of selected macroeconomic variables (i.e., lnunemployment and lninflation), murder rate and self-reported physical illness (in %). Murder, self-reported physical illness (in %), lnunemployment rate and lninflation rate are statisticall correlated with HSB. A strong positive statistical relationship existed between HSB and murder rate (r xy = 0.763, P < 0.0001) compared to a moderate inverse relationship HSB and lninflation rate (rxy = -0.675, P < 0.0001). On the other hand, weak negative correlations emerged between HSB and illness rate (r xy = -0.494, P = 0.011) and HSB and lnunemployment rate (r xy = -0.414, P = 0.031). The direct statistical correlation between HSB and murder rate means that when the murder rate increases in Jamaica, please demand more health care service, which is indicating a rise in psychological and/or psychiatric conditions owing to murders. However, a rise in cost of living see an inverse relationship in HSB. Such a findings denotes that there is a substitution effect of food and other materials items for health care services in periods of high cost of living. However, the rise in cost of living do not influence self-reported physcial illness (P = 0.169). On the other hand, a rise in unemployment is associated with an increase in self-reported physcial illness (r xy = 0.621, P = 0.001), with the relationship being a moderately strong one.

Table 3: Pearson's Product Moment Correlations of selected Macroeconomic Variables, Self-reported Physical Illness Rate, Murder Rate per 100,000 population, Health-Care Seeking Behavior (in%)

Table 4 presents an OLS regression of selected macroeconomic variables, murder rate and physical illness rate on Health-Care Seeking Behaviour. Of the four variables entered into the model at once (i.e., two macroeconomic variables, homicide rate and selfreported physical illness rate), two variables emerged as factors of health-care seeking behaviour of Jamaicans (F [4, 20] = 13.860, P < 0.0001). The two factors (homicide rate and inflation rate) accounted for 72 percent of the variance in health-care seeking behaviour of Jamaicans (adjusted R ²). Homicide is positively correlated with health-care seeking behaviour and inflation is inversely correlated with health care demands. On further examination of Table 1, homicide is strongly correlated with health demands (rxy = 0.681) with all other variables being held constant and inflation was -0.592. Simply put, homicide positively affected the health demands of Jamaica, which cannot be said for reporting a physical illness. On the other hand, when the cost of living increases, Jamaicans demand less health care services. However, the correlations between selfreported physical illness and HSB and lnunemployment rate are spurious relationships.

F[4, 20] = 13.860, P < 0.0001
R ² = 0.776, Adjusted R2 = 0.720
Std. Error = 4.75, Durbin-Watson = 1.8

Table 4: OLS regression of selected Macroeconomic Variables, Murder Rate and Physical Illness Rate on Health-Care Seeking Behaviour

Using Stepwise OLS, homicide accounting for 56 percent (i.e., Adjusted R ²) of the variance in health demand of Jamaicans (F [1, 23] = 26.440, P < 0.0001) compared to logged inflation rate of 12.3 percent (i.e., Adjusted R ²; (F [1, 23] = 22.553, P < 0.0001).

Table 5 presented an OLS regression of selected macroeconomic variables and self-reported physical illness on a dependent variable, health-care seeking behaviour (i.e., HSB). For this OLS model, we substituted murder rate with the exchange rate because there was heterodasticity with both variables. With both variables being independent variables in a single model, biased estimates would be created and therefore only one can be placed as an independent variable at a time. Therefore, of the five variables entered in the OLS regression, three emerged as factors of health-care seeking behaviour (i.e., self-reported physical illness, exchange rate and lninflation rate). This explained 83.6% of the variance in the dependent variable. Of the three factors, only one was positively correlated with dependent variable and the other two were inversely correlated with HSB. A very strong direct statistical correlation existed between the exchange rate and HSB (r xy = 0.832, P < 0.0001) with the other factors being held constant. It should be noted here that the correlation between self-reported physical illness and HSB was accommodated by the introduction of the exchange rate, making the exchange rate an intervening variable. With all other factors being held constant, the statistical association between self-reported physical illness and HSB is a moderately negative one (r xy = -0.535). This means that people tend to demand less medical care services, when self-reported physical illness are high and vice versa.

F[5, 19] = 21.317, P < 0.0001
R2 = 0.877, Adjusted R2 = 0.836
Std. Error = 3.64, Durbin-Watson = 2.4

Table 5: OLS regression of selected Macroeconomic Variables and Self-reported Physical Illness on Health-Care Seeking Behaviour

Of the four selected macroeconomic variables entered in an OLS regression ( Table 6), two emerged as factors of the murder rate (F[5, 19] = 24.3, P < 0.0001). The two factors accounted for 81.0% (i.e., adjusted R ²) of the variability in the dependent variable, murder rate. A positively strong statistical correlation existed between the exchange and murder rates (r xy = 0.723, P < 0.0001) compared to the moderately inverse one between lnpoverty rate and murder rate (r xy = -0.614, P = 0.004), in each case the other independent variable being held constant. However, when Stepwise OLS was used to determine the strength of each of the two factors on the dependent variable, the exchange rate contributed 73.8% and 5.3% for lnpoverty rate.

F[5, 19] = 24.373, P < 0.0001
R ² = 0.844, Adjusted R ²= 0.810
Std. Error = 3.64, Durbin-Watson = 1.4

Table 6: OLS regression of selected Macroeconomic Variables on Murder Rate

Discussion

This current research examined the effects of homicides on human biology from a mental health perspective, using national data for Jamaica from 1989 to 2013. This was done in order to narrow the gap in the literature by evaluating this public health issue from an empirical viewpoint. The results from this research shows that since 1989 homicide in Jamaica has steadily increased and without appropriate interventions to reduce these rates, this issue will be irreversible. In 2013, the population of Jamaica was 2.715 million people (World Bank, 2013). However, deaths from homicide are at an alarming rate for a country the size of Jamaica. This study computed that in 1989, the homicide rate in Jamaica was 18.5 per 100,000 and this rose to 44.2 per 100,000 in 2013, with rates being 55.8 per 100,00 ≤ homicide rate ≤ 62.3 per 100,000 for the periods 2003 to 2009. In absolute number, 761 more murders were committed in 2013 compared to 1989, which represents a 138.9%. Global homicide rate in 2000 was 8.8 per 100,000 (Krug et al., 2005, p. 10) cpmared to 34.3 per 100,000 in Jamaica (current study) and 32.1 per 100,000 in low-to-middle income countries (Krug et al., 2005, p. 10). The homicide rate in the developing world including Jamaica is at least twice that in high-income nations (14.4 per 100,000, Krug et al., 2005, p. 10), offering an insight of where Jamaica's emphasis ought to be. The writings are on the wall, Jamaica is experiencing a homicide epidemic which is worse than HIV/AIDS dilemma that is the thrust of many public health specialists and policy makers and this requires empirical investigations as well as public health interven.

Although the research provided the evidence necessary for policy makers and public health researchers to develop intervention strategies to effectively reverse this trend there is more work that is required to pinpoint the more urgent needs in addressing this issue. Smith & Green (2007), claimed in their research that crime and violence, in Jamaica, poses a significant treat to the health and well-being of the society and that these activities imposes significant costs, which includes death, injuries and mental distress, directly or indirectly on the population (Green & Smith, 2007). This study offers empirical insight to what Smith & Green (2007) forward as we found that homicide is positively influencing health demand. Homicide is health cost as when murders occur the living seeking both public and private health care, which is a public expenditure on health and increased demand on the health sector.

A 2013 report on homicide rates in the United States was 16,238 or 5.2 per 100,000 (Murphy, Xu, & Kochanek, 2013) compared to 1 200 or 44.2 per 100,000 in Jamaica. Based on the study in the US, deaths that were directly linked to firearms was 11,068 or 3.6 per 100,000 (Murphy, Xu, & Kochanek, 2013). Although these numbers are high they are significantly lower than that which was made evident through the current research. There is little attention paid to those that are left to morn the loss of loved ones (i.e., friends, family, spouse, etc). The homicide survivors are left behind to cope with various issues such as "economic stressors, stigmatization, fear of recurrence, anxiety when encountering reminders of the event, negative beliefs about themselves or feelings of guilt (Zinzow, Rheingold, Hawkins et al., 2009). This research is unearthing that homicide is not only resulting in premature death, there is a human and social biology to the homicide reality as murders are directly influence health seeking behaviour among the living. Clearly embedded in the positive correlation between homicide and health care seeking behaviour is the psychology of murders on the human biology of the living. Furthermore, the pressures could increase the risk for mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric disorders (Zinzow et al., 2009), which are parcelled in the social biology for the living.

The current study expands previous research on homicides by demonstrating the association between poverty, inflation and murder rates. During the years when inflation and poverty were at their highest so was the rates for murder. Interestingly, the was also an increase in the percentages of Jamaicans who sought medical care during the period when the murder and inflation rates were elevated. There were limitations in determining the correlation between the health-care seeking behaviors of the population under study and whether the change in behavior was due to the rise in inflation and poverty or due to address their mental health conditions resulting from homicides. In Bourne's study, it was reported that although there is a steady increase of illness over the years, there is a significant correlation between the lack of "seeking medical care and the inflation rate" (Bourne, 2009). Bourne's study revealed the association betweeen mortality and the pervasiveness of poverty, especially in rural communities (Bourne, 2009).

Green & Smith (2007), reported that a disproportionate amount of Jamaica's gross domestic product (GDP) is allocated for violence related issues. It is estimated that Jamaica spends over J$ 15 billion dollars on health care cost each year, with violence related issues costing roughly 700 million Jamaican dollars (J$) (Green & Smith, 2007). This type of spending restricts the country's abililty to compete on the global platform (Green & Smith, 2007). With the present study showing a direct correlation between homicide and health care seeking behaviour as well as the exchange rate and health care demand, murder is not only a mental health cost it is also a health care cost to the society as well as the reduced productivity from the lost humans. Homicide further limits the amount that is allocated for education, food, etc as resources but be diverted services including the need for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, medical practitioners, and buildings for care of the family of the deceased.

As evident from the current research, there is clearly an increase in the cost of living, however, there is increases in unemployment, which may be directly link to the rise in the number of physical illness. The surge in the number of self-reported illnesses may be a result of those unable to affort care or their illness may be related to the cost of living increases, poverty and unemployment. Undeniably, chronic poverty, unemployment and rising violence and can levy a heavy price on those that are directly impacted by these societal changes (Green & Smith, 2007). The present study revealed that self-reported illnesses increase on changes in the socio-economic status. Lower SES can significantly affect those that are more vulnerable to these changes, such as the elder, children, those who have attained lowever educational status (Rieder & Elbert, 2013). It is clear and the evidence points to the need to take action to assess the physical and mental health needs of this population under study and to assess the socio-ecological factors that could hinder intervention to address this important public health issue.

Conclusion

Published data on ten leading causes of deaths in Jamaica by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica has never included homicides among non-communicable conditions such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, Ischaemic heart diseases and malignant neoplasm. Ironically though is the number of deaths caused by homicide in many instances are more than mortality by hypertension and Ischaemic heart diseases; yet the not ten causes of deaths include Ischaemic heart diseases, hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Clearly, homicide is a non-communicable conditions and must be included among the public health discussion on health matters. Furthermore, with current evidence that homicide is influence the human and social biology of Jamiacans, particularly mind and body of the dead as well as the living, the time has come for the inclusion of homicide into mental health, human and social biology and demography, particularly life expectancy and social biology.

The community psychiatry resulting from homicide on human and social biology has not been evaluated by Caribbean psychiatritists or public health experts, which explains why these specialists have not placed on the psychopathology to homicide. Like non-communicable diseases such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, neoplasm and heart diseases, there are certain risk factors that people face as it relates to homicides. The reality is, in Jamaica, homicide has been constant rising and while is it not communicable it is a non-communicable condition to which emphasis must be placed by scholars as well as psychiatrists and medical practitioners.

References

1. Blake, D. (2002). Shower Posse: The most notorious Jamaica criminal organization. New York: Diamond Publishing.

2. Boxill, I., Lewis, B., Russell, R., Bailey, A., Waller, L., James, C., et al. (2007). Political culture of democracy in Jamaica: 2006Americas barometer. Kingston: The University of the West Indies.

3. Harriott, A, (ed.) (2003). Understanding crime in Jamaica: New Challenges for public policy. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press.

4. Harriott, A. (2004). The Jamaican crime problem: Some policy considerations. In: Harriott A, Brathwaite F, Wortley, ed. Crime and criminal justice in the Caribbean. Kingston: Arawak Publishers, pp. 265-284.

5. Harriott, A. (2008). Organized crime and politics in Jamaica: Breaking the nexus. Kingston: Canoe Press.

6. Harriott, A., Brathwaite, F.,& Wortley, S. (2004). Crime and criminal justice in the Caribbean. Kingston: Arawak Publishers.

7. Headley, B. (1994).The Jamaican crime scene: A perspective. Mandeville: Eureka.

8. Krug,E.G., Dahlberg, L.L., Mercy, J.A., Zwi, A.B., & Lozano, R. (2002). World report on violence and health. Geneva: World Health Organization.

9. Levy, H. (1996). They cry 'respect': Urban violence and poverty in Jamaica. Kingston: Centre for Population, Community and Social Change, Department of Sociology and Social Work, the University of the West Indies, Mona.

10. Manwaring, M.G. (2007). A contemporary challenge to state sovereignty: Gangs and other illicit transnational criminal organizations in Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica and Brazil. Washington D.C: Department of the Army.

11. Murphy, S.L., Xu, J.Q., & Kochanek, K.D. (2013). Deaths:Final Data for 2010. National Vital Statistics Reports. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.

12. Phillips, P., &Wedderburn, J.,(ed.) (1987). Crime and violence: Causes and solutions. Kingston: Department of Government, the University of the West Indies.

13. Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) &Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN). (1989-2010).Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions, 1989-2010. Kingston.

14. Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ). (1989-2010). Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica, 1988-2009. Kingston: PIOJ.

15. Powell, L.A., Bourne, P.,& Waller, L. (2007). Probing Jamaica's Political Culture, volume 1: Main trends in the July-August 2006 Leadership and governance survey. Kingston: Department of Government, the University of the West Indies, Mona.

16. Schiller, D. (2011). Zeta Soldiers Launched Mexico-Style Attack in Harris County. Houston Chronicle, November 23.

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The Effects of Homicides and Economics on Human and Social Biology: A Mental Health Challenge for a Society?

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www.omicsonline.org/scholarly/mental-health-statistics-journals-articles-ppts-list.phpPaul Andrew Bourne1 * , Angela Hudson-Davis2 , Charlene Sharpe-Pryce3 , Cynthia Francis4 , Ikhalfani Solan5 , Dadria Lewis3 , Vivienne L.

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Video/documentary about the Golden State Killer

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Video/documentary about the Golden State Killer

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wk 4 - trilena

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wk 4 - nathan

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The Cold Case That Inspired the ‘Golden State Killer’ Detective to Try Genealogy (Published 2018)

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Before genealogy websites helped crack the “Golden State Killer” case, a similar technique was used to solve a decades-old cold case in New Hampshire.

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activity 2: maslow hierarcy chart

question 3: I think one could move up the pyramid once they experience growth and lessons from their relationships. I think they can move down if the person refuses to grow and learn from the past.

question 6: all these needs are thrown out of the window when a serial killer comes by. The most important one would be a need for security and safety, but it seems very low in the hierarcy

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activity 1: choose an aspect of setting that you think is significant to the book and research this setting and discuss how it impacts the speaker or other characters in the book: It's not very significant, all it does is provide a name and an area of attack for the "Golden State Killer". It shows the "connection" of all of these murders/rapes, as well as people's fear of living in the areas where he has stricken last.

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connection to Ted Bundy, serial killer rapist
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ted-Bundy

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents Ask Anything

Ted Bundy (born November 24, 1946, Burlington, Vermont, U.S.-died January 24, 1989, Starke, Florida) was an American serial killer and rapist, one of the most notorious criminals of the late 20th century. Bundy confessed to 30 murders (some sources say 36), but investigators believe he actually killed hundreds. The majority of the confirmed cases occurred in the western states and in Florida. He was ultimately convicted of three murders, and he was executed in 1989.

Early life

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell in Burlington, Vermont. After becoming pregnant, his mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell, had moved there from Philadelphia to enter a home for unwed mothers. Bundy's biological father was reportedly a World War II veteran who called himself Jack Worthington. While Bundy's birth certificate does not list a father's name, crime writer Ann Rule claimed to have found the original document, which gives Lloyd Marshall as the father. Some have speculated that Cowell had actually been impregnated by her father. Following Bundy's birth, mother and child returned to Philadelphia. For a time Cowell's parents raised the infant, and Bundy was initially led to believe that his mother was actually his sister.

When Bundy was three, he and his mother moved to Tacoma, Washington, where her uncle's family lived. In 1951 she married a U.S. Navy veteran named Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, with whom she had four more children. Ted had a strained relationship with his stepfather, who adopted him.

As a teenager, Ted Bundy seemed serious and aloof-although he could also be sharp and funny, his friends later told journalists. "He could make me laugh with a gesture or one or two words, where I'd need sentences and pictures and diagrams to get the same thing across," one former friend told reporter Stephen Michaud. Bundy's main hobby was skiing.

After high school Bundy attended the University of Puget Sound before transferring to the University of Washington, where he studied Chinese. However, in 1968 he dropped out and moved to Seattle, where he became involved in Republican politics, working on campaigns and for the party office in Olympia. Bundy eventually returned to school, graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Washington in 1972.

Crimes

It is unclear when Bundy started committing violent crimes, and he gave conflicting accounts of his criminal career. He told one of his attorneys, John Henry Browne, that he committed his first murder as a teenager, killing another boy in the woods while they played a sexual exploration game. The criminologist Matthew DeLisi has argued that it is likely Bundy was telling the truth. He and other investigators also believe that Bundy may have killed eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr, a girl in his neighborhood, when he was 14.

Bundy's first documented crimes occurred in 1974. On January 4 Bundy severely beat and sexually assaulted Karen Sparks, who had been asleep in her Seattle apartment. Then, in early February he raped and killed Lynda Ann Healy, his first known murder victim. Over the next five months, he sexually assaulted and murdered at least seven other women. Most of these murders occurred in Washington. For much of that time, he was working at the state's Department of Emergency Services, the agency that coordinated rescue teams for some of his victims.

Later in 1974, Bundy moved to Salt Lake City, where he started law school at the University of Utah. He continued killing women while enrolled there. Bundy was skilled at covering up the evidence of his crimes, and he tended to kill women in areas where he was only passing through. By the time the bodies were discovered, he would often be hundreds of miles away.

Bundy's killings were unusual not only for their sheer number but also because of his sadistic methods. He later told Browne, his attorney, that it aroused him sexually to stalk women and decide who to kill and who to let live. After trapping them he often sexually assaulted his victims using foreign objects and strangled them to death. He sometimes decapitated his victims and used their bodies for sexual gratification. At least two of his murder victims were preteens.

The charismatic Bundy often wore an arm sling or used crutches when approaching victims. He would ask them to help move items into his Volkswagen Beetle. When they were near the vehicle, he would hit them-often with a crowbar-and force them inside. In some cases he would pretend to be a police officer.

Arrest and escape

In August 1975 Bundy was driving late at night through a suburb of Salt Lake City. By this time he had murdered at least eight women in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho since starting law school. He was stopped by police, and a search of his car revealed handcuffs, a pantyhose mask, a ski mask, rope, and an ice pick. Bundy was arrested but later let go. However, in October 1975 Carol DaRonch, one of Bundy's victims who had managed to escape, identified him in a lineup. The following year he was convicted of kidnapping and received a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

In 1977 Bundy was transferred to a county jail in Aspen, Colorado, while he awaited trial for the murder of a nurse. He escaped that summer, jumping from a second-floor window at the local courthouse. Bundy was arrested several days later in Aspen. He went back to jail, but on December 31, 1977, he staged another escape, this time using a hole in his cell's ceiling. His disappearance was not noted for some 15 hours, and a nationwide manhunt was launched.

Florida and convictions

In 2026 Laura Ann Aime was identified as one of Bundy's victims through advanced DNA testing. The 17-year-old had been murdered in October 1974 in Utah.

Bundy traveled to Florida, where he resumed his killing spree. On the night of January 15, 1978, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house in Tallahassee and attacked four women, killing two: Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. Some three weeks later, he killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. On February 12, 1978, while driving to Alabama, he was pulled over by police for driving a stolen Volkswagen Beetle. After a brief altercation, he was arrested.

In 1979 Bundy was convicted of killing Bowman and Levy, and he received the death penalty. The following year he was again sentenced to death for the murder of Leach. For the next decade, he lived on death row in Florida. In 1980, amid his court proceedings, he married Carole Ann Boone, a woman he had met while working for the Department of Emergency Services in Washington. They reportedly had several conjugal visits-Bundy likely bribed guards since such visits were prohibited-and Boone later gave birth to Bundy's daughter. The couple divorced in 1986.

Execution

Throughout his trials Bundy maintained his innocence, but shortly before his execution, he started confessing to his crimes, ultimately admitting to 30 murders. However, the number of people Bundy killed remains a matter of speculation. In his book-length study from 2023, criminologist DeLisi makes a case that Bundy had 100 or more victims. This claim is supported by others.

Despite the appalling nature of his crimes, Bundy became something of a celebrity, particularly following his escape from custody in Colorado in 1977. During his trial his charm and intelligence drew significant public attention. His case inspired a series of popular novels and films devoted to serial murder. It also galvanized feminist criminologists, who contended that the popular media had transformed Bundy into a romantic figure.

Read About Other Serial Killers

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Ted Bundy | Biography, Crimes, Death, & Facts | Britannica

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Ted Bundy was a notorious American serial killer and charismatic manipulator. He terrorized the nation with his heinous crimes that shocked the world and left an enduring legacy in criminal history.

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2) I do not agree with the order of this hierarchy, I believe that Belonging and Love needs should in the place of Aesthetic needs. I believe this because in order to grow, love and support is needed.

6) The safety needs of every victim in the book are not met. As they have bought guns and weapons in order to try to fulfill these needs themselves.

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article on the capture of the Golden State Killer

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article on the capture of the Golden State Killer

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trilena wk 3

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The dramatic arrest in 2018 of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was all the more astounding because of how detectives said they caught the elusive Golden State Killer - by harnessing genetic technology already in use by millions of consumers to trace their family trees.

But the DNA-matching effort that caught one of America's most notorious serial killers was more extensive than previously disclosed and involved covert searches of private DNA housed by two for-profit companies despite privacy policies, according to interviews and court discovery records accessed by The Times.

The revelations are likely to heighten debate about genetic privacy and the self-policing models of testing companies, as well as law enforcement access.

The original version of events omitted not only the involvement of private databases but also the access to sensitive information the companies had told users law enforcement could see only if "required" or presented with a "lawful request."

One prosecutor described the public understanding of DeAngelo's arrest as a "false impression," according to a letter the prosecutor wrote to the FBI.

Investigators and prosecutors said the investigation relied on genetic information people voluntarily made public, though with little reason to suspect it might incriminate members of their families in crimes. The actual investigation was broader and more invasive, conducted without a warrant, and appeared to violate the privacy policy of at least one DNA company.

When DeAngelo was arrested, prosecutors would say only that they had used family tree searches to find relatives of the killer and, from there, identified DeAngelo. Shortly after, a detective confirmed the investigative team had uploaded semen from a rape kit to develop a fresh DNA profile that was then uploaded to GEDmatch, an open-source platform frequently used by members of the public to trace their heritage.

What prosecutors did not disclose is that genetic material from the rape kit was first sent to FamilyTreeDNA, which created a DNA profile and allowed law enforcement to set up a fake account to search for matching customers. When that produced only distant leads, a civilian geneticist working with investigators uploaded the forensic profile to MyHeritage. It was the MyHeritage search that identified the close relative who helped break the case.

Both companies denied involvement at the time.

But in late 2019, FamilyTreeDNA's chief executive acknowledged giving the FBI access in 2017 without knowing the case being investigated. He said he did not believe it violated the company's terms of service, which warned that it "may be required" to release personal information in response to a "lawful request by public authorities."

Those terms were later changed to alert customers that law enforcement had access to the database.

MyHeritage's privacy policy at the time stated that personal information "would only be released if required by law." A corporate executive said the policy "did not explicitly" address such unprecedented police access. "It is possible that the civilian geneticist thought she was not violating our terms of service," said Aaron Godfrey, vice president of marketing.

Nevertheless, the search was not sanctioned, and MyHeritage has since revised its policies to make it clear that "such investigations are prohibited," Godfrey said.

Not disclosing that private consumer data were used in the investigation "perpetuates a fraudulent impression of all the methods implemented to identify Joseph DeAngelo," Cheryl Temple, chief assistant district attorney for Ventura County, wrote in a January 2019 letter to the FBI. Even DeAngelo's defense lawyers stood to be kept in the dark about how he was identified, she wrote.

In an interview last week, Temple said she was confident that the case against DeAngelo - who pleaded guilty to 26 counts of murder and kidnapping and admitted to violent crimes against 61 other people - was handled ethically and properly. The issue she raised with the FBI dealt instead with the need for transparency heading into trial.

"I have no concern whatsoever about the legality of anything that was done in the case," Temple said. "I don't think anybody has any question whatsoever about how the case was solved."

Even before these new revelations, the use of consumer databases to catch this serial killer sparked ethical debates as it unleashed a wave of efforts by other cold-case teams across the U.S. to use similar means to identify violent criminals. As a result, most major consumer genealogical database companies created barriers against law enforcement access, the U.S. Justice Department adopted interim restrictions for the use of such databases, and Maryland considered legislation to limit law enforcement's use of them.

DeAngelo, 75, pleaded guilty before going to trial. He is serving 26 life sentences in a California prison. And the legality of investigative genealogy, still relatively new, has not faced serious legal challenges. It is perceived in law enforcement circles as a vital tool for solving even current crimes, but regulations and legislation have not yet caught up.

In most DNA-derived cases going to trial, prosecutors contend that the databases police use are like street informants whose identity can remain hidden. Meanwhile, some companies, such as Ancestry.com, say they have successfully fought efforts by law enforcement to obtain court orders to access their databases.

But FamilyTreeDNA says it will work with law enforcement if an investigation involves a violent crime, denying access to data only if a private subscriber to its database has specifically opted out.

Some legal and privacy experts are concerned that the race to use genealogical databases will have serious consequences, including eroding privacy protections and broadening police power. There have also been instances of the wrong people being arrested and taken to jail - including a twin in California. In Texas, police met GEDmatch's new search guidelines by classifying a case as a sexual assault but filed only burglary charges after an arrest.

The technology has also led to the conviction of other violent criminals, including the NorCal Rapist, who sexually assaulted more than 10 women in the 1990s.

Those involved in the DeAngelo investigation said the use of the databases was invaluable. They argued against the need for oversight, such as a warrant or subpoena.

The use of family genes in the DeAngelo case was begun by an investigator working with DNA fragments left from a subset of his crimes, the rapes in Northern California.

Paul Holes was chief of forensics for the district attorney's office in Contra Costa County, one of half a dozen Northern California counties where the East Area Rapist struck from 1976 to 1979, assaulting nearly 50 women and girls. In 2017, Holes used DNA from one of the few surviving rape kits to develop a Y-chromosome profile, found a partial match on a free website called Ysearch.org, and with the FBI obtained a federal grand jury subpoena to require Ysearch's parent company, Gene by Gene, which also owns FamilyTreeDNA, to release information on that account holder.

The search led Holes and agents from Orange County to an elderly man in a nursing home in Oregon, but he turned out to be an exceedingly distant relation - with no shared ancestor for 900 years. After that, Holes said, federal agents in Northern California lost interest, and funding for more DNA ventures dried up. But an FBI lawyer in Los Angeles was "all in."

"He said, 'Paul, I believe in the DNA, and that the DNA is going to solve this case,'" Holes said.

Because consumer DNA had never before been used by law enforcement that way, Holes said, FBI L.A. Division Counsel Steve Kramer vetted the legality of what they were about to do with an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and a federal judge. Media officers for the FBI in Los Angeles and Washington declined to make Kramer available for an interview. The agency provided no response for this story.

"We were entirely confident that it would pass legal muster," Holes said. "But we understood that there could be a fallout in terms of public perception."

Holes and Kramer canvassed counties that still had rape kits from the Golden State Killer crimes and found one still sealed in Ventura County, from the 1980 rape and murder of Charlene Smith and the murder of her husband, Lyman Smith. Temple said Ventura County Dist. Atty. Greg Totten approved of conducting a genetic investigation.

According to county records, Steve Rhods, a Ventura County district attorney's office investigator, secured written consent from the Ventura County and city homicide divisions for what he called a "genetic genealogy" investigation, records show. Rhods told them that DNA extracted from the killer's semen would be sent to two labs, one at a university and the other a commercial lab connected to FamilyTreeDNA.

The chief executive of FamilyTreeDNA, Rhods wrote to the Ventura homicide bureaus in December 2017, "is being very cooperative working with the FBI in order to generate and search his company's database."

Court discovery records show the FamilyTreeDNA data profile was then compared by computer with the profiles of the company's 2 million other customers. The law enforcement team was provided a list of the close matches, including names and other personal information account holders made disclosable. A similar comparison was performed on GEDmatch.com.

These secret searches provided only lists of third cousins, Holes confirmed.

Then in February 2018, a civilian genealogy expert helping the team announced that she had, on her own, uploaded the FBI's forensic DNA to another consumer ancestry company, MyHeritage, and found a much closer match. A summary of the investigation written by the Ventura County district attorney's office notes that this search violated MyHeritage's privacy policies.

That expert, Barbara Rae-Venter, was already helping law enforcement agencies investigate the murders of four women whose skeletons were found in barrels at Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire. The four turned out to be the victims of a California drifter. Unreleased court records show Rae-Venter was given access to the passwords and logins of the FBI's fake account on FamilyTreeDNA. She also had independently uploaded the forensic DNA to GEDmatch. Holes had also done the same.

Holes said Rae-Venter's actions on her own "put us a step closer, and I know Kramer didn't seem to be overly concerned from a legal standpoint at all."

Rae-Venter said she used her personal account on MyHeritage and did not notify the company. She said her actions were approved by Kramer at the FBI. "He said if we're going to solve this case, we need better matches," Rae-Venter said. "In his opinion, law enforcement is entitled to go where the public goes."

MyHeritage said it first learned of the FBI search when Rae-Venter emailed the company Sunday to alert it of the coming Los Angeles Times story.

The prosecutor in Ventura County likened the DNA sleuthing to an undercover agent walking into a bookstore and buying a book, something any other customer could do. Temple said law enforcement agencies are making use only of public access.

The second cousins discovered by Rae-Venter's surreptitious search created a narrow pool of suspects whom investigators code-named the "Wright" family.

A month later, the FBI visited one of those cousins, an Orange County woman, to ask for her DNA. Her brother had become the prime murder suspect. That woman's genetic information cleared her brother but told Rae-Venter the killer was related through the women on the family trees that authorities were building on yet another consumer genealogy site, Ancestry.com.

Only six male cousins were possible fits. An FBI search of California driver's license records showed that only one of those six men had blue eyes that fit the profile Rae-Venter said she had built: DeAngelo.

After 10 days of surveillance that included police enlisting the help of a garbage truck driver to snatch DNA-bearing items from his trash can, DeAngelo was arrested.

Months after the arrest, the FBI sought to keep the involvement of FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage secret, even from DeAngelo's lawyers. The federal agency invoked a legal privilege that protects the names of confidential sources. According to court discovery records reviewed by The Times, Holes told investigators preparing the criminal case against DeAngelo that that was why he was not allowed to divulge their identities.

Holes said the FBI's instructions put him in an uncomfortable position, but he abided.

Rae-Venter also said she encountered efforts to revise the account of how DeAngelo was captured when she was asked to omit references to the "match lists" - names of genetic relatives to the killer - she had seen during the investigation. At news conferences later, her active role in the investigation was revised and diminished to advisory capacity only, and credit for narrowing the search to DeAngelo was given instead to staffers in the Sacramento County district attorney's office.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Grippi on Monday repeated the Sacramento agency's belief that the DeAngelo investigation "was lawful in every manner." Grippi said the DNA investigation had been examined by DeAngelo's public defenders, and "none raised any constitutional claims that would undermine the integrity of the investigation."

Rae-Venter expressed worry that revelation of FamilyTreeDNA's involvement will again create a backlash against a technology she said is vital to law enforcement, when there is no such privacy debate about adoptees and the children of sperm donors using the same methods to find their parents - though those searches don't involve government agencies.

Gay Hardwick, who was repeatedly raped by DeAngelo while her future husband was tied up, said she was concerned that the investigators' tactics could have given the serial killer's defense team grounds for appeal had he not pleaded guilty.

"Maybe I'm gullible, old-fashioned, whatever," she said. "I just see how this could have opened the case to multiple appeals lasting the rest of our lives."

Jennifer Carole, whose father's and stepmother's murders had yielded the crime-scene evidence that identified DeAngelo, was unconvinced the arrest merited the larger erosion of privacy.

"DNA should not be something one Googles," Carole said. "Any time you are using a DNA service, it should be between you and the service.... If you make a conscious decision to share, that's fine, but it shouldn't therefore implicate your relatives."

But Debbi Domingo McMullan, whose mother, Cheri, was raped and beaten to death by DeAngelo in 1981, had no such reservations. After DeAngelo's arrest, she encouraged consumers to give law enforcement access to their DNA to help solve other crimes.

"Laws weren't broken, but practices were bent. Still, investigation by nature - it always has tended to include a little bit of deception," said McMullan, who believes that justice prevailed.

In the end, she said, "the truth is what's important."

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The untold story of how the Golden State Killer was found: A covert operation and private DNA

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The dramatic arrest in 2018 of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was all the more astounding because of how detectives said they caught the elusive Golden State Killer - by harnessing genetic technology already in use by millions of consumers to trace their family trees.

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Psychological Examination of the Golden State Killer

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Psychological Examination of the Golden State Killer

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wk 3 -shalini

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FRESNO, Calif. -- He is the alleged serial killer who spent nearly four decades on the run, but now that 72-year-old Joseph James Deangelo is in custody, questions from investigators about his role as the Visalia Ransacker and Golden State Killer pour in.
TIMELINE: A look back at the Golden State Killer's crime spree that lasted a decade
Dr. Eric Hickey is a well-known forensic psychologist and studies serial killers.

He says one of the elements in this case that stands out is the people DeAngelo is accused of targeting.
VIDEO: CoCo County Investigator Paul Holes is '100 percent sure' they have 'Golden State Killer'
"Most would just kill women or just kill men," Hickey said. "Seldom do you see them kill them together and then have sex with one of the victims."

That makes Hickey want to examine DeAngelo's past to see what his childhood was like. The criminal expert said, "He obviously had a lot of anger towards women he hated women he was very sadistic towards them."
VIDEO: Visalia detective came face to face with serial killer in 1975
The anger Hickey mentioned was echoed by one of DeAngelo's neighbors, Grant Gorman, who described an argument the two had over his dog.

"He called and said if you don't shut that dog up, I'll deliver a load of death," Gorman said.

Hickey also anticipates that once investigators go through DeAngelo's computer, they will likely find sadistic porn.
Click here for more stories, photos, and video on the Golden State Killer.

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Forensic psychologist examines mind of accused 'Golden State Killer'

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FRESNO, Calif. -- He is the alleged serial killer who spent nearly four decades on the run, but now that 72-year-old Joseph James Deangelo is in custody, questions from investigators about his role as the Visalia Ransacker and Golden State Killer pour in.

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Weekly Discussion Notes (updated weekly!)

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Weekly Discussion Notes (updated weekly!)

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week 1: intro to end of oak park
week 2: sacramento to end of ventura, 1980
week 3: goleta, 1979 to end of sacramento, 2012
week 4 + break: east sacramento, 2012 to end of the one
week 5: los angeles, 2014 to end of epilogue: letter to an old man

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He also killed multiple people, had an infamous name, and was based in California - trilena wk 2

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The Zodiac Killer, or simply Zodiac or the Zodiac, is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The killer originated the name himself in a series of taunting letters and cards that he mailed to regional newspapers, threatening killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed. Some of these letters included cryptograms, or ciphers, in which the killer claimed that he was collecting his victims as slaves for the afterlife.

The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, alternating among rural, urban, and suburban settings. In chronological order, the known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper. He targeted young couples, with two of the men surviving attempted murder; he also killed a lone male cab driver. The Zodiac himself once claimed to have murdered 37 victims, and he has been linked to several other cold cases, some in Southern California or outside the state.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) marked the case "inactive" in April 2004, but re-opened it at some point prior to March 2007. The case also remains open in the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa County and Solano County. The California Department of Justice has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.

Murders and correspondence

Confirmed murders

Although the Zodiac claimed to have committed 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.

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.

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.

Paul Lee Stine, 29: shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood in San Francisco.

Lake Herman Road murders

The first murders widely attributed to the Zodiac Killer were the shootings of high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Arthur 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. They 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.

Utilizing available forensic data, Robert Graysmith postulated that another car pulled into the turnout just prior to 11:00 p.m. and parked beside the couple. The killer may have then exited the second car and walked toward the Rambler, possibly ordering the couple out of it. It appeared that Jensen had exited the car first, but when Faraday was halfway out, the killer shot him in the head. The killer then shot Jensen five times in the back as she fled; her body was found 28 feet from the car. The killer then drove off.

Blue Rock Springs murder

Just before midnight on July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau drove into the Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo, four miles (6.4 km) 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.

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. Police traced the call to a phone booth at a gas station at Springs Road and Tuolumne, located about three-tenths of a mile (500 m) from Ferrin's home and only a few blocks from the Vallejo Police Department. Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mageau survived the attack despite being shot in the face, neck and chest. Mageau described his attacker as a 26-to-30-year-old, 195-to-200-pound (88 to 91 kg) or possibly even more, 5-foot-8-inch (1.73 m) white male with short, light brown curly hair.

First letters from the Zodiac

"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 all the I 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, solved in August 1969, including faithful transliterations of spelling and grammar errors in the original. The meaning, if any, of the final eighteen letters has not been determined.

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, subsequently described by a psychiatrist to have been written by "someone you would expect to be brooding and isolated", 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 [] 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".

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. 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 that 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 seemed to reference " The Most Dangerous Game". The author also said that he was collecting slaves for his afterlife. No name appears in this decoded text, and the killer said that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.

Lake Berryessa murder

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 white man, about 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) weighing more than 170 pounds (77 kg), 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 three-by-three-inch (7.6 cm × 7.6 cm) 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 a jail with a two-word name, in either Colorado or Montana (a police officer later inferred that the man had been referring to a jail in Deer Lodge, Montana), where he had killed a guard and subsequently stolen a car, explaining that he now needed their car and money to travel to Mexico because the vehicle that he had been driving was "too hot".

The killer 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 that Shepard had bound Hartnell's hands loosely. Hartnell initially believed this event to be a bizarre robbery, but the man drew a knife and stabbed them both repeatedly, Hartnell suffering six and Shepard ten wounds in the process. The killer then hiked 500 yards (460 m) 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:

At 7:40 p.m., the killer called the Napa County Sheriff's office from a pay telephone to report this latest crime. The caller first stated to the operator that he wished to "report a murder - no, a double murder," before stating that he had been the perpetrator of the 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 (43 km) 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.

After hearing the victims' 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. 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 and never regained consciousness. She died two days later, but Hartnell survived to recount his tale to the press. Napa County 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 murder

Two weeks later, on October 11, 1969, a white male 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 driven 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 9 mm handgun, took Stine's wallet and car keys, and tore away a section of Stine's bloodstained shirt tail. The perpetrator was observed by three teenagers across the street at 9:55 p.m., and they phoned the police while the crime was in progress. They observed a man wiping the cab down before walking away toward the Presidio, one block to the north. Two blocks from the crime scene, patrol officers Don Fouke and Eric Zelms, responding to the call, observed a white man walking along the sidewalk east on Jackson Street 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.

Fouke estimated the white male pedestrian to be 35 to 45 years old, 5'10" tall with a crew cut, similar to but slightly older than the description provided by the teenagers who observed the killer in and out of Stine's cab. The teenagers described the suspect to be 25 to 30 years old with a crew cut and standing approximately 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) to 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) tall. However, the police radio dispatcher had alerted officers to look out for a black suspect, so Fouke and Zelms drove past the perpetrator without stopping; the mixup in descriptions remains unexplained. A search ensued, but no suspects were found. This was the last officially confirmed murder by the Zodiac Killer.

The Stine murder was initially believed to be a routine robbery that had escalated into homicidal violence. However, on October 13, the San Francisco Chronicle received a new letter from Zodiac that claimed credit for the killing and contained a torn section of Stine's bloody shirt to "prove this" fact. The three teen witnesses worked with a police artist to prepare a composite sketch of Stine's killer; a few days later, this police artist returned, working with the witnesses to prepare a second composite sketch. 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.

1969 mailings and 2020 breakthrough

"I hope you are having lots of fan in trying to catch me that wasnt me on the tv show which bringo up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber becaase it will send me to paradlce all the sooher because e now have enough slaves to worv for me where every one else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I am not afraid because i vnow that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death"

-The solution to Zodiac's 340-symbol cipher, solved in December 2020, including faithful transliterations of spelling and grammar errors in the original.

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 the Oakland Police Department (OPD), demanding that one of two prominent lawyers, F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, appear on A.M. San Francisco, a talk show on KGO-TV 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. Someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times, and Belli asked the caller for a less ominous name and the caller picked "Sam". The caller said he would not reveal his true identity as he was afraid of being sent to the gas chamber (then California's capital punishment method). Belli arranged a rendezvous to meet the caller outside a shop on Mission Street in Daly City, but no one arrived. The call was later traced back to a patient in a mental institution, and investigators concluded that the man was not the Zodiac.

On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. This cipher, dubbed "Z-340", remained unsolved for over 51 years. On December 5, 2020, it was deciphered by an international team of private citizens, including American software engineer David Oranchak, Australian mathematician Sam Blake and Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke. In the decrypted message, the Zodiac denied being the "Sam" who spoke on A.M. San Francisco, explaining that he was not afraid of the gas chamber "because it will send me to paradice [ sic] all the sooner". The team submitted their findings to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which verified the discovery. The FBI stated that the decoded message gave no further clues to the identity of Zodiac.

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; that same day, Officer Don Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened on 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 that he wanted Belli to help him.

Public speculation and Zodiac claims

Various authors speculated at the time of the killings that other murders may have been the work of the Zodiac, but none have been confirmed:

Robert George Domingos, 18, and Linda Faye Edwards, 17: shot and killed on June 4, 1963 on a beach near Gaviota. There are some specific similarities between their attack and the Zodiac's attack at Lake Berryessa five years later.

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.

Donna Ann Lass, 25: last seen September 6, 1970 in Stateline, Nevada. A postcard bearing an advertisement for Forest Pines condominiums (near Incline Village at Lake Tahoe) pasted on the back was received at the Chronicle on March 22, 1971. No evidence has been uncovered to connect Lass's disappearance with 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.

Kathleen Johns' report

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. 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 back roads 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 a 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.

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 had abducted her and her child. Fearing that he might return to kill them all, the sergeant had Johns wait in the dark at nearby Mil's Restaurant. When her car was found, it had been gutted and torched.

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

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 that hasn't been solved to this day.[50] 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)[51] 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 that he would use to blow up a school bus. At the bottom of the diagram, he wrote: " = 10, SFPD = 0."[52]

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 that he had written. He also wanted to start seeing people wearing "some nice Zodiac butons []".

In a letter postmarked June 26, 1970, the Zodiac stated that 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." The Zodiac was possibly referring to the murder of 25-year-old Sgt. Richard Radetich one week earlier. At 5:25 a.m. on June 19, Radetich was writing a parking ticket in his squad car when an assailant unrelated to the traffic violation shot him in the head with a .38-caliber pistol through the closed driver's side window. Radetich died 15 hours later. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) denies that the Zodiac was involved; the murder remains unsolved.

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 those from previous correspondence. At the top of the crossed circle, he placed a zero, a three, six, and a nine. The accompanying instructions stated that the zero was "to be set to Mag. N."[56] 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 that he had buried and set to detonate in the fall. The cipher was never decoded, and the alleged bomb was never located. The killer signed the note with " - 12, SFPD - 0".

In a letter to the Chronicle postmarked July 24, 1970, the Zodiac took credit for Kathleen Johns's abduction, four months after the incident.[57] 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 in which he planned to torture his "slaves" in "paradice [sic]".[58] The letter was signed with a large, exaggerated crossed-circle symbol and a new score: " = 13, SFPD = 0".[59] A final note at the bottom of the letter stated, "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians."[60] 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.[61]

On October 7, 1970, the Chronicle received a three-by-five inch card signed by the Zodiac with the 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 that it was "highly probable" that the card had been sent by the Zodiac.[62]

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 crossed-circle symbol. Handwritten inside the card was the note "Peek-a-boo, you are doomed." The threat was taken seriously and was the subject of a front-page story in the Chronicle. Soon after receiving the 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 (640 km) south of San Francisco. Avery reported his findings in the Chronicle on November 16, 1970.

Riverside murder

On October 30, 1966, an 18-year-old student at Riverside City College, Cheri Jo Bates, 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. The watch had stopped at 12:24, but police believe that the attack had 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". 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.

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 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.

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".

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 that 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. 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", "peek through the pines", "pass Lake Tahoe areas", and "around in the snow". The Zodiac's crossed-circle symbol was in both the place of the usual return address and the lower-right section of the front face of the postcard.

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 that Lass had left town because of a family emergency. Lass was never found. What appeared to be a gravesite was discovered near the Clair Tappaan Lodge in Norden, California, on Sierra Club property. No evidence has been uncovered to definitively connect the Lass disappearance with the Zodiac Killer.

Santa Barbara County murders

In a Vallejo Times-Herald story appearing on November 13, 1972, Bill Baker of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office postulated that the 1963 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 his 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 Lake Tahoe 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 [] that I have ever seen". The letter included a snippet of verse from 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".

Later letters of suspicious authorship

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". However, the handwriting was not authenticated as the Zodiac's.

A letter to the Chronicle, postmarked May 8, 1974, featured a complaint that the movie 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. 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.

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. Author Armistead Maupin believed the letter to be similar to "fan mail" that praised the work of Toschi in the investigation, which he received in 1976; he believed both letters were written 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, was re-discovered in their photo files by editorial assistant Daniel King. 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. 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.

2000s developments

In April 2004, the SFPD marked the case "inactive", citing caseload pressure and resource demands, effectively closing the case. However, they re-opened their case sometime before March 2007. The case is open in Napa County and in the city of Riverside.

In May 2018, the Vallejo Police Department announced their intention to attempt to collect the Zodiac Killer's DNA from the back of stamps he used during his correspondence. The analysis, by a private laboratory, was expected to check the DNA against GEDmatch. It was hoped the Zodiac Killer may be caught in a similar fashion to the "Golden State Killer" Joseph James DeAngelo. In May 2018, a Vallejo police detective said that results were expected in several weeks. However, as of September 2021, no results have been reported.

Arthur Leigh Allen

Robert Graysmith's book advanced Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992, 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. In 2010, Toschi stated that all the evidence against Allen ultimately "turned out to be negative". Toschi's daughter said in 2018 that her father had always thought Allen had been the killer, but they did not have the evidence to prove it. Mark Ruffalo, who portrayed Toschi in the 2007 film , commented, "If you get into who these cops were, you realize how they have to take their hunches, their personal beliefs, out of it. Dave Toschi said to me, 'As soon as that guy walked in the door, I knew it was him.' He was sure he had him, but he never had a solid piece of evidence. So he had to keep investigating every other lead."

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 Berryessa attack against Hartnell and Shepard on September 27, 1969; he described himself scuba diving at Salt Point on the day of the attacks. 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.

Jack Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department subsequently wrote Allen had received an other than honorable discharge from the U.S. 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 he was also described as fixated on young children and angry at women. He apparently never had a girlfriend or wife.

In September 1972, San Francisco police obtained a search warrant for Allen's residence. In 1974, Allen was arrested for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy; he pleaded guilty and served two years imprisonment.

Vallejo police served another search warrant at Allen's residence in February 1991. Two days after Allen's death in 1992, Vallejo police served another warrant and seized property from Allen's residence. In July 1992, victim Mike Mageau identified Allen as the man who shot him in 1969 from a photo line-up, saying "That's him! That's the man who shot me". However police officer Donald Fouke, who is speculated to have seen the Zodiac fleeing from the Stine killing, said in the 2007 documentary 'His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen' that Allen weighed about 100 pounds more than the man he saw, adding that his face was "too round". While Nancy Slover, who received the call from the Zodiac in the aftermath of the Mageau/Ferrin shooting said that Allen did not sound like the man on the phone.

Other evidence existed against Allen, albeit entirely circumstantial. A letter sent to the Riverside Police Department from Bates's 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. He lived in Vallejo and worked minutes away from where one of the Zodiac victims (Ferrin) lived and from where one of the killings took place.

In 2002, the SFPD developed a partial DNA profile from the saliva on stamps and envelopes of Zodiac's letters. The SFPD compared this partial DNA to the DNA of Arthur Leigh Allen. 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.

Retired police handwriting expert Lloyd Cunningham, who worked on the Zodiac case for decades, stated, "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."

Public speculation

Ross Sullivan became a person of interest through the possible link between the Zodiac Killer and the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside. Sullivan was a library assistant at Riverside City College and was suspected by coworkers who said that he went missing for several days after the murder. Sullivan resembled sketches of the Zodiac and wore military-style boots with footprints like those found at the Lake Berryessa crime scene. Sullivan was hospitalized multiple times for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Lawrence Kaye, later Lawrence Kane: Kathleen Johns, who claimed to have been abducted by the Zodiac Killer, picked out Lawrence Kane in a photo lineup. Patrol officer Don Fouke, who possibly observed the Zodiac Killer following the murder of Paul Stine, said that Kane closely resembled the man he and Eric Zelms encountered. Kane worked at the same Nevada hotel as possible Zodiac victim Donna Lass. Kane was diagnosed with impulse-control disorder after suffering brain injuries in a 1962 accident. He was arrested for voyeurism and prowling. Fayçal Ziraoui, a French-Moroccan business consultant, claimed in 2021 that he solved the Z13 cipher and the solution to the puzzle reads "My name is Kayr," which he said is a likely typo for Kaye. Others disputed that Ziraoui could have solved the cypher. Kane died in 2010.

Police informants accused Richard Marshall of being the Zodiac Killer, claiming that he privately hinted at being a murderer. Marshall lived in Riverside in 1966 and San Francisco in 1969, close to the scenes of the Bates and Stine murders. He was a silent film enthusiast and projectionist, screening Segundo de Chomón's The Red Phantom (1907), a name used by the author of a possible 1974 Zodiac letter. Detective Ken Narlow said that "Marshall makes good reading but [is] not a very good suspect in my estimation."

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was investigated for possible connections to the Zodiac Killer in 1996. Kaczynski worked in northern California at the time of the Zodiac murders and, like the Zodiac, had an interest in cryptography and threatened the press into publishing his communications. Kaczynski was ruled out by both the FBI and SFPD based on fingerprint and handwriting comparison, and by his absence from California on certain dates of known Zodiac activity.

The Manson Family: following the capture of Charles Manson and his murderous cult, a 1970 report by the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation stated that all male members of the Manson Family had been investigated and eliminated as Zodiac suspects.

In 2007, Dennis Kaufman claimed that his stepfather Jack Tarrance was the Zodiac. 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.

In 2009, former lawyer Robert Tarbox, who was disbarred in August 1975 by the California Supreme Court for failure to pay some clients, 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 based on 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 30 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. During the time of the murders, Gaikowski worked for , a San Francisco counterculture newspaper. His appearance resembled the composite sketch, and Nancy Slover, the Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac shortly after the Blue Rock Springs Attack, identified a recording of Gaikowski's voice as being the same as the Zodiac's.

Retired police detective Steve Hodel argues in his book The Black Dahlia Avenger that his father, George Hodel, 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 the elder Hodel had indeed been 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. 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.

On February 19, 2011, America's Most Wanted featured a story about the Zodiac Killer. In 2010, a picture surfaced of known Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin and an unknown man who closely resembles the composite sketch, formed based on eyewitnesses' descriptions, of the Zodiac Killer. Police believe the photo was taken in San Francisco in the middle of 1966 or 1967.

Convicted serial killer Edward Edwards, who committed five murders between 1977 and 1996, was linked to the Zodiac murders and several other unsolved cases by former cold case detective John A. Cameron. Cameron's theories were met with "almost universal disdain, especially from law enforcement".

Former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty said the Zodiac Killer was a 91-year-old Solano County, California, man he referred to by the pseudonym George Russell Tucker. Using a group of retired law enforcement officers called the Mandamus Seven, Lafferty discovered Tucker and outlined an alleged cover-up for why he was not pursued. Tucker died in February 2012 and was not named because he was not considered a suspect by police.

In February 2014, it was reported that 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, and allegedly worked in the same restaurant as victim Darlene Ferrin. During the 1971-73 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 if Kenney could produce credible evidence.

Robert Ivan Nichols, also known as Joseph Newton Chandler III, was a formerly unidentified identity thief who committed suicide in Eastlake, Ohio, in July 2002. After his death, investigators were unable to locate his family and discovered that he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old boy who was killed in a car crash in Texas in 1945. The lengths to which Nichols went to hide his identity led to speculation that he was a violent fugitive. The U.S. Marshals Service announced his identification at a press conference in Cleveland on June 21, 2018. Some Internet sleuths suggested that he might have been the Zodiac Killer, as he resembled police sketches of the Zodiac and had lived in California, where the Zodiac operated.

In 2014, Gary Stewart published a book, The Most Dangerous Animal of All, in which he claimed his search for his biological father, Earl Van Best Jr., led him to conclude Van Best was the Zodiac Killer. In 2020, the book was adapted for FX Network as a documentary series.

Since 2018, a journalistic inquiry on a connection between the Zodiac and Monster of Florence cases is being published on the web site of Italian magazine Tempi also appearing on newspapers and Il Giornale (which following the publication of Amicone's first article on in 2021 backed off) and . The suspect is a former superintendent of the Florence American Cemetery in Italy, Joseph "Joe" Bevilacqua, also known as Giuseppe, who was born on December 20, 1935, in Totowa, New Jersey, and had a 20-years career in the Army when he left it to move to Florence in 1974. Francesco Amicone, the author of inquiry, wrote an account of a Bevilacqua's partial admission, in which he would have confessed to Amicone to being responsible of the murders attributed to the Zodiac killer and the Monster of Florence in an unregistered conversation occurred on September 11, 2017. After the release of the first part of the inquiry in May 2018, Bevilacqua denied his admission; even though he threatened him with a lawsuit, Amicone did not stop to accuse him. In 2021, Amicone reported that Bevilacqua would have been an undercover CID agent assigned to an investigation in San Francisco concerning SMA William O. Wooldridge and other Army sergeants at the time of Zodiac's homicides in 1969 and 1970. While Army criminal investigator in Italy in the early 1970s, Bevilacqua would have had access to a case file of a double murder occurred near Florence in 1968 where bullets and shell casings had been improperly stored. Bevilacqua replaced the pieces of evidence with spent cartridges shot by the gun he would use in the Monster of Florence's homicides in order to link his future crimes to those murders for which he had an alibi. Italian authorities collected Bevilacqua's DNA in late 2020.

Letters and ciphers gallery

The decryption of the July 31, 1969 408-cipher by Donald and Bettye Harden

References

Primary sources

FBI Files:

Further reading

Gareth Penn (1987), Times 17: the amazing story of the Zodiac murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, Foxglove Press

Gary L. Stewart and Susan Mustafa (2014), The Most Dangerous Animal: Searching for My Father - and Finding the Zodiac Killer, New York: Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-231316-4.

Ronald J. Dayton (2018), Zodiac 340 Cipher, Inner Rapport Publishing ISBN 978-0-244-43599-8.

Michael H. Stone, M.D. & Gary Brucato, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, pp. 113-128. ISBN 978-1-63388-532-5.

External links

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The Zodiac Killer, or simply Zodiac or the Zodiac, is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The killer originated the name himself in a series of taunting letters and cards that he mailed to regional newspapers, threatening killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed.

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Video trailer of the I'll Be Gone In The Dark HBO show

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Video trailer of the I'll Be Gone In The Dark HBO show

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wk 2 -shalini

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I'll Be Gone In the Dark (2020): Official Trailer | HBO

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Padlet Manager: Nathan
Discussion Leader: Trilena
Notetaker: Shalini
Evaluator: Shalini

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https://www.biography.com/crime/michelle-mcnamara-golden-state-killer

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Inside Michelle McNamara’s Obsessive Hunt for the Golden State Killer

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The true-crime writer spent the last six years of her life chasing down the infamous California serial killer and rapist.