Lullacide

In the late 1960s, when everyone in San Francisco was wearing flowers in their hair, someone in Northern California was doing something much less groovy. On quiet lovers' lanes and beside dark lakes, a man with a gun was making the evening news. He wanted to be famous. Mission accomplished.

The Zodiac Killer attacked couples in isolated areas in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Zodiac loved puzzles. He sent coded letters to three newspapers at once. 'Here is a cipher,' he wrote. 'When you crack it, you will know my name.' A high school teacher and his wife cracked the code in about a week. It said a lot of scary things. But his name? Not in there. The Zodiac was a tease.

The first cipher was solved by Donald and Bettye Harden. It contained no identifying information.

The Zodiac dressed up for one of his attacks. A black hood with a circle and cross symbol on the chest. Like a supervillain from a very bad comic book. 'I want you to know it's me,' he seemed to be saying. He even called the police himself afterward. He really, truly wanted credit.

At Lake Berryessa, the Zodiac wore a distinctive black executioner-style hood with his symbol.

The police were baffled. They had fingerprints! They had handwriting! They had a man in a costume calling them on the phone! And still, they couldn't catch him. The Zodiac sent more letters. 'I am not afraid of the gas chamber,' he wrote. He also claimed to have killed 37 people, which was probably a fib. Even serial killers exaggerate on their resumes.

Despite substantial evidence, the Zodiac was never caught. He confirmed five murders but claimed 37.

The letters stopped coming in the 1970s. The Zodiac either died, got bored, or got a less dramatic hobby. His last cipher wasn't solved until 2020, over fifty years later. It didn't reveal his name either. Some puzzles, it seems, are designed never to be solved. And the Puzzle Man liked it that way.

The 340 cipher was finally cracked in 2020 by amateur codebreakers. The Zodiac's identity remains unknown.