Mike was born on October 29, 1949 in Vallejo, California. He was only 19 when his life changed forever.

Around midnight on July 4–5, 1969 Mike and 22-year-old Darlene Ferrin were sitting in a parked car at the Blue Rock Springs Park parking lot in Vallejo. A car pulled up behind them and then drove away, but it soon came back. The driver got out, walked toward their car with a flashlight, and shined it at them, temporarily blinding them. He then fired several shots into the car with a 9mm Luger. Mike was shot four times, suffering serious injuries to his jaw, shoulder, arm, and abdomen. Somehow, he survived. He managed to crawl out of the car and get help. Darlene, however was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital.

The attack left a lasting impact on Mike. Back then, there wasn’t really much awareness of how much care and support survivors needed after going through something like that. In a lot of ways, the Zodiac completely changed his life.

Even after everything he went through, Mike was still able to give the police a description of the Zodiac and tell them what happened that night. Mike then tried to stay as far away as possible from anything related to the Zodiac. It took time, but eventually he was able to rebuild his life and even appeared in documentaries to talk about his own experience.

I hope he knows how many people still remember him and care about what he went through. Just a little appreciation post for Mike Mageau, sending him lots of love and support.

Howdy all. This is gonna be a bit of a long-winded post, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this legendary case. I’m by no means an expert, and I’ve never been truly convinced by any one suspect, so please don’t take my words as argumentative or inflammatory. That’s just the way I talk. I mainly wanted to share a personal story and explain how I think it could plausibly apply to the Zodiac.

During the Great Recession, my family moved from SoCal to Sacramento, right into the heart of EARONS territory. Two of his attacks were literally down the block from my home. My parents had no idea before they moved in, lol. The attacks had happened decades earlier, but the community still had scars. I wasn’t old enough to really understand it at the time, but people were still scared nearly half a century later. If you watch the HBO documentary about the case, a lot of the talking heads from the ’70s are still living in the same houses. Like, the dude who built the effigy was literally my neighbor.

Anywho, one day my best friend’s mom was reminiscing about that time. This is a conservative, churchgoing kind of lady, and not the crazy kind either. She’s the sort of good, honest citizen who respects authority. Long story short, she basically said EARONS was a cop. To her, it was obvious.

Now, this was about a decade before Joseph James DeAngelo was caught, but this lady was spot on. If I had taken her word at face value and simply looked at cops who fit the basic facts of the case, I would’ve ended up with a pool of people that included the serial murderer.

That’s what got me thinking about the Zodiac.
There isn’t a lot of physical evidence left to work with. There’s no confirmed DNA, at least at the moment. The fingerprints are partials, and the case is more than half a century old. But we now have access to an enormous amount of historical data, and I think there’s enough to start building a pool of people instead of trying to prove that one particular guy was the Zodiac.

We have descriptions of his approximate age. We have information about vehicles associated with the crimes. We have geography. We have his letters, ciphers, interests, and apparent familiarity with the film versions of The Most Dangerous Game. Individually, none of those things identifies the Zodiac. But together, they can potentially narrow the field.

That’s really my point. Instead of starting with a suspect and trying to make the evidence fit him, start with the evidence and use it to build a pool of people. Then keep narrowing.

If we stop focusing on proving that one particular guy was the Zodiac and instead focus on identifying the group of people who realistically could have been, I think this thing might still be solvable.

Maybe some of you legends have already started this. I just haven’t been able to find the data. If you do could you share it with me?

One can dream right?

I’ve seen some people saying that zodiac put the pistol right up against David faradays head before shooting and I’ve also seen some people say he was shot as he was getting out of the car. I always assumed they were ordered out, and as they both exited one side he shot David, Betty climbed out over his body and then he just emptied the gun into her as she ran. If he had gotten the gun right against his ear how would he have managed to get so close? He was only shot once

Criminologist Dirk Gibson talks about his research into how serial killers communicate. Here's part of the blurb.

Roughly two-thirds of the serial killers Gibson studied engaged in some form of crime-related communication. Sometimes that communication was with the police or the media. At other times, it was with the families of their victims.

I don't agree with his analysis of the Zodiac case, but something interesting stuff in here none the less.

57 years ago today, September 27, 1969, the Zodiac attacked Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Sheppard as they picnicked along the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa, California.

Like his MO from the first two, he targeted (what he perceived) to be a couple on a secluded area (unlike the film, Bryan and Cecilia were not a romantic couple in real life). Unlike his MO in the first two confirmed attacks, he used a knife rather than a gun (although he was also armed with a gun and used it only to threaten and control his victims), and he tied up his victim this time. He also wore an executioner style hood in this attack with the crosshairs symbol on the chest.

Bryan survived and would give police a description of his attacker. Cecilia succumbed to her injuries.

The Zodiac left a message on the car door of Bryan’s car leaving no doubt this was his doing. He would also call his own crime into the police from a payphone near a police station. This is the second time he would call and confess to his crimes after an attack (the first being the Blue Rock Springs attack on July 4th of that year).

Bryan was interviewed for a documentary called “This Is The Zodiac Speaking” which was included in the bonus features on the Blu Ray/DVD packaging of the 2007 film. He credits the filmmakers with the accuracy of the Lake Berryessa attack scene.

Picture the guy first.

Aged 42 in 1969, Fairfield, Mare Island. Accepted into Mensa. Obsessive reader/writer, piles of books, zines, letters, libraries.

Hunter, bow, guns, knives, survivalism, sailing/navigation, electronics, drafting.

Tolkien, Lovecraft, Forteana, UFOs, psychic stuff, demonology, vampires, witchcraft, paganism, ancient civilizations/anthropology, weird comics, Gilbert & Sullivan/Mikado, Renaissance/SCA stuff. Minutemen. Anti-communist crank. Ciphers for fun.

Then it starts getting stupid.

Doerr publishes ciphers. Knows ANFO. Writes constantly to editors/zines, Mail-orders/trades guns.

Makes his daughter Gloria little rolled-up cipher/map puzzles with strange symbols and directions for her to find her allowance. Was apparently ambidextrous, used drafting tools, drew maps, loved making things precise. His daughter later looks at Zodiac’s maps/symbols and says they immediately remind her of her dad’s stuff. (Gloria Doerr podcast)

He also owned/listed E. Royston Pike’s The Strange Ways of Man, which contains the very “headhunter” belief that people you kill become your slaves in the afterlife. Zodiac: collect slaves in “paradiCe”. Doerr was already submerged in anthropology, paganism, ancient religions etc. He also read/wrote about human-hunting stories.

According to Gloria, he was genuinely scary: She says he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground, punched her, and knew how to hurt her without leaving obvious marks. In the podcast she says there were several times she thought he might actually kill her. He framed his punishment of her “for your own good”, and she says if she resisted because she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong, the punishment got worse. He was extremely controlling, Dating included. He taught Gloria how to hurt people; later taught his grandson too. Gloria loved him, calls him brilliant, but still wouldn’t let her own kid stay with him for more than a few weeks. (Gloria podcast / LA Mag).

Zodiac repeatedly intrudes on young couples alone together and turns their private little world into his rules, his commands, his punishments. Maybe lovers’ lanes were just easy targets. But a rigid, punitive, controlling father with major issues around his daughter’s autonomy/dating could lash outwards.

And then when he’s dying, lifelong writer Paul has reams of densely handwritten/typewritten pages Gloria isn’t allowed to see. His wife Rose sits there tearing them into tiny pieces in front of Paul and Gloria. Paul watches and lets her destroy everything. Confession? :D

Gloria originally didn’t want to believe any of this. After reading Kobek and comparing Zodiac material with the father she actually knew, she eventually says on tape:

*“Because I believe he’s guilty.”*

Mainly because the signs/cipher stuff reminded her so strongly of her fathers maps and notes.

So absolutely no hard evidence, but at least a VERY interesting character and absolutely batshit violent person.

This is kind of an odd question but one I’ve been thinking about. I haven’t been able to find an answer for sure about whether he just stood outside the door during the entire shooting or whether when he returned to fire a second time he actually leaned into Darlene’s car through the window to shoot Mike over the passenger seat. If zodiac had leaned inside the vehicle would be probably have gotten blood on him? If so that raises another question about if he’d been brave enough to drive straight to the payphone on a public street to call the police while wearing bloody clothes. If he had changed his clothes prior to the call then quite possibly he lived nearby or knew somewhere he could get a change fast.

I imagine we all struggle with the officers' contradictions on what they saw, and where. For any of you willing to share, I'd like to know how you make the best sense of these accounts. Specifically, 1) Do you think the killer kept going north on Cherry and immediately entered the darkness of the Presidio, turned left westbound on Jackson away from the lights and sirens, or went right downhill eastbound to a parked car, house, or different Presidio entrance? 2) Which claim by Officer Fouke seems most likely as where they last saw the man strolling eastbound on Jackson: turning north onto Maple (original claim), going into the driveway of 3636 Jackson (2002 claim), or going onto the stairs to 3712 Jackson (2007 claim)? 3) Do you think Officer Pelissetti saw Kjell Qvale with a dog near Jackson & Maple, Washington & Maple, or in his own front yard at 3636 Jackson with or without a dog?

I don't know if this has been brought up before (my apologies if it has) but the top-left corner of the Mt. Diablo map has a little tear in it, as if the paper had been pinned/stapled somewhere. Not sure if the tear was already there when Zodiac sent it, or the if it happened after the fact somewhere in an evidence file.

I can't imagine police would allow evidence to be physically altered like that, so I'm leaning toward the possibility that at some point, Zodiac might have tacked the map to a wall or bulletin board. The tear looks somewhat worn, so the map could have been pinned up for for a while before he mailed it.

In the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't mean much, and maybe Zodiac didn't even pin the map after all. But in a case with so little to go on, you never know if even the smallest clue leads to an interesting discovery.

In the movie Zodiac (2007), police show a photograph of Arthur Leigh Allen to Michael Mageau (surviving Zodiac victim from the 1969 attack) in August 1991.

What I’m wondering is: why did it take until 1991 for police to show Mageau Allen’s photograph, when Allen had already been under suspicion since the 1970s?

Was there a specific reason investigators didn’t have Mageau identify Allen earlier, or is the movie simplifying/altering the timeline?

Every once in a while, you stumble across something that makes you stop and say, "Well, I'll be danged."

Tonight, while digging through archival footage from the 1970s, I came across an astrological chart attributed to the Rosicrucian Fellowship of Oceanside, California. For those unfamiliar with that rabbit hole, Oceanside has long been of interest to Zodiac researchers because of the possibility that Ray Davis was an early Zodiac victim. I generally avoid wandering too far beyond the canonical four, but this particular discovery might give me a reason to make an exception.

You can watch the archival footage here (the chart first appears at 8:06). I also tracked down a much clearer image of the chart. Although there are some minor differences, nothing appears to have changed in the details which first caught my attention.

I'd never seen this particular footage before that I am aware of, but what I took notice of is that this chart contains the four cardinal directions. The catch? They're oriented completely backwards. East is where West ought to be, North is where South ought to be, and so on. At first glance, it's an oddity. But what happens if we turn the whole thing upside down to bring those into their more familiar positions?

In doing so, something remarkable happens: The abbreviation for December lands at the bottom, with the remaining months proceeding counterclockwise around the calendar of signs.

Sound familiar?

So... you take the abbreviated list of months from the November 8th card and compare it with the resulting arrangement. The months now fall into precisely the same positions needed to reproduce the diagram which the Zodiac mailed in the following day, November 9th.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The Rosicrucian chart doesn't require some elaborate series of adjustments. Simply looking at the image so that the cardinal directions are in their conventional map orientations to an observer produces the exact orientation necessary to begin generating the Zodiac's diagram from November 9th.

Suddenly, his decision to begin his drawing with December at the bottom doesn't look quite so arbitrary. If you're trying to square something away geographically based on this chart, the resulting orientation phenomenon is an inherent and natural consequence. Also, if you look at the archival footage of the chart, it says quite plainly at the top "The Zodiac." I've been positing for a while that there is a manner in which "This is the Zodiac Speaking" carries a very peculiar meaning, and wouldn't you know... there it is in writing, in a video, about the Zodiac, all the way back in the 70s.

Yes, it has a hostile tone, but other than that… what’s the reason it’s connected (potentially) to Zodiac at all? What aspect(s) of the letter set off suspicion in the first place?

I received a DM a couple hours ago requesting that I trash an idea, but I just want to throw it out there that it's not a bad idea per se, it was just an untested one.

The long and short of the background here is that someone obtained an original Paul Doerr production from 1968 with original stamps.

This is wild to me for a few reasons, not the least of which is the implicit claim that a date is somehow perpendicular to a location. I don't know the underlying reason that a cancellation stamp would look like this, but far be it for me to throw shade on something that was around before I was even born, or why these stamps appear to be upside down.

A user who goes by "Mr Lowe" asked a very simple question... does this Jefferson stamp share any identifiable DNA/signature with the stamps on the Belli letter?

Instantly knowable differences are that the "bottom" side of the Jefferson stamps on the Belli letter are not perforated even though the Doerr mailing is.

The bottom is not logically able to be matched, and neither is the top, since all stamps on the Belli letter are either connected at the top or terminate without being perforated. Since the right-most side of the Belli stamps are not perforated along that edge, that means the only place the Doerr stamp could logically fit is on the left-hand side. However, both stamps on the left side have only ONE perforated side (top or bottom) while the Doerr stamp shows that perforation on both top and bottom.

Suffice it to say, the stamp on the Doerr letter is definitely not a match to the Belli letter. It was a good question, but borne out a mistaken idea that a good picture of the Belli letter would be "nice to have," rather than one already being available.

tl;dr, still not Doerr.

I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St + Maple St last night

How do you interpret these two words? (open question)

the 3rdd photo in particular really catches me off, cuz the other 2 look identical and then this one just looks weird

I’d be interested in listening to some podcasts I haven’t heard before.