A group of 40 cold case investigators believe they have identified San Francisco's infamous serial murderer known as the Zodiac killer.
The Zodiac terrorised the bay area of California and murdered five people over the course of a year, between 1968 and 1969.
It has remained a cold case for more than half a century but now a team of journalists, former law enforcement and military intelligence personnel have got a name.
As fictionalised in the 2007 film Zodiac, the killer taunted the police and journalists with riddles which supposedly revealed his identity.
The latest Zodiac Killer theory emerged this week from a private team of investigators who named a man from the Sierra foothills who died three years ago as the killer, but FBI and police officials say the Zodiac case remains unsolved. https://t.co/hLHD7EySkY
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) October 6, 2021
The myster murderer sent letters to the Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The San Francisco Examiner before stopping all communication.
The Zodiac claimed to have killed up to 37 people but only five murders and two attempted murders across the bay area were ever connected to him.
Who is the Zodiac Killer?
Officially, Arthur Leigh Allen, from Vallejo, who was the only suspect every identified but he died in 1992.
The 'Case Breakers' have identified the Air Force Veteran Gary Francis Poste as the Zodiac.
The team believe that he strongly resembles the 1969 police sketch due to the similarities with some scarring on his forehead.
A former Army counterintelligence agent and member of the invesitgations team, Jen Bucholtz, has claimed that coded letters sent to journalists and police reveal an anagram of his name.
Poste was from the Sierra foothills and died in 2018.
The 'Case Breakers' have also claimed that they have proof that their suspect was connected to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in 1966.
But Federal and police investigators have rejected the conclusions made by the cold case team, speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The San Francisco Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) said: “The Zodiac killer case remains open. We have no new information to share at the moment."
According to the Chronicle, the San Francisco Police Department share this conclusion.
However, a member of the 'Case Breakers' Tom Colbert, also spoke to the Chronicle.
Colbert said: “I absolutely feel we solved this case.
He insisted that the team has been investigating cold cases for 10 years.
“There’s no ego here, we do this to solve cases.”
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