Forty-five years after the Zodiac killer snuffed out five lives in the Bay Area and mercilessly taunted the cops with letters and spooky cryptograms, theories about the killer’s identity still pop up frequently, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. In books and in letters and phone calls to the police and press, people contend that the Zodiac is everyone from the creepy neighbor downstairs to an unhinged husband to a secret gang of rogue cops.
Most of these tips find their way to the San Francisco Police Department, where investigators would love to be able to close the casebook on their one connection to the Zodiac, the shooting death of cabdriver Paul Stine — the killer's last victim. They also wind up coming to the Chronicle because the Zodiac sent several letters to the newspaper when he was on his five-body rampage in 1968 and 1969. The theories come from former police officers and sincere research projects by amateurs to rantings from the deranged.