Bay Area's Zodiac Killer: Is Resolution Finally Here?

There were five murders which took place between December 1968 and October 1969 in Northern California's bay area. Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa and San Francisco were the areas these five who have been conclusively determined as being done by the same person. He was known only as the Zodiac killer because of notes, or letters, with a hand scrawled zodiac symbol on them.

There were two more victims who survived the attempted murders. All the victims were young, four men and three women between 16 and 29 years of age. The killer wrote letters to the newspapers in which he claimed to have murdered 37 people but authorities have been unable to verify any other than the five.

There were other killings, some of which prompted letters to the newspapers professing to be the work of Zodiac but no further ones were officially charged to him. Also, the letters were not known for certain to have been his.

There is a long and detailed coverage of this persons activities and resulting police work which has continued to surface with new evidence from time to time contained in Wikipedia online.

Yesterday (04/29/09) Deborah Perez from Southern California, along with her attorney, Kevin McLean, told authorities that her father Guy Ward Hendrickson who died in 1993 of cancer, was the Zodiac killer. She tells them she was taken along with her father on several trips when he killed someone, but that she was 7 years old and he would never admit that he shot anyone. He would leave her in the car later she would hear shots and he would return but claimed that someone had shot firecrackers.

She also says that she embroidered the mask he wore in several cases and would write the letters for him and draw the circle-cross sign on them. There is a considerable amount of skepticism on the part of the police, yet she has said and offered some evidence that has caused them to pay attention and they are investigating further to determine if she is, indeed, telling the truth.

As with many serial killers, there are a number of killings which remain a mystery and cannot be brought to a conclusion. Most of the time, however, the killer is eventually caught and several murders tied to him. This particular man, whoever it turns out to be, is likely dead by now and was one of the few that was never caught or even identified. Many people still think it was a man named Arthur Leigh Allen who lived in Vallejo, and was a convicted child molester and who died in 1992, but was never charged with any of those crimes.

To this writer, not experienced in psychiatry, police investigation or any such related work, still questions the likelihood of Allen being the man. Normally, it would seem to me, a child molester would not likely stop being a child molester and turn into a killer with no apparent sexual connections whatsoever.

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