A team of more than 40 former law enforcement investigators, The Case Breakers, say they identified the Zodiac Killer and linked him to another murder.

The Zodiac has been connected to at least five murders in the San Francisco area between 1968 and 1969. Since the first murder, multiple potential suspects have been investigated. 

The killer gave himself the name in ciphers that were sent to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspaper publishers. To this day only two ciphers have been cracked. The Zodiac claimed to have murdered over 37 victims because he wanted to “collect slaves for the afterlife”.

In one of his ciphers, he said, “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. … I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me,”

The Case Breakers believe that Gary F. Poste was the Zodiac Killer. Although he died in 2018, the team has compiled potential evidence to link him to the murders.

The first clue was when the team deciphered letters sent by the Zodiac that revealed Poste as the killer. The ciphers quite literally had his full name in it. Another clue that linked him was the scars on his forehead that are also present in the police sketch done in 1969.

Most recently, the Case Breakers connected Poste to the Cheri Jo Bates murder that occurred on October 31, 1966, in Riverside California. This murder took place two years before the first murder and is over 100 miles from San Francisco.

The Riverside Police do not believe that Cheri Bates was murdered by the Zodiac. There was a letter sent to them the year following her murder, but in 2016 someone came forward to admit it was fake. Investigators confirmed the author was not the Zodiac Killer and did not murder Cheri Bates.

One link between Poste and Bates is that at the time of her murder Poste was going to check-ups at a hospital only 15 minutes from the Bates murder scene. Another link was a watch was found at the murder scene with pain platters on it as well. Poste was a house painter for more than forty years. Detectives discovered a military boot footprint at the Bate’s murder scene and it matches the size and style of the footprints found at the Zodiac crime scenes.

Since there is a significant amount of evidence for Poste being the Zodiac Killer, Poste’s former neighbor has come forward and said she believes he was the Zodiac Killer. Poste and his wife babysat her, and she claims he “lived a double life” and that it never hit her until she was older and “it hit me full-blown that Gary’s the Zodiac.”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/cold-case-zodiac-killer-identified-murder