SAN FRANCISCO (NEXSTAR) \u2013 A team of investigators calling themselves The Case Breakers say they know the identity of the\u00a0Zodiac Killer, but law enforcement is refuting their claim.<\/p>\n
The serial murderer killed five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969, taunting investigators with with a series of cryptic notes.<\/p>\n
The Case Breakers, a group of 40-plus members led by retired FBI agents have varied backgrounds in law enforcement, according to their site, and work to solve some of the country\u2019s most notorious cold cases. The Case Breakers have previously attempted to tackle the D.B. Cooper case and the death of Jimmy Hoffa, according to FOX.<\/p>\n
The self-described task force identified an Air Force veteran who lived near Northern California\u2019s Sierra Nevada as the Zodiac Killer in a story first reported by\u00a0FOX News<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday. The man they named died in 2018. (Nexstar is opting not to name the man in The Code Breakers\u2019 report in light of refutation from law enforcement).<\/p>\n The group said they also believe the Air Force veteran is responsible for killing a sixth victim, 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates on Oct. 31, 1966 in Riverside, California and stated that detectives recovered \u201chairs, skin and blood\u201d from under her fingernails. They are calling on the department to test the alleged evidence \u2013 which they say is stored in the Northern California city of Vallejo \u2013 against that of the person they identified in the case.<\/p>\n Riverside Police Officer Ryan Railsback told Nexstar that his department is unaware of any such physical evidence and questioned where the cold case team was getting its information. Railsback said that Riverside investigators have worked closely with the labs and law enforcement teams to investigate any possible link.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Cheri Jo Bates case was actually related to the Zodiac Killer, we wouldn\u2019t be holding that back, especially 55 years later,\u201d Railsback said. \u201cUnequivocally, we are saying that the Cheri Jo Bates case and the Zodiac Killer case are not related.\u201d<\/p>\n Railsback said that the Riverside Police Department\u2019s Cold Case Unit did\u00a0receive a handwritten letter<\/a>\u00a0in 1967 that initially led investigators to believe the Zodiac Killer might have been behind her murder. The department received a second letter, this time typed, apologizing for the letter and saying it was written as a \u201csick joke.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, the Riverside Cold Case Unit and the FBI Los Angeles Investigative Genealogy Team used DNA evidence from the stamp on the 2016 letter to track down the author and confirm that he wrote both letters. The letter writer, who was a teenager in 1967, wasn\u2019t involved in the murder of Bates, investigators determined.<\/p>\n There is a standing $50,000 reward for information leading to Cheri Jo Bates\u2019 killer set to expire Jan. 31, 2022, according to Riverside police, who said that a lawyer working with the The Case Breakers had inquired about in September.<\/p>\n The Riverside Police Dept. is asking\u00a0anyone with tips on the Zodiac Killer to contact the FBI instead.<\/a><\/p>\n A Vallejo police spokesperson said the department could neither confirm nor deny Wednesday\u2019s report from The Case Breakers, and added that they would announce any major developments.<\/p>\n San Francisco police and the FBI also cast doubt on the Case Breakers\u2019 announcement to the\u00a0San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>. \u201cThe Zodiac killer case remains open. We have no new information to share at the moment,\u201d the FBI told the newspaper Wednesday.<\/p>\n Several conflicting theories have emerged in the decade since the Zodiac crimes.\u00a0The San Francisco Chronicle\u00a0\u2013 which received coded ciphers at the time of the killings \u2013 says it has received piles of letters \u201cnaming hundreds of suspects\u201d over the years.<\/p>\n According to the Fox News report, the team of cold case specialists say new forensic evidence, decoded notes and photos from the suspect\u2019s own darkroom led them to the identity of the Zodiac Killer.<\/p>\n In one case, The Case Breakers removed the letters of the Air Force veteran\u2019s full name and discovered a message in the remaining text.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019ve got to know [the suspect\u2019s] full name in order to decipher these anagrams,\u201d said Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent. \u201cI just don\u2019t think there\u2019s any other way anybody would have figured it out.\u201d<\/p>\n In December 2020, a cryptographer and two software engineers cracked a cipher\u00a0sent to the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>\u00a0more than 50 years ago, the FBI confirmed.<\/p>\n The Zodiac would write notes, often threatening to kill, in a cryptogram composed of a bizarre series of letters and symbols. The killer signed the letters with a circle divided by a cross. Subsequent letters began, \u2033This is the Zodiac speaking.\u2033<\/p>\n His last authenticated letter to the San Francisco Chronicle arrived Jan. 30, 1974.<\/p>\n Police say at least five people are believed to have been murdered by the Zodiac, although the killer claimed at least 37 victims since 1966 in his letters.<\/p>\n The killing spree has since been the subject of numerous theories, podcasts and even major motion pictures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAN FRANCISCO (NEXSTAR) \u2013 A team of investigators calling themselves The Case Breakers say they know the identity of the\u00a0Zodiac Killer, but law enforcement is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":110751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}