The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up

[Jolie Rouge]

The new book that claims to unmask the Zodiac Killer: 6 takeaways
By The Week's Editorial Staff | The Week – 6 hrs ago.

A notorious serial killer with a taste for cryptograms haunted San Francisco in the '60s. And after decades of mystery, an ex-cop says he has solved the case.

In 1968 and 1969, as San Francisco was bathing in the hot afterglow of the "Summer of Love," a serial killer was coldly stalking the Bay Area. The so-called Zodiac Killer — immortalized in the 2007 David Fincher film Zodiac — fatally stabbed or shot at least five people, then sent cryptic, taunting notes to the police and local newspapers until 1974. He was never caught, and the San Francisco Police Department officially closed the case in 2004. But now, retired California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty has unofficially reopened it in a new book laying out the results of his and six colleagues' decades of freelance sleuthing. The book, The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, purports to solve the case, claiming that the Zodiac Killer is still alive and living in the area.

Here, six takeaways from Lafferty's investigation:

1. Lafferty won't name the suspect
The killer, Lafferty says, is a 91-year-old recovered alcoholic living in fairly comfortable retirement in nearby Solano County, where the killings began in December 1968. Lafferty says a lot about his suspect, but leaves out a crucial detail: His name. Citing privacy and safety concerns, Lafferty refers to the man by a pseudonym, George Russell Tucker. For any code-breakers interested in the truth, Lafferty says the killer spells out his real name in one of his signature zodiac-riddled letters to the cops and the press.

2. Lafferty says he's known the man's identity since 1970
Lafferty stumbled into the case at a Vallejo rest area in 1970, he says, when Tucker parked next to his patrol car. The guy in the car looked like the sketches of the Zodiac Killer, Lafferty said, but there was something else: "I looked into a quivering, snarling face like I was looking to the face of death.... It scared the hell out of me." He ran the man's license number, and has been investigating him on and off ever since. Lafferty says he has provided the real name to the police, and waited to publish the book until some people had died, including Tucker's wife.

3. The evidence is plentiful, but circumstantial
Lafferty and his six colleagues — including a retired local cop who worked on the case and an ex–Navy intelligence officer — have spent more than 30 years on the case, and one chapter of the book lays out "156 circumstantial factors of evidence that related to the Zodiac case and our suspect," Lafferty tells ABC News. For example, Tucker frequented a restaurant where one of the victims, Darlen Ferrin, worked, and a witness recalls seeing a car similar to Tucker's lurking outside Ferrin's house in the weeks before her death.

4. Tucker's apparent motive? Revenge
Lafferty says the reason Tucker started killing people — the Zodiac Killer claimed to have murdered 37, far more than the official tally of five — is that he found his wife cheating on him with, among other men, a senior Solano County Superior Court judge. "Through his tauntings of the police, his code, ciphers, and letters, he was on a mission to redeem his shattered ego," Lafferty says in the book. "To prove that he is better, smarter, and more clever than all the judges and police put together."

5. Lafferty accuses local officials of a cover-up
As the name of his book suggests, Lafferty says "power brokers" in Solano — notably the senior judge sleeping with Tucker's wife — stymied the investigation. Cops were instructed not to "investigate this man until you have permission from the judge," Lafferty tells ABC News. James Dean, a retired Vallejo police detective who worked with Lafferty, says local cops actually started investigating Tucker... until they were suddenly waved off, with the explicit instruction: "Tear up your ****." This corruption and meddling, Lafferty concludes, gave "the insane Zodiac Killer immunity and a license to kill."

6. Of course, not everyone is convinced
"It seems that each year or so we get another claim about the true identify and/or whereabouts of the Zodiac Killer," says Brock Keeling at SFist. There's no reason this should be any more true than the others.

http://news.yahoo.com/book-claims-un...094500637.html

comments

OK. He wrote a book claimimg to "unmask" a serial killer, but will not name him...I guess my definition of "unmasking" is incorrect..

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And, if you could look into Laffertys eyes you would be looking into the eyes of a liar.

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They have found the "real" Zodiac killer as many times as they have found the "real" Noah's Ark.

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Let me get this straight, he became the Zodiac because his wife was messing around? Well this means there are tons os suspects out there!

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[Jolie Rouge]

Louisiana author claims in book Zodiac killer is his father
The author of a new book released on Tuesday claims he is the son of the notorious Zodiac killer, an unidentified serial killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s.
Reuters 1 day ago

Gary L. Stewart, who penned "The Most Dangerous Animal of All" with journalist Susan Mustafa, discovered items of evidence "that conclusively identify his father as the Zodiac Killer" after he embarked on a journey to find his biological father, publishers Harper Collins said in a description of the book.

The book claims to present "forensic evidence" and "a chilling psychological profile" that identifies the killer.

Stewart, vice president of a chemical cleaning company in Louisiana, is not the first person to claim knowledge of the identity of the elusive criminal.

In 1991, a lawyer said he believed his deceased brother Jack Steadman Beeman was the murderer. San Francisco police in 1996 investigated links between the Zodiac killer and 'Unabomber' Theodore Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured many more with a series of homemade bombs from 1978 to 1995.

The Zodiac killer, who got the title from sending local newspapers letters written in elaborate code predicting future killings, is thought to be responsible for multiple unsolved murders in San Francisco and Northern California's Bay Area.

The last letter, received in 1969 after a taxi driver was killed, said there would be no more murders.

The case inspired the 2007 film "Zodiac," based on San Francisco Chronicle journalist Robert Graysmith's quest to uncover the identity of the killer.

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/lo...ocid=ansnews11