Post by JoannaL on Oct 6, 2021 13:55:49 GMT -5
Has 'The Zodiac' Been Identified?
The Case Breakers, a team of 40 former law enforcement officers, journalists and military intelligence officers claims the late Gary E. Poste was the infamous Zodiac Killer.
The investigators reached their conclusion after digging through new forensic evidence and photographs from Poste’s darkroom and one image shows a scar on Poste’s forehead that matches scars on an artist’s sketch of the Zodiac.
Additionally, Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent, said in one of the Zodiac’s notes, the letters of Poste’s full name (Gary Francis Poste) were removed to reveal an alternate message. “So you’ve got to know Gary’s full name in order to decipher these anagrams,” she explained. “I just don’t think there’s any other way anybody would have figured it out.”
The team also believes Poste killed Cheri Jo Bates on October 30, 1966, in Riverside, Calif., which is more than 400 miles south of the San Francisco area, and the murder occurred two years before teenagers David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were shot and killed December 20, 1968, on a lonely road in Solano County.
According to Case Breakers, Poste has a connection to the Bates case. For example, he served in the Air Force and there’s evidence he received follow-up treatment for a gun incident at a hospital 15 minutes from the Riverside City College campus, where the girl’s body was found. Also, Poste worked as a house painter and a wristwatch with paint splatter was collected at the scene.
Even though the Riverside Police Department has determined the Bates murder isn’t related to the Zodiac killings, Case Breakers members have asked officials to have DNA from the Bates murder compared to that of Poste. Thus far, the Riverside investigators have declined, however, the case remains open and just a few weeks ago, police announced a $50,000 reward was being offered for information leading to a conviction in the 55-year-old Cheri Jo Bates case.
Sources: Louis Casiano, Fox News, October 6, 2021; The Riverside Press-Enterprise, August 4, 2021; and Heather Monroe, "The Unsolved Murder of Cheri Jo Bates," Medium, February 1, 2020.
