Chapter 22 Section VI

The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle published the letter in its entirety.The headline on the front page read: Zodiak Ends Silence - "I'm Back Again" At that time, no one thought that this letter was the beginning of a longer silence, perhaps an eternal silence.Zodiak was never seen or heard from again for more than 20 years, and the police never found him in a single crime.As if evaporated from the world, this frantic murderer and terrorist disappeared without a trace. 〓 It is said that to this day, relevant authorities in San Francisco still receive reports and phone calls from all over the country and Canada from time to time, providing various clues about Zodiak.Among the nearly 100 suspects listed by the police, three stood out the most.

One was Arthur Lee Allen, a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area.David Tozzi once called him a "highly likely perpetrator".The circumstantial evidence listed is as follows: Very smart, with an estimated IQ of around 135; Living with the mother for a long time after adulthood, but the mother-child relationship is not harmonious; University chemistry graduate with training in cryptography.Once his sister-in-law saw him holding a piece of paper with some weird symbols written on it; He likes hunting, and his marksmanship and swordsmanship are good.Once told a friend that humans are "the most dangerous animal";

According to the family of Dailyn Elizabeth Fallon, she was followed by a man who called himself "Li" before the murder.Arthur Lee Allen often used his middle name; He owns a Zodiac watch made in Switzerland with the exact same brand pattern as the Zodiac logo; In almost all of Zodiak's homicides, there is evidence that he was present at the scene or in the surrounding area.He attended Riverside Municipal University and was a long-time resident of Villeo, where Cecilia Ann Sheppard and Brian Hartnell received a speeding ticket near Lake Belliesha on the day they were killed On the same day, someone saw a bloody knife in his car, and he said he had killed a chicken with the knife;

His height and weight are in line with Zodiak, and he wears size 10 and a half shoes; During the period when Zodiak stopped writing letters, he was sentenced to prison for molesting a child. In July 1971, a friend of Arthur Lee Allen reported to the police that Arthur Allen had raped him around 1968 or earlier—before the Bay Area's first Zodiac homicide. Said that he planned to shoot the men and women who had a tryst on the "Lover Road".He also talks about strapping a flashlight to the barrel of his gun for night shooting, mentions writing letters to harass the police, and calling himself "Zodiak."

But one thing, Arthur Lee Allen's appearance is completely different from the Zodiak that Michael Macchio, Brian Hartnell, Catherine Jones and the two police officers have seen.It has been argued that Zodiak wrote in a letter dated November 9, 1969: "I only look like the wanted poster when I'm working, and I'm completely another person." In any case, the police never had enough evidence to arrest and prosecute Arthur Lee.By 1992, when Arthur Lee Allen died at the age of 58, he was still the number one suspect in the Zodiak series of murders.His brain tissue was sampled by authorities for future use.

Another suspect in the case is a prominent businessman in the San Francisco Bay Area.He initially aroused the suspicion of the police because of his frequent letters to newspapers.A more in-depth investigation found that he also has a special sensitivity to anniversaries.On June 20, 1969, exactly six months after the murder at the Lake Herman Road pumping station, the man predicted in a letter to a San Francisco newspaper that there would be a "bloody conflict" and that The scene would be described as "dying young men lying in the street, waiting for death to come".Two weeks later, there was the bluestone springs golf course murder.

When Paul Lee Steen was killed in his taxi that September, the well-known businessman was living in Mount Pustio, just two miles from the scene of the crime.The police deduced that it was entirely possible that this person, like Zodiak at the time, quickly hid to a safe area and witnessed the police's subsequent search operations.The location of the businessman's residence is also fully in line with what Zodiac wrote in his letter: "The police dogs were at least two blocks away from me, and they searched westward. There were only two teams of military police and me separated by about 10 minutes." walking distance, and several motorcycles going south to northwest within 150 feet of me."

This person is still in San Francisco.As a successful businessman, his IQ should be beyond doubt. William Collins is a journalism graduate student at a university in New York.A few years ago, when he first opened the best-selling book "Zodiak" by the famous author Robert Gremisch, he was stunned. "Oh, God!" He stared at the photocopy of Zodiak's letter in the centerfold. "That's my father's handwriting." William's father, Charles Clifton Collins, died in 1993.According to the photo provided by his son, he looks exactly like Zodiak on the wanted notice.And, William Collins said, he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of the Zodiak murders.He really likes to wear military shoes, a size 10½.Some spellings of Zodiak are also very close to Charles Collins.For example, Zodiak likes to write "do" as doo, while Charles Collins writes "who" as hoo.As William continued his investigation, he also discovered that his father's initials, CCC, had appeared on a postcard from Zodiak.

New York. On May 31, 1990, around 4 am.Near Elder Street on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, a 78-year-old man, Joseph Prouss, was shot and wounded in front of his home.The man later told police the killer followed him for about 10 blocks and when he stepped into his front yard, the man approached him for water and asked if he could come inside. "Why do you want to go in?" asked the old man. "I'm cold," said the man.Then he raised a homemade pistol and shot at the old man. The old man fell on the doorstep.Beside him, the police found a note buried under three small stones.There is an astronomical symbol on the bar, and a mark similar to the Zodiac of San Francisco - a circle and three lines bisecting it.The note said:

This is Zodiak the 12 will die when the star belt hangs high in the sky Police didn't know what that meant at the time. Witnesses saw a man in a military jacket running in the direction of Brooklyn after the shots were fired.The shooter has been described as a black man. On June 19, The New York Times received a letter claiming to be Zodiak announcing that he had attacked three passers-by in the past three months, on March 8, March 29 and May 31.In the letter, he described in detail the characteristics of the victim and the location where he was shot. Based on these clues and the available information, the police quickly identified the three "Zodiak shootings in New York".The first case came at 1.45am. Mario Orozco, a 49-year-old Colombian immigrant, came home from get off work at a restaurant and walked around a corner when he was followed by a head-to-toe black man in a hooded beret uniform. Getting closer.Mario Orosco started limping forward on crutches, but the man in black overtook him and shot him in the back.The second case was also in the early morning. At 2:57, 34-year-old Jermaine Montanajo was shot in the left arm outside his home.The third victim was Joseph Prouss.

All three shootings took place in the same area, no more than a dozen or so blocks away.The police then began looking for connections or commonalities between the three victims.Do they shop at the same supermarket?Or get your hair cut at the same barber shop?Or borrow books from the same library?Or whether to eat social assistance?All answers are no.But at one point, there was something wrong with all three of them.Mario Orozco was born with polio.Jermaine Montanazzo was an alcoholic, and he passed out in front of his house when the crime happened.Joseph Prouss suffers from dementia and often cannot distinguish day from night.From this point of view, this "Zodiak" specifically attacks the weak who have little resistance. The letter from "Zodiak" stated that "all the cases happened in Brooklyn", which is actually inaccurate.Joseph Pross and Jermaine Montanacho lived in Queens, but they were both very close to Brooklyn, only a few hundred steps away.It is not known whether the murderer was really confused about the boundary between the two districts, or deliberately confused the public, because 20 years ago in San Francisco, Zodiak often chose the junction of the jurisdictions of various police stations to commit crimes. This "Zodiac of New York" also stated in the letter that he was going to shoot 12 people, each representing a constellation in the zodiac, or Zodiac belt, according to the note next to Joseph Prouss. The "12 seats".So far, he has killed Scorpio (Mario Orosco, born October 26, 1940), Gemini (Jermaine Montanacho, born May 28, 1956), and Taurus (Joseph Prouss, born May 20, 1912). Further analysis showed that each of the shootings occurred in the early hours of Thursday.The interval between the first two cases was 21 days, or 3 weeks, and the interval between the latter two cases was three times that of the previous case, that is, 63 days, or 9 weeks.If we count from May 31, when Joseph Sr. was murdered, the next 21 days should be Thursday, June 21, that is, less than 48 hours after the newspaper received Zodiak's letter.Moreover, according to the astronomers who helped solve the case, in the early morning of the three shootings, three groups of star clusters in the form of stripes, Orion, Taurus and Pleiades appeared in the night sky at the same time. This is what the note said " Star belt", that is, the zodiac, or the Zodiac belt. On June 21, the three groups of star clusters that make up the "belt" will appear together again. Without further ado, the New York Police Department urgently deployed operations.Since the scenes of the first three cases were within half a mile of each other, more than 30 detectives were placed overnight on the Queens-Brooklyn border, each controlling two blocks.They stayed there until dawn and withdrew around 6:00 am.As soon as he got back to the police office, the phone rang, and it was "Zodiak".He said he saw the waiting detectives around Elder Street and hopped on the subway to Central Park. The detectives, who were just about to take a nap, got up and headed straight for Central Park. Larry Paran, a 30-year-old homeless man, lay on the couch where he spent the night, his chest covered in blood.The murderer also left a note beside him, which, in addition to the New York Zodiak mark, also had the victim's star image.Larry Palan later told the police that a few days before the incident, someone had inquired about his birth date, and he told the person that he was born on June 29, 1959, under the sign of Cancer.It is estimated that "Zodiak" has inquired about Larry's sleeping place in advance.Around 5:00 a.m. that morning, just five hours into Larry Paran's astronomical cycle, he shot the sleeping homeless man in the chest.Larry Palan said the person who asked him his birthday looked like a weather announcer for a local TV station. For a while, the New York media rushed to report this new series of murders.People seem to automatically refer to the murderer as "Little Zodiak," "Zodiak II," "a copy or bootleg of Zodiak," or "a copycat of the famous San Francisco killer," and so on.Unlike the Bay Area terrorist, this "Zodiak II" never attacked a woman, never used a dagger, and never shot his victim in the head like an execution.The murder weapon he used was only a homemade pistol, and all the victims were shot only once, so there has been no death so far.But his bullet was actually the original Zodiak 9mm that shot Davey Arthur Faraday and Petit Lou Jessin on Herman Lake Road.San Francisco detectives who had worked with Zodiak for years told colleagues in the NYPD that sooner or later the killer would be caught because he left too many alive. The day after the Central Park shooting, on June 22, The New York Times received another letter from the killer: This is Zodiak.I read the New York Times and you said my letter had nothing in common with San Francisco's Zodiak's letter You're wrong It's the same Zodiac who shot a man in a park San Francisco's Zodiak who killed a woman with a knife and a man with a gun in a taxi The New York Times added an "editor's note" when it published the letter, saying: "This Zodiak seems eager to prove to people that he is the same Zodiak who killed people in the Bay Area 20 years ago." Meanwhile, sales of the "birthstone," which represents 12 months of gemstones in 12 different colors, plummeted as police warned citizens not to let strangers know their birthdays, and people were afraid to stop, according to jewelers. Wear "birthstone" jewelry that indicates the month or zodiac sign of your birth. On June 25, Joseph Prouss died in hospital from a wound infection. On Thursday, July 12, another 21 days after the Central Park shooting, New York City was heavily guarded, but nothing happened overnight. Soon, "Zodiak II" wrote in another threatening letter: "Zodiak will kill 12 when the zodiac light appears." The New York Police Department asked NASA again.According to astronomers, the zodiacal light is caused by the refraction of sunlight by small particles of dust in the air, but this natural phenomenon does not occur in large cities such as New York.If the sky is clear and it is twilight, it may be seen on an open coast such as the Caribbean Sea.This rare astronomical sight only appears once a year in early March and early October. After that, "Zodiak II" disappeared.Some say he was frustrated because no one recognized him as a real Zodiak.It is also said that he did not intend to kill people, and the death of Joseph Sr. was beyond his expectation.But more people think that his whereabouts may be related to the so-called Zodiacal Light.He started committing crimes in early March and should have ended before early October. On March 1, 1994, New York police arrested a young man nicknamed "Vampire".He was thin and weak, "wouldn't hurt a fly".People called him "the vampire" because he was nocturnal and hated drug dealers.He lives with his mother and half-sister in an abandoned residential building in an abandoned residential area on the east side of New York.Nine out of ten rooms in the building are empty.Whenever he learns that drug dealers and drug lords are wandering in the neighborhood, the "vampire" must be furious and must drive them away, so he has also become the eyeliner of the police's drug investigation. "Vampire" has a hobby, he is particularly keen on collecting all kinds of military items.He was taken to the police station because he was carrying a homemade pistol.Homemade pistols differ from store-bought pistols in that, in addition to being informal, they are not officially registered.Therefore, almost all homemade pistol owners are suspected of illegally holding guns, and the police will catch them regardless.Because "Zodiak II" used a homemade pistol, the New York Police Department requires all those who hold a homemade pistol to have their fingerprints on file.But later the police discovered that the gun of the "vampire" could not shoot at all, so they did not compare his fingerprints with the fingerprints left by "Zodiak II" on two letters four years ago, and sealed them together with the files Get up and put it on the shelf. On Monday, August 1 of the same year, the "New York Times" received another letter from "Zodiak".The writer claimed to be "Zodiak II" who killed the four constellations four years ago, and his writing style does have many similarities with "Zodiak II".The letter also stated that he attacked five more people between August 19, 1992 and June 11, 1994, two of whom died. It is difficult for the police to determine whether the criminal is "Zodiak III" or "Zodiak II" comeback, or the original Zodiak. Two of the five victims were women, and in one of the homicides the murder weapon was a dagger, all in the San Francisco Zodiac style.The murderer did not follow certain astronomical laws like "Zodiak II", who only selected people with a certain constellation as targets, and followed the victims.It seems that he just picked out a few convenient targets from the crowd at a convenient time.However, according to the testimonies provided by survivors and eyewitnesses, the perpetrator's body shape and appearance are similar to "Zodiak II", but he is not black, but a South American with a heavy complexion. This "Zodiak" also sent a code with the letter, which is much simpler than that of San Francisco Zodiak 20 years ago. mirror image drawn.Password means: This is Zodiak.Everything is under my control.Get ready for more homicides. your loyal.