The Zodiac Killer: Dear Editor Pt. 2
August 8th, 1969. A schoolteacher named Donald Harden and his wife Bettye sit at their kitchen table in Salinas, California with a newspaper spread in front of them. On the front page is one-third of a 408-character coded message sent by a serial killer. The FBI has been staring at it for over a week. Bettye has a hunch: this man is an egomaniac, so the message probably starts with "I." And he is a killer, so the word "kill" is probably in there. Twenty hours later, a couple at a kitchen table has cracked what law enforcement, military codebreakers, and the NSA could not. The decoded message begins: "I like killing people because it is so much fun."
That is where Part 2 begins.
In this episode, Kathryn and Gabriel go deep on the letters. Over twenty pieces of correspondence sent to Bay Area newspapers, a celebrity attorney, and a journalist between 1969 and 1974. The Z408 and what it reveals about the Zodiac's psychology. The October 1969 letter containing a swatch of Paul Stine's bloody shirt and a threat to shoot children off a school bus, which put armed officers on Bay Area transit routes for weeks. The December 1969 Melvin Belli letter, in which the Zodiac appears to beg for help while simultaneously enclosing more bloody evidence. The Z13 cipher of April 1970, prefaced with the three words "My name is," which has never been definitively solved. Kathleen Johns and her infant daughter, two hours in a car with a man calmly announcing he planned to kill them. The Halloween card sent to Chronicle reporter Paul Avery: "Peek-a-boo, you are doomed." And then the silence. A postcard in 1971. A final authenticated letter in January 1974, praising The Exorcist as a satirical comedy and claiming a body count of thirty-seven. And then nothing.
Part 3 drops next Monday.
SOURCES: Graysmith, Robert. Zodiac. Berkley Books, 1986. Graysmith, Robert. Zodiac Unmasked. Berkley Books, 2002. Toschi, Dave, and Armstrong, William. Zodiac Homicide Investigation Files. San Francisco Police Department, 1969-1978. California Department of Justice. Zodiac Killer Case Files. State of California, 1969-2004. Harden, Donald and Bettye. Cipher Solution Submission. San Francisco Chronicle, August 1969. Connell, Richard. "The Most Dangerous Game." Collier's Weekly, 1924. Belli, Melvin. Personal Correspondence and Case Files. Melvin Belli Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley. Zodiac Killer No-Show. KGO-TV News Broadcast, October 1973. youtube.com/watch?v=RpyKvbBdcbA.
DISCLAIMER: This episode discusses murder, serial homicide, kidnapping, threats against children, and unsolved violent crimes across multiple California jurisdictions. Letter and attack reconstructions are based on official police reports, survivor accounts, authenticated correspondence, and established investigative record. No theory presented constitutes proven fact. Discussion of potential suspects is strictly educational and does not constitute accusation, legal conclusion, or forensic finding of any kind regarding any living or deceased individual. Psychological and cultural framing is for educational purposes only and does not constitute clinical d
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