FBI Memo: Zodiac Killer Mailed Letter From Tri-Valley

TRI-VALLEY, CA — A cold case team claimed this week that it identified the so-called "Zodiac Killer" and said the city of Pleasanton has a tie to the infamous serial killer who haunted the San Francisco Bay Area decades ago.

The Case Breakers — a team of more than 40 former law enforcement investigators, military intelligence officers and journalists — identified Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018, as the Zodiac Killer. Poste had forehead scars that matched those of the Zodiac Killer. The group solved anagrams in his letters by removing the letters of Poste's name, a member told Fox.

"My FBI guys say it's irrefutable. It's a match," Case Breakers member Tom Colbert told Fox. "We have six people that he has confessed to that he was the Zodiac. Three of them on our court affidavits."

The sleuths unearthed a memo from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations that attributed the 1966 Southern California killing of Cheri Jo Bates, 18, to the Zodiac Killer based on a letter he mailed in Pleasanton back in 1971.

But police in the city of Riverside, where Bates was killed, aren't so sure that Poste was the culprit.

Riverside police spokesman Ryan Railsback told the San Francisco Chronicle that the group's evidence is circumstantial and doesn't amount to much. Police worked with the FBI to debunk the letter that indicated the Zodiac Killer was to blame.

"Is there a chance that [the Case Breakers suspect] killed Cheri Jo Bates? No," Railsback told the paper.

The Zodiac Killer once claimed to have killed 37 people, including five in the North Bay and San Francisco from 1968 to 1969. The FBI published hundreds of pages of investigative notes about the case.

The first killing happened in December 1968, when two teenagers were shot to death in a car in Benicia. The victims were David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16.

A man and woman were shot in Vallejo in July 1969. Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, died. Michael Renault Mageau, 19, survived.

Two college students were stabbed while picnicking at Lake Berryessa in Napa County in September 1969. Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22, died, but Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, survived more than a half-dozen stab wounds.

The final killing attributed to Zodiac happened in October 1969, when cab driver Paul Lee Stine, 29, was shot to death near the Presidio in San Francisco.

Read more: Zodiac Killer ID'd By Cold Case Team; FBI Memo IDs 6th Victim