In the late 1960s a serial killer quickly and
clumsily killed his victims as an ante in a game he was
developing. It was Murder and Seek.  He named himself
The ZODIAC,  the master controller. He was both the
hunter and he made himself the hunted. His costumes
ranged from the bland and obsolete to bizarre theatricality. Sadly, he was successful in his game. To this day nobody knows his identity. Over 40 years later, only  amateur sleuths and private detectives hound his trail.

   ____________________________________________________________

ZODIAC: STEVE The Unsuspected

   Due to his size— 6 foot, 210 pounds— Steve never thought he could contribute much to the fighting Air Force. When he graduated officer’s training, he wrote his preference was to be a personnel officer. He was already the Personnel Officer, so he need only write it on his own file’s paperwork. It was a rare example of contemporary hand-printing that matched The Zodiac Killer’s, and I was lucky to get it. Discovering this, I couldn’t help but remember SFPD chief of detectives Marty Lee, who surmised that ZODIAC was nothing but a “fat paperhanger” in real life.

     Despite the easy job, Steve began to act strange in ways that bothered his fellow Air Force officers. It first happened in 1964 at Lackland AFB in Texas. It was attributed to nerves. But in 1966 when the pudgy lieutenant was finally able to get a posting overseas, it got worse quickly. It wasn’t a combat posting. It was in the Hawaii area. He was still only the Personnel Officer for his squadron, but he was nevertheless showing lots of signs of “stress”— Insomnia, anxiety. He got called in and even examined at Hickam Field, Pearl Harbor.

     Steve actually was a little more than a paperhanger. He was a grad psychologist.  When questioned by Air Force doctors, he denied most every symptom he had. He knew by the standards of the time if he admitted to depression he would immediately be classified as a psychotic. That meant goodbye Air Force after only a few years’ service.

     But the military doctors weren’t fooled. There was something really wrong with Steve. They said he would be a danger in isolated duty. They said he was not fit to remain in. . .but they had before them an interesting specimen. Despite the recommendation in February 1967 that he be released, he was shipped to the hospital at Lackland AFB— back to Texas. There he was kept in observation for 4 months before finally being discharged for psychiatric reasons.

     Steve was out and free in the summer of 1967. TVs were showcasing the Summer of Love. It was a different, even licentious, San Francisco than the one he had known in 1963 just before he had joined up. He had no real prospects— so much for a BS in Psychology. He was bitter. In all but designation he was Section 8 out of the military. He was not going to return to live in San Francisco. He was going to move beyond the Bay Area but remain close enough.

     Now out of the Air Force, he let his hair grow back to its old, full 1950s style. He remained a chunky 210 pounds. His kept his only medal from the Air Force— the ribbon for Expert in small arms. He was a deadeye marksman with a pistol. He kept his Wing Walker shoes. He kept the bitter antiestablishment attitude he acquired while forced under observation for 4 months. He had both the intelligence, ego, and antiestablishment attitude to evolve into ZODIAC.

     How I came across Steve and then doggedly followed his thin trail is outlined in HorrorScope. All the details will be laid out. For me, his most important military legacy are his annotated Personnel records in his frightfully slanted, hurried style of writing or while quite calm in an almost elegant different penmanship.

     Contemporarily, in order, penmanship, latents, and ballistics were the evidence against ZODIAC. All suspects underwent an examination of their printing and their fingerprints. Today, fingerprints are problematic. The bloody latents pulled from Paul Stine’s cab are disputed. Ballistics are good only if you have the gun and can trace its ownership or vice versa. Handwriting remains the surest trail. The ZODIAC left much, certain it could never lead to him. 

     Relatively speaking, what I uncovered in an old Air Force folder is a a bare fraction. Evidence developed more and more until it became obvious I was tracking a paperhanger careful at at covering his trail. Strange if only an undistinguished private citizen. One thing I grew grateful for— the path via which I had uncovered Steve. By the standards of modern forensics ZODIAC left only one sure bit of evidence— licked stamps. DNA should be able to trace him through genealogy. But this has never uncovered him. Curiously, Steve was adopted. Unraveling his origins and family via genealogy is near impossible. I realized I had found the only trail. I had to stick to it. 

     I got his pictures. I uncovered his past. His mother’s infidelities and foibles (even an bigamist marriage). Perhaps his mother’s many marriages and his illegitimate birth inspired him to strike petting couples first. But that’s for the psychologists to play with. I was interested in the clear evolution of a man straddling the line of sanity and insanity.

     I had enough to accuse Steve— From his printing to his features— height, weight, age — everything fit. But accusation is not enough. I had to work everything together and get more evidence. The ZODIAC will go down as one of the luckiest killers, caught by only one mistake.

       In HORRORSCOPE I will deliver the body of The ZODIAC. The soul? It takes more to get at the soul. Why he killed, why he played such a boastful game about it, and why he stopped. Was he a reluctant killer? Was the terror campaign a ruse to cover some other motive? Were the deaths necessary in some greater scheme or ritual? The questions may not seem as important after the killer’s hood is removed. To unmask The ZODIAC is to reveal more than the soul of the killer. It is to isolate the pudgy, insecure madman from the pomp of his publicity. This will destroy the soul. The result is an empty mask devoid of any substance of the theatrical master controller ZODIAC that he created from dark shadows. It leaves us with his true image, the one he drew for himself in the cowardly barbarity of his crimes.  

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Q Files is not spontaneous extemporanea.
 It contains the results of 33 years of the author’s
   personal investigations of the unexplained.