The Zodiac Killer: The First Kill
The Zodiac murders are one of the greatest unsolved murder cases of all times, ranking up with the Jack The Ripper murders.
No one knows who he is that has killed so many people, and some even think it may never be solved. Police investigated over 2,500 suspects, but to no avail.
Our story begins with the murder of a young girl...
On October, 30, 1966, an 18 year old college student, Cheri Jo Bates was brutally murdered near a parking lot of Riverside City College. Neither rape nor robbery seemed to have been a motive, as her clothes were undisturbed and her purse was present and intact. After disabling her lime green Volkswagen by pulling out the distributor coil and the condenser, then disconnecting the middle wire of the distributor, the zodiac killer had apparently waited for Bates to return to her car and try to start it, whereupon he made a pretense of unsuccessfully tinkering with the engine.
After this he probably offered her a ride, and lured her into the dark unpaved drive between two houses owned my the college.
They spent an hour and a half there, but what they did in that time was not decided, but the man attacked, slashing her three times in the chest area, once in the back, and seven times across the throat.
Police determined that the murder weapon was a small knife with a blade about 3 1/2" long by 1/2" wide, but the wounds to Bates' throat were so deep and brutal as to nearly decapitate her, severing her larynx, jugular vein, and carotid artery. She had also been choked, beaten, and slashed about the face.
Found about ten feet from Bates' body was a paint-spattered man's Timex watch with a broken 7" wristband, stopped at around 12:23 .
After a long time of investigating Cheri's killer would remain a mystery.
On November 29, 1966, carbon copies of an anonymous letter were mailed to the Riverside Police and the Riverside Enterprise, typed using a portable Royal typewriter with either Pica or Elite typeface, it was entitled "The Confession," and carried a "byline" that consisted of the word "BY" followed by twelve underscores.
Both copies were on low-quality white paper eight inches wide and torn at the top and bottom so as to be roughly squarish, and had been sent unstamped and with no return address from a secluded rural mailbox. Presumably, the author planned on the letters being sent by Postage Due mail.
At least one of the details referred to in this letter had not been made public, and at the time, investigators agreed that it was most likely genuine, though this opinion has changed over the years.
The confession
By _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
She was young and beautiful but now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last i lay awake nights thinking about my next victim. Maybe she will be the beautiful blond that babysits near the little store and walks down the dark alley each evening about seven. Or maybe she will be the shapely brunett that said xxx no when i asked her for a date in high school. But maybe it will not be either. But i shall cut off her female parts and deposit them for the whole city to see. So don't make it to easy for me. Keep your sisters, daughters, and wives off the streets and alleys. Miss bates was stupid. She went to the slaughter like a lamb. She did not put up a struggle. But i did. It was a ball. I first cut the middle wire from the distributor. Then i waited for her in the library and followed her out after about two minutes. The battery must have been about dead by then. I then offered to help. She was then very willing to talk to me. I told her that my car was down the street and that i would give her a lift home. When we were away from the library walking, i said it was about time. She asked me, "about time for what?" i said it was about time for her to die. I grabbed her around the neck with my hand over her mouth and my other hand with a small knife at her throat. She went very willingly. Her breast felt warm and very firm under my hands, but only one thing was on my mind. Making her pay for all the brush offs that she had given me during the years prior. She died hard. She squirmed and shook as i chocked her, and her lips twiched. She let out a scream once and i kicked her in the head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her and it broke. I then finished the job by cutting her throat. I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read it. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that's up to you. It will be on your conscience. Not mine. Yes, i did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware...i am stalking your girls now.
Cc. Chief of police
Enterprise
Neither envelope bore a complete address; they were handwritten with a felt-tip pen in the following manner.
Daily Enterprise
Riverside Calif
Attn: Crime
Homicide Detail
Riverside
One fingerprint was found on the envelope sent to the RPD Homicide Detail, but it has never been matched to a suspect, and whether it was left by the author, a postman, or a police officer is unknown.
The killer's claim that "she did not put up a struggle" was contradicted by the numerous defense wounds on her hands and arms, as well as by the flesh and hair found beneath Bates' fingernails.
While a contemporaneous newspaper report reflects uncertainty as to whether the knife actually broke in her body, no evidence of this event is reported in the autopsy report, and more recent pronouncements from RPD detectives are unanimous that the knife did not break.
Bates' car had indeed been sabotaged in the manner described, which had not been fully revealed by the news media. The phone call that is referred to near the end of the letter has never been elaborated on by authorities, though researcher Tom Voigt suggests that it was placed to the Riverside Press, rather than the police, and so went misunderstood and ignored.
The letters were delivered on the same day they were posted. The next day, November 30th, both the Enterprise and the local police submitted their copies to the Riverside County Postal Inspector, who in turn notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Murder is not a federal crime, but extortion through the mail is, and the FBI briefly considered joining the investigation under this pretense. However, since no specific victim of extortion was named or alluded to, there would be no federal aid in the investigation.
In an unexplained turn of events, what appears to be a photocopy of the "Confession" was attached to an FBI report declassified in the 1990s, but the typescript and number of words per line are different from those in the well-known copy that appears in a photograph of the letter lying either on a detective's or a reporter's desk.
The killer taunted police for years with cryptic messages and the like, and killed many people, but still the case remains unsolved.
