(Newsinta) — A team of cold case investigators says it has identified the infamous Zodiac Killer as Gary F. Poste, a California man who died in 2018.
The 40-member team, known as The Case Breakers, comprises former FBI agents, journalists and intelligence officers and has been investigating the Zodiac Killer for years, according to reports.
According the team’s website, The Case Breakers have “identified more crime scenes with the madman’s MO and signature on a trail stretching from San Diego County to Lake Tahoe.”
One of those places was Poste’s darkroom, where they claim to have uncovered a photograph that shows scars on his face that match a sketch of the sadistic Zodiac, who terrorized the country and toyed with law enforcement in 1968 and 1969, killing at least five people, possibly as many as 28. The killer claimed to have killed 37 victims.
Poste is the among a long list of suspects that have emerged over the years, as experts have attempted to decipher the Zodiac’s cryptic messages sent to police and newspapers. The Case Breakers say the messages haven’t been properly decrypted until now because investigators lacked a vital piece of the puzzle.
“So you’ve got to know Gary’s full name in order to decipher these anagrams,” Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent, told Fox News. “I just don’t think there’s any other way anybody would have figured it out.”
One of those messages, when deciphered, reads, “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. … I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me,” according to The Case Breakers, intimating that Poste may have had help.
The group also claims it has linked forensic evidence to Poste, a house painter for 40 years. They say heel prints made by a military-style boot found at Zodiac crime scenes match boots he owned.
A woman who lived next door to Poste and his wife in California told Fox News she believes The Case Breakers but offered few details. She told the network Poste taught her to shoot firearms in the ’70s and ’80s and that he abused his wife.
“He lived a double life,” the woman, identified as Gwen, said. “As I’m (an) adult thinking back, it all kind of makes sense now. At the time when I was a teenager, I didn’t put two and two together until I got older. It hit me full-blown that Gary’s the Zodiac.”
A man named Hans Smits says that he knew a man named Wil who told him he was part of a “posse” led by Poste. Smits says Wil told him he was “groomed into a killing machine.”
A woman named Michelle, Fox News reported, said she was involved romantically with Poste’s son and was harassed by the “posse” and that Poste would recruit certain people to help him commit crimes.
“He targeted young men who didn’t have a father figure,” she told Fox News. “It was a posse of three but the one (Poste) did a lot of damage. He still has some kind of control… and he’s gone.”