The short answer is no. They never handcuffed him. They never sat him in a cold interrogation room under fluorescent lights and watched him crumble. But if you’re asking if we know who he was, well, that’s where things get incredibly complicated and, frankly, a bit heated depending on which true crime forum you haunt. For over five decades, the question of did they catch the Zodiac Killer has lingered like a bad smell in the halls of California law enforcement, fueled by a mix of taunting letters, cryptograms that took fifty years to solve, and a suspect list that never seems to shrink.
He’s the ultimate ghost. Between 1968 and 1969, a man stalked Northern California, killing at least five people—though he claimed thirty-seven—and then did something almost unprecedented: he marketed his crimes. He sent letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers, demanding they be printed on the front page or he’d "cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night." He wore a black hood with a crosshair symbol at Lake Berryessa. He mailed a piece of Paul Stine’s bloody shirt to prove he was the one who pulled the trigger.
Then, he just stopped. Or did he?
The DNA problem and why he isn't in a cell
One of the biggest reasons people keep asking did they catch the Zodiac Killer is because we live in the "CSI era." We assume DNA solves everything. In 2018, when they caught the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, using investigative genetic genealogy, everyone thought Zodiac was next. It felt inevitable. But the Zodiac case is a forensic nightmare.
Back in the late sixties, "touch DNA" wasn't a thing. Investigators weren't worried about contaminating a crime scene with their own skin cells or breath. They handled the letters with bare hands. They licked the stamps? No, the killer did—but back then, police didn't always preserve that moisture correctly. In 2002, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) managed to develop a partial DNA profile from the saliva on the stamps of the Zodiac letters. It was a huge moment. However, it was only a partial profile. It’s enough to rule people out, but not necessarily enough to pick one person out of a global population.
There's also the terrifying possibility that the DNA on those stamps doesn't even belong to the killer. Maybe he had someone else lick them. Maybe he used a sponge. In 2018, the Vallejo Police Department sent several letters to a private lab for more advanced testing, hoping to find a "cleaner" sample. We are still waiting for a definitive, world-changing match. Until that happens, the case remains legally "open" and "unsolved."
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Arthur Leigh Allen: The suspect who wouldn't go away
If you’ve seen the David Fincher movie Zodiac, you probably walked away thinking Arthur Leigh Allen was the guy. Honestly, for a long time, the lead investigators like Dave Toschi thought so too. Allen was a nightmare on paper. He wore a Zodiac brand watch. He talked about killing people with a flashlight attached to a firearm. He was in the vicinity of several of the murders.
When police searched his trailer, they found some truly disturbing stuff, but they never found the "smoking gun." No bloody clothes. No trophies. When they compared his DNA to that 2002 partial profile, it didn't match. His fingerprints didn't match the one found on Paul Stine’s cab—though that print was bloody and might have belonged to a first responder. His handwriting didn't match the letters.
It’s frustrating. You have a guy who looks like the killer, acts like the killer, and jokes about being the killer, but the science says "no." Or at least, the science doesn't say "yes." This is why the question of did they catch the Zodiac Killer is so polarizing. If Allen was the guy, then he was smart enough to mask his handwriting and lucky enough to leave no trace. If he wasn't, then a very innocent (albeit strange) man spent his life being hounded by the FBI.
The 340 Cipher and the 2020 breakthrough
For 51 years, one of the killer's most famous puzzles, the "340 Cipher," sat unsolved. People tried everything. Supercomputers. Codebreakers. Bored hobbyists in their basements. Then, in late 2020, a trio of amateur codebreakers—David Oranchak, Sam Blake, and Jarl Van Eycke—finally cracked it.
The message didn't contain a name. It said: "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 PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME."
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It was chilling, but it didn't give the FBI a suspect. What it did prove was that the killer was a sophisticated narcissist who understood transposition ciphers. It also showed he was a terrible speller, or at least pretended to be, consistently spelling "paradise" as "paradice."
Other names that keep popping up
- Gary Francis Poste: In 2021, a group called the Case Breakers claimed they identified Poste as the killer, citing scars on his forehead that matched the police sketch and "coded" messages in his photos. The FBI, however, remains skeptical. They haven't officially cleared him, but they haven't jumped on the bandwagon either.
- Ross Sullivan: He worked at the library near where Cheri Jo Bates was murdered in Riverside. He looked remarkably like the composite sketch and disappeared shortly after the murders started.
- Richard Gaikowski: A journalist who some say had a voice that matched the descriptions given by survivors.
The reality is that every few years, a new "definitive" suspect emerges. Someone finds a box in their dead father's attic and becomes convinced they were raised by a monster. Most of the time, it leads to a dead end.
The Lake Berryessa anomaly
The attack at Lake Berryessa is perhaps the most famous because it happened in broad daylight. Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were relaxing by the water when a man approached wearing a strange, hooded costume. It looked like an executioner’s mask. It had the crosshair symbol stitched on the chest in white.
He didn't just want to kill; he wanted to perform. He talked to them. He tied them up. He used a long-bladed knife. This attack was different from the quick shootings at Blue Rock Springs or Lake Herman Road. It showed a man who was evolving, getting more confident, and becoming more obsessed with his own mythology. Hartnell survived and provided a chilling account of the man's voice—calm, measured, and terrifyingly normal. Yet, even with a living witness who spoke to him for several minutes, the police couldn't put a name to the mask.
Is the Zodiac still alive?
Probably not. If the killer was in his 20s or 30s in 1969, he’d be in his 80s or 90s today. Many of the primary suspects, including Allen and Poste, are already dead. This creates a massive legal hurdle. You can't put a dead man on trial. Even if DNA eventually points to a specific person, the answer to did they catch the Zodiac Killer will always technically be "no," because the justice system requires a living defendant.
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However, the "catching" might happen in a different way. We are looking at a "posthumous identification." Like the Black Dahlia or Jack the Ripper, the goal has shifted from incarceration to closure.
Why we can't let it go
There’s something uniquely haunting about a killer who writes letters. Most murderers want to hide. The Zodiac wanted to be a celebrity. He played a game with the public, and by never being caught, he won the final round. He became an urban legend, a campfire story that happens to be true.
The SFPD still gets dozens of tips every month. People are still staring at the "Z13" cipher, which allegedly contains his name, trying to find a pattern that isn't there. We are obsessed because the mystery feels solvable. It feels like the answer is just one lab test or one old diary away.
Actionable steps for following the case
If you’re looking to get deeper into the actual evidence rather than the Hollywood dramatizations, here is how you can stay updated on the real-time investigation:
- Monitor the Vallejo Police Department updates: They hold the primary evidence for several of the most famous attacks. Any new DNA breakthroughs will likely come through their coordination with labs like Othram or Parabon NanoLabs.
- Study the primary documents: Sites like ZodiacKiller.com (run by Tom Voigt) or ZodiacKillerFacts.com (run by Mike Rodelli) host high-resolution scans of the original letters and police reports. Reading the actual transcripts is much different than hearing a summary.
- Check the FBI Vault: The FBI has declassified hundreds of pages of Zodiac files. You can read the original memos from the 70s to see how the feds were actually tracking him and where the jurisdictional balls were dropped.
- Look into Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG): This is the tech that will likely solve the case. Following news from companies that specialize in cold case DNA will give you a head start on when a "John Doe" might finally be named.
The search continues. We might not ever see a mugshot of the Zodiac Killer taken in 1969, but the odds of a name finally being attached to the letters are higher now than they’ve ever been. Technology finally caught up to the monster. Now, we just need that one clean strand of DNA to close the book.