A US air force veteran Identified as the Zodiac Killer, Is Gary Francis Poste a house painter in California the twisted serial killer, his family, relatives, and a group of retired police personnel have all the evidence out in the public
What Is All About Gary Francis Poste?
Born on 8 November 1937, Gary Francis Poste was a US air force veteran from California. On Thursday, August 23rd, 2018, 80 years old Gary passed away at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton. He was working as a house painter in California before his death.
A few years later, a team of more than 40 cold case investigators made of former law enforcement personnel, military intelligence investigators, and many crime journalists, claimed to have found the real Zodiac Killer as an old man named Gary Francis Poste, who had already passed away in 2018.
The team claimed to have uncovered forensic pieces of evidence and photos from Gary’s darkroom. They examined different photographs of Gary and claim that the scars on his forehead matched the killer’s description. According to them, this cold case after decades of years is finally explained with actual shreds of evidence.
Since the zodiac killer was considered to be a narcissistic and paranoid misfit, mainly driven by the need for attention, power, and, most of all, credibility. At the very least, he killed 5 people in California and claimed to have killed 37 people during his five-year span of carnage also sent ciphered messages to the press, the characters in the letters were substituted for different symbols, numbers, and alphabets.
Letters from the Zodiac Killer
The first cipher the killer sent was solved about a week later by a North Salinas schoolteacher Donald Harden and his wife Bettye.
“I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAT WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND ALL THE I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOW DOWN OR STOP MY COLLECTING OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE EBEORIETEMETHHPITI”.
The killer’s ciphers became even more complex after his first message. One, which contains 340 characters, has outwitted decryption for more than 50 years named Z 340, sent on November 8, 1969
The cipher was cracked in Dec 2020, not by any professional law enforcement but by an amateur team of sleuths. David Oranchak a software developer along with Sam blake an applied mathematician in Melbourne and Jarl Van Eycke, a warehouse operator and software programmer in Belgium.
The cipher said:
I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT 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
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH
Instances with his Family
The newspaper San Francisco Chronicle supposedly was contacted by a male relative of Gary 6 years ago. He is said to have lived in the town of Groveland, 150 miles away from San Francisco. This anonymous relative claimed of been almost killed by Gary with a hammer, he later accused of Gary being the Zodiac.
The Us version of The Sun retrieved a police report in January 2022 which had documented papers on Poste’s physical abuse of his wife. In 2016 Poste had pushed his 74 years old wife Mary into a wall, and the impact broke her pelvis in 4 different places.
Gary was also accused of being in the zodiac by his former daughter-in-law, Michelle Wynn also accused him of being the serial killer in a newspaper interview.
Victims and their ages
Claimed to have killed 37 people during his five-year span, investigators were only able to link him to 7 victims, 5 died, and 2 survived.
These victims include:
30 years old Paul Stine who shot once in the head at point-blank range
22 years old Cecelia Shepard was stabbed 10 times, five in the front and five in the back
20 years old Bryan Hartnell stabbed six times in the back
22 years old Darlene Ferrin was shot five times
19 years old Mike Mageau was shot four times
17 years old David Faraday was shot once in the head at point-blank range
16 years old Baetty Lou Jensen was shot five times in the back
Some of his other possible victims include:
Ray Davis, aged 27, shot twice from behind in his own cab
Cheri Jo Bates, aged18, was beaten and stabbed multiple times with a short-bladed knife