Did Zodiac killer spend final days in South Sound?

By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published December 07, 2008

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A California man is trying to convince the FBI that his stepfather, who died in the Olympia area about two-and-a-half years ago, was the San Francisco Bay Area's notorious Zodiac killer.

Zodiac killer's crimes

The following are among the slayings that the Zodiac killer is suspected of, according to Robert Graysmith's book "Zodiac."

• On Dec. 20, 1968, Betty Lou Jensen, 16, and David Faraday, 17, were found shot to death on Lake Herman Road, near Vallejo, Calif., outside Faraday's mother's station wagon.

• On July 5, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot repeatedly while in Ferrin's vehicle parked at the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course in Vallejo by a man who shone a light on the car before opening fire on the occupants. Ferrin was killed. Mageau survived, despite being shot three times. Minutes after the shooting, an anonymous man placed a call from a pay phone to the Vallejo Police Department "to report a double murder." The man also claimed credit for the Jensen and Faraday homicides.

In letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area newspapers in late July 1969, the Zodiac killer claimed responsibility for the Jensen and Faraday murders, as well at the shooting that killed Ferrin and wounded Mageau, giving details known only to police. Ciphers sent to the newspapers were decoded and read in part: "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 dangeroue anamal of all to kill."

• On Sept. 27, 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd were stabbed repeatedly by a man dressed in black and wearing a black hood while picnicking at California's Lake Berryessa. Shepherd died, and Hartnell survived. He reportedly is a lawyer now in Southern California.

• On Oct. 11, 1969, San Francisco cab driver Paul Stine was shot and killed in his car by a passenger in the back seat on Washington Street in San Francisco. On Oct. 14, Zodiac sent the San Francisco Chronicle a letter claiming responsibility for the murder. The letter contained a bloody piece of Stine's shirt.

In one of his last letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, Zodiac claimed responsibility for 37 murders.

Dennis Kaufman, 41, of Pollock Pines, Calif., said his stepfather, Jack Tarrance, died in Thurston County in August 2006 at the age of 78.

Kaufman and his half-brother, Charles Tarrance of Olympia, have submitted some of Jack Tarrance's belongings to the FBI in Sacramento, Calif., for analysis. They include his dentures, a toothbrush and a comb that might have DNA that can be analyzed in a crime lab. The FBI confirmed that the agency was testing unnamed items Kaufman submitted.

The Zodiac killer is blamed in the murders of at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area starting in the late 1960s. He taunted police and bragged about his crimes in letters to Bay-Area newspapers. He placed ciphers in his messages, using symbols for letters, creating codes that had to be solved like puzzles. He has never been identified or caught. His unsolved crimes and flamboyant style — he wore a black hood emblazoned with his trademark, a circled cross, during his fatal attack at Lake Berryessa north of the city of Napa in 1969 — have made him an icon in popular culture.

In Hollywood, the villain "Scorpio" in the first "Dirty Harry" movie was loosely based on the Zodiac killer. In 2007, Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal starred in "Zodiac," a big-budget adaptation of former San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith's books on the killings — and law enforcement's futile attempts to find the killer.

But Tom Voigt, who is a critic of Kaufman's claims and runs the Portland-based Web site www.zodiackiller.com, said the FBI's involvement doesn't mean Kaufman's theory is valid.

"The reason why Dennis Kaufman is involved with the FBI is he's gone through more investigative agencies than you can count, and they've all found no evidence that Jack Tarrance was the Zodiac. Kaufman's claims have been investigated by numerous law enforcement agencies." Among those agencies are the San Francisco, Santa Rosa and South Lake Tahoe police departments and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, Voigt said.

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