December 20, 1968 is the date associated with the first confirmed case in what would become a string of unsolved mysteries.
That Friday night, two teenagers, 17-year-old David Arthur Faraday and 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen, were parked along Lake Herman Road on the outskirts of Benicia, California, on what was reportedly their first date. What happened there would later be recognized as the initial case tied to letters that would soon follow, signed with a name and symbol chosen by the sender himself, Zodiac.
Within months of the Lake Herman Road case, letters and handwritten ciphers began arriving at local police departments and newspaper offices. Some included letters arranged to create code no one understood, while others were in depth with direct statements about motive and his future plans.
In those letters, he claimed responsibility for 37 incidents. Investigators, however, were only able to firmly connect him to seven cases, two of which involved survivors, leaving the officially recognized number far lower than what was asserted. The cases have since been reexamined in books, documentaries, and films, yet decades later, the identity behind the letters remains unknown.
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