It is impossible to be embroiled in the world of true crime, without becoming familiar with the infamous Zodiac killer. Even outside of true-crime circles, you wouldn’t have to look very far to find someone who knew a few snippets of Zodiac lore, it remains one of most studied, written-about, discussed and documented murder investigations in modern history, but how can that be?…
I’m not hating the Zodiac fans, or the MOUNTAINS of investigative work that countless sleuths (both professional and recreational) have put into cracking the codes and naming the names in the DECADES that have followed since the grizzly rampage of the mysterious murderer. I just don’t understand how there can still be new, emerging theories for something so trampled over by inspecting eyes, 56 years later, no less. At this point, are we really trying to solve the riddle, or just keep it going? The same could be said for many of the illustrious, illusive criminals that have slipped off into the night, only to be monetised and interpreted for the next lifetime. Jack The Ripper, The Monster of Florence, Lord Lucan, D.B Cooper. I chose the Zodiac as an example because its probably still the most active and relevant, plus, it has had some pretty interesting developments in the last few years.
We seem to have gotten closer to the real truth than ever before, but I’m not afraid to say that I’m highly sceptical, of the recent theories, and their motives. Here is how I look at the current horses in the race.
– Arthur Leigh Allen
The latest Netflix investigative docu-series on the Zodiac argues, quite compellingly, that the Zodiac is, without doubt, a man named Arthur Leigh Allen. They do this, in large, by presenting us with first-hand accounts from two siblings, who knew him personally and spent a lot of time around him as children. The evidence throughout is reasonably strong, placing him in the right place at the right time, repeatedly, showing him as having the opportunity, the character and the know-how, BUT, it was all pretty circumstantial. There was never any DNA corroboration, evidence recovered, confessions. He didn’t quite match the sketches, he talked the talk, but when people looked closer, they started to think maybe that’s all he was doing. It seemed to me like Arthur very much wanted people to believe he was the Zodiac, but he would never admit it. In the end, there were still no definitive answers, or closure, or justice, but there’s a documentary, and its on Netflix.
– Jeremy Foy and Richard Hoffman.
For me, there isn’t a lot to take seriously on this one. Richard Hoffman popped up on the Zodiac radar about 10 years ago, when a user on a small, zodiac theory message-board started posting about who he was and how he could be their man.
Skip to a year or so ago, when a tik-tokker named Jeremy Foy obviously read these posts, before launching a series of videos about how Richard Hoffman, his grandfather, was absolutely, totally, seriously, on god, the zodiac killer, and he could prove it. He just has to make a documentary about it before he takes anything to the police…which by itself, is pretty dubious behaviour, but if you were to couple that fact with all of the solid proof that Richard Hoffman physically could not have been at the scene, at the times of at least two of the killings, from eye-witness accounts of other police officers and EMTs, work logs and timestamped documents, then this theory becomes a tasteless social media soap opera. No real answers, lots of empty views and unlikeable characters.
– Marvin Merrill/Margolis
This one unsettles me. It feels so bizarre and unlikely that the bigger part of me simply will not accept that it doesn’t have some kind of creative liberty baked into its bones. There were so many red flags in the things I was reading about the latest Zodiac revelation that I wanted to write it off as fanfic, but there is a tiny little part of me that thinks…isn’t a broken clock right at least twice a day?
Now, if you are a Zodiac fan, I can assume you enjoy a little brain-teaser, puzzles and codes, so I have a real, real easy one for you.
I would like you to look at the offhand notes I scribbled while reading about this new theory, then, tell me why I wanted to take that sheet of paper, rub cheese on it and feed it to seagulls.
’50 year old Virginia man’
‘Self-taught codebreaker’
‘Founder of Cold Case Consultants Of America’
‘Worked 18/20 hour days, 9 months’
‘AI codebreaking programme’
‘Nancy Grace, ABC’
‘Michael Connelly(author of Bosch series/Podcaster) brother in NSA(?)’
‘3 experts allegedly confirm’
‘Mitzy Roberts/Rick Jackson. Retired cops, love the camera’
‘Marvin Merrill/Margolis’
‘Field medic/Surgeon’
‘Japanese Bayonet’
Some of you will see that chain of thought and feel the same unwillingness to engage in infotainment as I did, and I understand it but…there may actually be be something to it, unbelievably. Of all the information available, those were the only parts of it I found worth noting, but then I couldn’t stop returning to other aspects of it and thinking about how crazy of a coincidence it is, if true. The short version, no pun intended, is that the main suspect in the famous Black Dahlia murder, is also the Zodiac.
The long version, the story that we will no doubt be seeing on screens near us next year, is that after all this time, the founder of the cold case gang plugged a cypher into an Ai, where it eventually spat out the name Marvin Merrill. The super-sleuth then sought help in his trusty true-crime novelist friend, who coincidentally had no other ongoing projects, so that they could use his NSA connections to take this evidence to high-level codebreakers in the government, which they then did, and it doesn’t matter who those experts were, because they confirmed it. If it wasn’t enough that Margolis lived in California, he had also served as a codebreaker in the navy, on top of THAT, he had a big knife, which was something the Zodiac was known to have used, sometimes. Now, all they need to solve this case once and for all, is two retired cold-case detectives, a podcast, a book, Nancy Grace and news coverage, and inevitably, another docu-series.
I am so tempted to be taken in by this theory, because if the AI program really found old Marvin’s name in the cypher, that is peculiar. The fact that he also looks uncannily like the sketch of the Zodiac killer, lived in or around the places where some of these events took place at around the same times, had experience in coded messages, shooting and surgery?…all circumstantial, still no definite answers, no justice, just fresh content.
This recent zodiac gossip has made me think that old-crime and the investigation of it has never really been about the truth, or people seeing justice, or even solving the crimes. It seems to mostly be about stretching every shred of information long enough to make a couple of bucks and a tangent, safe in the knowledge you can theorise until the cows come home and people will eat it up, because they will probably never really know, and if we did, at this point, its far too late to do anything about it other than keep recycling the story. The victims of the Zodiac, and now The Black Dahlia, have been overshadowed by mountains of speculation, disagreement, and conspiracy theories, their killer was never brought to justice, or even outright confirmed, but millions have been made on their story and people are still trying to catch that train in 2026.
I have my own theory on the zodiac, and I’m positive that other people out there have surely also noticed the same pattern I have, in a small, select group of the main suspects, some included here, some not, but it is something I have rarely seen discussed, and the implications of it, if true, would stretch far beyond the borders of California, but I won’t be sharing it, or podcasting about it, because it has no possible resolution, and does nothing for what few people remain that have been directly affected by the fallout of those terrible events.
I think, if all the great minds out there in their book-clubs and writing rooms, were to focus their energy on more current unsolved events, instead of beating dead donkeys with new sticks and hoping that once it split open there would be more than shoddy policework and e-books inside, they could probably do some real good. At the very least, we might hear some new stories.
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