'My Dad Was the Zodiac Killer'

(NEWSER) - The half-sister of the California woman who asserted Wednesday that their father was the dreaded Zodiac killer of the 1960s isn’t having any of it, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Janice Hendrickson’s father “couldn’t hurt a fly,” she said today. “He did have a temper, and he did hit me, but did he kill people? I don’t believe he did.” More»

But Lt. John Lewison has yet to share his solution

(NEWSER) - A Chicago cop says he has managed to decipher one of the coded messages that have long frustrated investigators—one left by the Zodiac killer. Lt. John Lewison has been something of a Zodiac hobbyist ever since the “BTK Killer” was caught in 2005 using clues from the taunting letters he sent. “I thought to myself, I’ll look back at Zodiac,” Lewison tells the Chicago Tribune . “Perhaps there’s something in the cryptograms he left that could be teased out.” More»

Search for Shannan Gilbert takes to the sea

(NEWSER) - The serial killer that Long Island cops suspect is using a lonely stretch near Jones Beach as a dumping ground may not be the first to have done so: The latest remains pulled from the area are too old to be connected with those of four prostitutes found in December. "These are so old that roots were growing around the vertebrae and the skull," a source tells the New York Post . "These could be one or two of Joel Rifkin's victims who were never found," or those of another killer. More»

Photographer Joseph Naso suspected in string of cold-case deaths

(NEWSER) - Investigators probing a Nevada man suspected of having murdered four women in California between 1977 and 1994 have found a disturbing similarity to the unsolved rape and murder of three young girls in upstate New York in the early '70s. Bizarrely, all seven victims had matching initials for their first and last names. Two victims, one in New York and one in California, even had the same name: Carmen Colon, AP reports. The other California murder victims? Roxene Roggasch, Pamela Parsons, and Tracy Tafoya. More»

DNA links serial killer to slaying of 9-year-old

(NEWSER) - San Francisco police believe they have uncovered another killing by the "Night Stalker" serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area in the '80s. DNA evidence has linked Richard Ramirez to the 1984 murder of 9-year-old Mei Leung, who was sexually assaulted and killed in the basement of a hotel. The breakthrough was made by homicide detective Holly Pera, who was a rookie at the time of Leung's slaying and never lost interest in the case. More»