In the 1960s, the Zodiac Killer spilled blood all across northern California, with five confirmed kills and claims of 37 more. However, he was never caught – could he be your dad?
The trail of unresolved murders has crushed, boggled and fascinated investigators and true-crime enthusiasts around the world. Whoever it was, they took great pleasure in their own status as an enigma of death – taunting police chiefs and the press with haunting letters before another kill.
However, it’s a much deeper story for Gary L. Stewart. He believes he has the answer to the decades-long question of the identify behind the Zodiac Killer: his biological father, Earl Van Best, Jr.
FXThe new four-part docuseries on FX, based on Stewart’s New York Times bestselling book of the same name, looks at his attempts to track down his real dad – which leads him to the realisation that he may have been the infamous serial killer.
The official description of the show calls it ‘an honest depiction of true life and true crime unexpectedly merging to upend one man’s understanding of his own identity’.
This isn’t some slipshod hypothesis – it was a 12-year process to collect the eye-widening research. For example, in the footage, Stewart recounts seeing his father’s name in one of the Zodiac Killer’s ciphers. They also have eerily similar handwriting, the same fingerprint scar, and most curious of all, a 99% probability of their DNA matching.
FXBack during the height of heat around the investigation, Van Best Jr. was one of the major suspects that dominated investigators’ theories (along with Arthur Leigh Allen, arguably the most famous figure in the case).
The name of the docuseries is inspired by one of the killer’s most memorable letters, which read:
I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is thar when I die I will be reborn in paradise and they I have killed will become my slaves [sic].
The case was also the subject of David Fincher’s 2007 masterpiece, aptly titled Zodiac, which heavily leaned on Allen as the suspected killer. It’s available to stream on Amazon Prime now.
All four episodes of The Most Dangerous Animal Of All are dropping on FX on March 6.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]
After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.