REUTERS/ Robert Galbraith
California authorities have submitted evidence tied to the elusive Zodiac Killer to a private DNA lab to use on genealogy services, using the same strategy that was employed to track down and arrest a suspect in its notorious Golden State Killer case. The Sacramento Bee reports investigators with the Vallejo Police Department have submitted the evidence and are hoping to get a genetic profile of the killer and then narrow in on suspects using family-tree tracing, as detectives in the GSK case did. Det. Terry Poyser, who has been on the decades-old Zodiac case for years, told the Bee that authorities sent two envelopes, which had letters from the Zodiac Killer and saliva on the envelope and stamps, for advanced DNA analysis. Such analysis had not been previously used—or available—in the case. The Zodiac Killer reportedly murdered victims in Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, San Francisco, and elsewhere in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He killed at least five people, though he claimed to have murdered 37 in his taunting letters to the press. Poyser said results will be back from the lab within weeks, and then officials can start creating a family tree and narrowing options. “If we get a good profile, then you start tracking back,” Poyser said. “It really comes down to DNA. Without it, you have nothing. It’s a 50-years-old case.”