Friday, April 02, 2004

SERIAL KILLERS REDUX

In an amazing development, the San Francisco Police Department has closed the Zodiac Killer investigation, even though the case remains unsolved. Read all about it at Tom Voigt's excellent Zodiackiller.com. I can not recommend this site highly enough for those interested in the case. Tom has done some amazing and important work. Be sure to check out the extensive forums.

Meanwhile, Zodiac wannabe and Wichita boogeyman BTK is back in the news. The Wichita Eagle offers a profile.

Interestingly, a rather obscure writer named Ken Mosbaugh developed a theory linking the two killers (among others). What follows is an old article from KSN News, Wichita, that is no longer on their website, but was posted on Zodiackiller.com's forums and I repost it here for your convenience. The theory is reminiscent of Maury Terry's excellent book on the Son of Sam murders The Ultimate Evil, which I highly recommend. And if anyone knows anything about Ken Mosbaugh (if that is his real name . . . ) please let me know.




BTK Murders: A new theory


KSN News


WICHITA, Kansas, Feb. 27 - In the mid 1970's Wichita's most notorious serial killer, BTK murdered at least six people and sent the entire city into a panic. That case is still unsolved. Now, a California man says he's unlocked the mystery to this case and two other infamous killers.



THE THEORY IS COMPREHENSIVE and complicated. And the cases have similarities that one man says are much more than coincidence.
January, 1974: Four members of the Otero family are found dead in their home. And Wichita enters an era of terror unlike it has ever known. Children hide knives under their beds, adults stay home after dark, families keep their doors locked, all for fear of being the next victim of BTK.
BTK.bind.torture.kill.He would choke his victims almost to the point of death, then let them come back, before strangling them. The dead bodies were found tied up. And BTK left his mark with letters to the media.
In 1977, after the murder of Nancy Fox, the killings stop as abruptly as they started. But the case was never solved.
The fear was very much the same as that eight years earlier in California, when the Zodiac killer stalked his victims in four towns along the coast.
The Zodiac also sent letters, but like BTK, they weren't able to lead police to a suspect.
Years later in 1976, another serial killer surfaces on the other coast-this New York killer calls himself the Son of Sam. And again there are letters, but this time police make a break. They arrest David Berkowitz and he readily admits to the murders. But in interviews since, he has claimed he was part of a murderous satanic cult.
Three notorious serial killings committed in communities thousands of miles apart, yet the crimes appear to be closely related.
All three killers had six official victims, all three killers used similar taunting letters, in all three cases the letters were sent to press or police by the killer, and in all three cases the letters make reference to things demonic or satanic.
In the first BTK letter three times the author describes himself as a monster. In the first Son of Sam letter three times the author describes himself as a monster. In all three cases, there are letters containing misspellings. In letters from the Son of Sam and the Zodiac, the killer misspells 'woman'. The first letters of both Zodiac and BTK were typed. The killers in both the Zodiac and BTK case called police from a phone booth.
During one of the Zodiac murders, the killer said "I want your money and your car keys, I want your car to go to Mexico." He also said he was wanted by police in Montana.
Years later, in another murder thought to be connected to BTK, the killer said he needed money and a car for a trip to New York. He said he was wanted by police in California.
"If someone wants to call this circumstantial, then it's the most circumstantial case of all mankind," said Ken Mosbaugh, the man who says he's broken a complex satanic code that proves all three killings were masterminded by the same person.
Ken Mosbaugh was studying the Zodiac killings, when he stumbled onto the BTK case in the process. He says pieces started falling in place quickly after that.
Mosbaugh says he's solved the BTK, Zodiac, and Son of Sam cases in a massive five year investigation that began when he broke the code of the Zodiac letters.
"At the end of the 72 hours I had broken two of the languages used to compose the ciphers for Zodiac murders," Mosbaugh said. He says those ciphers revealed the mastermind behind the Zodiac -- the leader of a satanic group called 'Four Pi'.
But it wasn't until Mosbaugh laid out all the Zodiac murders on a map that he started finding connections to other cases..
Mosbaugh drew a line from Riverside to San Francisco -- the points of two of the Zodiac murders. He did the same thing with the killings in Lake Barryessa and Lake Herman near Vallejo. The point where they crossed was Palo Alto and when Mosbaugh started following the 37th latitude across, he ran right into Wichita.
When Mosbaugh investigated further, he says he found the evidence to link BTK to Zodiac.
"When I read the descriptions the letters the poems were adjunct to the killings in Wichita, I was absolutely stunned -- it was the same MO," Mosbaugh said.
More research led Mosbaugh to the 1974 unsolved case of Arlis Perry, who was killed in a church at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Church officials called the scene "ritualistic and satanic." Her body laid out on the same lines Mosbough drafted on the map, a candle between her legs pointing east, which he believes is toward Wichita. The murder came on the five year anniversary of the last Zodiac death and the birthday of the most famous satanist in history -- Alister Crowley.
Perry, who was from Bismark, North Dakota, published reports say members of a satanic cult lived nearby. And a man by the name of John Carr was among them.
After more research by Mosbaugh, Carr's name comes up again -- this time linked to the Son of Sam murders.
David Berkowitz is sentenced to life for that crime, he confessed and pled guilty in court, but has since claimed he was a just a part of a murderous satanic cult. Berkowitz named John Carr and his brother Michael Carr as triggermen.
But shortly after Berkowitz was arrested, John Carr was found dead in Bismark, North Dakota. According to Mosbaugh, the evidence all points to a satanic cult traveling across the country, performing ritualistic killings in California, Kansas, and New York.
And while it all may be circumstantial, he says he has the hard proof that leaves no question.
"There is a change in the weapons used in the murders but the serial writing is identical," Mosbaugh said. He also says he's cracked a code written into the letters. "The ciphers with the Zodiac letters, the ciphers with the Otero case letter and the ciphers with the Son of Sam letters are all based on the same key," he said. And they all reveal the same thing -- the Zodiac, BTK, and Son of Sam murders were all masterminded by yet another famous serial killer: the Unabomber.
In these cases, there are a lot of things that fit together, which could all be circumstantial. But Mosbaugh says, "homicide investigators have a mantra -- there's no such thing as coincidence."
Ken Mosbaugh isn't the only one standing behind his theory. Dr. Margaret Singer, one of the world's foremost experts on cults, believes it's completely true.
"Those aspects that I can check out, it all hangs together time wise possibility wise and psychologically," Singer said.
Mosbaugh believes Kaczynski mapped out the killings sometime in the sixties, then recruited members into his cult to carry out the murders as a bold sacrifice to satan.
"It was an era where cults were on the rise and that guy was bright enough to know how do go about doing it -- you self proclaim you have all this knowledge, follow me and this is what we'll do," Singer said.
The devil is in the details proclaims Mosbaugh, who believes Kaczynski, a math professor, hid clues to his identity and used engineering concepts as he laid out his plan. For example, the satanic group was called 'Four Pi,' an engineering term. The kill lines on the map run parallel to the east borders of California and according to Mosbaugh, they fit the formula for a complex plane.
Mosbaugh also points to the similarities in handwriting between the Zodiac and Kaczynski. Mosbaugh interprets one letter sent by the Zodiac to read the murders will come by knife and gun as in the Zodiac and Son of Sam cases, by rope as in BTK, and by fire as in the Unabomber.
Another believer in Mosbaugh's theory is Mark Mazzaferro. He grew up in California during the Zodiac killings and investigated them as city editor for the Vallejo Times Hearld. "You get to the point where there's too many circumstances for it to be coincidence," Mazzaferro said. "From the time line to the location to the actual incidences, beyond that what Ken did was brought it all together -- it's no coincidence it's fact," he said.
Mazzaferro said his first thought was, 'here is another person who thinks they solved the Zodiac murders.' "But after many hours and weeks of conversation I came to the conclusion that he's right that he actually came up with a plausible explanation for what happened and who's responsible," Mazzaferro said.
The theory that Ted Kaczynski is responsible for more than just the Unabomber killings is not a new one. Investigators have been trying to connect him to the Zodiac murders for years. But Mosbaugh goes further, when he adds BTK and Son of Sam and points to hard mathematical evidence to prove his theory.
But Wichita State University engineering professor, Dr. Scott Miller says he doesn't see mathematical proof of anything. Miller spent several hours pouring over Mosbaughs theory.
"I just don't see the rigorous math, there may be a coincidence or maybe some weird interpretation of the math but it doesn't fit the traditional engineering sense," Miller said.
Miller says he doesn't see the complex plane or any obvious math in the murder trail, especially if an engineer was behind it.
"If it was an engineering professor and he was attempting to do an engineering type exercise, it's out of the norm," Miller said. "That doesn't mean it's not true," cautions Miller, "but it doesn't mean it is either."
The Wichita Police Department says they have investigated this lead, but have eliminated Kaczynski as a suspect after they learned that there was no way he could have been in Wichita during the time of the BTK murders. And they are doubtful that he was the mastermind behind the killings. They have always believed that BTK was a single person acting alone.

posted by Prof. Hex at 6:50 AM