Written by Amanda Clark
For any true crime addict, Peacock’s two-episode Myth of the Zodiac Killer is the latest show that should be put on that long list of true crime TV shows to watch.
It goes over the cold case of the Zodiac Killer, but from another angle that some might not have considered — the Zodiac Killer was never real. Author of The Myth of the Zodiac Killer: A Literary Investigation, Thomas Horan presents his theory that it was a different murderer for each of the killings, instead of it being the same person.
One reason Horan has as to why police or others interested in this case haven’t considered there were different murderers, or possibly a copycat murderer, is because they are so invested in the story of it being all one person — the story most people believe. This leads to them having their judgment blinded and shapes how they conduct the investigation, Horan said in the documentary, and he believes this could be the main reason why the case hasn’t been solved yet.
The multiple-killer theory that Horan discusses actually sounds more plausible than someone may think, and this can get people to start questioning the entire Zodiac Killer case. Horan goes into great detail to explain his reason by going through it murder by murder, letter by letter, and evidence by evidence to prove it is not the same person. He even goes as far as to point the blame on multiple people.
However, there are a few things he says that don’t add up. He says the police are so wedded to their beliefs, even when there is evidence contradicting those beliefs, but it goes the same for him. Horan comes up with multiple reasons as to why his theory is the correct one, even if a few things don’t make complete sense.
Besides being on screen to talk about the case himself, director Andrew Nock brings in police investigators, a clinical and forensic neuropsychologist, a cryptographer, a Bay Area News Group reporter, computational linguistics experts, eyewitnesses, a Zodiac writer, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, and people who knew the victims. Nock also uses footage from a previous Zodiac Killer documentary to have a different viewpoint on the cold case than Horan.
One thing that separates this Zodiac Killer documentary from other ones is the use of artificial intelligence to analyze the letters sent by the supposed Zodiac. What was found is that it is possible that there were multiple writers because of a shift in the writing style. But this is not something that creates concrete evidence because, over time, people can change their style of writing. Nonetheless, this is something that leads Horan further into his theory, while people who believe it’s one person think the killer just changed their writing over time.
Myth of the Zodiac Killer compares each killing that’s officially tied to the Zodiac Killer, recaps how each person got murdered, and goes over any possible connections between each murder. The viewer mainly hears Horan’s theory but also receives the reasoning from the other people interviewed as to why it could only be one person.
What this documentary successfully does is get the viewer to second guess if the Zodiac Killer is one person or if there were multiple people. Both theories are convincing, and both have plausible evidence. Of course, while the belief of it being a singular killer seems to have more concrete evidence, Horan’s theory truly will make the viewer question how many Zodiac Killers there really were.
