The Zodiac Killer, who murdered as many as 37 people and successfully evaded authorities, has reportedly been identified by a team of investigators.
Despite his claims to have killed dozens, police were only able to confirm five deaths, and seven attacks in total.
The killer sent coded messages with chilling messages and terrifying threats in California during the 1960s and 1970 and his identity had never been revealed
But a new team of independent investigators say the man who terrorised the San Francisco area was Gary Francis Poste, TMZ reports.
However, police never caught him and it turns out he died in 2018.
Poste successfully eluded authorities not just in the Bay Area, but also committed murder hundreds of miles away - a killing that was not previously linked to him.
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According to Fox News, a team of more than 40 detectives, journalists and military intelligence officers made up the so-called Case Breakers, who believe Poste is the one responsible for a 1966 murder in the SoCal city of Riverside.
The team's years of digging uncovered new forensic evidence and photos from Poste's darkroom, Fox said.
This included an image that featured scars on Poste's forehead, exactly like those on a sketch of the Zodiac Killer, the publication stated.
Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent who works on cold cases, said that by knowing the killer's real name, they were able to work out that Poste was culpable.
"So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," Bucholtz said. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."
A former next door neighbour of Poste is convinced by the evidence brought forward by the Case Breakers. Gwen, who declined to give her last name, said Poste and his wife babysat her as a child in the 1970s and '80s.
"He lived a double life," she said. "As I'm adult thinking back, it all kind of makes sense now. At the time when I was a teenager, I didn't put two and two together until I got older. It hit me full-blown that Gary's the Zodiac."
