FBI failed to investigate Zodiac killer ‘suspect’: group claims

A volunteer group investigating unsolved cases believes it has identified the infamous Zodiac killer and has criticized the FBI, claiming the FBI didn’t do enough to investigate the apparent lead.

Case Breakers, a nonprofit organization led by investigative journalist Thomas Colbert, claims to have linked Air Force veteran Gary Francis Poste to the killings and says an FBI agent confirmed to them that he had been there since 2016 is considered a suspect.

“The criminal has been secretly listed in headquarters’ computers as a Zodiac ‘suspect’ since 2016 — his ‘partial DNA’ is safely secured at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia,” Case Breakers said in a news release Thursday.

The team said the FBI had a partial DNA sample from Poste in its database but failed to use the sample in its investigation of the serial killer responsible for five confirmed murders in Northern California in the late 1960s.

The FBI, meanwhile, has repeatedly stated that it has not solved the Zodiac Killer case and that the investigation is still ongoing.

Case Breakers also said it collected its own DNA sample from Poste, who died in 2018, and would like the agency to test it with DNA evidence collected from a sixth murder – the 1966 murder of Cheri Jo Bates. who they believe is the serial killer responsible for.

However, law enforcement officials denied that Bates was part of the murder pattern.

“We 100% believe that our Cheri Jo Bates case has nothing to do with the Zodiac case,” Riverside Police Officer Ryan Railsback told Fox News Digital in October 2021. “Nothing changed about that.”

The nonprofit has called for a “serious review” of the FBI, the Riverside Police Department and the San Francisco Police Department.