Deborah Perez Says Her Father Was The Zodiac Killer

At a press conference yesterday, Deborah Perez, a 47-year-old realtor from California, claimed her father was the elusive Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer thought responsible for at least five deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area some 40 years ago.

Perez said her adoptive father, a now-deceased carpenter named Guy Ward Hendrickson, even performed one murder in front of her when she was just a child and claims to have written some of the notes the killer purportedly sent to local newspapers and police, taunting them and daring them to discover his identity.

The last murder by the Zodiac Killer was thought in 1969, the victim a cab driver. However, letters alleging to be from the murderer continued to appear for years after.

Eyeglasses Deborah says belonged to cabbie Paul Stine.

 
  So why did Deborah - who has passed psychological evaluations and had her handwirting analyzed - wait so long to reveal this little bombshell? She claims to have been unaware that there was such a thing as the Zodiac Killer until watching an episode of America’s Most Wanted back in 2007, when she began to piece together that her father may have been involved. Conspiracy theorists and skeptics may be interested in the fact that the man who analyzed Ms. Perez’s handwriting by Bart Baggett, an “author, handwriting expert, TV host” - and, conveniently, the executive producer and narrator of a yet to be released documentary about the Zodiac Killer. Furthermore, the lawyer Perez chose to handle her case, Kevin McLean, was disbarred for “10 counts of professional misconduct, including moral turpitude, failing to maintain client funds in a trust account, failing to promptly release a client file, failing to perform legal services competently, failing to keep a client informed of significant developments, failure to cooperate in a disciplinary investigation, and paying or offering to pay personal or business expenses for a client.”

Envelope sent by the Zodiac Killer - or 7-year-old Deborah

Conspiracy time! Deborah Perez’s claims, if true (and, at this point, seems doubtful) would at the very least provide a new dimensions to theories that all serial killers (well, who are caught) are white, non-Hispanic men - one famous exception being Richard Ramirez, known in the 1980’s as “The Night Stalker” for the series of murder he performed around Los Angeles. We remember one friend, who is interested in serial killers (some of us knit, some write, some like to read about decapitations…) claim that there were theories floating around that, because of the wording of the Zodiac Killer’s notes, he may have spoke Spanish as his first language. If Deborah, if she is in fact Latina, penned the notes for her dad, perhaps this would explain our friend’s theory. Then again, maybe she’s just a loca looking for her fifteen minutes and has yet to discover how easy it is to just create one’s own blog.

Mull it over while listening to Deborah talk about the crimes and her dad’s explanation of them:

Californian Says Father Was Zodiac Killer (and She Played a Role, Too) [NY Times]