California woman claims Zodiac Killer was her father

A SOUTHERN California woman has claimed her late father was the Zodiac Killer who terrorised the San Francisco Bay area four decades ago.

San Francisco homicide investigators said they will check into the information from Deborah Perez, who said her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, killed at least two of the known victims 40 years ago.

Sgt Lyn Tomioka said the investigation into the 1969 death of San Francisco taxi driver Paul Lee Stine related to the Zodiac Killer remains ongoing.

“We get a significant number of calls a year. We will look into whatever evidence that is presented to us,” Tomioka said about the case that also became a hit movie in 2007.

During a frenzied news conference outside the San Francisco Chronicle, Perez, of Corona, California, said she has given police what she believes are Stine’s eyeglasses and letters she wrote (some to the newspaper) on her father’s behalf about the crimes.

During the height of the killings, the San Francisco Chronicle received taunting letters believed to be from the Zodiac Killer.

Perez claims she was a naive 7-year-old tagging along with her father during the killings.

“He told me he was sick, and all I wanted to do was help my dad,” said Perez, who came to her conclusion about two years ago. “He kept telling me he was sick and he killed many, many people. I had no idea.”

The self-described Zodiac Killer is blamed for at least five murders in 1968 and 1969. He was never caught, though many believe he was Arthur Leigh Allen, a convicted child molester who died in 1992.

Hendrickson, a carpenter with six children, died in 1983 from cancer.

Perez said she could not keep her father’s secrets any longer.

Perez’s lawyer, Kevin McLean, said she had passed psychological exams – “I know that everybody’s going to say she’s nuts,” he said – and that her handwriting claims had been confirmed by Bart Baggett, an “expert document examiner” from Los Angeles, who, as it happens, is also an executive producer and narrator of a coming documentary about the case.

Three killings occurred in Vallejo. Teenagers David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen were shot to death in December 1968. Darlene Ferrin, 22, was shot and killed seven months later at Blue Rock Springs Golf Club. Her companion, Michael Mageau, 19, survived.

Perez said that she was with her father when he killed Ferrin and then Stine in San Francisco.

“My father grabs his gun, goes to the passenger side and I hear shots, I hear moans, I hear screams,” Perez recalled. “We leave and we’re pulled over by police and my father takes the gun and puts it into a brown paper bag and sticks it into the back of my pants and says “I need you to not move. Don’t move. The police will not understand if they find this gun.’ ”

Robert Graysmith, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who has written two books about the Zodiac case, said he was doubtful of an “entirely new suspect” like Mr Hendrickson.