I was babysat by Zodiac Killer Gary Poste who taught me how to shoot guns and hide out in the

A WOMAN who claims she was babysat by the man identified as the Zodiac Killer said he taught her how to shoot guns and hide out in the woods. The source, named only as Gwen, also claims Gary Postes wife later told her that her husband was a very bad man.

A WOMAN who claims she was babysat by the man identified as the Zodiac Killer said he taught her how to shoot guns and hide out in the woods.

The source, named only as Gwen, also claims Gary Poste’s wife later told her that her husband was “a very bad man.”

Gwen told CBS Sacramento: “I looked up to Gary Poste as an uncle. I used to cut his hair. I spent nights at his house.

“1000 per cent I do believe I grew up next door to the Zodiac.”

Gwen said Poste was never aggressive to her but that he would “hit” his wife Mary “if she made dinner the wrong way.”

‘MONSTER’

She added: “I did talk to his wife.

“The first words out of her mouth were ‘Gary is a very bad man. And I am sorry I did not tell the cops about what he has done.'”

Despite being a “monster”, Gwen said Poste did “have a way of caring for people.”

She added: “He had this way of caring for people, even though there was this other side, his other life, he was a monster.”

A group of cold case investigators said on Wednesday that they had identified Poste as the killer who terrorized the San Francisco area in the 1960s.

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In a press release by The Case Breakers they details how a woman they identify as Gwennie had been babysat by Poste and his wife in the 1970s.

According to the release: “He taught her how to use guns, sometimes going into the woods five days a week.

“In the last year of her childcare, she witnessed Poste’s callousness and violence towards his wife – a wife that only slept on a couch.

“Recently, Gwennie caught up with the 75-year-old wife, now in assisted living. And the phone call stunned her, one line in particular: ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t tell the cops about his [Zodiac] past.’”

SHROUDED IN MYSTERY

The Zodiac’s identity has been shrouded in mystery for nearly 52 years since he launched his killing spree in 1968.

But on Wednesday the Case Breakers, a team of specialists who have worked to crack a number of America’s most high-profile unsolved cases, said they had identified the killer.

The man they say is responsible for the string of five murders in 1968 and 1969 is Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018.

They also claim to have linked Poste to a sixth killing hundreds of miles away that has never before been connected to the Zodiac.

DECODING HIS IDENTITY

The Zodiac Killer is believed to be a California man who gave himself that nickname to conceal his identity from authorities.

He is known to have targeted at least seven victims – three couples and a lone taxi driver. Two of them survived gun and knife ambushes.

The same killer has been linked to as many as 28 murders — claiming to have killed 37 people in taunting letters sent to newspapers and police.

The letters included complex ciphers – some of which haven’t been officially solved to this day.

The case was deemed inactive in 2004 but the San Francisco Police Department reopened it in March of 2007.

Over the years, many independent sleuths have claimed to have decoded the Zodiac’s true identity.

CASE BREAKERS

The Case Breakers crew is comprised of more than 40 former law enforcement investigators, journalists and military intelligence officers.

The team said they discovered Poste’s identity after years of digging through new forensic evidence and his darkroom.

One image uncovered from the darkroom purportedly featured scars on Poste’s forehead which match a sketch of the Zodiac.

The team said the Zodiac’s ciphers also point to Poste.

In one note, removing the letters of Poste’s full name revealed an alternate message, according to former Army counterintelligence agent Jen Bucholtz.

“So you’ve got to know Gary’s full name in order to decipher these anagrams,” Bucholtz told Fox News.

“I just don’t think there’s any other way anybody would have figured it out.”

The killer earned his nickname by signing his fourth letter to the press with “Zodiac” on August 7, 1969.

In it, he wrote: “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking.” 

He also signed his letters with a circle and a cross over it, resembling a target or a coordinate symbol.

REIGN OF TERROR

Authorities believe the Zodiac claimed his first two victims on December 20, 1968, when 17-year-old David Arthur Faraday and 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen were shot and killed in Benicia.

The second two victims – Michael Renault Mageau, 19; and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22 – were found shot in a parking lot in Vallejo on July 4, 1969. Ferrin was killed and Mageau survived.

Nearly three months later, 20-year-old Bryan Calvin Harnell and 22-year-old Cecelia Ann Shepard were found stabbed at Lake Berryessa in Napa County on September 27, 1969. Shepard was killed and Hartnell survived.

Taxi driver Paul Lee Stine, 29, was shot and killed in his car in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood on October 11, 1969.

SIXTH VICTIM?

The Case Breakers have asserted that the Zodiac is also responsible for a sixth killing in Riverside, California, on October 31, 1966.

Cheri Jo Bates was 18 years old when she was found dead in an alley on the Riverside City College campus.

In 1967, police received a handwritten letter which later led them to believe Bates’ killing may have been committed by the Zodiac.

That theory was quashed in 2016 when investigators received an anonymous note from someone who claimed they’d written the earlier note as a “sick joke.”

However, the Case Breakers have maintained that the Zodiac did kill Bates and claim investigators have blocked them from comparing her DNA to Poste’s.

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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk

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