By Stephen M. Lepore; 5/17/23; Daily Mail
A former TV investigator and other supporters brought Gary Francis Poste to the FBI in 2015. But they claim the feds whitewashed all of their efforts, seized their briefcase of evidence and ignored the prime suspect when he was still alive.
The alleged cover-up led this newsman, Dale Julin, to reach out to the Case Breakers team for help in 2020.
Organizer Thomas J. Colbert says an FBI whistleblower confirmed that Air Force veteran Poste, dead since 2018, is still listed as the suspect in FBI Headquarters’ computers — with a ‘partial’ DNA sample that links him to the murders.
The Case Breakers are asking for an official review into the local and federal law enforcement’s handling of the Zodiac case. Colbert believes it should also involve the forgotten victims and surviving family members: ‘As a nation, we’ve abandoned them – especially the remaining 10 brothers and sisters.’
He called it a ‘coverup’ that was ‘nonsensical for the people that are still waiting.’
The group – which is compiled of about 40 volunteer sleuths – announced in 2021 that Poste had given away weapons and bullets before his death, which could finally lead to the true identity of the killer. But ‘when the Case Breakers approached officials about a new Zodiac suspect, six police, state and federal agencies would not cooperate,’ the group said in a statement.
Colbert strongly believes they have nailed the identification of the Zodiac Killer more than five decades later. ‘My [retired] FBI guys say it’s irrefutable,’ Colbert told Fox News back in 2021.
‘We also have six people that he’s confessed to that he was the Zodiac. Three of them on our court affidavits. And then of course there’s the 1966 murder scene in Riverside. We’ve uncovered 11 evidentiary clues there.’
The team of investigators, with the collective experience of 1500 years of skill sets, has also used photographic evidence to compare a distinctive
scar seen on the Zodiac Killer and compared it to photos of Poste. They have even requested the FBI to test their findings for DNA — sadly, with no response.
Five people were fatally stabbed or shot to death in Northern California in 1968 and 1969, and their killer sent taunting letters and cryptograms to the police and newspapers. But the team claims they have found the same MO and signature at a total of a dozen former attack sites, stretching from San Diego to Lake Tahoe.
According to information released by the Case Breakers, the Zodiac Killer was also responsible for the brutal killing of co-ed Cheri Jo Bates, 18, who was found stabbed 42 times and nearly decapitated on October 31, 1966, in Riverside — more than 400 miles south of San Francisco and two years before the Zodiac’s first official killing.
Members of the investigative group claimed that around the time of Bates’ murder, Poste, an Air Force veteran, was getting a check-up at a hospital located just 15 minutes away from the crime scene.
A wristwatch splattered with paint and believed to have been worn by the killer was found near Bates’ body. Case Breakers noted that Poste spent 40 years working as a house painter.
Additionally, a heelprint found in the dirt at the scene of the stabbing was said to have been been from a ‘military-style boot’ consistent with the style and size of footprints found at three known Zodiac crime scene, and also of Poste.
A California woman who lived next door to Poste and his wife, and who had been babysat by the couple as a child in the 1970s and 80s, told Fox News she now believes her neighbor was the Zodiac killer. The woman, who gave her name only as Gwen, Poste taught her how to shoot, sometimes going into the woods for target practice five days a week.
‘In the last year of her childcare, [Gwen] witnessed his callousness and violence towards his wife – a wife that only slept on a couch,’ according to the Case Breakers.
In a recent a phone conversation between Gwen with Poste’s widow, the elderly woman was said to have told her former neighbor: ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t tell the cops about his past.’
A former Vietnam pilot named Hans Smits told the Case Breakers that over the past 10
years, he had been shielding a former Zodiac crime-partner who had allegedly escaped from Poste’s criminal ‘posse.’ The turncoat was said to have been active in the High Sierra area of California for several decades. ‘Now in his 50s and hiding in the Northwest, [the whistleblower] says he’s angry and ashamed, claiming the psychopath ‘groomed me into a killing machine,” according to the investigative group.
The snitch also claimed to have witnessed Poste burying murder weapons.
A woman named Michelle said she was the common-law wife of Poste’s son, and the mother of his grandson, who is now in his 30s. According to Michelle, when her 10-year relationship with Poste’s son ended, the house painter ordered two members of his ‘posse’ to attack her — ordering them to break her windows, harass and assault her, ultimately driving her out of state.
