Suspect Zero

by Michael D. Kelleher

Overview

In the late sixties, a serial killer calling himself the Zodiac terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area, committing brutal, random attacks, and bragging about them in letters to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In Santa Rosa, fifty miles to the north, investigators Manny Bruin and Mick Millian were asked to tail potential suspect Byron Avion, an odd, portly man admittedly obsessed with the Zodiac. He had other eccentricities as well, not the least of which was his large collection of cardboard boxes, carefully stacked and tied shut with white nylon rope.

But peculiar habits do not a criminal make - that is, not until the bodies of young female hitchhikers began appearing in ditches, tied up with white nylon rope. That and a dozen other connections convinced Bruin and Millian that Avion was the Highway 101 Murderer, a Zodiac-style killer who prowled the Santa Rosa area.

Despite the connections, a decade-long investigation was unable to connect Avion to the crimes, or connect Zodiac to the northern murders. Bruin and Millian eventually became so frustrated that they dubbed Avion "Suspect Zero," and hoped for something to break the case open. When that break finally came, it re-wrote the book on homicide investigations and forever changed the direction of each man's life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781929429875
Publisher:	Dead End Street, LLC
Publication date:	06/03/2003
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.72(d)

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Introduction

In 1968, a serial killer with the moniker ?Zodiac? began his career with a double homicide in the city of Vallejo, California, just east of San Francisco. Within a year, he had attacked seven people, mostly young couples, killing five. In a series of bizarre and disturbing letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, this murderer would eventually lay claim to more than three-dozen victims. In 1978, after two dozen of these letters, Zodiac disappeared, leaving investigators confused and empty-handed.

While an army of law enforcement personnel was busy chasing Zodiac, another series of murders was taking place less than an hour north of San Francisco, in the semi-rural community of Santa Rosa. Between early 1972 and late 1973, at least seven girls and young women were slain in a similar way by an unknown male assailant. Because Zodiac had attacked at a variety of locations around the Bay Area, including Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco, many investigators assumed that the Santa Rosa murders were also his doing, although the fugitive himself never took credit for them. These crimes came to be known in the press as the Highway 101 Murders. As with the Zodiac killings, the case has never been officially closed.

But even unsolved cases sometimes find a resolution. There is often a sea of certainty and understanding that lies forgotten or ignored between what is known and what can be proved. This was certainly true with the Highway 101 Murders. It was true, and for Lieutenant Manny Bruin of the Sonoma County Criminal Investigations Division, and those who worked the case with him. It was also true for the victims of Byron Avion.

When traditional justice fails due to unexpected circumstances, lack of hard facts, insufficient resources, or unremitting confusion, there is still the possibility of discovered truth. What happened in a few years ago in Sonoma County, California, is cause enough to believe in that possibility, even when fiction must, of necessity, take the reins from fact.