A series of brutal unsolved murders in the late-1960s in Northern California — and the mysterious man calling himself Zodiac who claimed to have committed them — have fueled speculation about the killer’s identity for more than 50 years. They’re some of the most baffling serial killer mysteries that remain unsolved. Over the years, there has been a pool of potential suspects, but no arrests were ever made. In this era of internet sleuths and social media’s rampant speculation on every unsolved crime, another name has been added to this list: Richard Hoffman. The Vallejo police officer was involved in the investigation into the Zodiac killer and died in 2020. Four of the murders attributed to Zodiac (he claimed 37 total) took place in Solano County, where Vallejo is located (the fifth murder tied to Zodiac happened in San Francisco).
Hoffman’s grandson, Jeremy Foy, himself a former police officer and current TikToker, believes Hoffman is actually Zodiac. “My grandpa is the … Zodiac killer,” Foy proclaims in the first of a series of TikTok videos that have racked up millions of views. “This is not click bait.” Some of Foy’s alleged proof is rather tenuous, like Hoffman loving holidays and the fact that some of the murders took place on the Fourth of July and around Christmas. Others are less easily dismissed, such Hoffman’s unusual spelling mistakes mirroring those in the Zodiac’s letters to the police and press.
Hoffman’s alleged connection to one of Zodiac’s victims
Jeremy Foy lost touch with his grandfather, Richard Hoffman, when he was still a child, but recalled that he had some disreputable traits. “He was known in my family to be abusive, controlling, manipulating, and also unfaithful to my grandmother,” Foy said. Hoffman was also the first officer on the scene on the night of July 4, 1969, when someone shot and killed a 22-year-old local waitress, Darlene Ferrin, while she was parked in a car at Blue Rock Springs Park with 19-year-old Michael Mageau. He was seriously injured in the attack.
Just before the Zodiac shot the couple, Mageau said in an interview that Ferrin told him the person walking up to the car was a man named Richard, who was a jealous lover. According to Foy, Hoffman was having an affair with Ferrin and was frightened of him. Foy isn’t the first person to pin a relative as the elusive serial killer. Among the dozen major suspects accused of being the Zodiac killer was a man named Earl Van Best, Jr. His son, Gary L. Stewart, alleged in his 2014 book that Best, who is dead, was the Zodiac based on Best’s likeness to the police sketch of the killer, previous crimes, and a matching timeline. Still, some of Foy’s evidence for his grandfather being the killer is hard to reject outright.
Hoffman and Zodiac shared strange spelling errors
Besides Richard Hoffman’s alleged connection to one of the victims, Jeremey Foy believes several other factors also tie his grandfather to the Zodiac case. There is Hoffman’s physical appearance, which closely resembled the police sketches of the serial killer. Foy also pointed to his grandfather’s police reports in which he misspelled certain words, like adding an extra “l” to the end of “until.” Zodiac misspelled some of the same words in his letters to authorities.
Another theory about the Zodiac killer that changes everything has been suggested by author Thomas Henry Horan. He believes the killer never existed, that the letters and phone calls to the newspapers and police were part of a hoax, and none of the murders were connected. Foy disagrees, and he’s continuing his investigation into his grandfather. “Without a shadow of a doubt, there’s no if, ands, or buts, it was Richard Hoffman,” Foy told YouTuber GroovyGavin in an interview. “And I know that. With everything I’ve already gathered and the dots I’ve already connected, I’m not 99.9% no more, I’m 100%.” Whether this is just another dead end in a long line of them related to the mysterious killer who called himself Zodiac or something more remains to be seen.
