An upstate New Yorker claims his best buddy was the notorious Zodiac Killer, who paralyzed California’s Bay Area with fear during the late 1960s.
The reason the man, then a teen, went on his bloody spree of at least five murders? Over a girl, Randy Kenney says.
“That’s what the deal was with the couples,” Kenney told KGO-TV.
The still-unsolved killings terrorized the region. In December 1968, a teen couple sitting in a car were ordered out and shot dead. A second couple was shot in July 1969 at a park in Vallejo. The woman died, while the man survived and gave cops one of their only descriptions of the elusive murderer.
Two were stabbed in September 1969 at a lake in Napa County. One survived the brutal attack.
A cab driver was shot and killed in October 1969, another murder police linked to the Zodiac.
“He was just robbing the cab driver,” Kenney says of the killer’s deviation away from attacking couples. “… that was just for drug money.”
It was April 2001 when Louis Myers, dying of a liver failing from cirrhosis, told Kenney that he was the infamous killer and had begun his reign of terror at age 17. He begged his friend to tell authorities the truth only after he’d died and that Kenney should write a book of his morbid tales and donate the proceeds to the families of his victims.
“He said, ‘I killed some people. I’m the guy they’re looking for. They’ve been looking for me for over 30 years. I’m the guy that’s The Zodiac Killer,'” Kenney told the news station.
Cops have investigated and cleared more than 2,500 potential suspects and to this day, continue to get at least one Zodiac-related tip a week, the ABC affiliate reported.
Myers died in May 2002, and Kenney claims he went to cops with his tale – seemingly to no avail.
“I really, truly feel that Louie was 100% honest with me that day,” Kenney told the station.
Myers did live near the killings, in the Vallejo area just northeast of San Francisco, from 1965 to 1971. He would have gone to high school with the first two teen victims, the news station reports.
Myers would also have crossed paths with another Zodiac victim at a Vallejo restaurant where he worked as a busboy and the woman, Darlene Ferrin, worked as a waitress.
Myers worked at a military surplus store and his father worked at Mare Island, a Navy installation, meaning the teen would have had access to the type of military boots that left footprints at one of the crime scenes.
The youth had even had minor run-ins with the law.
Another coincidence – or more evidence – was that Myers was deployed to Germany with the Army from 1971 to 1973, a time period during which the Zodiac, who frequently sent letters and codes to newspapers and cops, sent nothing at all.
And Myers, who returned from the Army and began a career as a long-haul trucker out of upstate New York, even admitted in 1976 to a childhood friend he was the notorious killer.
“It freaked me out for a second then I just pushed it aside. We never talked about it again,” Bob Robitaille told KGO-TV.
Robitaille said he’s changed his mind over the years.
But cops who investigated the case some 45 years ago say it would have been a tough crime spree for a teen to pull off – and his picture looks nothing like the sketch of the suspect a survivor gave to cops.
Police, who have had promising leads over the years but have never closed the case, also believe the killer would have kept some sort of souvenir of his crime.
Kenney says he can only tell the authorities what his good buddy told him: that Louis Myers was the Zodiac Killer.
“I’ve already talked to San Francisco and that’s what they want, the smoking gun,” Kenney told the news station. “And I don’t have it.”
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