Nine Zodiac Killer Suspects And The Disturbing Stories Behind Them

Published December 13, 2022
Updated October 23, 2024

Who Is The Zodiac Killer? The Tantalizing Theory About Lawrence Kane

Was Lawrence Kane The Zodiac Killer

IMDBLawrence Kane strongly resembled the Zodiac Killer and may have learned to write encoded messages in the Navy.

To some, Lawrence Kane (who also went by the name Kaye) seems like the best Zodiac Killer suspect of all. Several eyewitnesses spotted a resemblance between Kane and the Zodiac Killer.

The sister of a victim claimed that a man resembling Kane had previously bothered her sibling at a restaurant, a police officer who caught a glimpse of the killer after one of his attacks agreed that Kane bore a resemblance to the murderer, and a woman who may have escaped from the Zodiac Killer also picked out Kane’s image as her would-be abductor.

What’s more, a French engineer named Fayçal Ziraoui claimed in 2021 that he’d cracked two of the previously unsolved ciphers that the Zodiac Killer had sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. And according to Ziraoui, one appeared to spell Kane’s name, hinting at the Zodiac Killer’s identity.

Ziraoui believes that cipher Z13, which begins in English with the phrase “My name is —” can be decoded to read: K-A-Y-R. To many online sleuths, this seems tantalizingly close to “Kane” or “Kaye.”

Cipher Z13

Wikimedia CommonsCipher Z13 begins with the phrase “My name is” before trailing off into the Zodiac Killer’s coded language.

Kane served in the Naval reserves, where he could have learned to write coded messages. And Voigt writes on his Zodiac Killer website that Kane suffered from brain damage following a 1962 car accident, which reportedly left him unable “to control self-gratification.”

However, many criticized Ziraoui’s findings after he released them online in 2021. Since investigators have failed for decades to solve the Zodiac Killer’s remaining ciphers, many expressed doubt that Ziraoui could crack the code so quickly and easily. “When he says that it took two weeks to crack the Z32 and an hour for the Z13, I think that sums it up pretty well,” one online commenter wrote, according to The New York Times.

Kane, who died in 2010, took any secrets he might have had about the infamous murderer to his grave. But when it comes to the question of the Zodiac Killer’s identity, there are still several other intriguing possibilities.

author
Kaleena Fraga
author
A senior staff writer for All That's Interesting since 2021 and co-host of the History Uncovered Podcast, Kaleena Fraga graduated with a dual degree in American History and French Language and Literature from Oberlin College. She previously ran the presidential history blog History First, and has had work published in The Washington Post, Gastro Obscura, and elsewhere. She has published more than 1,200 pieces on topics including history and archaeology. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
editor
Jaclyn Anglis
editor
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Jaclyn Anglis is the senior managing editor at All That's Interesting, where she has worked since 2019. She holds a Master's degree in journalism from the City University of New York and a dual Bachelor's degree in English writing and history from DePauw University. In a career that spans 11 years, she has also worked with the New York Daily News, Bustle, and Bauer Xcel Media. Her interests include American history, true crime, modern history, and science.
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Fraga, Kaleena. "Nine Zodiac Killer Suspects And The Disturbing Stories Behind Them." AllThatsInteresting.com, December 13, 2022, https://allthatsinteresting.com/who-was-the-zodiac-killer. Accessed July 16, 2025.