A closer look
Notorious serial killer the Zodiac terrified Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s while using a cross-circle symbol and a cosmic moniker, but his cryptic ciphers rarely contained any actual advanced astrological concepts. Despite the dramatic branding, investigators noted his knowledge of the stars was remarkably superficial, proving he was less of a dark mystic and more of a narcissistic attention-seeker with a flair for theatrical marketing. True crime fanatics still occasionally try to solve the cold case by intensely analyzing the birth charts of primary suspects, refusing to accept that an edgelord murderer co-opted a popular counterculture aesthetic simply to make his unhinged letters look much cooler
