zodiac to cause copycats

Zodiac To Cause Copycats?

A major motion picture directed by David Fincher [Alien 3 (1992),

Se7en (1995), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002)]

opens across the United States on March 2, 2007, from Paramount

Pictures. It stars, among many, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Edwards, Mark

Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, Chlo� Sevigny and Bijou

Phillips. It is based on the self-named serial killer who terrorized

the San Francisco area during the late 1960s.

The Zodiac murdered five known victims near the Solano County

communities of Benicia and Vallejo, near Napa Valley's Lake Berryessa,

and in San Francisco, California, between December 1968 and October

1969. The Zodiac may have murdered others. The Zodiac claimed as much.

On August 1, 1969, three letters written by Zodiac were received at

the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and theSan

Francisco Examiner. The letters continued being received by the media

through 1974.

The Zodiac was never caught and never identified.

Will the new movie cause a Zodiac copycat killer? As documented in The

Copycat Effect, some movies have resulted in violent mimics. Minor and

television movies, of which there have been a few about the Zodiac,

have had little impact on triggering copycat behaviors in violent

humans. Major motion pictures appear to have created copycat waves of

violence. Recent examples I detail include A Clockwork Orange, Natural

Born Killer, The Matrix, and American History X. (I do not advocate

censorship, but awareness, and deal with that approach, in depth, in

the book.)

The impact of the Zodiac in cinema may be widespread, even when the

name Zodiac is not used. For example, the fictional "Gemini Killer" in

the movie The Exorcist III (1990) was loosely based on the Zodiac

killer.

Movies about the Zodiac have increased lately. Zodiac Killer, (2005,

director Ulli Lommel) is about a cat-and-mouse game between the real

Zodiac and a young copycat in 2002 Los Angeles.

The Zodiac (2005, director Alex Bulkley) concerns a fictional

detective in Vallejo obsessed with investigating the real Zodiac

during the timeframe of the real killings. Bulkley's film has been

shown often on cable television during the opening months of 2007,

probably due to the upcoming Fincher release. It is an intriguing Bay

Area mystery, with occult overtones. Strangely, the one suspect they

show they tried to track down lived at an address with the street

number 2323.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that the original real Zodiac

has already resulted in one alleged imitator, the New York Zodiac

copycat. Between March 9, 1990 and June 10, 1994 in New York City, a

Zodiac copycat murdered three people and wounded five others with a

zip gun. He also wrote letters to the police in a fashion similar to

the San Francisco Zodiac. The killer knew the astrological signs of

his victims.

On June 18, 1996, Heriberto Seda was arrested for shooting his

17-year-old sister in the back, and was later identified as the New

York Zodiac. In June 1998, he was sentenced to 236 years in jail, and

will not be eligible for parole until 2082.

One of the most famous quotations from the San Francisco-area Zodiac

is: "I am waiting for a good movie about me."

Will Fincher's Zodiac cause the Zodiac, if the killer is still alive,

to resurface to communicate?