Does The Most Dangerous Animal Of All Actually Unmask The Real Zodiac Killer?

Though it’s been over 50 years, we’re still just as obsessed with the Zodiac Killer and his mysterious identity. While the case itself has seemingly gone cold (even though it’s still technically open via the San Francisco Police Department), it seems that every once and a while a brand new suspect emerges for consideration. FX’s documentary series, The Most Dangerous Animal of All gives us another name on the suspect list: Earl Van Best Jr. Could he be the Zodiac Killer we’ve been searching for all along?

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Zodiac Killer was confirmed to have killed five people, but it’s believed that he killed upwards of 30. During the time, the Zodiac Killer also started taunting the San Francisco Police Department and sent them ciphers with hidden messages inside of them. The killer claimed that if they could be decoded, his identity would be revealed.

The Most Dangerous Animal of All, written by Van Best Jr.’s biological son Gary L. Stewart, attempts to reveal that identity by concluding Van Best Jr. was the Zodiac Killer. After being abandoned and adopted as a baby, Stewart was contacted by his biological mother as an adult, and following that decided to search out his father. That led him to identify Van Best Jr. as his dad... and that led him to the Zodiac Killer, or so he says.

As he learned about his father, who passed away in Mexico in 1994, Stewart uncovered a lot of startling connections between Van Best Jr. and the Zodiac Killer. In his book, which he wrote journalist Susan Mustafa, Stewart stacks up the supposed evidence that his father really was the killer. While some of his points are pretty convincing, unfortunately, none of his discoveries have been proven to be 100 percent fact. And that's the thing about the Zodiac Killer: Everyone's evidence is pretty circumstantial, including Stewart's.

Some of the Zodiac's ciphers were partially decoded, and Stewart says that he found his father’s initials in there: "EV," "Best," and  "Jr." He also believes that some of his father’s aliases are hidden in the codes. 

That’s not the only evidence that Stewart collected for his book. Another very compelling, yet greatly disputed argument is that Van Best Jr. and the Zodiac Killer had the same handwriting. Stewart matched his parent’s marriage certificate with some of the Zodiac Killer’s notes and concluded that there were similarities. However, Zodiac theorist Mike Rodelli doesn’t believe this claim, explaining to the San Francisco Gate that he did his own legwork on the handwriting, and determined that it actually belonged to someone who worked at the church where Stewart’s parents were married. According to Rodelli, Stewart is grasping at straws and trying to force a conclusion here, and furthermore “an abomination that is giving everyone (theorists like him) a bad name.”

But, there are still weird coincidences between the Zodiac Killer and Van Best Jr., like an alleged Zodiac killing that is said to have happened right outside where Van Best Jr. was living at the time. He frequently made trips to Mexico and one Zodiac survivor said that the assailant mentioned going to Mexico. And supposedly, Van Best Jr. had a scar on his finger that appeared to matching the Zodiac Killer's. There’s also the super weird coincidence that Stewart’s real mother, Judy Gilford, actually married an investigator on the Zodiac cases — and shortly after they were engaged, another Zodiac letter was sent to the police department. 

While Stewart has handed over his own DNA samples to be compared to that of the Zodiac, according to him the San Francisco Police Department has reportedly not gotten back to him with any actual results. But, while these pieces have raised Stewart's suspicion, there just simply isn’t enough concrete evidence to finally close this case or make any real conclusions. Investigator John Hennessy told the San Francisco Gate, “We didn’t kiss him off. He was a very nice man, very well spoken. And I think he was sincere in his belief that his father was the Zodiac, but there wasn’t enough to move quickly on. And the reality is that without hard evidence it’s hard to prove a case.”

Though the San Francisco Police Department has their doubts, Stewart’s co-author believes that they’ve really identified the long sought-out killer. 

“I’m a true-crime writer. I have a reputation for research and accuracy,” Mustafa told the Baton Rouge Advocate after the book’s launch in 2014. “If I didn’t believe this, I would never put my reputation on the line for it.”

So was Van Best Jr. the Zodiac Killer or not? The Most Dangerous Animal of All — both book and documentary — certainly wants people to think so. But it’s been 50 years and there's not a lot of hard evidence here, so this explanation will just have to stay a theory for now.