1970: The Zodiac Killer Mocks the Reporter Chasing Him

Paul Avery had spent months covering the unidentified killer terrorising Northern California for the San Francisco Chronicle, turning his byline into the public face of the investigation. That attention made him a target of the very man he was writing about.

On 27 October 1970, the Zodiac Killer sent a letter addressed directly to Avery, taunting the journalist for the coverage that had made his name synonymous with the case. The killer was never identified, and the letter remains one of the eeriest pieces of correspondence in a case still unsolved more than half a century later.

Symbolism
Symbolism – Zodiac Serial Killer Mystery

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1965: The Moors Murders: John Kilbride Found on Saddleworth Moor, Identified Only by His Clothes

John Kilbride had vanished the previous November after leaving a Lancashire market, one of several victims to disappear from the Manchester area without explanation. Nearly a year later, on 21 October 1965, police dug up his badly decomposed remains on Saddleworth Moor; so little remained that he could only be identified by his clothing.

The discovery came the same day Ian Brady and Myra Hindley appeared in court charged with the murder of another victim, Lesley Ann Downey. Kilbride’s body on the moor would soon tie the pair to a second killing, as the full scale of what became known as the Moors Murders began to emerge.

Graves on Saddleworth Moor in England
Graves on Saddleworth Moor in England

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1999: Melbourne Gangland War: Gerardo Mannella Gunned Down Fleeing His Brother’s Killers

Gerardo Mannella, 31, tried to run when two gunmen came for him outside his brother’s home in Melbourne, but they caught him in the street and shot him dead on this day in 1999.

The ambush was no isolated act. His brother Vince Mannella had already been murdered, and police believed the same killers were also responsible for shooting Dimitrios Belias, part of the string of tit for tat killings that became known as Melbourne’s gangland war.

No one has ever been convicted over Gerardo’s death, and it remains one of the unsolved murders from that bloody era.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.
Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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2003: Melbourne Gangland Victim Found Executed with His Partner in Their Own Home

Istvan ‘Steve’ Gulyas ran a dating agency out of Sunbury, on the outskirts of Melbourne, that police suspected was really a front for a brothel. He was also a friend of Nik Radev, a standover figure already gunned down in the city’s escalating underworld war.

That connection made Gulyas a marked man. On 20 October 2003 he and his de facto wife were found shot dead inside their home, both killed in what police treated as a deliberate execution rather than a robbery gone wrong.

The case became one of several unsolved or unresolved killings tied to the broader Melbourne gangland conflict of the late 1990s and 2000s, with no one ever convicted over the double murder.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.
Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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On This Day in True Crime History

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