Murder Clues Suggest Zodiac Killer Japanese Police Investigating Boy’s Beheading See Similarities To 1960s Serial Killings In San Francisco

Police are investigating similarities in notes written by the person who beheaded a schoolboy in western Japan and the Zodiac killer in the San Francisco area in the 1960s, Japanese media reported today.

A crosslike symbol was found on notes left by both killers, and some of the contents of the messages were similar, the reports said, quoting unidentified police sources.

The San Francisco killings by someone calling himself “the Zodiac” were never solved, and the case remains officially open.

The beheading last week of 11-year-old Jun Hase has gripped Japan like no other crime in recent memory, dominating headlines and even eliciting a call from Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto for investigators to find the killer as soon as possible.

Japan was shocked further when police released the contents of a note the killer left in the mouth of his victim, whose head was placed near the gate of a junior high school in Kobe.

“So, this is the beginning of the game,” said the note, written in red ink. “I desperately want to see people die. Nothing makes me more excited than killing.”

Hundreds of police have been deployed around the school where the head was found. Parents have organized neighborhood watches, and children are being escorted to and from school.

The Zodiac killer, who also left taunting notes and claimed to be excited by killing, murdered five people and wounded two in a series of attacks around the San Francisco Bay area.

The killings stopped, but Zodiac was never caught. One prime suspect died in 1992. A translation of a book on the Zodiac murders was published in Japan two years ago.

Several Kobe residents have said they saw a stout man between the ages of 20 and 40 carrying two black garbage bags down a street just before the head was found.

Police believe the killing could be related to two assaults in March in the same neighborhood, 270 miles southwest of Tokyo. One girl was killed and another seriously injured in those attacks.

Dead, mutilated cats also were found near the school gate before the murder, perhaps put there as a warning.