Woman Claims "Zodiac Killer" Was Her Father

However, many believe he was Arthur Leigh Allen, a convicted child molester from Vallejo who died in 1992.

Wednesday, 47-year-old Deborah Perez claimed that as a young 7-year-old girl she helped her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, write and mail some of the letters that earned him the Zodiac nickname.

The Zodiac Killer sent letters to local newspapers including The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner, taunting police,. media, and the public with clues and riddles of his identity.

The whole event revealing his name was rather sensationalized, however, with those involved going so far as to schedule a press conference (complete with a press release). The press release said:

At the press conference, a proven immediate family member of the Zodiac Killer will make a statement identifying the killer. Attending with her will be leading forensic experts, a Melvin Belli former partner, family lawyers and others who have helped solve this case that has been open for many years. Information of the forensic evidence - including cryptology, handwriting analysis, current law enforcement investigations, and most startling, the murder accomplice evidence - will be distributed. This historical revelation upsets the theories of the murder investigations in the past. Many cold case crimes have recently been solved because of 21st century forensic technology. This is one of the bigger breakthroughs.

At the news conference outside the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday, Perez said she has given police what she believes are the eyeglasses of one of the victims, San Francisco taxi driver Paul Lee Stine, as well as letters she wrote, some to the Chronicle, on her father's behalf.

Perez also claimed to be with her father at the Blue Springs Golf Club in July, 1969, when he allegedly killed Darlene Ferrin, 22, and wounded her companion, Michael Mageau, 19.

Perez said that until she saw a composite sketch of the Zodiac killer in on TV in August 2007, she had never heard of the Zodiac Killer. She added that she immediately recognized the man as her father, who died in 1983.

Additionally, during the press conference, Kevin McLean, the former law partner of the late Melvin Belli, who was used as a pawn by the Zodiac Killer, said handwriting analysis shows Perez did write some of the letters, and they hope DNA testing can be done on the glasses to show they in fact believed to belong to Stine.

It's hard to believe, but if independent forensic writing analysis can prove she wrote the letters, and / or DNA can be found on the glasses, we might finally have a solution to a case that some said, like Jack the Ripper, would never be solved.