[imagesource: Stockton Police Department via AP]

Over the past 18 months, six men have been killed and one woman wounded at the hands of a serial killer in California.

Police have linked the crimes, which occurred across Stockton and Oakland, in an area spanning roughly 110 kilometres, via ballistics tests and video evidence.

The same gun is believed to have been used in all of the attacks.

While officials are at a loss for a motive, they say it appears the killer is “on a mission” and have offered a $125 000 (R2,2 million) reward for information leading to an arrest.

Here’s Sky News:

The victims appear to have little in common, no particular ethnic group seems to have been targeted and while some were homeless, others were not. None were beaten or robbed and they don’t appear to have known each other.

“We don’t know what the motive is. What we do believe is that it’s mission-oriented,” Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said Tuesday. “This person’s on a mission.”

The only known survivor of an attack was a woman in Stockton, who, despite being shot and wounded in April last year, scared the man off by walking in his direction until he fled.

She said the man didn’t say a word before he opened fire on her.

Her description of the suspect was hampered by the fact that he was wearing a black COVID-19 mask and a hoodie pulled over his face.

The only CCTV footage authorities have (you can see a screenshot above) to go on is grainy and doesn’t offer much insight, either.

The first two attacks took place just days apart before more than a year went by without any incident:

On 8 July this year Paul Yaw, 35, was shot dead, followed by Salvador Debudey Jr., 43, on 11 August; Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 21, on 30 August; Juan Cruz, 52, who died on 21 September.

The most recent victim was Lorenzo Lopez Sr., 54, who was shot dead on 27 September.

That’s four murders in under two months and five since the start of July, all of which took place within a radius of a few square miles. Four of the victims were walking alone and one man was shot dead while sitting in his car.

One of history’s most infamous unidentified serial killers, the man dubbed the Zodiac Killer, also killed five known victims in California.

He struck between December 1968 and October 1969 and his case has been described as the most famous unsolved murder case in American history.

Hundreds of theories and suspects have been put forward but two weeks ago, The Los Angeles Times published a story titled ‘Has The Zodiac Killer Mystery Been Solved (Again)?‘ that may have cracked the case.

It’s long but well worth a read if the Zodiac Killer story has ever interested you.

[source:sky]