The Zodiac killer identified ... ?

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A retired highway patrolman believes he has found the infamous Zodiac killer that is responsible for at least five deaths that haunted California in the 1960s.

Lyndon Lafferty - a childhood friend of the police's main suspect - penned a book on his decades-long hunt for the Zodiac called 'The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up' in which he adds an intriguing new theory as to who the killer is and why he was never caught.

Mr Lafferty believes that the killer is a 91-year-old man living in Solano County, California, and that he was protected from investigators by 'power brokers' that refused to stop him.

'Official corruption and political intervention forced the investigation into a top-secret, covert status, giving the insane ZODIAC killer immunity and a license to kill,' said Mr Lafferty in his new book, published on February 8 of this year.

The Zodiac Killer terrorized the San Fransisco Bay Area from 1968 to 1969 when he killed at least five people.

In the letters, he claimed that he killed 37 people.

'The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them,' the Zodiac wrote in a letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mr Lafferty, who went to High School with Mr Allen, claims that the identity of the Zodiac killer has been known since March 15, 1971.

The 'Mandamus Seven,' a group of retired law enforcement officers, federal agents, a minister and a District Attorney banded together to prove, once and for all, who the Zodiac really is.

The motive for the killings, Mr Lafferty says, was adultery.

'Mind and body ravaged by years of severe alcoholism, his blood-lusting revenge turned him into the most shocking and vicious killer in our 20th century,' Mr Lafferty writes.

'Through his tauntings of the police, his codes, ciphers, and letters, he was on a mission to redeem his shattered ego, to prove that he is better, smarter, and more clever than all the judges and police put together.'

Mr Lafferty says that the Zodiac started his killing spree after his wife had an affair with a Solano County Superior Court Judge, according to the Daily Republic.

Mr Lafferty locked onto the Zodiac case in 1970 when he became suspicious of a man he saw parking at Vellejo Highway rest stops, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

He tracked the man, who drove a white Chevrolet sedan and looked just like the wanted posters, and decided he had to be the one.

One time, Mr Lafferty said, he even confronted the killer.

'I looked into a quivering, snarling face like I was looking to the face of death,' Mr Lafferty said to the Daily Republic. 'It scared the hell out of me.'

Mr Lafferty, who said he worked as a code breaker during the Korean War, even claims that the name of his suspect appears in the Zodiac's codes.

Some have questioned Mr Lafferty's zest for the Zodiac, as so many before him have claimed to have solved the case.

Reviews of his book on Amazon.com complain of numerous research inaccuracies and question Mr Lafferty's use of an alias to hide the name of his person of interest.

But Mr Lafferty is so convinced that he knows who the killer is that he thinks the killer has his eye on him.

Mr Lafferty says he may have been threatened by the Zodiac himself in his own cryptic letter, out of retaliation for publishing his book.

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From a book review:

He alleges that the Vallejo police department was ordered away from the suspect (called George Russell Tucker) because a powerful judge in the area had had an affair with Tucker's wife. The judge, according to the author, was more worried about a scandal involving him than in protecting the lives of people.