Police to look into new Zodiac Killer claim

SAN FRANCISCO — A Southern California woman said Wednesday that her late father was the infamous Zodiac killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area four decades ago.

San Francisco homicide investigators said they will check into the information from Deborah Perez, who said her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, killed at least two of the known victims 40 years ago.

Sgt. Lyn Tomioka said the investigation into the 1969 death of San Francisco taxi driver Paul Lee Stine related to the Zodiac killer remains ongoing.

“We get a significant number of calls a year. We will look into whatever evidence that is presented to us,” Tomioka said about the case that also became a hit movie in 2007.

During a frenzied news conference outside the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday, Perez, of Corona, Calif., said she has given police what she believes are Stine’s eyeglasses and letters she wrote — some to the newspaper — on her father’s behalf about the crimes.

Perez claims she was a naive 7-year-old tagging along with her father during the killings.

“He told me he was sick, and all I wanted to do was help my dad,” said Perez, who came to her conclusion about two years ago. “He kept telling me he was sick and he killed many, many people. I had no idea.”

The self-described Zodiac killer is blamed for at least five murders in 1968 and 1969. He was never caught, though many believe he was Arthur Leigh Allen, a convicted child molester who died in 1992.

Hendrickson, a carpenter with six children, died in 1983 from cancer.

Perez said she could not keep her father’s secrets any longer.