‘I WANT YOUR MONEY AND YOUR CAR KEYS.

I WANT YOUR CAR TO GO TO MEXICO’

During the late 1960s and early 70s; a self-named serial killer operated in Northern California.

ZODIAC.

He was never caught. He was never identified.

He left evidence, clues, letters and cyphers. He exposed a side of America wallpapered over by image makers and propagandists.

I chose this particular killer- for the fact that he walked onto a well managed and carefully crafted stage- and performed in plain sight, then left. His legacy a wound, never to heal.

USA in 68/9; in the pages of advertising and features editors, was Woodstock, the first man on the moon, the 747 and Concorde, surfing the swell of the century, muscle cars, Sesame Street debuting, ‘authentic’ cowboy Rocky Mountain trails and gas at 35c a gallon.

The front pages of newspapers however; were -Vietnam, The Black Panthers, assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Manson Family, Chappaquiddick, Nixon in The White House, protests, poverty and riots.

The unresolved slaughter carried out by Zodiac, a book without a conclusion- becomes an uncomfortable metaphor for image versus reality, for the land of the free.