SAN FRANCISCO — In the pantheon of unsolved mysteries, few can top the Zodiac, the shadowy killer blamed for five Bay Area murders in the late 1960s and untold numbers of stranger-than-fiction theories ever since.
Add to that roster the tale told Wednesday by Deborah Perez, who announced to a skeptical crowd of reporters and Zodiac aficionados here not only that the killer was her adoptive and long-dead father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, but that she had been present at at least one killing and had even scribbled some of the taunting notes the Zodiac sent to the press and the police.
“I was a child and just thought I was helping my dad,” said Ms. Perez, a 47-year-old real-estate agent from Southern California. “I didn’t know.”