Zodiac Killer & Portland Stabbings

On May 26, 2017, in Portland, Oregon, two people were killed and one was injured after a stabbing on a local MAX train. On Saturday afternoon, police identified the two men killed as Ricky John Best, age 53, who died at the scene; and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, who died at the hospital. A third man, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, is injured but expected to survive.

Heroes: Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23.

Severely injured was Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, of Southeast Portland, Oregon.

The Friday afternoon disturbance began when a man on a light-rail train "began yelling various remarks that would best be characterized as hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions." Among the subjects of his diatribe were two young women who appeared to be Muslim; one was wearing a hijab.

Portland police have charged Jeremy Joseph Christian with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, according to the Portland Police.

"In the midst of his ranting and raving, some people approached him and appeared to try to intervene with his behavior and some of the people that he was yelling at," Sgt. Pete Simpson told The Oregonian. "They were attacked viciously."

The suspect stabbed (in the throat area) the three men before fleeing the train; police located him and took him into custody.

Police identified the suspect as 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian of North Portland, Oregon. He has been booked on two counts each of aggravated murder and intimidation in the second degree, and one count each of attempted murder and being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon.

The suspect was found to have past associations with a free-flowing set of political ideas and causes based more in his own mental health issues than in any foundation beliefs.

As media accounts detailed, Christian had been a prominent and vocal participant in recent “alt-right” rallies in Portland, Oregon. At a “free speech rally” in Montavilla City Park on April 29, 2017, he was captured on video wrapped in an American flag, giving Nazi salutes. Earlier that day, police reportedly confiscated a baseball bat from him. Local reporters captured him yelling racial slurs and threatening to shoot “anyone who tries to disarm me.”

Cat Davila, who was among counter-protesters at the free speech rally, said Christian “showed up part way through the event and came striding straight toward the counter-demonstrator crowd very purposefully waving a baseball bat by his side and staring us down.”

As he drew closer, Davila said, police “blocked him and took his bat and from then on he just yelled a lot.”

Christian wore, during past demonstrations, a teeshirt showing the drawing of the Zodiac Killer.

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.

A drawing of the Zodiac Killer suspect has become infamous in popular culture. On September 27, 1969, Pacific Union College students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were picnicking at Lake Berryessa on a small island connected by a sand spit to Twin Oak Ridge. A man approached them wearing a black executioner's-type hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes and a bib-like device on his chest that had a white 3"x3" cross-circle symbol on it. He approached them with a gun, which Hartnell believed to be a .45.

This is the drawing on the teeshirt worn by Christian.