Coveting Control: The Emotional Engine Behind the Zodiac's Crimes

Beneath the taunting letters and ciphers, the Zodiac’s violence appears to have been driven by something older and more primal than intellect - a deep, gnawing need to possess what he lacked. His crimes were less about attacking and killing others and more about absorbing, through dominance, what he perceived they had and he did not. Each act - whether pulling a trigger, stabbing multiple times, crafting ciphers, or writing a taunting letter - was an attempt to convert envy into ownership.

A way through which we can understand this drive can be found in the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lecter instructs Clarice Starling to examine a killer's acts not by their superficial appearance, but by their essential nature:

"I have read the case files, have you? Everything you need to find him is right there in those pages... Of each particular thing asked: What is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?"

When Clarice responds, who's answer is not unlike the Zodiac community's viewpoint of the Zodiac as a "couples" killer, she states - he kills women. Lecter corrects her: the killing itself is incidental. The central question is: What needs does he serve by killing? Clarice, and again it's not much different than the opinions we see in the Zodiac community, guesses anger, social acceptance, and sexual frustration. Lecter's answer is definitive: No. He covets. That is his nature. 

The Zodiac's behavior exemplifies this principle. The killings, ciphers, and letters were not random acts; they were mechanisms for possessing, dominating, and controlling recognition. His victims, the media communications, and even the ciphers served as tools to convert observation and perception into psychological ownership. The essential act was never the killing itself - it was the assertion of control over the narrative, the audience, and ultimately, over himself.

Coveting lies at the root of the Zodiac: the inability to tolerate the success, intimacy, or ease seen in others. The Zodiac’s world, built from perhaps perceived isolation and resentment, seems to have revolved around this very tension. He didn’t simply desire attention; he needed to take it away from others and claim it as his own. His killings, his letters, even his self-coined name were all mechanisms for achieving symbolic possession - of people, of fear, and of narrative control.

From his earliest crimes, the Zodiac demonstrated a fixation with authorship. He wrote himself into existence, transforming anonymous acts of violence into episodes of a story he alone could tell. His first cipher declared that he was collecting “slaves,” a statement that should not be read literally but psychologically: those he killed, those who wrote about him, and those who tried to solve his codes all became or have become extensions of his control. To covet, for him, was to own - and through ownership came temporary relief from insignificance.

The letters that followed were not spontaneous bursts of arrogance; they were deliberate instruments of control. The Zodiac didn’t simply crave acknowledgment; he craved precise acknowledgment - the replication of his words and symbols exactly as he intended. When newspapers quoted him verbatim, he achieved what he could not in life: authorship that mattered. When his phrasing was misquoted, or his symbols misinterpreted, his frustration surfaced almost immediately. The taunts to the press, the insistence on accuracy, all hint at a man whose self-worth depended on the world’s correct recognition of his narrative.

This framework - of coveting and control - offers a way for understanding both his victims and his communications. The people he attacked were not random; they embodied qualities he envied or despised in himself: youth, freedom, intimacy, or aspiration. The public figures he later named in letters - journalists, lawyers, police officials - represented the status and recognition he wanted to share. In each direction, the emotional engine was the same: covet, claim, and command.

In this sense, the Zodiac’s story is not one of pure mystery but of psychological economy. Each crime replenished a failing sense of power; each communication preserved it. Yet, as with all compulsions, satisfaction was fleeting. Every public mention of his name validated him - and simultaneously reminded him that control must be reasserted again.

This series begins with that central idea: that the Zodiac’s crimes and communications stemmed from coveting control - a craving for authorship over life, death, and identity itself.

In the next article, “Victim vs. High-Profile: What the Zodiac Coveted and Why,” I will explore how this same emotional drive shaped the two worlds he built - the one he dominated through violence and the one he sought to join through attention.