This may well have been a hoax but I’ve always found this call interesting since it almost seems to foreshadow the Exorcist letter. Thanks to Seagull for the newspaper article.

A caller claiming to be Zodiac apparently contacted San Francisco police and "various news outlets" reporting that he had killed a woman and dumped her body in a Daly City church. The report was obviously false since Daly City police checked every church in Daly City and found nothing. Zodiac, after being silent for almost three years, then writes 17 days later to comment on the Exorcist and the letter is postmarked from the San Mateo County area, which includes Daly City.

There was also the case of a Catholic priest, Father Patzelt, who apparently performed numerous exorcisms for a family in Daly City in 1973 (presumably before the Exorcist was released) and then was deluged with exorcism requests in 1974 after this was publicized and after the release of the Exorcist movie. This case certainly could have inspired both the call and Zodiac’s Exorcist letter at a time when "Satanic panic" was in full force. The call is also kind of an eerie foreshadowing of the case of Arlis Perry, whose mutilated body was found in a Palo Alto church on 10/13/74.

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-23/ … _exorcisms

http://www.greatplainsexaminer.com/2012 … lis-perry/

Was this a case of Zodiac copycatting a copycat or could Zodiac have actually placed this call as well? Or are both call and letter hoaxes?