The Zodiac Killer has been identified as Gary Francis Poste, according to a team of detectives, military intelligence personnel and journalists, Fox News reported on Wednesday.
However, he has been dead for three years.
Poste was known to have murdered five people in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. In the end, the authorities had never caught him.
The team said that he had been painting homes throughout his career.
Investigators believed that Poste was responsible for an additional murder that took place miles away but it had never been linked to him, and the possibility had been ruled out many years prior.
The incidents inspired the 2007 film Zodiac, which tells the story of the manhunt for the killer, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.
What makes Poste different from other criminals is that he had sent riddles to the San Francisco Chronicle to taunt authorities, and it had reportedly taken years until the code was cracked, with investigators finding a photo that featured scars on Poste's forehead matching scars on a sketch of the Zodiac, as well as having deciphered letters by the Zodiac that reveals Poste as the murderer.
The investigators, also known as the Case Breakers, have called on police to conduct a DNA test to confirm their discovery.