A new allegation has placed a respected California scientist and academic into one of America’s most enduring unsolved murder mysteries.
Jacob Michael Lehman says he believes his biological father, Peter A. Lehman, may have been the Zodiac Killer the unidentified murderer who killed at least five people, wounded two others and terrorised Northern California through letters, cryptograms and threats in the late 1960s.
Jacob first laid out the Zodiac allegation publicly in August 2026, but it did not emerge in isolation.
Over several years he has published an extensive archive about his father, containing family memories, biographical details and allegations stretching from abuse inside the family to supposed connections with organised crime, intelligence agencies and major acts of terrorism.
BPI News reviewed those writings alongside Peter Lehman’s publicly documented academic career and the established evidence from the Zodiac investigation.
The result is more interesting and considerably less conclusive than simply looking at an old photograph beside a police sketch.
Some details in Jacob’s account can be independently confirmed.
Peter Lehman genuinely was a highly trained physical chemist.
He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completed a doctorate at the University of Chicago and subsequently held a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.
He later taught at several California institutions before arriving at Humboldt State University in 1979, where he became a prominent renewable-energy researcher and eventually founded the Schatz Energy Research Center.
Other elements of Jacob’s story remain unverified.
And some of the wider allegations contained in his archive are so extraordinary that they cannot responsibly be treated as corroboration for the Zodiac theory without independent evidence.
That distinction is critical.
Repeated allegations from the same person do not become multiple sources simply because they appear in multiple articles.
The question is what can actually be established.
What Do We Know About Peter Lehman?
Jacob identifies his father as Peter Alan Lehman and says he was born in the summer of 1944.
He describes Peter’s parents, Giska and Arthur Lehman, as Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who eventually settled in New Jersey, where Arthur operated a chicken farm and an HVAC business.
BPI News has not independently verified every element of that family history.
But Peter Lehman’s later educational and professional history is well documented.
He earned a chemistry degree from MIT and a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago.
His doctoral research was titled Flash Photolytic Studies of Aromatic Azides.
He then became an NIH postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, where his research concerned the aerochemistry of photochemical air pollution.
After Berkeley, institutional biographies say Lehman taught at Sacramento State University, California State University Northridge and Deep Springs College before joining Humboldt State University.
That sequence matters enormously to the Zodiac theory.
If Peter Lehman was living in Berkeley by December 1968, he was geographically capable of reaching every confirmed Zodiac crime scene.
But BPI News has still not established exactly when his Berkeley fellowship began.
That remains the single biggest gap in the theory.
A New Clue From Jacob’s Earlier Writing: Peter’s First Marriage
Jacob’s longer autobiographical writing contains an important detail that was absent from his original Zodiac article.
He says Peter had a first wife named Carol.
According to Jacob, he discovered the marriage as a child after seeing wedding photographs while visiting relatives.
More importantly for the Zodiac timeline, Jacob says his mother later told him that Peter and Carol had lived together in Berkeley while Peter was completing his postdoctoral work.
If independently verified, that could help establish exactly when Lehman was resident in the Bay Area.
Jacob further says Carol left Peter for another man and later died with that partner in a single-car crash.
Jacob has separately alleged that his father may have been responsible for Carol’s death.
BPI News found no independent evidence supporting that accusation and it should not be treated as fact.
But the marriage itself is potentially important for a very different reason.
A marriage certificate, divorce record, address record, death certificate or contemporary directory entry involving Peter and Carol could potentially establish where Peter lived — and when.
That is far more useful to a Zodiac investigation than speculation about what caused a later car crash.
Deep Springs Gives Us A Firm Date
Another part of Jacob’s account can be independently anchored.
By 1977, Peter Lehman and Carolyn Polese were at Deep Springs College in eastern California.
An archived Deep Springs newsletter from March 1977 records Peter Lehman and Carolyn Polese and includes a photograph of the couple.
Peter himself later wrote about the period.
In a 2019 retrospective for Humboldt State University, Lehman said he and Carolyn were teaching at Deep Springs when a position became available in Humboldt’s Environmental Resources Engineering programme.
He wrote that he had created two solar-energy courses at Deep Springs and successfully applied for the Humboldt job.
“That June,” he wrote, his young family moved to Humboldt County.
The position was created for the fall of 1979.
That gives BPI News a much firmer later chronology.
By March 1977 Lehman was demonstrably associated with Deep Springs.
By June 1979 he was moving to Humboldt County.
The period that now matters most is what happened between Chicago and Deep Springs, particularly 1968 to 1971.
The Zodiac Timeline
The confirmed Zodiac attacks occurred within a remarkably concentrated period.
On 20 December 1968, teenagers David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were shot dead on Lake Herman Road near Benicia.
On 4 July 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot at Blue Rock Springs near Vallejo. Ferrin died. Mageau survived.
On 27 September 1969, Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were attacked at Lake Berryessa. Hartnell survived. Shepard died.
On 11 October 1969, San Francisco taxi driver Paul Stine was shot dead in Presidio Heights.
Pieces of Stine’s bloodstained shirt were later sent to newspapers, providing physical authentication that at least some of the correspondence genuinely came from his killer.
The Zodiac claimed more victims.
Those additional claims remain disputed.
No one has ever been convicted.
Was Lehman In Berkeley When The Murders Started?
Jacob states that the Zodiac killings began shortly after his father moved to the Bay Area.
That has not yet been established independently.
Official biographies confirm that Lehman went from the University of Chicago to a postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley.
But they do not provide a start date.
His doctoral thesis is catalogued with a 1969 publication date.
That does not prove he remained physically in Chicago during 1969.
Academic dissertations can be completed, deposited or formally published after someone begins another appointment.
But it does prevent BPI News from simply accepting the statement that Lehman had already settled in Berkeley before December 1968.
The crucial evidence could still be sitting in mundane historical records:
University payroll files.
NIH fellowship records.
Berkeley city directories.
Old telephone books.
Rental agreements.
Tax records.
University correspondence.
The exact start date of his Berkeley appointment could substantially strengthen or weaken the entire theory.
If He Was In Berkeley, The Geography Works
If Lehman was resident in Berkeley, there is no obvious geographic obstacle.
Benicia, Vallejo and San Francisco were all readily reachable from Berkeley.
Lake Berryessa was further away but remained within driving distance.
That proves opportunity only in the broadest possible sense.
Millions of people lived within driving distance of the crime scenes.
But before any person can seriously be considered in a geographically concentrated murder series, investigators first have to establish that they were actually in the region.
That work has not yet been done publicly in Lehman’s case.
The Claims About Government Laboratories
Across several articles, Jacob says his father told family members he had worked at Berkeley and Livermore government laboratories.
He goes much further, alleging that Peter participated in secret government programmes involving drugs, intelligence operations and behavioural manipulation.
BPI News found independent documentation for Peter Lehman’s UC Berkeley postdoctoral research.
We did not find independent documentation establishing the secret work described by Jacob.
There is also an important historical wrinkle.
Jacob sometimes describes his father as working for the “Department of Energy” at Berkeley and Livermore in connection with this earlier period.
The US Department of Energy did not exist until 1977.
During the Zodiac period, the Berkeley facility was the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and federal oversight came through predecessor structures, including the Atomic Energy Commission.
Berkeley and Livermore were administratively separated in 1971.
That does not prove Lehman never conducted federally connected research.
It does mean later terminology cannot be used as evidence that a particular secret programme existed in 1969.
Operation Underworld Was Real. The Family Connection Is Not Established
Jacob’s broader account also claims that his family had connections to organised crime and American intelligence stretching back generations.
He invokes Operation Underworld, the secret Second World War cooperation between US Naval Intelligence and organised-crime figures.
Operation Underworld itself is historical fact.
The US Navy has acknowledged that intelligence officials worked with Mafia figures including networks connected to Charles “Lucky” Luciano as they sought information and greater control over the New York waterfront during the war.
But BPI News found no evidence connecting Peter Lehman’s family to Operation Underworld.
Those are two completely separate propositions.
That the US government historically worked with organised crime does not demonstrate that the Lehman family participated.
The same caution applies to Jacob’s claims that relatives served in intelligence organisations or were involved in major geopolitical events.
What Jacob’s Archive Tells Us About His Source Material
Reviewing Jacob’s entire archive is useful for another reason.
It shows how he has built his case.
His writing combines three different kinds of material:
personal memories;
stories he says were told to him by relatives;
and interpretations of major historical events that he believes connect back to his family.
Those categories cannot be given equal evidential weight.
A verifiable recollection that his parents taught at Deep Springs can be checked against college archives.
It checks out.
A statement that Peter studied at MIT, Chicago and Berkeley can be tested against institutional biographies.
That checks out.
A claim that his father possessed a private pilot’s licence could potentially be checked through aviation records.
That remains to be done.
But claims that Peter secretly controlled terrorist attacks, intelligence operations or unrelated mass-casualty events require an entirely different level of evidence.
BPI News found no independent evidence supporting those accusations.
They should therefore not be used to make the Zodiac allegation appear stronger.
The World Trade Center Remark
One of Jacob’s newer articles describes what he says was the final trip he took with his father.
According to Jacob, they visited Manhattan in 2000.
While looking at the World Trade Center, Jacob says Peter told him: “Maybe we’ll blow it up.”
Jacob now interprets that remark through his broader belief that his father was involved in later terrorism.
Even if accurately remembered, a disturbing or dark remark made in 2000 would not establish advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks.
The distinction is important because Jacob frequently interprets family memories retrospectively through his wider theory about his father.
Those memories may provide leads.
They do not become corroboration without another source.
The FBI And Intelligence Reports
Jacob also says he repeatedly reported his father to US authorities.
In an open letter published in 2025, he wrote that he submitted FBI tips in early 2023, visited the FBI’s San Francisco field office and was interviewed by someone he understood to be an FBI special agent.
He also says he later spoke to a person identifying themselves as connected to the National Security Agency Office of Inspector General.
BPI News has not independently confirmed those interactions.
Even if confirmed, the fact that authorities received or discussed an allegation would not mean they accepted it as credible or substantiated its contents.
That distinction should not be blurred.
The Wing Walker Evidence
One of the most specific supposed overlaps concerns the distinctive footwear impressions recovered after the Lake Berryessa attack.
The Zodiac wore Wing Walker-type boots.
These were heavy military-style boots associated particularly with personnel working around aircraft.
Jacob says Peter wore size 10 shoes and obtained a private pilot’s licence around the period.
But the official evidence is slightly different from the version presented in his article.
FBI material describes the boots sought in connection with the investigation as size 10½.
That does not exclude someone who normally wore a size 10 shoe.
Boot sizing varies.
But it means this is not the exact shoe-size match it first appears to be.
More importantly, BPI News has still not independently established Peter Lehman’s alleged pilot licence.
Historical aviation records could answer that.
Even if confirmed, being a pilot would not prove ownership of the boots.
Wing Walker boots were available outside professional aviation settings and could be obtained as military surplus.
So the chain currently looks like this:
The Zodiac wore Wing Walker boots.
Jacob says his father flew aircraft.
Jacob says his father wore a nearby shoe size.
What is missing is the important part:
evidence that Peter Lehman actually owned those boots.
The Police Sketch
Jacob also compares an older photograph of his father with the famous Zodiac composite.
The age question is complicated.
Jacob says Peter was 25 in 1969.
Some early eyewitness estimates placed the suspect at around 25 to 30.
Others particularly material surrounding the Paul Stine murder described a man who appeared considerably older, roughly 35 to 45.
The descriptions generally portrayed a white man with short hair and a stocky or heavy build, often said to be wearing glasses.
Witness descriptions are imperfect.
Age estimates made at night after a traumatic event can be wrong.
But Peter being 25 does not create the clean match sometimes implied by a side-by-side photograph.
A proper comparison would require photographs from 1968 or 1969, rather than photographs taken decades later, as well as verified height, weight, hairstyle and whether he regularly wore glasses.
A Scientist And A Killer Who Designed Bombs
Peter Lehman’s scientific background is one of the more interesting genuine coincidences.
He was not merely science-literate.
He held a doctorate in physical chemistry and conducted advanced photochemical research.
The Zodiac, meanwhile, sent newspapers diagrams and descriptions of an intended bomb.
His November 1969 correspondence described a device using ammonium nitrate fertiliser, fuel and electrical components including batteries and a photoelectric trigger.
Jacob sees that as significant.
There is certainly a superficial connection between an advanced chemist and a killer discussing chemical explosives.
But the Zodiac’s bomb design has never been shown to require postgraduate chemistry.
Ammonium nitrate-based explosive mixtures were not obscure knowledge.
Nor has any technical feature of the Zodiac bomb diagram been traced to Peter Lehman’s specialist academic work.
Compatible knowledge is not identifying knowledge.
The Crossed-Circle Incident
Jacob’s most unsettling personal story concerns the Zodiac symbol itself.
He says that when he was a child he drew a circle divided by a cross after encountering a similar symbol in Susan Cooper’s fantasy novels.
According to Jacob, his father saw it and reacted with extraordinary alarm, rapidly erasing it and repeatedly demanding to know where Jacob had seen it.
Jacob says Peter then told him never to draw the symbol again.
If independently corroborated, investigators might reasonably find the story interesting.
At present, however, it is one person’s memory of an incident in childhood.
BPI News cannot verify the exchange.
The symbol was also not unique to the Zodiac.
Crosshair, gunsight and quartered-circle designs predated the killings.
The Eureka Card
Peter Lehman ultimately built his career in Humboldt County.
That makes the so-called Eureka card particularly attractive to anyone constructing a Zodiac theory around him.
In December 1990, the San Francisco Chronicle received a Christmas card postmarked in Eureka.
Eureka sits immediately beside Arcata, where Lehman lived and worked.
That seems remarkable.
Until the status of the card is considered.
The Eureka card has never been conclusively authenticated as Zodiac correspondence.
It contained photocopies of two postal keys but did not contain the Zodiac symbol, a murder confession or the kind of authenticated physical evidence found in the Paul Stine correspondence.
Its handwriting has been disputed.
The keys were ultimately associated with another Eureka resident.
There is consequently no sound basis for saying that the Zodiac was living in Eureka in 1990.
The coincidence only becomes evidentially meaningful if the card itself can first be proven genuine.
The DNA Evidence Needs To Be Explained Properly
Jacob’s strongest proposal is also the one most capable of being tested scientifically.
He points to biological material associated with Zodiac correspondence and argues that modern DNA analysis could potentially establish whether it came from his father.
The history is complicated.
During testing publicised in 2002, investigators developed a partial male DNA profile from material associated with a Zodiac stamp.
It contained too few markers to identify someone conclusively.
It was potentially more useful for exclusion.
Separately, a reddish-brown hair has been reported beneath a stamp on correspondence connected to Paul Stine.
The Stine correspondence is particularly important because part of the murdered taxi driver’s shirt was enclosed with Zodiac letters, establishing a direct connection to the killer.
But these two pieces of evidence should not be merged into a single claim.
The partial DNA profile was not simply a full genetic profile extracted from the hair.
Nor has the hair publicly been proven to belong to Zodiac himself.
Mail can be touched by many people.
Why The Hair Matters More In 2026
This is where advances in forensic science make Jacob’s request genuinely interesting.
Historically, rootless human hair was primarily useful for mitochondrial DNA testing because conventional forensic methods struggled to obtain sufficient nuclear DNA from the hair shaft.
That has changed significantly.
Modern sequencing techniques can recover fragmented nuclear DNA from rootless hairs and, under the right conditions, obtain enough information for powerful identity or kinship analysis.
That creates a potential route for testing the allegation.
If the reported Zodiac hair still exists;
if enough material remains;
if its chain of custody is reliable;
and if investigators believe it plausibly came from the sender;
then current forensic technology may offer significantly more information than investigators could obtain two decades ago.
None of those conditions should be assumed.
But unlike resemblance to a sketch, this is something science could potentially answer.
Would Jacob’s DNA Match His Father?
Jacob describes the potential comparison as an approximate 50% DNA match.
That is an oversimplification.
A biological child does inherit approximately half of their autosomal DNA from each parent.
But forensic laboratories would not ordinarily identify a parent through a simple “50% match”.
They would evaluate genetic markers and calculate the statistical likelihood of a parent-child relationship.
If a sufficiently complete nuclear profile derived from securely authenticated Zodiac evidence showed a parent-child relationship with Jacob, that would be profoundly significant.
If it excluded that relationship, it could substantially damage the theory.
Mitochondrial DNA would require a different comparison because fathers do not normally pass mitochondrial DNA to their children.
Jacob therefore suggests relatives in Peter’s maternal line.
Conceptually that makes sense.
But all of it depends first on developing trustworthy DNA from evidence that investigators can reasonably attribute to Zodiac.
There Is No Physical Match To Lehman Today
This is perhaps the most important sentence in the entire report:
There is currently no publicly known physical evidence linking Peter Lehman to the Zodiac murders.
There is physical evidence from the Zodiac investigation that might one day be capable of testing the allegation.
Those are very different statements.
No public DNA match identifies Lehman.
No fingerprint match identifies Lehman.
No handwriting comparison identifies Lehman.
No murder weapon has been connected to him.
No Wing Walker boots belonging to him have been recovered.
No authenticated Zodiac possession has been traced to him.
BPI News found no indication that law enforcement has publicly identified Peter Lehman as a Zodiac suspect.
The Schatz Center Claim Does Not Survive The Public Record
Reviewing Jacob’s wider articles is also useful because it allows some of his claims to be tested.
Jacob alleges that his father secretly financed the Schatz Energy Research Center using laundered money.
The documented history of the centre contradicts that straightforward account.
Peter Lehman’s own retrospective describes receiving a telephone call in 1989 from Dr Louis W. Schatz after submitting a proposal for a solar-hydrogen research project.
According to Lehman, Schatz initially sent $75,000.
A subsequent contribution of $300,000 supported further fuel-cell work.
Institutional accounts identify Schatz as the financial backer whose donations ultimately exceeded $12 million.
Peter Lehman unquestionably became the centre’s founding director and an influential figure in its development.
But BPI News found no evidence that he secretly financed its creation with laundered money.
That is an important test of the wider archive.
Some of Jacob’s biographical details prove accurate when checked.
Some of his interpretations do not have supporting evidence.
What Peter Lehman’s Own Record Shows
There is another Peter Lehman visible in the public record — not the figure described in his son’s accusations, but the academic whose career can actually be documented.
He arrived at Humboldt State University in 1979 to develop its energy curriculum.
He helped establish renewable-energy teaching at the university.
In 1989 he founded what became the Schatz Energy Research Center with Charles Chamberlin.
His later research included hydrogen generation, fuel-cell technology, renewable microgrids and clean transport.
He served as the centre’s director for its first 24 years.
He later became professor emeritus.
California recognised him with a Clean Energy Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award.
He currently serves on Arcata’s Planning Commission, with the city listing his term through 2029.
That public career neither proves nor disproves what he may have done in 1968 and 1969.
But it matters because extraordinary criminal allegations against a living person must be tested against records, not simply repeated because someone close to them believes them.
What The Rest Of Jacob’s Archive Does And Does Not Tell Us
Jacob’s writings become much broader beyond the Zodiac allegation.
He accuses his father of involvement in organised crime, covert intelligence programmes, drug-assisted behavioural manipulation and numerous major acts of terrorism.
Among the events he links to Peter are Oklahoma City, September 11, multiple mass shootings, the Judi Bari bombing and other mass-casualty incidents.
BPI News found no independent evidence linking Peter Lehman to those attacks.
Their appearance elsewhere in Jacob’s archive therefore cannot be used to corroborate the Zodiac allegation.
If anything, the breadth of the claims makes independent verification more important.
There is a basic evidential rule here:
Jacob saying something in five different articles is still one source.
BPI NEWS ANALYSIS WHAT ACTUALLY LINES UP?
After reviewing Jacob Lehman’s archive and the independent record, the case can be divided into four categories.
What is independently established
Peter Lehman was an advanced physical chemist.
He attended MIT and the University of Chicago.
He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley.
He later taught at Sacramento State, CSU Northridge and Deep Springs.
Peter Lehman and Carolyn Polese were at Deep Springs by 1977.
He moved to Humboldt County in 1979.
He founded the Schatz Energy Research Center in 1989.
He has lived and worked in the Humboldt area for decades.
Those are real biographical facts.
What is plausible but not yet independently established
That Lehman was already resident in Berkeley before the first confirmed Zodiac murder in December 1968.
That his first wife Carol lived with him in Berkeley during precisely that period.
That he had a private pilot’s licence around 1968-69.
That he wore exactly the footwear size Jacob describes at the time.
These questions could potentially be answered through records.
What is circumstantial
His scientific knowledge.
A possible resemblance to the Zodiac sketch.
The Wing Walker aviation association.
His later residence near Eureka.
Jacob’s account of the crosshair-symbol incident.
None of those uniquely identifies the killer.
What remains unsupported
Jacob’s claims that Peter Lehman participated in secret mind-control projects, organised-crime operations or major terrorist attacks.
BPI News found no independent evidence supporting those allegations.
They should not be treated as proof of the Zodiac theory.
The Most Important Discovery May Be Something Boring
The temptation in a case like Zodiac is to concentrate on ciphers, secret laboratories, eerie photographs and strange family stories.
But the most useful discovery might instead be an employment form.
If Peter Lehman’s NIH fellowship began before 20 December 1968 and records show him living in Berkeley, one major question is answered.
If records instead show him still resident in Chicago, or elsewhere far from Northern California, when the Zodiac murders began, the theory becomes significantly harder to sustain.
The same applies to his first marriage.
If Jacob’s account that Peter and Carol lived in Berkeley can be confirmed through contemporary records, that might independently establish residence.
If the dates do not fit, it weakens the story.
Four Dates Matter More Than Everything Else
Before asking whether Peter Lehman liked puzzles or understood chemistry, an investigator should establish his whereabouts on four dates:
20 December 1968 — Lake Herman Road
4 July 1969 — Blue Rock Springs
27 September 1969 — Lake Berryessa
11 October 1969 — Presidio Heights
After that come the objective comparisons.
Aviation records.
Contemporaneous photographs.
Handwriting.
Fingerprints.
And, if law enforcement retains suitable evidence, DNA.
A Theory That Can Actually Be Tested
There is an understandable temptation to treat the enormous number of Zodiac theories with cynicism.
The case has attracted false confessions, elaborate conspiracies and generations of amateur suspects.
Peter Lehman should not be elevated above those suspects merely because the person accusing him is his son.
Family proximity can provide information unavailable to outsiders.
It can also produce interpretations that require independent verification.
At present BPI News finds the Peter Lehman theory unproven and largely circumstantial.
His documented Berkeley connection makes establishing the dates worthwhile.
His scientific background is real but not identifying.
The boot connection is weaker than originally presented.
The Eureka card remains disputed.
The broader terrorism and intelligence allegations are unsupported by evidence BPI News located.
And there is currently no known physical match between Lehman and the Zodiac case.
But unlike many internet theories, at least part of this one may be capable of being tested.
Somewhere in university archives may be the document showing exactly when Peter Lehman arrived in Berkeley.
Somewhere in aviation records may be the answer to whether he was flying in 1969.
Somewhere in old family or public records may be a contemporary address.
And somewhere in an evidence room may still be a tiny strand of hair preserved from the Zodiac investigation.
Those records not resemblance, personality or family mythology are where the answer would have to begin.
