Robert Graysmith is an American true crime

True crime

True crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people.The crimes most commonly include murder, but true crime works have also touched on other legal cases. Depending on the writer, true crime can adhere strictly to...

 author. He was working as a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

in 1969 when the Zodiac Killer

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...

 case came to light. Graysmith attempted to decode

Decoding

Decoding is the reverse of encoding, which is the process of transforming information from one format into another. Information about decoding can be found in the following:* Digital-to-analog converter, the use of analog circuit for decoding operations...

 letters written by the killer. He became obsessed with the case over the next thirteen years, finally confronting the person he suspected, Arthur Leigh Allen

Arthur Leigh Allen

Arthur Leigh Allen was the primary suspect in the Zodiac Killer investigation. While being investigated, Allen passed a polygraph test, had his fingerprints compared to those at the murder scene of known Zodiac victim Paul Stine and had his handwriting examined...

, at his workplace. His second marriage ended in divorce, which he directly attributes to his intense interest in the case. Graysmith wrote two books about the case, eventually giving up his career as a Pulitzer-prize nominated cartoonist to write five more books on high-profile crimes, one of which became the basis for the 2002 film, Auto Focus

Auto Focus

Auto Focus is a 2002 American biographical film directed by Paul Schrader that stars Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. The screenplay by Michael Gerbosi is based on the book The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith....

. The 2007 movie Zodiac

Zodiac (film)

Zodiac is a 2007 American mystery-thriller film directed by David Fincher and based on Robert Graysmith's non-fiction book of the same name. The Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros...

, directed by David Fincher

David Fincher

David Andrew Leo Fincher is an American film and music video director. Known for his dark and stylish thrillers, such as Seven , The Game , Fight Club , Panic Room , and Zodiac , Fincher received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for his 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and...

, was partly based on his books and featured Jake Gyllenhaal

Jake Gyllenhaal

Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaal is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at age ten...

 as Graysmith. Graysmith now lives in San Francisco.

External links

• Interview by Newsweek
  Newsweek
  Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
  
  
• Interview by MovieWeb
• Interview by New York Post
  New York Post
  The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...