What is Robert Graysmith’s Net Worth?
Robert Graysmith is a true crime author and former political cartoonist who has a net worth of $5 million. Robert Graysmith is best known for writing the 1986 non-fiction book “Zodiac,” about his decade-plus-long work trying to solve the case of the Zodiac Killer. The book and its follow-up, “Zodiac Unmasked,” were adapted by screenwriter James Vanderbilt into the 2007 film “Zodiac,” directed by David Fincher and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Among Graysmith’s other true crime books are “The Sleeping Lady,” “The Murder of Bob Crane,” “Unabomber,” and “The Laughing Gorilla.”
Early Life
Robert Graysmith was born Robert Gray Smith on September 17, 1942 in Pensacola, Florida.
Zodiac
Graysmith began his career as a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. While working for the paper in 1969, he became wrapped up in the case of the ‘Zodiac Killer,’ an unidentified serial killer who murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area from late 1968 to late 1969. During his spree, the Zodiac Killer sent letters to the San Francisco Chronicle that he requested be published in the paper. These letters contained evidence that the sender was, in fact, the killer in question. For many years after the Zodiac murders ceased, Graysmith built his own scrapbook of evidence in the hopes of eventually solving the killer’s identity. He sought the assistance of various police departments in his quest, and worked closely with Inspector David Toschi from the San Francisco Police Department. Graysmith ultimately spent over a decade collecting information on the case, but was never able to determine the Zodiac’s identity.
In 1986, Graysmith published the non-fiction book “Zodiac,” a chronicle of his extensive and obsessive work on the Zodiac Killer case. The book was a big hit, selling four million copies worldwide. Graysmith published another book about the case, “Zodiac Unmasked,” in 2002. Both books were adapted by screenwriter James Vanderbilt and director David Fincher into the 2007 film “Zodiac,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Graysmith. Mark Ruffalo portrays Inspector David Toschi, while Robert Downey Jr. portrays journalist Paul Avery. The film was highly acclaimed upon its release, with many critics hailing it as one of the best films of the year. Later, in a 2016 critics’ poll conducted by the BBC, Fincher’s “Zodiac” was voted the 12th greatest film of the 21st century to that point.
(Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)
Other Works
Following the success of “Zodiac,” Graysmith continued writing true crime books based on high-profile cases. His second book, “The Sleeping Lady: The Trailside Murders Above the Golden Gate,” was published in 1990. Graysmith followed that with “The Murder of Bob Crane: Who Killed the Star of Hogan’s Heroes?,” which was published in 1993. That book later became the basis for the 2002 film “Auto Focus,” directed by Paul Schrader and starring Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. Graysmith’s next book was “Unabomber: A Desire to Kill,” about the titular elusive domestic terrorist; it came out in 1997. Two years later, Graysmith published “The Bell Tower: The Case of Jack the Ripper Finally Solved… in San Francisco.”
After his second “Zodiac” book in 2002, Graysmith wrote “Amerithrax: The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer,” which was published in 2003. His next book, which wasn’t released until 2009, was “The Laughing Gorilla: A True Story of Police Corruption and Murder.” Graysmith subsequently published “The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shower,” about the mysterious disappearance of Marli Renfro, the body double for Janet Leigh in Hitchcock’s film “Psycho.” He went on to write “Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer – And of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco,” which came out in 2012. Graysmith’s later books include the 2023 title “Graveyard Harbor: Treasure, Murder, and Vigilantes in the Gold Rush’s Fantastic Floating City of One Thousand Abandoned Ships.”
Personal Life
Graysmith wed his first wife, Margaret Ann Womack, in 1963. They divorced a decade later. He went on to marry Melanie Krakower in 1975; they divorced in 1980. Graysmith has attributed his failed marriages to his obsession with the Zodiac Killer case.
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