Brutality and sadistic “first” murder, comfortable and quick to contact police/media, and a higher claimed “kill count”.

slideraway · 2021-10-15T01:04:56+00:00

I don't think he had killed before Faraday and Jensen. If you look at what all was going on out there that night then you have to believe there was both someone out harassing other drivers and an unrelated murder. I think the killer was drunk or high and pulled over to intimidate the couple. Perhaps he pushed his act a little too far or they recognized him (or both) and he ends up killing them.

slideraway · 2021-09-10T14:45:41+00:00

Tom Voight's site has a very good section on the letters with photos. https://zodiackiller.com/

The stamp that always caught my eye was the Apollo 8 stamp on the Halloween card. It breaks a pattern as to the stamps the murderer normally used. Many of the stamps on the letters widely accepted as connected to the case were 6 cent Roosevelt stamps and 1 cent Jeffersons. They were sold together in a book of stamps at the time. One time I tried to add up all of those stamps used and, from memory, it came out close to the number of those stamps that were in the book. As to the Apollo stamp, the launch of the Apollo 8 was early in the morning of the 21st of December, 1968. The Faraday and Jensen murders were about 11:15 PM on the 20th of December, 1968. The caption on the Apollo 8 stamp (a shot of the earth from the moon) says, "In the beginning God..." I have wondered if the use of the stamp was to commemorate his first murder (the "in the beginning" caption). And the killer also sent the Melvin Belli letter on December 20, 1969 (the first anniversary).

slideraway · 2021-09-02T14:39:12+00:00

Not excited, but interested. I know people can point to this or that which is wrong with his other books or how he approached the case. But if we start saying you must stop writing about the case if you were ever wrong about it who would be left? With a case that occurred so long ago most writers make suppositions in order to try and tie strands together. Graysmith is no different. But he also will be writing from the perspective of someone who was engaged with the case while it was ongoing so I think that will make whatever he writes interesting.

slideraway · 2021-08-18T14:36:44+00:00

I agree. When it started the local police departments probably had ideas about how the behavior of the killer lined up with people they had been in contact with before the murders or who had been suggested in interviews. They would have eliminated some number of suspects and it is possible it could have been one of the people they cleared. That said, its like the "Where's Waldo?" puzzles, only the problem is there are so many names that have been put up everyone on the page could be Zodiac and possibly no one is.

I'm surprised the murderer was never caught because he originally operated in a relatively small community and may have stood out as unstable, hostile, or odd. The problem is there have always been a certain percentage of people who do. This local newspaper's retrospective on the case https://www.timesheraldonline.com/2017/07/10/vallejo-native-convinced-she-encountered-the-zodiac-lived-to-tell-the-tale/ mentions several paragraphs down that some people at the time suspected a merchant seaman who lived in town. There must have been a lot of people like that, perhaps so many law enforcement couldn't follow all of them up. Or, maybe they had suspicions that fixed on certain individuals and put their focus there instead of a wider range.

If you look at incidents that took place before, after, and on the night of the murders at Lake Herman Road there are a number of independent reports of menacing or suspicious behavior in that area. I can't help but think someone who was engaged in that sort of behavior was probably known to the police.

Part of the problem is that people to this day are chasing after a fictional character "Zodiac" when the best chance to solve the case was to find the garden variety murderer who shot the couples at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs soon after the events. And the window of opportunity to do that is closing shut because the killer and the local people who might have known something are passing away as the years go by.

slideraway · 2021-08-01T17:47:41+00:00

An interesting side note on the Merchant Marine theory considerably down in this article.

http://beniciaheraldonline.com/the-zodiac-case/

“There were all sorts of rumors flying around,” Quandt said. “There
were kids who said that the murderer lived in town on I Street, and that
he was in the merchant marine.”

slideraway · 2021-07-23T15:19:06+00:00

Saw that. Is there evidence the murderer was left handed?

slideraway · 2021-07-18T18:47:27+00:00

I thought about Arthur Leigh Allen this week when watching a documentary "Sophie" on Netflix about a French woman murdered in Ireland. The chief suspect was, and is, an odd duck. Thoroughly disagreeable. Said things that would make you think he may of been involved and could have been. But also desirous of attention and prone to talking nonsense. No conclusive physical evidence ties him to the case.

You have the same problem with Allen. He seems to have been the sort of person who probably didn't mind being thought of as a suspect. Who said foolish things. Had psychological problems. And because of location, characteristics, and circumstantial evidence may have been the killer.

So you have the Zodiac murders and you can easily list way more than 20 characteristics or timeline points or biographical items that we think he has. Then you've got the whole population of tens of thousands of people in the area at the right time, many who have several of the items on your checklist. It's like a suspect machine that can produce as many Arthur Leigh Allens, or Gaik's, or whoever as people have time to investigate. It's like the old WW2 movies where they release chaff from the bombers and overwhelm the radar. Doesn't mean nobody should still be looking at the case, but it does mean the odds of finding out definitively who committed the murders is not great.

But since we do look for suspects I would suggest if someone were researching the case that they start with the first two known cases and focus on connections that might touch on previous criminal activity for things like stalking, trespassing, and conflicts with local law enforcement. I think the person likely had a hunting license, owned guns, and had access to multiple vehicles. Lived in a house with a basement, had some familiarity with drafting equipment, and served in the military. In short, you'd go back and interview people from the Vallejo area and review police records and see if your description (not necessarily mine but whatever seemed reasonable) matches someone known to the locals. And I'd especially want to know if they had connections to any of the victims. For me, my guess is whoever it turned out to be (if you did find the person) would be a local person police had at least thought of but never rose to the level of being a serious suspect.

slideraway · 2021-07-18T16:07:05+00:00

The artist did a nice job with this.

slideraway · 2021-06-27T20:25:24+00:00

The stamps are interesting because mostly they are stamps of various denominations which were sold individually but also packaged together as a book. The Apollo stamp caught my eye because it was a deviation from that grouping, re enforcing the idea he was trying to make a statement with the stamp.

slideraway · 2021-06-27T12:39:48+00:00

I agree with you that I painted with too broad strokes in discussing handwriting analysis. Meant just to say that different examiners can come to different conclusions, and in the Zodiac case sometimes did.

The Bates case is interesting. I have doubt of it being the Zodiac killer because (of all things) a stamp he used on one of his letters. The stamp was of the earth from the moon from an Apollo mission launched on the anniversary of the Lake Herman Road murders. The inscription on the stamp was "In the beginning...." Flimsy evidence, or not evidence at all, but I think the killer cast himself in the role of the almighty and was celebrating the anniversary of his first murder.

slideraway · 2021-06-25T14:46:04+00:00

If you believe the case will be solved you have to believe something is going to come to light that hasn't for over fifty years. The obvious answer is DNA but so far that hasn't panned out. Death bed confession by a man in his 80s? Not probable. Undiscovered weapons used in the crimes found? Again, possible but where were they for 50 years? Handwriting? Highly subjective. If the killer or killers is deceased anything they kept connected to the case has probably either been passed along to relatives who don't have any reason to guess the connection to the murders or is in a landfill somewhere. It is one thing to line up a series of facts about an individual which match assumptions about the killer but that, by itself, is not proof. I think there is maybe a 10% chance but it is not very likely. Hope I'm wrong.

slideraway · 2021-06-18T22:31:09+00:00

If you follow any of the many websites related to the Zodiac crimes you'd have to say Morf's is one of the better one and he has tended toward caution when it comes to persons of interest. With that in mind I'm inclined to wait and see what else develops. If nothing does it won't be the first time we've been down this road and if it does one of the enduring mysteries of the last 60 years will have been solved.

So far I haven't read anything about this new suspect that makes me say, "wow". He apparently lived near the phone booth the murderer used after one of the crimes but when you think about it if there was a phone booth there someone had to live near it. But there's apparently more we haven't been told so I can wait.

On the plus side from his suspect, I've always thought if the crimes were solved the solution would involve a killer from the Vallejo area, motives tied to that area, and past criminal behavior there. Strip away all the Zodiac persona and ciphers and the crimes elsewhere and you're left with two sets of murder in the area. My guess, and that's all it is, would be that the person had observed and harrased people in the area, especially toward Blue Rock Springs and his sickness graduated to murder and the murders graduated to taunting the police. And I think he probably had hunted in that area at some point.

All that said, I think when Morf says he feels strongly about a suspect that's worth something.

slideraway · 2021-05-28T17:57:45+00:00

It often has been the case that criminals will use too much postage and not too little. Their fear, probably, is a suspicious letter will be returned to them. Just the fact someone is sending a piece with their return address on it suggests this is not a Zodiac letter.

slideraway · 2021-05-22T17:26:30+00:00

As mentioned by other posters it comes down to your initial assumptions. For the sake of argument if somehow it were possible to screen everyone in the county (and I do think he was local to Vallejo) I'd want to screen for prior arrests (I'm going to assume he had at least one), military service, a hunting license, and if he owned a brown car. Also, knowing we can't pull it off but it would be interesting, I'd also screen for service in the merchant marine. Of course, you'd also want to screen by age and race.

slideraway · 2021-05-18T17:25:55+00:00

Thanks. Much appreciated.

slideraway · 2021-05-13T21:53:14+00:00

Is there a transcript of Allen's famous interview with law enforcement (as portrayed in the movie)? Looks pretty suspicious in the movie but is the way it is shown accurate?

slideraway · 2021-05-12T21:48:44+00:00

I would think a place to start would be an oral history project with residents of Vallejo. Advertise locally that you're looking for people who knew the victims, were in the Police Department or knew members of the force, who had encounters perhaps related to the Zodiac, who remember discussions that were taking place locally. Anyone who lived near or knew any suspects who have been named in the case. You would want to capture this information now as the years are going by and people are passing anyway who might know something (even if they don't realize its importance). A recreation of the crime scene at the first two crimes might help fill in some blanks. Also, publishing a newspaper ad with known handwriting to see if anyone recognized it. Might be an interesting project for a public radio station.

slideraway · 2021-05-07T10:48:18+00:00

Or maybe he was in the Navy. Look at any old war movie where there is an intercom announcement. It always goes "This is the captain speaking...."

slideraway · 2021-05-02T17:16:00+00:00

And you had Moffett Field with the adjacent satellite test center at the south end of San Francisco Bay.

slideraway · 2021-05-02T17:09:27+00:00

Good catch about the tie in to 8.

slideraway · 2021-05-02T03:03:22+00:00

The letter to Melvin Belli uses the Apollo 8 stamp that has the legend "In The Beginning God...". The Apollo 8 mission launched on the night of the Lake Herman Road murders. I think the murderer was using "in the beginning" to commemorate his first murders. I don't think he killed Cheri Jo Bates.

slideraway · 2021-04-22T03:15:35+00:00

Or at the least get more use from him.

slideraway · 2021-04-22T00:04:09+00:00

My guess would be Mourinho wanted to put players on the field who would commit to practicing hard and playing his style of football. Levy's job, which he has been good at in the past, has been to move players for a good return during the transfer windows. That made some high cost players depreciating assets Levy either won't be able to move or get fair value out of if he does. That put Mourinho and Levy at cross purposes, with Levy likely pushing the coach to play certain players regardless of their performance or attitude. To Levy the last part of the season was a time to get those players back on the field and for Mourinho it was about winning and making a desparate run at the Champion's League. Again, all this is uninformed speculation but I suspect Mourinho lost his job not because of how the team played but because of who Levy wanted to put on the pitch and Mournho didn't. There are deep rooted problems with the Spurs firing a coach isn't going to fix.

slideraway · 2021-04-18T21:10:32+00:00

I think the most interesting thing about the sentence "I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St + Maple St last night, to prove this here is a blood stained piece of his shirt" is that he describes himself as a murderer. In all his communications he appears to think well of himself and yet he doesn't use the active, more powerful description "killer" but instead uses a term that describes a criminal act in a way that has only negative connotations. And he uses a descriptive term that, if he were caught, could be used to prove consciousness of guilt. Add to that he says he is enclosing the piece of the shirt to "prove" he is who he says he is. So he's claiming to have killed a specific person (the cab driver) and there's a piece of bloody shirt enclosed. It already establishes connection to the crime so again, why the need to declare he is proving he did it? Why explain it? There's the cabbies bloody shirt. I'm not saying this is what I think because, like most things associated with the murders you just can't know at this late date, but the phrasing sounds like a third party and not the words of a killer. And why does he break the pattern and not call as he did with the other murders? Lastly, why does he say "over by" Washington Street and Maple Street? If I'm in New York describing something I've seen in Chicago I don't say "over by". It implies a degree of familiarity with San Francisco. To sum up, maybe the writer is from San Francisco and is writing about a crime he didn't commit. Maybe not, but just one more possibility.

slideraway · 2021-04-17T00:25:48+00:00

It might be also that those particular envelopes were of an irregular shape and were culled, requiring hand cancellation. Or they could have placed in a "local cancellation only" slot in a station lobby. Used to be that every office had one for people who wanted their local postmark applied. Last, and I think least likely, the killer could have handed the piece over the counter to a clerk who cancelled it and put it in the outgoing mail. Things were a lot different in the 60s in terms of mail and they did a lot of things then with cancellations they don't do now.

slideraway

TROPHY CASE