The Zodiac Killer...maybe?

Isn't there a thread about this already? I remember seeing photos from the roll of film that was found. They were definitely creepy...
 
Bumping due to recent interest in Zodiac on this board. There are several different threads on the subject.
 
...indicating that maybe the Zodiac should have a forum to consolidate all the different threads. Mods? :)
 
...indicating that maybe the Zodiac should have a forum to consolidate all the different threads. Mods? :)

I concur with your recommendation. There are several different threads in Cold Cases which discuss Zodiac. Perhaps they could all be brought together as threads in a featured topic case.
 
I agree it would be nice to have a subforum or some way to combine the threads together.

I had to search to find this one. Today Show is doing a feature on Zodiac this am so I came looking for it. lol

wm
 
I have always felt that there may have been more than one serial killer responsible for the murders generally credited to Zodiac. And I think that the guy who wrote the Zodiac letters may have taken credit for killings that he did not commit, just to boost his standing with the police and public.

I have often wondered myself if the individual who wrote the Zodiac letters had actually committed any murder at all.
 
The man who wrote the letters was the killer.

Several times he gave info only the killer would know, and in two letters he enclosed a bit of the bloody shirt of Cab driver and Zodiac victim Paul Stine.
 
The man who wrote the letters was the killer.

Several times he gave info only the killer would know, and in two letters he enclosed a bit of the bloody shirt of Cab driver and Zodiac victim Paul Stine.


In my 2008 post which was quoted recently, I stated that I thought that there may have been more than one killer. It IS possible, as KarlK suggests that the writer of all the letters might not have killed at all.

However, the big stumbling block as you point out, is that bit of bloody shirt. IF the writer did not kill anyone at all, he had to have obtained the shirt piece from the person who did kill Paul Stine.

It is true that the writer, who named himself the Zodiac, did come forward with some facts about early cases which were not known to the general public. His earliest letters could be matched to later ones by the handwriting, excessive postage, and by the inclusion of pieces of Paul Stine's shirt.

That said, Zodiac the writer made some false claims and promises in his letters which show him to be a liar. This is most noticible in his "score" tallies. For example:

- On 9 November 1969, Zodiac claims to have killed 7 people in the previous December, July, AUGUST, September, and October. This was the beginning of his score keeping. In FACT, the only two unsolved homicides for August were Kathy Snoozy and Deborah Furlong. Those murders were later solved and another man was convicted of committing them.

- On 27 December 1969, He claims an eighth murder. There were two unsolved cases at the time, but Zodiac gives no details whatsoever.

- 22 March 1970, Kathleen Johns and her baby are abducted by a man whom she believes resembles an artist sketch of Zodiac. There is NO mention of the incident by Zodiac for months. He writes four letters before he bothers to mention and take credit for it. Everything he states about it has already been reported in the papers - nothing added by Z.

- 19 April 1970, He claims a total of 10. Again no details at all.

- 26 June 1970, He now claims a total of 12 killed, and indicates that he has killed a man sitting in a car with a .38 pistol. In fact, a police officer had been shot in such a manner, but by the time the letter arrived, police had already issued an arrest warrant for the man who actually did it.

Zodiac indicated on two occasions that a bomb would be set off and it never occurred.

24 July 1970, He claims 13 killed, and again on 5 October 1970, it is still 13.

BUT in the meanwhile, on 26 September 1970, Donna Lass goes missing from Lake Tahoe. Months later, he hints that he is responsible in his "Peek through the Pines" card of 22 March 1971.

When Reporter Paul Avery makes a connection between the Zodiac and the murder of Cherri Jo Bates in Riverside, Ca back in 1966, Zodiac takes credit for it and says that there are many more. He ups his "score" to 17 plus. Again no details what so ever.

My point is that Zodiac the writer liked to play games and he lied a lot. SO what can you believe in ANY of his writings? He obviously took credit for crimes that he did not do, and he did not claim others that Graysmith suspects him of doing.

There are a number of still unsolved murders in California which are related to each other. BUT whether or not they were committed by the same guy who killed Paul Stine is hard to say.

Again, it is my feeling that there were more than one serial killer active in California back then and many of the possible Zodiac Victims may have been murdered by others.

Zodiac gave himself a lot of press and built himself a legend. I think that he probably did kill people, but I think that he was much more into writing and game playing. There are a lot of unsolved cases and a lot of loose ends.
 
January 26, 2004 -- A new suspect in San Francisco's notorious "Zodiac Killer" case was discharged from Vietnam and returned to California just three months before the unsolved serial murders began, The Post has learned.

Convicted hit man William Mentzer saw heavy combat in Vietnam when he was just 18 and 19 years old - and suffered from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder when he returned in 1968.

In prison interviews with The Post, Mentzer, 54, said he liked to taunt enemy North Vietnamese soldiers by taking pictures of their dead comrades.

The new revelations come in the wake of a Post report that the San Francisco district attorney found "compelling" links between Mentzer and the police profile of the never-caught Zodiac Killer - who taunted cops in letters as he brutally murdered five people and severely wounded two others in the Bay Area in the late '60s.

Mentzer is serving life sentence without parole for the 1983 Los Angeles murder of New York theatrical producer Roy Radin and the 1984 slaying of prostitute June Mincher.

Full Story from the New York Post
Wasnt there some pretty well founded suspicions(mostly from Maury Terry's research) that he may very well have played a role in some of the Son Of Sam killings as well?
I for one wouldnt be at all surprised if the Zodiac and Sam cases werent periphally connected through occult weirdo channels.
 
Maury Terry had some interesting information on the Son of Sam case but he totally trashed his credibility by going of on the tangent of trying to link Mentzer, who was hired to kill Ray Rudin, to Son of Sam, the Process Church and various other evil occultists.

From what I read, the Mentzer-Zodiac ling was based on nothing more than "profile". There was nothing to actually tie him to the crimes.
 
Maury Terry had some interesting information on the Son of Sam case but he totally trashed his credibility by going of on the tangent of trying to link Mentzer, who was hired to kill Ray Rudin, to Son of Sam, the Process Church and various other evil occultists.

From what I read, the Mentzer-Zodiac ling was based on nothing more than "profile". There was nothing to actually tie him to the crimes.
I beleive the Son of Sam killings were indeed carried out by Berkowitz and a group of Satan bent cultists but I too doubt the size of the conspiracy he was suggesting.
 
This is the only case I have ever seen that is solved like once every few months. lol What Happend to the last guy that found his dad's stash .Didn't he find a bloody knife a pair of glasses and the executiner's mask / hood . Where did he go ?
 
Sadly, there is no shortage of people claiming the Zodiac case is solved,and many of them are pretty shady people. If you are interested in Zodiac case discussion regarding suspects, victims, clues,etc, check out the site at:
http://zodiackillersite.forummotion.com/
 
This attempt at a profile of Zodiac is highly speculative and I can't make any claim that it is in any wise factual or probable--just a possibility, something to keep in mind.

If my speculation is anywhere close to being correct, none of the main suspects such as Arthur Leigh Allen, Andy Walker or Larry Kane could have been Zodiac because they were too old. Allen was born in 1933 and Kane was born in 1924. Too old. I'll explain as you read.

Zodiac suffers from a homicidal psychosis that manifests itself in the teenage years. He may have started killing immediately but probably started off torturing animals, stalking girls or possibly rape or child molestation. In Zodiac's case, he likely discovered that he is not capable of nomral sexual relations--he is inadequate in that regard. He gets off by dominating a victim but cannot dominate them sexually, which probably enrages him. by his early teens, his psychosis manifests itself as full-blown homicide.

So he hates the sight of happy love-crossed couples. They too enrage him because he feels this is a simple pleasure that others indulge in freely but which, for some reason, was denied to him. So he takes great pleasure in attacking couples and dominating them (i.e. binding them, stabbing them, shooting them, beating them).

But he hates women especially and enjoys killing them more than men. He likely has severe issues with his mother or a mother-figure in his past. His sexual impotency is in some way related to her due to a relationship that must have been extremely abusive and traumatic for him. It is doubtful that Zodiac has ever had sex with a woman and is not capable of it.
 
As a boy, Zodiac lost himself in stories, movies and certain types of music such as opera because they enabled him to play roles where he could be someone else other than the sad, pathetic, traumatized, damaged soul that he is. We know from his letters that he is a big fan of "The Mikado" by Gilbert & Sullivan and likely fancies himself as the character of Koko the Lord High Executioner whose song ("I've Got a Little List") he quotes at length. the role he fantasizes for himself is "The Master." He wants to be master of the universe.

Zodiac did time in the military, probably the Navy or possibly the Air Force. He demonstrates military-style manners on numerous occasions including his knowledge of weapons and ammunition, his taping of a small flashlight to his pistol for better aim, his excellent marksmanship, his knowledge of bomb-building, his knowledge of staying undercover until the moment of the kill, his affinity for Wing Walker shoes (distributed to both Naval and Air Force personnel), his sewing ability, his knot-tying ability, and some of his rhetoric is military. He was probably in the military when he murdered Cheri Jo Bates and was probably stationed at nearby March Air Force Base. He was certainly still in the military or connected with it in some way by the time he came to San Francisco. He is far too familiar with the Presidio, an Army base. He is also connected to people who had worked at the Presidio. He is not likely to be a career military man as he is too much of a loner for that kind of life. Yet he deliberately keeps up a clean-cut Navy-type appearance. The Navy gave him discipline and order, something he needed and could put to good use.

In the Navy, Zodiac probably learned surveying and cartography. Measuring and plotting seem to be his cup of tea. Perhaps he was a navigator as well. This would make sense. A man calling himself Zodiac probably at least at one time made his living by reading the positions of stars. Zodiac fancies himself a hunter and hunters also use the stars to track.

Kathleen Johns, an attempted victim of Zodiac who managed to escape him, stated: “…I remember thinking he may have been a service man or something. He was that kind of clean-cut.” She also noticed his shoes were spit-shined (having been in the Navy, I learned such shoes were called coraframs as I had owned several pairs and their extremely polished appearance is built-in). “They were like Navy shoes,” she said. “His general appearance, come to think of it, was Navy.” He wore a blue-black nylon windbreaker over black bell-bottom trousers.

The bell-bottoms appear to be part of the black service jumper called “service dress blues”, “blue crackerjacks”, “black crackerjacks” or just “black (or blue) crackers” (as far as the Navy itself is concerned, Navy blue is really black and not a shade of blue at all). He also wore black, thick-rimmed glasses that are probably those that are issued to recruits in boot camp. I had a pair myself. They are ungainly looking and are jokingly called “birth-control glasses”. They are the only glasses one is allowed to wear in boot camp although one can wear most any type of glasses after boot camp. Only the truly gung-ho continue to wear them after getting out of boot camp. Such people are contemptuously called “lifers” because they usually stay in the Navy for life although it is doubtful that Zodiac was a lifer. Zodiac’s glasses had a kind of machinist’s strap that went around the back of the head. I don't think we can doubt it: Zodiac had been a Navy man.
 
Bob Graysmith brings up interesting points that are worth considering. For example, Zodiac may be from Britain or his mother may have come from Britain. He tends to use British-type rhetoric and spellings (“Happy Christmas”, “boughten”, “clews”, etc.). However, he so often deliberately misspells words that it is difficult to say with any certainty. One would think that his rhetoric would sound familiar to someone who had known him and who had read his letters in the papers (such as in the case of the Unabomber). Yet, no one came forward. This may indicate that he has no family in the United States.

His phone calls to the police and his conversation with Bryan Hartnell prior to his attack betrayed no British accent but he might have learned to disguise it. On April 19, 1970, a man named Christopher Edwards stopped near the corner of Bay Street and the Embarcadero in San Francisco to ask directions to Fisherman’s Wharf from a man sitting in his car. The man began rambling about the crime rate in San Francisco. He talked of the murders that had occurred in the city that year but neglected any mention of the Zodiac murders, which were by far the most sensational. Edwards found the whole thing completely odd and declined a lift from the man. According to Edwards, the man spoke with a British accent and had told him that he was a British engineer who had been living in San Francisco for the last ten years. Edwards identified the same composite as had Kathleen Johns as being the man he had spoken to.

We are reasonably certain that Zodiac has had some engineering. Could he be British as well? Of course, he would have had to become an American citizen if he served in the U. S. military. But this raises another interesting point: the watch found at the murder scene of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside in 1966 was the same type that were sold at military bases in Britain. Zodiac, then, may have picked up his anglophile tendencies while actually stationed in England. The S.F. patrolman who spotted a man now thought to be Zodiac (since Zodiac ID'd himself as that man in a letter) walking away from the Stine murder scene stated that the man’s general physical appearance was common among the Welsh. This could be an excellent clue in narrowing our list of suspects.
 

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