Gary S. Rishel was questioned in connection with the case. Apparently, he wasn’t charged with Gardner’s murder, as the next article I can find (from Oct. 12 ’69) states…

"VAN NUYS (UPI) — A 25 year-old electronic technician who pleaded guilty to being a freeway sniper was fined $500 and placed on five years probation in Superior Court.

He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon."

BTW, I doubt those were accidental shots from the firing range, or that range wouldn’t have stayed open for long, lol. EDIT: Reading again, I see that cartridges were eventually recovered.

Another article on Rishel.

Wow, great findings, Coffee Time! Thanks!

Let’s have another look on the Dripping Pen Card..

http://servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=1310&u=14945813

Confirmed victims, so far, were a total of five:

Dec – Jensen/Faraday
July – Ferrin
Sept – Shephard
Oct – Stine

If we take his claims seriously, Z did not count the injured victims Hartnell and Mageau. Although this would make a total of seven, it lacks of his claim that he had been active in August as well ("Dec July Aug Sep Oct"). Thus we may assume that Z had only counted the victims who had indeed died. We may for a moment accept that he had been active not only in Dec, July, Sept and Oct but also in August. According to the order of the months he had written on the card, it may also be assumed that Z had meant the August in 1969. Furthermore, Z did not claim any killings in August on the Shephard/Hartnell car door, yet.

According to this, we must assume that Z had two more victims in August of 1969. If we take the LaBianca/Polanski/Shea Los Angeles murders as Z-unrelated, only the Furlong/Snoozy killings would remain. However, Karl Francis Werner, who has confessed to the Bilek murder with the murder weapon even being found on his property, also confessed to the Furlong/Snoozy killings. Even before he had given his confession, police assumed a relation between the Furlong/Snoozy and the Bilek murders. So let’s assume that Werner was responsible for Furlong/Snoozy, too.

So far, I do not know about any other killings in California during August 1969 either. If we take the claims of Z and Werner for granted, there must be somehow another explanation for the two additional Z victims of August 1969. Indeed, there are one or two theories regarding such two murders:

1. At the time of the Dripping Pen Card, the victims had not yet been found.
2. At the time of the Lake Berryessa attack, Z did not want the police to know about the August murders (it’d be double information and thus lower the impact of the Lake Berryessa attack or it would tell the police too much information about his other whereabouts)
3. Any double homicide may have occurred outside of California, like Z had later claimed to also have committed crimes in ‘Na’ (Nevada? Nebraska?)

I therefore wonder if there were any couples missing (instead of being found) in August 1969? Eventually being reported as missing persons individually?
Or if there had been any couples found multiple years later, possibly in another state and without knowing that they might have had been Z victims?

QT

Bus Bomb Letter: "This is the Zodiac speaking up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people."

Dec – Jensen/Faraday
July – Ferrin
Sept – Shephard
Oct – Stine, Cheri Jo Bates

Possibly one in August.

True..so there’d be only one in August..

@Soze:

August 1969 were the following:

Deborah Gay ‘Debbie’ Furlong, Kathy Reyne Snoozy
Leno LeBianca, Rosemary LeBianca, Sharon Marie Tate Polanski, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowsky, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Donald ‘Shorty’ Jerome Shea

Not many in California I know about..however this one, in Lompoc:

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showth … ngs-Aug-69 (slit throat like CJB, stabbed like Cecilia Shephard)
Book about the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Q%22_Is_for_Quarry

Or this one, floatin’ around for a while:
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/115 … cumstances

Or a girl from Castaic area, close to LA:
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/299 … nformation

This one could have putrefied since August, too (Marine County):
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/12133?page=images

Or this one if you make 7 months instead of 9..
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/770 … nformation

Another one from Marine County:
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/121 … mographics

Hiking on Mt. Whittier:
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/299 … cumstances

Some folded cash found on this one:
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/246 … cumstances

Buried but came up again:
https://www.identifyus.org/en/cases/246 … mographics

Please excuse any sarcasm, wasn’t meant to be as bad as it may sound..nevertheless it is somehow ironic that bodies are found everywhere in Calif..

QT

Yeah, I just figured that they were the Werner victims. He hadn’t been caught yet at the time and wasn’t that pretty much what the police thought saying something like "those were the only unsolved homicides in the area for that month." Maybe BS on that last part, but I don’t buy Z for being part of the Manson Family, especially not claiming their actual crimes if he really was. and he never claimed any "down south" other than Bates, which is not exactly LAC.

I agree with this.

Since Zodiac didn’t write these (or any) August victims on Bryan’s car door…I call any August killings bs.

We are making the assumption that Z "victims" need to be kills. But it could be that Z also considered survivors Mageau and Hartnell to be victims as well.

Basically, when Z shoots Mageau and stabs Hartnell multiple times, he thinks he has killed them. Is it in his personality to later admit failure, by removing them from his victim count? As in, "Well, I tried to kill these 7 helpless people, but I only managed to get 5 of them, and botched the other two…" His count gives himself a large number, SFPD zero, and I’m not thinking he’s giving (whether stated or not) survivors credit for surviving.

My scenario is this: The 7 are the ones we know about, including the 2 who lived, and as he’s writing the months he wants to scare people into thinking he’s escalating his activities dramatically, prowling almost constantly. So he lists January for LHR, then with BRS he becomes full-time Z, and lists that month and each month after.

And then he stops.

That is a good theory, however none of them had been attacked in August.

This is why I actually think Z is talking about killings..considering CJB as Z’s "Riverside activity", there’d be one more..and CJB wasn’t even the ‘first’. In fact something appears to be unprecise in here, somehow. Either he had killed one person before CJB or he had one in August (1969?). Otherwise it’d be a total of 8 people.

Guess he had differed somehow between his Riverside activities and his Bay area Dec/July/Aug/Sept/Oct activities. In that case, Z would have killed two more people in August, somewhere in the region..but what do I know, everything is possible. Nevertheless I wonder about his note regarding August as we don’t know anything about it, so far.

QT