Downloaded. Working on 101-150 for now.
Great. Thanks.
In particular I am interested in any and all mentions of Zodius, Roebert and crime scene details
MODERATOR
Mr. Robinson was trying to start a "computer services warehouse and cultural centre" near an airport. He was negotiating with a Mr. Jeffers who was already in that business to bring in up to 100 million in investment. It is clear from the reports (p101-105) that Jeffers does not trust Robinson and vice-versa. Jeffers suspects Robinson of wanting to steal his business with a fraudulent investment.
There is a Mullerhagen or Mullenhagen who was hired by Robinson in January 68 and seems to be the intermediary with the financial backer(s). The early reports suggest that the backer is in St-Louis.
Page 121 is a letter from Michigan State Police to the Monterey, California PD, asking for information on the potential backer, a Mr. Roebert, and five others identified on an attached memo. Unfortunately, the attached memo seems to be missing from the file. One of Robinson’s former employees, a Mr. Pohl is now apparently in Monterey working for KSVW-TV, and is said to have information on Mr. Roebert.
The letter specifies that "Mr. Roebert was to call for Mr. Robinson and family by private jet on the day of the murder".
Thoughts: Mr. Robinson was involved in some very shady dealings with some very shady people. Or, he was the victim of a fairly long con that culminated in an ambush killing of the whole family at their cottage. A hundred million seems like a ridiculously large amount for 1968, and the private jet trip is a good lure to get everyone together in one place. More to come.
Monterey Police sent the inquiry to Salinas PD where Pohl was a resident. Incidentally, Pohl reports being in that area of California in 63-64, back to Michigan in 65, and then to Salinas again starting in early 68.
Pohl is interviewed (P. 130) about Roebert and the names of backers from a group apparently calling themselves "The Superior Table". He denies any knowledge of Roebert. The other names are (all apparently last names): Fisher, Joseph, Richard, Thomas, Peters, Martin. Fisher may be the one that doesn’t appear on the Superior Table, but is identified by Pohl as possibly a large stockholder and member of the board of Ford Motor Company.
Pohl associates both Richard and Thomas with WJR radio in Detroit. He is less sure about the others.
He says he doesn’t know anyone with a private jet. However, for some reason, he volunteers that he knows many people in the Detroit Mafia, but that he doesn’t know that any of them had any business dealings with Robinson.
Pohl is the second source to strongly hint that Robinson is active in a local gay underground and that part of his publishing activities and warehouse business plan may be part of this.
Here is something interesting on p. 208. A few days before the murders, in the same area, the son of some neighbours was killed in a motorcycle accident. The young man’s grand-mother reports that a rope was strung across the road. TK wrote about ambushing and killing motorcyclists around his cabin. I remember seeing more details on the motorcycle death earlier in the file (minus the rope). I will look back.
p. 211-212
RE Peters from the Superior Table list: The Pastor of the church the Robinsons attended was Harvey Peters, with a brother named Edmund, who is considering going to work for Robinson. Pastor describes Robinson as "a brilliant and determined individual; also he had a split personality and he always wanted to be a top man".
The name Peters was found on a note in Robinson’s wallet.
AK Wilks and The Mist thank you so much for this!
AK Wilks and The Mist thank you so much for this!
You are very welcome. Glad people are interested.
MODERATOR
Here is something interesting on p. 208. A few days before the murders, in the same area, the son of some neighbours was killed in a motorcycle accident. The young man’s grand-mother reports that a rope was strung across the road. TK wrote about ambushing and killing motorcyclists around his cabin. I remember seeing more details on the motorcycle death earlier in the file (minus the rope). I will look back.
If you or anyone else find any material that might be very specific to TK, post it in the TK section. Wire stringing is something TK did, but others might have done it as well (though I know of nobody else who was doing this back then). It seems the Robison family murderer also hated loud motorcyclists, something that fits both Zodiac, whoever he was, and TK specifically.
Excellent! Glad you found this in the police report. That confirms memories from local residents and family members, but I never had anything official until you found this just now. Zodiac hated loud motorcycles – remember he complained in his letter that police could have caught him if they weren’t too busy making noise racing their motorcycles. Ted K also hated loud motorcycles. He did indeed string cables to injure or kill motorcyclists, and he was one of the very few, if not the only one, doing this in the late 1960’s, and someone did do this near the Robison cabin right before the murders.
A few days before the fatal motorcycle accident near the Robison cabin, a car hit a cable strung over the road between trees. The driver also noticed someone had spilled oil on the road near the cable, as if the saboteur figured if a motorcyclist swerved or braked to avoid hitting the cable wire, he could cause him to crash by going over the slippery oil slick.
I do remember Ted Kaczynski talking about stringing wires and/or cables from tree to tree in nature areas, with the goal of maiming or killing the "noisy polluting" snowmobilers and motorcyclists he hated.
Can anyone direct me to a link or source that mentions those entries in Ted’s journal? I can’t seem to find it.
I ask because it appears in the weeks prior to the Robison Murders, in the same exact area, someone strung a cable from tree to tree over a dirt road, damaging a car. In this same time period a motorcyclist died, and some suspect he was killed by a similar type of cable.
This is a post from http://www.thegoodhartmurders.forummotions.com .
I cannot yet verify it as true, but I have no reason to doubt its accuracy. There was a motorcyclist killed right before the Robison Family Murders, and it was very close to the cottage. Mr. Robison did know the deceased. The fact that someone was stringing cables in this area is very interesting, in light of the fact that Ted Kaczynski recorded doing the exact same thing, with the stated intent to kill motorcyclists.
A new book "Corroborating Evidence III" by William T. Rasmussen contains evidence that the Zodiac Killer should be considered a possible suspect in the Robison Murders case, and one item of evidence is that someone, with inside knowledge of the crime, sent a tip to police asking the name ZODIUS to appear in the newspaper as a signal. Ted Kaczynski is a leading suspect to be the Zodiac Killer, and had lived in Michigan for 5 years, from 1962 – 1967. Given his fondness for wilderness areas and hunting, he may well have explored this area of Northern Michigan, but that is speculation on my part. Ted’s brother Dave told me that Ted "had a cabin in the woods north of San Francisco" that he used for "hunting", when he was a professor at Berkeley. It would not surprise me if Ted had something similar, a cabin in the north woods, when he was a student and TA at the University of Michigan.
http://thegoodhartmurders.forummotions. … hat-summer
Strange Events from that summer
warrior1978 on Thu Oct 21, 2010 1:13 pm
I guess I will tell my family’s story as it was relayed to me many years ago. Some of what I will write about was mentioned or alluded to in the two books I read about the murders, I do not know if any or all of it is the original police reports.
As my father and mother told me the story, the same summer the Robison family was murdered two strange things occurred to them. One summer afternoon they were driving along Lakeshore Drive (I believe or another nearby road) near Blisswood when as they came around a corner of the road, their vehicle hit an outstretched cable damaging the front end of the car. I believe my father mentioned there was oil in the road as well. They left the scene and returned a short time later with a police officer however the cable had been removed. A short time after this occurred, my cousin was killed in a motorcycle crash near Blisswood. This was mentioned in the book. Although he was drunk at the time, my father was convinced that the crash was not an accident and that cable that my father struck was intended for my cousin. I believe my cousin’s father (Chauncey) blamed Dick Robison for something or another as it related to the death of my cousin.
The same day or within a day or two when the Robison family was thought to have been murdered, it was evening and my parents were on the beach very close to the Robison cabin. As my father told the story, he and my mother were relaxing on the beach and my father was shooting at seagulls with a .38 revolver. It grew darker and at some point my father and mother saw a lantern in the woods. My father believing it was Richard Robison called out in the direction of the lantern, “is that you Richard?” and then the lantern went out.
I asked my father in he ever reported any of this to the investigators and he said yes. I’ve always wondered if his stories were ever considered or addressed in the police reports.
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AK Wilks: Found a reference to Ted Kaczynski setting traps to kill motorcycle drivers, they sound very similar if not identical to what was found in Good Hart near the Robison cottage:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/199 … -unabomber
Book Links Unabomber To Sabotage
March 14, 1999|By New York Times
LINCOLN, Mont. – Theodore Kaczynski won notoriety as the Unabomber, the evil genius who mailed deadly pipe bombs to scientists and corporate targets.
But in this mountain village detective work is giving Kaczynski a new notoriety: as a pioneer for environmental sabotage. Starting in 1975, a decade before Earth First made “monkeywrenching” a household term, Kaczynski opened a local front in his one-man war against what he called the octopus of technology.
Roaming in a 25-mile radius from his cabin here, Lincoln’s environmental radical, according to several sources, booby-trapped motorcycle trails with wires strung between trees, sabotaged mining machinery with sand, burned logging equipment, poured sugar into snowmobile gas tanks and destroyed vacation cabins with ax blows.
The account of this 20-year trail of sabotage comes from two letters Kaczynski wrote from prison in January, an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a new book by a neighbor, Chris Waits.
In 1982, according to Waits’ book, Kaczynski smashed up a vacation home and destroyed a motorcycle and four snowmobiles.
One week later, two deputy sheriffs knocked on his cabin door. “I was so cool and collected in answering cops questions,” Kaczynski boasted in an entry decoded 14 years later by the FBI. Noting that the police never returned – and that his neighbors did not resume snowmobiling that winter – he wrote: “Who says crime doesn’t pay? I feel very good about this.”
JEM: Chris Waits, in his book "UNABOMBER The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski", has two undated entries from Ted’s journals:
At the end of Summer ’75 after the roaring by of motorcycles near my camp spoiled a hike for me, I put a piece of wire across a trail where cycle-tracks were visible, at about neck height for a motorcyclist. (Next summer I found someone had wrapped the wire safely around a tree. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone was injured by it.)
Summer ’77…I strung a neck-wire for motorcyclists along the divide trail above [location]. Later I found the wire was gone. Whether it hurt anyone I don’t know.
The two above entries are from page 206. On page 204 you can find an interesting entry from Ted’s coded journals. In this journal entry Ted talks about acts of vandalism he’s committed, and about being questioned by the police concerning crimes in the area and whether he’s had any problems with motorcyclists. He writes that he doesn’t think the police seriously suspect him, and that he’s pleased with how cool and collected he was while speaking with the officers.
DREAMNINE: From the Robison family murder thread on Topix, Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came To Good Hart writes:
Here’s what I know about the tripwire: I looked and looked and there’s no police report on it. The only official documentation on it is reporter John Clock’s notarized statement that he gave to Noggle (this whole statement is in the Petoskey Library file if anyone wants to read it in its entirety). However, some locals talk about it as if it really happened. The statement of this event in the book is a quote from Clock. My own opinion is that Monnie would never try to hurt anyone, especially his own son. If a tripwire were put across the road, I don’t believe that it was done by Monnie.
MODERATOR
P 223
Investigating officers suspect that Roebert is an alias for Raymond E Britt, husband of Robinson’s former secretary, and Chairman of the Board of Central States Industrial Sales Company, among others. Very wealthy. Connected to California and Florida. Jealous of an alleged relationship between Robinson and his former secretary.
The file doesn’t note it, but "Raymond E Britt" has everything you need to create "Roebert".
P 227
Gail Rector, President of the Musical Society at UofM. Friend of Robinson since about 1965, and in the "winter and spring of 1968 had been spending considerable time with RCR working on plans for the expansion of the circulation of the magazine". He was a bassoonist.
TK was a musician. Was he involved with the Society?
Gail Rector links:
Who is Dr. Guidini?
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
Who is Dr. Guidini?
QT
That’s the million dollar question! There is no superhero, supervillain or comic book character named "Dr. Guidini". William T. Rasmussen, author of Corroborating Evidence III, thinks that Zodius, Dr. Guidini and Mr. Roebert, the mysterious man from San Francisco, who had the whole Robison family gathered at the cabin waiting for him to arrive, who spoke in the robotic, monotone voice, are all one and the same person, and he thinks he killed the Robisons, Valerie Percy and was also the Zodiac.
To see what I think "Dr. Guidini" means, and who it could be an alias for, go here: viewtopic.php?f=102&t=993&p=73436#p73436
MODERATOR
I know this doesn’t quite fit but I thought I would post it anyways.
P. 281-289
Detectives interview a couple of hardened criminals. One (originally from Birmingham AL) implies they were hired by Scolaro to murder the Robinsons at their cottage. The other (local, possible last name Mathew) doesn’t deny it and confirms some details. The alleged murderers recover a briefcase full of bearer bonds from the cottage. Investigators confirm with Jeffers that the briefcase looks like the one Robinson carried to their meetings.
Whatever it was, seems to have been an elaborate operation, with cars bought cash and disposed of after the trip to northern Michigan etc. IMO, of all the confessions in the file so far, this is the most convincing.
Like in almost any big case, there were several false confessions. All the so-called confessions in this case were ruled false, with no actual evidence linking the confessors to the crime scene. If there was the slightest truth to them and any evidence at all to back them up, they would have been prosecuted. The investigation focused on Scolaro, and eventually they developed tunnel vision and didn’t seriously look at anyone else. And they never solved the mystery of who was Roebert or Zodius.
MODERATOR
