The Robison family murders are the number 2 most likely unverified Zodiac attack after Cheri Jo. Change my mind.
I looked at this case about a year ago, and I was intrigued by the name "Zodius", but ultimately I was unimpressed. Now, thanks to AK Wilks, my eyes have been opened, not to Ted, I’m not going there, but to this being a better Zodiac crime than you don’t remember.
It seems I didn’t look far enough into it and I wonder if others have made the same mistake? I had a fundamental misunderstanding about what had occurred regarding the tipster’s letter and after having this understanding corrected, by AK Wilks, I now find the case far more compelling. More compelling in fact than any other possible Zodiac attack, with the exception of Bates.
Looking only at the evidence available, on paper, to me it looks a lot better than Domigos Edwards, or Ray Davis, and a damn sight better than any of the others.
So I’m wondering why there’s so little love for this case?
I’ll explain my misunderstanding of the case, as I think it may be part of the reason others have dismissed it. The case has been discussed on various threads, but in many of these threads a key detail is often obscured.
Most discussions of the topic talk about how the police received a letter from a tipster, who wrote that they had information that they would reveal, if a classified ad, containing a cryptic message, was placed in the paper. Part of the message contained the name, or moniker, "Zodius". At the time it seemed curious, but police get loads of weird tips, so really I wasn’t all that impressed.
The problem is, that’s not what happened according to a reporter. The police are quoted as saying that the letter from the tipster already contained information about the killing, information interesting enough to make police place the personal ad twice. AK Wilks has intimated that he has reason to believe the information provided to police, prior to any ads being placed, was of a nature only the killer would know. I would love to hear more about AK Wilks source, but I’m prepared to believe it, since the quote in the newspaper below seems to support this belief.
I don’t know about you, but I think that makes all the difference in the world. There is a big difference between a tip asking for a cryptic message to be published and a tip containing information about the murder and then saying more will be given, if the newspaper publishes the cryptic message. Do you see the difference? In the first scenario it could be any hoaxer, in the second it’s probably the killer, and not just any killer, a very familiar one. It shows that this tipster was either the killer, or someone very close to them and I think if you read the subtext you’d have to agree that it probably wasn’t his wife. Only the killer would behave like such a jackass in not just handing over all the information. What good would the cryptic classified ad do for an innocent informer?
Notice I haven’t mentioned the ammo being the same, or the stacking of bodies. I don’t consider those things to be in the same league as the other evidence. Zodiac can buy whatever ammo he likes. What I consider special is the moniker and the penchant for cryptic messages in newspapers.
When all we have in a case is ammo and MO, I can understand relying on those factors to inform our opinions, but to my mind evidence like a similar moniker and the writing of cryptic letters for publishing in a newspaper, just dwarfs these forms of evidence. I don’t care if he beat them to death with a rubber duck if he called himself Zodius .
We don’t say about the Stine case, "well, he had a piece of Stine’s shirt, buuuut it’s not a .22 calibre, sooooo I guess it’s a hoaxer?".
The other striking part of the story is the report that a suspicious stranger by the name of Roebert called in the days prior to the attack and spoke in a distinctly "robotic" voice. This is in the police report and it seems it was an outstanding detail, since great pains are gone to to describe it’s distinctive character.
According to Scientific American, there are between 25 and 50 serial killers who are active in the United States at any given time. Of those 50, how many of them do you think would be using a moniker that contained the letters "Zodic"? Could be more than one, but I don’t like those odds.
People talk so enthusiastically about other cases simply because they happened at around the right period, in the right location and have a vaguely similar MO. I get looking in the Zodiacs backyard, but this case gets dismissed despite having circumstances that trivialize concerns over MO, and location.
I know AK Wilks and others have written a lot about this already and I’m not trying to repeat those threads. I wanted to start a thread that looked at this case, but also as a larger conversation about how we go ranking evidence and comparing cases.
I dismissed this case because it seemed superficially absurd, I mean Michigan, a whole family, some random tipster, some knock off Zodius? If it was our Z, why didn’t he just go the whole hog and call himself "Zodiac", what’s with cheap knock-off? But that was before I understood just how likely it is Zodius was the killer and that he, the killer, wrote a letter to police asking them to publish a cryptic message in the newspaper. I don’t think that should even be call a coincidence, it’s more accurate to say that it is favourably comparible to the Zodiac. Coincidence implies luck, or chance. This isn’t chance, it’s just flat out really really similar, but not quite the same. That’s something else.
Basically you have three reasonable options:
1) The whole thing is a prankster. The letter to the police didn’t actually contain sensitive information. Since we don’t have the letter, we can’t assess the accuracy of the newspaper report. Forum members who claim the letter contained information only the killer could know are speculating.
2) The newspaper report is probably accurate and the subtext does imply the information received by police was likely from the killer, but there was simply two killers operating around the same time with a similar name.
3) The newspaper report is probably accurate and the subtext does imply the information received by police was likely from the killer. The killer called themselves Zodius. The Zodius killer asked that a cryptic message be placed in the newspaper. The Zodius killer is likely The Zodiac killer.
I’d love to hear what people think about the coincidences and how this stacks in comparison to coincidences in the other cases.
Don’t know this one. I’ll read up on it. To my mind, the best among the others:
Cheri Bates
Joyce Walker
Swindles
Domingos-Edwards
Bennallack
Hakari
Lass
Watson
Maher
Davis
Raddetich
Maybe Joan Webster (although if Z is involved, there’s a good chance he’s coat-tailing with letters)
Makes you wonder how so many cases could end up with no fingerprints or DNA (AFAIK).
When I first read about this case years ago and the circumstances surrounding it it was really a wow moment, the similarities were unbelievable to other possible zodiac murders and the way ak wilks presented the robisons/bricca/ sims cases led me to believe the mid west family murders are zodiac/zodius crimes, these were particularly brutal murders and rightly so deserve a closer look, that message in the paper is eerily similar to the one that was posted after Fred manallis death IMO,another coincidence? I think not!
One wonders, why place ads in the paper? It would imply that using standard means of communications are considered too risky.
A few considerations:
1- Whoever places the ad clearly expects the intended recipient to be aware that they need to look for adverts in a particular newspaper to get a message.
2- It implies some preexisting arrangement that would have been made through other means of communications to begin with.
3- In the Zodius case, why go through such effort to place an advert instead of just placing it in the paper normally? And why communicate through an advert? It seems the sender has no problem writing a letter since they did so to request the advert to be placed to begin with. This would imply the recipient cannot be communicated with through other means. But why not place the advert themselves normally? I assume back then you had to show up in person to place an ad, to make the payment, and that due to the nature of the ad they just couldn’t do it. It’s as if they expect the recipient to stumble on the ad, but they didn’t agree on how the ad would be written to make it less obvious. It seems almost like a hail Mary hoping the recipient will see the advert, and they took the opportunity to pressure LE to place the ad.
4- In that case, in the Zodiac ad, we know of no similar demand made to have the ad in the paper, and we assume it was placed through normal means. We don’t know if that is the case, and I find it unlikely: who can just walk up to the San Francisco Chronicle office and place an ad under the name Zodiac, or that reads ZODIAC, without attracting some serious attention right away? Someone has to note down the message, and someone has to type it as well afterwards to get it printed, and someone had to pay for it, probably requiring some contact information. I have to assume that either someone at SFC who had the means to place the ad with enough authority to avoid questioning did so, or it was again a case where the ad was placed in response to a demand, at the request of LE.
5- In at least the Zodius case, the sender doesn’t seem to have a problem writing directly to LE, so it’s the recipient who can’t be contacted directly. The same again is true for the Zodiac advert. It seems the sender simply has no contact information for the intended recipient.
Note also that if the ZODIAC advert is about Fred Manalli, it implies that they managed to get the information of his death and place the ad over a very short period of time. Whoever placed that advert was likely free, not in jail or a mental institution. It sounds like the advert has Zodiac as the recipient, but it’s unclear.
I’m assuming Guidini is a fake or misspelled name in the Zodius advert, probably difficult to find the actual Guidini. The message itself sounds like a transaction was concluded and they are ready for more. Could be a drug delivery, a hit, human trafficking, anything.
I wonder if there might not be other adverts we are unaware of.
Don’t know this one. I’ll read up on it. To my mind, the best among the others:
Cheri Bates
Joyce Walker
Swindles
Domingos-Edwards
Bennallack
Hakari
Lass
Watson
Maher
Davis
Raddetich
Maybe Joan Webster (although if Z is involved, there’s a good chance he’s coat-tailing with letters)
See this ranking fascinates me. I’m curious as to why you would rank crimes where no letters were sent, or phone calls made, ahead of crimes where letters were sent and calls were made. I mean did Hakari get a Zodiac post card? No, so why put her so high up the list? Ray Davis’s killer called police before and after, saying he would commit a "baffling" crime, yet you list him towards the bottom?
This is what I don’t understand, I see a lot of time spent picking apart minor details in an exhaustive manner. The more evidence in a case that can be speculated upon, the more popular it is. The less evidence, the more popular it is. It’s as if making phone calls and sending letters is too obvious for most Zodiac researchers.
In my opinion things like MO, patterns in the way bodies were dumped, or shell casing, all that stuffs fine, when you have literally nothing else to go on. But the moment some guy with a monotone voice calls the local police and says something only the killer would know, he’s a hoaxer, and the information is held in lower esteem than evidence involving minute patterns and vague correlations. Who cares if it happened on a "beach" with a ".22" when you’re looking at post card with a Zodiac symbol on it? "Oh, but it’s probably a hoax letter", yeah, well freaking anyone can buy a .22, so how is that more compelling than a letter?
People are more interested in any killing involving a .22 than one that involves a letter from someone claiming to be the Zodiac. Literally, he can write a letter saying he did it, and it gets dismissed as hoax, in favor of crimes with no more link to the Zodiac than the choice of weapon. How does that make sense? A hoax isn’t a strong enough argument.
Do you know what I’m saying? Sure people make crank phone calls, people send hoax letters, but when you’re comparing probability amongst crimes, letters and phone calls should rank be above things like ammunition, MO, victims age, victims gender, location etc. As far as I’m concerned if a phone call was made, or a letter was sent, or both, that’s going straight to the top of my list, regardless of the prevalence of hoaxes. That is unless we had actual hard physical evidence connected to an individual, like a piece of hair, or a watch with their initials on it. A bullet casing is hard physical evidence, but not all hard physical evidence carries the same weight. A bullet casing is difficult to tie to any one particular person, a human hair, on the other hand, is not. So when most of the hard physical evidence is generic, that’s when circumstances like phone calls, and letter writing rise to the front.
It raises many questions about geography. We’re imagining he kills Davis, Domingos-Edwards and Bates in southern California, goes over to Illinois for the Robisons, then all the way to northern California for the canonical Zodiac crimes shortly thereafter. How and why such a wide geographical spread?
The answer might be military bases.
The geography isn’t much of problem to me if there is good evidence. Indeed he may not have committed all of those other crimes. It doesn’t matter how he got there, if we have good reason to believe he was there, we must conclude that evidently he got there somehow. Since there is nothing preventing someone from traveling, or moving freely across the United States, distance is not a strong reason to dismiss evidence of an individuals presence.
Certainly it makes sense, when looking for possible crimes, to focus primarily on areas of known activity. This would be parsimonious, commonsensical even, and with little else to influence the search, where else would you begin? But it’s misleading to think that geography exerts a strong influence on probability. Geography, like other weak forms of evidence is used primarily not because it is strong, but because frequently there is little else to go on. When there is a paucity of other information, geography becomes important, but the moment something stronger comes to light, geography should not be an obstacle to belief. I’d stop short of overseas travel, but provided it’s within the same nation, I see little obstacle.
If you were trying to determine where I have been, assuming you had no other information whatsoever, other than my last known whereabouts, you would be well served to begin the search nearby. Suppose though you heard a report of a person matching my description on the other side of the country, would you have any real objection, provided the source was credible and description was accurate? After all, what is to prevent my travelling? It’s no great feat.
I’ve noticed that some serial killers do seem to pick occupations that allow them to travel. There are cases of serial killers being constantly on the move. It is neither common, nor uncommon, but it may be slightly more common than the general population, though I have little evidence, other than it seems to come up a bit more. It would make sense to move around a bit, if that was what you were into. There are a great many jobs that allow travel. I’ve seen quite a few traveling salesman serial killers, also quite a few who moved vehicles, or delivered goods. My main point being that, there is little to prevent someone from having such an occupation. It doesn’t require any special degree of faith to believe he may have travelled. He may not have travelled, we don’t know, but his travelling is hardly unlikely.
I think geography can be used to locate possible crimes, but I’m not sure it should even be a factor in assessing crimes once they have been discovered.
I’m also quite happy to believe he wrote the letters and didn’t commit the crimes. At this early stage in the investigation (I know, but really how far have we gotten?) it’s important just finding anything Zodiac may have been involved in.
The consequences of this being a Zodiac crime are interesting. It may suggest he travelled widely, which could lead us to consider other occupations. It would also demonstrate, as if it needed to be demonstrated further, that assessing cases by MO is of little value in the Zodiac case and that it may be more worthwhile to focus on old newspapers and strange goings on in cases.
The Zodiac seemed to go to some pains to impress upon us his ability to change his MO. "By Knife, By Fire, By Rope, By Gun". He attacked a cabbie, people on a beach, isolated lovers lanes. He drew plans for bombs and threatened children. He described the many ways he would torture his victims. He said he would change the way he carried out his killings, that he would make them look like "accidents". From this we take away that he was proud of his creativity and ability to carry out baffling crimes in a great variety of ways. The more baffling the case, perhaps the more likely. Lately I’ve even wondered if he used a pen knife on Cheri Jo just for a bit of extra challenge and variety. Perhaps not, but he rocked up to LB in a full costume, so what does that tell us about his personality?
There is one thing that troubles me. Tahoe bought it up back when this case was first discussed. If it was Zodiac, why not just call himself "Zodiac"? Why come so close and still be one letter short? We may reason it is the difference of one letter, but does that mean we should think it likely, or less likely? Would he really misspell his own moniker? It depends on how you look at it though. It’s not even the difference between two letters of the alphabet, it’s the difference between a "u" and an "a". I don’t like to speculate, but I can think of three possibilities:
1) Zodiac demonstrated a desire to be baffling and mysterious, he may have misspelled it to keep us wondering.
2) It was before he officially called himself Zodiac, so maybe he toyed with the other name first.
3) Since we don’t have the letter and in other letters he disguised his writing, sometimes being messy, could it be that the letter actually reads "Zodiac" and the police misread it as "Zodius".
If this crime was chronologically after the official crimes, it would be more of a problem, but since it occurred earlier, these possibilities seem reasonable. The third is interesting. Being an early letter he may have not have had the confidence to use tidy handwriting, and so perhaps it was difficult to read. Wouldn’t that be a discovery? Has anyone ever put in a request to see the letter?
I remember some girls were killed in early 90s in some bar (??) and they were put one on another
1) I’m not discounting these MIdwest killings at all. In fact, it’s pretty interesting to me how everything in this case seems to go back to Fred Manalli. I just don’t know them very well.
2) As far as those cases:
Cheri Jo Bates – letters written, phone call to cops seems to have been made the night of the killing.
Joyce Walker – unknown if there was a call or letter. Sketch looks just like him, though.
Domingos-Edwards – it seems like the cops there basically think their perp was Zodiac. They just never quite commit all the way to saying it publicly.
Swindles – similarity to D-E.
Bennallack – According to Tom V, Z did send a letter with "something gross" that proves he did it.
Hakari – lived really close to Bennallack. I think a Z card was mailed a few days after her disappearance. Also of note for the Robinson discussion: 3 dudes spotted acting suspiciously where her body was found.
Lass – card(s)
Watson – Z failed here.
Maher – This is a gut feeling for me.
Davis – phone calls made, and maybe letter? Forgotten the details, but there were communications.
Raddetich – possible that Z tried to take credit for it in one letter.
Maybe Joan Webster (although if Z is involved, there’s a good chance he’s coat-tailing with letters) – card
Let me guess ….. one of these families is involved in the military-industrial complex, possibly missiles or spy satellite technology.
1) I’m not discounting these MIdwest killings at all. In fact, it’s pretty interesting to me how everything in this case seems to go back to Fred Manalli. I just don’t know them very well.
2) As far as those cases:
Cheri Jo Bates – letters written, phone call to cops seems to have been made the night of the killing.
Joyce Walker – unknown if there was a call or letter. Sketch looks just like him, though.
Domingos-Edwards – it seems like the cops there basically think their perp was Zodiac. They just never quite commit all the way to saying it publicly.
Swindles – similarity to D-E.
Bennallack – According to Tom V, Z did send a letter with "something gross" that proves he did it.
Hakari – lived really close to Bennallack. I think a Z card was mailed a few days after her disappearance. Also of note for the Robinson discussion: 3 dudes spotted acting suspiciously where her body was found.
Lass – card(s)
Watson – Z failed here.
Maher – This is a gut feeling for me.
Davis – phone calls made, and maybe letter? Forgotten the details, but there were communications.
Raddetich – possible that Z tried to take credit for it in one letter.
Maybe Joan Webster (although if Z is involved, there’s a good chance he’s coat-tailing with letters) – card
It’s interesting that you take into account speculation about what the police are hinting at. I almost mentioned this factor, undisclosed information, in my original post. We don’t know what the police might have up their sleeves, but it’s fair to say that they have given some hints over the years. Their interest in Domingos – Edwards does seem to suggest they have a little something they’re not telling us. The question then becomes, is it good to speculate about what the police may know? I think it’s fine, my argument being that they give some pretty strong hints, so much so, that you’d have to be a bit thick not to read between the lines.
Tom’s information is interesting too. Some people take issue with his abrasive style, but most of what he does is in the vein of good old fashioned investigative journalism, getting out there, talking to people, and simply reporting what was said. You could argue he’s a little laissez faire with his record keeping, but he’s made it clear that part of the reason he gets what he gets is because he makes it clear to the people he talks to that it is "off the record", the moment he pulls out a notepad, or voice recorder, the interview is over. So I’m happy to take most of it in good faith.
I don’t have POI, or any real interest in most of the speculation. The one firm belief I do have is that there are probably more crimes than the official ones. I say probably, because to me it’s all about likelihood. Zodiac killed people, this is a fact, what’s to prevent him from killing more people than we know about? What is the obstacle? It was his occupation, maybe not full time, but part time.
Here is thought experiment: suppose you pass a certain pizza shop every night of the week and through the window you see a kid who makes the pizzas, and you watch him as you go by. Now suppose someone says, "how many pizzas does he make?" and you say "well, I’ve been by there every night and he makes one pizza in the time it takes me to pass the window, I work 5 days a week, I pass the shop once each work day, so I guess he makes 5 pizzas a week.". Sure, for all you know he only makes five pizzas a week, but do you think it’s likely? No. Why? Because that’s what he does, he make-a the pizza.
Now that is a freaking awful analogy. I should be shot for that one. For a start, pizza disappears into your stomach without any interest from the police whatsoever. Dead bodies, on the other hand, are not so easy to hide. Or are they? Not a month seems to go by that a new potential victim isn’t found. Sure most of them suck, but if nothing else it shows that there are a lot of murdered people out there, a lot of unsolved cases. So I ask, what are the odds that he only killed the exact number we know about? I would say in any given serial killer case, the true figure is always going to be higher than the confirmed figure, maybe not as high as the killer himself claims, but certainly higher than the number you can prove.
I’ve always thought it credible that Zodiac could have killed at least 37 victims as he claimed. The body counts serial killers could rack up in the days before DNA and other technology is staggering. Good examples are Ted Bundy, Rodney Alcala and Samuel Little. Also, Zodiac was seemingly not a sexually motivated killer, so the dispensing of sexual assault adds an element of efficiency to the act of murder, so to speak. The Santa Rosa cases might be an outlier but it’s not clear if Zodiac was involved in them, and even in those cases there is a variance in MO.
OK, I found a possible link between the people in the Midwest crimes and the SoCal crimes that we study. It’s a weak link at the moment, only a six-degrees-of-separation sort of thing. I’m taking the names of the people out for right now, so a Zodiac site doesn’t pop up when a great-grandson is looking online for an obituary. This is an NYT article from 1985. I’ll leave it to you all to consider how serious to take this chain of people.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/15/busi … group.html
… has announced the formation of a new joint venture to pursue venture capital opportunities in high technology, and has named [name redacted #1], a co-founder of TRW Inc., its chairman.
[Name Redacted #1] is not the only familiar name involved in the new operation ……. Indeed, the group was formed as a result of wide-ranging contacts in government and business made by [name redacted #2], a Commerce Secretary under President Nixon who also has been chief executive of Bell & Howell and chairman of Lehman Brothers.
”I have known [name redacted #2] for some years, starting with when he was at Bell & Howell,” [name redacted #1], who is 72, said …..’
To be very clear here: Name Redacted #1 is too old to be Zodiac. And I’m not saying anyone mentioned in the article is Zodiac.
I’m also not saying Z worked specifically for one of these companies. He could have worked for a third company involved in this line of business. Or McDonald’s.
But I am intrigued the companies possibly worked together in some way. At this point, however, it might be only that the CEOs played golf together.
Here’s how you get from A to B (or A to F):
1) Valerie Percy was one victim in the 1966 Midwest murder cases we’re discussing (that have not been definitively linked, but have some commonalities that AK Wilks has documented). Percy’s father was the previous CEO of Bell and Howell, and appears to have been the predecessor of Redacted Name #2. The company made photographic lenses, camera stuff, and business machines.
2) Name Redacted #1 founded the defense contracting company that Joyce Walker worked for- Space Technology Laboratories. STL worked in satellites and missiles (and maybe computers). Here’s a 2007 LA Times article looking back at STL, with NR1 reminiscing.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm … story.html
3) Some background on the TRW company mentioned in the article: TRW, headquartered in Cleveland, was formed in a 1958 merger between Cleveland-based Thompson Products and California-based STL. STL continued its work in SoCal as a subsidiary corporation.
4) Vandenburg AFB, near Lompoc, was where they launched satellites. SLT might have had a field office there at some point, if the company history linked below is accurate.
Here’s an online TRW/STL company history of unknown origin:
https://tra-spacepark.org/wordpress/wp- … story2.pdf
Encyclopedia Britannica article on TRW:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/TRW-Inc
5) I want to mention that reading around, the navy did weapons testing at the base where Joseph Bates worked in Corona. Obviously that brings up possibilities, none clearly established at this time, at least by us.
I’ve always thought it credible that Zodiac could have killed at least 37 victims as he claimed. The body counts serial killers could rack up in the days before DNA and other technology is staggering. Good examples are Ted Bundy, Rodney Alcala and Samuel Little. Also, Zodiac was seemingly not a sexually motivated killer, so the dispensing of sexual assault adds an element of efficiency to the act of murder, so to speak. The Santa Rosa cases might be an outlier but it’s not clear if Zodiac was involved in them, and even in those cases there is a variance in MO.
Got to agree with this post, 37 victims is entirely plausible and that’s just in California! If the mid west family murders are connected to zodiac (like I think they are) then the body count could be huge
