Absolutely, Tahoe – I get that. And I agree with the approach – it’s a good thing to speculate and consider all kinds of possibilities when it is within reason. And it IS within reason that LB wasn’t a Z crime.

One thing we do know…is that whoever did it was a nut!

To finish my own speculation, some further thoughts, particularly about the costume:

Poss. killer 1: The copycat. I maintain that his main motivation would have been to copy Z’s work. That is what a copycat does. The costume was not associated with Z until after Berryessa. If a copycat was the killer, he invented this elaborate costume all by himself for unknown reasons, which is an obvious deviation from what you’d expect a copycat to do.

Poss. killer 2: Someone who wanted to pin the murders on Z. This person would have been less of a nut than the copycat. Chances are he knew either BH or CS – or both. The latter begs many questions. Who was the target? It seems highly improbable that he targeted both. BH and CS ran into each other earlier that day, they had history but were not a couple at the time and their decision to drive to Berryessa was pretty much spur of the moment. All in all, their presence, together, at Beryessa is largely happenstance and would have been virtually impossible to predict for a killer. It stands to reason, then, that our man intended to kill one of them, not both. Which begs another question: Why attack the target when he or she was with someone else, which is both messier and riskier than going for a lone target?

Lastly, the costume. In order to incriminate Z the costume is superfluous. A) The killer intended to link the murders to Z by writing on the car door, which is sufficient (albeit a novel idea, not associated with Z, but that’s another debate). B) He intended to kill both targets, so unless a witness happened to see him in the act, the costume would have been useless as a means to incriminate Z (who was not known to wear a costume anyway). As a means to hide his identity the costume is overkill to the point of being ludicrous. A ski mask would have sufficed.

Poss. killer 3: The Zodiac killer. Why did he wear the costume? We don’t know. But we do know it bears his symbol. We also know there’s a direct link between this costume – which appears to be some sort of executioner’s garb – to a Z trait which became known later, namely his penchant for quoting the Mikado. He may have thought of himself as an executioner. As a sheer means to hide his identity the costume makes no sense for any of the possible killers. It’s clearly far too elaborate to be a mere disguise. For Z, however, the costume may have served him well as a disguise AND as part of some sort of ritual he was performing, according to the twisted ideas in his own mind. This latter double function only works for Z, not for any of the others. Unless we are to believe that the copycat coincidentally shared Z’s particular pathology – and that beggars belief. The killer intended to kill both BH and CS. The costume may have served to hide his face, yes, but its nature (it’s elaborateness, its similarity to an executioner’s hood) would have served the killer alone. That last detail makes no sense in the context of a copycat, nor in the context of a killer who wanted to pin the thing on Z. It makes perfect sense if Z was the killer, though.

Ah-ha Norse!
He Did Not Do It But He Wrote Letters About It To The Police And Newspapers As If He Actually Had.
If you want an MO then by cracky there’s one.

T. – "LB aside he shot and bailed" – leaving behind different calibre shells and witnesses who gave us very varied descriptions. Some thinNER, some fatTER. (Sorry about that, no he was never described as thin. I expect he would have been eventually though, had he kept writing…….).

Berryessa is certainly different. Strange. I have to concur with the idea that the guy who dressed in a hood and got close-in with a knife at the lake that day was a complete fruit-loop. He was close to being off the scale of operable in normal society. It’s not a regular thing to do, that. It’s the kind of attack you’d expect from some who was properly out to lunch. Schizophrenic, maybe.
Say – they weren’t covering up a screw-up in who they let out of the Napa Facility for the day were they, by writing on the door? Naaaa, that’s silly.

Ted Bundy was a nut and he functioned quite well in society. One can be quite brilliant and still be one can short of a six-pack. (or maybe two or three)

Ah-ha Norse!
He Did Not Do It But He Wrote Letters About It To The Police And Newspapers As If He Actually Had.

Hmm. Possibly – he did that, possibly. Then again maybe he didn’t – maybe he just confirmed what LE seemed to think at the time when his "activity" in Riverside became public knowledge. He did like to confuse ’em, after all. And, strictly speaking, both scenarios work in that regard.

As for the escaped loon…well, there’s that damn costume again. It’s not any old costume, it’s HIS costume, the character from the papers. Only it isn’t – because nobody knows anything about it until after the attack. There’s a problem here, I think. A huge one. The killer, whoever he was, put some effort into making that costume. It was significant – to him. That’s a reasonable assumption, I think. It’s an executioner’s outfit. It ties in nicely with the Mikado.

Is the link between the Mikado (Z) and the costume (not made by Z but by someone else, who never wrote letters quoting the Mikado, but did use Z’s symbol) coincidental? I find that hard to believe, I must say.

Consider the following:

NN attacks at Berryessa wearing an elaborate costume with Z’s symbol on it. The costume isn’t associated with Z (as far as our man knows) but the symbol is. He is partly emulating Z, partly improvising. Using a knife where Z used guns, writing on car doors where Z wrote letters. He then disappears (as far as we know), never to attack anyone in the same fashion again (as far as we know).

The "real" Z, the man responsible for LHR and BRS then goes on to kill Paul Stine. Without mentioning Berryessa. Makes sense if he didn’t do it. If it weren’t for the fact that he – clearly – was a man who cared about his reputation and his "trademark". He wanted people to wear Z buttons (in fact he seemed obsessed with the idea of Z buttons). Did he not mind the imposter at Berryessa – an imposter who sported an executioner’s outfit with HIS symbol on it? Maybe not. He was nuts, after all, so who knows? Maybe he simply was inspired by it, thought it was a great addition to the persona, and then went on to quote the Mikado and play up the executioner angle. Maybe. I’m inclined to think that there’s a more likely explanation for all of this, though.

I tend to think (if this was not Zodiac) it DID bother him and this is why he went after Paul so quickly in the easiest manner possible (a cabbie?) and with such a need to prove it was him who did it.

Ultimately, all I hope for is someday to be proven wrong….or right.

Personally I think LB was Z and that he was just getting cocky and confident and that is why he was getting bolder with each attack. LB was still pretty secluded (plus based on eye witnesses it appears he scoped out the place for the person couple to “do his thing” to) and I don’t think he worried about talking too much because in his mind they were both going to die anyway. I think he was enjoying it and did the costume to make him feel more powerful and induce as much fear as possible. In my opinion his cockiness was evident in the Spine murder as well and after almost getting caught it brought him back to reality real fast. I think he was feeling invincible and that is why he put on this show. I also believe (as speculated) that he did enjoy theater and maybe even was jealous that he was not able to perform the way the actors were, so therefore his crimes became his performance.

Ted Bundy was a nut and he functioned quite well in society. One can be quite brilliant and still be one can short of a six-pack. (or maybe two or three)

For all rules, an exception, naturally. Ya think he was on a par with Bundy then, not just a nut-job? When you said "Maybe he was just a nut" I thought you meant, uh……

Norse, I like your "letter writer" (oops!) "Zodiac was inspired by the guy at the lake" angle quite a lot.
Re:

It’s an executioner’s outfit. It ties in nicely with the Mikado.

Well….. Berryessa was September 27th 1969 – The Little List letter arrived 26th July 1970. Mikado – KoKo, the executioner.
Did one lead to the other? Perhaps it did yes. Maybe. But it took a damn long time!
Were they both inspired in the mind of the same nut? Well… IDK.
If he’d written about Ned Kelly in October ’69, would we be talking about Ned Kelly right now instead of Groucho’s Mikado? Yes, we would. Here’s a rubbish picture. Looks like Ted K.
http://x-bonez-x.deviantart.com/art/Ned-kelly-185861343

I like the fact that KoKo never actually killed anyone quite a lot too, of course. The whole things a comic opera? Yes, could be.

He does look a bit like Ted K…

And Clint looks a bit like the Stine sketch. Not to mention Bruce Willis! Slap a pair of glasses on him – and there’s your man from Presidio Heights, stockiness included.

Not to mention that Paul McCartney resembles the Berryessa sketch…

But KoKo – yes. It’s hard to tell what Z saw in him exactly. But there IS a link – and I’ve seen more tenuous ones – between the Berryessa outfit and the Mikado. Even if one doesn’t buy that, I still maintain that the costume is such that, given the circumstances, it serves mainly as a…costume for the killer. He’s acting something out, in full regalia, it’s for HIS benefit more than anything. And that isn’t easily reconcilable with a copycat (of any kind).

It’s completely out of proportion as a pure disguise (the pin-it-on-Z angle) and it simply wasn’t associated with Z at the time (the pathological, nutty copycat angle). If it was a copycat he must have been very similar to Z, shared his flair for histrionics and possibly even his penchant for light opera!*

* Devil’s advocate there, I must admit. I don’t believe Z necessarily had a penchant for light opera. But he undoubtedly liked to quote from the Mikado for some reason.

Personally I think LB was Z and that he was just getting cocky and confident and that is why he was getting bolder with each attack. LB was still pretty secluded (plus based on eye witnesses it appears he scoped out the place for the person couple to “do his thing” to) and I don’t think he worried about talking too much because in his mind they were both going to die anyway. I think he was enjoying it and did the costume to make him feel more powerful and induce as much fear as possible. In my opinion his cockiness was evident in the Spine murder as well and after almost getting caught it brought him back to reality real fast. I think he was feeling invincible and that is why he put on this show. I also believe (as speculated) that he did enjoy theater and maybe even was jealous that he was not able to perform the way the actors were, so therefore his crimes became his performance.

My theory on the costume wasn’t so much to induce fear, but to keep him from view. We have to remember, sun was going down, but it was still light out when the attacks occurred. He had to think that there was a chance that a passing motorboat/fisherman could have spotted him committing his murder….therefore, that’s why he wore the costume.

My theory on the costume wasn’t so much to induce fear, but to keep him from view. We have to remember, sun was going down, but it was still light out when the attacks occurred. He had to think that there was a chance that a passing motorboat/fisherman could have spotted him committing his murder….therefore, that’s why he wore the costume.

I agree that he choose to wear a costume so others could not ID him if he was seen, but a ski mask could make worked for that and been a hell of a lot easier; however I believe he wore that type of costume rather than a simple mask to induce fear. As well as make himself feel powerful.

The car door pictures in the papers in the aftermath of the Berryessa crime were not shown and in evidence paper concealed the wording by knife. Of course this may have been withheld, so when the real Zodiac contacted he might verify the words written. Upset by them not revealing his entire message in the paper, he wrote ‘You better print’ and ‘The bleeding Knife of Zodiac’ in the Fairfield Letter 3 months later. After all the Berryessa attack was his only known knife murder to date.

Eh?
How many newspapers wrote about Cecelia and Bryan being stabbed? All of them. I don’t think the fact that some adolescent writer figured out that someone used a knife to do the stabbing is all that compelling….

Eh?
How many newspapers wrote about Cecelia and Bryan being stabbed? All of them. I don’t think the fact that some adolescent writer figured out that someone used a knife to do the stabbing is all that compelling….

A simple yet easily overlooked fact. That certainly would cover the ‘kooks’. Where does that then leave the Halloween card on the scale I wonder. Where the actual phrasing was accurate as well … slightly elevated?