Zodiac apparently told Hartnell that he escaped from prison and "had to kill a guard to get out".

http://www.zodiackiller.com/HartnellInterview3.html

Your question about a trial and conviction makes sense IF Z was telling the truth about this. BIG IF, IMHO.

A lot of folks over the years have looked into people who may have been in those same circumstances.

In the LB report it is written that Z had mentioned he was sent to a … Lodge Prison for a killing.

http://www.zodiackiller.com/LBReport24.html

If that is true, there must have been a trial and conviction sometime earlier..I doubt the info is correct as the report is from 10-4-69..

QT

Interesting.

These transcripts are hard to interpret sometimes because they are of interviews and it’s hard to clarify exactly what is meant because it’s presented verbatim so unless a clarifying questing is asked we can’t know. At that point in the interview it would have been good to have a clarification as to whether the killing refers to the guard during escape or also the reason for incarceration.

Now as far as reading it, well, it says just that. As pointed out by QT, good catch BTW, "…for a killing". There’s not even a question mark there so maybe that suggests no need for clarification. Maybe it is what it is?

As morf says though, and I feel myself, the whole story is probably fiction anyway but even at that this is a part of it that has mostly gone unnoticed, that being he possibly and apparently did include why he was in prison as well.

On second read, I quite honestly think this is probably an innocuous misstatement by investigators since Hartnell doesn’t make any mention of it in his interviews (despite clearly stating that Z claimed to have killed a guard escaping). It’s the kind of detail that is easy to confuse when you’re reporting eyewitness testimony after the fact. I would tend to stick with the actually eyewitness testimony when there’s a discrepancy unless there’s something else to back it up.

I have always thought and still think that anything that Zodiac said to Hartnell and Shepard was a lie. I don’t see him telling them the truth. It seems out of place with his previous actions.

I understand why you guys suspect Z of not telling the truth; though why would he feel the need to lie to people he is about to kill?

He reported a "double murder" after this crime, so in his mind they were both dead.

If you felt like he probably did, and wanted to confide in anyone; surely the safest option is to open up to a person you are about to kill. Regardless of what you tell them, they will not be able to "snitch", so again why would he feel the need to lie under these circumstances?

I understand why you guys suspect Z of not telling the truth; though why would he feel the need to lie to people he is about to kill?

He reported a "double murder" after this crime, so in his mind they were both dead.

If you felt like he probably did, and wanted to confide in anyone; surely the safest option is to open up to a person you are about to kill. Regardless of what you tell them, they will not be able to "snitch", so again why would he feel the need to lie under these circumstances?

Submission.

I understand why you guys suspect Z of not telling the truth; though why would he feel the need to lie to people he is about to kill?

He reported a "double murder" after this crime, so in his mind they were both dead.

If you felt like he probably did, and wanted to confide in anyone; surely the safest option is to open up to a person you are about to kill. Regardless of what you tell them, they will not be able to "snitch", so again why would he feel the need to lie under these circumstances?

Well, assuming that it was Z at Lake Beryessa, it’s been proven that he lied. His story was that he had escaped from prison in Montana and was on the run, so was passing through California and needed Bryan’s car to get to Mexico. After trying to stab them to death, he then conveniently totally ignored Bryan’s car keys and then obviously wasn’t off to Mexico as he nonchalantly turns up in San Francisco 2 weeks later with a completely different ruse.

IMO, his whole story was a complete load of bollocks from start to finish and was just a vehicle for controlling his victims before ambush killing them. Wouldn’t surprise me if he had a gun to Paul Stine’s head for a lot of the journey too, telling him that he wouldn’t harm him and just needed a lift to PH where a car would be waiting for him. Of course we all now how that ended too.

To me it seems obvious that whoever the killer was, he was lying all the way. He hadn’t just sprung from some prison in Montana and he wasn’t headed for Mexico.

If there is a "clew" anywhere here it must be about his choice of words – i.e. that the particular prison he happened to mention meant something to him, in one way or another. If we presuppose that it was Z who committed this crime, we can perhaps allow ourselves to think that his words were rehearsed, that he was working from a "script" of sorts, that he had rehearsed this attack in his mind before executing it. And as such, the name of the prison could be significant – but in what way? Hard to tell.

I struggle to see how it is significant when in his mind he was going to kill them. As the ole cliche goes "dead people don’t talk".

I am not sure just how rehearsed it was, I read a few reports that he may have been targeting the girls initially, the ones that assisted with the sketch of the rather "good looking" man that was smoking.

How valid do you guys consider the semi cracked 420 claims? About him being watched at the lake and "popping another pill"?

The man the girls drew in the sketch was also observed with what appeared to be a white shirt falling from the back of his trousers, this was most likely the nylon cord, he was carrying in his back pocket and this man and the Zodiac were probably one and the same. One of the girls also stated he was wearing a black short sleeved sweater shirt bunched up at the front, this may be where he holstered his knife.
His story about killing guards, mexico etc, is for certain a lie, but somewhere within his dialogue with Bryan Hartnell, it is not inconceivable he let slip an important word or grain of truth, that he had once experienced in his life, ie there maybe a Deer Lodge, Montana or Colorado connection, but we are heavily reliant on a drugged up Bryan Hartnell, one day after the attack, being ‘coerced’ with a poor interview technique by an eager John Robertson, dropping words into Bryan Hartnell’s mouth.