If her assailant was someone there or known to her, then that person should be injured because she fought with him enough to make him bleed, lose a watch and also leave a shoe print behind.

That’s a ton of identifying traits for anyone under suspicion. How they missed a person like that within her orbit is beyond me. So I can only conclude this was a stranger attack and the desktop poem probably not related. As far as I remember this item was disputed by other handwriting analysts in the FBI.

IMO, what points at this being the Zodiac is the Confession letter and the Bates letters. The tampering of the vehicle an interesting aspect. What points away from it being the Zodiac is how there is no physical evidence matching with the Zodiac case. However the Zodiac case has problems matching physical evidence between crimes. The emotional signature is what is the strongest indicator it’s the Zodiac. The confession letter. Same misspellings. Same themes.

The Zodiac avoided wanting to be connected to this crime until it was publicized. Then he took credit for it. Why did he want to avoid the connection? I think because it just straight up says Zodiac in Riverside 1966 and North Cal in 1968-69, 70 etc. He seems to get around.

Injured, missing his watch, matching shoe prints. How hard could that one be to find?

If the poem was written before the attack on Cheri, and this person had planned to coax her into his vehicle and murder her some time later, the desktop ending of "Just wait till next time. rh", could have been the foreboding message of "Just wait till next time. riverside, halloween".

Joseph Bates has a collection of photos online. I found it from a Tom link.

http://www.ihsf.org/Collections/BatesCollection.html

There is a bio introducing the collection. It says that Joseph Bates worked at Lockheed Martin in the early 1960s. I’d like to know when and at which location. There is a Lockheed Martin presently located near the Los Angeles Air Force Base, located in an aerospace cluster south of LAX airport. I’m curious if he worked there or was connected to it. Or did he work for Lockheed Martin at the Corona Naval Ordnance Laboratory? Or somewhere else?

A lot of you know about Joyce Walker. She worked as a secretary for an aerospace company called Space Technologies Laboratories. They were involved in missile development. Without trying to unravel all of the corporate shells here in a small space, it also seems possible they were involved in spy satellites to one extent or another. Or maybe not.

The present Lockheed location is next door to an organization called the Aerospace Corporation. The Aerospace Corp is a non-profit that was created in 1960 to help National Reconnaissance Office deal with SLT/TLW. The corporate structures get confusing. Suffice it to say, a secretary with SLT might have reason to go to Aerospace Corp. Might also have contact with Lockheed Martin.

I don’t see how people can tie Zodiac to this. Did you ever look at Steve Avery’s threatening letters? Obviously he can’t be Zodiac, but they’re full of misspellings too. Look at Larry Kane’s letter to Eileen Barton, even more misspelling than Zodiac, same kind of mistakes. He’s an actual Z suspect but for all we know isn’t Z.

Seems like a common trait in letters written by hand.

Car tampering is only loosely associated to Z through Johns.

Yeah, I wonder what possible reason anyone could have to "tie" the Zodiac to this killing… hmmm… I mean could it be because he idk… claimed it. Oh, sorry, I forgot, he could be lying… silly me, of course, claiming a killing in no way strongly links a known killer with a crime.

I shouldn’t be sarcastic. I get that it’s not an absolute given.

The letter writer signed two letters with a "Z". Also the Zodiac claimed the killing. I mean it’s not a Paul Stine shirt fragment, but these two facts alone raise it above any of the other unconfirmed attacks.

I agree that disabling a car is hardly a Zodiac MO, he didn’t do it in a single verified attack. Luckily we have much stronger circumstantial evidence. How many serial killers do you think were roaming California, writing threatening letters and then signing them with a "Z"?

According to Scientific American, there are between 25 and 50 serial killers who are active in the United States at any given time. Now in fairness the Bates killing did not occur in the same year as a confirmed Zodiac killing. Also in fairness we don’t know that the Bates killer ever killed more than one victim. Also the letter writer may not have been the killer. In order to compensate for these minor weaknesses, I will ignore the fact that California is only one state, and assume the upper estimate of 50 serial killers. Now how many do you suppose write taunting letters? Since we have no scientific basis to estimate this, I’m going to take make an arbitrary guess of half. We’re all fair minded people, does anyone object to a full half being letter writers? Seems generous to me. Now suppose your in a room with these 25 serial killers (all of whom just happen to be in Cali) and they were all writing threatening letters, if one of them signed their letter as "Zodiac" and another as "’squiggly’ Z" would you be surprised?

We don’t have much hard physical evidence, therefore we’re are forced to talk in terms of probability. Regardless of whether or not you think it’s the same person, the odds of two serial killers in the same state, in a close time period, having a similar moniker has low probability. The probability remains low regardless of our personal opinions, or arguments.

Outside of Zodiac claiming it, I recall that the envelopes were double stamped, had similar hand writing (like the candy cane f in “calif”), and had similarities in the confession letter envelope in that the sender sent to a local news publication with directions (“attn: crime” I believe). This link from zodiackillerfacts has a comparison of the handwriting that to me at least is pretty compelling: https://zodiackillerfacts.com/wp-conten … on-ZKF.jpg Also, it’s been covered a lot, but the Confession letter had that odd “squirmed” and “twiched” spelling + language later similarly included in a Zodiac letter.

Something that stands out to me personally is that the Confession Letter has this little playful formatting where he took the effort to type in “By _________ “, leaving it blank obviously. Zodiac loves to tease about his name in the same way in his letters with things like the “My name is” and putting symbols on the envelopes return address location. Zodiac also loves formatting and protocol in his communications. There is a weird politeness to it (“‘please’ rush to editor”). It gels to me where in the Confession letter its like he is sportingly giving them a chance to protect their women.

I don’t think it’s a slam dunk but I think there are strong links.

Listen to this and then come back and tell me how we shouldn’t consider Cheri a Zodiac victim: https://youtu.be/0bKUoRLs-Q4

Listen to this and then come back and tell me how we shouldn’t consider Cheri a Zodiac victim: https://youtu.be/0bKUoRLs-Q4

I listened to that the other day from your link. Thank you.

Listen to this and then come back and tell me how we shouldn’t consider Cheri a Zodiac victim: https://youtu.be/0bKUoRLs-Q4

Good listen Tom but I stay in the opinion SJB was not a Zodiac crime while leaving it slightly possible.
October 30, 1966 was not on the car door… Zodiac mentioned his collection of slaves being in Vallejo… A serial killer proud of his work and leaving SJB off IMO is highly unlikely. I also believe Zodiac had more to gain and less to lose by throwing his hat in the SJB ring since everyone who wasn’t in Riverside that day would have a ALIBI to ultimately being the Zodiac…

Listen to this and then come back and tell me how we shouldn’t consider Cheri a Zodiac victim: https://youtu.be/0bKUoRLs-Q4

October 30, 1966 was not on the car door… A serial killer proud of his work and leaving SJB off IMO is highly unlikely.

You’re ignoring the fact that the task force compared evidence and subsequently declared Bates a Zodiac victim in November 1970.

Also, just glancing through some Google results pages …… it looks like they tested missiles at the Corona base. Which would make sense. So there might be reason for employees of STL and/or TRW to be at that base.

Maybe I’ll get around to looking further into it, when the spirit moves me.

This is a random Riverside thought that I have that I’m interested to hear opinions on.

If you look at the crime scene photos, it is pretty striking to me just how close her body is to the annex. There is a photo with the detectives on the annex porch looking over at her and it’s very very close.

Part of that picture that is noticeable to me is, 1, how far on the left side of the road her body is positioned. I know there was a struggle but it appears from her walking orientation that she was walking with her assailant up the left side of the road. Is there any significance to that?

Two, the location puzzles me a little. It appears her killer attacked her right before the alleyway that ran left along the annex and side of the library. I wonder why the killer didn’t get her to willingly go or force her down that alleyway to block the view of her assault from where they just walked from? It seems to me more private in that alleyway. The only thing I can come up with is either the killer had their get away route/vehicle down that path or he attacked her at the very last moment from where he told her he was taking her before he could be seen from two directions (or both I guess). The Confession Letter, if it was the killer, indicates he had a location along that road picked out. Why that location?

I’m pretty interested in thoughts from the board about those two things, especially those who understand the UCR lay out and crime scene better than I do.

My guess is he tried to lure her further into the alley but then she got a bad feeling about it,
sort of like her 6th sense telling her something is wrong get out of there and he grabbed her as she tried to
turn around and walk back to the street.

My guess is he tried to lure her further into the alley but then she got a bad feeling about it,
sort of like her 6th sense telling her something is wrong get out of there and he grabbed her as she tried to
turn around and walk back to the street.

Bet he told her he was a cop.

I wonder if she reported something to police not long before.