I believe what @Chaucer is suggesting. Zodiac might have been dumb enough to provide the phone number he was calling from, which would explain why he clearly did not do so and left the phone off the hook in Napa following the Lake Berryessa attack. The operator here seemed capable of ringing back immediately; why she did, we may never know. Either way, this suggestion is very plausible.
The seven-minute discrepancy between the ring-back and the “trace” may have been nothing more than the time it took for someone from the Vallejo PD to contact the operator asking to locate the pay phone, and the operator searching their directories for the phone number provided and then informing the Vallejo PD of the pay phone’s address. Since the operator was in Ukiah, and potentially unfamiliar with Vallejo (I don’t know if that would actually matter if you had a directory, but for the sake of argument), this could explain why it only took seven minutes to “trace” the call.
Thus, it wasn’t a proper trace, which would have required significantly more time as well as authorization to perform. “Trace” as used in the police report may have just meant “determining the location based on information provided by the suspect”. It wouldn’t be the first time something wasn’t clear in one of these reports.
Of course, as far as I’m aware, all of this assumes that Zodiac was telling the truth in the letter, and that the story of the “shabbly dressed man” who may or may not have contacted police wasn’t a concoction of the killer’s imagination designed to waste time with unprovable theories like this one. That also wouldn’t be the first time he did that. Is there any proof from Betty Main that the phone was indeed called back, or are we just taking a psychopath at his word?
Your description of the 7 minute discrepancy is accurate based on my research. However, the operator was not in Ukiah. The call was routed to the telephone office on 730 Carolina St. in Vallejo. I spoke with a woman who worked in that office in 1969 and was present the day the Zodiac call was made (she was not the one who spoke to him).
Another thing to keep in mind that the only source of the “ring back” is Zodiac himself. Who knows if he was being truthful?
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
@chaucer Ah, I thought it was determined the operator was in Ukiah. If we are to take the killer at his word, something like this is probably the most likely scenario:
12:38 or thereabouts, Z calls the operator and requests to be connected to the police department. It’s unknown if he mentioned a murder at all. Operator requests pay phone number in case of disconnect and Z (potentially) gives it, not realizing it can identify his location.
12:40, Z speaks with Nancy Slover. If I understand the report correctly, he did not stop talking as he (slowly) recited this monologue of sorts, talking over her, so the call probably lasted approximately 1 minute.
Z hangs up and the phone rings back, surprising him. (My guess is that there was nobody around, or if there was someone, they wouldn’t have known the subject of the phone call. That’s why I think the “shabbly dressed man” was a fabrication. But that’s irrelevant to this point.)
12:41 or 12:42, Nancy or someone else in the room at VPD contacts the operator again. They request to speak with the operator who just routed a call to the police department. Probably about a minute to establish contact.
12:43 or thereabouts, VPD tells the operator that the caller just confessed to a murder and asks if a phone number was provided. Ms./Mrs. Johnson says a number was provided and either retrieves or requests that someone bring over a directory.
12:44 to 12:47, or something like that, spent looking in the directory for the number provided and verifying that it matches.
12:47, operator provides police with the location of the pay phone. Thus, “trace” has been completed.
These times are just estimates, and as @Chaucer mentioned, operate under the assumption that the phone did indeed ring back, immediately or within about a minute, so Z could have heard it. The assumption that he did provide the phone number is an inference based on his behaviour at Napa about three months later. If both of these are correct, this scenario lines up, time-wise, with all of the police reports. A proper trace could not have happened that quickly (and with the call ended), but “trace” may have been a different way of saying “identifying the location” in the report by someone who was most likely quite shaken by the call received.
(edited to fix a glitch that reduced 12:44 to 12:47 to “1247” for some reason)
@iletthesungodown The Ukiah connection was in error. Betty Main did, in fact, live and worked as an operator in Ukiah, but by 1969 she was the supervisor at the Vallejo telephone office.
I’d say your timeline is reasonable.
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
