Maybe somebody DOES know something about this already. That’s why I bring it up. Is this shabbily dressed negro generally considered real or fictitious? I’m sure somebody has asked the pertinent detectives about this, but I don’t know what answer they got.

I don’t think it’s ever been reported that a shabbily dressed black man saw Z at the phonebooth. So, Z either mentioned it and it was true, or he made it up. Why would he volunteer that info? It could only lead to a witness against himself,so personally, I think he likely made it up. If you believe Fouke, he definitely made up the part about being stopped by Fouke & Zelms after the Stine killing.

One thing that I have wondered is how prevalent the word "negro" was in 1969. It was commonly used in the 40s and 50s. I was born in the late 70s, so word wasn’t used to describe African Americans in polite conversation in my lifetime. It be a clue to Zodiac’s age. Did people in their 20s regularly refer to black people as "negros" in 1969? It could date Zodiac to his late 30s or early 40s.

I did previously bring this up but my horror is was still very prevalent.

Any picture of this person?

Which person?

I did previously bring this up but my horror is was still very prevalent.

"The turning point came when Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase black power at a 1966 rally in Mississippi. Until then, Negro was how most black Americans described themselves. But in Carmichael’s speeches and in his landmark 1967 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, he persuasively argued that the term implied black inferiority. Among black activists, Negro soon became shorthand for a member of the establishment. Prominent black publications like Ebony switched from Negro to black at the end of the decade, and the masses soon followed. According to a 1968 Newsweek poll, more than two-thirds of black Americans still preferred Negro, but black had become the majority preference by 1974. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times abandoned Negro in the 1970s, and by the mid-1980s, even the most hidebound institutions, like the U.S. Supreme Court, had largely stopped using Negro".

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcr … ctober.htm

"Cars with menacing white youths cruised the Negro neighborhoods…"

Richard Gaikowski — 1968

The Zodiac, in December of 1968, kills Betty Lou Jensen and David A. Faraday. Nearly 7 months pass without a word from the person who would later be known as the Zodiac. On July 4th, 1969 the Zodiac shoots Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau. He leaves the site and goes to a payphone at Springs and Tuolumne to phone police. The call is reported as possibly rehearsed or read from a script. Obviously pre planned. Not out of the realm of possibilities given the Paul Stine communication. If he rehearsed or planned the script then when did he do this and, more importantly, where? I suppose what I am getting at here is this:

What if the Zodiac was someone to the southeast of the first crime scene at Lake Herman Road? When thinking about the next crime scene at Blue Rock Springs, the location to this site from the Lake Herman Crime scene, would be to the east. The distance from the intersection of Columbus Parkway and Lake Herman Road to Blue Rock Springs is approximately 1 mile. The Zodiac would have 1. been trying to connect the two crimes via the rehearsed message or 2. made a booboo.

Soze