What bothers me about both DNA and fingerprints is the simple and…bothersome fact that no credible person, at any point, to my knowledge, has EVER said that there is a MATCH between two separate pieces of evidence, from the cab via the letters to the partial DNA. If LE are confident (or at the very least somewhat hopeful) about the DNA, to my mind this SHOULD indicate that such a match does indeed exist. If they are confident for any other reason, then I’m…not.
After so many years the only thing which would convince me is if someone comes out and says: Yes, we have obtained samples from separate pieces of evidence and yes, it’s highly likely they come from the same person and no, we do not know who that person is. Then I’d be willing to bet that person is indeed Z. If all they have is a partial sample lifted from one single source, then – no.
Yup. GIVE ME A MATCH. JUST ONE. That’s all. The DNA on those letters could well be some Chronicle mailroom worker with bad allergies for all we know.
It’d be good to know…however it somehow is still an ongoing investigation, isn’t it? And if police would publish any details about any suspect I guess a lawyer would eventually get someone free..it might be that this is the reason why investigators won’t publish anything until they got a match.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
IIRC, there are some odd blotches on some of the letters. These marks are small and resemble dots. They match some on my letters from my poi. I visited him recently and noticed the same markings on a piece of paper and told him I had a question for him. He asked what it was and I asked about the mark on the paper. He said it was spittle from his GUM CHEWING!
IIRC there was mention by Kathleen Johns that the guy who gave her that ride had lots of chewing gum wrappers in his car!
Maybe Z was clever enough not to seal the envelopes or lick the stamps but he couldn’t avoid getting spittle on the stationery if he was chewing gum and probably never thought anyone would think to check it out so maybe it could be done now? It seems that only the envelope flaps and stamps have been checked for dna but forgive me for possibly being mistaken about this as I am so confused about all that I’ve read in an effort to eliminate my poi that I could have gotten this all wrong.
Regarding Morf’s DNA report
http://zodiacrevisited.com/cheri-jo-bat … -analysis/
on page three it is shown that the hair that was found was brown. If Z was the killer of CJB, it therefore might be assumed that he had brown, not blond or black hair. This somehow goes well with the report of Kathleen Johns that her assailant had ‘dark hair’ as well as the report of Brian Hartnell, who had seen brown curly hair under Zs hood.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
Shaking my damned head.
You know, they can read DNA these days in such a way as to determine certain characteristics, least of which is ethnic heritage. They can tell a Russian Jew from a Norwegian from a African Bantu. Why they haven’t tried to read the mtDNA of either perp, I’ve no clue. At the very least it would give them some clarity as to the type of individual they’re looking for, assuming they still care to solve either case.
As for Cheri…Sandy blond. Fouke said The Zodiac had brown, maybe light brown, but the lighting threw his identification. Hartnell said brown. Johns didn’t meet the Zodiac, and Mageau said something altogether different. Curly light brown or something.
Eyewitnesses rarely get much right.
As for Cheri…wasn’t killed by The Zodiac. No way he butchers her like cattle and then has a hard time killing two people pinned like moths to corkboard. Even had a larger knife and still failed to seal the deal. Shephard died only because it took so long to get her to the hospital, not because The Zodiac knew what he was doing.
Plus, Cheri knew her attacker. Not likely she would know The Zodiac or go anywhere with him, even if he did park his car in such a way just to get her into the dark.
As for the Confession Letter…fraud imo. He says he knew Bates for years during numerous brush offs, but then calls her "Miss Bates". The way i see it, you don’t slaughter a woman you obsessed over for YEARS, only to call her "Miss Bates". Just doesn’t add up.
Someone she knew killed her, and someone like The Zodiac wrote the letters. One wonders if the murder was carried in the Vallejo, Albany or Chronicle papers…
That’s my take. I’m sure everyone disagrees. 
As for Cheri…Sandy blond. Fouke said The Zodiac had brown, maybe light brown, but the lighting threw his identification. Hartnell said brown. Johns didn’t meet the Zodiac, and Mageau said something altogether different. Curly light brown or something.
Not only that one, but ok: According to FBI, the hair is brown, not sandy blond at all. So it’s a good match with Fouke, Hartnell. Johns didn’t meet Z? How you wanna know..and if she met him, why did she scream the first time she saw his sketch (‘That’s him’)? Mageau said curly light brown, too?
This is why I believe that he had brown hair..’sandy’ suspect? Possible..still possible.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
Johns’ original police report is very boring. Nothing in there at all that would leave someone to think she was threatened with imminent death. And unless The Zodiac lost a TON of weight, no way the skinny guy she ran across was him. The fact that she changed her story (lied) from one thing to another, with ever-increasing luridness, indicates her story is not to be trusted.
Then there’s the matter that a MILLION men, back then and in that area, looked JUST LIKE the Zodiac. Michael Douglas in Falling Down looks like him. Take a billion thin-faced white guys, give ’em a crew cut and some glasses and you’d have a virtual ARMY of Zodiac clones.
Yeah, The Zodiac commented on the event. Later. Probably after he had read it in the news. He was, after all, scanning newspapers as far down as LA, and I know that because he said to The Los Angeles Times "you don’t bury me on the back pages like some of the others do". Guy was reading every newspaper he could to see his name. He was probably in Modesto during the Johns flap and read about it, or he read it after it was republished closer to home.
The fact that Johns’ original report of her encounter was rather mundane, that her description of the guy undercuts the fact The Zodiac was clearly a heavy guy, and that anyone could have looked like The Zodiac, means that there is a very small probability she encountered him.
For all we know, she made the entire thing up. For all we know, she set her own car on fire while sleeping in it, like some people do. You know, the people you hear about setting their bed or couch on fire because they fell asleep with a lit cigarette. She may have made the story up to cover her goof. We don’t know. Or she might have run across some lonely creep who tried to help her, only for her to coldly rebuff him, which drove him to burn her car for revenge.
Read the police reports from back then….there was more than a handful (lol) of anti-social nuts and lunatics running around. Not all of them were The Zodiac, either.
Oh, and just imo, but Kathleen Johns was a very "nutty" woman. I trust nothing she ever said. Same goes for Mageau and Darlene’s sister. And Graysmith for that matter.
Not even sure I entirely believe Pelisetti, Fouke’s latter-year detailing, or Collins claiming Shephard told him of the Zodiac’s face.
As for Cheri…Sandy blond. Fouke said The Zodiac had brown, maybe light brown, but the lighting threw his identification. Hartnell said brown. Johns didn’t meet the Zodiac, and Mageau said something altogether different. Curly light brown or something.
Not only that one, but ok: According to FBI, the hair is brown, not sandy blond at all. So it’s a good match with Fouke, Hartnell. Johns didn’t meet Z? How you wanna know..and if she met him, why did she scream the first time she saw his sketch (‘That’s him’)? Mageau said curly light brown, too?
This is why I believe that he had brown hair..’sandy’ suspect? Possible..still possible.
QT
Well, according to this, at least, the hair found by RPD was sandy-blonde
When Cheri’s body was found, two to three strands of hair were recovered from a clot of blood and tissue in the palm of her hand. At the time, technology would only show that the hair, blood and tissue were that of a white male with sandy-blond hair. Barnett is a white male and, at the time, had sandy-blond hair. (Tissue was also recovered from under Cheri’s fingernails, but was too decomposed to gather DNA from by the time it was attempted in the early 1990s.)
As for Cheri…Sandy blond. Fouke said The Zodiac had brown, maybe light brown, but the lighting threw his identification. Hartnell said brown. Johns didn’t meet the Zodiac, and Mageau said something altogether different. Curly light brown or something.
Not only that one, but ok: According to FBI, the hair is brown, not sandy blond at all. So it’s a good match with Fouke, Hartnell. Johns didn’t meet Z? How you wanna know..and if she met him, why did she scream the first time she saw his sketch (‘That’s him’)? Mageau said curly light brown, too?
This is why I believe that he had brown hair..’sandy’ suspect? Possible..still possible.
QT
Well, according to this, at least, the hair found by RPD was sandy-blonde
When Cheri’s body was found, two to three strands of hair were recovered from a clot of blood and tissue in the palm of her hand. At the time, technology would only show that the hair, blood and tissue were that of a white male with sandy-blond hair. Barnett is a white male and, at the time, had sandy-blond hair. (Tissue was also recovered from under Cheri’s fingernails, but was too decomposed to gather DNA from by the time it was attempted in the early 1990s.)
What’s the source for that ‘sandy-blond hair’?
Mine is that one (brown):
If Barnett is blond, too, it would imply that the brown hair is from the second/main assailant. K3 is CJB’s hair and is this not identical to the four brown (caucasian) ones found under her nails. So this would likely – so far no indications for any ‘forgery’ do exist – be the DNA of Z. No matter if one is trustful in this one, it’d make sense to compare it with e.g. saliva under the stamps of other letters.
brown
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
The sandy-blonde hair quote is from Tom Voigt. Also, IIRC, Graysmith referred to sandy-blonde hairs, but I cannot recall for sure. I’d have to look it up, not that anything he wrote is trustworthy. And the hairs were found on the palm of her hand, in a blood spot. Skin was found under her nails, so he scratched him, indubitably. They could compare mtDNA from the hair to the saliva, or prints from the VW to Zodiac prints, but they haven’t done so as far as I can tell…
Regardless, it’s too far a stretch imo to think The Zodiac killed Cheri Jo. Just doesn’t add up. As for the desktop poem, I have a Photoshop comparison of my own coming, and it’s quite interesting given that so many letters are spot-on matches to The Zodiac’s known writing, which I didn’t really expect. As the desktop poem was found six months later, one wonders if it wasn’t written rather freshly, close to the timing of the Bates Had To Die letters. One wonders if The Zodiac, ghoul that he was, wasn’t up there at RCC after her death roaming around, checking unlocked doors. Perhaps the storage area in which the desk was located was unsecured, and The Zodiac wandered right in. Perhaps his little poem, if he wrote it, is something similar to masturbating at the scene of the crime, so to speak. I could certainly see that. I can certainly see why he’d want to go up there and check everything out for himself, if he didn’t actually commit the murder.
i think someone close to Cheri Jo killed her, close enough anyway, and I think the Zodiac capitalized on that tragedy to manipulate the press and police. Then again, if the Confession Letter is a fraud, then why direct the police to look for someone in Bates’ past? But if you had no personal connection to her, if she was but a "stranger" killing, why direct the police anywhere? Not like they can link the perpetrator by clairvoyance. And they’d have to have a suspect to make a hair or fingerprint match, but if you’re just a stranger, they cannot pull you, as a suspect, out of thin air. 1966 was well before IBIS, CODIS and AFIS.
Anywho.
Shaking my damned head.
You know, they can read DNA these days in such a way as to determine certain characteristics, least of which is ethnic heritage. They can tell a Russian Jew from a Norwegian from a African Bantu. Why they haven’t tried to read the mtDNA of either perp, I’ve no clue. At the very least it would give them some clarity as to the type of individual they’re looking for, assuming they still care to solve either case.
As for Cheri…Sandy blond. Fouke said The Zodiac had brown, maybe light brown, but the lighting threw his identification. Hartnell said brown. Johns didn’t meet the Zodiac, and Mageau said something altogether different. Curly light brown or something.
Eyewitnesses rarely get much right.
As for Cheri…wasn’t killed by The Zodiac. No way he butchers her like cattle and then has a hard time killing two people pinned like moths to corkboard. Even had a larger knife and still failed to seal the deal. Shephard died only because it took so long to get her to the hospital, not because The Zodiac knew what he was doing.
Plus, Cheri knew her attacker. Not likely she would know The Zodiac or go anywhere with him, even if he did park his car in such a way just to get her into the dark.
As for the Confession Letter…fraud imo. He says he knew Bates for years during numerous brush offs, but then calls her "Miss Bates". The way i see it, you don’t slaughter a woman you obsessed over for YEARS, only to call her "Miss Bates". Just doesn’t add up.
Someone she knew killed her, and someone like The Zodiac wrote the letters. One wonders if the murder was carried in the Vallejo, Albany or Chronicle papers…
That’s my take. I’m sure everyone disagrees.
Yup. I agree. With all this.
The Cheri Jo business is a big fat red herring in my opinion. I think the Riverside PD really muddied the waters on this one. First off-
Cheri Jo was not wearing a red dress. No connection to the scratches on the desk.
No one obsessed with someone would use their last name. There are loads of boys i have been in love with in my life and not one time did I ever pine for them muttering their last name. I am a girl but I doubt a boy would either. Reminds me of one of CJ’s friends that Graysmith supposedly interviewed and I remember something she said because it struck me as strange- "Bates was a cheerleader and my best friend". It immediately reminded me of some teen horror films ("Heathers" comes to mind) where the dead teen is suddenly friends with a whole host of people she never would have even sat next to in study hall in real life. If she was your best friend no way will you call her "Bates". No way.
I think it was a smart-assed screenwriter/writer type who wanted a hoot of some sort who wrote that letter. Just speculation, not applicable to the evidence at all and just a tinkerer’s opinion.
But there is ZERO evidence that draws one to an easy conclusion that this is Z. Other than the fact that someone wanted to communicate it to the newspapers, which is not nearly so unusual as one would think. I think it is THIS more than anything else that leads people to believe that CJ and Z had any connection. Its apples and oranges…..and he is quite happy to steal from the pile to claim as his own. Adds to his fear he can strike in the populace at large, with no effort. Why WOULDN’T he claim credit for it when you look at it from his angle? Sure, I’ll claim credit for what is still, to this day, the only unsolved homicide in RPD history. SURE. Why not? I would. Any of us would, if we were Z. You think a guy like that has scruples or something?
Kathleen Johns- nope. Anybody who looks at a composite in a high stress situation in a police station is probably going to make a mistake. Not a line-up, but a composite.
I recently did a little experiment of my own where I compared the composites in well known crimes to their eventually-captured perps. Ted Bundy, Green River, etc. And whadya know. NOT ONE OF EM looked like the suspect other than in perhaps hairstyle. Composites are like lie-detectors- they have limited and sometimes plain-faulty usefulness. Or rather, no use at all.
@mysterymachine: very good points.
No one in my life has EVER called me Roberson, outside the usual non-familial authority figures, such as teachers and cops. Cannot recall a time when someone I knew, a friend, coworker or whatever, referred to me as Roberson. The fact that this guy referred to Bates as Bates to me is a huge indicator he didn’t know her, but then he tries to claim he did. Now, some people say this was done to make the cops look elsewhere, at someone "Miss Bates" knew, but again I ask: why? Let’s say you’re the person who killed her, but you’re not connected to her in such a way that would render you a suspect. Then why bother writing a letter to make the murder seem like a fellow classmate stalker or obsessed paramour committed it?
And again, clearly Bates knew this person on some level, why else stand outside with him for an hour or so working on the car, only to then slide off into the dark? Why not return inside to the library and make a call? Certainly a phone was waiting for Cheri Jo (see, even I refer to her by her first name and I’ve never met her) inside. She could have called a dozen people, including her father. Why trust this figure, who almost literally pops from out of nowhere, over your own father?
The only way I can see the theory, that The Zodiac killed Cheri Jo, working is if he were an authority figure in her life, like a coach or a teacher or someone who had some kind of power over her in the form of trust. Maybe a neighbor? Someone who lived on the same street? Sees her leave and decides to follow her to RCC. In this case, it kind of works. A lot of things "gel". Sort of.
But there’s still the problem of why The Zodiac goes into such an angry maelstrom of what looks like pent-up jilted-lover rage, only later to fail to kill Hartnell and Shephard. Really, how do you possess the ability to nearly decapitate an eighteen year-old girl with what looks like a legal, palm-length knife, only to fail to kill two people tied up, totally immobilized, using a knife more than than three times longer than that used on Cheri Jo Bates? To me, that makes no sense. Killers usually ESCALATE their viciousness and depravity, not deescalate. Usually they go from timid and awkward and unsure displays of murder to much more proficient skills of dispatching their victims. Certainly, I’ve never heard it go the other way from furious, lethal brutality to controlled, methodical…incompetence.
And really, if you look at all the women killed by virtual strangers, they are rarely so ever demolished like Cheri Jo. As one cop said, that murder was a nearly virtual carbon copy of the Nicole Simpson murder….
Perhaps it was some kind of Jack the Ripper repeat (Martha Tabrum, for instance), sans mutilations, but that seems more than a little absurd, even if the Zodiac killed five canonical victims and wrote ridiculous letters, too.
Poor girl. I can still see her, in my mind’s eye, laying there, face down in the dirt, feet crossed, large purse halfway underneath her body.
Oh, and another thing: the idea Bob Barnett would return with a friend AND a flashlight to search for his watch, only to fail to find it ten feet from the body, is highly risible. So you have to wonder about the cops who took that story seriously…
Anyway, looking at the confession letter…lots of little things, like the fact the author talks about killing more people, even though he claims Cheri Jo was murdered essentially by an obsessed wannabe lover…and then the whole "young and beautiful" part. Seriously, what eighteen year-old man would refer to Bates as "young" in that context? Then he refers to "my next victim", which stinks of The Zodiac’s mentality of people basically functioning as his playthings, existing solely for his enjoyment.
I’ll bet he wrote the letters, but there’s MANY problems with him being the actual killer, including: why bring such a small knife to a murder? Legal, palm-sized blade? What, no gun and bindings? No bread knife with homemade handle? Who chooses a 3.5 inch knife when they KNOW they’re going to kill someone? And why implicitly claim Snoozy and Furlong but not Bates? Because she knew him and thus a connection could be made that would uncover his identity? Then why write a letter, ANY letter, claiming a connection to her? Why not write as a total stranger, a commuter killer, or just some guy who took an opportunity to claim a random victim? Why not write as Joe Blow off California Interstate X who saw her eating a hamburger before heading to the library?
Stuff will drive you mad.
jroberson, agree with all of that. I recently saw somewhere, a mention of a game played on college campuses in sixties, 66ish-69 to be precise. It was called, I believe, The Hunter, and people stalked and "killed" people to earn points. All they had to do was say, "you are dead" and then you had to play dead. Its bizarre, but it sounds like whoever wrote the letter was maybe privy to that and that might account for some of the language. There was a Time article about it, dated ’66 but you can’t read all of it if you don’t have a sub, of course. But its there.
And yeah, the nervousness at LB tells me that he probably tried a different angle, just like he said he would, but when it got down to it he balked. He’s wearing a freaking costume, its daytime, he’s got these kids tied up and he’s been talking with them for what, 10 minutes? 20 minutes? And not once does he mention being the Zodiac, he doesn’t say anything to alarm them, tries to keep them settled, while he is wearing a hood. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t even do the job right, as you mentioned. It just seems like he was trying something out and then, what does he do? He retreats to his regular M.O but he decides, well, I’m gonna go to the big city, break my pattern. After all, he always said he would do that. He was trying to shake things up, but I think it shook him up. He wasn’t that great at personal killings. When he could just come up and shoot, he seemed to prefer that. And he always did it in a place with some degree of quiet. CJB was right out there in the open. Its just so different.
