The easiest answer is this… nobody knows if they have Zodiac’s prints. There is absolutely no way to be positive that any prints that LE have belong to the killer.

But it’s VERY LIKELY they have his prints. The bloody cab print is most certainly his(assuming he didn’t cut somebody’s finger off),and the palm prints on the letters are very likely his,and we know they have one or more of those.

The easiest answer is this… nobody knows if they have Zodiac’s prints. There is absolutely no way to be positive that any prints that LE have belong to the killer.

But it’s VERY LIKELY they have his prints. The bloody cab print is most certainly his(assuming he didn’t cut somebody’s finger off),and the palm prints on the letters are very likely his,and we know they have one or more of those.

I wish we could find out if the palm prints were ever compared, and if so, what the results were. I kind of think that Zodiac himself did not kill Stine, but that is a theory for another section of the forum I suppose.

I find it curious though…

Why bring himself into the case as Zodiac? If there were ANY chance at all they had his prints, wouldn’t he be better off being quiet about "Zodiac"–at the very least he would have be popped for being the murderer of a cab driver. Heck, one barely had to serve prison time for killing a cop!

This has always killed me. So to speak. It seems that Stine was a close call for him, and he was trying to obfuscate any info that he may have believed they had. Ergo the bit about "i look different when i do my thing"-which, as Norse pointed out, is a silly sort of add-on. It seems to me that he was afraid of having been tracked in some way and was trying to make it seem like he was above it all.

I have thought for a while now that if it weren’t for those pieces of Paul Stine’s shirt there would have been zero reason to think this was a Zodiac crime. It was sorta like a feeble attempt at throwing in some variety, feeble because he was seen, perhaps by more people than merely the children from the upper window.
So it would fit that he would make some claim that would render any evidence they had gathered from this atypical Z crime possibly useless.

I find it curious though…

Why bring himself into the case as Zodiac? If there were ANY chance at all they had his prints, wouldn’t he be better off being quiet about "Zodiac"–at the very least he would have be popped for being the murderer of a cab driver. Heck, one barely had to serve prison time for killing a cop!

This has always killed me. So to speak. It seems that Stine was a close call for him, and he was trying to obfuscate any info that he may have believed they had. Ergo the bit about "i look different when i do my thing"-which, as Norse pointed out, is a silly sort of add-on. It seems to me that he was afraid of having been tracked in some way and was trying to make it seem like he was above it all.

I have thought for a while now that if it weren’t for those pieces of Paul Stine’s shirt there would have been zero reason to think this was a Zodiac crime. It was sorta like a feeble attempt at throwing in some variety, feeble because he was seen, perhaps by more people than merely the children from the upper window.
So it would fit that he would make some claim that would render any evidence they had gathered from this atypical Z crime possibly useless.

that’s what makes berryessa such an outlier – in the other three crimes we are not aware of any indication that he was the zodiac until he had made his getaway. it’s a pretty decent failsafe. if he gets caught at a crime scene then he’s perhaps caught for that crime but if he keeps his mouth shut no one ties it to the zodiac because it’s not a ‘zodiac’ crime until he contacts police or writes letters claiming it. with berryessa, wearing a zodiac hood flies in the face of that otherwise solid MO. in the stine case, if he truly worried that they had his fingerprints then why claim the crime? wait a few weeks and kill someone else.

I find it curious though…

Why bring himself into the case as Zodiac? If there were ANY chance at all they had his prints, wouldn’t he be better off being quiet about "Zodiac"–at the very least he would have be popped for being the murderer of a cab driver. Heck, one barely had to serve prison time for killing a cop!

I had that thought too. Here’s the thing though. I think that horse had already bolted.

He claimed the Stine murder pretty much immediately. I think it was an opportunity he couldn’t resist. He might have been conscious of covering his tracks evidence wise but the near miss and his failed capture, I believe, overrode any practical caution. I have to wonder as well if the shirt might have played a part. Sending in bloodstained material from a crime is pretty dramatic. Sending it in when it’s "as fresh as possible" is even more-so.

He attempts, imo, to tidy up any loose ends or at least sow doubt in the follow up letter. All that stuff about appearance and airplane cement. The cops talking to him. A bus bomb. It all seems like ham-fisted misdirection but hey … maybe it worked. He did kinda bombard them with stuff in that letter and that makes sense because I don’t think he could be sure of what they might or might not have regarding evidence. Everything happened pretty quickly that night and he was still reacting to it with the sending of the letter and the piece of shirt. It’s only afterward when he thinks about the what if’s – witnesses, prints etc that he pens a response rather than a reaction.

I think there were doubts and unknowns on booth sides. Do they have my prints? Do we have his prints? Zodiac, I believe, was playing games just in case and because he could.

I think there were doubts and unknowns on booth sides. Do they have my prints? Do we have his prints? Zodiac, I believe, was playing games just in case and because he could.

Agreed.

Pardon this question, but since these are ALL partial fingerprints, these have not been entered into CODIS, correct?
SO if they have NOT, then these are not being ran against the population at large- I think I remember there being 8 points on the palm print but that isn’t enough to put into the system.

So this has only, if that is true, been sight-analyzed- meaning, it is probably never going to match ANYONE unless millions of records are examined by sight. They are not capable of putting it into the system. I could be wrong on this, but that fingerprint doesn’t really seem to be hella helpful.

Not strictly relevant to your query, MM – but nevertheless:

I have spoken to two people who have actually worked with these prints, and they said that there were traces of blood. Not bloody prints, but prints with blood in some ridges. The overwhelming majority of the evidence indicates that these prints were left by the killer and were found in the last place where the witnesses observed the suspect making contact with the cab.

From Butterfield’s board (the quote’s from him).

The prints in question are the so-called "bloody prints" which SFPD were "confident" about. And these prints were, as far as I can tell, used to eliminate suspects (including, among others, ALA).

Now, that has to mean they’re good enough – as prints. Whether they’ve been included in the federal database, I don’t know – nobody seems to know precisely what is included where when it comes to the Z evidence (other than the DNA not being complete enough to be included in CODIS).