sorry if this has been discussed but i can’t find it anywhere – is it believed that the killer used stine’s shirt to wipe down the outside of the cab or, no, it’s believed the killer brought a separate rag with him to wipe down the cab?
I think its the former, he used the shirt to wipe down the car. But i’m sure others here probably know a lot more about this than I do.
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thanks. i think i found a reference too. an october 1969 article about paul stine’s brother joe essentially daring zodiac to come get him references the belief that the killer tore the shirt to wipe down the cab.
i’ve wondered whether zodiac killed stine simply in order to have a form of "proof" for his letters in order to avoid one of his legitimate letters being thrown in the "hoax" pile. it’s always seemed odd that he’d take the time to cut part of the back of the shirt off in the middle of a crime scene, but it makes more sense that he’d try to get a part of the shirt not covered in blood if he needed to wipe down the cab.
He could have mailed in Paul’s driver’s license or something from his wallet too. The shirt definitely had a creepy factor to it though.
Odd they even found prints if it was wiped clean.
Paul sister mentioned over at zk.com (in chat) that Joe had given Paul that shirt. Sad…
I think most assume it was Paul’s shirt used to "wipe" the cab, but of course there is no way of really knowing this.
“…they may be dealing with one or more ersatz Zodiacs–other psychotics eager to get into the act, or perhaps even other murderers eager to lay their crimes at the real Zodiac’s doorstep.“ L.A. Times, 1969
No one really knows. The kids claimed they saw him using a white rag, but from a distance it would have been hard to see the black-white lines in Stine’s shirt. More than likely, they would have blurred into a grey and, lit by street lights, made the cloth look white.
One wonders about The Zodiac’s organizational skills…he kills Stine, expelling blood all throughout the cab. Did he not consider the ramifications of such an act? Probably not. He had never killed someone with a gun within such tight quarters. Makes you wonder if he actually possessed any military training or experience, then, because if so he would know that a head wound produces enormous blood flow, and that such flow inside a confined space would create a rather considerable mess. If then the Zodiac didn’t bring his own rag, and made do with Stine’s shirt as many think, The Zodiac wasn’t quite that well organized nor was he familiar with blood spatter via head wounds.
One also gets the impression he didn’t want his crime discovered until later, given that he left Stine laying on the front seat, even though such a position made it all but certain The Zodiac would be even more covered in blood as he dissected Stine’s shirt and stole his wallet and keys.
Perhaps The Zodiac had planned to phone the SFPD police, announcing his latest crime, but the "cids" skewered his opportunity and preempted his escape.
i believe the most likely scenario is the cab wasn’t in park when stine was shot, which was an aspect zodiac totally overlooked. i believe he had an expectation that he would shoot and be out of the car in a flash. premeditated shirt-taking doesn’t fit the bill for me. if he needed a souvenir or proof for the papers he could have mailed in stine’s license or keys. i think he took the shirt after realizing he needed to wipe the car down after realizing his plan was crumbling as the car lurched forward and he needed to interact with it in order to stop it from crashing. once he had his fingers all over everything he HAD to wipe it down with something, thus the shirt.
the biggest point of this theory to me is his nov 9 bus bomb letter where he goes out of his way to say he doesn’t leave fingerprints and he covers his fingers with airplane cement. i can’t imagine that statement is anything other than him freaking out that he might have left fingerprints. it’s so obvious and so ill-thought that, to me, that paragraph is the best example of who we’re dealing with – a disorganized criminal whose only genius is how random he was. he completely screws up his own plan, tries to improvise, then realizes he probably made things worse so he tries to trick the cops by essentially saying ‘i never leave fingerprints…so don’t bother checking the fingerprints, they’re not mine. no, seriously, don’t even bother checking.’ it’d be funny if it wasn’t part of a murder.
