So you think someone just walked right in unnoticed and tore a piece of Stine’s shirt? How would they manage to do that in an uber-secured facility? And how would they know where to find that exact shirt? And how would they know Stine had been killed?

Is there anything in the police reports that would prove the shirt was ripped on the night of the attack and not something someone could have snatched from access to the forensic evidence afterwards?
Like, a mention that they noticed a part of his shirt was missing. I know only of the missing keys and wallet being mentioned.

Reverse this thinking and ask yourself "Is there any evidence that someone could have snatched the shirt piece from forensic evidence afterwards? Now the burden of proof is on you.

So you think someone just walked right in unnoticed and tore a piece of Stine’s shirt? How would they manage to do that in an uber-secured facility? And how would they know where to find that exact shirt? And how would they know Stine had been killed?

Well by accessing the case files, obviously they already know he’s dead.

My point is just that I’m wondering if we know from the case files that the shirt was noticed as ripped, before the Zodiac started sending bits of it.

If you believe the Graysmith account, the missing shirt piece was noticed on the 14th October. But this still wouldn’t be proof anyone other than Zodiac took it. Just speculating it’s possible, we can do for every crime scene.

If you believe the Graysmith account, the missing shirt piece was noticed on the 14th October. But this still wouldn’t be proof anyone other than Zodiac took it. Just speculating it’s possible, we can do for every crime scene.

Sure, I was just wondering if it could have been ruled out entirely.
Thanks

edit: Also do you know if the shirt/evidence was stored at the SFPD? If there was a LE link to LH/BRS I would only assume Vallejo PD.

I suspect it was stored in the jurisdiction of the crime, unless requested or deemed appropriate to send to another department, as in the Debut of Zodiac letter.

I suspect it was stored in the jurisdiction of the crime, unless requested or deemed appropriate to send to another department, as in the Debut of Zodiac letter.

Unlikely that they would send the victim’s shirt around, not much to do with it back in those days, but nowadays it could be useful to potentially find DNA where the shirt was ripped off as one had to presumably hold it to rip it off and we assume he had no gloves on. I wonder if they ever tried that.

You would be talking of touch DNA, known to provide erroneous results because of its nature of how its transferred, not to mention how the shirt piece has been stored and handled down the years. It is probably not a realistic pathway. If they got any hit, it would then need to be compared to something. The only realistic hope is the same profile through more than one letter. Or from letter to shirt piece.

GRAPHIC

The idea is good but it wouldn’t make very much of a difference, I’d say. Even IF a police officer had taken it, there is no need to believe he’d be the killer. The killer himself was very close to Stine’s shirt anyway, as you can see. The shirt was disarranged at least. Seems as if the shirt had been cut on the back, most likely while Z still sitting in the rear.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/zodiack … 3-s10.html

QT

GRAPHIC

The idea is good but it wouldn’t make very much of a difference, I’d say. Even IF a police officer had taken it, there is no need to believe he’d be the killer. The killer himself was very close to Stine’s shirt anyway, as you can see. The shirt was disarranged at least.

QT

Difficult to say from the photos.
Stine was shot in the head, and it seems his head was tilted forward towards his chest for some time, in a sitting position, before his body ended up on the side, based on how much blood is on the front of the shirt which implies gravity pulling the blood downwards from the head onto his chest.
I always read the shirt tail being ripped off. Not sure if that was confirmed. Seems ripping off a piece from the front would have made more sense.

So the attacker had to rip off the piece, not end up full of blood on his hands, and put the piece away like in his pockets in a way that would hopefully for him not be obvious, if we go by witness accounts. Pretty damn risky.

Likelihood.

What is the purpose of Occam’s Razor? It’s not an argument, I can’t refute an argument using Occam’s Razor, although people often use it that way. There are a great many things in life for which the correct explanation is extremely complicated. Still we use Occam’s Razor, not because complicated answers cannot be correct, but simply because simple answers are more likely, therefore we save an enormous amounts of time. If we constantly look in the most unlikely of places we will die of old age before we accomplish anything.

Constantly seeking the most convoluted explanation to a scenario makes you either a contrarian, a crank, or a kook. What is your usual standard of proof before you will believe something? You accepted that this website is real, and yet you’ve probably never met any of the people who created it. What if it was created a few months ago solely for the purpose of trapping you in meaningless speculation? What about the chair you’re sitting on, do you own it, do you still have the receipt, is it even real? You accept those things, but this is a step to far.

Parsimony is basically going with the statistics. If most homicides are committed by someone known to the victim, especially a family member, then you go there first. It might not be correct, but usually is. It is useful because of something called logistics, which is basically time, experts and money. You put to the top of the file what you expect from the statistics and that way when the chief pulls you into his office to explain your budget you can show you did things by the book rather than going on some wild goose chase. This is because the chief has to explain their budget also. Someone somewhere is telling you how you could have saved x amount of money if you did things another way instead of the way you did them. If you can show by the book then at least you can cover yourself that way.

The problem with the Zodiac case is we are likely dealing with an offender who knew everything about LE and how they work to the point that he was able to exploit all that knowledge to his own advantage. He knew how to thwart investigations, how to throw them off the scent, how to manipulate the evidence for the most part and how to get the inside scoop on what was going on. How he did that or the degree to which he did that is anyone’s guess. It seems to me at some point LE got wise to this, probably around the time William Armstrong left the case. They just can’t figure out how the Zodiac did that or who he manipulated and how. Likely he was associated with LE in some way and it could be anything from LE talking to civilians to the Zodiac having direct access to police details. So because of that I think we will always see guesses ranging from evidence being lifted to reading police reports. Somewhere along that spectrum is the truth. As far as I remember Stine’s trip sheet is gone. "In the wood dies April" card has gone missing. Cheri Jo Bates diary was found in Bud Kelly’s home.

If Cheri Jo Bates’s diary was found in Bud Kelley’s home, where is it now? Who found it? What did that person do with it?

Where is Stine’s shirt now? All someone has to do is take a look at it to see where it was torn. IIRC there are clear photographs taken in the morgue that show the area that was torn.

If Cheri Jo Bates’s diary was found in Bud Kelley’s home, where is it now? Who found it? What did that person do with it?

Where is Stine’s shirt now? All someone has to do is take a look at it to see where it was torn. IIRC there are clear photographs taken in the morgue that show the area that was torn.

Do you have a link to that or a report that says so? Genuinely curious.

Bloodstained piece of Paul Stine’s shirt Zodiac sent to the San Francisco Chronicle

Judging from the size of the stripes as extrapolated from other photos, this is a 7-8" x 13-15" piece of shirt.

Photo taken when?

Just judging from the black and white photo, it seems impossible investigators wouldn’t have noticed. Would be nice to know when the photo was taken, it would close this topic for good to me.

Difficult to explain how he got all that rear side off considering Stine’s body position, would have implied blood found in other places relative to the need to change his body position to access the rear of the shirt. Why go through all that trouble? To avoid getting blood on himself? Possible, he may have wanted only shirt pieces, not necessarily full of blood.

Edit: Actually, I stupidly just realized the piece of shirt was received two days after the attack, likely sent the next day. That makes it far easier for someone in LE to rip off the shirt than if it had to be ripped off many days afterwards. At the same time, it reduces the chances that they would be able to do so without being noticed, as there is more activity around the evidence itself at that time. This would have had to be someone with immediate access to the evidence in this district, and if we assume that the Zodiac was made up to cover up LH/BR, where they had limited access to case files compared to if it happened in their district, then the Stine attack would have been made or picked in order to have a case on their hands from which they could take evidence from. If this was a murder/theft unrelated to the Zodiac that they "chose" to use, it is borderline ridiculous because for all they know the investigation could lead to an arrest soon after, completing blowing up their game. It would only make sense if they carried out the attack themselves with enough confidence to not get caught. All of this to make some letters believable? Way too complicated. It would start to be a massive conspiracy. I’m feeling I can likely discount it all as having a tie to LE in this case.