If you loosen the lugs on the wheel of a car and expect that wheel to come off, you aren’t exactly also expecting that same car to simply stop with no problems back in 1969. Today cars can deal with a wheel flying off a bit better because of safety features so I can picture cars still traveling on three, but back then, in 1969, especially if the car was a heap to begin with, that’s not something that always ends okay.
You are expecting the thing to veer off, hit the ditch, throw the occupants through the windscreen and possibly catch fire, burning up. Or like Fred Manalli head-on into incoming traffic.
Zodiac basically has no control (and neither does she) over when that wheel will come off and what is going on in the environment at the time except for more road and traffic. A wheel flying off can take out oncoming traffic and even his own vehicle in the process.
If this is BY FIRE then he might have trouble with the idea of burning someone to death but crash and burn?
When I committ my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc. – November 9th, 1969.
Is that his new game? Causing car accidents?
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The main problem I have with John’s story is that she lets the guy fiddle with the wheel, the wheel comes off, and she trusts this same guy enough to get in his car? I mean, did she not think “hold on, this guy just caused my wheel to come off, I probably shouldn’t trust him”?
Don’t at all believe she rode with Zodiac.
And yet more last thoughts about the Kathleen Johns incident…
Zodiac claimed he resembled the Oct. 11, 1969 “Presidio Heights Crime” sketch ‘only when I do my thing,‘ and that all other times Zodiac looks completely different.
In March 1970, Kathleen Johns identified her abductor as the Zodiac Killer from the same “Presidio Heights Crime” sketch.
Zodiac takes credit for the Johns abduction / arson around July 24 1970 in a letter: ‘… that woeman and her baby that I gave a rather interesting ride a coupple howers…‘
Did Zodiac have on the exact same facial costume to exactly resemble the sketch yet again, then? If so, why would such a clever criminal do such a stupid thing that could get him identified?
Or did Zodiac actually look exactly like that sketch and inadvertently confirm this when taking credit for the Johns abduction crime?
That was too much!
@cz85 Zodiac did take credit for the crime.
True. But as Nice Guy Eddie would say, “He’ll tell you he started the Chicago fire. Now that don’t necessarily make it fuckin’ so.”. ?
@cz85 Yes Zodiac is an unreliable narrator fer shur. And Kathleen a famously “unreliable” witness as well.
But looking at the primary sources in 1969 & 1970, it seems quite plausible that Johns did encounter Zodiac.
At that time, Kathleen Johns said Zodiac got her – and Zodiac publicly agreed. Many interested people agreed. Note also that Zodiac’s letter taking credit is very short: Z complains about his “buttons” and then directly threatens Kathleen Johns again, letter completed. And that arives only a few months after the crime… just as its memory faded.
Johns was unquestionably traumatized by the events of that night per the police report. She certainly did encounter a scary man who looked like the Zodiac composite, abducted her, and then torched her car when she escaped him.
Johns’ recollections got shakier as time marched, which is typical for almost all crime witnesses. But quite atypically for Kathleen, she was also hounded by amateur/professional Zodiac sleuths the rest of her life. The sleuths ran photographs of their pet “Zodiac suspects” in front of her and they would interview her with leading questions. No doubt some bum information made its way to Kathleen in these exchanges. That stuff could certainly taint her recollections. She is a witness who received an extraordinary amount of badgering.
A parallel example: Michael Mageau is another victim in this case whose modern recollections are not considered reliable by investigators. However, his primary recollections at the time the crime occurred are very well accepted as factual. But not Kathleen Johns…?
That was too much!
