I’m trying to figure out the closest YMCA hotel to Vallejo. It’s total speculation, but Ross has to have some connection to the Vallejo / Napa area. It’s very possible he was at Napa State hospital.

If he was released with nowhere to go, SF YMCA is a possibility. Could he have also stayed at one in Vallejo or Benicia?

I believe the Vallejo one burned down:
http://www.timesheraldonline.com/articl … /808169848

There was one in Berkeley.

There was also one in Pleasant Hill. *Serving the Mt. Diablo region since 1964.

Opera a la Carte is a Los Angeles based theatrical company founded by British Gilbert and Sullivan artist Richard Sheldon. Its theatrical productions were based on the Savoy Operas like the Mikado and Pirates of Penzance. I was trying to figure if Ross Sullivan had a leaning towards history and historical productions, having worked at the Riverside City College Library, and wonder if he retained any connections with Riverside after leaving the area, possibly returning occasionally. The first ever production performed by Opera a la Carte was in Riverside County on March 28th 1970 at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts. Just under 4 months later Zodiac sent his first Gilbert & Sullivan reference in the ‘Little List’ letter. Has Ross Sullivan any connections to Idyllwild, Pine Cove, Fern Valley or the San Jacinto Mountain region.
During the late 1960’s and early part of the 1970’s Idyllwild saw ‘ The Brotherhood of Eternal Love ‘ set up their headquarters in Garner Valley, which resulted in hippies congregating in the area, to the dismay of many local residents, particularly in light of the fact Timothy Leary, was a known proponent for the use of psychedelic drugs and served in many prisons, described by President Richard Nixon as ‘ the most dangerous man in America ‘ Idyllwild once gave residence to a sanatorium in 1901, latterly redesigned to a resort, named ‘ Idyllwild Among the Pines.’

Opera a la Carte is a Los Angeles based theatrical company founded by British Gilbert and Sullivan artist Richard Sheldon. Its theatrical productions were based on the Savoy Operas like the Mikado and Pirates of Penzance. I was trying to figure if Ross Sullivan had a leaning towards history and historical productions, having worked at the Riverside City College Library, and wonder if he retained any connections with Riverside after leaving the area, possibly returning occasionally. The first ever production performed by Opera a la Carte was in Riverside County on March 28th 1970 at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts. Just under 4 months later Zodiac sent his first Gilbert & Sullivan reference in the ‘Little List’ letter. Has Ross Sullivan any connections to Idyllwild, Pine Cove, Fern Valley or the San Jacinto Mountain region.
During the late 1960’s and early part of the 1970’s Idyllwild saw ‘ The Brotherhood of Eternal Love ‘ set up their headquarters in Garner Valley, which resulted in hippies congregating in the area, to the dismay of many local residents, particularly in light of the fact Timothy Leary, was a known proponent for the use of psychedelic drugs and served in many prisons, described by President Richard Nixon as ‘ the most dangerous man in America ‘ Idyllwild once gave residence to a sanatorium in 1901, latterly redesigned to a resort, named ‘ Idyllwild Among the Pines.’

Hmm,interesting

Please excuse me if this has been posted. I recall discussion of the film that Ross and his friends made but I do not recall if the article with the picture was ever posted. I’m not going through 199 pages to try to find it!

Please excuse me if this has been posted. I recall discussion of the film that Ross and his friends made but I do not recall if the article with the picture was ever posted. I’m not going through 199 pages to try to find it!

I have it listed on the timeline: http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/ind … s_Sullivan

It points to this post: http://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.p … 836#p26836

Stuff gets lost so easily in these massive threads!

Thanks Doranchak! It’s on page 89, I’m glad I didn’t try to find it.

Thanks for posting it Guys,I couldn’t remember where it was either.

I’ve been away awhile, but my thoughts regarding this case (and Sullivan as a POI) have never left.

I still have issues concerning Ross being a subject. 2 years ago I was fairly convinced that morf may be on to something with Ross as the POI but as more information becomes evident, the less I’m convinced he’s the subject.

Here’s my issues I still have, and the logical fallacies I find some folks iterating regarding Ross as well:

1) "We’ve tracked down where he was for almost his whole life except the years the killings happened"

Yes, this is certainly a fascinating, and even fairly convincing, argument for Ross, but the absence of evidence here most definitely proves nothing. Ross was arrested for his stunt in 68, but was institutionalized as a result of it. We know how California is regarding medical records and we know that barring an external source, the State will not relinquish those records. However, what we factually know is this: Ross was held in a mental institution for an unknown period of time, Ross was held after his mental breakdown in 68, Ross had these mental issues up until his death in 74, the State will not release any information regarding any patient whatsoever. With all these facts in mind, I can only conclude that the most plausible explanation to the question "Where was the mentally ill man after his mental breakdown" is "in the mental hospital." Fact is, there is no evidence substantiating the idea that RS was both held in an institution and escaped this institution at least 5 separate times, with weapons, a costume, and other utilities.

2) The only record we have showing Ross’s illness demonstrates that subtlety is a word unknown to the subject

This may be slightly anecdotal, but I feel it’s spoken from experience and from an educated standpoint. In all my investigations I’ve ever conducted, I’ve found that those with mental illness usually stay within their "mental illness wheelhouse," meaning that they don’t general deviate from their patterns or actions. In 1968, RS was naked, furious, and uncontrollable in public. He was attacking a man in public vision with no regard to his surrounding. Within only a year, we go from a naked deranged man in broad daylight to man using a weapon, driving a car, at night-time, stealthily killing teenagers in the middle of nowhere. These two instances are nearly diametric opposites. Even the LB murders were done under the guise of stealth (Hiding behind trees, not wanting to be identified, choosing subjects furthest from possible line of sight, etc). This points to the idea of slight premeditation (Not premeditated against the victims, necessarily, but bringing a costume, rope, and the particular location is without a doubt evidence of some premeditation towards the crime of murder).

This poses a second question relating to the first point: I assert RS was held and supervised by the State in some capacity from 68 until his death. There are no further records of Ross being naked in public or beating up folks. I find it far more likely that this was the scenario, as opposed to Ross being released/hardly supervised after his mental breakdown, having no further contacts with law enforcement the rest of his life, yet still being the mastermind who can evade police, write letters and cryptograms, and commit murders with very little evidence pointing towards him. The question is this: why does RS go nuts in public once, yet never again, if we are to believe he was so little supervised after his first outburst?

3) This photograph:

Yes, I’m being that guy revisiting this particular question again, but this photograph just screams out at me. I’ve debated before that RS was way too big to be Z, but we’ve all had very few body pictures to go by to really and honestly make a say in one direction or the other. This photograph, in my opinion, closes the book on it completely. I realize morf really believes that RS wears his weight well, but he definitely wasn’t vouge-ing for this picture! His shirt is huge, his head is ridiculously bigger than everyone else’s in the photograph, and his hands are the size of boxing gloves. I think many folks conveniently ignore the statements and quotes from the very few people who have been interviewed about RS, who all unanimously attest that RS was a "very large" guy and that his size alone most definitely ruled him out. This is a great upper body picture that finally shows RS and his size. My girlfriend said he may look this large because of how his shirt is situated, but this doesn’t explain why he’s wearing such a clearly large shirt. I don’t know any thin folks, or even people who "wear their weight well" who need to buy XXL shirts. Further, just look at his left arm in the photograph in comparison to everyone else’s arms. It’s as if he has tree-trunks for arms in comparison. By no means of the word can we say that this photograph of RS is anything but of a man who is clearly heavy-set.

I have more points to be a stickler about, but I think I’ll wrap this post up here. I can’t wait for the breakdown of this post

Hi 1doctor…I am generally with you when it comes to Ross, but as you can see via this link (in a post by morf) http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtop … &start=550 …Ross wasn’t a chunky guy just maybe a year or two (?) before this photo was taken. (see swim photo)

Could be he bulked up under the shirt for the role he was playing?

There is no doubt he became a very large man. The question is….when?

Ross died on September 29, 1977, not in 1974. And he lived at an apartment complex at 2177 17th Avenue in Santa Cruz, which is not an institution. There is a lot of evidence that make Ross a strong POI, and lack of evidence about some facts completely unknown one way or the other do not logically eliminate Ross. The photo doesn’t really give much evidence, except that in some ways he looks similar to the sketch.

Ross died on September 29, 1977, not in 1974. And he lived at an apartment complex at 2177 17th Avenue in Santa Cruz, which is not an institution. There is a lot of evidence that make Ross a strong POI, and lack of evidence about some facts completely unknown one way or the other do not logically eliminate Ross. The photo doesn’t really give much evidence, except that in some ways he looks similar to the sketch.

Thank you! we keep saying that same points over and over.

We need to add to the locked Ross thread the counter arguments to the two points that always come up.

1) Ross was too heavy. When the only Zodiac evidence suggest that Z was in fact very heavy.

2) Ross was too insane. When we know he worked in the library, worked at UCSC, and managed to attend and pass many classes in college.

Hi 1doctor…I am generally with you when it comes to Ross

Hey there bud, long time no see!

but as you can see via this link (in a post by morf) http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtop … &start=550 …Ross wasn’t a chunky guy just maybe a year or two (?) before this photo was taken. (see swim photo)

I’ll post the two photographs here for posterity

Now I promise fellas, I’m not trying to be argumentative here, but he looks fairly stocky to me in the first photo above, and he’s without a doubt the largest person in the photo by quite a bit in the second.

What I do when trying to estimate a weight in a photo that doesn’t give ya much to work with is, I look at their arms. Specifically here, I’m looking at shoulder size and upper arm size. He doesn’t look much like a weightlifter and he is large for a swimmer, for sure.

However the biggest obstacle for this subject to overcome, however, is the car. I believe I recall someone from RCC claiming he rode a motor scooter, but I don’t believe we’ve ever found if Ross has a license or ever drove at all.

Now, I’ll add a bit of positivity to change it up from constant dissent: what kind of people take taxis? Generally, those who do not drive. For whatever reason, I think most of us can agree that Ross probably didn’t do much driving. I struggle to think of how someone who usually kills people who are already in a discrete location, changes up his MO and kills a lone taxi driver. The only thing that I can conclude is that it showed opportunity. This evidence would point towards Ross than every other subject, as Ross probably took a couple taxis around town. Furthermore, Z shot Stine from the front seat, not the back, and people close to Stine have attested that Stine would only let people he knew sit in the front.

In order to make this theory a sound one though, we would obviously have to place Ross in SF during the year Stine was killed. Once that can be done, it’s MUCH easier to agree that Ross was taking taxis a bit in SF, knew Stine a bit, and committed the shooting from the front seat.

Ross died on September 29, 1977, not in 1974. And he lived at an apartment complex at 2177 17th Avenue in Santa Cruz, which is not an institution. There is a lot of evidence that make Ross a strong POI, and lack of evidence about some facts completely unknown one way or the other do not logically eliminate Ross. The photo doesn’t really give much evidence, except that in some ways he looks similar to the sketch.

I do admit I got the years wrong, I forgot to fix it in the edit, sorry!

As for his Santa Cruz residency, you’re talking to the guy that found that information

And since we’re talking about it, let me remind everyone that the Santa Cruz address was a medical facility, not an apartment complex. I elaborate more here:

viewtopic.php?f=106&t=2646&p=39814#p39814

It’s been a while and I’ll see if I can find the post, but I remember it was confirmed Ross was there from 74-77.

We need to add to the locked Ross thread the counter arguments to the two points that always come up.

1) Ross was too heavy. When the only Zodiac evidence suggest that Z was in fact very heavy.

2) Ross was too insane. When we know he worked in the library, worked at UCSC, and managed to attend and pass many classes in college.

Well, point 1 comes from his family and friends themselves, the people who actually knew Ross (something none of us can claim), and they all say Ross was very large. I mean, yes Z was a bit larger as well, but the folks who knew Ross said he was 300lbs, not 200lbs. This is a large problem which has yet to be countered and is still a valid criticism. As Tahoe said, we can tell he’s clearly not 300lbs in the high school pictures, and we do know he was 300lbs at time of death, the real question is when he got that big.

Your second point is not a very decent one, I don’t feel. Schizophrenia shows in male adults anywhere from youth up until their thirties. There are very many people who live out their lives normally until their illness sets in. Given the nature of the crimes and the contents of the letters he wrote, do you also suggest that Z didn’t hold a job or couldn’t pass classes, either? Surely not.

Point is, I’m not dissenting out of ignorance here, fellas!

There is also the matter of his 1977 death certificate stating that he had been living in Santa Cruz County for 3 years. This leaves a gap from 1968 to 1974 where we don’t know where he was living. But, maybe it’s a simple matter of the vital records office not having enough information at the time to enter a more accurate duration of residence. Shuffling around in various institutions and rest homes may account for the lapse in record keeping.

Still, it’s very tempting to wonder about him deteriorating rapidly from his "normal" life living in a Santa Cruz apartment in 1968 to ending up in a mental health facility and/or rest home towards the end of his life. What else was he up to during that decline?

There is also the matter of his 1977 death certificate stating that he had been living in Santa Cruz County for 3 years. This leaves a gap from 1968 to 1974 where we don’t know where he was living. But, maybe it’s a simple matter of the vital records office not having enough information at the time to enter a more accurate duration of residence. Shuffling around in various institutions and rest homes may account for the lapse in record keeping.

Still, it’s very tempting to wonder about him deteriorating rapidly from his "normal" life living in a Santa Cruz apartment in 1968 to ending up in a mental health facility and/or rest home towards the end of his life. What else was he up to during that decline?

This really is the million dollar question.

Personally, I believe it’s most likely that due to staying in institutions, RS became sedentary, which is how he gained so much weight near the end. At least, those living active lives certainly don’t gain 100lbs in ~7 years