The thing is, how do you fit an anomaly like Z into a criminal profile? If you take all the murders together, and especially, if you include Bates, it’s difficult to make a basic argument of whether he was even an organized or unorganized serial killer. I find it interesting that Morf pictures a sick, mentally ill individual, others see a cold blooded sadistic type, some see thrill seeker, while others see power assertive.

Personally I don’t picture Z to be schizophrenic whatsoever. I also disagree with Norse that the killing was secondary to the letter campaign. The letters, the taunting phone calls, point to a sadist, who stretches the joy of the kill, by writing letters and crank calling relatives of the victims. On the other hand, unlike sadists such as btk, Z has little interest in torturing his victims, and only one sloppy instance of binding, so I return to square one, baffled as to where Z fits.

T The letters, the taunting phone calls, point to a sadist, who stretches the joy of the kill, by writing letters and crank calling relatives of the victims.

I don’t disagree with that – he wasn’t a generally nice guy who just wanted some attention and who couldn’t think of a better way of getting it than going on a killing spree. What I see, however, is someone who is characterized more by the letter campaign than by the actual murders, which in that sense seem secondary in nature to the former. It can clearly be called sadistic – he took pleasure in scaring (and taunting) people and there’s no reason to think he didn’t enjoy killing people either, on some level or other. But to me these murders can’t be classified as sadistic or sexual…or anything very useful in themselves. I tend to regard them as representing some sort of game he played more than anything – and I also tend to think that this game was a one-player one: It was him acting out something, with both the victims and the general public as extras in the script.

By the way, he didn’t actually make any crank calls to relatives, did he? May have written a letter to a relative, if he was responsible for the Riverside notes – but those notes are very interesting: They’re not taunting in nature as I see it. You can almost insert an "I’m sorry, but…" there without altering the – possible – meaning.

Yes, I was referring to the "She had to die" letter to Joseph Bates, if he was indeed responsible for that one, but also the alleged calls to Darlene’s family. I believe Stine’s family may have too been harassed.

I agree with you, Norse, that in terms of MO, Z is characterized by the letters. The question is what he got off on more, the killing or the terrorizing he could create with the letters. Ultimately, I think the same underling motive is the impetus for both the killing and the letters. Whether that was for the thrill or for the feeling of power I think an argument could be made for both.

Mike R.’s thread re: his conversations with Walter about the CJB case.

http://zodiackiller.fr.yuku.com/topic/3 … TES-KILLER

(Read the entire thread, as Walter revised his opinion after receiving new info.)

Thanks CT, that is very helpful. It makes sense to me. I understand why Mr. Walter may think that the crime scene behaviour is more important to analyse than the content of the letters, if that is what he thinks, and that he doesn’t have the time to review every single piece of information in the case. I think that’s fine.

What I don’t understand is David Van Nuys, who IIRC, only viewed the content of the letters and no other information BY CHOICE. Why in the world would you want to purposely exclude information about a case in your assessment? He was the one that was stipulating the conditions.

Thanks CT, that is very helpful. It makes sense to me. I understand why Mr. Walter may think that the crime scene behaviour is more important to analyse than the content of the letters, if that is what he thinks, and that he doesn’t have the time to review every single piece of information in the case. I think that’s fine.

What I don’t understand is David Van Nuys, who IIRC, only viewed the content of the letters and no other information BY CHOICE. Why in the world would you want to purposely exclude information about a case in your assessment? He was the one that was stipulating the conditions.

Could be why he later denounced the book. Or was that Kelleher? Either way, one of them thought the book to now be incorrect (for lack of a better word).

Hi-

Mr. Walter did not fail to review the letters due to a lack of time or desire. His methodology, which works quite well, is to analyze crime scenes to determine the profile. He views letter writing to be post-crime behavior, which is not relevant to his type of profiling EXCEPT that a power-assertive has the need to brag and the letters therefore fill that need.

As for Bates, he said that he would need access to the case files before he could come up with a definitive profile. He is normally consulted by police and has complete access to case files, unlike we who try to piece things together from the crumbs we are tossed to us by the police over the years. However, the Bates murder does not appear to me to be a power-assertive type of crime and other profilers have also sensed that it was not a Z crime (Sharon Pagaling Hagen, for one).

Mike

The thing is, how do you fit an anomaly like Z into a criminal profile? If you take all the murders together, and especially, if you include Bates, it’s difficult to make a basic argument of whether he was even an organized or unorganized serial killer. I find it interesting that Morf pictures a sick, mentally ill individual, others see a cold blooded sadistic type, some see thrill seeker, while others see power assertive.

Personally I don’t picture Z to be schizophrenic whatsoever. I also disagree with Norse that the killing was secondary to the letter campaign. The letters, the taunting phone calls, point to a sadist, who stretches the joy of the kill, by writing letters and crank calling relatives of the victims. On the other hand, unlike sadists such as btk, Z has little interest in torturing his victims, and only one sloppy instance of binding, so I return to square one, baffled as to where Z fits.

I have wondered this myself. It seems there are a number of contradictions. I always thought it strange that he did the LB murders, and then went and shot a cabbie in the city. If he were getting that much of a thrill out of the killing, you would expect to see a continued escalation. That is USUALLY what happens…but no. He pulls back, uses a gun, shoots a guy from behind. With his last murder, he had gotten more up close and personal with the victims, spent more time with them than previous victims. If he were a sadist, one would think that inflicting pain close up would have been a thrill. Instead he stops killing couples and just shoots a guy from behind. Almost as if he were doing it for some other reason. I mean, why didn’t he even take any souvenirs with him from LB? You would have thought he would have taken a piece of Cecilia’s clothing. Think about Jack the Ripper- his last murder was the most brutal by far, and it was the only time he had privacy as well, in Mary Kelly’s room. It gave him more license. Z has this opportunity and he merely stabs them, and not even all that well enough to kill them immediately, and he leaves another survivor. He didn’t lean in and lose his cool and get really knife-mad. He doesn’t. And he has a loaded gun as well.
Its just all so strange. Thinking on it you could believe that Stine was almost perfunctory. He wanted that shirt, wanted something to dribble out in his letters, proof. You could almost believe that was his ONLY real motivation with Stine.

I would think a schizophrenic would leave a much less organized scene, as well. And anyway, schizos rarely commit violent crimes. Even serial murder accounts for something like 3 percent of all homicides, so out of that small sliver schizophrenics are not hugely represented. Personality disorders are a whole other business, but diagnosing something like that from letters just turns the whole thing prismatic and inscrutable all over again. But think about Richard Chase, the Sacramento Vampire. That guy was purely, full on schizophrenic and he practically left blood trails right to his own door.
I think he was obviously a Black Swan, just unknowable by the typical disorganized/organized rubric of profiling. Walter’s power-assertive model is the closest Z gets to being pigeonholed, but even then, he stands outside the margins somehow.

From Zodiackillerfacts.com

"Another psychological assessment of the killer’s personality appeared in the October 21, 1969 edition of The San Francisco Examiner. The headline read, “Zodiac’s Graph: Impotent, Shrewd and Paranoid,” and the accompanying article presented a portrait painted by William F. Baker, a handwriting expert armed with thirty five years of experience and master’s degrees in psychology and abnormal psychology."

"In an interview with reporter Sam Blumenfeld, Baker offered his insights after what he called an “exhaustive” study of the Zodiac’s writings. “He feels suspended between heaven and hell, not sure of himself and feels caught in a trap of merely existing.” Baker explained how certain characteristics in the killer’s writing revealed more about his state of mind. “The strong slant to the left of the lower letters denotes a ‘mother hostility’ and an unhappy childhood. Carry that trait further and you find the man who is afraid of women and hates them. Carry that to a further extreme and you have a man who is capable of killing women to get even with his mother.” Like others before him, Baker speculated about the Zodiac’s possible feelings of inadequacy and his psycho-sexual compulsions. “The probability is that he is impotent and a watcher rather than a participant in sex.” Baker told Blumenfeld that the killer was most likely not a homosexual but that he was unquestionably paranoid and schizophrenic"

And this-

The top psycholinguistics expert in the country, Dr. Murray S. Miron, working from nineteen of the killer’s letters, came to these conclusions about Zodiac in a secret Syracuse Research Institute report:

Zodiac has had some exposure to our training in elementary cryptography"

is a Caucasian unmarried male in his twenties.

He is no more than high school educated,

reads little,

is isolated, withdrawn, and unrelated in his habits,

quiet and unprepossessing in disposition"

Miron felt the killer had good eyesight

and was " a discretionary illiterate, " someone who prefers " the passiveness of pictures, T V, and the movies" and does not even have a library of " cheap pocket books."

Zodiac, in Miron’s opinion, "would have spent much time in movie houses specializing in sado-masochistic and occult eroticism"

and was " a borderline psychotic…

His communications display the characteristic signs of magical thinking, and narcissistic infantilism typical of the schizophrenic.

From Zodiackillerfacts.com

"Another psychological assessment of the killer’s personality appeared in the October 21, 1969 edition of The San Francisco Examiner. The headline read, “Zodiac’s Graph: Impotent, Shrewd and Paranoid,” and the accompanying article presented a portrait painted by William F. Baker, a handwriting expert armed with thirty five years of experience and master’s degrees in psychology and abnormal psychology."

"In an interview with reporter Sam Blumenfeld, Baker offered his insights after what he called an “exhaustive” study of the Zodiac’s writings. “He feels suspended between heaven and hell, not sure of himself and feels caught in a trap of merely existing.” Baker explained how certain characteristics in the killer’s writing revealed more about his state of mind. “The strong slant to the left of the lower letters denotes a ‘mother hostility’ and an unhappy childhood. Carry that trait further and you find the man who is afraid of women and hates them. Carry that to a further extreme and you have a man who is capable of killing women to get even with his mother.” Like others before him, Baker speculated about the Zodiac’s possible feelings of inadequacy and his psycho-sexual compulsions. “The probability is that he is impotent and a watcher rather than a participant in sex.” Baker told Blumenfeld that the killer was most likely not a homosexual but that he was unquestionably paranoid and schizophrenic"

And this-

The top psycholinguistics expert in the country, Dr. Murray S. Miron, working from nineteen of the killer’s letters, came to these conclusions about Zodiac in a secret Syracuse Research Institute report:

Zodiac has had some exposure to our training in elementary cryptography"

is a Caucasian unmarried male in his twenties.

He is no more than high school educated,

reads little,

is isolated, withdrawn, and unrelated in his habits,

quiet and unprepossessing in disposition"

Miron felt the killer had good eyesight

and was " a discretionary illiterate, " someone who prefers " the passiveness of pictures, T V, and the movies" and does not even have a library of " cheap pocket books."

Zodiac, in Miron’s opinion, "would have spent much time in movie houses specializing in sado-masochistic and occult eroticism"

and was " a borderline psychotic…

His communications display the characteristic signs of magical thinking, and narcissistic infantilism typical of the schizophrenic.

I’m not going to put a lot of stock in what a psychologist from 1969 has to say about Z, especially one who interprets profiles from handwriting. That sounds like quackery to me. As for the other profilers mentioned, they don’t exactly sound like they’re describing Ross Sullivan either, except for the schizophrenic part. Moreover, If he were actively psychotic (I think Norse or MM pointed this out) the crimes would be more disorganized. Plus, the letters would come across more incoherent, like the ramblings of SoS.

Zodiac hardly seemed paranoid either, imo.

Zodiac hardly seemed paranoid either, imo.

I don’t know what the difference between paranoid schizophrenia & plain old schizophrenia is(if there is any)

JOEDETECTIVE wrote-
"I’m not going to put a lot of stock in what a psychologist from 1969 has to say about Z, especially one who interprets profiles from handwriting. That sounds like quackery to me. As for the other profilers mentioned, they don’t exactly sound like they’re describing Ross Sullivan either, except for the schizophrenic part. Moreover, If he were actively psychotic (I think Norse or MM pointed this out) the crimes would be more disorganized. Plus, the letters would come across more incoherent, like the ramblings of SoS"

Well, I didn’t say they were describing Ross, although he was a schizophrenic. Current day profilers are wrong, just look back to the DC sniper case when an early tip came in to look for black males in a white car and that tip got put to the end of the line because profilers said that the perps were White