Hi-

In 2011, a guy I’ll call Samuel called Armond Pelissetti to discuss the Zodiac case. Samuel loves classical music and was recording some Mozart in the background. He accidentally left the recorder on and captured the phone call. He played it for me later and there was no doubt but that this was Pelissetti’s voice. I had spoken to him in 2004 and nobody could reproduce his arrogant, condescending sarcastic tone like that.

He started to ask Pelissetti to describe what happened on the night of the Stine murder and Pelissetti stopped him short. He asked Samuel if he had ever seen the Director’s Cut of the movie Zodiac. He said that he had. Pelissetti said that everything he had to say he said on that DVD, so there was no need for Samuel to ask him questions. He elaborated by saying that he spotted this man in his own front yard with a dog on a leash and he was not wearing the same clothes that had been described for the killer, and that he was not sweating.

Wait a minute!

Did he say "front yard?" Pelissetti has never before placed himself that far east of Maple Street, more than half way to Spruce! Pelissetti has always maintained that he ran into this "dog walker" on Maple Street and that presumably the alibi had to do with the fact that the man could not have made it home, changed clothes, gotten his dog and made it to the corner of Maple before Pelissetti arrived. Now the man had extra time to change and he only had to get into his front yard, not onto the street. (Of course, I expect people to say that even with the extra time, the dog walker still could not have even made it into his front yard by the time Pelissetti arrived. I know how it works.)

But the question is this: Why can’t Armond Pelissetit, who called me in 2004 and told me that my suspect "had an alibi and had been cleared," tell his story the same way every time? What do the police make of people who tell varying stories? They have something to hide, that is what they think!

Pelissetti told someone once, "If that clown from New Jersey is right (and I don’t think he was referring to Mike M!), he’ll sure make and ass out of me!" So Pelissetti’s first loyalty is not to the truth or to solving the case. It is to making sure that HE does not become Don Fouke a thousand times over.

Pelissetti always ties his arrival back at the crime scene to the arrival of Toschi and Armstrong. In an interview by Duffy Jennings, Toschi says that he got the call at about 10:10 PM. He still had to get dressed and pick up Armstrong at Park Merced. I’m guessing they didn’t arrive until 10:45 at the earliest and probably closer to 11 PM. What was Pelissetti doing for all this time? How could he get to Jackson and Maple quickly enough to give some soul an alibi but then take forty minutes to get back to the crime scene? Was it the climb up Maple?

I sent Pelissetti my report in 2007. He read it and trashed both it and me. This was the same report that a Superior Court Judge from Solano had read in 2001 and declared I had the "only true prime suspect in the case." Based on this same report, Richard Walter was willing to go in print saying that I had solved the case. And yet Pelissetti said there wasn’t even ONE fact in my report that was of interest. He called it "amateurish." Nobody else who has read it has ever said that.

When you talk about people who "have an agenda" in the Zodiac case, place Pelissetti at the very top of your list.

BTW, he told Samuel that the dog walker from the front yard was NOT the guy who was placed in the back of the police car and looked at by Rebecca that night. To repeat: NOT the guy in the squad car!

Mike

Good stuff, but who is Rebecca and who had been placed in the car?

QT

Hi-

Rebecca was one of the three eyewitnesses. Apparently, about a half hour or so after the murder, she was asked to come out and try to ID some guy who had been out walking his dog. Her father accompanied her. She (and he, I guess) failed to ID the guy as the assailant. People have speculated that the man was the same one Pelissetti had spoken to on his trip around the block. Pelissetti says it was not.

What is ironic is that for years people have said that Pelissetti is the more credible of the two cops from that night (Fouke is the other). But Pelissetti can’t get his story straight, sort of like Mr. X when I spoke to him in 2006 (when he said he "should have been in England" the night of the Stine murder but AP spoke to him in the streets or in his yard, or both). Fouke has repeated his story to me several times and tells it the same way every time. People have called him out on that and say it is a "well-practiced lie." But where does that leave poor old Pelissetti? I guess by the logic applied to Fouke, Pelissetti must be telling the truth, LOL!, since he is not telling a "well-practiced lie!"

Mike

Hi-

Rebecca was one of the three eyewitnesses. Apparently, about a half hour or so after the murder, she was asked to come out and try to ID some guy who had been out walking his dog. Her father accompanied her. She (and he, I guess) failed to ID the guy as the assailant. People have speculated that the man was the same one Pelissetti had spoken to on his trip around the block. Pelissetti says it was not.

What is ironic is that for years people have said that Pelissetti is the more credible of the two cops from that night (Fouke is the other). But Pelissetti can’t get his story straight, sort of like Mr. X when I spoke to him in 2006 (when he said he "should have been in England" the night of the Stine murder but AP spoke to him in the streets or in his yard, or both). Fouke has repeated his story to me several times and tells it the same way every time. People have called him out on that and say it is a "well-practiced lie." But where does that leave poor old Pelissetti? I guess by the logic applied to Fouke, Pelissetti must be telling the truth, LOL!, since he is not telling a "well-practiced lie!"

Mike

It’s sad, but I think they both have demonstrated over the years that they are capable of changing their story

How has Fouke’s story changed? I can’t recall it changing since he started telling it to me. People may not be satisfied with his story but I can’t recall it evolving.

Mike

Hi-
The difference between Fouke possibly changing his story (if he did) and Pelissetti changing his story is that Fouke isn’t supplying anyone with an alibi. Pelissetti is. Pelissetti can’t keep his facts straight.

Mike

How has Fouke’s story changed? I can’t recall it changing since he started telling it to me. People may not be satisfied with his story but I can’t recall it evolving.

Mike

In the early interviews with Fouke, and in his scratch/memo, he never ever mentioned seeing Z walk up stairs to a house, then suddenly in 2007, on the Z documentary, he mentions that happening, and when asked why he never mentioned that before, he had no real good reason. To me, that seems like a story has changed

Hi-
Fair enough. I would not be surprised if it ever came out that Fouke only came forward after he was busted by Z with the 11/9 letter and that he didn’t want to get in trouble for not reporting what he saw on the night it happened, so he kept quiet to cover his ass. Who knows if he spoke to the guy? He has never faltered and admitted it to me. However, did you notice that on the night of the murder, when Pelissetti told him they were looking for a white guy, he did not speed back to 3712 Jackson and run up the steps to that house?

He told me and Jim in 2005 that he felt at the time that the person who had robbed the cabbie would not have lived in that neighborhood, which is what every other officer undoubtedly thought at the time, so he thought the guy had "faked him out" by APPEARING to walk up the steps. This is a logical conclusion. His actions are a matter of record that night, as he and Zelms went into the park assuming that the perp was going to walk up Maple and get away in that direction.

Fouke was very conditioned not to bother the residents of PH, since they were wealthy. He seems to have been very class conscious. He felt the guy he saw fit in the neighborhood, and since he was presumably wealthy, when he saw him walking up the steps towards a mansion, he did not want to bother him. Or maybe that is a cover story. But his ACTIONS that night, which cannot be disputed since they are a matter that is on the record for that night, say that he did not feel the man lived in PH.

And Fouke is not giving Mr. X a personal alibi that is based on meeting him at Jackson and Maple. Pelissetti is, and he is pretty in-your-face about it. Now he tells a different story that alters his timeline and places him in a different place than he ever said he was that night. When have you ever heard of a suspect getting an alibi from the police department that should have investigated him? Kind of unique, right?

Mike

Hi, new here, not been tracking this case for long and will probably never be as well informed as others on here, but on the information I have, Pellisetti has never changed his story, whereas Fouke has been proved to have changed his story, considerably too, to go from saying he drove past the man and never looked back because he didn’t fit what he was told to look for, to then suddenly remembering that the guy had put his head down, and turned onto some steps leading to a house, that is very suspect. I go with my gut, and my gut says Fouke is the shadier of the two, when Pellisetti recounts the events of that night, he’s clear, confident, he knows his memory, he doesn’t umm and arrr like Fouke seems to, Pellisetti seems to just be remembering the events, Fouke seems to be trying to remember what he’s told himself at times in the ’07 documentary. There are facts about the case that come from victims and eye witnesses that are still disregarded on here from my reading, physical descriptions and so on. So people will always just believe what they believe now I think.

Hi-

"Hi, new here, not been tracking this case for long and will probably never be as well informed as others on here, but on the information I have, Pellisetti has never changed his story,"

Uh, I guess the info you have doesn’t come from this thread.

Mike

Hi Mike,
Perhaps CandyCoated is simply noting that the evidence of Pellisetti’s changing his story is coming from an anonymous "Samuel". Any chance we could listen to the alleged tape recording?

My impression, subjective of course, of the video featuring Fouke talking about his experience that night and then Pellisetti saying something like, "That’s not what he told me.", is that they’re both acting suspicious.

Fouke saying he never stopped and spoke to the guy he saw – Fouke seems defensive, could indicate lying; also seems irritated, maybe he’s just sick of being accused of lying.
Fouke talking about the guy walking up the stairs – indication of deception (eyes dart left), probably false.

Pellisetti saying Fouke told him he stopped the guy – looks down, to right side: indicates guilt. Of what, though?

How to make sense of this? If Fouke was lying, it wasn’t to "cover his ass", but because that’s what his superiors told him to do. The BMA dispatch was bad enough; letting a possible perp get away, on top of that, would make the SFPD look really incompetent. Fouke was just following orders. If he had refused, he would have soon found himself in the unemployment line. My impression of Fouke is that he’s a normally honest guy who hates being put in the position of having to lie.

Pellisetti, contradicting Fouke, shows guilt because he knows he’s supposed to support the official story. Probably telling the truth, yet nevertheless seems untrustworthy.

Sorry if this post doesn’t directly address your argument, just wanted to relate some of my impressions and conclusions, based on closely watching the video a few times and applying what I know (or think I know!) about behavior when lying, and trying to make sense of two guys saying opposite things, yet both seeming suspicious.

Thanks for sharing your info, though, it’s quite interesting if true!

Hi-

I have a copy of the recording but there is no desperate need for anyone else to listen to it. Just ask anyone who has been around the case for years about my hard earned reputation in this case and they will tell you I don’t deal in BS. Not my style. I guess if Mike M wants to drive 60 miles, I’ll play it for him. But there is no need. What I said is true.

Mike

Oh I see. Yes, I’ve heard of you and know you’re known as a serious researcher in this case. Certainly have no reason to doubt your honesty.

Just somehow managed to miss that you heard the tape yourself. Sorry, Mike.

So here is what we have: A cop who can’t get his story straight but who is nonetheless trying to do something very unusual in the annals of crime by offering himself up as an alibi to someone who became a POI, and a POI who, in 2006, said he was not only not on the streets that night but that he wasn’t even in the country! And yet I am the one who is supposedly delusional.

Very strange…

Mike

The suspect Pelissetti saw and spoke with that night can now be named as he is recently deceased. Mr X is Kjell Qvale (pronounced Shell Ka-Va-Le) and if he was on his drive when Pelissetti saw him, it would mean Pelissetti went further than Maple and Jackson Intersection and went on toward Spruce and Jackson because Kjell Qvale resided at 3636 Jackson Street.

Mike, you say Rebecca was asked to come outside with her father and view a suspect in a police car but that this suspect was not Kjell Qvale. How old was Rebecca? Im wondering if she could be the witness in this document…

As you see, this eight year old appears to have named someone He/She thought they recognised as being the offender that night. We can assume I think that if this is the case, He/She recognised him because he lived locally. Also, the name is reacted but I would say that Qvale’s name fits quite nicely in that redacted space. "Eight year old witness in murder of cab driver identified Qvale as possible subject in that matter."

I have a FOIA request pending to obtain the name of that redacted suspect, as I have already successfully obtained one of the other suspects names that was redacted on the first page of the same document because he’s now deceased, Robert H. West. At the time I filed that FOIA, Qvale was still alive but now that his is deceased, if it’s him named in this document, they should release it to me as they did with my prior request in releasing Robert West’s name.