Thank you, Jacob and Chaucer, for your responses.

It is speculative. I think LB should be seen as an outlier. But I would put that forward as one simple explanation. I believe it’s a simpler explanation than the copy-cat, or accomplice theory. I think the spreadsheet bolsters it a little bit in that as I look through the hair column I see the crossover between the descriptions and I see that times the hair is described as darker are the times it may have been combed.

Now that the column for "Observational Circumstance" has been added it does cause a little conflict, given that his hair is darker during the sunniest sighting.

Now that the column for "Observational Circumstance" has been added it does cause a little conflict, given that his hair is darker during the sunniest sighting.

As we have discussed, this could be caused by the use of a hair product such as pomade which was common then, or, in my opinion, he was sweating in the afternoon sun.

It’s also possible that the man seen by the 3 college girls and the doctor was not the Zodiac.

Unless it was suggested elsewhere on the forum, it was I that raised the idea of a hair product such as pomade. It just seemed oddly conceited to quote myself, although it may have been a lot less confusing.

I’m sorry but need to go by the Stine sketch! Kids and Fouke’s description are pretty similar.Everything else is just noise.

I’m sorry but need to go by the Stine sketch! Kids and Fouke’s description are pretty similar.Everything else is just noise.

The surviving victim descriptions are "just noise"? Seriously?

I will never understand why some people want to treat the sketch-like a picture and why some people are willing to treat Fouke’s account as the Gospel.
Eyewitness memory is horrible in the best of times never mind when it comes to dealing with a bunch of terrified kids and an officer who is looking out for a black suspect.

I will never understand why some people want to treat the sketch-like a picture and why some people are willing to treat Fouke’s account as the Gospel.
Eyewitness memory is horrible in the best of times never mind when it comes to dealing with a bunch of terrified kids and an officer who is looking out for a black suspect.

I agree most eyewitnesses are not very good. Except that the police are trained to observe what a person looks like and they are very good eyewitnesses. The artist who did the sketch was told it needed a more full face. I don’t think it was changed to much of a more full face much at all. Later Officer Fouke said the picture he saw of Larry Kane looked the most like the man he saw. My suspect looks enough like Kane that Roy Conway at VPD said the picture I have of my suspect looked like Larry Kane.

The SFPD composite certainly is not even close to the Lake Berryessa sketch ,or what Ken Narlow had to say about the size of that killer. They seem to be two very different looking killers? I personally believe that to be the case, that they are two different killers working in tandem.

I also believe that Kathleen Johns was kidnapped by the Zodiac and that she gave the best description of any witness, including the rubber band he used to hold his glasses in place. The type of work he did that was only available to him a few months out of the year. When I first read that I thought that someone doing concrete work would need his glasses secured, because as a finisher your head is down while finishing the concrete. And there are only a few months out of the year that is best for that sort of work. Hot summer months are not a good time,because it will dry out too fast and it needs a certain amount of time to cure. Rainy months are too wet unless it is covered by something.
The Donna Lass card shows construction workers, I think that was a huge clue to the sort of work Zodiac did at that time , he was probably working on that job?

I will never understand why some people want to treat the sketch-like a picture and why some people are willing to treat Fouke’s account as the Gospel.
Eyewitness memory is horrible in the best of times never mind when it comes to dealing with a bunch of terrified kids and an officer who is looking out for a black suspect.

I agree most eyewitnesses are not very good. Except that the police are trained to observe what a person looks like and they are very good eyewitnesses. The artist who did the sketch was told it needed a more full face. I don’t think it was changed to much of a more full face much at all. Later Officer Fouke said the picture he saw of Larry Kane looked the most like the man he saw. My suspect looks enough like Kane that Roy Conway at VPD said the picture I have of my suspect looked like Larry Kane.

The SFPD composite certainly is not even close to the Lake Berryessa sketch ,or what Ken Narlow had to say about the size of that killer. They seem to be two very different looking killers? I personally believe that to be the case, that they are two different killers working in tandem.

I also believe that Kathleen Johns was kidnapped by the Zodiac and that she gave the best description of any witness, including the rubber band he used to hold his glasses in place. The type of work he did that was only available to him a few months out of the year. When I first read that I thought that someone doing concrete work would need his glasses secured, because as a finisher your head is down while finishing the concrete. And there are only a few months out of the year that is best for that sort of work. Hot summer months are not a good time,because it will dry out too fast and it needs a certain amount of time to cure. Rainy months are too wet unless it is covered by something.
The Donna Lass card shows construction workers, I think that was a huge clue to the sort of work Zodiac did at that time , he was probably working on that job?

Police officers are human as well though. Able to make mistakes like any other eye witness. Plus one could easily argue Fouke’s never got a good enough look at Zodiac given the dispatch error. He was looking for a black guy.

Sure the police are human and make mistakes, but when it comes to taking notice of someone they stopped and talked to during a crime investigation, I doubt he forgot what that man looked like.
Zelm’s wife told Dr. Howard Davis that her husband was bothered by the fact that they did stop the man and didn’t report that they had.

So they did get a very good look at the man seen on Jackson st., who was more than likely the killer.

This is why Chaucer’s spreadsheet is so useful. Other than the hair, the witness descriptions of Zodiac’s appearance are consistent in terms of his build and height.

But they’re not consistent. There’s a height range of 5’8" to 6’2" and a weight range of 170 lbs to 225 lbs. It was a great idea to create a spreadsheet but a very bad idea to average the information.

If, for example (and let’s take this out of Z world to eliminate bias) a witness at one crime describes someone who is blond, 5’5" and 150 lbs and a witness at another crime describes someone with black hair who is 6′ tall and 250 lbs you don’t average it to look for someone who has brown hair and is 5′ 7 1/2" and 200 lbs for both crimes. You look for two different people.

To be clear, I did not average them to provide a definitive description of the unknown subject. I did it to condense all the witness statements together into one data point. Your point is well taken. There are discrepancies with the eye witnesses. In fact, we don’t even know if the man the three co-eds saw was the Zodiac. He could have been someone unrelated to the case. You could have a dozen people see the same man for the same period of time under the same conditions and report a dozen variations.

In other words, the point is not to draw a circle. The point is to draw many circles and see how many overlap each other.

To be clear, I did not average them to provide a definitive description of the unknown subject. I did it to condense all the witness statements together into one data point. Your point is well taken. There are discrepancies with the eye witnesses. In fact, we don’t even know if the man the three co-eds saw was the Zodiac. He could have been someone unrelated to the case. You could have a dozen people see the same man for the same period of time under the same conditions and report a dozen variations.

In other words, the point is not to draw a circle. The point is to draw many circles and see how many overlap each other.

I greatly appreciate the effort it took to create the spread sheet. It’s very useful. Thank you. As you point out, there are discrepancies with eye witnesses. Eye-and ear-witness accounts are notoriously unreliable.

You’re right, we don’t know if the three women saw the man who attacked Hartnell and Shepard, although I will argue that it’s likely they did. The man was about the same size, was seen watching the young women from the treeline (he approached Hartnell and Shepard from behind a tree) and the women described him, variously, as wearing a white belt that showed in the back and wearing a white t-shirt under his shirt that showed in the back while Hartnell described his attacker as having pieces of pre-cut white rope visible in the back. The two similarities (watching from the trees and the white in the back) make it likely, in my mind, that he was the same person.

On the other hand, I, personally, would discount the claim that Shepard gave an eye-witness description as being highly unlikely. If she had, it almost certainly would have appeared in the LE reports. However, I am not suggesting that it was inappropriate for you to include in the spreadsheet.

For a number of reasons I could go into, I do not regard Fouke as remotely credible. I also have some questions about Pelissetti’s credibility which, in turn, raises questions about his claims about what the Robbins teens said. But, again, I’m not suggesting that it was inappropriate to include them in the spreadsheet. It’s most helpful to see all the descriptions in a single document. Thank you.

This is why Chaucer’s spreadsheet is so useful. Other than the hair, the witness descriptions of Zodiac’s appearance are consistent in terms of his build and height.

But they’re not consistent. There’s a height range of 5’8" to 6’2" and a weight range of 170 lbs to 225 lbs. It was a great idea to create a spreadsheet but a very bad idea to average the information.

If, for example (and let’s take this out of Z world to eliminate bias) a witness at one crime describes someone who is blond, 5’5" and 150 lbs and a witness at another crime describes someone with black hair who is 6′ tall and 250 lbs you don’t average it to look for someone who has brown hair and is 5′ 7 1/2" and 200 lbs for both crimes. You look for two different people.

Thank you Kolchack, I have always said that I believe there were two killers working in tandem. One who prefers to use a knife ( Lake Berryessa), who was heavier and perhaps a couple of inches taller. The other killer at the Stine scene prefers using a gun rather than a knife, which would have been a quiet way to kill Stine in a very quiet neighborhood.
This killer is older and smaller than the person at Lake B.

I wish that Pam Hoffsass would compare the DNA from the gloves left in the cab to the DNA VPD more than likely has.
Who knows maybe that is what the hold up is. they have found two killers DNA and are rechecking what they found? I am not alone in this thinking, Ken Narlow believed there were two. I happen to have two suspects, one is heavier and about 5 ft 10 who I refer to as Honcho, the other is RH who is about 5ft 8 170 pounds. (That one wears wigs that are light in color and has dark framed horn rim glasses. ) Honcho also wears old lady clothes as a disguise. RH talks slowly and enunciates each syllable as if reading a script and very robot like. . His voice is very hard sometimes to understand as if he has food in his mouth when he talks. The other has a more husky/ raspy sounding voice who also talks slowly. Honcho is the one with the lazy eye, who followed me in Vallejo, he continues to follow me from time to time and calls me. Latest threat call was last week Nov 11 at 4:23 pm.

Side note from you most recent post. Cecelia did see the killer before he went behind the tree to put the costume on. She gave that information to David collins who said he didn’t think it was important and that is why it was not included in the police report.