I would hope that other jurisdictions are doing the same…seems like any analysis of the letters or any other physical evidence is being held close to the vest…..I’m encouraged…..

It depends what kind of DNA sample they have recovered regarding Zodiac. The commonly held belief is that there is only a partial profile which would make any kind of forensic genealogy difficult if not impossible. However, the story of the Zodiac DNA has been a muddled one, so I don’t think it’s impossible that LE have more than they are saying. 

I know they have a full DNA profile from Nancy Bennallack’s murderer, and that crime has been connected to Zodiac by some. I don’t know if Sacramento is planning on doing anything with it though.

Frankly, I’m grow more pessimistic about the DNA prospects in this case. I kind of feel that if any crime would have been made a priority to solve via DNA, this one would have been it, but we have seen dozens of other crimes solved instead. 

If they have Zodiac DNA that can be used in this manner then they obviously haven’t shared that publicly. I wonder if they are upset that Riverside has released this info. 

My speculation is that the putative Zodiac DNA is degraded to the point that working backward from it becomes next to impossible. Finding a suspect to match the fragment it is the better option.

@chaucer Last I read the Bennallack investigation is still live. In that case the DNA isn’t from the back of the stamp, it’s blood from the killer who covered the crime scene with it. I often repeat myself but it bears repeating, if Zodiac was Nancy’s killer then Sacramento is the master key to identifying him.

@jacob I could not agree more. However, the silence emanating from Sacramento regarding this case is deafening. 

Posted by: @chaucer

@jacob I could not agree more. However, the silence emanating from Sacramento regarding this case is deafening. 

Article from December 2020: https://forum.zodiackillerciphers.com/community/postid/86035/

It’s an ongoing investigation at their cold case unit.

Posted by: @chaucer

@jacob I could not agree more. However, the silence emanating from Sacramento regarding this case is deafening. 

Sorry but I don’t quite understand something here. Your stance is strong skepticism over the CJB case and Zodiac. You went through all the points there and dismissed them using strong skepticism. You required evidence above and beyond the circumstantial for CJB and Zodiac.

Yet here you are indicating that Nancy Bennallack is possibly a Zodiac victim?

Do you have the sort of strong evidence that you required for the CJB case with Bennallack? If so what is it.

I don’t mind strong skepticism at all, which is why when you made your list, I said to myself, okay, so they are a strong skeptic and left it at that.

Yet with the Bennallack case you seem to have overcome any skepticism there.

So what is the evidence that is better than the CJB case? Because as far as I can tell, CJB holds possibly the strongest position as a candidate for non-canonical crime and Kathleen Johns second.

Thanks.  

I did not say that I believed Bennallack was a Zodiac case. I said that case has been connected to Zodiac “by some”. 

I also said that the silence from Sacramento is deafening meaning that it would seem that given the DNA profile, if there was a connection, we’d have heard something by now.

They tracked this guy down within a year, apparently. The Vallejo DNA announcement was 3 years ago…

Posted by: @chaucer

I did not say that I believed Bennallack was a Zodiac case. I said that case has been connected to Zodiac “by some”. 

I also said that the silence from Sacramento is deafening meaning that it would seem that given the DNA profile, if there was a connection, we’d have heard something by now.

 

Ah okay, thanks. So still skeptical but acknowledging there is something going on there worth keeping in mind.

At least you stick with the strong skepticism. It’s amazing how many times I come across people who make a post with that angle and in the next post just forget everything they said in the previous one. That is what boggles my mind sometimes. 

Posted by: @coffee-time

They tracked this guy down within a year, apparently. The Vallejo DNA announcement was 3 years ago…

From what I have studied and researched (I have background in biochemistry), familial DNA analysis is called bioinformatics and basically you take what genetic profile you have and then you build imaginary possible relatives of that profile by applying statistics and likelihood analysis which is a heck of a lot of work and a good working knowledge of the programming language R. So you have this list of imaginary gene pools and every couple of months you take that list to the public databases and plug it into them to see if the new public entries closely match some of the predicted profiles. So the process is simply blind to what crimes should take precedence over others and it doesn’t have any preferences. If it hits, you take whatever it is, and are thankful you got anything. It is hugely dependent on random individuals putting their DNA into these databases and also the quality of the genetic profiles being put forward. It really is a bit of roulette going on and chance, but you can push things in your favor with the quality of the genetic profile list you generate.

So that explains why there is no pattern to how important each case is and the hits got.

Lol. What I mean to say is, they probably got a very useful sample out of the 2016 stamp. They didn’t have to test a bunch of envelopes just to get something. And they didn’t have to try again every 10 years or so.

@bdholland I’m prepared to be wrong about everything.