I think there is still a lot of reason to believe Z wasn’t the LB killer and very little reason to believe he was.

This is called backwards reasoning.

Because some aspect of this case is different, it must mean a different person was responsible. Because some aspect of this case doesn’t play out to the narrative I want, then it must be a conspiracy!

"I think there is still a lot of reason to believe Z wasn’t the LB killer and very little reason to believe he was."

The phone call and car door handwriting, dating the other crimes is good reason. He actually claimed this crime earlier than any other, 5 minutes and 1hr 10 mins to be precise, unless you believe it’s a copycat, and there is absolutely no evidence for that. If people believe the perpetrator is a copycat we need two better opposing examples, than the ones proposed above in favor of Zodiac, rather than people saying the phone call wasn’t him or the handwriting was a forgery.
I have never seen one good argument to prove this crime wasn’t Zodiac or am I missing something.

He didn’t completely change his MO.

Aside from attacking a couple with intent to kill, and the writing on the car door, what is the same as the other crime scenes? There are at least a dozen significant things that are different. Even the gun he carried was a different caliber.

Since we know that there were many people playing out their own murder-related fantasies by writing fake Z letters and cards, I don’t see it as being a stretch that one of them may have taken it a step further.

After Z became big news, yes. After Stine, that is. And there’s an immense difference between writing fake letters (which is something people do, so to speak – it’s a common phenomenon) and carrying out a murderous assault.

I think "big news" is a relevant term here. In 1969, how many mass murderers were writing letters to newspapers of major metropolitan areas, which were then published? How many mass murderers were sending ciphers that were published so that ordinary citizens could try to solve them? No, he hadn’t yet achieved "Jack The Ripper Status," but prior to LB, he was certainly gaining a lot of attention, and his letters and ciphers were distinctive. It isn’t hard to see how this attention Z was gaining could’ve been of great interest to other disturbed individuals.

I used to dismiss the "multiple Z theory" because I didn’t think there could be more than one nut like that running around, until I started paying more attention to all the non-Z crimes, and the other murders many of the Z suspects were convicted or suspected of. Hate to say it, but there were a surprisingly high number of murders and murderers in California back then. On this site alone, pages and pages of other murder victims from that timeframe. Yes, there is an immense difference between writing letters pretending to be a killer and actually being one. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a shortage of people who were willing and able to murder for "fun."

Yes – the costume. It’s bizarre. But what is more bizarre:

a) Zodiac, an unknown subject we don’t know everything about (as far as, say, pathology is concerned), dons a crazy costume for whatever reason at LB,

or

b) Someone else, not Zodiac, dons a crazy costume with Zodiac’s symbol on it (which is entirely pointless as a means of identification – he intends to kill his targets, but we may add for good measure that he doesn’t say a word to them about being Zodiac either, what he says is that he’s an escaped convict headed for Mexico, a detail which has absolutely nothing to do with Zodiac as he would have been known to an impostor), and goes to great lengths to make sure the attack is attributed to Zodiac.

Well? Why is it so important to this non-Zodiac killer – who is not a copycat in the normal sense of the word, as we agree on – to pin the crime on Zodiac? Why does he find it necessary to wear a costume with Z’s symbol on it (something we only know about because Bryan, thankfully, was lucky enough to survive)?

Is he obsessed with Zodiac? Seems odd, doesn’t it? Both because he doesn’t actually emulate him to any great extent – and because Zodiac at the time (before Stine, before San Francisco, before he became truly notorious) wasn’t someone an arbitrary loon was very likely to become obsessed about.

Perhaps we agree that the costume did require some degree of effort and planning, and that it therefore was important to whomever wore it. You’re wondering why it would be important for an interloper, pretending to be Z (not copying Z’s methods, but latching onto his notoriety) to make and wear such a thing. Well, he was pretending to be Z… he just had his own interpretation and ideas about it, possibly Tim Holt Death Wheel inspired, who knows? But if you’re identifying with a role model of sorts, you want to wear his brand. Same reason I used a baseball bat with Johnny Bench’s name on it when I was a young teenager. And by the way, nobody who saw me play would say I was a Johnny Bench copycat, unfortunately.

Now, take your argument that it was Z. If this costume was worth all the effort to Z, why didn’t he ever use it again, before or since?

I think there is still a lot of reason to believe Z wasn’t the LB killer and very little reason to believe he was.

This is called backwards reasoning.

Because some aspect of this case is different, it must mean a different person was responsible. Because some aspect of this case doesn’t play out to the narrative I want, then it must be a conspiracy!

Paul,
I am not looking for a certain narrative, and it isn’t "backwards thinking" to say the preponderance of facts, as I see them, weigh to the side of this guy not being the same as the killer who used a gun.

A week or so ago I thought LB was the work of Z. After reading Tahoe27’s posts and the nice PM she sent me at my request, I am re-thinking this through. I think it’s human nature for people to get locked into opinions, and so with myself, I try to hit the reset button now and then and consider someone else’s opposing view. This is how I form my opinions – best idea wins, period. If the argument is that Z was responsible for LB is strongest, then in my mind, that wins. Right now, for me, I simply cannot see it. Virtually everything about LB is an outlier from the other 3 crimes. People even have to stretch to claim Z was wearing a brown, long-haired wig under the hood, to sync up Bryan’s description with the PH sketch.

If you disagree with me, please, I invite you to present a case to change my mind. That would be useful and part of the reason for this website I think – to engage constructively. But please, don’t dismiss me as someone who is trying to force some sort of narrative.

If the Zodiac hadn’t sent the October 13th letter, would you have ever believed this to be a Zodiac crime. It was also totally different from the first two. He took a grisly souvenir, attacked a single male and committed the crime in the heart of a major city.

Some other reasons to possibly doubt LB as a Z crime were that from the boot impressions, LE estimated that the perp weighed over 225 pounds. Witnesses at other Z crimes have him as between 160 and possibly up to 200.

Also, Bryan (and I think Dave Slaight) said the LB attacker / caller sounded young – possibly college age. Nancy Slover thought the guy who called in BRS had a deeper, mature voice.

Thirdly – and I realise we can’t prove it was Z but – the guy dressed in black with something white hanging out the back of his belt who was casing out LB and stalking girls just before the attack was estimated as being 6ft to 6’2" tall by 3 different witnesses. Z was more often reported as nearer 5’8".

Lastly, in a November letter Z hinted at a tally of 7 murders including August as presumably a murder month, yet the writer on the car door at LB seemingly misses out (or was unaware of) an August murder. Did Z lose track of what he was writing or did a wannabe inject himself into the situation but didn’t know the full extent of Z’s crimes?

More tenuously, Z also lays claim to at least one crime in Riverside a few months later but this wasn’t stated on the LB door either so who knows what we’re to make of that…

If the Zodiac hadn’t sent the October 13th letter, would you have ever believed this to be a Zodiac crime. It was also totally different from the first two. He took a grisly souvenir, attacked a single male and committed the crime in the heart of a major city.

Yes, exactly my point! PH is more similar to the other crimes than LB, with the obvious difference being the victim is a single person and not a couple, but shooting a guy in a car at night with a 9mm is not similar enough to, by itself, identify this as a Z crime. In fact it isn’t even suspected as a Z crime until that letter arrives.

And that is the very point of the Oct. 13 letter. It claims Stine as a Z victim, taunts the police, and includes "I am the same man who did in the people in the north bay area." By this time, Z is well known to LE. Why does he feel a need to remind them of LHR and BRS? And why not also include LB? Or is his statement, reading between the lines, saying, "I am the man who did in the people in the north bay area, as opposed to the guy who killed them up north…"

I’ve checked the map and asked a couple people in northern California, and it would be a stretch to say that Lake Berryessa is considered "Bay Area." Which means, Z is excluding it.

What ties LB to Z:
1. Car door writing, which some say matches Z’s writing, while others don’t think so. I’m no expert but I think it could go either way, especially after seeing some of the non-confirmed Z letters, not to mention writing samples of both TK and Manalli. There’s a lot of writing that "could" be Z, by different authors, and that car door doesn’t give us a lot of letters to work with, not to mention, writing on a car door isn’t the same as writing on a piece of paper. The hand/arm angle is by necessity very different, letters are much larger, drawn rather than written, and so on.

2. Phone call. The caller can’t be identified as the same guy who called after BRS, so what we have is, a guy, probably the killer, making a phone call. There’s been some conversation here about his stumbling over the double-murder phrase, as though he was reading from a script and muffed it. In any case, there’s much to tie the caller to the murder but little to tie the caller to Z.

3. Halloween Card sent top Paul Averly. This has always been the thing that made me sure LB was the work of Z – the Halloween card has some cryptic phrases here and there, but the main message is the diagrammed "By Knife" etc. stuff. Since this was written on the LB car door and not known to the public, it makes it likely the writer of the HC was the LB killer. The problem for me is that I’m really starting to doubt that HC, as are a couple others here who’s views are consistently logical and well thought out. In short, to my way of thinking, if the HC wasn’t written by Z, then Z isn’t the guy who wrote "By Knife" on the LB car, which means he also wasn’t the LB killer.

In sum, all my opinion:
1. Car door writing is inconclusive either way. Proves nothing.
2. Phone call could’ve been made by anyone. No inside Z knowledge required.
3. HC is suspect, and that means it tends to point to a non-Z killer at LB.

If that’s all there is, it’s a weak case for it being Z. The killer says he is, but not in the usual way, where we could compare a letter to the others.

Z committing his masterpiece murder and not claiming it in his letters simply makes no sense at all, not when he’s, 2 weeks later, triumphantly claiming another murder while actually distancing himself from LB.

One big problem with this investigation is that LE at some point checked out just about every odd acting guy in the Bay Area who looked anything like the composite. They looked at thousands and thousands of guys aged between 20 and 45 who might have been Z but the stumbling block on many was that they had an alibi for at least one of the murders.

This is where I think the whole problem with the case is. I feel 99.9% certain that Z is somewhere in that list of suspects who were checked out but slipped through the net due to some issue with the evidence. I think eIther someone lied and gave Z a false alibi for at least one of the crimes or he didn’t commit all of them and LE therefore couldn’t tie him to all crimes and let him go.

There were guys (weekend release mental patients, etc) who were excellent suspects for the LB crime but had alibis for the Vallejo or San Fran shootings. Likewise there were very good suspects who owned 9mm or 22mm guns linked to BRS and LH but couldn’t be tied to being in Napa.

If there were 2 different suspects this would explain very easily why they slipped through the net as no one guy could ever be tied to all Z crimes.

Yes Quagmire, I would agree.

Your statement brings me back to one of the LB guys who was at one point taken into consideration due to the fact he was on a weekend release (or something like that), and one of his doctors at Napa State told investigators the guy was capable of doing such a thing.

Nice of them to let this guy out for the weekend…

It becomes easier for me to think they did exactly what you said they did Quagmire. And it could be, Zodiac knew of these possibilities as well. Hence, why he (imo) didn’t deny some of the crimes he did not commit and also copped up to some he didn’t too.

Yes Quagmire, I would agree.

Your statement brings me back to one of the LB guys who was at one point taken into consideration due to the fact he was on a weekend release (or something like that), and one of his doctors at Napa State told investigators the guy was capable of doing such a thing.

Nice of them to let this guy out for the weekend…

It becomes easier for me to think they did exactly what you said they did Quagmire. And it could be, Zodiac knew of these possibilities as well. Hence, why he (imo) didn’t deny some of the crimes he did not commit and also copped up to some he didn’t too.

It could also work the other way – a guy who wanted to try his hand at killing might establish a false alibi for himself by making it look like the work of Z. So… for those who wonder why an imposter might attribute his kill to Z, there’s a possibility.

Absolutely.

It could also work the other way – a guy who wanted to try his hand at killing might establish a false alibi for himself by making it look like the work of Z. So… for those who wonder why an imposter might attribute his kill to Z, there’s a possibility.

As long as you ignore any kind of logic and common sense, these hoax theories aren’t dubious at all !!!!!!!!!!

As long as you ignore any kind of logic and common sense, these hoax theories aren’t dubious at all !!!!!!!!!!

The rest of us are presenting lots of logic and common sense… If you don’t think so, join the debate with your own logical argument.

If people took everything at face value, there would be a lot of things undiscovered.

"Determining individual dye components ― An examination called liquid chromatography can be conducted to identify the chemical composition of inks on a document. In this technique, a small cutting from the questioned document is dissolved in a solvent and analyzed. This is one of the few destructive techniques employed by the document examiner. The inks can be compared to the International Ink Library, a database maintained by the U.S. Secret Service that contains data on more than 9,500 inks that have been manufactured since 1920."
Take the two letters, August 4th Debut of Zodiac letter and the October 13th Paul Stine letter either side of Lake Berryessa, and compare it to the ink from the car door at Lake Berryessa. The constituent components of the ink, produced during manufacture will separate in a bar code structure, identifying whether the ink is likely derived from either the same marker pen or same manufacturing process. Even a copycat would unlikely to have stumbled across the same exact brand Zodiac used. Gas chromatography is a similarly useful technique.