From the initial police report, page 2, dated Oct 12, 6:29AM, 1969:

http://www.zodiackiller.com/StineReport2.html

"SUSPECT: WMA ,in his early forties , 5’8, heavy build, reddish-blond "crew-cut"
hair, wearing eyeglasses, dark brown trousers, dark (navy blue or black)
"Parka" jacket, dark shoes."

From the initial police report, page 2, dated Oct 12, 6:29AM, 1969:

http://www.zodiackiller.com/StineReport2.html

"SUSPECT: WMA ,in his early forties , 5’8, heavy build, reddish-blond "crew-cut"
hair, wearing eyeglasses, dark brown trousers, dark (navy blue or black)
"Parka" jacket, dark shoes."

Yeah, but then adding to the confusion, we have the mystery guy at Berryessa looking to be 28-30, and we have Slaight & Hartnell saying Zodiac’s voice sounded like a student’s or in his early 20’s.

Add all of this together, and you have Z in his early 20’s all the way up to his mid 40’s, quite a big range

And we have Slover who said the voice sounded mature (and like Gaikowski’s).

It never ends…

And you throw those glasses on him and it can be just about any white male….

We don’t know Z’s age, his name, driver’s license plate or number or SSN.

This guy was very elusive, both making it hard to identify, let alone find. It also opens a path to all these books
that are coming out that contain questionable claims.

Mageau, Foulke, the girls across the street at Pacific Heights and the girls at Lake Berryessa are the only ones
who (may) have seen the killer- and each description differs.

It is 44 years since 1970. Whatever age one may think Z was, at that time, just add 44 years to that for an estimated age today.

Is Z still around? A guessing game! One cannot check without a name and SSN, let alone a state where he may have lived (if he passed).

My money is still on late twenties/early thirties.

I used to accept the general, serial killer profile that Z was in his late 20s/early 30s by the time he committed his first murder but having done a LOT of reading on terrorists and political assassins over the past few years, I’ve come to suspect that the Zodiac was much younger than the conventional wisdom and even the eyewitness reports would suggest.

In Whoever Fights Monsters, Robert Ressler writes at length about the Son of Sam and is seemingly perplexed by how different David Berkowitz is from people like Edmund Kemper and other similar sexual predators. Ressler goes on to suggest that Berkowitz has more in common with convicted RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan.

Political assassins and terrorist bombers are most typically frustrated, lonely, inadequate, YOUNG men barely out of adolescence by the time they commit their crimes. This lack of maturity is reflected in the mixed, organized/disorganized approach, and it is of particular interest that the victims were attacked in-situ and no attempt was made to hide the bodies. Berkowitz was barely 24 years old when he was arrested and had begun his reign of terror at 22. I believe we’re looking at a similar, if not identical profile with the Zodiac. I would be genuinely surprised if Z was over the age of 27 in December of 1968.

Thank you, Soze.

I’ve read posts from Nachtsider suggesting that, were he operating today, Z would likely have become a mass-murderer/school shooter a la Klebold and Harris. I believe strongly in that assessment. Zodiac’s crimes weren’t carried out merely to satisfy some esoteric sexual urge (if, indeed, that was a factor at all). Rather, they carried the grave weight of terrible singularities like Columbine or either of the Kennedy assassinations. They were intended as statements, the victims mere surrogates for a broader social order that the killer felt had unfairly excluded him.

Of course, these sorts of crimes happen all the time these days, seemingly every other week . But when they are repeated over and over again and tied to correspondence and a vast personal mythology like the Zodiac killings were? That is a rare thing indeed and the fact that there really isn’t much precedent for what he did probably has more than a little to do with why no one’s managed to catch him yet.