It is probably best to keep making your case under the thread for your suspect. Don’t give up, I haven’t explored your guy much, but do you have handwriting samples
or DNA? How about fingerprints or palm prints. These things would help.
With regards to the Profile of the Zodiac Killer, please be advised the only person aging him at 35 -45 is Foukes. There is no way they can confirm the guy they saw that night
is the Zodiac Killer. So it is conjecture. All witnesses place the actual criminal at a much younger age.
And let us look at his psychological profile. Why was he killing couples? What would compel someone to kill specifically couples? Most serial killers focus on women it seems,
but Zodiac was hunting couples…

Forgive me for not having reading through all of your POI thread, captain, but you honestly seem to be making up some of the circumstantial evidence in the Zodiac case, IMO. Barry Wysling may fit regret’s description there but do you really think he’s the only harmless seeming weird loner in the SF Bay area?

Things like shoe size, physical description and location are good connections.

Military background, psychological characteristics like being a loner are a bit speculative but perfectly fine to consider as possible connections.

Obsession with blue, 4 marriages, making his wife live in a separate residence, Pythians, uncle writing books about murder, birth sign? You may believe that these are attributes of Zodiac but there is simply nothing in any of the known Zodiac evidence that supports that and it really doesn’t help your case to cite them as factual evidence to support that your guy is 100% certain to be Zodiac.

I’m honestly trying to be helpful, amigo. He seems like an interesting POI but we need to be intellectually honest in distinguishing fact from even reasonable speculation.

Obsession with blue, 4 marriages, making his wife live in a separate residence, Pythians, uncle writing books about murder, birth sign? You may believe that these are attributes of Zodiac but there is simply nothing in any of the known Zodiac evidence that supports that and it really doesn’t help your case to cite them as factual evidence to support that your guy is 100% certain to be Zodiac.

If I am coming off as trying to say these are factual evidence, I am not trying to do that, what I am saying is there is so many different pieces from all angles that point to BW, and when you put them all together, you have a real suspect! And I know its my opinion, I just can’t let go of everything that has went on, and what I know about ZK and BW just fit. I really truly wish that none of this ever happened to me. I have a lot of trouble trying to convey what I know to anyone, unless I am speaking to them face to face. I have wasted so much time trying to, it isn’t working for me. I can’t imagine what Bryan Hartnell has gone through. I am at the point, where I have a knife from my suspect that matches Hartnell’s description, and I can’t even find a company or LE to do a DNA test/blood evidence, I can’t even find a place that I can pay to have this done? And to continue to try to tell people on the internet is pointless without some real proof, like the results that test would give. And to go a step farther, I have been told, even if the knife I had came back with BH’s DNA they still wouldn’t believe BW is the ZK.! I think its time to let go of this mess. It seems like I have made no progress, IDK?
It was my understanding that law enforcement thought ZK had a deep obsession with the color blue, many letters being written in blue felt pen? It was my thought also that ZK was an individual who would have relationship issues, as BW demonstrated his entire adult life (I have never even heard of someone who made their wife sleep in a separate home). As far as the Pythians, I find it at the least (seeing no one I have asked has even heard of a Pythian) a strange coincidence that both BW’s parents were high up in the Pythians, that 2 victims were at a Pythian function minutes before they were murdered.

That’s fair, captain. I just think we should all be careful about distinguishing facts from theories or speculation, even when it’s reasonable speculation. We all have our own personal visions of personality traits, interests etc. etc. and if we all agreed, there probably wouldn’t be so many vastly different POIs discussed here. Just suggesting that I think it actually is MORE productive when you specify how ideas of specific connections are formed as you just did. Best of luck… Back to profiling…

I always figured him for a cross-dressing, anti-social loner who liked to have sex with furry animals and snack on his own bodily secretions. Just my opnion.

He will be White Male, 25 to 45, and a total and complete psychopathic lunatic. The End.

I think Z would be a profilers nightmare in all seriousness. No pattern, different MO almost each time he strikes, seems to have delusional and psychotic beliefs one moment, then being articulate and rational the next.

From the more well known of the FBI Behavioural Profilers, Robert Ressler, Roy Hayzlewood and a few other’s, the man that stands atop them all has to be John Douglas. Only once I’ve ever been amazed at a profiler’s accuracy and that was John Douglas psychological profile of Robert Hansen while Hansen was still unknown and at large. Douglas stated, I’m paraphrasing here: "The offender you seek will have a chronic speech impediment, most likely a stammer. This will be most noticeable to Detectives when attempting to Interview the suspect about the crimes after he is apprehended." When Hansen was caught and placed in an interrogation room and questioned, he stuttered almost un-controllably. I found that prediction astonishing at the time, that a man can look at how the offender is carrying out a series of crimes and from that, can ascertain how the man’s speech is impaired. That’s profiling! Not like Dayle Hinman! They actually pay her to simply state the obvious it seems!

Cop: "There is no signs of forced entry, no windows or doors show signs of a break in…"

Professional Criminal Profiler of Behavioural Science Dayle Hinman: "I would say the victim let her attacker in and felt comfortable enough to do so suggesting she may have known her attacker." Don’t know how the woman does it, that’s a gift that!

Hi-

What I don’t understand is if you are not a profiler who actually has credentials, works in the field and has solved scores of cold cases in your life, why are you telling everyone "your profile" of the Zodiac killer? If I saw a show on how a surgeon threads a catheter through the internal carotid artery into the Circle of Willis to fix a berry aneurysm, I am not going to write a post on how I, someone with no training in the field of neurosurgery, would fix a berry aneurysm (and I even studied neuroanatomy years ago).

This is not directed at any one individual. I am just always perplexed as to why amateurs feel that profiling is some pastime like fly fishing and that basically anyone can write a profile just by having an opinion. If you’re not a profiler, do everyone a favor and stick to fly fishing. Trust me. I have known Richard Walter, who does solve cold cases for a living, for nine years and I still cannot profile a lick (as he always reminded me when I used to try my hand at it years ago).

I think that it should be a rule on message boards that before anyone posts a profile, they have to either state their credentials or state they have no credentials, so we can give the proper weight to what you have to say. Sorry to be snarky, but this has been irking me for a long time. It seems that every time I mention Walter’s profile of Zodiac someone with no credentials comes right back and says, "Well, I disagree and here is my profile of Zodiac." That is fine. But please have a track record to back up what you are saying…or try to learn from what Walter said about Zodiac.

Before I met Walter in December 2004, I was skeptical of profiling. I went to the Vidocq Society not even knowing that they had a profiler. I wasn’t looking for a profile or a profiler. I just wanted their help in whatever form they might have offered it after the 2002 ABC debacle. I knew from being around the case for six years that Z was variously described as being aloof, distant, superior, narcissistic, into control. Walter’s profile encompassed all of those traits under one simple term–power-assertive killer. He even explained why Z wrote his letters: Because power-assertives need to brag about their crimes. That is why I believe he nailed it.

And yet amateurs continue to try to reinvent the wheel. Go ahead. Knock yourselves out. But Walter has a track record for solving cases that most other people don’t.

Mike

I knew from being around the case for six years that Z was variously described as being aloof, distant, superior, narcissistic, into control. Walter’s profile encompassed all of those traits under one simple term–power-assertive killer. He even explained why Z wrote his letters: Because power-assertives need to brag about their crimes. That is why I believe he nailed it.

And yet amateurs continue to try to reinvent the wheel. Go ahead. Knock yourselves out. But Walter has a track record for solving cases that most other people don’t.

Mike

Sounds good to me!

How another profiler could say someone would have a speech impediment is beyond me…

I think it just allows the person attempting to profile Zodiac to feel that they better understand him if, lets say, they decide he is White Male, 25 – 45. Loner, probably spends a lot of his time reading true detective magazines and so on. That is obviously an example and not my attempt to understand the character of the man hiding out of sight behind his alter ego Zodiac. I suppose as long as amateurs don’t declare that their profile is anything other than guess work, or at best, educated guess work based on what they have seen the real profilers do on TV, then I can’t really see the harm it can do.

But yes, I see what your saying. Profiling any offender at large is difficult enough, not really reasonable for an amateur to expect to be anywhere near accurate by creating a profile based on having watched John Douglas twice on TV. Behavioural profiling is almost a form of art, for which the profiler himself must be highly trained and even then failing to be accurate is not uncommon in criminal profiles. The one statement I have heard Douglas reiterate over the years in various interviews is that Criminal profiling is most certainly not a science and he has occasionally referred to using instinct and intuition to compile a profile on each specific offender individually. But even that instinct, I would guess, was born from the countless hours spent interviewing serial killers of all ages, races, sexuality and background.

Hi-

I don’t mean to sound harsh in these posts but I believe that many people can be "amateur detectives" because that calls for deductive reasoning and logic, which anyone can possess. But profiling requires a wealth of information and a foundation in criminal behavior that is only obtained by years of study.

I speak to Mr. Walter all the time about different cases. There are two cases in particular that have been in the news recently where his opinion is vastly different from that of the masses. I was shocked at what side he came down on in each of these cases because I thought just the opposite of what he said (as do many people form what I’ve seen in the media). I don’t want to get into specifics because I don’t want to discuss anything we’ve spoken about in private but my point is that what seems logical and obvious to most people may not be so to an experienced profiler.

Mike

Dear Mike_r do you find profiling helpful? It is fascinating, and it gives us the idea we might be able to identify someone
ahead of time, before they become killers, doesn’t it?

Hi-

It is interesting that you mention that. One of the things that hooked me into the case in 1998 was that I wondered if we might identify Zodiac as a youth in Riverside prior to 1966 by using the "homicidal triad" that John Douglas talked about in his books. When I came along, it was pretty widely accepted that Bates was definitely a Z victim. Not so much now.

I believe that since serial killers, especially sadistic ones, go through an evolutionary process, you may be able to identify a serial killer who may be at the top of his game today by mistakes he may have made along his evolutionary path in getting from where he was to where is currently is. One of the things that so interests me about my POI is that as far back as the late 1940s, he was able to get himself onto the front pages of two Bay Area newspapers by making some bizarre claims. This may represent the roots of Zodiac’s ability to manipulate the press and the first time he flexed his wings and got widespread public attention.

Mike

I believe in "profiling".
I think it’s an excellent tool to use to narrow down possible offenders and offender types (just as long as it’s a guide and not a "filter" which is slavishly employed – leading to mistakes) – but…..
My new and strange perspective of this case (quote marks) means that every time I now read the profile of a single "serial killer" supposedly the single perpetrator of these crimes – even the profile by the wonderful John Douglas in his little pot-boiler "The Crimes That Haunt Us" – it makes me laugh.
And it also makes me a bit sad.
If it should ever emerge, for instance, that more than one individual was involved in perpetrating the crimes, it just may undermine the burgeoning science of profiling – outting it back by a year or two.
Which is a depressing thought.

I believe in "profiling".
I think it’s an excellent tool to use to narrow down possible offenders and offender types (just as long as it’s a guide and not a "filter" which is slavishly employed – leading to mistakes) – but…..
My new and strange perspective of this case (quote marks) means that every time I now read the profile of a single "serial killer" supposedly the single perpetrator of these crimes – even the profile by the wonderful John Douglas in his little pot-boiler "The Crimes That Haunt Us" – it makes me laugh.
And it also makes me a bit sad.
If it should ever emerge, for instance, that more than one individual was involved in perpetrating the crimes, it just may undermine the burgeoning science of profiling – outting it back by a year or two.
Which is a depressing thought.

Good points. As far as I know, the police never ruled out a "Team Zodiac," so I wonder why the FBI or another agency hasn’t attempted a team profile, so to speak. Unless someone has and I’ve missed it. Or, do profiles have to be limited to just one offender for some reason?

Capt. J – it beats the heck out of me.
John Douglas "created and managed the FBI’s Criminal Profiling Program" if you believe what Wiki tells you – and he speaks of a single individual, only. *shrug*