There is a clinical term for it: mechanophilia. Perhaps there was no apparent sexual motive to the crimes because he was more interested in carrying out the violent fantasy scenarios involving cars. Strange thing to think about but it makes sense.

I need be brief but would like opinions.

Man meets woman in singles bar. It was instant attraction. He asks her to dance and they hit it off, lingering on the dance floor talking and dancing as it was a small place and not crowded. After some 4 or 5 dances, he asks and gets her phone number. ( This was 1970 when there was lots of publicity about all these missing women and other crimes.

Almost as soon as he gets phone number, he folds paper and puts in pocket and then rather abruptly says he "has to get going" and asks her where her car was parked. She instantly thinks to herself that was kind of strange since it was he and not she and her friends leaving. She tells him it was parked outside on the street. He then asks her to walk him to his car! Now she really thinks that is odd. If she had been the one ready to leave and he offered to walk her to her car, she wouldn’t have thought anything other than he was being protective/gentlemanly in view of all the missing people and crime of the day.

After that she asks him where his car is and he tells her just outside as well. So she decides (nervously) to walk him outside but does let her two friends know, telling them if she doesn’t return right away to call the police!

So they go outside and he points out his 1967 Mustang that was parked right there and then he asks to see her car which she points out and was parked just about three behind his. He leaves and she returns to her friends and after a short time, the three leave together.

Question still to this day is it odd for a man to ask a woman to accompany him to his car (it was not a Rolls Royce, Bentley or unique car in any was as there were thousands of these very popular Mustangs being driven).

There is a clinical term for it: mechanophilia. Perhaps there was no apparent sexual motive to the crimes because he was more interested in carrying out the violent fantasy scenarios involving cars. Strange thing to think about but it make sense.

Yeah it was like he didn’t get it exactly right at lake berryessa so he just rushed to a cab infested area like Downtown San Fran and took out a cabbie. Didn’t even matter that it wasn’t a woman. It’s like he needs to see the carnage within the car.

Also I forgot he messed with Kathleen Johns car and set it on fire(possibly)

There is a clinical term for it: mechanophilia. Perhaps there was no apparent sexual motive to the crimes because he was more interested in carrying out the violent fantasy scenarios involving cars. Strange thing to think about but it make sense.

Yeah it was like he didn’t get it exactly right at lake berryessa so he just rushed to a cab infested area like Downtown San Fran and took out a cabbie. Didn’t even matter that it wasn’t a woman. It’s like he needs to see the carnage within the car.

The Tarantino movie Death Proof comes to mind.

Well just to add, if his M.O. is all based on cars, maybe at the time he first called himself the Zodiac, maybe it’s not a Watch Symbol or a Zodiac Raft. Maybe it’s a car, like the Ford Zodiac Mark III, I think the American Version is called a Zodiac/Zephyr. Also another note, he threatened to bomb a bus, so there’s another combination with chaos and cars.

I just think maybe the car isn’t just a method of attack but also interictal to his sick car killing fantasy. So if he says he has used Knives, guns, rope and fire, then they would all be involved with a car or bus or vehicle at least. Maybe even hit and runs or purposeful wrecks like you suggest with Death Proof. I don’t know about being a stunt man though, you never know though.

Interesting. My poi told me his first job after obtaining his MBA from UC Berkeley was with Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Michigan. He worked for the Lincoln-Mercury Division of Ford Motor Co. He later on worked for RCA selling computer time and would talk about the Spectra Series which was a competitor of IBM. He was sent to Cherry Hill, New Jersey where he learned computer programming. He told me he and two of his friends who were with him the night we met (electrical engineers) were working on or thinking of creating a program that had to do with dating.

We went for a bicycle ride on our first date. He got a motorcycle shortly afterwards and went on many bicycle and motorcycle rides.
He told me he’d had a motor scooter when he was in high school that had caused conflict with his parents and the parents of a younger boy when he’d sold it to this younger boy as his parents did not approve of their son having one.

I don’t hate the theory, but I’m wary of reading too much into the significance of something as ubiquitous and omnipresent as a car. They’re everywhere, we’re all constantly in them, or near them. It’s like saying all of the crimes involved people who were wearing shoes, or sitting down. But I suppose if you include all possible victims is does seem as if cars feature heavily not only by being present, but are often heavily involved.

I do recall a conversation we had one day about how much mileage a person has walked over the earth up to their current age. This came up after talking about cars, getting one’s first license, car, etc. along with walking to and from school and other places. I remember then I remarked to him that if people were cars, they’d be a model (year they were born). He then went on and told me about a crime with a ’38 involved (year of his birth). I think it was Officer Radetich. There had been a note from the Zodiac saying he’d shot someone with a ’38 and we were talking generally about the crimes much as we are doing here.

I remember telling him maybe the writer of that note was thinking of himself as a model 38 if he was born that year knowing that most people would think it was a ’38 gun.

World renowned profiler Richard Walter included an obsession with cars in his profile of the killer. Cars are not the "driving force" (pardon the pun) behind the crimes but the references to cars and other vehicles in the letters reinforce the car connection to the murders. Cars are everywhere in the z case.

World renowned profiler Richard Walter included an obsession with cars in his profile of the killer. Cars are not the "driving force" (pardon the pun) behind the crimes but the references to cars and other vehicles in the letters reinforce the car connection to the murders. Cars are everywhere in the z case.

Do you know where I can read that profile?

Yes. My ebook.

The movie that comes to mind on this subject is David Cronenberg’s 1996 film Crash based on J.G. Ballard’s book; very twisted and interesting for those with adventurous tastes in the macabre connection between cars/violence/sex.