The corner of Mason and Geary streets is located in a part of SF called the Tenderloin. Notorious for "alternate sexualities".
Here’s was Wikipedia had to say about it, "The Tenderloin has a long history as a center of alternate sexualities, including several historic confrontations with police. The legendary female impersonator Rae Bourbon, a performer during the Pansy Craze, was arrested in 1933 while his show "Boys Will Be Girls" was being broadcast live on the radio from Tait’s Cafe at 44 Ellis Street.[8] On New Years Day in 1965 police raided a Mardi Gras Ball at California Hall[9] on Polk Street sponsored by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, lining up and photographing 600 participants and arresting several prominent citizens. One of the first "gay riots", pre-dating the Stonewall riots in New York, happened at Compton’s Cafeteria[10] at Turk and Taylor Streets in August 1966 when the police, attempting to arrest a drag queen, sparked a riot that spilled into the streets. Prior to the emergence of The Castro as a major gay village, the center of the Tenderloin at Turk and Taylor and the Polk Gulch at the western side of the Tenderloin were two of the city’s first gay neighborhoods and a few of these historic gay bars and clubs still exist."
Question: Does anyone think this is relevant?
Is it possible he went down there looking for something, only later to be angry enough to kill Stien?
Certainly possible, but there also theaters right there too, he simply could have had it all planned out after catching a movie. Dude, I know that your Suspect(one of the 2)lived very close to where Stine picked up Z, perhaps closer than any other Suspect I know of.
There is more than one way to lose your life to a killer
http://www.zodiackillersite.com/
http://zodiackillersite.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/Morf13ZKS
Certainly possible, but there also theaters right there too, he simply could have had it all planned out after catching a movie. Dude, I know that your Suspect(one of the 2)lived very close to where Stine picked up Z, perhaps closer than any other Suspect I know of.
And his Aunt lived at 127 Ellis St., but horseshoes and hand granades…
I guess what I’m trying to understand is Stein’s death. I think most people would agree that the other attacks/murders had a sexual element to them, but not Stein’s. To me, Z feels like the kind of guy struggling with homosexuality, and the Tenderloin is definitely the kind of place to satisfy those feelings. Maybe he did go there to hook up and maybe he hated himself for it. Maybe Stein’s death was strictly out of anger and guilt for having those feelings?
This makes more sense to me than if he knew Stein or some of the other theories out there.
Any thoughts? I’m okay with criticisms also. 
I think it’s possible – but not the likeliest scenario – that Z killed Stine because he was prompted, or even provoked, to do so by something which happened either right before or during the cab ride.
Was Z gay? Did he struggle with his sexuality? Both are possible, in my opinion. But a) I don’t know whether anything in his known "work" positively indicates this; and b) I’m not sure if it’s directly relevant if he WAS.
I’m not sure I agree there is a clear sexual component in the other three attacks either. That is, a – pardon the term – meaningful one, one which can be legitimately derived from the facts themselves. Everything anyone does arguably has a sexual aspect to it. Compared to other killers (of the serial sort), Z’s way of killing is markedly non-sexual, if one can put it like that. Which doesn’t mean his killing didn’t spring from some kind of "issue" (I’m sure it did) – but precisely what it could have been is very difficult to say. It might be something more subtle than what is "normal" under the circumstances.
The obvious explanation for why he killed Stine – a lone male, thus deviating from the pattern – is that he was challenged to do so (from his perspective) by the suggestion that he was reluctant to kill men (a quite preposterous suggestion, in fact, given that it was obviously coincidental that MM and BH survived – Z clearly, in my opinion, tried to kill them). I’m not sure I quite buy that one either – but it makes sense if he was actually "sensitive" enough to allow himself to be offended, so to speak.
I do believe, in conclusion, that homosexual killers have a marked tendency to kill members of their own sex, to the point of not being particularly interested in the other. Z, as we know, went for both sexes.
The obvious explanation for why he killed Stine – a lone male, thus deviating from the pattern – is that he was challenged to do so (from his perspective) by the suggestion that he was reluctant to kill men (a quite preposterous suggestion, in fact, given that it was obviously coincidental that MM and BH survived – Z clearly, in my opinion, tried to kill them). I’m not sure I quite buy that one either – but it makes sense if he was actually "sensitive" enough to allow himself to be offended, so to speak.
Norse, when you say "the suggestion that he was reluctant to kill men" — was that information available very publicly within the specific time frame? I know the papers published a lot of information about the ongoing investigation, including psychological profiles (and probably op/eds as well), but I am curious whether or not the timing would have aligned. That might have given Z a reason to feel challenged in this specific way — but if not, I would wonder.
That’s a really good question Murray. I think that is one of those things that is more in the Zeitgeist than factually based. There really wasn’t a whole lot of non straightforward reporting on the Zodiac prior to Stine. I could be wrong, I haven’t read every news article or remember all the ones I had, but I don’t imagine that anyone made that direct implication: That Zodiac was too much of a wuss to kill a man. I should think in essence challenging him to commit a murder would be highly irresponsible.
I understand why police used the antagonistic communication with him that they later did, but in hindsight I don’t think it was a very good idea.
The Chronicle ran that story on Oct. 18th (it’s in the S.F.C. thread in the Media section). It specifically cited Berryessa as "evidence" of Zodiac’s homosexuality. To further confuse matters, the Fincher movie had Zodiac sending the Halloween card in retaliation, even though the card was sent over a year later.
What’s interesting, in relation to this topic: on Z’s list of LE’s "lies" that he’s angry about, he doesn’t mention the homosexuality thing at all.
Good points…I need to take a look at the available articles again. But I don’t think – actually – that anything which would have challenged Z’s masculinity (or implied that he was homosexual) was printed until after SFPD got involved and Avery wrote his pieces.
If this is so, that particular explanation (Z killed Stine to prove a point) doesn’t seem as obvious. Of course, Z may have felt the need to prove such a point himself – being aware, of course, of his failure to kill MM and BH – but the provocation angle goes out the window.
Research needed.
My suspect Ray lived at the Tenderloin area in the 80’s with a openly homosexual. Ray also was never link to having a relationship with women and may have been homosexual himself and was a loner and may of had a fear of women. During the Stine killing he lived less then a mile where Zodiac hailed the cab. Around the block from the Chronicle and a few blocks from Woolworths.
Dude, you might be interested in reading this thread about Gender Issues-
In particular read ggluckman’s posts that start after the posts that were transferred from the old forum.
From what I can see (not a complete read-through of ALL the available articles), it wasn’t until Avery’s famous "latent homosexual" remark (Oct 18, 1969) that anything like this was brought up in the papers. Before that Z was described several times as a (sexual) deviant of some kind – but there was no explicit mention of homosexuality.
It’s interesting to see how soon – and as if per default – they concluded that his murders (including BRS) were sexually motivated. I think this line of thinking (that a killer of Z’s ilk must be a sexual deviant) casts some light on Allen’s status as a suspect too. The fact that he was a pedophile would have contributed (perhaps even greatly) towards his viability, I think.
