The Cheri Jo Bates murder and Santa Barbara killings are often seen as early Zodiac crimes, despite the fact that no hard evidence ties either crime to each other or to the confirmed canon of Zodiac murders that began on December 20th 1968. It was the similar circumstances, choice of victims, method of attack, etc that led to this association. In my opinion, rightfully so.
As the killer typed in the Riverside Confession Letter mailed November 29th 1966 where he boasted; "She is not the first and will not be the last." The Zodiac then stated in the Los Angeles Times Letter mailed March 13th 1971 "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there."
My question is, how much research has been partaken in unsolved murders from that and surrounding areas? Or for instance, any murders that may have been somewhat suspicious in terms of the outcome, of there is a question of the culpability of the convicted perpetrator. Does the key to the case lay in cases outside of the general assumed Zodiac canon or associated Riverside/Santa Barbara killings?
This was probably a silly question.
Extract from excel file:
Mrs. Atwood 19 female Los Angeles / Riverside Parking lot near Cutter Pool at Riverside City College 13.04.1965 survived survived survived 13.04.1965 Parking lot near Cutter Pool at Riverside City College After being asked (and probably refusing) to go for a ride, she was stabbed with a hunting knife. Stabbed in the stomach, wounded, recovered after hospital Rolland Lin Taft, 18yr old son of a minister, was convicted and arraigned on 28.04.1965 for this crime (attempted murder), seems to have been in prison at the time when Cheri Jo Bates was stabbed to death.
http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtop … =33&t=3534
Unknown female 19 female Los Angeles / Riverside College students (University of California Riverside) A nineteen-year-old University of California at Riverside coed, walking west on Linden, became aware of a car creeping slowly alongside her. Looking around, she observed a man offering her a ride. “No, thanks,” she said. “Well, after all, I’m not Jack the Ripper,” replied the driver. “Don’t you recall? I gave you a ride three weeks ago.” Three weeks ago Cheri Jo had been murdered. The girl smiled, vaguely remembering him, opened the car door, and slid in. The ride went smoothly. He dropped her off at a local pizza parlor. When her boyfriend failed to meet her, she started back toward the UCR library. The same man rolled alongside again and picked her up, but instead of taking her home, drove rapidly up a dark road to Pigeon Pass. “There are a lot of kooks running around,” he said as the car slowed. “You heard about that girl at City College, didn’t you?” Frightened, the girl leaped from the car. Racing along the road’s edge, she fell. “I’m not going to kill you,” he shouted as she scrambled to her feet. “If I wanted to kill you, I could just hit you in the head with this piece of wood.” She returned to the car, but instantly his hands closed around her throat. “Now if I wanted to kill you, I could just snap your neck,” he said. “Shall I kill you now, or are you going to take off your clothes?” As he grabbed her sweatshirt, she wriggled free and bolted into the woods. The stranger gave up searching for her and roared off with her purse and books. Sobbing, covered with scratches and burrs, she staggered to the Highgrove area. When police responded, she described the suspect as “thirty-five, five feet nine inches tall with a chunky, protruding stomach.” Later descriptions of Zodiac mentioned “a slight potbelly” and that his “stomach hung over his trousers.” 22.11.1966 survived survived survived 22.11.1966 survived survived survived – – Riverside College yearbook should contain the female’s identity.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
I wish I had time to respond in full tonight, but headed to bed. There’s a case in the early ’70s I found interesting. The murderer was caught and sentenced. His name was Robinson Crusoe Huff, Jr. He killed a young man supposedly over a girl. Several articles can be found online. I’ll post more tomorrow evening.
There seems to be a lack of information on the internet regarding murders in and around the Cheri Jo Bates Riverside attack. Here is a distant outlier. Eighteen years before the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, California, on February 8th 1948, another senseless murder was perpetrated on a young woman in Riverside County. Marjorie Lee Winn (17), a Redlands High School student was traveling with her companion, Jim Sloan Jr, in his Mercury Coupe along Highway 99 just past Beaumont at around 2:30 am, when they pulled over for a brief moment. Suddenly, a man yanked open the passenger door of his Mercury Coupe and pointed a shotgun at Marjorie. Jim Sloan stepped on the gas to pull away and the gun discharged, leaving the young student with what would prove fatal injuries.
http://tonimomberger.weebly.com/the-uns … -winn.html
The murder of Sunny Lyn Dagowitz on December 16th 1970 in Los Angeles has been compared to the Riverside City College Library murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966. Four years separate the crimes, yet both have some lines of similarity, although certainly not enough to draw any firm conclusions. Sunny Lyn Dagowitz (18) was a sophomore in psychology and worked as an assistant to Raymond Orbach, vice chancellor for academic change at UCLA, Westwood. It is situated 70 miles west of Riverside. Sergeant Thomas Rogers stated that Miss Dagowitz, wearing capris and a blouse, had left the Foreign Students Center on the campus at 4:45 pm, less than half an hour before she was killed, estimated at shortly after 5.00 pm. She was attacked on the third tier of the campus parking structure, Miss Dagowitz was stabbed with a large knife at least 15 times, after a violent struggle resulting in wounds to her chest, arms, hands and back. She had succumbed just eight feet from her car. Thomas Tsunetomi Noguchi, Chief Medical Examiner for Los Angeles performed the autopsy, concluding she died from massive hemorrhaging. https://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=176
On March 19th 1968 Elizabeth Lurene Ernstein (14) was heading back to her home in Redlands, near San Bernardino from Moore Junior High School in Mentone. The young, brown-haired girl, wearing a blue dress with white flowers, dark olive corduroy reversible coat and tennis shoes was last seen leaving the school at approximately 3:40 pm. Her body was discovered in 1969 in a shallow grave near Wrightwood, 33 miles northwest of Redlands.
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/
“I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.” Edward R. Murrow.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Ernstein was a Z victim.
But Z didn’t hide his victims, it was his purpose that the whole world could see his "work". Was the victim raped? If yes, to me that would mean she wasn’t a Z victim.
Yes, they are unlikely Zodiac victims, as are Domingos & Edwards, where the perpetrator or perpetrators decided to drag or carry both victims a total of 60 feet up rough terrain into a shack. From a Zodiac standpoint this served absolutely no purpose, however, we cannot really apply any modus operandi to this killer with any confidence. Zodiac didn’t kill taxicab driver’s in built up areas until he did. Zodiac didn’t use a knife to kill his victims until he did, Zodiac didn’t wear a costume until he did – and we cannot be certain what he did prior to December 1968. Because he hadn’t hidden any bodies in the four canonical attacks doesn’t exclude him from doing so in the future, or having done so in the past. He may simply have evolved.
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/
“I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.” Edward R. Murrow.
Good point, RG.
Extract from excel file:
Unknown female 19 female Los Angeles / Riverside College students (University of California Riverside) A nineteen-year-old University of California at Riverside coed, walking west on Linden, became aware of a car creeping slowly alongside her. Looking around, she observed a man offering her a ride. “No, thanks,” she said. “Well, after all, I’m not Jack the Ripper,” replied the driver. “Don’t you recall? I gave you a ride three weeks ago.” Three weeks ago Cheri Jo had been murdered. The girl smiled, vaguely remembering him, opened the car door, and slid in. The ride went smoothly. He dropped her off at a local pizza parlor. When her boyfriend failed to meet her, she started back toward the UCR library. The same man rolled alongside again and picked her up, but instead of taking her home, drove rapidly up a dark road to Pigeon Pass. “There are a lot of kooks running around,” he said as the car slowed. “You heard about that girl at City College, didn’t you?” Frightened, the girl leaped from the car. Racing along the road’s edge, she fell. “I’m not going to kill you,” he shouted as she scrambled to her feet. “If I wanted to kill you, I could just hit you in the head with this piece of wood.” She returned to the car, but instantly his hands closed around her throat. “Now if I wanted to kill you, I could just snap your neck,” he said. “Shall I kill you now, or are you going to take off your clothes?” As he grabbed her sweatshirt, she wriggled free and bolted into the woods. The stranger gave up searching for her and roared off with her purse and books. Sobbing, covered with scratches and burrs, she staggered to the Highgrove area. When police responded, she described the suspect as “thirty-five, five feet nine inches tall with a chunky, protruding stomach.” Later descriptions of Zodiac mentioned “a slight potbelly” and that his “stomach hung over his trousers.” 22.11.1966 survived survived survived 22.11.1966 survived survived survived – – Riverside College yearbook should contain the female’s identity.
QT
This is incredibly interesting and thankfully she survived the encounter. I will be researching this one further.
I wouldn’t normally say that a body in a shallow grave would be Z’s doing, but what interests me with the Ernstein case is that a letter arguably assumed to be from Z was sent on the 3rd anniversary of her death hinting at a body buried in a similar location. If we consider Z as a possible suspect in the Donna Lass or Kathleen Johns cases then he could equally be responsible for a murder such as Ernstein’s.
Quagmire said, in this post about Elizabeth Ernstein;
viewtopic.php?f=70&t=4317&p=70364&hilit=einstein#p70313
…"murder of Elizabeth “Betty-Lou” Ernstein? She was seemingly murdered
on March 19th 1968 and buried in a shallow grave amongst pine trees by
snowy ski slopes called Big Pines. The perp seemingly taunted her father
by ringing him just after the abduction."
Quagmire, where did you source your assertion about taunting Ernstein’s father?
—————–
Note for Richard Grinell – I normally regard citations from the ‘Daily Fail’ as very
poor evidence indeed. I qualify that opinion to not include information from
their comments section, however, and this interesting comment (which you may
not be aware of) appeared therein, apparently from Jeff Ernstein, her brother;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/registratio … od=archive
"The partial remains were found about 50 miles away. She was very slender and
it is easy to see how she could be mistaken for an 18 to 20 y.o. male by the
pathologist which really threw everybody off track. There were many young men
then with long hair. She had had no dental work done other than cleaning so no
records. Apparently there was nothing else in the shallow grave. The only thing
we ever found was a bra, her size and type, washed in the same detergent–no
DNA testing back then. My mother, father, and older brother all passed away
without knowing for sure, but we did have a memorial for her in the 90’s.
Thank you all and pray we catch an old killer, if still alive. Her brother".
But Z didn’t hide his victims, it was his purpose that the whole world could see his "work". Was the victim raped? If yes, to me that would mean she wasn’t a Z victim.
I’m not certain if this is entirely true. If in fact Riverside was a Zodiac victim, he didn’t claim it until it was later discovered. I would question whether the Oceanside attack, and Santa Barbara are also Zodiac killings. Is there a reason why he may have initially wrote letters, made phone calls, and other methods of communication but then hid them from his own public proclamations?
I would say because he wasn’t entirely certain that the police wouldn’t finger him for the crimes. That would be my guess.
