A person of interest!
The widows peak.
20’s, stocky, pleated pants, 185 lb. 5’9 (glasses -(part time)
monotone narration, ego reaches to the stars.
Know’s all names listed in the letters.
32yrs. old when taxi driver was killed.

Blind Bat

A Superhero indeed!

uncensored facts

norse speaking here in the first person singular narration.

It’s important to keep the cards apart in the Z case. The actual crimes are there, with their details and their facts. It’s not all smoke and mirrors. My advice would be to stick to the facts as much as possible. The factual aspects of the case have not been exhausted, so to speak – not in my opinion, at least.
By, norse

Blind Bat, first person plural- we can do it!

Blind Bat

Blind Bat, first person plural- we can do it!

Sure we can. Would be helpful to know who "we" are and what "it" is, though – but I guess that’s too much to ask.

Seen Ocean’s 12? Not great, but there’s this scene – you may want to check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3DmtUJ3MWs

Norse

Thanks for the laugh….too funny!!

Blind Bat, first person plural- we can do it!

Sure we can. Would be helpful to know who "we" are and what "it" is, though – but I guess that’s too much to ask.

Norse,

Don’t allow the guano to affect you. Most bats are fruits…and they love it. Blind Bat hangs upside down so it views the world in a different perspective.

This will give you a general idea. http://youtu.be/bXQ1qvW0lb0

So I want to discuss the Zodiac age estimates and how reliable they are, with a specific eye to what modern science says about age estimate reliability. Let’s start with the research, then interpret some of the eyewitness age estimations:

Scientific Studies on Age Estimation

This all comes from a research review by Evelyne Moyse called "Age Estimation from Faces and Voices: A Review." It’s a good summary of the research on this topic, and easy to find if you wanna google it and read it yourself. Though I’m mostly just copy/pasting the key findings from it anyway.

• Estimations based on Face are More Accurate than Those Based on Voice: "Indeed, globally, error of estimation from faces was around five years whereas error of estimation from voices was around ten years." and "Consistent with previous studies, they showed that young adults were more accurate at estimating the age based on face information (average absolute value of 5.7 years) compared with to voice information (average absolute value of 9.7 years)."

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• Having Both Face and Voice Information Does Not Improve Accuracy of Age Estimation: "In addition, they also asked to estimate the age from a video in which face and voice information were available at the same time. In this case, the average absolute value was 5.1 years, which is similar to the photograph condition. Voice information did not improve the performance of age estimation from a photograph only. Therefore, when multiple cues are available, it appears that age estimation was mainly based on visual appearance."

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• We Are More Accurate at Identifying People of Our Own Race: "The occurrence of the so called ‘own-race’ bias has been well documented in memory for faces: recognition performance for faces of one’s ‘own race’ is higher compared to performance for faces of ‘another race’ "

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• We Underestimate the Age of Old People, and Overestimate the Age of Young People: "First, there is a tendency to place the stimuli (stimuli=people) in the middle range with the age of young stimuli being overestimated and the age of older stimuli being underestimated."

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• Age Estimations are More Accurate when the Person Being Examined is Younger: "In age estimation from faces, Sörqvist and Eriksson (2007) reported the same pattern of responses with an absolute error of the young faces (15–24 years) of 2.83 years and for the older faces (56–65 years) an absolute error of 5.25 years."

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• Younger People are Better at Estimating Age, but the Effect is Small: Voice – "They reported that absolute error scores were higher in older than in young participants, respectively 11.37 and 10.14." Face – "In the same way, with an absolute error of 6.83 years, older participants estimated less accurately the age from faces than middle-aged (6.30 years) or young participants (5.91 years)

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• There is an Own-Age Bias, but It’s Complicated: "According, participants estimated more accurately the age of one’s own age stimuli than the age of other age stimuli." (Note: it’s all pretty complicated, so read the report on this one. In general though, people are either just as accurate or more accurate at estimating those from their own age group)

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• Gender of witness does not affect reliability: no significant difference between male and female performance of age estimation from voices was reported in most of researches"

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• "Overall, the literature on age estimation suggests that we are able to categorize a face or a voice into an age range with high accuracy. However, when the issue is to give an exact age, we are more accurate in age estimation from faces than from voices "[/*:m:wh5evtzr][/list:u:wh5evtzr]

The Zodiac Age Descriptions

• Mike Mageau, Age 19, Blue Rock Springs: Only saw shooter for brief moment from a side profile, and has re-iterated this fact over the years. "Stated subject was a white male, approximately 26-30 years.Was unable to judge real well what his age was."

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• Nancy Slover, Age 26, Blue Rock Springs: Dispatcher who took phone call from Zodiac. Describe his voice as "mature" in police report. She said it sounded "mid 30’s."

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• Linda #1, Age 22, Lake Berryessa: While at Lake Berryessa, was watched by a man staring at them from the trees. Behavior is similar to Z, but may or may not be Z. Describes man as approximately 28 in police report.

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• Linda #2, Age 21, Lake Berryessa: While at Lake Berryessa, was watched by a man staring at them from the trees. Behavior is similar to Z, but may or may not be Z. Describes man as approximately 30 in police report.

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• David Slaight, Age 24, Lake Berryessa: Dispatcher who took phone call from Zodiac. Described his voice as "young sounding, possibly early 20’s."

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• Bryan Hartnell, Age 20, Lake Berryessa: Described Z as being between 20 and 30, according to police report. Based this mostly off of his voice/behavior, since Z was wearing a mask.

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• Three Teens, Ages 13/14/16, San Fran: The composite drawn from these three teen’s testimony lists his age range as 25-30. Viewed scene from 50 ft. away with no obstruction. Area has a reputation for being well lit. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any report or interview where it states their age estimates. I’m basing the 25-30 number off the initial Stine composite).

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• Officer Fouke, Age 30, San Fran: Stopped a white male fitting the description of the Zodiac shortly after the Stine murder. Described the person as being 35-45. Said he looked similar to the composite, but "older and heavier" than the composite. The area was dark but lit with streetlights, and Fouke claimed to have placed his headlights on the suspect. Fouke is a trained professional, though his age description is the most divergent of all the descriptions. Openly states that lighting might have made hair look grayer than it actually was (or so I’ve heard — I wasn’t able to find where he said this). Zodiac made a claim of having an encounter with the police in a subsequent letter, and most believe this is the Fouke’s encounter, but it is still uncertain whether the man Fouke’s saw was actually Zodiac.[/*:m:wh5evtzr][/list:u:wh5evtzr]

(ps please correct me if I made any factual errors here!)

What I Take Away From All This:

• There are those who say the variation in ages might indicate here were two people acting as Zodiac. However, a 30-35 year old Zodiac easily falls into the "margin of error" for every estimation.

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• Based on the research article, I think I can mostly say there’s no compelling reason for me to disbelieve the general accuracy of these estimations (assuming they actually saw Z in the first place). In other words, there’s no reason for me to believe that a whole bunch of people would ALL be incredibly wrong in their age estimations.

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• I think the biggest myth about the age estimates is that the three teens are the most unreliable eyewitnesses. Three things work in their favor: 1) They saw the face of Z, as opposed to those who only heard his voice 2) They FOR SURE saw Z, as opposed to people like Fouke and the Lindas who we’re unsure of 3) the 15-24 age range is the most reliable age range, contrary to belief! I frequently hear people doubt their testimony based on the fact that they were teenagers, but I’m not sure that’s a fair criticism anymore based on what I’ve read.

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• If the "Lindas" actually saw Zodiac, then that’s valuable information too. It would put his age at somewhere between 23-35, on average, and probably closer to 25-33.

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• The absolute highest possible age of Zodiac would have to be 40, regardless of Fouke’s description. A Zodiac older than 40 would mean that 8 of the 9 other witnesses were wildly wrong in their estimation, and as stated before, there’s no reason to believe that.

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• Research says it’s possible for these estimations to be overestimates, but I think the amount of corroboration makes this effect small. Maybe 1-2 years?[/*:m:wh5evtzr][/list:u:wh5evtzr]

Let me know what you all think about this!

Based on facts… Many trial lawyers have won cases because of so many conflicting stories by witness.
The Zodiac was 32 years old when he killed Paul Stein.
The man I think is Zodiac. December 28, 1936 still living.

Why is it hard to believe Z was a sloppy dresser?
Pleated pants are perfect attire for a photojournalist.
A photographer is always in different positions so starchy jeans would be ridiculous to be wearing while on an assignment.
Stop and think how baggy they need to be to carry flash bulbs and film in the pockets.
Pleats as one knows help on bending at the knees.
And brown even hides blood splatter.
So what foulke described is spot on for a photojournalist.

3. Linda – Saw a man staring from besides a tree a good distance away. Did she ever provide details on the subjects appearance at that particular instance? No! Did she notice if he had glasses on at the time? No! What colour was his hair when she saw him besides the tree? Did he have a beard? However he was between 28-30.

There were three girls that day who described the guy. The did see him from a much closer vantage points as well. He even walked down and around the area they were sunbathing at–in the same manner "Zodiac" walked down to Bryan and Cecelia. They were very detailed when they described him and they were the ones who provided the composite drawing of the person they saw.

In regards to age, I think it’s safe to say Zodiac was not a teenager and not an old man. I don’t think his ACTUAL age, whether a little younger than 30 or a little older than 40, would hurt the investigation. This is why LE does not go by visuals alone.

As one Linda stated…
He was standing there staring at her.
It’s believable because the Z I know has a pic on the web of him standing in the rehearsal room of Marilyn Monroe staring at her from 20 feet away.
Maryln did not see him at the time.
He was in such a pose as to look like a stalker.