What puzzles me is that if Z was simply doing it for the publicity, why did he not begin his murder spree in San Fran. Vallejo isn’t exactly a metropolis.

The problem with the collecting slaves motive is that Z doesn’t sound delusional in his letters, except when he talks about that. Than again, it could explain why he wore the hood.

And if it was all a big diversion than the hood and costume doesn’t make sense.

Just thinking out loud…..

He killed in Benicia/Vallejo, because most serial killers dip their toes close to home first before venturing wider afield. The impact of a double murder in a relatively small community would be immense, in a large metropolis the shockwave would be more minimal, where murder was more common. It is almost certain the Zodiac Killer used the killings to create his main focus of taunting authorities and police. His definitive murders spanned 10 months, his letter writing lasted 4 years. The murders to him were secondary, his main aim appeared the games and notoriety he basked in thereafter.

He killed in Benicia/Vallejo, because most serial killers dip their toes close to home first before venturing wider afield. The impact of a double murder in a relatively small community would be immense, in a large metropolis the shockwave would be more minimal, where murder was more common. It is almost certain the Zodiac Killer used the killings to create his main focus of taunting authorities and police. His definitive murders spanned 10 months, his letter writing lasted 4 years. The murders to him were secondary, his main aim appeared the games and notoriety he basked in thereafter.

I agree with you on the secondary nature of the murders, and see what youre saying about dipping his toes, but if he killed Stine first, and sent a letter to SFPD and The Chronicle, I think it would have made a much bigger impact.

I wonder does anyone think his main motive was a hatred of young couples or students.

Another motive Z offers early on is the thrill or fun of hunting humans. I guess that compulsion to kill would have to be the driving force, at the same time the murders seem secondary. I mean, he’s not like Dennis Radar. Z doesn’t seem like he’s deriving the most satisfaction from the killing, but from the correspondence and reaction.

A possibillty IMO is that the woman he killed were lookalikes of two different woman, who was also in appearance two different types of woman, who in his opinion, had hurt him so deeply as that it had turned into a deadly rage.

So IMO he killed thise victims as substitutes for the woman he had this rage toward.
However I belive that this motive was only a partial motive, there were other motives as well IMO, but I´d rather not get into that at this point.

The following murder of Paul Stine might have been that he was afraid that the lookalike motive was possibly getting too obvious to people who knew his life story, and he decided to kill a lone man in order to throw off thise people + the police concerning his motive, and at the same time feed his ego by spreading his "power or fear" into San Francisco.

I know that many people does not agree on this theorie, and I do respect that 100%, it´s just my personal theorie/thoughts.

I think his motive was the thrill of the hunt. Like a fox who hunts chickens and is hunted by the bloodhounds..
He loved to kill innocent victims, he loved to be hunted by the police. Just like a fox who shows his face sometimes out of the woods just to annoy the ones after him, Zodiac showed his face sending letters annoying the ones that were after him.
The "fame" he recieved throught the newspapers could have been a second motive to sent letters even after his last confirmed killing.

But who knows for sure?

No matter how you look at it, at the core it’s about power and control for the zodiac. Probably as he progressed, he found he got more of a feeling of power from the letters than from killing. But yeah, who knows?

….The impact of a double murder in a relatively small community would be immense, in a large metropolis the shockwave would be more minimal, where murder was more common. It is almost certain the Zodiac Killer used the killings to create his main focus of taunting authorities and police.

I agree. Not only that, but most people probably wouldn’t have cared so much about the murder of a cab driver. Or maybe I should say it wouldn’t have drawn that much attention. Once it becomes known it was "Zodiac" it’s a different story.

Couples in isolated places are simply easy targets, as is a cab driver.

Bragging to newspapers and dissing cops made him feel bigger than the weasel of a man he actually was, imo.

I agree Tahoe and UK….Makes sense to me….

I wonder does anyone think his main motive was a hatred of young couples or students.

I do. Victimology always tells you something about a killer. It’s no coincidence, I feel, that the Lord High Executioner’s role in The Mikado was to execute fornicating or adulterous couples.

The way I see it, Zodiac was a bitter and malcontent young man who lashed out at people or things that reminded him of real or perceived wrongs against him. The police for being authority figures (rage against dad?), society at large for failing him, young couples for representing his disastrous romantic pursuits/the girls who snubbed him. Starting the whole media campaign to hold the Bay Area hostage gave him the sense of power he lacked in his everyday life.

In other words, I feel that Zodiac was cut from exactly the same cloth as Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Cho Seung-Hui. He just opted to conduct serial murder rather than shoot up his school.

I wonder does anyone think his main motive was a hatred of young couples or students.

I do. Victimology always tells you something about a killer. It’s no coincidence, I feel, that the Lord High Executioner’s role in The Mikado was to execute fornicating or adulterous couples.

The way I see it, Zodiac was a bitter and malcontent young man who lashed out at people or things that reminded him of real or perceived wrongs against him. The police for being authority figures (rage against dad?), society at large for failing him, young couples for representing his disastrous romantic pursuits/the girls who snubbed him. Starting the whole media campaign to hold the Bay Area hostage gave him the sense of power he lacked in his everyday life.

In other words, I feel that Zodiac was cut from exactly the same cloth as Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Cho Seung-Hui. He just opted to conduct serial murder rather than shoot up his school.

How do you explain Paul Stine?

How do you explain Paul Stine?

Balancing the books. He failed to kill two of his male victims, and could have wished to prove that he had no trouble killing a man. If he hadn’t come so close to being caught that night, we might very well have seen another murder of a lone male, before a return to killing more couples.

There’s also an argument that Paul was not a planned victim, but a spur-of-the-moment murder. Someone once indicated that there actually WAS a lovers’ lane area in that particular region of San Fran. Maybe Zodiac was taking a cab to this spot, then Paul said or did something that enraged him, resulting in a drastic change of plans.

Whatever the motive behind Z’s crimes, it doesn’t make sense for him to just decide in Nov of 1969 that "I will no longer announce to anyone when I commit my murders…"

If he was addicted to publicity and attention from the Chronicle in publishing him then to go from being seemingly addicted & dependant on making his actions the front page headlines to one of "Not interested in attention anymore, bored now" is highly unlikely.
Zodiac would have us believe that he gave up all the publicity, all the letters and cipher writings to the Chronicle etc and all because Chief of SFPD Inspectors Martin Lee questioned his sexuality.

Remember at this time around Oct and Nov of 69 Zodiac has vastly decreased the cooling off period between kills to two weeks, down from 6 moths when he first embarked on his slave collecting campaign. I think, and it’s only my opinion I know, but I think he stopped killing and announcing he’d been doing his thing again because he was given a large dose of reality by Donald Fouke and the other responders that night who responded within a couple minutes of him leaving the cab. The fact an Officer has now seen his face is bad enough, but if he did simply walk up steps to evade being stopped and the responders really were given an incorrect ethnic description of suspect that night then ‘The Zodiac’ knows all to well that he can thank his lucky stars that he is still a free man.

I would imagine he woke up on Oct 12 and asked himself how the hell isn’t he welcoming the new day from behind bars.

Nachtsider, it’s possible Stine was Z’s way of balancing the books. Don’t think Stine was spur of moment though. He must have had some kind of escape plan, either a place to go or more likely a car waiting, to get away that night. The couples in lover’s lanes and stine have obe thing in common, besides being students, they make easy targets. I wonder if that had more to do with it.

Chappie, Z kept on going with his letter writing campaign long after he announced he would no longer announce his murders. Maybe he started to get more of a thrill from the letters than from killing.

I can see how the Stine murder would make him wake up to the risk he was taking, but do you ever wonder why, if he felf so close to being captured, did he mail the letter taking credit for Stine, included it with Stine’s shirt, to prove it, implicating himself, even though he knew he had been seen by police and nearly apprehended. Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep the police thinking it was a random murder or robbery/murder? I guess he couldn’t resist rubbing it in the cops’ noses, how they almost had him, how they let the biggest fish in the pond go.