In the last few years – and I really mean the last 20 or so – the American TV news has completely changed from "news" to "entertainment." And it is a bunch of "sh*te." CNN was a late hold-out, it used to be good.

At least the BBC reports actual news. For me, it’s them or the New York Times. All the rest are "info-tainment" for the newsbite generation.

Sorry, I’m showing my age here.

-glurk

Just watched a few documentaries on the JonBenet Ramsey case and what I witnessed is the worst case of trial by media ever seen, where a grieving mother and father were subjected to the most unimaginable torment, perpetrated by the worst forms of American chat show drivel ever, carrying mock trials and half-wits parading as experts, further exacerbated by a Colorado Police Department exhibiting one of the most ‘closed minds’ investigations in world history. These police investigators were the worst kind of buffoons ever. The only thing they didn’t have were the flaming torches, in the persecution of Quasimodo. Talking of closed minds. When Lou Smitt showed clear evidence that a possible intruder may have entered the house, along with other evidence, the Colorado Police, rather than thank the homicide investigator for his assistance in expanding their mind, they did the predictable pig headed approach and refuted his ideas, likely because it showed them up for the fools they were. They even tried to block his evidence reaching court. It’s like a defendant not having a defense lawyer. What are these idiots doing wearing a badge.
Defaming the dead appears acceptable in the Zodiac community, as we search endlessly for the Northern California killer, but what about the utter misery it bestows upon surviving family members. In the search for justice and closure for the victims and the families of the Zodiac Killer, aren’t we just creating new victims in our insatiable desire to unmask the killer. I try putting myself in the shoes of the son or daughter of one of the Zodiac suspects and would find it unimaginably hard not to understand the hurt it would bestow upon them. seeing possibly their loving parent (in their eyes) being carefully dissected piece by piece. How do we juggle with this as responsible human beings or do we just accept these people as justifiable collateral damage.

ITA. I haven’t closely followed all of those named who are deceased but have read enough to learn many of them were quite accomplished and well-respected members of their communities. It really is disgraceful and disrespectful to these men, their friends and families to have their pictures and names of family members put out as "possible suspects" based only on circumstantial information such as having resided in particular areas at certain times, attending same schools, etc. (IMO).

Yeah. All of that bothers me. I don’t just think of the victims and their families but I also think of the killers family. What joyfulness it would be for the victims and their families but what hell it would be for the killers if he is ever identified. I don’t think that I would want to wake up one morning to find that the man I loved as a brother, father, friend and so on was a murderer. Then to have it all play out in the press, new books released with false information on the family or knowing that people are enjoying their popcorn while watching all this unfold in a theater. No. Its bad news all the way around.

Soze

I don’t know much about that case, but Patsy Ramsey graduated from the same high school and college I did. She’s about 15 years older than me, so I never knew her or anything. That whole thing was so sad. Still is, actually.

fine line…a person of interest is different to a suspect.. technically anyone born in that era that fits in with "parameters" such as age, gender, time lines, association to the victims, friends school colleagues, lived with, etc are just POI. and that can be thousands of men. But I think Ross would slip into the suspect list as he has been nominated by others (library staff). We end up with all varying degrees of suspects and all varying degrees of people of interest. no one points and says GUILTY.. more along the lines of trying to find someone who fits and then eliminate them because of information gleaned.
all imo

in fact I think I should change my user name to IMO

I don’t know much about that case, but Patsy Ramsey graduated from the same high school and college I did. She’s about 15 years older than me, so I never knew her or anything. That whole thing was so sad. Still is, actually.

this is the case of "handwriting expUrts" out expUrting each other.

and for a really bad case of injustice inept police work, flawed scientific evidence and general all round dumbarsery, google up Lindy Chamberlain. A Dingo and her baby Azaria.

I don’t know much about that case, but Pathesy Ramsey graduated from the same high school and college I did. She’s about 15 years older than me, so I never knew her or anything. That whole thing was so sad. Still is, actually.

this is the case of "handwriting expUrts" out expUrting each other.

and for a really bad case of injustice inept police work, flawed scientific evidence and general all round dumbarsery, google up Lindy Chamberlain. A Dingo and her baby Azaria.

I remember that case making the news. Now that was something. Took a very long time to find her innocent didn’t it? Didn’t she go to prison and was later freed?

Soze

I don’t know much about that case, but Pathesy Ramsey graduated from the same high school and college I did. She’s about 15 years older than me, so I never knew her or anything. That whole thing was so sad. Still is, actually.

this is the case of "handwriting expUrts" out expUrting each other.

and for a really bad case of injustice inept police work, flawed scientific evidence and general all round dumbarsery, google up Lindy Chamberlain. A Dingo and her baby Azaria.

I remember that case making the news. Now that was something. Took a very long time to find her innocent didn’t it? Didn’t she go to prison and was later freed?

Soze

yep that’s the one, three years in the big house..

fine line…a person of interest is different to a suspect.. technically anyone born in that era that fits in with "parameters" such as age, gender, time lines, association to the victims, friends school colleagues, lived with, etc are just POI. and that can be thousands of men. But I think Ross would slip into the suspect list as he has been nominated by others (library staff). We end up with all varying degrees of suspects and all varying degrees of people of interest. no one points and says GUILTY.. more along the lines of trying to find someone who fits and then eliminate them because of information gleaned.
all imo

in fact I think I should change my user name to IMO

Wrong. A Person Of Interest is just that, someone who the police are interested in talking to because they believe that that person has information relating to the crime. A POI may be a potential witness or suspect, but it’s usually someone who has been IDed at or near a crime scene that police do not know what they were doing there and want to find out. It’s not just a random person that is tangentally related to some aspect of the case.

It’s Ok to call Ross a suspect because he actually was one. The Police interviewed him with suspicion of being the perp. Most of the people we call "POI"s are neither.

POI is just a term that people use with the exact same intention as suspect, but it’s a less accusatory sounding phrase that is not that well known by the general public, so they use it for the purposes of trying to get around that defamation.

"Muy Huevos" to those who consider ‘suspects’ or ‘POI’s.’
I’m not at all comfortable with either.
I am not a part of any police agency either, of course.

-glurk

fine line…a person of interest is different to a suspect.. technically anyone born in that era that fits in with "parameters" such as age, gender, time lines, association to the victims, friends school colleagues, lived with, etc are just POI. and that can be thousands of men. But I think Ross would slip into the suspect list as he has been nominated by others (library staff). We end up with all varying degrees of suspects and all varying degrees of people of interest. no one points and says GUILTY.. more along the lines of trying to find someone who fits and then eliminate them because of information gleaned.
all imo

in fact I think I should change my user name to IMO

Wrong. A Person Of Interest is just that, someone who the police are interested in talking to because they believe that that person has information relating to the crime. A POI may be a potential witness or suspect, but it’s usually someone who has been IDed at or near a crime scene that police do not know what they were doing there and want to find out. It’s not just a random person that is tangentally related to some aspect of the case.

It’s Ok to call Ross a suspect because he actually was one. The Police interviewed him with suspicion of being the perp. Most of the people we call "POI"s are neither.

POI is just a term that people use with the exact same intention as suspect, but it’s a less accusatory sounding phrase that is not that well known by the general public, so they use it for the purposes of trying to get around that defamation.

I have re read my writings and your comments. And I can not for the life of me work out how wrong I am or how wrong you are on this topic……… So is a poi different to a suspect?
If the police bother to speak to you ..you be a suspect…if we stumble upon your name you be a poi

I have re read my writings and your comments. And I can not for the life of me work out how wrong I am or how wrong you are on this topic……… So is a poi different to a suspect?
If the police bother to speak to you ..you be a suspect…if we stumble upon your name you be a poi

I think what duck means is that an actual "person of interest" in the context of – actual – criminal investigations isn’t just some random guy who sort of resembles a composite, or lived in the general vicinity of a crime scene, or had a mother who loved the Mikado…or whatever the case may be.

A so-called "POI" as the term is used on here may be an actual POI (hardly anyone would qualify, though) or even an actual suspect (like ALA, for instance) but the great majority of them are just people who are interesting to us (researchers, theorists, zodiac buffs, etc.) for whatever reason – not people who definitely were of interest to the actual investigation.

The term as it’s used by us is potentially misleading. Then again terms evolve and take on new meanings – so there’s that too. But what we usually call a "POI" is not the same as what LE commonly refers to as a "person of interest".

^ Bingo.

Sorry Mr. Lowe, my saying "wrong." may have been too strong. I don’t really disagree with what you said, it’s just a matter of confusing two different things. Mostly I disagreed with the notion that there are thousands of Zodiac POI’s. There may be thousands of people that we find "interesting" and so do the police, but that doesn’t qualify as a POI as I’ve described it.

On a sort of unrelated note, that reminds me of how Robert Graysmith said there were "over 1,200 Zodiac suspects." I always wondered what he was smoking, or if there were thousands of reports that he has seen that we haven’t, because from what I can tell there were only like at most 50 or 100 Zodiac suspects mentioned in the reports and FBI files. Maybe he counted everyone in the fingerprint database that was tested.

I think there are millions (at least) of Zodiac suspects. Since none of us have any idea who he is/was.

Maybe even more than that, to be honest.

-glurk