An excellent find, ACE!!! Gives a lot of detail about the Dunbar calls, confirming that the Oakland PD was called more than once before the Dunbar show.

The article is dated Sept. 9, 2013 and that threw me! It’s about a week and a half from now, I had to check and see what year it was right now.

An excellent find indeed. Thanks Ace.

Yes Deb, some great info on the Dunbar show and it certainly seems to answer the questions we had recently on a related thread. Was it Eric that phoned Oakland PD and how did he have access to a telephone.

I did wince at the ‘written in dust’ comment regarding car coor at berryessa. Technically it probably was dusty and was obviously written on but the comment I took to imply ‘with a finger and not a pen’ the way people write ‘wash me’ in the dirt on dirty vehicles.

Hi-

He falls into the same trap everyone else does. Although he was supposedly there that night, the night was not foggy according to both Fouke and the kids. I’m not saying this guy is making this stuff up but I’ve seen people claim to have been at that crime scene who were NOT there. In 2006 a guy came to my attention who said he was the first SFPD officer to arrive on the scene–even before Pelissetti. He created a time gap that intrigued me. I did a lot of work and proved the guy was a liar who was trying to impress someone with a BS story. (Unfortunately for him, his story made it to my ears.) Now this news guy was also apparently an ambassador at one point(?), so maybe he has better credibility. But if he is saying it was "foggy," I’d definitely dispute that. Makes for a good story, though.

He looks like the guy who is on the old composite tape Tom made up in about 2000. There is a guy with a microphone at the back of the Hall of Justice saying, in part, something to the effect of, "Bits and pieces of information. Leads and tips are pouring into SFPD about the Zodiac killer." (I’m paraphrasing from memory.) Have to look at the footage again and see if that was him.

Mike

Yea I know Mike R reader beware when it comes to zodiac killer literature esp new stuff
I did not see some of what seagul and traveler 1st are talking of another page ?

on page 2 of the article you posted-

The Oakland police department desk officer, a fellow we talked to many times a week, said, “We’ve been getting phone calls from a guy who says he is the Zodiac. He just called again. He sounds really crazy,” said the deskman, “probably too crazy to be the Zodiac.” The bottom line is, he said, this whack job wants us to arrange for F. Lee Bailey, the defense attorney, to be on AM San Francisco so he can call in and talk with him. But, if we can’t arrange that (Bailey lived in Boston), said the sergeant laughing, he’ll settle for Melvin Belli of San Francisco.

We chuckled over the possibility that the crazy caller had actually been hired by Belli, a publicity hound of truly gargantuan proportions, to get him on TV more often now that the media interest he had received for representing Jack Ruby in the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald had significantly waned. This will work, we told the police deskman. A perfect KGO-TV nutcase story.

Then all of page three of the article is devoted to the Dunbar calls-

Mel Belli was nothing if not flamboyant. Every time he won a case (he lost the Ruby trial) or made a large tort settlement, he fired a cannon from the roof of his Montgomery Street office and hung a piratical skull and crossbones from his building’s flagpole. He billed himself the King of Torts but to those not in his fan club he was known simply as Melvin Bellicose.

I called an ABC vice president named Dave Sack at home and woke him up. He was a friend of Belli. A few hours later, Belli was on the AM show. Soon, the same fellow who called the Oakland police called the KGO switchboard. He was patched through live to the studio.

He told Dunbar and Belli that he was the Zodiac killer and his name was “Sam.” Sitting a few feet away, listening to the man on the speaker, I thought it was obvious that he was a phony—too deranged—and so did the entire stage crew.

At one point the caller began screaming, “I’m going to kill those kids,” referring to the Zodiac’s well-publicized pronouncement about the school bus. There was much eye-rolling and silent chortling in the studio, but not from Dunbar and Belli, who seemed to have been transported to Media Idiots Heaven. Here is an exact transcript:

Dunbar: Talk to us. Just, tell us what’s going on, inside you, right now. Please.

Caller: I have headaches.

Dunbar: Right.

Belli: How long have you had those headaches, uh, Sam? Been a long time?

Caller: Since I killed a kid.

Belli: Well, was it before December that you had the headaches?

Caller: Yes.

Belli: If, did, were you in service, that you might have had an injury in service, did you ever fall out of a tree or down stairs? Were you ever unconscious?

Caller: I don’t know.

Belli: You don’t remember. Does aspirin do you any good?

Caller: No.

Belli: Doesn’t do you any good?

Caller: No.

Dunbar: Sam—

Belli: Damn stuff never did me any good either.

Dunbar: Sam, let me ask you a question. Did you, um, did you attempt to call this program one other time when Mr. Belli was with us? And, you called—

Caller: What?

Dunbar: Did you try to call us one other time about, oh, two or three weeks ago when Mel Belli was with us?

Caller: Yes.

Dunbar: And you, uh, well—

Belli: You couldn’t get through, and we were talking?

Dunbar: And you couldn’t get through, the phones were tied up, is that it?

Caller: Yes.

Belli: Sam, let me ask you this. There’s some reason why you go to a particular doctor or a particular priest, and some reason why apparently you wanted to talk to me, or Lee [F. Lee Bailey]. Is it that you feel we have compassion for people who get in trouble? Or is it that you feel that we can do something for you? Or is it that you feel we’re, we’re, have enough integrity that if we promise you something, that we’re gonna stick to it?

Dunbar: Well, let’s find out why he wanted to talk to—Why did you want to talk to Mr. Belli, Sam?

Caller: I don’t want to be hurt.

Belli pleaded with the caller to surrender: to Belli. He promised that “Sam” wouldn’t face the gas chamber for the murders if he gave himself up. “Sam” said okay.

Off camera Belli set the meeting place behind the St. Vincent de Paul’s charity shop on Mission Street, in two hours. Belli was practically delirious over his pending coup.

Feverish efforts by police and the phone company to trace the call were unsuccessful. A surviving victim and two police dispatchers who had heard the real Zodiac’s voice listened to a tape and all agreed “Sam” was an impostor, though the Oakland police dispatcher said it was definitely the same loony who had called early that morning.

The scene at the St. Vincent de Paul’s store was other-worldly, with a portly Belli, long white hair flaring in the breeze, waddling to and fro like a walrus with a weak bladder, his broad, handsome face both expectant and nervous, being watched by dozens of news crews, who’d discovered the “surrender point” from cop friends or the talkative Belli, all of them being watched in turn by police snipers on surrounding rooftops and uniformed cops barely hidden all over the seedy block.

“Sam” never showed. Police learned later that his real name was “Eric” and he was locked up in an Oakland mental hospital and had court-ordered access to a telephone.

Over one thousand leads came to police from that KGO broadcast. None of them panned out or even came close. Some were from people pointing the finger at a troublesome tenant (some guy they couldn’t evict any other way) or an irritating ex-husband or neighbor or ex-boyfriend. Hundreds of people thought they knew someone who looked like the drawing of Zodiac that Dunbar and Belli showed.

The taped segment with “Sam the Zodiac” ran on hundreds of radio and TV stations, including on Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News that night. So far as I know, none of this was accompanied by irony or cynicism.

We took a call in our newsroom after the Cronkite show from an excited couple in Florida who said they had three reasons why they were certain Zodiac was their son: (1) He had visited California a couple of times, (2) he was “a pervert,” and (3) he looked exactly like the drawing.

One viewer who watched our AM show called the newsroom and said, “I just saw the killer. He’s in the men’s room at the downtown Sacramento bus station right now.”

The San Francisco police chief of inspectors Martin Lee held a news conference to say emphatically that the AM show caller was not the Zodiac, but he was a sick puppy, for sure. The national media ignored this.

Reporters and news crews not hiding in doorways or cruising the neighborhood near St. Vincent de Paul’s on the Mel & Sam watch flocked to the offices of San Francisco district attorney John J. Ferdon to hear Ferdon beat up Belli because Mel had promised “Sam” he wouldn’t be sentenced to the gas chamber if he surrendered to Belli.

Ferdon, normally a colorless bureaucrat, was happy to cooperate with reporters. He was indignant. He said Belli couldn’t make any such promise to a possible murder defendant, he had no authority. Who did he think he was? In an aside to the last reporters at his desk after the news conference ended, Ferdon said about Belli, “The man is crazier than a shithouse rat, and just as principled.”

The crowd around his desk erupted in laughter.

“That’s off the record,” said the DA.

Just a note, Belli arranged to meet "Zodiac" at thrift store in Daly City not SF, minor point.

The bit about writing in the dust on page 2-

Bryan was stabbed 15 times but survived. Cecilia was stabbed more than 20 times and died. The killer left a message written in the dust on the side of Hartnell’s car—“Sept. 27, 6:30 p.m. (by knife)” and the symbol he used.

The last thing I get is " we would head to the newsroom." and no -read more- link …so thanks Seagul
also does not load right at all occasionally The news page /paper must have verified his story or claims to let it be run there you would think.

Perhaps they told him it was to run that date, but they moved it up .
His writing style I find interesting and flowing he should have kicked out a Zodiac Killer book.

Interesting account!….This guy claims they filmed the scene…should that not be available somewhere if so? Secondly, he claims they heard the dispatch call…(which drew them to the location in the first place) "possible robbery" etc, curiously no mention of the "Black suspect".
Also of interest is the fact that he claims dog units arrived at the scene. (Taxi)

He is the guy I was thinking of, as discussed above. The guy in the clip I saw is holding a KGO microphone and looks just like this guy.

Interesting account!….This guy claims they filmed the scene…should that not be available somewhere if so? Secondly, he claims they heard the dispatch call…(which drew them to the location in the first place) "possible robbery" etc, curiously no mention of the "Black suspect".
Also of interest is the fact that he claims dog units arrived at the scene. (Taxi)

KGO must have the footage then , A murder in SF and a week later knew it was zodiac. Available for $$$$$$$ likely ,
if they kept the tape in good condition
but would be cool to see