If LHR was not Zodiac, "Zodiac" had time after LHR to come up with some sort of scheme….and throw David & Betty Lou into the mix.

Yes – that is possible. It’s not even all that far fetched: For some reason you need to kill someone – someone who knows too much or whatever the case may be. You are a cop, or at least someone in a position to perpetrate a hoax of the sort we’re talking about here. So, you wait for the right time to strike, you take advantage of an unsolved double murder which is old enough to be relatively safe to use…and you make a phone call and write a “sick” letter in order to make the world believe a nutcase is behind both attacks.

But. What takes place beyond this – is just…well, it’s too much. We can, if we so please, remove LB from the equation and call that one a copycat crime. But we can’t remove the cipher – which is completely unnecessary and over the top. We can’t remove Stine – which could be interpreted as a “need” to move the Z business away from an area which was, literally speaking, too close to home. But is that really plausible, all things said and done? You kill another person *, a random cab driver, and add the perfectly grotesque detail with the bloody shirt piece JUST to shift Zodiac over to the SFPD, so to speak?

And even – even – if we accept Stine as part of a more rational smoke screen, the fact remains that the letters kept on coming – and the ciphers. And bomb threats, threats against school children, menacing Halloween cards, the bizarre business with Belli and God knows what else (depending on what one thinks were genuine Z communications). Those things make no sense. No sane person would do that as part of a cover up. Or so I claim. It’s not only over the top – it simply isn’t necessary.

* I put it like this because I think the Stine killing would have been a positively stupid choice for anyone who desired to pin a San Francisco crime on "Zodiac". The shirt business notwithstanding, picking a cabbie slaying would have been extremely risky. The real killer would in all likelihood be a "standard" small time criminal – and as such it would have been more than possible that he’d be caught at some point, and so the game would’ve been up.

the only hoax theory that i’ve read that maintains even a single strand of plausibility is that stine wasn’t killed by the hoaxer but the hoaxer had access to remove a piece of his shirt after the fact (at the police station, morgue, hospital, etc). see below –

the scenario would be something like this –

1) after brs, our hoaxer is waiting for another crime, potentially a murder, with a particular method or timing or scenario that fits his hoaxing scheme.

2) on the night of stine’s murder, a random petty thief plans to rob stine, something goes wrong and he shoots him. petty thief realizes his prints are all over the cab so he rips off a piece of stine’s shirt to wipe down the cab. sfpd show up to process the scene and the actual hoaxer realizes this is the kind of murder he’s been waiting for (who he is, how he’d hear about the crime or particularly the shirt, etc is beyond the scope of my imagination). in any case, he hears that the cabbie has a piece of his shirt missing so mr hoaxer thinks "perfect, i can nab another small section and use it in my hoaxing letters" and somehow has the timing and access to do so.

note: i don’t believe this at all, i just like exercises like this to help us think outside of the box. norse’s point about the chances the case would be solved, thus blowing the hoaxer’s cover, is pretty much the simplest counterpoint that shuts down this whole line of thought.

The only hoax theory I might believe is that Zodiac was created as a cover-up.

I’m telling you…if you have not read Agatha Christie’s "ABC Murders"–do it!

Found a Richard Hoffman at Ramona H.S. class of ’61. Anyone know if it’s the same guy? Found this interesting link as well…

http://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMyste … man_match/

Found a Richard Hoffman at Ramona H.S. class of ’61. Anyone know if it’s the same guy? Found this interesting link as well…

http://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMyste … man_match/

Not the same.

Found a Richard Hoffman at Ramona H.S. class of ’61. Anyone know if it’s the same guy? Found this interesting link as well…

http://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMyste … man_match/

Not the same.

Thanks for confirmation, Tahoe. I have a long list of RH initials from different yearbooks and websites and it’s always a bit of a relief when i can cross a name off the list.

What about LB? Doesnt this stop the need to even debate this? The car door with same handwriting as the letters? How would the hoaxer of done this? And the killer wearing a god damn zodiac symbol on his chest? How is this explained by the hoax believers?

What about LB? Doesnt this stop the need to even debate this? The car door with same handwriting as the letters? How would the hoaxer of done this? And the killer wearing a god damn zodiac symbol on his chest? How is this explained by the hoax believers?

This is my point. Horan brushes this off, oh wait, he claimed Hal Snook was the Zodiac writer, and since he was at this crime scene as an investigator,he could have written on the door. Pretty flimsy theory in my opinion

What about LB? Doesnt this stop the need to even debate this? The car door with same handwriting as the letters? How would the hoaxer of done this? And the killer wearing a god damn zodiac symbol on his chest? How is this explained by the hoax believers?

The god damn Zodiac symbol? Try not to let this upset you so.

Zodiac’s handwriting and the symbol was published in Vallejo’s newspaper. A copy of the actual letter.

A hoaxer could have done this, but the term hoaxer makes me want to cringe.

Hoaxer, who would also happen to be a murderer, who just happened to have close enough writing to fool Sherwood Morrill,that sums it up

If someone wants to commit murder and blame it on another, pretending to be someone else is a good start. He wouldn’t be the only one to fool Morrill.

This is my point. Horan brushes this off, oh wait, he claimed Hal Snook was the Zodiac writer, and since he was at this crime scene as an investigator,he could have written on the door. Pretty flimsy theory in my opinion

Flimsy is right. If Horan’s theory is to float, Hal Snook got wind of what had happened at Berryessa (over the radio, presumably), drove up there, did the writing, and then drove back to Napa in order to receive Narlow’s call which instructed him to go to the carwash.

He must have done it that way. Because by the time Snook officially (per the reports) appeared at Berryessa, a whole host of people, including Narlow himself, had seen the writing on the car door already.

The word "bullshit" springs to mind.

Has Horan addressed the LB issue? Specifically the killer wearing a costume with a zodiac symbol?

Has Horan addressed the LB issue? Specifically the killer wearing a costume with a zodiac symbol?

I’m not sure – he keeps changing his theory all the time, so it’s hard to keep track.

I believe, however, that the basic idea is that the killer and the hoaxer (who did the writing on the car door) were not connected. The killer was just a copycat who had read about Z in the papers (the symbol had been published too, so it’s not technically impossible).

An arbitrary killer shows up wearing a costume with Z’s symbol on it – and Snook (or whoever) takes advantage of this, having already created the "Zodiac" persona after the BRS attack. Sounds plausible? Not really.

Seems plausible to me, but Snook? nah