Seems plausible to me, but Snook? nah

It’s extremely implausible that a hoaxer, who had already created “Zodiac” by writing the post BRS letters (and possibly made the phone call), was lucky enough that some nutcase decided to show up at LB wearing THAT costume – AND lucky enough to catch on to this in time to capitalize on it.

That is far beyond the realm of plausibility.

But – and this is where you stand, unless I’m mistaken – it isn’t inconceivable as such that the LB attacker was a copycat nobody knew about or capitalized on. Pretty unlikely, and hugely problematic, in my opinion, but still conceivable.

However, if he WAS a copycat, he did the whole thing, including the writing on the door. Because the idea that someone else – who simply capitalized on the arbitrary presence of a copycat – did the writing (and the phone call) is utterly inconceivable.

^^Yes.

Seems to me that if one doubts the single-killer/writer/caller angle, that a Z-team/tag-team is a much more likely hypothesis than hoaxters and copycats.

i.e. Perhaps Z kills at LB, while Y is in Napa (with his police scanner, and a witnessed alibi at crime-time). Z could then head off in the opposite direction to Napa post-kill, while Y’s call from the car wash draws cops attention there.

And similar at BRS. Maybe Y kills there, and Z phones it in? And maybe at LHR and PH one is the getaway driver?

All maybe-s and perhaps-es. And goes against the grain of the single-killer claims in the letters. But could explain some inconsistencies and unknowns. …And two-man murder teams are certainly not an unknown phenomenon. (And this tag-team concept is not a new original idea, I’m sure).

Horan’s theory(as well as people that think Lake B was done by a copycat) fails to address something big. The writing on the car door at Lake B & the fact that the Perp is wearing a crosshair symbol on his hood. If Snook did the letter writing, he got awfully lucky that the perp there was wearing a Z crosshair on his hood. If the attacker was simply a copycat, how is it that he just happened to have writing that was so similar to Zodiac’s and could fool trained experts? Isn’t the logical answer that the car door writer & the attacker, are one and the same, the same person writing & killing all along? Logic is your friend

It’s not unthinkable that Z was, in fact, a team of some kind. It’s a needlessly complicated theory, though, IMO.

The discrepancies (such as his appearance at various crime scenes) aren’t that dramatic. If it were necessary to seriously question the one-man premise, then I’d be all for it. I don’t think it is, however. One guy fits the bill. Occam and so forth.

It’s not unthinkable that Z was, in fact, a team of some kind. It’s a needlessly complicated theory, though, IMO.

The discrepancies (such as his appearance at various crime scenes) aren’t that dramatic. If it were necessary to seriously question the one-man premise, then I’d be all for it. I don’t think it is, however. One guy fits the bill. Occam and so forth.

I agree, can’t see more that one person keeping this secret all these years, but then again, with this case, nothing surprises me

Horan’s theory(as well as people that think Lake B was done by a copycat) fails to address something big. The writing on the car door at Lake B & the fact that the Perp is wearing a crosshair symbol on his hood.

I don’t think I’ve failed to address it. We’ve talked about it a bunch.

Horan’s theory(as well as people that think Lake B was done by a copycat) fails to address something big. The writing on the car door at Lake B & the fact that the Perp is wearing a crosshair symbol on his hood.

I don’t think I’ve failed to address it. We’ve talked about it a bunch.

Lol, I wasn’t singling you out,I think you are not alone

Hi-

The weak thing about the hoax theory is that the power-assertive profile of Zodiac not only explains the crimes and the manner in which they were committed but also the killer’s need to boast about them through phone calls and letters. So the letters and crimes make sense when viewed as a single entity committed by a power-assertive killer. The profile captures both sides of the case.

Mike

You sum up generally how I feel about this. IMO his motives were attention and power and he fulfilled these with both the letter writing and the nature of his attacks. IMO Both the letters and murders "reward" the same general motivations.

To each his own though.

We’ve talked about it a bunch.

No doubt about that. But since this has been, sort of, revived in this thread I may repeat my old point for whoever may be interested:

The Zodiac killer was well known in California before LB. He was in the news – a crazy killer who had sent a cipher to the papers. People knew about him – sure. But it wasn’t until he sent the post Stine letter(s) that he became a proper celebrity. And it wasn’t until LE failed to catch him, and he issued bomb threats and further ciphers, that he really got his fifteen minutes worth.

His symbol had been published, before LB, but nobody had made a huge deal about it.

In short: How likely is it that a copycat (a deranged person who seeks to emulate a known killer) opts for the still fairly obscure Z as his blueprint?

The handwriting means but little to me – less and less. But whoever the copycat was he did manage to get it down to the extent that Morrill apparently was convinced it was Z. Says something about Morrill and the "science" as such, sure – but it does resemble Z’s writing. So, the copycat went to the trouble of studying the published letters and getting it right.

What he did not get right, however, was the medium (the known Z never wrote on car doors, if he was famous for anything it was letters to the press, the latter being conspicuously absent in the LB case), so the copycat came up with that idea himself. He also opted not to strike at dark, using a gun – but got creative in that sense too, using a knife.

Furthermore, he never (as per Bryan Hartnell’s testimony) alluded to being the Zodiac killer at all. He must have simply assumed that his victims would know what the symbol meant (which they didn’t, of course – and most people wouldn’t have, at that stage). Rather than stating he was Z, he claimed to be an escaped convict (another trait which had absolutely nothing to do with Z as he was known at the time).

All of the above is strange if we assume that the killer was Z. But it’s even stranger if we assume that the killer was not Z.

The canonical Zodiac killer went on to write letters suggesting he fancied himself an executioner of sorts. For him it may have been part of some kind of personal fantasy to appear in the costume – and there would have been no need to inform his victims about his status. That makes some sense, actually – at least in my opinion. For a copycat to don that costume (a costume which is new for LB, another sheer invention on the part of the copycat), and never to appear in it again, nor commit any other crime as "Zodiac" or otherwise make his presence felt, makes far less sense.

The F on the car door is an extremely close match to the F on the Riverside/Bates desktop,very specialized . That would be hard for a copycat to do,since Z had not yet been linked to the Riverside desk.

adding to norse’s points above – a copycat by nature copies the original. in the case of lb, the "copycat" created an entirely new set of circumstances – knife, costume, writing on something at the scene, etc. it makes less sense to me that someone was trying to copy zodiac vs zodiac was branching out, a pattern he repeated with the differences in the stine murder. in fact, only lhr and brs bear a striking resemblance to each other. we may be suffering from a small sample population. things we’re attributing to the "real zodiac" are only apparent in four crimes at most, two in a lot of cases so maybe we’re giving too much credit for consistency.

I personally am not a fan of "copycat". To me, this was some crazy just trying to make it look like a potential Zodiac crime. He didn’t need to do exactly as Zodiac, but emulate him; surpass Zodiac in a more grandiose appearance—one that Zodiac himself never once boasts about.

Heck, Zodiac didn’t even copycat Zodiac when it comes to Lake Berryessa…except for a phone call, which was also in the paper.

The LHR & BRS attacks were well known in the Vallejo-Napa area. Take into consideration the many psychos walking around Vallejo and elsewhere (according to many of the POI’s on message boards and police reports), it wouldn’t surprise me at all there was someone like this out there. We know there was some crazy (not Zodiac–writing letters), and we even know a Napa State doctor thought one of his guys who was given a weekend pass capable of such a thing.

The writing on the car door has more differences than likenesses, imo. With Zodiac on the brain and a big fat circle cross in your face, well…

Hey, I know it’s 99% to my 1%. I just don’t think Zodiac was the loon in the costume–it just wasn’t his "thing".

I personally am not a fan of "copycat". To me, this was some crazy just trying to make it look like a potential Zodiac crime. He didn’t need to do exactly as Zodiac, but emulate him; surpass Zodiac in a more grandiose appearance—one that Zodiac himself never once boasts about.

Yes, fair enough – but who actually does that? This is very specific. He goes into embroidery, so to speak. The symbol hasn’t been made a big deal out of at all – and Z isn’t known for wearing a hood/costume. Yet this guy dons an elaborate hood/costume featuring the symbol.

People are nuts – in general. But this strikes me as being too general to be truly applicable in this case. The LB attacker had studied Z. He knew about the LHR and BRS dates. And yet he didn’t emulate his method from those attacks (he used a knife, before dark, invented a costume, invented the door writing, etc.).

And bear in mind that Z wasn’t Jack The Ripper at the time. He wasn’t the most obvious villain for some nutcase to copy, whether to the letter or not. What we have – if you’re right – is a nutcase who partially based his unmotivated attack on some killer who had been mentioned in the papers. He didn’t copy him, invented more (actually) than he emulated. But was inspired (if one can put it like that) by the guy he’d read about in the papers. I ask again – who does that? Are there similar cases on record? *

* By which I obviously don’t mean copycat cases as such, but documented cases in which a nutter partially copies a fairly obscure serial killer, adding the most striking features of the murder himself.

People are nuts – in general. But this strikes me as being too general to be truly applicable in this case. The LB attacker had studied Z. He knew about the LHR and BRS dates. And yet he didn’t emulate his method from those attacks (he used a knife, before dark, invented a costume, invented the door writing, etc.).

This is exactly what makes this guy not Zodiac, imo. This person had some sort of mental, psychotic, NEED to stab someone. It’s much more personal. If we take into account the traditionally accepted Zodiac crimes, this was very much not his mo. So no, he didn’t shoot like Zodiac would have, he stabbed like he wanted to.

***
I know part of the reason nowadays they don’t like mentioning certain crimes in the media is because of the whack jobs who do copy–gives them ideas. Take Columbine into consideration, or any high school shooting (any other types of crimes) for that matter. Look at the people who jumped in writing fake Zodiac letters.

I think someone got a psycho-kick out of the behaviors and audacity of Zodiac and I think it gave him an opportunity to kill while LE looked elsewhere. All he needed was a circle-cross, a similar phone call (with a different sounding voice mind-you) and some similar traits in handwriting….and a desire to be glorified for his acts. The creepiest of them all.