We’d have no reason to believe he wore the costume at Lake Berryassa had the victims been killed as planned, so I don’t think we can make any assumptions about what he wore at LHR.

great, we agree on not assuming he wore a costume.

We’d have no reason to believe he wore the costume at Lake Berryassa had the victims been killed as planned, so I don’t think we can make any assumptions about what he wore at LHR.

great, we agree on not assuming he wore a costume.

LOL. AND, we agree (?) on not assuming he didn’t.

We’d have no reason to believe he wore the costume at Lake Berryassa had the victims been killed as planned, so I don’t think we can make any assumptions about what he wore at LHR.

True enough. But we do know that LB was very different from LHR in terms of the crime scene (and access to the latter): At LB Zodiac could (and did) put on a costume at his leisure whilst on foot, at a point between his car and the scene. He could not do that at LHR: If he was wearing a costume it seems that he must have been driving around in it. Which is unlikely, IMO.

LHR is similar to BRS in terms of access to the location. And we know for a fact that Z did not wear a costume at BRS.

We’d have no reason to believe he wore the costume at Lake Berryassa had the victims been killed as planned, so I don’t think we can make any assumptions about what he wore at LHR.

True enough. But we do know that LB was very different from LHR in terms of the crime scene (and access to the latter): At LB Zodiac could (and did) put on a costume at his leisure whilst on foot, at a point between his car and the scene. He could not do that at LHR: If he was wearing a costume it seems that he must have been driving around in it. Which is unlikely, IMO.

LHR is similar to BRS in terms of access to the location. And we know for a fact that Z did not wear a costume at BRS.

The scenario I, personally think is most likely goes something like this: Faraday and Jensen are parked, talking or making out. Z pulls up alongside. James Owen drives by, and the occupants of both cars duck out of sight. Shortly after, Z gets out of his car and "does his thing."

Why would he have to be driving around with the costume on? Why couldn’t he put it on in his car? And for that matter, since we know he had a gun at LB, while in costume, but used a knife instead, how do we know the plan hadn’t been to use the knife again (and in costume?) Maybe Jensen’s running away is what forced him to use the gun instead, or maybe Owen’s driving past made him think it best to hurry up and get out of there.

My point is that a lot of people are trying to make one or another crime scene an outlier for this or that reason, but we actually know very little about LHR, in terms of what he wore, and what the plan had been.

LHR is right by the road. Donning a costume, getting out of the car, incapacitating the victims using rope, then stabbing them – it’s just not a plausible plan at that location. If he had done that, he would’ve been caught red handed – as we know. Again, BRS is a very similar crime scene. And we know exactly what he did there: Pulled up, got out, fired multiple shots and drove off. He didn’t wear a costume, didn’t talk to the victims, made no attempt to have them tie each other up, etc. He just shot them and left. Isn’t it reasonable to assume this is what he did at LHR too?

LB is a very different crime scene. It offered him the privacy he needed to carry out whatever it was he had in mind: Some sort of executioner fantasy or whatever it was. The knife and the costume go together: It was an execution by knife he had in mind for whatever reason.

No costume at BRS, no costume at PH as far as we know (if he wore one, he certainly lost it before the teens caught sight of him).

Likeliest possibility? That LB was the outlier in terms of the costume and that he did not use one at LHR. Just my opinion, of course.

LHR is right by the road. Donning a costume, getting out of the car, incapacitating the victims using rope, then stabbing them – it’s just not a plausible plan at that location. If he had done that, he would’ve been caught red handed – as we know. Again, BRS is a very similar crime scene. And we know exactly what he did there: Pulled up, got out, fired multiple shots and drove off. He didn’t wear a costume, didn’t talk to the victims, made no attempt to have them tie each other up, etc. He just shot them and left. Isn’t it reasonable to assume this is what he did at LHR too?

LB is a very different crime scene. It offered him the privacy he needed to carry out whatever it was he had in mind: Some sort of executioner fantasy or whatever it was. The knife and the costume go together: It was an execution by knife he had in mind for whatever reason.

No costume at BRS, no costume at PH as far as we know (if he wore one, he certainly lost it before the teens caught sight of him).

Likeliest possibility? That LB was the outlier in terms of the costume and that he did not use one at LHR. Just my opinion, of course.

Norse, you make excellent sense and for what it’s worth, in my opinion, you do so consistently. I also appreciate your courtesy.

LB was also during daylight, another reason it’s an outlier I suppose, which makes it especially risky. Knifing two people while wearing a bizarre outfit, walking a good distance back to their car, writing his identification on it, all during daylight hours.

Shooting people quickly, at night, and driving away is a lot safer, especially when right next to a road.

I don’t know enough about LHR in terms of how far away headlights of approaching vehicles would be visible. That would’ve been Z’s warning as to how much time he had remaining… But as soon as headlights were spotted, it would’ve been relatively little, and then gunshots would be certainly heard as well.

So… I definitely agree, getting both victims subdued and tied, like LB, would’ve been difficult to accomplish quickly. Killing Faraday quickly to then perform the knife ritual on Jensen makes no sense either as she would’ve been hysterical, and Faraday’s body beside the car would’ve attracted too much attention. So, okay, you have convinced me that a knife attack was in no way practical at LHR.

And, wearing the hood at night, while aiming a gun, could’ve potentially been problematic from a visibility standpoint.

You’ve made a good case.

It may be that Z had his costume perhaps stashed in the trunk of his car so that when the situation was right, he could put it on and act out his peculiar fantasies. Question: anyone aware of notorious prior murders in which the killer wore a costume and stabbed his victims?

Question: anyone aware of notorious prior murders in which the killer wore a costume and stabbed his victims?

Here’s some threads about an ‘attacker’ as opposed to a murderer.

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1704&p=20022&hilit=hood#p20022

and a previous thread about it.

http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtop … 06&p=15071

and of course the Texarkana Phantom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texarkana … ht_Murders

the simplest answer regarding the hood is that this was the first known case where he attacked during daylight. perhaps he was concerned about the openness of the area and the likelihood of there being a witness in the area. we know from the conversation details that it wasn’t important to him to relay to the victims that he was zodiac (which seems like something an imposter would have done) but maybe his line of thought was that if someone else spotted him they’d see the costume.

we know from the conversation details that it wasn’t important to him to relay to the victims that he was zodiac (which seems like something an imposter would have done)

Yes, this is what I keep coming back to.

It’s odd that the canonical Z doesn’t make any references to…being Z. But it’s even more odd that a copycat doesn’t do so. It almost invalidates the assumption, one could even say. If it wasn’t Z, it wasn’t a copycat either in any meaningful sense of the term.

we know from the conversation details that it wasn’t important to him to relay to the victims that he was zodiac (which seems like something an imposter would have done)

Yes, this is what I keep coming back to.

It’s odd that the canonical Z doesn’t make any references to…being Z. But it’s even more odd that a copycat doesn’t do so. It almost invalidates the assumption, one could even say. If it wasn’t Z, it wasn’t a copycat either in any meaningful sense of the term.

For whatever reason the real Zodiac didn’t say it could be the same reason an impostor didn’t. And "Zodiac" at this point–at least the name, wasn’t famous yet.

I will always wonder why Zodiac didn’t boast about his most sinister crime of all.

For whatever reason the real Zodiac didn’t say it could be the same reason an impostor didn’t.

True. But that makes the impostor something else than a copycat. Which, in its turn, makes him less…likely, I suppose.

You said it yourself: Zodiac wasn’t that famous. If it wasn’t him it was someone who used the symbol (and the murder dates, as written on the car door, in a hand which does resemble that of the canonical Zodiac) of a not-too-famous killer, but who nevertheless did not make any attempt to identify himself as "Zodiac" to his victims.

Again, it’s odd if it’s him. Just as it’s odd that he never made a deal of it in his letters. But it’s downright bizarre if it’s NOT him.

Balance of probabilities. Or something.

Well, I think it was him – but I still think there is something odd about him not milking it in subsequent letters. There was a survivor after BRS too – and that didn’t stop him from writing about it.

I don’t know, but if we assume that LB was indeed Z’s work, the fact that he doesn’t write about it could be instructive somehow. Says something about him – perhaps. About the nature of LB – perhaps.

Then again it could be a very mundane and simple explanation. I’ve speculated before that he simply didn’t get around to mentioning LB before Stine. And after Stine he had other things to write about.

Perhaps he took exception to this…?

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.

Bumping this to add a few comments (I was reminded of Horan’s theories the other day, and began to ponder a bit):

In general, the problem with Horan is that he is – deliberately or not – mixing the cards all the time. A good example of this is his Dennis Land theory. Which isn’t really a theory as much as a half-baked idea that it was Land who attacked BH and CS at Lake Berryessa.

Horan theorizes along these lines:

Land was a repressed homosexual with a strict, religious upbringing. He attacked BH and CS because they were engaging in sinful activities on the sabbath (righteous punishment, as he saw it) AND because he was attracted to BH (whom he killed out of self loathing – with CS being a “suicide by proxy”, i.e. he identified with CS as a person who, like himself, was attracted to BH, and killed “himself” through her in order to punish his actual self for his unnatural urges). Elaborate enough, you could say. But not overly implausible, as such.

However, this attack doesn’t take place in a vacuum, which Horan too realizes. So, he has to fill in the gaps somehow. What he proposes goes roughly like this:

Land was Mr Creepy, the guy observed by the three girls some hours prior to the attack. His failure to interact with these girls (typical of him, so says Horan) was the starting point of what ended with the brutal assault on “Zodiac Island”. Filled with general resentment towards both himself and young, sexually active people, he observed BH and CS as they drove past him, followed them, and attacked them – as the culmination of this entire self-loathing, repressed movement.

Fine. Even this is somewhere within the boundaries of the semi-plausible. If you don’t bother to examine it closer, that is:

The repressed homosexual is apparently on leave during the incident with the three young women. That’s one thing. And – which is considerably worse – the apparent opportunistic nature of the attack is impossible to reconcile with a fact obvious to anyone familiar with the case: The costume. Horan tries to explain this: Land couldn’t commit the crime as “himself”, he had to do it as a “persona”, someone he could distance himself from later on – which is why he pinned it on Zodiac. Nice – as such. But how do we explain that he was – necessarily – already in possession of an elaborate costume, bearing Zodiac’s symbol, if the attack itself was the culmination of the sequence described above? He failed to interact with the girls, which put him in a bad mood, only to be soured further by the appearance of two young lovers, whom he decided to punish for their transgressions…and…what? He rushed home and made a Zodiac costume?

At which point did the idea of impersonating the Zodiac killer enter his mind? And where does the idea that Land was the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murderer (which Horan eagerly suggests) fit in with the Zodiac impersonation?

And then come all the other details: The writing on the car door and the Napa phone call. Both points neatly explained by Horan – but using entirely different characters for the principal part: The car door was Snook – or Denis Land’s brother, Ray. The phone call was a random punk who had picked up the LB attack on his police scanner. And the fact that Snook – usually the principal hoaxer in the play – just happened to be more or less directly connected to a homicidal maniac who just happened to opt for copycatting Zodiac (the fictitious "serial killer" already created by the hoaxer or hoaxers), was…good fortune? It all fits. If you abandon logic and reason.

ETA

One further, particular detail may be added to this – something which illustrates the half-baked nature of it all: When Horan describes the most problematic part of the Land pathology – his use of a persona (plausible in itself) who just happens to be Zodiac (not plausible at all) – something suddenly, as it seems, occurs to him, and he goes on to cast suspicion, in a bizarre manner, on Bryan’s testimony regarding the symbol on the attacker’s hood (or bib, more precisely):

Bryan "remembered" that the killer had a white, circled crosshair symbol on his hood…

What? He “remembered” it, did he? What this is meant to suggest is obvious enough: It wasn’t actually Z’s now infamous symbol, it was something else, but in his confused and medicated state Bryan (with a little help from the interviewer, perhaps, who was one of those famously dirty cops we hear about all the time, perhaps, and in cahoots with Land, perhaps, or his brother, perhaps, or the nefarious Hal snook, almost certainly) “remembered” it as the Zodiac symbol. Another myth in the Z case! The problem is just that the very same symbol did appear in connection with the very same attack – and there isn’t any doubt whatsoever that it is the Zodiac symbol: But this detail – the symbol which someone drew on Bryan’s car door – doesn’t bother Horan too much. He just skips across to the next avenue of theorizing, never finishing the – possible – line of reasoning.

We could try to finish it for him: What he proposes is that an attacker who was not Zodiac appeared at LB in a costume featuring a symbol that was not the actual Zodiac symbol (but nevertheless close enough, one must suppose, since Bryan probably wouldn’t have “remembered”, say, a smiley face in the same fashion), while either himself or someone else drew an actual Zodiac symbol on the car door. That is – necessarily – what must have happened given the premise offered.

And there it is. Half-baked is perhaps too kind a description, but we’ll leave it at that.