E) The initial letters, what stands out to me.
He maximises publicity by sending three different letters and ciphers to widen the geographical profile from Vallejo to San Francisco. This was a Vallejo issue up until this point. Publishing these letters and ciphers really complicates the investigation as it opens it up to every ’nutcase’ who either wants to interfere or copycat. We therefore cannot be completely sure that Lake Berryessa and then Paul Stine were committed by the same culprit although on balance they probably were as the Paul Stine letter on the 13th October has the same writing characteristics of the earlier letters in August. There was no letter after Lake Berryessa. This is the only time he writes to three newspapers. He writes only to one paper after this as this newspaper have given him the publicity required to disrupt the investigation. I don’t think it is a hoax.
Let us look carefully at the first letters of 31st July, the Zodiac claims the Lake Hermann and Blue Rock Springs murder. He is also provides a cipher whos major feature is the ‘collection of slaves for paradice’. There is nothing in the cipher that leads to his name as many have hoped. What he does say is that if ‘you solve this then you have my name’.
The notable factor in this letter is the way he spells the word until. Those of you have read Richard Hoffmann’s Police report realise he makes exactly the same spelling error as Zodiac. Richard Hoffmann was the police officer who was closest to the Blue Rock Springs murder scene being less than a few minutes away. He spells it ‘untill’. Both Richard Hoffmann’s report and the Zodiac letter are littered with spelling errors. Both appear to have a similar level of illiteracy. Was this intentional? This is not to say that Hoffman is the Zodiac; the immediate time line of the events after the slaying largely clear him of involvement in the phone call. He could not possibly of made the phone call at the same time he was in the back of an ambulance, unless he of course had an accomplice who made the call for him. We cannot exclude the fact there was not another person in the attackers car. The spelling error in Hoffman’s report sticks out like ‘dogs balls’ at the end of the report. It could easily be somebody who has access to the report trying to muddy the waters to implicate him.
The probability of the Zodiac and Richard Hoffmann both spelling untill the same way by chance alone is at best 1 chance in 50. Adding extra letters to words occurs in about 15% of people. Until is one of the 10 top misspelt words. The true frequency of spelling ‘until’ is likely to be less than 10% To be conservative I have given a probability of 1:50 but it could be as low as 1:400. Tom Voigt dismisses this in a webpage refuting Horan’s theory about being a hoax but misses the point that probability is in favour of this being linked somehow to the Vallejo police report is actually higher than it not being linked.
He follows this up with a second letter (August 4th) where he provides more detail about the murders. Two details of this second letter stand out to me. The first he discusses ‘Blue Rock Springs in much more specific detail than the Lake Herman road murder. I am convinced he was at Blue Rock Springs, I am not convinced that he adds anything about Lake Hermann.
In addition to discussing The Lake Herman murder, he makes a statement about what the ‘police are interested in finding out’ and then answers that question with the flashlight strapped to his weapon. Ask yourself; How could he possibly know what the police are interested in? Obviously he either knows what is in the police investigation and has access to it or this is irrelevant and is just another lie. Horan picks up on this in the ‘Zodiac Hoax’. He thinks that this means that the reporters have read the police report, but fails to think this through in relation to Zodiac being real and the consequence of that information. By the way Chief Stiltz from Vallejo came to the same conclusion about the writer having access to the case files.
At this stage, in summary the writer of these Zodiac letters has detailed knowledge of the Blue Rock Springs murders and I am convinced he was there. He has a less detailed knowledge of Lake Hermann murders. More importantly he knows about the police investigation. Therefore the most likely writer is a police official who had access to the Lake Hermann murder reports. These letters point towards a Vallejo police officer as the most likely writer. However you cannot rule out that the Vallejo police information leaks like a seive.
F) Lake Berryessa. ’The first Zodiac murder’. Remember he needs to create the false narrative of a deranged random serial killer who uses different weapons. This is what he does. The costume, the insignia, the car door, the weapon used. He says he is an escaped convict from Montana. Why does he need to say this.
Let us look at the car door. It assumed by most people interested in the Zodiac killer that Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard were attacked and then the Zodiac wrote the message on the car door claiming ownership of his deeds as you would expect of your typical serial killer. In this scenario the primary motive is the attack, the car door comes second. The zodiac would be covered in blood in this attack. There is a debate about how he left the message without transferring some blood to the door, there were no signs of it being wiped clean etc.
The logical answer is he wrote on the car door before he actually performed the attack. The footprints discovered at the crime scene, indicate both a before or after scenario is possible. He takes two journeys between the car and the attack site, one in each direction. The fact that he writes the time of the attack on the car door is a dead giveaway. The time is out by about 10-15 minutes. He also writes the method of attack. This is actually very important as it goes to the his primary motive. He is actually thinking out aloud what he is about to do when he writes this. The actual motive for the attack is not to kill either person but to write that message on the car door. The attack on the victims is simply to reinforce that message rather than being the primary motive. The motive is to claim the Lake Hermann murder, reinforce the idea that we have a crazed serial killer and to show he changes weapons readily to account for the discrepancy in weapons used. A random serial killer would feel no need to tell the time or even specify the weapon. I really believe that ‘Law Enforcement’ could have worked out it was a knife. Writing this is actually very telling. It reinforces the idea that this is not your typical psychopathic killer, there is another motive.
How do we know that he did not necessarily want to kill them? Think about it. Who was going to tell the story of the man in zodiac costume who escaped from a Montana prison if they were dead? Defeats the whole purpose of the costume don’t you think. He wants at least one of them alive to tell the story. We know they were both alive when he left them. He could of easily have plunged a knife into their carotids if he wanted to kill them. Believe me, you know when someone is dead. He did not want them dead. The motive is not killing.
Why did Cecilia die? We don’t actually know what killed her in the end. Dying two days later raises other possibilities. Was there an unanticipated complication? Was there any medical negligence? Who knows. The autopsy results that I have seen do not cut the mustard and other medical records have never been released. I would be very interested to see what happened to Cecelia.
In his phone call in NAPA, he speaks normally as he has no fear of being identified. There is no put on voice with Bryan Hartnell either, reinforcing the idea that the Vallejo call was about hiding is voice which would have been known to Nancy Slover. He adds the two murders to be consistent with his first phone call. (He changes from one murder to two murders.) Remember neither of them are dead. I think this deliberate and again to reinforce a false narrative which he stuffed up in the first phone call in which he has committed murders. In other words makes the call to set up a pattern of behaviour to justify his Telephone mistake after Blue Rock Springs. It has nothing to do with his MO. Lake Berryessa is about creating the deception of a Deranged serial killer who changes weapons and to justify his telephone mistake.
G) Paul Stine. I am not going to delve into the Paul Stine murder other to say that I think it is an attempt to simply widen the geographical focus from Vallejo to San Francisco and to collect objects by which he can prove his identity in further communication. The collection of car keys, wallet and shirt tail is the primary motive for the attack. Killing Paul Stine is the way he justifies his further communication without having to kill anyone else. The two important pieces of evidence from this attack are the description given by the direct witnesses and that of officer Foukes. They are different!
We can see from statements from Law enforcement that the investigation moves in the direction he wants. I think Paul Stine is the last murder simply because he does not need to attack again as the Investigation is now heading in the direction he wants. They are no longer looking for the acquaintances of Darlene Ferrin, they are looking for a random deranged serial killer. We can see this in Police media statements as well as what is in the case file. Mission accomplished. Police investigation derailed.
Looking at all subsequent communication, including envelopes and letters, I can’t really convince myself that they are all definitely the work of the same author. If you look carefully at the way he dots his ‘i’ and writes his uncapitalised ’t’ and writes his uncapitalised ‘d’ it appears to change in some of the correspondence after Paul Stine. Note that his writing in the letters appears to improve with time in the subsequent letters. His ideas are however in the public domain by this time and are unfortunately at the mercy of copycats. The only two communications we can be 100% sure that are his are the ones he provides evidence for. October 13 and November 9.
What is apparent in the October 13 communication is that he talks about Motor cycle cops in the Presidio. Why does he single them out when there is no mention of the encounter with officer Foukes. This may be an important clue by the way. There is a police meeting in late October (20 or 22) where the San Francisco Police force shares information with the other Jurisdictions. Looking at the November 9 communication (validated with Paul Stines shirt), he provides much more information about the Police dogs and Officer Foukes etc. Ask yourself has the Zodiac read the police report from San Francisco that was shared with Vallejo police on October 22? The discrepancy in the information provided between the two letters is just extraordinary. It follows the same pattern as the earlier letters. I can’t help but feel that the Zodiac is reading Police reports.
In summary the 1) I believe the Zodiac reads police reports and could be a Vallejo area police officer.
2) I believe the motive for the attacks is to mislead a police investigation. Killing is a secondary motive. It is therefore not a psychopath style murder spree. Any suspect that fits that definition is therefore not the Zodiac.
In the third section I will tie all the communications together and show you where it leads. It implicates one person but I think this is an intentional deception.
