Man, I'll tell you, the Zodiac attacks really are baffling. Even how many there were! There is consensus (but not unanimity) that there were four attacks with five killed and two survivors.  Zodiac claimed responsibility for 37 murders. Three of the four were shootings, not all one gun, and one stabbing. There is a HUGE difference, to me, between shootings and stabbings. Stabbing is an "intimate" attack, you have to get within arm's length of your victim. It's also for that reason dangerous for the attacker. You can be disarmed. You are likely to leave your own blood behind as evidence (blood is slippery, the hand slips).And yet the one time Zodiac used a knife was on a couple. (?) And they got DNA! They got fingerprints, too. They got a WET fingerprint off a payphone! The cops have a TON of physical evidence (the letters) and they still can't id the guy. They had one, I think two, prime suspects but there was no DNA match and the prints don't come back to anyone with prints in the system.

Three of the four attacks were on couples, like Son of Sam I was thinking, but then the last one--on a lone male cab driver.(??) The cops almost got him on that one too. Sex was not a motive. Zodiac sought out victims in the three couple attacks, but again, the last one, the cab driver, was almost certainly random. That one, Paul Stine was the victim's name, is the only one that seems impulsive, Zodiac apparently was pissed because Stine overshot the drop-off point. Paul Stine's murder is also the one that unquestionably was committed by the, or a, letter-writer (Zodiac sent pieces of Stine's shirt in the letter). My first thought when I read about Stine's murder was "We're looking at different killers," it was just soo different from the others. (How the hell did that motherfucker have time to cut off pieces of the shirt? Who else would have had immediate access to the shirt? The cops, uh-oh, see below).

The letters, maybe we got thrown off by the letters. They're the reason we call them the "Zodiac" attacks! Maybe somebody other than the attacker wrote the letters. Handwriting analysis has been debunked as not scientific but it is soo tantalyzing and in 1968-9 was the evidence that really stuck out. How many of the letters are in the same hand? Don't know for sure. The cops have ruled out some, just like they have ruled out some murders (I get it but still Cheri Jo Bates, no?). The lead detective in the Stine case thought the Zodiac attacker was "quite intelligent," played "an ego game" with a flare for the "dramatic," was a "weekend killer" perhaps one who "can't get away Monday through Thursday," maybe his "job keep[s] him close to home," and who finds "It's easier to mail a letter than to get in a car and kill someone". The detective was quite sure of this since he, David Toschi was his name, had a "quest for attention" his own self which he evinced by wearing clown clothes to work and writing letters under an assumed name to a San Francisco newspaper praising his own work. (Toschi was later cleared after being accused of writing one of the Zodiac letters himself. (Could somebody explain to me how the FUCK the killer had time to cut off pieces of Paul Stine's clothes?)) No serious investigator presented with the manner in which these four attacks occurred and no letters could reach a conclusion about the attacker's intelligence. And which letters, since you've ruled out some? The highly intelligent ones. Ah, the ones with multiple misspellings? He was trying to throw us off. Bullshit. 

Random, motiveless crimes are the hardest to figure out. These are certainly random and motiveless (but what about Paul Stine?!). A random, motiveless crime is evidence of thought, of "heightened" premeditation, I could go along with random, motiveless killings being the product of high intelligence but the letter-writing, is that really evidence of high intelligence? Ted Kaczynski is highly intelligent, his crimes were carried out in very sophisticated ways. Unfortunately for him Ted also wrote. That's what sacked him. The Zodiac writer was a letter-to-the-editor writer. Which is lower on the IQ totem pole than bloggers. A highly-intelligent criminal mind does not taunt the cops, okay? Taunting the cops is contraindicated for high intelligence. Random, motiveless crimes that are the the work of a highly intelligent killer still can be impulsive but really, impulsivity and heightened premeditation are spaced pretty far apart on the scale, if they're even on the same scale.

Having spent as much time as I am ever likely to spend on these killings my general impression is that the cases are now so cluttered by the debris of previous, multiple jurisdictional investigations and by the noise of the letters that a virgin set of eyes is needed. I wonder what would happen if you sent these cases--minus the letters!--to an investigator who knew nothing about them, a Chinese investigator for instance. Put up a "Chinese Wall" between the other evidence and the letters and tell him to have at it. All that needs be done to clear away the clutter is to submit, or re-submit, every fucking piece of physical evidence to the national DNA and fingerprint databases--like was done in solving the "California Rapist" cases.