Robbery

[Count_Marco Profile]

I believe I once heard that Stine was robbed shortly before being killed by the Zodiac. Can anyone confirm this?

[Bently Profile]

According to GS, Stine was held up five weeks prior by two gunmen. Zodiac p99.

[fanatic Profile]

another thing confuses me. I read somewhere that, after robbery, Stine didn't allow his passengers to sit behind him. why did he allow this time?

[Zabagliona Profile]

I don't think he did, fanatic; this crime could easily have been committed by Z from the back seat if he moved up so that his body were touching the back seat; then he could reach near Stine's temple with his gun...

[FoolsGold Profile]

another thing confuses me. I read somewhere that, after robbery, Stine didn't allow his passengers to sit behind him. why did he allow this time?

Hearsay shouldn't be allowed, IMO. Theorizing on the known facts is one thing, but saying you read somewhere something happened, without offering a source is a Graysmithism. And I thought we were moving away from that junk.

As an aside, I think it's possible Paul Stine was killed for the express purpose of testing the plausibility of masking a murder as a 'routine robbery'. I think Zodiac was exploring his avenues of murder in order to kill without implicating himself, and either he changed his mind or something went wrong. I lean toward the latter: I think the scenario he planned to mask PS's murder fell apart. After all, a cabbie getting killed in San Fran back in 1969 wouldn't have garnered an extraordinary amount of attention, but Zodiac either did something wrong, or he felt he hadn't accomplished his goal the way he had originally intended.

So what Zodiac does is this:

Hails cab, his mundane and disposable and expected victim.

Takes driver to 'dummy' location where wealthy people live. Perhaps chooses PH in the same way you might leave dog scat on the doorstep on a despised neighbor. As Zodiac eluded to in his terrible Mikado rant, perhaps the people of PH were those he didn't like. Or perhaps he just liked the fact that PH lay next door to the Presidio. A geographical explanation works because it explains why he made the cab move one block up: he felt Washington and Cherry somehow gave him a better escape route, even though we might argue it in fact did not. Not sure Zodiac was entirely 'adroit' throughout his 'career'. Bungling might describe him from time to time.

So, next: changes his POD, or point of departure from Washington and Maple for whatever reason, which IMO really has little bearing on the unfolding events. The moving of the cab reminds me of the moving of stage props into proper position right before the dawning of a play.

Zodiac is in the back seat or the front seat. Either one works, but without blood spatter evidence, all you can do is guess.

Zodiac 'robs' Stine. Tells him to turn the car off. Takes his wallet and keys (robbery).

A slight, momentary struggle ensues. PS has his left hand in the vicinity of the gun barrel as it goes off. PS dies. No one hears the shot, but that's not very surprising.

Zodiac decides to split. Still has the keys and wallet in his jacket pocket from the momentarily earlier 'robbery'. But for whatever reason, Zodiac realizes that he's left 'incriminating' evidence in the form of fingerprints. Maybe he decides that his experiment hasn't worked as well as he hoped. He didn't bring anything to clean the cab, so all that's available to him is the relatively unbloodied back of Stine's shirt.

Hastily rips shirt tail off and wipes cab. Again, Zodiac's plan isn't working out so well, about as well as his LB experimentation.

Witnesses see Zodiac, and I think Zodiac notices witnesses. Or witness. Did only the girl see anything? No matter.

Zodiac escapes. Experimental plan to mask PS murder as a mere 'routine robbery' and murder of a cabbie doesn't end well.

Zodiac is nearly nabbed, but still has the shirttail, wallet and keys, but not as 'trophies'. Wallet and keys are the 'props' needed to be taken in order to make PS murder look like a robbery, and the torn shirttail taken simply because Zodiac used it to clean the cab and perhaps even himself. If the jacket he wore was 'slick', the blood might have wiped off onto PS shirt portion much more easily than, say, a cotton jacket, thus perhaps adding to the reasons why Foulk did not see blood on the Zodiac suspect.

And I think because Zodiac realized he was done killing, coming so close to getting caught, he decided to milk the aborted, failed event for all it was work, as a substitution for actual killing. Which is why he had no issues publicly disclosing his post-PS plan to mask his murders as more mundane deaths. I think he was already planning to do this BEFORE PS was killed, and I think Stine's death, a cabbie in San Fran that doesn't fit the previous 'pattern' of lone rural couples, was an actual dry run, an experimentation in 'undetectable' murders. I think Zodiac decided to turn lemon into lemonade and milk that lemonade for all it was worth.

I think Zodiac may have been something of a 'scientist', in the sense that he experimented with different ways of killing without getting caught. LHR was at night, out in the country. Excellent environment. BRSP was closer to Vallejo and in a more 'public' locale, but still during the dark. LB was perhaps more geographically remote, but more immediate to other people as a recreational area, and the LB event occurred during the waning day; Zodiac responded with a costume to exclaim his symbological power and hide his identity.

I think Zodiac wanted to be a god, a god of killing. And he believed as a god he needed both a name and a symbol. Like if Lex Luthor wore a mask and a big L on his chest. But of course Zodiac was more grounded than this, perhaps only marginally though. And I believe Zodiac believed that symbols carry power, and I think the power Zodiac wanted, the power he thought the zodiac symbol would give him was the typical power of any old god: the power to kill with impunity, and I believe that Zodiac explored, through his murders, the means to make that power a reality. I think PS's murder ended his exploration and experimentation, and I believe that Zodiac's manipulation of the media was his equivalent of the Burning Bush, in the sense that the Chronicle served as his prophet, and the people of San Fran and surrounding environs served as his mere mortal subjects.

Zodiac wanted the power to discard people as he saw fit, and in his Mikado rant, he said exactly just that. Whoever Zodiac deemed unworthy would be eliminated. This was the power Zodiac wanted, and even though some have classified his murders as rooted in sexual motivation, I don't think that even if that's true, it dispels what I think regarding his psychology. Zodiac may have had marriage problems, or girlfriend problems, or maternal problems, that left him feeling powerless in his personal life.

The only question I have regarding PS that lingers and vexes me is this: we have no reason to assume Zodiac wore glasses to LHR. He didn't wear them at BRSP, as far as we know per Mageau. We can't say he wore them at LB, and all evidence indicates that Zodiac wore sunglasses with the temples threaded though the eye holes. No where does Hartnell claim he saw any indication of lens thickness or optical distortion via the lens. Just possibly plain old sunglasses, to separate Zodiac from the victims visually, and to further eliminate more visual identification like eye color.

So why the glasses at PH? Have the issue regarding PS's glasses never received a proper answer? Were they in the cab, but because San Fran refuses to cooperate with the public, that information hasn't been released? Or did Zodiac wear them away? I'd say no, because I think Stine's glasses were fairly powerful, and it's difficult to see through powerful corrective lens, especially while trying to escape from a murder scene. That and if San Fran police couldn't locate Stine's necessary glasses, they might logically surmise Zodiac wore them away from the crime scene, and I think that if they made this simple leap of imagination, they would have revised the Sketch again, but without glasses.

Other than that, I have no idea.

[smithy Profile]

I always enjoy your stuff FG, even though you lean out a long way sometimes.

In respect to glasses at PH, I'd hazard that either he wore them because he needed them, or because they were a "descise". *shrug*

I enjoyed the film, but David Fincher did us no good with his "Zodiac wore Paul Stines glasses when he left the scene" nonsense. Logic must tell us that the perps don't wear their victims bloodied glasses away from crime scenes - that's ludicrous. The glasses are very probably in a dusty custody box somewhere so that the police can use them to reject the occasional whack-job with a "my father did it and here are a pair of horn rims he left in his effects" story.
No?

Anyhoot, here's a lazy "paint" I've knocked off for ya.
Sorry he looks slightly Asian, it's pretty hurried. No shouts of "Mr Sulu"! or "Grandpappy"!
Thanks.

[glurk Profile Website]

Here's my version. Is it better or worse? Perhaps.

wanted2.gif [ 56.73 KiB | Viewed 1365 times ]

-glurk

[smithy Profile]

Looks a little like Spock....?
Back to the ciphers for us, glurk!

[Zsearcher Profile]

My favorite version, where Sandy Betts makes Z look almost exactly like Christopher Walken.

http://www.thezodiacmansonconnection.co ... ition.html

[glurk Profile Website]

So, I was bored and staring at the text at the bottom of the two sketches. From the bottom up, we have:

Armstrong + Toschi

Case: 696314

Left image has date of 10/13/69, right image has date of 10/17/69

Above that is the artist's signature and possibly something else. Perhaps another date. I can't tell.

Is it known who made these sketches? I ask because I truly do not know.

-glurk