I am new to this forum and interested in unsolved crimes, none more so than the Zodiac case. I am a retired LEO with quite a few years of investigative experience including having the privelege to work on several cold cases (which is one of the reasons I am still so interested in unsolved violent crimes). I hope beyond hope that someone out there can come with the clue that will make the difference, to bring justice to the innocent lives taken. I have read every police report and followup that is available on websites, the 4 incidents in the bay area. My personal opinion is that the Zodiac's name has not been discovered yet. Most times, the suspect's name is in the file somewhere as I have seen it myself in solved cold cases. My instincts tell me different on this one. From my understanding, the killer's finger and palm prints are in police evidence and so is his partial DNA from the stamps which excludes the favorite suspects. This man's fingerprint card has not been located for comparison, and one may not exist at all. Depsite what he wrote, he didn't seem to care about his prints so I doubt he was ever arrested for anything. I think he was like the BTK Dennis Rader in that he hid in plain site, living a seemingly normal life. I have my own theory, like so many others do: Years 68-70: this man was unmarried, in his late 20's or early 30's, living in either Vallejo, Benicia, or very close by. He worked a regular Monday through Friday job at an Air Force Base, potentially as a civilian employee. We already know that he mailed almost all of his letters in SF, most of which were postmarked on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday indicating to me that he spent his weekends in SF. The interesting thing is that phone directories back then had a ton of information about the phone account holder including their occupation, employer, spouse, and any adults living in the same home. I think this guy's name is one of those directories 68-70. I further suspect that this man built a normal life after the killings stopped, sometime after 1971. That's a theory that I'd like to spend some of my time to disprove if anything. Mulitple times throughout my career, when a suspect commits two crimes very close together (Lake Herman Rd. and Blue Rock Springs), they are housed very close by, including somewhere in between. Granted, all of those were robberies and burglaries that I worked on, never a serial murder case. These are his very first confirmed ones in the area, I just don't think he would have ventured too far away for the intial one. Thirty five to forty minutes after the shooting, he went to a pay phone in the center of Vallejo. It did not take that long to get to that phone, which is an 8 minute drive. Where did he go? His home is what I think, where he changed and dropped off his weapons. I suspect he had a hotel room in SF that Saturday night he murdered Paul Stine, keeping him from having to travel too far. Car would have been staged with some clean clothes.
