It is a subject matter I don’t discuss much. It is a complex subject in which one must divide between bone and marrow. The marrow of it is FLYING SAUCERS; the bone is UFOs.
Explicitly put: UFOs are ours; Flying saucers are up for debate.
An example of the latest mainstream news report follows: Pentagon UFO Film
When you understand the origins of certain US black projects, such as Lightcraft, you should really be disturbed by the utter lack of admittance that acorn-shaped and bell-shaped objects, even domed and flanged objects, are entirely US projects. For that branches of the military are unaware only shows how dangerously compartmentalized the American military is.
The flying saucer phenomenon was an entirely different phenomenon until it slowly began to shift to the UFO phenomenon, beginning with Levelland, Texas, 1957, and then in 1965 the Great Second Flap was upon us, engineered entirely by the wanton use of black projects.
Despite the enormous press that occurred and a Congressional Hearings, the military intelligence establishment kept quiet. Truth had been silenced and a cult began. J. Allen Hynek converted to accept UFO reality and made “UFOs respectable.” Congress was impressed. The Condon Committee was formed. They said nothing that had been observed was beyond human engineering, but they refused to name names. No believer in the UFOs wanted to believe them.
We live in the wake of the Great UFO Flap of 1965-1967, and it was almost entirely manufactured by the brazen use US black projects. The CIA today only glibly says, it was probably U-2. They know exactly what projects they were.
This section of my website only touches on some of my research. It is the tip of the iceberg of American irresponsibly on the Cold War home front. It’s free. I strongly suggest those interested read it.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
As I continue to refine the number of pages being prepared on The Quester Files for presenting the case of the I-70 Killer I think it is time to share some frustrations. Yes, much is taking form. There will be much new information. But there is still much frustration. As important as adding new information is to sort out the false information.
The case is subject to nothing but the tritest regurgitation online. Over a couple of decades of news articles have not elaborated at all. When one jurisdiction’s police department did a short video encapsulating what it felt was the relevant evidence to stimulate the public’s help, it presented starkly contradictory evidence to what had been presented in the name of another jurisdiction– e.g. the type of .22 caliber weapon suspected.
According to the earliest news reports, the witness in Wichita saw an “uzi-like” weapon with a banana clip. This suggests the .22 caliber Scorpion. Since 2012, St. Charles Police Police say the weapon was likely an Erma Werke, a German automatic pistol that has close to a foot-long barrel. It looks like a small rifle and has a wood stock under the barrel. Amazingly, then a retired Wichita detective said the witness at the bridal store saw a gun he described as a short rifle. Is it memory contamination? Which is right?
A line up of composite sketches of the suspected perpetrator is frequently presented, but no individual sketch is attributed to any jurisdiction. A little digging reveals the Wichita sketch. . . but the others? The circumstances?
I was able to uncover the Raytown sketch because it appears in the window of the victim’s Store of Many Colors in a May 1992 photo taken by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The sketch that is remarkably close to the Wichita sketch I must assume is St. Charles PD’s. Then there’s an odd one that has no attribution.
I had to work police contacts just to get the address of the Houston gift shop.
Tarrant County, Texas, wherein lies Fort Worth and Arlington, cannot find the coroner reports on the victims Mary Ann Glasscock (Thacker) and Amy Vess, the first two victims of the I-35 Killer. The third victim in Houston survived, and the bullet is still in her neck. There it is going to remain, she has insisted.
There is therefore, at present, no way to draw a more concrete link between the two murder sprees classified as I-70 and I-35 killings. No one has ever proposed a type of weapon for these I-35 killings. The articles only read it was a different weapon. We are subject to the superficial regurgitation that “some suspect” there is a link. Q Files will add a little more info, though, and I am still seeking the reports.
Sedgwick County (Wichita) Forensics does not hold Medical Examiner reports back that far, so I was referred to the court. They are trying to see if they have the coroner reports for the victims there.
Nevertheless, as is stands, Q Files section Cruise to a Kill will offer much more and will sort out the contradictions and present the facts on the case.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
Like all unsolved mysteries, the case of D.B. Cooper is a combination of unlikely components. My new section on The Quester Files IN QUEST OF D.B. COOPER is a short summary of the events and then the introduction to a likely profile and individual.
The selection of any profile or individual is not dependent merely on finding similarities in appearance and interests, and the ability to pull off the crime. For an unsolved crime as audacious as Cooper’s, in the context in which it happened, there is an unavoidable induction. Cooper knew he was not traceable by sight. He knew he would be well-observed. Yet he knew no investigation would lead to him. He knew he could be identified only by fingerprints. He left none, and he even insisted that the note he handed the stewardess Flo Schaffner be returned to him. It wasn’t to protect his penmanship. It was fingerprints.
No one could be so bold as the man calling himself Dan Cooper unless he knew he was untraceable. History has proven this point. Even under the assumption he splattered, the FBI could find no missing person who matched the swarthy Dan Cooper.
This heavily suggests the reality behind the skyjacker calling himself Dan Cooper was someone who had left the grid long before. Not just the United States. I’m not speaking about a citizen who simply went overseas years before. I mean someone who disappeared years before and assumed a new identity, for whatever reasons.
Please keep this in mind as you explore my new Q Files section on D.B. Cooper.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
As publication date draws nearer, it is time to share some outserts from my upcoming THEN CAME THE DAWN: The Search For Amelia Earhart Then and Now. This is my short foreword. The foreword is the first thing I write and the last thing I write. So when I’m finally happy with it, this is a good sign the book is near completed.
A Foreword of Forewarning
This is not a biography of Amelia Earhart. This is, in its way, a biography of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. As a chronicle of discovery, its purpose is to put in place the actual facts and then logically follow them as far as we can. The ultimate purpose of any quest, of course, is to attain the goal. Setting in place the solid facts of a true mystery is the first step toward its final solution. This therefore cannot be an uncritical compilation that merely slops before the reader sundry claims and theories. This would only bloat the book with counterproductive assertions, the very ones that have reduced the fate of Amelia Earhart to a convoluted folklore of hearsay. Thus the goal here is to present the truth all in one volume. Its slim nature does not betray this goal; it is a reflection of it.
The actual facts pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart are only fragments lost within an aggregate of assertions that have been repeated oft enough until they have taken on the façade of truth. But the true facts are far more intriguing when cleared of the extemporanea of conspiracy theories, counter theories, and the cyclical reasoning that dominates such an ad hoc spectrum.
When head of the Max Planck Institute for Health, Gerd Gigarenzer said that the intuitional component of intelligence is not found in knowing what is important but in knowing what is not important so that it can be discarded from the equation. It is my hope the slimness of this volume reflects adherence to this wise insight.
Following this sagely approach, the biographical section of this book will be as thin as possible. The life of AE, as she liked to be called, insofar as she influenced aviation and insofar as she rose to unique fame in her time as “America’s premier aviatrix,” must be presented first for that which follows to make any sense. But I will keep it brief and to the point.
Biography is not “my thing” anyway. Mystery is my thing. To pursue and crack a captivating thriller! Thus the disappearance of Amelia Earhart rather than her life has drawn me to the case.
Perhaps my agnosticism is an advantage in this matter. I am neither a critic nor a fan of Amelia Earhart. I am not going to see her through rose-tinted spectacles. Nor do I have the need to denigrate an icon. I encapsulate the life of AE as it leads up to and motivates her final flight.
Her charisma and daring captivated a world and made her a fascinating symbol of progress. The sudden and unexpected snuffing out of such a luminary created much speculation about exactly what happened to her. It is not tragedy that holds our attention today. It is mystery.
Disappearance is different than destruction. It is to enter limbo, to forever remain alive but unapproachable. Her tomboyish face did not age before the camera. Her voice did not become shaky and quiver. She remains with us today, fresh, alive, frozen in her final smile and wave to those who adored her.
Then and now no one wanted to believe that the disappearance of the “foremost aviatrix” could be chalked up to running out of gas and going down at sea. Shortwave enthusiasts picked up messages for days after she vanished. The nation was led to believe she had initially survived on a desert island. Then the search was called off. The messages were declared a hoax. She faded from the front page with a question mark rather than a period.
From that question mark there have cascaded numerous questions. And like all questions, the answers must be honestly sought and finally be given. And this is where the volume will get investigative, where I have to take sides and reveal weaknesses and strengths in theories.
We’ve heard stories of a secret government spy mission, of things gone terribly awry in flight, of Japanese internment; cover up, of course; conspiracy, a must. We also heard the banal “crash and sink” can be the only logical conclusion. Facts have been used to support all of the above, but they are really only factoids regurgitated without applied context. This volume will not avoid them, but it will place them in context, for truth is always found within the context, not at the urging of a factoid.
After that final dawn over the Pacific Ocean the fame of Amelia Earhart has been passive to those who have searched for her. Legends have arisen that have intrigued us. Uncovered documents have contained statements that have shocked us.
Several clues have come together to instill the instinctive feeling that there must be more to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance than simply running out of fuel and crashing. It is time to finally weigh all of these concisely; to find their origins and to follow through to see which have merit and which do not. Thus the majority of this volume is devoted to that final dawn, and this final dawn can have little meaning without the life of Amelia Earhart having flown into it and having never returned.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
Due to the possibility that The ZODIAC’s 340 Cipher has been cracked, at least a chunk of it reliably, I am releasing in order two chapters from my upcoming book HorrorScope: The Zodiac Killer Revealed. These chapters deal with this period in ZODIAC’S career, and as such they give some juxtaposition to the 340 Cipher. The three gentlemen who apparently may have cracked the cipher went to the FBI first before releasing the information. In like manner, as you all know, I did it the same with another LE agency after identifying Steve as ZODIAC on 100% admission evidence. Until the formal announcement, I too have held back publishing it all in HorrorScope, which I know has been a source of frustration for those who follow me. But please be patient. There is only one good way for an independent to crack a crime spree, and that is doing it the same way and not through publishing S&M.
There are sentences in the cracked 340 Cipher that don’t really fit within the frame of ZODIAC’s other letters– such as the inference he could be caught, that he was done killing, and there are no misspellings except for PARADICE. Not even HAVING is misspelled HAVEING, as was ZODIAC’s usual style. He also denied he was the crank caller “Sam” on the AM San Francisco TV show with Jim Dunbar and Mel Belli. Yet his Belli Letter of December 20, 1969, openly imitates Sam’s deranged and plaintive style, enticing the famous barrister to help him.
In many other ways the solution does fit– ZODIAC avoids his previous tendency to use Kill, Killing, Killed, which the papers announced is what got his last cryptogram cracked by the Hardens.
HorrorScope by Gian J. Quasar. Chapter 12– Comic Strip Crusade
While it is tempting to fall prey to the hysteria of the autumn of angst, we cannot imagine the Zodiac sitting there controlling his game masterfully. To initiate the autumn terror he had sent only one letter, and no more, confessing to Stine’s murder. He had truly murdered Stine, and he had truly engineered the final paragraph of his letter to insight panic. But in no small part had his publicity game been aided by other grandstanders. In fact, since October 22 most of Zodiac’s publicity had been gratuitous. It reached a crescendo with the AM San Francisco segment and then with Stine’s brother stirring the pot by challenging him to a duel. During the media glut, Zodiac need not lift a finger to be the ever-present arch villain.
During this time, however, he was not just sitting back idly enjoying a metropolis in fear. He was formulating another cipher. Like with the first cryptogram he carefully used his blue felt pen to draw the symbols in a neat long block on a single sheet of that strange paper he used. He folded it and placed it in a greeting card that carried a lighthearted sentiment. Around this sentiment he had already scribbled a note in his hasty, slanted scrawl. He included a macabre touch— a small bloodstained piece of Paul Stine’s shirt. It was a curious act since it was no longer necessary to prove he was the killer. But considering the difficulty he had in convincing Jack Stiltz back in summer, he probably felt it was a wise gesture. He sealed it and wrote on the envelope:
It was a chilly Saturday, November 8, 1969, in the City. The chunky, obscure villain opened the drop on the mailbox and let it scoop in the sealed card. He probably had chosen a drive-up postal box on the corner at one of the postal stations. At such a location there was no one to see him behind the darkened tint of his car windows. He drove on, no doubt quite satisfied he had played another calculated hand in his game of death.
Curiously the stocky, paunchy villain appeared at a mail drop again on Sunday. He slipped in another letter. The routine repeated. Perhaps there was that satisfied smirk as he drove off yet again. He imagined how the contents of the letter would affect the Letters Editor at the Chronicle and thereafter the police and then the people of the Bay Area, his guinea pigs in his macabre game of terror.
Both card and letter arrived at the Chronicle on Monday November 10. It was the same routine as before. The card was randomly selected from the pile of mail, but the “Rush to Editor” scribble looked familiar. When the envelope was slit and the card removed, out fell a bloody swath of striped fabric. By contrast, the greeting card sentiment became a grisly bit of sarcasm. It had the illustration of a pen dripping ink. The caption: “sorry I haven’t written for a while, but I just washed my pen. . .” Unfolding it, a folded piece of paper fell out and landed by the bloody token. Inside the card there was the sentiment “and i can’t do a thing with it.” Around this was Zodiac’s nasty slanted scrawl in blue felt. In his comic strip way, he introduced his oracle:
He barely got “speaking” to fit on the card. In a childlike way he curved it around to get it to fit. In sarcastic tenor, he then forewarned:
Childish and yet at the same time chilling; bloodlessly chilling with that casual ledger claiming two more victims in a tally by months. It takes more than just being a killer to frame a bloody piece of torn shirt with the tongue-in-cheek tenor of the card and its sentiment.
“Thing!!!!!!” underwent an evolution here. Zodiac had originally written the word normally, starting with a small “t.” When finished he went back and capitalized it. Tracing over it several times, he made it outlandishly bold.
It did not stop there. If there was any doubt about the amount of time the ‘Zodiac’ Killer spent on his game it was vanquished when the piece of paper that had dropped out was unfolded. It was a new cryptogram. Instead of being in 3 pieces it was one big long block of symbols 17 across and 20 down. Altogether there were 340 symbols. Like the inside message on the
The 340 Cipher, so named because it contains 340 symbols.
card, it was signed with a circle and crosshair— the sign of the zodiac. In this case it was neatly centered so that the top of the crosshair was in line with the center of the cryptogram.
Surprisingly, another envelope turned up in the same pile. The postmark was November 9. Opening this envelope revealed a 6 page letter dovetailing on the events of October 11. Due to the length of the letter it is best to reproduce it here in regular script rather than reproducing the entire letter page by page. It began like the others with his pompous preamble: “This is the Zodiac speaking.”
Up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people. I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. So I shall change the way the collecting of slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc.
The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.
1 I look like the description passed out only when I do my thing, the rest of the time I look entirle different. I shall not tell you what my descise consists of when I kill 2 As of yet I have left no fingerprints behind me contrary to what the police say in my killings I wear transparent fingertip guards. All it is is 2 coats of airplane cement coated on my fingertips— quite unnoticible + very efective 3 my killing tools have been boughten through the mail order outfits before the ban went into efect. except one & it was bought out of the state. So as you can see the police don’t have much to work on. If you wonder why I was wipeing the cab down I was leaving fake clews for the police to run all over town with, as one might say, I gave the cops som bussy work to do to keep them happy. I enjoy needling the blue pigs. Hey blue pig I was in the park— you were useing fire trucks to mask the sound of your cruzeing prowl cars. The dogs never came with in 2 blocks of me + they were to the west + there was only 2 groups of barking about 10 min apart then the motor cicles went by about 150 ft away going from south to north west ps. 2 cops pulled a goof abot 3 min after I left the cab. I was walking down the hill to the park when this cop car pulled up + one of them called me over + asked if I saw anyone acting suspicious or strange in the last 5 to 10 min + I said yes there was this man who was runnig by waveing a gun & the cops peeled rubber + went around the corner as I directed them + I disappeared into the park a block + a half away never to be seen again. Hey pig doesnt it rile you up to have your noze rubed in your booboos? If you cops think I’m going to take on a bus the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your heads. Take one bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer + 1 gal of stove oil & dump a few bags of gravel on top + then set the shit off + will positivily ventalate any thing that should be in the way of the blast. The death machine is all ready made. I would have sent you pictures but you would be nasty enough to trace them back to developer + then to me, so I shall describe my masterpiece to you. The nice part of it is all the parts can be bought on the open market with no questions asked. 1 bat. pow clock — will run for aprox 1 year 1 photoelectric switch 2 copper leaf springs 2 6V car bat 1 flash light bulb + reflector 1 mirror 2 18″ cardboard tubes black with shoe polish inside + oute [For Page 5 diagram see next page]
the system checks out from one end to the other in my tests. What you do not know is whether the death machine is at the sight or whether it is being stored in my basement for future use. I think you do not have the manpower to stop this one by continually searching the road sides looking for this thing. + it wont do to re roat + re schedule the busses because the bomb can be adapted to new conditions. Have fun!! By the way it could be rather messy if you try to bluff me.
[PS. Be shure to print the part I marked out on page 3 or I shall do my thing.]
Almost as an afterthought the backside of the last piece of paper contains a paragraph in the center of the page.
[To prove that I am the Zodiac, Ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my collecting of slaves.]
This little epilogue, completely out of place and incongruous, proves quite intriguing. There was no need to prove he was the Zodiac anymore. It suggests he may have drafted notes and reused an old piece of paper in this case. Whatever letter this statement was intended for, if any, it must have been written after August 4, the first time he had called himself ‘the Zodiac,’ and before his next letter, the one received on October 13, in which he confessed to Stine’s murder.
An analysis of the letter was obviously not something the Chronicle was looking to print. The cryptogram was the big deal. Zodiac had played a new hand in his game and ratcheted up the intrigue level.
And the Chronicle was once again at the center of it. Paul Avery, their true crime writer, broke the story the next day. “‘I’ve killed Seven,’ the Zodiac claims.” Since the greeting card ledger indicated that Zodiac had killed in August, Avery harked back to the gruesome murders of Debra Furlong and Kathie Snoozy in San Jose on August 3, 1969. Collectively they had been stabbed 300 times at Foothills Park, a huge undeveloped hill on the edge of the new Almaden Valley subdivision of San Jose. These savage crimes had so far gone unsolved. The perpetrator had been dubbed the “Picnic Killer” since he either attacked them at the rustic parkland or attacked them near their homes and dumped them there.
It could be that Zodiac intended this link to be made. He specifically listed “Aug” in his tally by months. For public consumption it was a timely boast. It heightened the reaction of the
Page 5, where Zodiac details in diagram his “Rube Goldberg”—a homemade bomb.
Bay Area to the news announcements that Zodiac had sent another cryptogram, and it also showed he was capable of killing kids, the threat which was central to his success in the current terror mania in the Bay Area.
Yea or nay, his claim was a weak attempt. His ledger on Bryan Hartnell’s car door did not claim any such date in August. It was a misplaced boast, stupidly misplaced just like that unexplained isolated paragraph talking about his “electronic gun sight.” It was as out of place as “Have fun!! By the way it could be rather messy if you try to bluff me.” Bluff him how? He wasn’t requiring anything of SFPD.
With the publication of the new cryptogram, Marty Lee was once again at the center of an antsy press conference. It was Wednesday November 12. Amidst the flashbulbs he had to field the reporters’ questions. The quiver of angst was apparent in the atmosphere of the room. Lee wanted to qualify something.
“First of all he is described in all of the media as a nut, an insane person, a screwball and all of this sort of thing. And I don’t go along with this. I think— and I have studied all of the letters; I think that this man is legally sane. We all know the difference; legal sanity, of course, being a knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, and also a knowledge that what one has done is forbidden and therefore taking of action of fleeing from the police. This man has certainly exhibited that much intelligence or rationality.”
In almost tableau suspension, Bay Area residents had gathered around their TVs and watched the conference or listened to it on radio. In many of these homes, nearby lay the Chronicle opened to the page carrying the cryptogram.
The next day the Chronicle again published the cryptogram, this time besides Avery’s new article: “Zodiac ‘Legally Sane.’ Cop sure clues will snag him.”
Within the article Paul Avery asserts Lee’s confidence that they will soon have the Zodiac, and from the evidence they have gathered there will indeed be no doubt they have their man. He would not elaborate on the clues, but Lee asserted that with 20 men working on the case (all jurisdictions combined) it was only a matter of time before they had him.
The public, of course, did not know what this certainty was based upon. Behind the scenes, the physical evidence was, in fact, very thin. It only consisted of the bloody fingerprints in Stine’s cab, handwriting, and the ballistics indicating various guns. Without a suspect to match them to, however, fingerprints, handwriting, and ballistics are a reference in the case folder as vibrant as a fossil in a museum’s archives. Napa and Vallejo didn’t even have full faith in the bloody fingerprints. They thought onlookers could have contaminated the scene. What was Lee’s faith based on? It must have been the fact that Zodiac had used a new 9mm Browning. This alone could lead to a suspect. Ironically, however, the bloody fingerprints remained the only true evidence. Against these the purchasers of new Brownings would have to be compared.
Zodiac, of course, had taken exception to SFPD’s claim that they were certain they had his fingerprints. He had actually made quite a point of it. Was he right? Or was he the egomaniac Lee thought, one who couldn’t handle the fact he had made a simple mistake? Therefore he was lying in order to taunt SFPD more.
There is no doubt that the Zodiac did not like his publicity campaign’s effect being minimized. When his claim to the murders was questioned by Stiltz, he wrote back quickly. To make his presence at the crime scenes incontrovertible he wrote on the Karmann Ghia side door— proof he had been there. Marty Lee had said that he believed Zodiac had lied (in the October 13 letter) about being in the Presidio during the manhunt. Now in direct response (in his most recent letter), the Zodiac clearly went out of his way to “mock the blue pigs” by getting specific, describing the cops as west of his lurking hideout and that only two dog teams came within hearing.
Truth really didn’t matter to Zodiac. What mattered was maintaining his deadly image with the public. But Zodiac’s bragging once again betrayed valuable clues, clues that SFPD otherwise would not have had. Zodiac’s bragging confirmed that he actually was the man Fouke and Zelms had seen (Jackson and Maple is indeed about a 3 minute walk from the crime scene). Whether or not they had actually seen the Zodiac could have remained a source of debate had Zodiac not pulled this stunt. Because of this we have a clear description of Zodiac’s appearance from a trained observer, for Zodiac’s statement is no doubt what inspired Don Fouke to write his “scratch” only a few days after the most recent news glut. It is dated on November 12, 1969, and in it he gives us the following description:
“The suspect that was observed . . . was WMA 35-45 years old about 5’10”, 180-200 lbs, Medium heavy build – Barrel chested – Medium complexion – Light colored hair possibly graying in rear (May have been lighting that caused this effect.) Crew cut – Wearing glasses – Dressed in dark blue waits length zipper type jacket (Navy or royal blue) Elastic cuffs and waist band zipped part way up. Brown wool pants pleeted [sic] type baggy in rear (Rust brown). May have been wearing low cut shoes.”
The description is the image of Brian Hartnell’s sketch of the Zodiac at Lake Berryessa, only now with brown (though still obsolete) pants and minus the black ceremonial hood.
Despite Zodiac’s taunting claims, Fouke and Zelms had never stopped and talked to him. Fouke made this clear in the beginning of his note to his superiors. In fact, the view was so fleeting that Fouke admitted in his “scratch” that he didn’t even know if Zelms had seen the suspect. He concluded by giving Zelms’ name and badge number in order to facilitate a follow-up if his superiors desired.
Zodiac’s lie is self-exposing by the mistake he made. Fouke and Zelms had thought the perpetrator was a black male adult. Had they stopped, they would have asked him, ‘Have you seen a black guy . . .?’ Of course, Zodiac didn’t know this mistake had been made. Instead he invents a situation where he is asked about a “guy” acting strange. The truth is that Zodiac had only seen two cops speed past and decided to use the encounter to mock the SFPD and demand they print it. It was a punk’s way and language of embarrassing SFPD— the “blue pigs.”
There was little reason to believe anything Zodiac said, one way or the other. His threat against a school bus was calculated to instill terror, but now he claimed it was purely a boast and the cops were stupid to have taken him seriously. Which was the lie? Or was it all a lie?
Lee and the task force took Zodiac to be a liar but the language of his letters to be reflecting his true persona—some fat, little but not that educated a man. They religiously looked for mistakes in his letters that could lead to him. Not lies—mistakes. They were studied in depth to see if Zodiac betrayed some clue through the use of an expression or idiom. Some British English expressions had already consistently crept into his language. For example, “kiddies” was thought to be British. In this light “clews” was also of interest. This suggested not a misspelling but the British usage of the word. It is a thin connection, but Fouke too had the impression the man he saw was of Welsh heritage.
On the other hand, Zodiac’s spelling mistakes were regarded as obvious frauds. With each new letter his spelling got intentionally worse, sometimes impossibly bad; for instance, “oute” for out. He got ‘their’ and ‘there’ right all the time, a problem this current generation has. All this indicated was that he knew how to spell and was overdoing the uneducated punk routine.
Was he being really smart or really dumb? It comes back to the argument just how clever this villain was and what was his ultimate motive? Again, he completely controlled his publicity campaign. And with his recent letters, he was beginning to show a pattern. The Zodiac was a boastful slayer, but he was proving himself a skillful player of more than his game.
. . . Next post will be CHAPTER 13– SKILLFUL PLAYER
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
It’s the Roman in me that makes me walk off my usual topics on my blog, but in some respects this is related to cold case. Historic knowledge of its foundation is certainly a cold topic amongst Americans.
The age of the Founding Fathers of the American Republic was Neo-classicism. Knowledge of ancient Greece and especially the Roman Republic was pervasive in educated society. I’m sure it was at the back of the minds of some who drafted the American Constitution that one way to get this controversial document across was to hark back to this glorified Classical era. Constituting the American Federal government according to Roman precepts also had a practical purpose. They had worked. The Roman Republic was a “proof of principle,” as developers call it–
–Constitute government along similar lines and avoid those pitfalls that led to the fall of the Roman Republic. It seems smart. One way the compromises got convoluted was in the area of the supreme power.
There is no greater power than to say unchallenged “I forbid.” In Latin, “Veto.” It is tribunican potestes– the power of the tribunes of the peoples. Ten sat in the Roman Senate and could halt any legislature. Calling out “Veto” (pronounced weto) halted the legislation. “I forbid.” It became the most powerful office to hold in the Republic. Far more desirable than even the Consulate, the head of government.
Again, to be able to forbid is supreme power. You let all others go about and work their good for the country and take it easy. But when one goes too far or gets to of line– “Veto!” It makes governing easy! Everybody wants this power because you don’t have to be proactive in government. You just need to sit back and watch and . . .well, forbid when necessary.
As the Republic was collapsing, Roman politicians fought and bribed to get the office of Tribune. When the Empire took shape, Roman emperors power was based not on the Consular power but on the power of the Tribune. Augustus would be granted the power of tribune for life. Each emperor thereafter would be granted the same.
Seeking to bypass the hazards that led to the fall of the Republic, the American founding fathers knew the power of Tribune could not be overlooked. Instead of 10 tribunes in the Senate, the tribunes would be set apart into their own institution. Their power would not be unlimited over all legislation, but anchored only to the Constitution. As such, they needed to be judges. As such, there could be no equal number. There could never be a tied decision. This became the Supreme Court. They became 9 in number to prevent any tie in a judgment.
Displaying Roman grandeur, the Supreme Court is really a Board of Roman Tribunes anchored only by the Constitution in their power to forbid.
The Roman tribunes could halt legislation while underway and technically so could the Supreme Court if it was obvious the legislation contradicted the Constitution. So the Federalist Papers outlined how the system was the work. The tribunes (judges) had to wait for a challenge to a specific law to go through the appeals systems. This prevented the Court from being proactive and calling out “veto” as a bill was passing between both houses of Congress. They also had to keep quiet after the law was passed. They could only get involved when the law was challenged through the system and brought before them.
Thus it would seem the hazards that led to the battle to get the office and the power that so impeded change or prevented progress in Rome, intrinsic in causing so much upheaval at the end of the Roman Republic, had been avoided. Since the Founding Fathers were paradoxically anti-Government, the Constitution was written in the negative against government. The Supreme Court would safeguard the Republic against the tyranny of future governments by anchoring all laws to the document that forbade the Federal government repeatedly.
However, just like with the collapse of the Roman Republic, the problems are showing up in the American Republic around the same power of “veto.” It is accentuated by something the Romans didn’t have to contend with, and apparently some of the Founding Fathers thought it was a safeguard. Roman Tribunes held office for one term– about a year and a half, if I recall my Republic well. US Supreme Court justices hold office for life.
You can now see why appointment to the office has become a focal point of contention in the American scheme of things. No Roman magistrate could hold the same office back-to-back. Whether Questor, Praetor, Consul or Tribune, they were locked into one term at a time. If Consul one term, then maybe Tribune the next term, then maybe a few terms hence Consul again. They could hold the same office many times, but not back-to-back.
As the American Republic is in convulsions for change, the Supreme Court is targeted first because of its unchallenged power to forbid. Instead of the legislatures changing the Constitution and reducing the tribunes to limited terms of office rather than life terms, there is a move again to “pack the court.” In other words, to add more tribunes by the majority party in the legislature. The purpose? To get its way, of course. It then becomes the legislature’s power to control the Court, via whatever party is in majority, and the Supreme Court will rubber stamp what the party in majority wants.
The world has no precedence for a powerful Republic except the Roman Republic. There have been little, petty republics throughout history, but where there is great power there is great corruption. Only the system of the Roman Republic could forestall the power grab for hundreds of years, but in the end it collapsed from infighting. The collapse showed itself most predominantly at the most powerful office to prevent or allow significant change– the office of Tribune.
The fights over getting that same power of Tribune in the American Republic are a reflection of the dangerous weaknesses in the system. They foreshadow greater danger to come especially if those who want to pack the court rather than require the tribunes have terms get their way.
Few understand that Marius, Sulla, Caesar, and Octavian were necessary.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
A couple of years ago I deleted lots of posts on my blog here dealing with true crime. One was my section on comparing the current antiestablishment movement with the immortalized original of the 1960s. What I concentrated on was the effect the original antiestablishment movement had on crime. Some of that is still relevant, so I am putting up a series again exploring what may lay ahead in the future.
The original antiestablishment movement was not one homogenous whole. Antiestablishment was Berkeley 1964 and Sproul Plaza, free speech, anti-Vietnam, the New Left. Counterculture was ashrams, Timothy Leary’s Drugology, Flower Children, hippies. To divide them easily, one was politics, one was lifestyle.
As the tumultuous times progressed, Brown Power, Black Power, all sorts of movements came into being. Cops were “pigs.” LBJ was the devil. There were riots by the antiestablishment, bombs set off by the New Left. The campuses of the country were a breeding ground of radical ideas.
When the body is diseased little abscesses develop. Such as? Such as The Manson Family. It was a strange combination of all of the above. Another was The Zodiac Killer. Eventually, as the movements began to disintegrate it got worse.
In 1970, both the counterculture and the antiestablishment movement collapsed. The New Left set off too many bombs, finally killing a lab student. Disillusioned that this was not the way to peace, the youth dropped out of it, leaving it to become nothing but pockets of outright terrorists like Weather Underground.
A series of disasters disenchanted the counter culture. In December 1969, there were two horrid revelations– the Manson Family, a set of licentious counterculture hippies, had been the butchers in Hollywood the August before. Then there was the Altamont. Finally, in 1970 the festival on the Isle of Wight ended nasty. Counterculture realized that drugs was not the way to world peace. The inner journey to peace through drugs ended.
Drugs continued to be taken, even more than before. But it wasn’t for ideological reasons. It was a trip for a trip’s sake. The demand created by the ideology of the counterculture also created a supply line that now turned capitalistic. The drug culture of the 1970s was now made possible, along with the crimes and murders that would come from the cartels that developed to meet the new but purposeless demand.
Now firmly in the throes of upheaval, the nation had to deal with the after affects of lawlessness and bizarre cults. There were the Zebra Murders. There was the Symbionese Liberation Army, chic militant urban guerillas wearing leather jackets and tams.
Most of all society had to deal with the apathy that overcame the baby boomers, so central to both movements. Francis Schafer, a noted Christian theologian and philosopher, observed that the Boomers had come full circle in their attempts to defeat a wholly materialistic culture and ended up even more dissolute and materialistic than their parents.
The 1980s became the counter revolution to the 1960s. It gave us Yuppies and a hyper establishment, materialistic society based once again on the superficiality of impressing the Jones and the new status quo. It is amazing that these were the same baby boomers of the 1960s. They were now the 30-somethings of Reaganomics.
Like their former hippie selves they were known by their image. It was one of double breasted suits, ostentatious haircuts and hairdos, showcase-like glasses, expensive cars, even coats of arms with some rampant beast. They had been the Hippies and the Yippies, now they were the up and coming 30-somethings. Some journalist, whoever it was, hit the nail on the head with “Yuppies.”
Movies like Wall Street typified the Yuppie attitude. Greed is good. Own. Do not create. The screenwriter of the film has lamented in interviews how so many people (Yuppies) came up to him and expressed their admiration for Gekko, the bad guy of the film. He couldn’t believe it. No generation ever swang, and was aloud to swing, so far one way on the pendulum and so far the other as the Baby Boomers.
In the 2000s, it is this materialistic culture, now in their 50s and 60s, who spent vast amounts of money getting butt-lift operations so they could look like their younger and spry Yuppie selves. Bankers didn’t know how to balance their bottom lines, and the banks crashed. Real estate gave bad loans and housing collapsed. The Great Recession ensued. Kids who were 10 years old then were deeply affected by losing their homes. They looked about and saw parents who didn’t know how to take out loans properly, politicians who didn’t understand how to legislate, and bankers who didn’t know the basics of math.
These kids are now on the campuses. Just from Youtube they can see the culture of the last 60 years and they think it is full of sh . . .
Is it surprising that we have a convoluted antiestablishment movement today? It started with the Occupy Wall Street, which was largely an S&M sham. Typical reaction from that culture– sales and market some response. From Occupy Wall Street it devolved into Occupy Disneyland, and while the tongue-in-cheek capitalizing went on, the ten year old kids who felt disaster lost their sense of humor. It’s the kids who have the collapse of the Great Recession indelible in their memory that want change. They aren’t a sham. They also aren’t just kids anymore. Toxic elements are everywhere.
We now have Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the closest thing to the old counterculture I suppose would be the cancel-culture– destroy any tokens of the society they hate and blame for all the ills. Cops are “pigs” again. There are riots again.
Unlike the Great Generation in the 1960s, the Baby Boomers, now in their 70s, aren’t handling it well at all. They were from insulated, prosperous times, and as such they tend to not understand cause and effect. Some, perpetually rebellious, identify with antiestablishment yet again and agree with the slogan-level intelligence that demands the police be defunded. The Yuppie element has an equally simplistic approach– monetize it and try and profit off of it.
Hippie protests in the 1960s were about peace. Sticking the stem end of a flower into the rifle barrel of a White House guard rated the cover of magazines. Every elements in the antiestablishment of today wants war. Even Cancel-culture rips down statues.
What abscesses can arise in the wake of this antiestablishment movement?
Police have not had to deal with cult murders and organized political gangs killing people. This was an outcropping of the original antiestablishment movement. The cops of that era are gone. After this antiestablishment movement burns out, Cancelculture like the Counterculture will find a different lifestyle separate from the culture it hates. But radical communists and socialists, at least the modern American indulged versions, infest them all, from Cancelculture to Antifa. In addition, Neo-Nazi type radicals also fester in toxic cells.
When the nation is perceived by any of them to start yielding (or not yielding fast enough) to a certain culture, who will use murder for the purposes of political terror? We could have individuals like the Zodiac Killer who did it for his own amusement. Then there was the complex confection that was The Manson Family. They were not just counterculture. They were a nest of vainglorious hippies under the spell of their mesmeric guru leader. They committed a bizarre spate of murders behind various motives– to get one of their own out of jail, to start the collapse of society by bringing about Helter Skelter. Their new age would ensue wherein they would raise the children whom they saved. Then there were just experimental, twisted killers using religion like The Zebra Killers. The SLA were outright bandits ennobling their bank robbery as supporting a political liberation movement.
All were different. Yet none of them batted an eye about killing. All of the above were not just criminals. They viewed themselves as having a mandate against a corrupt establishment. They all germinated in the medium of the volatile antiestablishment movement and its tumultuous and disillusioned aftermath.
There are those who say that it was drugs, especially LSD, that made the Manson Murders possible, and there is nothing out there like that today. So why should we fear some eddy like this to form in the wake of this torrential antiestablishment movement? This might be true. But this time around there is more anger and violence. There are no peace protests. There are protests for war. There is also more contempt.
The Baby Boomers rebelled against a generation and culture they viewed as giving them the horrors of imminent nuclear holocaust and the slow death of Cold War battles like Vietnam. The young of today view the Baby Boomers as self indulgent wastrels. How does moving to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, smoking an hasheesh pipe and frolicking in a love-in do anything about Soviet arms production? Yet the Boomers said they were reacting against the Cold War. They were ennobling a spoiled upbringing, as far as youth of today can see it.
The Great Generation sent their kids (boomers) to college. At grad from High School, the boomers got some treat– a car, a Euro vacation, to Hawaii, whatever. Today, the young have a mountain of school debt and little likelihood of a job thereafter. Where did the money go? Their boomer parents or grandparents are viewed as having spent it all. Remember that Newsweek cover? The Case for Killing Granny. The Boomers would not have expressed that attitude. But today?
What hybrid cells are capable of forming out there that will take the radical ideas of today and turn themselves into champions of selective murder for political or social ideas? It may or may not be a few years off. There are enough disgruntled individuals who could gather under a twisted leader to perform anything horrific. After all, look at how many elements came together to create The Manson Family and then the Manson Murders.
In our next post, we’ll look at more similarities and differences in the antiestablishment movements.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
I feel guilty about keeping my readers waiting for the much-delayed publication of HorrorScope: The Zodiac Killer Exposed. So here I share parts of another chapter.
Chapter 3–
Silence of the Peacocks
When the moon is in the Seventh House And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Fireworks burst over the shipyards at Mare Island in San Pablo Bay and rain down over a regatta of sailboats in the estuary. The detonations lit the sky. The house tops of Vallejo glowed many colors and then retreated back into dark silhouettes. Cheers rose with every burst, awe cooed with each fabulous sequence of explosions. Sparklers sizzled in driveways. Whistling petes shrilled through middleclass neighborhoods. Barbeque smoke and its flavor— hotdogs, ribs, hamburgers, Americana— mixed with the heavy smell of cordite. It was late night 4th of July in Vallejo— the summer of ’69!
Vallejo was a blue collar town, but it was also a city on the bay, which gave it a little more opportunity for pageantry. Vallejo always sponsored a boat regatta and a massive firework display. There was little fancy in Vallejo, but it was an old town tied to the ship building yards at Mare Island, the Navy, and to a way of life inseparable from the rustic fringes of the San Francisco Bay Area.
At an opposite to the tempo of courageous men, ships and the sea, there were the surrounding grassy foothills. One of Vallejo’s major landmarks was Blue Rock Springs Park. Giant and ancient eucalyptus flourished by the springs, and oaks dotted the surrounding brown hillsides like giant green umbrellas. As a therapeutic destination, the springs went back in popularity to the 19th century. Aptly named Springs Road was the main road eastward from Vallejo. As the city expanded, it did so along Springs Road. It was now modern and developed with businesses— 1960s’ space age gas stations, Mr. Ed’s Drive-In, car washes, storefronts, and off here the new suburban neighborhoods.
Modernity, however, ended where Springs Road met Columbus Parkway. The latter was a paving of the old dirt road that had led to the springs. Its chief use now was a back way to the highways or to go to the huge park built around the springs. It was a beautiful country jaunt in the day. Take a left at the end of Springs Road onto Columbus Parkway and dash up and down the rolling, brown hills like a dragonfly, whisk under the canopies of tall eucalyptus and then as the road sank into the cleft of the hills, there under the densest canopy of eucalyptus was the parking lot to Blue Rock Springs Park. The lot was but a wide spot in the road, deep enough to fit two rows of cars.
The slopes of the foothills here were green and manicured. Winding paths led to stands of giant eucalyptus. Up on the slope an old wooden porch house was now used by the caretaker. Peacocks nested up here. They sat on beds of dried eucalyptus leaves and mewed over the vista. Pools of natural spring water were deep green. Their bottoms were impenetrable to the eyes because of the transparent reflections of giant eucalyptus. One pool was spanned by a wooden walking bridge. It was rustic and meant to be rustic. Even the parking lot was rustic. It was edged with uncut, raw boulders. It was a country park outside of town, sporting an old style redwood timber sign with the park name painted in golden yellow.
Beyond the park Columbus Parkway held nothing. The road climbed a slope of the dry foothills and eventually came down toward nothing but a convenient half cloverleaf in Highway 80 on the outskirts of northern Vallejo, the main highway from the Bay Area to Sacramento inland.
At night the area had a foreboding air. Darkness clutched the road under the canopies of eucalyptus. Within the curve of the road, in the cleft of the bosom where the parking lot was located, a car would sink into an abyss, its headlights plunge in a tarry pool. There was a lamp in the park near the parking lot. It stood-out like a weak lantern pestered by the shadows of the eucalyptus leaves dancing with the foothill’s bay breezes.
This aerial is centered over the park, looking toward Vallejo, showing Columbus Parkway traced in eucalyptus trees. Vallejo Historical Museum
Festivities were ongoing this night, so that the park was neither quiet nor foreboding. But as it grew late the partiers had thinned out. Columbus Parkway and the park grew lifeless and dark. The brown hills became tope behind the lace of country night. The clusters of trees were black silhouettes that strengthened their clutch over Columbus Parkway, eclipsing it into eerie shadows. Soon the plaintive cry of the peacocks faded.
Yet in Vallejo rockets still sailed into the sky and burst in electric colors. Kids spun their sparklers in hand, and parties were only beginning.
At 11:30 p.m. it was still early for Darlene Ferrin. She was one of the most popular people in her set in town. Vivacious is putting it mildly. She was a captivating character with a lively personality. This made up for her somewhat gnomish looks. She was only 5 foot 4 inches tall, but she was a firecracker herself. At 22 now she had already been married twice and divorced once. She was a popular waitress at Terry’s on Magazine Street, and had more than a few admirers who came into eat there just to see “Dee,” as her friends called her. Frankly, she was flighty, always late and often a flake. But her bubbly, unpretentious personality kept friends close.
Dee radiated in her casual bright blue slacks and white daisy patterned top. She sped down Springs Road in her brown, sporty Corvair coupé. In keeping with her character she had kept her friend Mike Mageau waiting . . . and waiting. She was supposed to have picked him up at 7:30 p.m. so they could go together to see a film in San Francisco. Things, as always with Dee, had happened. She gave him a heads-up earlier that she might be late, saying she had to take her younger sister Christina to the Miss Firecracker pageant. She would call him later. This was the last he had heard from her. Mike thought the world of Dee. Home alone because his dad was staying at a motel and his twin brother Steve lived with their mom down south, he waited by the phone for hours instead of enjoying this festive day. Now at 11:30 p.m., Dee finally arrived at his home on Beechwood, near Springs Road. Figures!— just as the day was almost over. He rushed out and jumped into the passenger side of her sporty 1964 Chevrolet Corvair.
It was too late for them to go to San Francisco, and yet as usual Darlene was also without embarrassment over having made Mike wait. She now said she wanted to get something to eat. They headed to nearby Mr. Ed’s diner on Springs Road. Suddenly, impulsively perhaps, she told Mike she wanted to talk. How about if they went to Blue Rock Springs Park? It wasn’t far. Her location of choice wasn’t surprising. It was her favorite meditating place. She turned around on Springs Road and headed to the nearby outskirts of Vallejo.
This sudden turn of events revealed why the extrovert Dee was always late for events. Right now she was supposed to be out getting fireworks for a late night party. Her husband Dean had called and told her to try and find some. After they closed at Caesar’s, where he was the cook, he was going to bring people home and give a party. After Dee had come home, she tidied up a bit and then walked out on her babysitter, telling her that she was going to look for fireworks and would be back by 12:30 a.m. Instead she finally went to meet Mike.
Apparently the fact Dee was married and had a baby girl did not bother the young 19 year old Mike Mageau, at least as little as it bothered Dee. This was 1969 after all, two years after the Summer of Love. Dee liked the beat that came from the antiestablishment pulse— break the norms and don’t assume the most negative thing about anybody acting outside that norm. But the mainstream reaction to Dee’s lifestyle nevertheless would still have been worse than the one embodied in the lyrics of one of the top 10 songs of the year before—“Harper Valley P.T.A.”
Well, the note said, “Mrs. Johnson, You’re wearing your dresses way too high It’s reported you’ve been drinking and a-runnin’ ’round with men and going wild And we don’t believe you ought to be bringing up your little girl this way” It was signed by the secretary, Harper Valley P.T.A.
Dee was as much a reflection of the counterculture as she was, by type, part of the cause for the receptive attitudes around San Francisco. Her life was certainly not the typical mainstream life of a 22 year old wife. Nor had it been. Her reputation for excitement must have been such that the young Mike Mageau had a definite impression of her and geared his introduction accordingly. When they had first met, he had said he was wanted by the FBI, thinking this would make her like him.
But Dee had liked him anyway, though he had some peculiarities. He thought he was too skinny. As a result he dressed to build himself up. For instance, despite the summer’s tepid air from the bay he had dressed tonight in 3 pairs of pants, 1 t-shirt, 1 long sleeve shirt, and over these 3 sweaters.
In this combination— her thin but lively flower print and his built up stork’s physique— they sailed down Columbus Parkway in her brown Corvair, windows down and radio playing the currents hits. Under the clutches of the canopy of eucalyptus, into the starlight, and at last they plunged into the cleft of the bosom where the solitary orb of light floating in the ink marked the lamppost at Blue Rock Springs Park.
The Corvair’s headlights swept the golden letters of the painted redwood sign, steadied, closed-in and stopped. Dee parked at an angle, her headlights obliquely lighting the sign. She didn’t park in a stall. No one was there. There was no point in being picky. Dee was never picky. She turned the headlights off and the sign went dark. She turned off the engine and kept the radio playing softly.
There wasn’t much time to say anything before a couple of cars came rolling in. Teens cheered, laughed, set off some firecrackers, and rolled back onto Columbus Parkway and into the clutching shadows of the eucalyptus canopy.
They had barely been left alone when yet another car came from the direction of Vallejo and pulled in next to Dee on her driver’s side, only 6 to 8 feet away. Considering she was parked crooked, it was bold to mimic her angle. The driver was alone. He turned off his headlights and sat there.
Mike and Dee looked over. He joked about how she knows everybody.
“Do you know him?”
“Oh, never mind,” she replied.
He didn’t know what she meant. No matter anyway. The lights on the strange car soon came on, the engine started and it pulled out and drove off back to town.
It was a queer moment, but Dee knew many odd people. After all, she liked the far side. Mike didn’t pursue it.
Only minutes later the same car returned, this time pulling up behind them and slightly to an angle. At least they thought it was the same car. They looked over their shoulders at the blinding headlights. It might be a policeman. The policeman on this beat checked the lot occasionally. A powerful flashlight came on and started to move behind them and up to Mike’s open window. Now Mike was sure it was a cop. As the light came to the window he looked over his shoulder. He saw a beefy guy; under 6-foot tall he estimated. He had a blue short-sleeved shirt on. He carried one of those big handheld flashlights in his left hand. Mike leaned back and reached around to get his wallet. It was a fortuitously timed act.
A shot burst forth. Mike felt burning pain in his neck. He jumped back. Dee clutched the steering wheel in surprise, but 2 more shots pumped out, piercing through her right arm and then through her left. Another shot spit out. She slumped from a bullet in her ribs. Mike was flailing about. From behind the blinding splatter of the flashlight, another shot hissed out. His hip burned with pain.
The bright flashlight beam streaked off the car. Footsteps casually thumped away. Blood trickled and dripped down the interior, lit only by the surreal angles of light slicing through the windows from of the assailant’s headlights. As the killer passed before them, the headlights cast his lumbering shadow over the gruesome scene in the Corvair.
Mike let out a scream of agony, mixed with anger.
The shadow stopped, steadied. The flashlight beam streaked over the car again, sparkling off the rear window and illuminating the blood streaking down the interior paneling. The footsteps were returning. Mike panicked. He started jumping about in the backseat. The flashlight splatter stopped at the side window. From behind the splatter two more shots burst out. His shoulder burned in back and then his leg. Two more shots burst out at Dee. She was slumped over the wheel and took the shots in her right back without any attempt to block them.
The splatter of the flashlight beam dashed off the car again. Moments later the killer’s shadow lumbered over the blood in the Corvair as the villain passed in front of his headlights again to the driver’s side of his car.
Mike reached out and unlocked the passenger side door. He fell out. The assailant’s car had just backed around. For a brief moment he saw the attacker in silhouette. A big face. He let out a wail of pain on the tarmac. The attacker hadn’t heard him. The brake lights snipped off and the car surged forward. Mike saw the back of the car and noticed it seemed to be a lighter brown than Dee’s, but of a similar model. The assailant’s car drove off and turned left onto Columbus Parkway— back to Springs Road and Vallejo.
Just moments later, a truck came coasting up from the other direction, that is, from the right, down from the rise in Columbus Parkway from the north, from the direction of Highway 80. Roger, Jerry and Debbie were a little more radical looking than the mainstream. They were morphing into mainstream hippies, which was largely just veneer for teens their age. Presently they were looking for one of Jerry’s girlfriends. They came this way from Vallejo to see if she was at the park, perhaps one of the leftovers from the evening celebrations here. Debbie, the oldest at 19, was driving. She stopped on the road and they looked up to the dark Corvair. (The parking lot slanted up at an angle, so that Columbus Parkway was noticeably below the apex of the lot.) They debated for a moment whether the girl they sought was in the car and whether they should pull in and look. At this moment, what must have been only seconds after they arrived, the Corvair’s lights came on and so did the left blinker. They saw a young man roll out from behind the right side and heard him scream. They pulled in.
The park and parking lot (obscured at the low point in the parkway by the stand of trees, seen from Columbus Parkway from the direction Jerry, Roger, and Debbie came. Vallejo Historical Museum
saw a young man roll out from behind the right side and heard him scream. They pulled in.
Roger jumped out.
Mike Mageau lay in the fringes of their headlights. Blood burbled from his mouth: “We’ve been shot,” he groaned. “Get a doc. Quick!”
Jerry had barely come forward when Roger bolted back. Jerry wanted to stay, but Debbie and Roger blurted “No way!” They assured Mike they would get help quick. They ripped out and sped toward Springs Road. They sped through the clutches of the eucalyptus canopy. Emerging into starlight again, Lake Herman Road cutoff was soon on their left. They noticed a car’s taillights receding away as it headed to Benicia. They couldn’t tell what type of car. They squealed right onto Springs Road. Soon they squealed onto Castlewood Drive (not far from Beechwood) and Roger’s house.
Frantic about the shooting, Debbie tried to explain to the police. Neither Roger nor Jerry had time to look into the car to see Dee Ferrin at all, so Debbie had little to screech over the phone except there had been a shooting at Blue Rock Springs Park. As such, the police were unsure of the extent of the carnage that awaited them.
At 12:10 a.m. all units heard the broadcast. Closest were officers Meyring and Lindemann in Unit 119, and in Unit 130 officer Richard Hoffman. Each turned around and went screaming onto Columbus Parkway, heading north to the park.
Hoffman was the most surprised by the report. He had just checked the park about 15 minutes before (around 5 minutes to midnight). No one had been there.
Now just by the clubhouse of the new golf course (on the opposite side of the parkway), oncoming headlights emerged from the darkness of the canopy of trees by the park. A gray late model Caddy passed them heading toward Vallejo. Meyring and Lindemann do a squealing U-turn and hit the overhead lights. Hoffman plunged forward into the darkness of the dip in the road. His headlights bounce up and down as he took the gutter at quick speed. Then the headlights swept a young man rolling in a pool of blood by the rear of the parked Corvair.
Hoffman rushed up. Mageau is retching in pain. Blood is flowing freely from his mouth. In such severe pain, Mike Mageau could say little as Hoffman knelt by him. He only said they had been shot and didn’t know who it was. Hoffman then got up and looked in the open window of the Corvair. Dee Ferrin was breathing, but only shallowly. He could see the holes in her arms and one in her side a few inches below her right armpit. He went around to the driver’s side. He saw no more bullet holes, but recoiled at the amount of blood splattered about in the car. Angered by the scene, Hoffman impatiently awaited other units.
Headlights quickly appeared through the stand of eucalyptus between the parking lot and Columbus Parkway. It was a plain car racing in. It pulled up behind Hoffman’s car and out jumped Sgt. Roy Conway of detectives. Hoffman confirmed both victims had been shot. Both were barely holding on. He suggested that Conway go back and tell Meyring and Lindemann the details, since they had stopped a suspicious car. Conway acknowledged and, after seeing the carnage for himself, pulled out. At that moment Officer Doug Clark pulled in from the north, from the Highway 80 direction.
. . .Excerpt from Chapter 3 Silence of the Peacocks from HorrorScope by Gian J. Quasar.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
I break the usual blog entry of investigation of crime and other world mysteries to drop a note on what will be my only comment on the recent Covid-19 epidemic and the belief that California’s low numbers could imply herd immunity already existed here in March 2020 when California was locked down.
First, it is necessary to remind my readers of the 10 Process Skills of Scientific Inquiry– Observe, Classify, Infer, Interpret, Measure, Predict, Questions and Hypotheses, Experiment, Model Building. Together these 10 process skills constitute Scientific Method. The brain cannot break this sequence. It is the process it follows when tackling any equation. This is why Einstein said that “Science is merely the refinement of everyday thinking.”
The first two, of course, are critical to proceeding correctly: Observe and Classify.
There are repeated and reliable reports from Californians that they had a strange virus starting last November. If it got bad enough they eventually went to the doctor. Doctors, as is their calling, comforted their patients and told them it is a virus and don’t worry, take the necessary precautions. In contrast to all the fearmongering today, doctors are the last to hype fear. Naturally, they could not know of a new virus. So the patient went home believing they had the seasonal flu.
There was no reason to condemn the classification upon the observation of virus symptomology.
But now in April 2020 the knowledge of a new virus is widespread and so are its symptoms. It is believed to have originated in or about Wuhan, China, sometime last autumn. Amazingly, based on reliable math taken from South Korean and Chinese studies, 25% of the people it infects show no symptoms. Up to 81 percent will show minor to moderate symptoms.
Mathematically speaking, this would mean many thousands would have the virus and not know it or have minor symptoms that require no medical visit. They would dismiss it as a minor cold. Within these thousands there would be those experiencing strong symptoms. After a week of this, it is usual that they then go to the doctor. Unaware of a new virus, the doctor would diagnosis this as “a virus.”
Such happened to my sister a week before Christmas 2019. She works in the financial sector of the California government in Sacramento. In adjacent offices and floors there are many others within the financial sector who travel a lot on seminars and tours, etc., for the government, including to China, returning last November. There is a lot of water-cooler contact and socializing. Just before Xmas a number of them get a virus. My sister doesn’t usually get sick, and this was the worst thing she had. It didn’t affect her nose or throat really– she got a fever and a cough. The day after Xmas she goes into her doctor– it is a virus. “It’s only been a week,” he told her comfortingly. For my sister that is an enormous amount of time to be sick.
I have not had a cold for 5 years, and I dread chest colds– my lungs are my weak point. But I finally get something minor from my sister. This thing only glances off me, though wrecks my sister. I notice some minor symptoms and relax for a day or two. She’s Type A blood. I’m Type O. They say Type O is hit the least with Covid-19. Perhaps.
Two weeks before my sister is hit with this virus, our neighbor– Italian, 75, smokes– is hit really hard for weeks with a chest cold. In January, our other neighbor, 81, a retired nurse, has pneumonia. They wipe it out with really good antibiotics. A week later she develops a fever and then a deep cough, much different than the pneumonia cough. By early February she is much better.
We are only half a mile from the convalescent home that saw the first death assigned to Covid-19 in Sacramento county. Several other people there were diagnosed with Covid-19.
Experiences such as these are not limited to my immediate contacts. In general Californians started talking amongst themselves about similar experiences. My sister learned that a friend of hers had it really bad and it wiped out his whole office before Xmas. A friend in London told me he and his wife had something strange before Xmas, and a Scottish barrister now informs me that his wife travels a lot and returned home to Scotland last November from none other than Wuhan. She developed a bad virus; he caught it to a lesser degree a few days later, and then several of her workmates.
The above and many more examples are mere observations. The initial classification was that of a flu. In light of Covid-19, the suspicion is that the virus was here in California (and Britain) earlier than the first “confirmed” case in late January. Since the incubation period could be up to 2 weeks, and then a week before the patient goes to see the doctor, California’s first confirmed cases of late January 2020 could have contracted it in late December 2019.
The first cases reported were those where travelers suspected they might have it, and therefore went to the doctor. But then a case turns up in Santa Clara that cannot be traced. It is declared the first community transferred case. But no one knows from whom this person got Covid-19. In late January the chat about the media was that it is just now coming here from China, but this was based on the rather simplistic equation it had to come here on a straight flight from Wuhan.
It stands to reason, however, at the present time, that Covid-19 spread much earlier and didn’t have to come here direct on a flight from Wuhan. If 25% percent of those infected are asymptomatic carriers, how many had been traveling within and without China months before China even discovered there was an issue? It is the narrative to condemn China for the hiding the virus, but logically it must have been around for a while before a pattern of deaths called even their attention to it in December.
Since the Process Skills can only be manipulated by logic, it is a legitimate induction to operate under the interpretation that coronavirus of the Covid-19 strand was here in California much earlier, infecting tens of thousands with no symptoms, many others with minor symptoms they dismissed, and then vexing others with symptoms diagnosed as flu. Many may even have died, and it was written up to the flu or pneumonia, since the medical profession would not be able to specially test for a virus China had not yet disclosed and no other nation suspected existed.
Developing an hypothesis along these lines would require predictions. Such a model would predict that California would have much lower numbers of active cases after the virus has become known, which is one fact that continues to fuel the interpretation above. To follow the general induction, the following predictions would also be made by this model at this time:
1, Once relieved of lockdown, California sees no real spike in Covid-19 cases.
2, the extent to which California was infected by Covid-19 could only be revealed by antibody tests, which confirm someone has had the virus.
3, Antibody tests in those who had been sick last November and December that show Covid-19 antibodies would be a powerful indicator that the virus was here much earlier than the first confirmed case in late January. Since Mathematic Probability is a law of science, those noting they had been sick last year have to be mathematically considered as a separate stat. A large number of people would preclude the deduction that they were all asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19 at a later date in 2020.
By the way, anecdotal is scientific evidence. It is a part of Observe and Classify, from which Inferences and Interpretations must be made. Again, Science is a method of investigation by which houses of knowledge are built. Its conclusions are tried and repeated and found to be correct. It is then an established fact and not a theory. This end result is now called “Science,” and these discoveries are placed within houses of knowledge– geology, cosmogony, biology, etc. Science is from Latin scientia, meaning “to know.”
Obviously, it is too early to speak dogmatically to what extent Covid-19 spread in California. But it is a rational inferences from the observed data of oral testimony and mathematic percentages, and from these the interpretation is that it was here much earlier must be pursued to be confirmed or refuted. Antibody tests would prove critical in determining this.
Unfortunately, “Science” as a word is used incorrectly in the popular forum to denote some isolated fact rather than the method that uses this fact to build a complete and accurate whole structure. A single observation is merely a factoid, and then incorrectly classified will only lead to anti-thesis, anti-knowledge, and anti-science. “Science” is also often used heretically to declare some immoveable status quo, when in truth Science as investigative method is forever in motion, forever advancing to confirm and discover in the upward momentum of progress. “I stand on the shoulder of giants,” declared Newton. Knowledge builds upon knowledge. It never stops except in closed minds.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
Interpretation of evidence is what causes investigators to take certain pathways or refuse to do so. One of the critical bits of disputed evidence in the Zodiac case are the bloody latent fingerprints found in certain locations on and in Paul Stine’s taxi cab. They can lead or dangerously mislead.
The Zodiac Killer murdered Stine point blank with a 99 millimeter on the night of October 11, 1969. There is more than one interpretation as to how Zodiac pulled this off– reenactments based on being in the back seat or in the front right seat (passenger’s), and whether it was at Washington and Cherry or Washington and Maple.
Some of these reenactments are based on what Zodiac was seen doing by the kids watching him across the street. He was seen sitting in the front passenger seat rummaging through Stine’s pockets while the victim was slumped over his lap. Then he pushed him upright and wiped off certain parts of the cab’s dashboard. He was seen to exit the cab and reported to walk around to the driver’s side, open the driver’s door and pull Stine upright again, then wipe off the dashboard some more.
The kids watched from these windows.
Bloody fingerprints were found on the outside driver’s side door frame, where you’d expect someone to touch it when holding it open or closing it. Then Zodiac walked casually away, through the inverted cone of downward street light and into the darkness of Cherry Street, heading north toward Jackson and the Presidio.
The problems with this recounting is that none of it fits with the actual SFPD evidence and report. It is based on the later statement of a couple of the kids at the slumber party. To wit:
“At this time, Lindsey went downstairs to get a better look at what was happening, while one of the kids upstairs called the police. Downstairs, the lights were off, so Lindsey knew he could not be seen from the outside. He got close to the window and watched his actions. He was shortly joined by Rebecca. They both watched and observed in silence as Zodiac pushed the driver to an upright position behind the steering wheel, exited the car and walked around the rear of the car and opened the driver’s door. Stine had fallen over onto the seat and Zodiac pulled him back up into the seated position and had some difficulty keeping him upright. Once upright, he was seen to have a rag, or something like a handkerchief and began to wipe down the door area and leaning over the driver, part of the dashboard. When he was finished, Zodiac calmly walked to Cherry St. and walked north”.
The kids’ point of view. The white car with black top is parked where Stine’s cab was found that night.
The problems with this statement are enormous. It makes no sense for Zodiac to want Stine found sitting upright, and it is contradicted by the evidence. Stine’s body was found laying sprawled out over the passenger side area of the front seat of the cab. His head hung over the seat almost touching the floorboard, and his arms were over his head. Blood had pooled over the road.
A dead body artificial set upright at the steering wheel is not going to slump slowly over and take this flung out position.
A dead body in the upright position at the driver’s wheel cannot slump over and attain this position on its own, especially with the arms flung over him and his shirt pulled up over his stomach. This is how the responding officers found him. This is how he was photographed by forensics.
There’s two answers to explain this:
1, the kids’ later accounts are totally inaccurate. Zodiac did not open the driver’s side door to pull up the body.
2, someone came and contaminated the scene before the responding officers arrived. The officers insisted no one had touched the scene after they had arrived, but . . . before?
We have to face the fact that Zodiac doesn’t seem stupid enough to leave bloody fingerprints on the victim’s cab, especially in avoidable places like the outer driver’s side door.
Despite some of the literature on the subject, it is obvious that SFPD came to doubt the viability of the bloody fingerprints. One famous vignette in the books underscores this. Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong tested Leigh Allen’s hand printing– this clearly indicates a building lack of faith in the prints. When they found out he was an ambidexter, they continued to suspect him, thinking for a time he might have fooled them.
With time stories have become more elaborate; some like the above account of Zodiac trying to position the body are egregiously untenable when compared to the actual hardcore evidence.
So far, the only reliable evidence is handwriting. Ballistics can be used to trace guns, but first the police must have a suspect in order to locate his guns for testing.
It has been close to 2 years since DNA was taken from a Zodiac stamp, and yet there has been no tracing of him in the genealogical databases. It is close to one year since I finally obtained such matching hand writing on Steve and submitted him officially. I had promised not to publicly confirm him as Zodiac until an official announcement. I had mentioned he would not be easily traceable in the databases– there had been an adoption. Two years of silence would seem to reflect this forewarning.
In our next Zodiac post, we will discuss this further.
* * * Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.
