The Zodiac Killer Was Not As Brilliant As You Think (And Why He Has Not Been Caught)

There are a LOT more references that I can bring up and even decoding I have looked at with the brand guides I have access to and a lot of it lines up. It is really just a hobby for me but I have amassed a lot of information on it over the years which have lead me to believe what I believe.

I think this is more evidence that this guy was pretty smart. I don't agree with the OP that he had a poor education.

a reply to: Restricted

Here is a bit more to wet the appetite....Tim Holt son: Lance Randolph Holt...initials carved on desk at the school were RH. Lance was the child of Tim's first failed marriage and oldest son. He adored his father and would have been on his sets on ranches many times. He would have traveled all over CA to the RKO studio ranches. Tim's father, Jack Holt, was more famous than Tim and had a Studebaker contract for ads....a studebaker was what was reportedly driven by the Zodiac when he was seen on Riverside Dr.

There are OOODLES of things that link the Holt family to Zodiac, but I live in GA and all of these things are in CA so all I can do is ask for records and internet sleuthing.....

Either way, if you start down the Holt connection path for yourself, it never ends......

I have some reading to do. Many thanks, Vasa.

Interesting thread.

I wouldn't read too much into the spelling / grammar though. I'm college educated and have been an advertising copywriter for a decade - I still make mind bogglingly simple spelling / grammar errors sometimes.

I imagine it comes from focusing on the next word and being careless with the one at hand!

I have even gotten in touch with Tims other children/grandchildren from the time and none of them could tell me anything about Lance Randolph Holt. He was in the armed forces, as were many in that day, but he, along with both his father and grandfather were in the airforce which all used Wingwalker shoes at that time and all were issued the Zodiac military glasses we have all seen in the pics.

Here is a pic of Holt at one of his gigs after he failed as an actor. This was around 1967 I believe....notice the glasses and crew cut?



Holt was also famous for being the only film star of the time to wear gloves in his movies and smoke. Oddly, Zodiac is believed to have worn gloves and cigarette butts were found at multiple Zodiac sites that were believed to be from Zodiac....one such being used as some of the forensic evidence for testing the later letters.

Again.....just me connecting a lot of dots but there is a ton of evidence and too many coincidences in this case for the Zodiac not to be either someone that knew Holt very closely and personally or was part of the family.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I note that his build is consistent with a witness description. He is fairly short and stocky.

Here is an example of the Brand Guide that got me looking a lot more into the brand books of the time:



Notice the similarity of the brand on the cow on the right to the Zodiac symbol used in this card:



After I saw that I began researching all the brand books in Oklahoma and California I could find. What I found leads me to believe, as I said before, that the book the Zodiac was using for symbols was a hybrid to the actual printed ones. Not every ranch had their "brand" in a book, and Zodiac seemed to use symbols from more than one area as well as some mining symbols, so like I said, a hybrid.

originally posted by: Restricted
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I note that his build is consistent with a witness description. He is fairly short and stocky.

And small hands.....not saying he is Zodiac, but if someone was imitating him or was a relative of his....like I said....this is a hobby for me and I would be far from ever stating someone is the Zodiac Killer without KNOWING it. That being said, there are WAY too many coincidences for me not to believe that Zodiac was not somehow connected to Holt on a very close, possibly personal level.

Oh, another large part of the connection with Brand Books for me is that Tim's father Jack Holt, also a famous actor, also enlisted in the US Army in WW2 in order to become a horse buyer for the US Cavalry....brand books would be heavily leaned on for this purpose.

That and they owned ranches and worked on mines. Tim had a ranch in Oklahoma and worked on ranches for sets and whatnot all over CA.

a reply to: WarminIndy

Anton Levay, surpisingly enough, went to the SFPD with a name of a suspect that to this day the name he gave them hasn't been released. I believe he gave them Van Best and didn't take Lavey seriously, wonder why. Lol.

Best had more than a passing relationship with Anton Lavey (founder of the Church of Satan) and even ensured his second marriage took place on 6/6/66 (known by Satanists as Year One of the Age of Satan). At one point, LaVey contacted SFPD telling them that he believed one of his “parishioners” might be the Zodiac killer. To date, the police detective has refused to divulge the name LaVey gave him.

source

I don't believe this case will ever be solved, for a number of reasons. Protecting their own (the wife of the SFPD agent assigned to the case had a child with Van Best and Lavey gave the SFPD a name that may very well have been the zodiac and saved some lives.)

My moms best friend's brother was one of the victims and she served as a bridesmaid in my parents wedding. My parents knew both of the victims of one attack and I grew up seeing the impact this had on their lives. I've only seen my dad cry a few times and most of those were when a show aired about the murders. They'd watch but I could tell it was hard for them to do that.

I hope the case is solved and the family's can have some answers.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I happen to know that the brands currently used on wild mustangs are Masonic. Are the military brands also Masonic?

a reply to: Restricted

No...maybe some of the brands you see on any farm animal are masonic, but there are MANY more than what masonic systems would have....thousands of them and mostly related to specific ways a certain letter is turned or positioned etc...there is a VERY specific way of reading brands when you see them.

a reply to: WarminIndy

Greetings- I worked at one of the police departments that investigated the Zodiac and actually did a search warrant at one of the suspect's house. You might check Your "facts" because at the time during these murders Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Vallejo, Ca.) was operational and didn't close until 1992. Arthur Leigh Allen also lived for a brief period in Sonoma County and worked at Friedman Bros. (a tool/farm/hardware store..) There is/was a I-Hop right on Tennessee St. catty-corner of Mr. Allen's house, if one continues west on Tennessee St. they'd run directly into Mare Island Shipyard

My cousin worked for Napa Sheriff's Office and is mentioned in Robert Graysmith's book as it re: to the Lake Berryessa murders..

originally posted by: ArchPlayer
I knew it was an inside job when the 2 policemen stopped the Killer (whom they claimed they couldn't clearly identify later) and he told them he saw a black guy running from the scene of the crime, and let the only car in the vicinity go! What the hell man?

Frisco PD knows who the hell did it, and I'm willing to bet its one of their own.

Bundy was caught. Gacy. Dahmer. The Unicorn Killer. Son of Sam. But not this one? Puleeze.

There are at least two versions of that story. In one, the cop says he stopped the guy and talked to him for a few seconds asking if he'd seen anyone suspicious. In the cop's other version, he never stopped the guy but saw him walking toward a house. The dispatcher, not the man in question, said the suspect was black. Even after that was cleared up, the house was not searched. There's also a time problem in the scenario. The time it took the cop to make the search loop and get back to the starting point doesn't make sense. There's also a question about whether he told the lead cop at that point that he had seen or questioned someone. Apparently, there was a rookie cop with the other cop. I don't recall reading that he was questioned by anyone as to whether he could corroborate the other cop's story. Teenagers in a an upper story of a building across from where the cabbie was killed saw the killer and, if I recall correctly, their description did not match the newspaper sketch.

originally posted by: Restricted
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I note that his build is consistent with a witness description. He is fairly short and stocky.

Thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of men in that area at that time matched that description and wore glasses like that.

originally posted by: mattsawaufo
he put aircraft cement on his fingertips, I read that somewhere. He wouldn't have left fingerprints. Aviation or military or construction. Or he lied. He had to be gullible to be so fascinated with astrology. Military footprints are the biggest clue. I'm the same size 10 1/2 you could only buy those shoes on a military base or boots I mean surplus didn't sell them. Guy was still able to wear them same size years apart, so we know it was an adult cause the foot didn't grow. We know he wasn't overseas at certain times but was in the military. The reason this case was never solved was probably because the military wouldn't cooperate. Without that it's impossible to know and yes I was in the army they issue you everything, they know your shoe size they know how many centimeters tall you are they know your weight and footprints would give you a weight too. The footprints might also tell if you're flatfooted which is something else the military would have on record we know he traveled to California or lived there, if you've ever been to california you know you have to stop at the border. So he either hopped on an airplane to california or got stopped at one of the border inspection stationsor he lived there and he's an adult not a military brat and he was so many pounds heavy and he has access to aircraft cement and add that all up and you've found the guy. The military probably executed him in secret or gave him a secret trial or both. The murders stopped for some reason. Or they protected him, everything wasn't computerized back then so it's possible they never even looked into it because of the records it would require looking through.
Maybe he kept killing somewhere else whenever he moved or after police questioned him but the killing stopped for some reason, that's another clue either he moved or was questioned or they were getting close.

You're assuming that those shoes would be absolutely unavailable to anyone else and that's simply not true. Someone who had a pair might have given them to a relative or friend or died and they were given away, sold at a yard sale, second-hand store, etc.

The killings stopped in that area. That doesn't mean he didn't move and kill elsewhere. He also could have been imprisoned for another crime, become hospitalized, incapacitated or died. Someone smart enough to avoid capture after multiple killings would have been smart enough to realize that he would leave footprints at some of the crime scenes and select shoes accordingly. In other words, he might have intentionally selected shoes he didn't ordinarily wear.

The same goes for the handwriting style and misspellings (which others mentioned). It doesn't take a genius to realize that if you don't want to get caught you don't write in your normal handwriting and you make spelling errors appropriate to the impression you want to create. Also, let's not forget that he was mentally ill (aren't all serial killers?). Some of his word choices might have reflected strange ideas he had that would make no sense to a normal person.

originally posted by: JimNasium
a reply to: WarminIndy

Greetings- I worked at one of the police departments that investigated the Zodiac and actually did a search warrant at one of the suspect's house. You might check Your "facts" because at the time during these murders Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Vallejo, Ca.) was operational and didn't close until 1992. Arthur Leigh Allen also lived for a brief period in Sonoma County and worked at Friedman Bros. (a tool/farm/hardware store..) There is/was a I-Hop right on Tennessee St. catty-corner of Mr. Allen's house, if one continues west on Tennessee St. they'd run directly into Mare Island Shipyard

My cousin worked for Napa Sheriff's Office and is mentioned in Robert Graysmith's book as it re: to the Lake Berryessa murders..

Thank you for correcting that.

As you served the search warrant for a suspect, are you able to share why the person was no longer a suspect?

originally posted by: Tangerine

originally posted by: Restricted
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I note that his build is consistent with a witness description. He is fairly short and stocky.

Thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of men in that area at that time matched that description and wore glasses like that.

That's very true.

Even the posters of D.B. Cooper look like Bobby Darrin to me.

originally posted by: WarminIndy

originally posted by: dollukka
a reply to: WarminIndy

Let's take someone who has Asperger, person with Asperger doesn´t care about unimportant word`s grammar, but even then his IQ might be above average.
What about Gaikowsky ? LINK
hand writing
Postcard

I doubt that serial killer would use same writing angle or same hand for writing.. so who knows if any of the samples meets handwriting of a normal life.

He was anti-police and proviolence.

I saw the documentary about Gaikowsky. Yes, we have to look at every angle, I agree.

Certainly he could have had Asperger's.

If it were Gaikowsky, then that would give credence to the Germanic elements. But it doesn't answer for the Japanese element, perhaps a relative of Gaikowsky?

The other thing is that no one has seen the costume since that time. It may be in someone's attic now, who knows? Gaikowsky makes sense as far as Neo Nazi, however, we shouldn't accuse him of that without evidence.

Gaikowski was the editor of a small counter-culture newspaper that advertised "The Mikado" (Japanese connection). For those who don't know, the Mikado was the "Lord High Executioner". The newspaper also made references to the Zodiac in odd ways. Read about Gaikowski at length at zodiakkiller.com. (not just the linked profile, but the more detailed discussions, too.) One of the very serious researchers who owns and posts on that site became friends with one of the detectives on the case and claims that, shortly before his death, the detective said that Gaikowski was at "the painting party" at one of the victim's (Ferrin's) houses. IF true, that, combined with all the other links between Gaikowski and the killings, would put him firmly at the top of the suspect list. No other suspect has links to the victims like he did. Gaikowski often signed things as "Gaik", "Gike" and "Gyke". Without using any contortions such as using letters from multiple lines, reversing letters, etc. to produce a suspect name, "Gyke" appears, plain as day, in one of the ciphers.

Anyone with access to newspapers, a library, and possessing a reasonable intellect could find books about codes and astrology and could have written the letters. Tens of thousands of men in that area would have matched the crew cut/stocky/glasses profile. Any number of them could have killed one of the victims. But very, very few, maybe only one, would have links to multiple victims across multiple jurisdictions. That's Gaikowski.