Zodiac Killer/Avatar

[ethsnafu]

It's definitely a very enigmatic case. It ranks up their with Jack The Ripper and The Black Dahlia in terms of intrigue and mystery for me. I really enjoyed the Zodiak film by David Fincher and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. If I recall rightly, they presented a suggestion as to who the killer might be and the film was based on the actual case films from the original investigation.

Eth

[Earthnut]

I enjoy reading about killers that have been caught, there's more information about them. One of the all-time worst is Albert Fish. I have this very repulsive dislike for him and here's why.

[ethsnafu]

Yep, that's a pretty good reason to loathe him. I find Fred and Rosemary West revolting individuals. I read a book about their crimes and had to pause quite a few timers to consider whether or not I should continue reading it.

Eth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_West

[BillQS]

Robert Graysmith made a career out of trying to pin the Zodiac murders on Arthur Leigh Allen, dogging the guy from one dead-end job to another, hounding him to "confess". This despite the fact that fingerprint and DNA evidence rule out Allen as the Zodiac killer. When the initial DNA evidence came out from the saliva on the stamps from the Zodiac letters and it ruled out Allen, Graysmith made the bizarre allegation that Allen had collected someone else's spit in the anticipation that years later police would eventually develop DNA testing.

Not that ALA was a great guy or anything, he would never have topped my list of dinner guests, but basically Graysmith and the area police spent 15 years persecuting someone who all reliable evidence indicates could not have been the Zodiac killer.

[MovieMaker]

well spotted M.....the differences are in the design of the ensignia...the Zodiac had what looked to be a circle puncuated on all four sides by perpendicular lines that bisected...Avatar only had the one line across the circle...and also the real Zodiac had a square hood, the Avatar had a rounder one...

as a sidebar, my father (civilian in the armed forces) used to travel a lot for his job. There used to be, or still is, a naval shipyard in Vallejo where the government used to send him for up to 20 weeks at a time to work on the Terrior Talos missle tracking systems...during the reign of the Zodiac, he was sent to Vallejo for a period of nearly 40 straight weeks. When he would come back on the weekends, he used to tell us that he had never been anywhere (and lordy did he travel) where the fear was so palpable and where everyone, from the rich to the poor were so nervous that you could not find a gun for sale anywhere within a 100 mile radius of Vallejo...it was most certainly a very tense time...

4th Horseman...

this is an interesting story, we shot there for the end episode of Millennium Apocalypse. Your father might recognize it.

[Guest Wepwawet]

I didn't know much at all about the Zodiac case - other than that it was unsolved - until I saw the most excellent film a couple of years ago, and watched the adjoining documentaries and interviews.

What also intrigued was the similarity in the real case to the fictional habits of the Scorpio Killer in the movie Dirty Harry - which was released at about the same time - including the fictional psycho's threat to take out a school bus.