An open question to the house, really: even though I have all manner of books and papers relating to other cipher mysteries, it struck me as odd a few days ago that I have next to nothing on the Zodiac Killer that I’d consider any sort of capsule library on the subject.
Despite his love of Americana, the section on the Zodiac Killer in Craig Bauer’s Unsolved is no more than a starting point (and that whole strand didn’t really end too well, in my cryptological opinion).
Conversely, I’m not sure I have enough pinches of salt to consume Robert Graysmith’s meisterwerken on the subject. Or is that just par for the whole Crazy Golf course, a necessary initiation of pain so you have been through the same awfulness as everyone else?
What I want is a Zodiac Killer book that sensibly describes each of the confirmed murders, the messages he definitely sent and all of the extant evidence (e.g. stamps, hairs, saliva, fingerprints, palmprints, DNA): and also discusses the murders that Zodiac claimed but didn’t carry out himself, and the messages attributed to him but which very probably weren’t by him.
But is this just too dreamily rational and sensible to hope for?
I think what you’re looking for is “The Zodiac Killer: Just the Facts.”
It’s written with attention to detail, solid citations, dry British humour, and not one bit of fantastical speculation.
There’s nothing else out there like it. Sadly, its utter lack of pandering to the masses with delusional content will keep it from ever seeing the big screen.
The book apparently hasn’t been released yet. In fact, I think publication may be another couple of years away, but it’s to be written by a chap named Nick Pelling.
Bill: 😉
Just the facts: Nearly all of the facts are in the archives of the California State Police . They rarely respond to queries. Y’all are just going to have to wait until the statutes of limitations have expired for any particular event which involves any State review.
bd
I’ve heard the Kelleher/Van Nuys book is rather factual, but I suppose there is a bit of theorizing when it comes to their conclusions about the killer’s profile:
http://www.amazon.com/This-Zodiac-Speaking-Serial-Killer/dp/031336138X/
Haven’t gotten around to reading it yet though.
Also haven’t read Mark Hewitt’s first book but I also heard it is rather factual, despite being a long setup (over the course of 3 books) for his ideas about the killer’s identity:
http://www.amazon.com/Hunted-Zodiac-Murders-Revised-Serial/dp/0990857573/
I have a feeling Rodelli’s book has a lot of factual info about the crimes, but it may be colored by his conclusions about the killer’s identity:
http://www.amazon.com/Hunt-Zodiac-Inconceivable-Double-Notorious-ebook/dp/B0786RL7RC/
You might be better off relying on original police reports, and interviews with investigators such as those in the “This is the Zodiac Speaking” supplement to the Fincher movie. There are also a lot of original news reports you could use as sources, although they sometimes got things wrong or published contradictory info. But even the police reports sometimes have contradictory info. And the interviews with investigators sometimes turn up contradictions, especially when the interviews have happened many years after the crimes occurred.
Oh! I completely forgot about this:
https://www.amazon.com/CASE-ZODIAC-KILLER-Photographs-Criminology-ebook/dp/B079ZMX2N6/
Those guys did a very good rundown of all the facts of the case in podcast form, then turned the transcripts into a book.
Dave: thanks very much for these! 🙂
As an aside, the three key evidential areas that have bothered me recently are Donna Lass (I don’t believe the link), the Albany letter (errrm… I don’t believe the link), and the Paul Stine murder (a strange, apparently unplanned rage killing). I feel like I’m missing something big with all the evidence, particularly the relationship between the murders and the letters, not all of which are genuine. :-/
I’m not too familiar with the details of the document examinations, but many of the letters were authenticated as genuine Zodiac communications at the time by document examiner Sherwood Morrill. But he has made some controversial judgments, such as apparently being absolutely sure the Bates letters were the work of Zodiac. It’s probably fairly safe to say that a certain subset of the letters are genuine and certain evidentiary things link them together such as the pieces of Stine’s bloody shirt which Zodiac included with two different letters. But he wasn’t consistent with the level of evidence he provided to try to establish himself as the killer AND the author of the letters.
It would be good to take an inventory of all the case reports and extract the conclusions made by the various document examiners such as Morill and the others in the FBI. Handwriting analysis is so dodgy to begin with, but even so, many of the letters look so much like each other it’s hard to believe they are not written by the same perpetrator.
Dave O: all the same, I’ve read that obsessive Zodiac “enthusiasts” (for want of a better word) sent fake Zodiac letters to the police, and they might well have made tolerably good simulacra. So we can’t necessarily rely on quality as a defining feature.
Similarly, there’s no guarantee that Zodiac was responsible for even 20% of the kills he claimed as his own and/or were believed to be his. As a result, it may be a lot harder to eliminate suspects than is generally thought.
Anyway, I now have lots of books to order, thanks! 🙂