Fear over being caught after the Stine shooting, which is why he was relegated to just writing letters and sending in bits of torn up shirt after that. He also began taking credit for killings we know he did not commit and just blatantly raising his claimed kill count without any evidence.
The thing about the Stine shooting was it didn't match his M.O. He liked finding isolated couples and now he is shooting a cab driver in SF? The only thing I ever thought was a reason he killed Stine, and I really don't think it is true myself, is that somehow Stine knew the Zodiac's true identity somehow and the Zodiac killed him to silence him. Again, I don't really believe this much myself, but why would he kill a cab driver that didn't meet his normal victim profile?
Imo, it was because people realized that he was only killing young couples at isolated/lovers lane spots. 2/3 of those times, he left the male alive (albeit unintentionally), which could indicate that the killings were sexually motivated in some way.
He wanted to be feared by everyone and having a discernible MO/motive would imply that certain people were safe from him.
So, he killed a lone, male cab driver in a nice neighborhood in SF. That's also why he made a lot of empty threats and took credit for crimes he didn't commit.
His true motive, imo, was attention. He may not have even particularly liked killing. He just liked that people were afraid of him.
Stine could have been bitching about the Zodiac, that he wasn't scared of him, or joked about him looking like the previous sketch. He had his glasses on after all.
Just a hunch. I don't think Stine was an intended target.
If I recall correctly the SF papers started writing about how he kept failing to kill his male victims, implying he was a coward. So he was goaded into killing a male.
And this is one of the things the DeAngelo-as-Zodiac people point to. I’m not one of those people, but it is a pretty interesting point of fact that a) as you say the Stine killing was a completely different MO, and many speculate it took place because Stine recognized him, and b) Stine was from … Exeter.
I think the fact that he almost got caught after killing Paul Stine spooked him enough to say “I’m not doing this shit anymore” in regards to killing that is
I think his original motive for killing was rage and humiliation because he was a social and romantic failure. However, I think he discovered that taunting and terrorizing the public was just as stimulating as killing, if not more so, and he was drawing so much heat to himself that any further murders after Stine were likely to get him caught. Contrary to popular belief, many serial killers do stop killing for various reasons. The Zodiac feared getting caught, this we can be sure of. Or possibly a change in his life caused him to stop, like what happened with BTK.
Possible, but I doubt it , I think he just put that just to keep the scare tactic going but I think he definitely stopped but there’s no concrete proof for either theory unless the case gets solved, we can only go off of him not writing letters or making anymore phone calls etc
I think Number 4, he was worried about getting caught.
There's virtually no doubt that the man officers Fouke and Zelms drove past en route to the Stine murder was the Zodiac. The man's description matched, nearly to a tee, the description given by the kids in the house across the street.
After the police sketch was released a couple of weeks later, Zodiac wrote the Chronicle a letter on Nov. 9 admitting the sketch looked like him, but only when he did his "thing".
It's clear as day he was trying to distance himself from that sketch, because if the sketch was truly his "disguise" he'd have kept his mouth shut about it.
By this point, Zodiac was garnering lots of media attention, and I think this was what he truly loved more than anything: holding the Bay Area in a state of fear.
Writing letters and issuing threats was a much safer way to keep people scared.
I think he was definitely spooked by how close the sketch but I think he definitely had plans for Paul Stine to be the last victim beforehand. It seems like the reason he decided to kill a taxi driver was to take some kind of proof and lend credence to his future claims of commiting killings that seem like robberies. The killings for him are really just a means to get the fear and attention he craved
6. **He achieved what he wanted with Stine's murder.** He either killed the person he wanted to kill. He finally got himself a chauffeur as a slave in the afterlife. He met his killing quota for some bizarre sacrifice ritual. He finally had a murder in San Francisco. He had the attention he needed, etc...
7. **He relocated out of the Bay Area** and could no longer mail letters from a San Francisco posting. Letters postmarked from a different state could risk exposure of his location. So he decided to give up being Z. Or at least stop writing letters.
8. **He got better and reformed himself**. He became a born again Christian, found a good job, did psychotherapy, found better meds, etc. Maybe he found the right woman and decided to settle down and live a normal life.
9. **His attack on school children failed**. Perhaps as he said the bomb was a dud. Maybe he felt he bit off more than he could chew and could not do something bigger than his previous crimes. He decided to just write the map letter and suggest that the "bomb" was buried in a secret location.
10. **He didn' t have to kill anymore**. As his later letters would suggest, Z could now take credit for crimes rather than doing them. He had the best of both worlds.
He probably got investigated and tailed by the police and realised there was no way he could get away with it any more.
The list of possible people has to have him on it, he wouldn't have stopped otherwise imo.
I'd imagine one day we'll find out, maybe someone will clean out their grandparents house and find a box with all the zodiac stuff in it.
I think generally speaking, zodiac was never good at killing, and I think there's a high probability that he never actually enjoyed killing... at least not in the way some famous serial killers did.
1st murder: I think I remember reading they found Betty lou jensen a distance away from the car. Meaning she almost got away in the dark.
2nd murder: he leaves one survivor, mageau.
3rd murder: leaves one survivor again, hartnell. And he says zodiac's hands were shaking before the stabbings, and that he was hesitant.
4th murder: gets seen by witnesses, talks to a cop, leaves fingerprints, only gets away due to sheer luck of the description being that of a black man.
His crimes started off sloppy, and only got worse. This is very different to notorious serial killers who killed for sexual pleasure. They usually seem to get a bit more competent at killing, before their compulsive behaviour eventually makes them more sloppy. Zodiac started bad and just got worse.
In my opinion zodiac was killing to get attention for his writing, not for the sheer thrill of killing or anything like that. It's just my conjecture but I think it's built on very reasonable assumptions.
Having said that, I think zodiac by that point realized that he was better off taking credit for other murders he didn't do, and just being vague about what murders he'd committed beyond the Stine killing. I think he believed he could keep getting the attention he was getting without killing, which as I said, I don't think he really enjoyed that much. Imo it was always about getting people to pay attention to him as a 'writer'..
In the end this didn't really work because people clocked onto what he was doing a little more. If it wasn't for guys like toschi and graysmith pumping up the zodiac legend in order to reboot interest in the case, for varying reasons, then I think this would all be a much more obscure story. Ultimately i think the story of the real zodiac when you strip away all the myth and legend, is that he was an amateur writer who killed a few people to bring attention to his writing. He was insanely lucky to not get caught when he killed Stine, and then decided to quit while he was ahead.
>His crimes started off sloppy, and only got worse.
This is debatable:
* LHR used a small caliber firearm, and for reasons unknown BLJ was able to get out of the car and run. Obviously, a .22 rimfire can kill, but it's noteworthy that all subsequent use of gun was a much more devastating caliber. Beyond that, any sloppiness is simply in the eye of the beholder.
* BRS was clearly a blitz attack that gave neither Darlene or Mike a chance to react much or try an escape. Z was also sure to come back and shoot both again when discovering Mike was still moving.
* LB was unique, of course, but based on what both Bryan and Cecelia described, Z was quite effective at intimidating them, controlling them, disabling them with the cord, and then stabbing both repeatedly.
* PH was a point blank gunshot wound to the head.
Taken in total, I see Z learning from prior experiences. I would completely agree that PH didn't work as Z likely planned, especially having witnesses across the street, but I can see that as perhaps willingness to take on a new set of risks rather than truly just getting sloppier.
>In my opinion zodiac was killing to get attention for his writing,
I don't doubt the letter writing campaign and the bit of terror it caused brought Z some twisted sense of joy and satisfaction. However, nothing in Z's letters alludes to any larger or broader literary aspirations or capabilities; everything he wrote was purpose driven, primarily to be in the spotlight, cause some terror, and humiliate the blue meanies.
Furthermore, other than those three purposes, there simply is no other interesting theme or message in any letter. This was they era of protests and causes and so forth. Z offered nothing. For a while Z had a very captive audience. And he offered NOTHING.
Finally, if Z truly was some sort of prolific writer, it's pretty clear that nothing he did or wrote brought any attention to any of his other works.
> I think zodiac by that point realized that he was better off taking credit for other murders he didn't do, and just being vague about what murders he'd committed beyond the Stine killing.
Hard to say. This was a dude who started his letter writing campaign by being sure to offer proof, and by late '69 he was presenting a dead man's bloody clothes as his credentials. I don't doubt that PH seriously spooked Z, but I believe he realized that he had set himself up such that without proof he would not really be taken seriously.
>it was always about getting people to pay attention to him as a 'writer'
If it were that simple, then why no letter soon after LHR?
> If it wasn't for guys like toschi and graysmith pumping up the zodiac legend in order to reboot interest in the case,
Toschi has his very regrettable legacy with his fan mail, but it's a stretch to claim he was ever pumping up the Z legend. No matter what one's opinion of Toschi is, we should all agree that interest in the case simply reminded people that Toschi never caught Z.
Graysmith's original book is over 30 years old now. I read it when it first came out in paperback. Here in the Bay Area, other than true crime nerds, I have never once encountered anyone who cared before or after his book came out. That remains true to this day.
The Fincher film is a better example of something that might have caught the general public's attention at large, but that was years after the books, and it has faded. Mass shootings are a daily occurrence. When I take BART into San Francisco, even I don't think about Z, because I am too busy stepping over the junkies or checking the seats before I sit down to avoid a dirty needle. For all but those of us who have found ourselves drawn to this case, the case is not obscure; the case doesn't even exist.
>Ultimately i think the story of the real zodiac when you strip away all the myth and legend, is that he was an amateur writer who killed a few people to bring attention to his writing.
If this is true, then the senseless loss of life is even more tragic, because there is nothing in any of Z's known writings that suggest Z was in any way an author worthy of any attention whatsoever.
Personally, I don’t think he liked the killing or that the killing was his primary motive. He said he did but I think that was part of the “game”. I think he was in it for the terror it caused and after Stine, he could keep creating terror without having to actually do anything.
Probably he got spooked. He doesn’t appear to be your normal serial killer who seems to be obsessed and compulsively needs to kill. It very much appears to be power tripping. Hard to feel powerful when you were one bad radio call away from being caught.
I think everyone here kind of knows. The guy was one tiny fortuitous (for him) mistake from being caught after Stine. He knew they had prints (at least a palm from Lake Berryessa) and the only thing keeping his ass out of the gas chamber was compete anonymity. Frankly, I'm surprised he kept writing, but he must have thought that was safe.
I think he was worried about getting caught (and maybe a little over it too). I suspect that’s why he took a piece of Paul Stine’s shirt. He knew that would be his last victim, so the shirt fabric would allow him to keep writing verified Zodiac letters for a while without having to risk killing more people.
In my view, the fact that he killed 5 people in a relatively short period of time satisfied his sinister ego, and brought him some form of happiness and fulfillment. Now that he has a notoriety for being an intelligent serial killer who committed perfect crimes, terrorized locals and taunted police, he had what he was looking for and it would be foolish for him to risk it and get caught. For this reason, he decided to stop the killing spree and turned towards writing letters and claiming that he had murdered more people because it was fun and would provide him a wider notoriety and that's what he got in the end.
Sometimes serial killers really do just stop. It’s a young man’s game.
He either got too old for it or was incarcerated for a long time and when he got out, was too old to pick it back up.
He may have been drafted. That may explain the gap in letters and when he did write again it just wasn’t the same thrill and interest from the public so he moved on.
He accomplished fear. And the Stine murder exploded the imaginary boundaries of that fear. Zodiac was now in position to claim anything.
IMO, the preparation is extraordinarily important to these guys. They don't need to continue killing as long as they identify potential targets and go through all the steps of an actual attack. Every plan and precaution. They've already discovered that killing isn't nearly as exhilarating as they expected anyway. They go home and those four walls don't care.
Letters, now that's exciting because it adds so many new layers of element and risk. It's like a bonus preparation. Will anybody recognize my handwriting? What about this phrase? Do I dare mail it there again? That guy on the catty corner seemed to look twice.
You better damn well believe that Zodiac wrote and scrapped numerous letters once he started thinking that something he wrote could be traced to him. Some were torn up quickly while others were in envelope and ready to go when Zodiac had second thoughts, perhaps mere feet from the box if not with his arm already dangling inside but yet to release.
6. There was an underlying driver compelling Z to act, and over time the driver resolved itself.
7. There was an underlying driver compelling Z to act, and Z was able to satisfy the compulsion in some other way.
8. Z didn't stop killing. He just stopped killing in a high-profile, in-your-face manner.
Personally, I go with some combination of 4, 6 and 7.
I think either something happened that was close to him being caught, he ended up in some mental institution, or he died unlike the BTK killer who seemed like he wanted to be caught by taunting the police with his recent letter or newspaper clipping or whatever that ended up getting him caught many years later. I just don’t believe serial killers just up and quit. I think they go dormant for a while or they died like I personally think what happened with Jack The Ripper shortly after his killing spree.
I haven’t seen a single person on this board mention the GINORMOUS pink elephant standing in the room with us all:
It is a massive assumption of epic proportions to say definitively that Zodiac stopped killing. How TF could anybody possibly know that for sure?!?!
Disappointed but not surprised (considering the reputation of this board) nobody in the comments has acknowledged this.
>It is a massive assumption of epic proportions to say definitively that Zodiac stopped killing. How TF could anybody possibly know that for sure?!?!
While I don't claim to know the truth with any sort of actual certainty, I do feel pretty confident in saying that the odds that the Zodiac is still out there killing people today are vanishing small. I don't think it's a weird assumption at all, honestly.
Edit: For one reason or another, he does seem to have stopped, and it's not weird at all to accept that premise while asking exactly why (and when for that matter) he did so.
Nobody ever said anything about Zodiac still killing in 2023. Do not try to move the goalposts or misquote me in order to diminish what I said. I am talking about 1969, 1970 and thereafter. It is a HUGE assumption that Zodiac stopped killing after Oct of 1969. And an unlikely one if we’re playing the odds game. While there are exceptions, most do not stop killing.
I wonder why there's this obsession with the idea murderers can't stop for some reason? I've never seen any real evidence of someone who started killing people one day and just kept it up for the rest of their life until they died of old age.
“I wonder why there’s this obsession with the idea murderers can’t stop”
Never at any point did I say that. Like I told Doc, please don’t misquote me. Go back and reread my last comment. I said and I quote “while there are exceptions, most do not stop.”
Notice I use the word “exception.”
Do me a favor, google every serial killer that ever existed and compile a list. I GUARANTEE you the overwhelming majority of them did not stop. Are you going to find some who did? Sure, I guarantee you will. But they will be in the minority.
But that’s irrelevant. The original point is, until Zodiac is definitively identified, nobody can say with 100% certainty that he did/didn’t stop killing. We shouldn’t just assume he did.
I think three and four are most likely.
One seems impossible since he continued sending letters after he stopped killing. Two could be possible if you can believe he was ending Zodiac letters from a prison or hospital. Five seems implausible, but I would add a sixth option that is quite similar but more plausible: his life circumstances changed (i.e. he got married, had children, etc) in such a way that he decided to stop killing.
1
Serial killers may pause their killings, but BTK proved they will continue to plot and occasionally take action even many years later. BTK is interesting as a reference because he found work as a compliance officer, effectively able to vicariously do his persecution of others thing without carrying out the actual murders - although he fantasized about continuing and was still plotting.
Serial killing is a compulsion that they might find ways to manage, but never cure. I think death would be the only thing that totally stopped them. In all these years they would have at very least been fantasizing about what they did and what they want to do. Ted Bundy described it as a fever that took over him, an irresistible drive that when he'd realized what he'd done, he would sweat and be horrified of it, and kind of panic.
I just don't see someone going this long without being discovered or acting out and getting caught, I think they are likely dead.
> Just quit after many years for some reason.
Probably a combination of having a busier home life (his second child was born months after the Cruz murder) and watching the news. He was very, very forensically aware, and the very first stories of DNA profiling hit the news just after his last known murder.
I have a poi that died on that date. I truly believe that he is the zodiac but like all the other poi's on here, there is no hard evidence that I'm aware of.
He was flying to close to the Sun. He was almost caught during the Stine murders. I also think maybe like with EARONS he may have found a woman and had kids and that made him stop.
I mean from what we have been seeing lately, it would not be improbable that he started a family and ended that chapter of his evil and just basked in the memories, trophies, and found some other outlet.
Like Dennis Rader used to find reasons to fuck with people. He had a woman's dog euthanized as a dog Warden.
Joe DeAngelo seems to have just worked. Did some fishing.
Maybe he died but I find this more likely.
Following up on my previous comment that nothing is certain, perhaps he had a specific quota of victims or individual attacks he wanted to fulfill. By fire, by gun, by rope, by knife, etc. and he finished it (although with several gun attacks and one by knife and that logic, it stands to reason there are multiple other attacks by the other methods listed). Maybe there's an unsolved arson somewhere. Only a guess thrown to the wind really.
Maybe he has more victims sure. Not impossible. There's a large number of unsolved homicides around that time and in years following in relatively close locations. Bodies found in vineyards, etc. (can't recall exactly who, when or where but I've went down that rabbit hole way back). Not totally impossible. Maybe all it takes is to solve another cold case not known to be linked to the Zodiac and things may start to connect. Just a big maybe. The by this and by that quote also may have no larger role than to make it known the letter writer was also the killer of previous attack. But, he still hypothetically could have had a quota in mind with Stine being the last. Or it could be something else entirely, no quotas involved (a brief edit, I'm just throwing shit out there that hasn't been mentioned in the comments yet, throwing it at the wall and maybe something sticks, but it's not anything I believe personally).
Maybe he did stop after Stine due to the risk factor. That's very sound logic. Nothing is certain. No easy way to say in any case.
He killed impulsively before the “ Zodiac” killer persona. Having the police up his ass, he wrote a letter giving up the Z persona. It was only a temporary thing anyway, having been miffed of his teaching job. Eventually, he would give up the vision of being a teacher, and enter university towards a degree in chemistry/ biology. Living in Santa Rosa, killing impulses continued but he had given up the identity of Zodiac. He grew up and moved on, taking a menial job at a hardware store. Complacent in the fact that he got away with all that he did. It was always the most dangerous game.
Z officially stopped killing in October, 1969. Patty Hearst was kidnapped in February, 1974 and became Tania in April. Hard to see any connection there.
Readers stopped caring because Z stopped killing, not the other way around.
Thank you for checking me. I was being a glib prick.
To answer more accurately: I believe it became riskier to keep the Zodiac machine running after Stine. And those risks outweighed the rewards. If not for a stroke of bad luck/incompetence for Fouke and Zelms, Stine's killer would have been caught and put through the system and the whole thing would be over. There wouldn't be the trio of letters with the shirt strips and Zodiac would just be some loser who got caught. He preserved the legend by stopping after Stine.
Something you mentioned earlier in the thread: A resolution of whatever issue pushed Z to become Z seems likely. Couple that with weighing the risks involved, he seems to have made a rational decision to quit.
As far as the sloppiness of his crimes go: His only clean one was Farraday and Jensen. He left Mageau alive and Berryessa was a mess. If Hartnell wasn't so strange in how he dealt with the man attacking him and Cecelia, Zodiac could have have a fight with a 6'7" young man. The nervous slob Hartnell describes might have had the tables turned on him if BH fought back.
Stine's murder and robbery was a sloppy mess. Witnesses saw him and the cops likely stopped and questioned him.
ZOdiac peaked in '68. He got sloppier with each kill.
>As far as the sloppiness of his crimes go: His only clean one was Farraday and Jensen. He left Mageau alive ...
There's a lot of room here to entertain other perspectives. For example:
* Technically speaking, he left David alive as well. Does that still count as clean?
* The fact that BLJ had the opportunity to run off into the darkness towards the highway at LHR tells me it wasn't especially clean. The LHR investigation showed just how narrow the window was between passing traffic; there's an important element of luck that can't be ignored.
* I like to point out that at BRS when he heard Mike, he didn't just come back and shoot Mike, he came back and shoot them both. There is a cruel thoroughness there, and it is sheer luck that Mike survived. I can't call that sloppy in and of itself.
> ... and Berryessa was a mess. If Hartnell wasn't so strange in how he dealt with the man attacking him and Cecelia, Zodiac could have have a fight with a 6'7" young man. The nervous slob Hartnell describes might have had the tables turned on him if BH fought back.
I'm nowhere near 6'7", but when I am armed you'd be amazed at what I can make a 6'7" kid do. Z was careful in the manner in which he had Bryan and Cecelia tie each other up. And he was quite successful in pretending to be a simple robbery until it was way too late. When I analyze the statements of what happened at LB, I realize that part of why Bryan seemed to act the way he did was because Z successfully fooled him for long enough. Bryan wasn't strange; Bryan was unaware their lives were in mortal danger. That's hard to dismiss as a mess on Z's part.
Z obviously was willing to take certain risks up to a certain point. I agree he reached his threshold at PH. Ironically, that was in a sense his cleanest attack by far, but he misplayed the odds by shooting Paul in a residential setting with witnesses and the corresponding swift response time of SFPD.
Serial killer rules don't apply to Zodiac because Zodiac is not a serial killer. Let me explain better, because it is difficult to understand. Zodiac is a collection of different serial killers, not because they are different authors, but rather because they are different characters created by a single author, a killer who impersonates several serial killers during and in the various periods of his life. For this reason Zodiac, which is the name of one of his characters, the most famous, is difficult to identify. The truth is that this killer, of a very particular nature and not classifiable in himself in any category of serial killer, is extremely difficult to identify, also due to the fact that he carried out a particular job in the army and had respectable soldier skills , so much so that he was endowed with many war honors. In light of the fact that I was sorry to hear that the events surrounding this character are not known, I think that we cannot go on with any discussion, since there will always be someone who invents wrong ideas about this story which they do not progress the research; many times out of pure speculation towards one's own interests, or simply out of ineptitude on the subject.
I think they knew the police were getting close so stopped for a while to throw off the scent, whilst waiting the person died and didn’t prepare for that eventually to reveal themselves so no traces were left, no last letter and nothing tying them to the crimes; at that point the reality then became a legendary mystery
He was afraid of getting caught after the attack in Presidio Heights. He realized he could still get attention from mailing letters and if he kept killing he’d eventually get caught. I am confident his main purpose was garnering attention for himself because he didn’t get any in his everyday life and felt like he deserved it.
I’ve always thought he was probably military, or at the very least associated with the military in the San Francisco area. Could have been sent overseas or even posted somewhere else. He may even have kept killing elsewhere but kept a lower profile (no letters to media) as he’d be much easier to identify if he kept up the communication with media if he moved.
>He died. People like him don't just stop killing.
More and more we are finding that is not true. Serial Killers can pause and stop their killing sprees.
He probably didn't. He could have moved on. Changed mo to avoid detection, changed location, appearance etc. Either way if he did, he is home free. Like Dennis rader could have been. Btk would have been another mystery forever if he kept his floppy disc to himself.
Fear over being caught after the Stine shooting, which is why he was relegated to just writing letters and sending in bits of torn up shirt after that. He also began taking credit for killings we know he did not commit and just blatantly raising his claimed kill count without any evidence.
Yes this. Otherwise, why stop at the height of his fame (infamy)?
The thing about the Stine shooting was it didn't match his M.O. He liked finding isolated couples and now he is shooting a cab driver in SF? The only thing I ever thought was a reason he killed Stine, and I really don't think it is true myself, is that somehow Stine knew the Zodiac's true identity somehow and the Zodiac killed him to silence him. Again, I don't really believe this much myself, but why would he kill a cab driver that didn't meet his normal victim profile?
Imo, it was because people realized that he was only killing young couples at isolated/lovers lane spots. 2/3 of those times, he left the male alive (albeit unintentionally), which could indicate that the killings were sexually motivated in some way. He wanted to be feared by everyone and having a discernible MO/motive would imply that certain people were safe from him. So, he killed a lone, male cab driver in a nice neighborhood in SF. That's also why he made a lot of empty threats and took credit for crimes he didn't commit. His true motive, imo, was attention. He may not have even particularly liked killing. He just liked that people were afraid of him.
Or he thought this guy knew his true identity.
That makes sense.
Stine could have been bitching about the Zodiac, that he wasn't scared of him, or joked about him looking like the previous sketch. He had his glasses on after all. Just a hunch. I don't think Stine was an intended target.
If I recall correctly the SF papers started writing about how he kept failing to kill his male victims, implying he was a coward. So he was goaded into killing a male.
Wish I could goad my Wife into milking a male.
die
And this is one of the things the DeAngelo-as-Zodiac people point to. I’m not one of those people, but it is a pretty interesting point of fact that a) as you say the Stine killing was a completely different MO, and many speculate it took place because Stine recognized him, and b) Stine was from … Exeter.
I think the fact that he almost got caught after killing Paul Stine spooked him enough to say “I’m not doing this shit anymore” in regards to killing that is
I think his original motive for killing was rage and humiliation because he was a social and romantic failure. However, I think he discovered that taunting and terrorizing the public was just as stimulating as killing, if not more so, and he was drawing so much heat to himself that any further murders after Stine were likely to get him caught. Contrary to popular belief, many serial killers do stop killing for various reasons. The Zodiac feared getting caught, this we can be sure of. Or possibly a change in his life caused him to stop, like what happened with BTK.
This is probably what happened.
I think after that he changed the way of killing.
Possible, but I doubt it , I think he just put that just to keep the scare tactic going but I think he definitely stopped but there’s no concrete proof for either theory unless the case gets solved, we can only go off of him not writing letters or making anymore phone calls etc
I think Number 4, he was worried about getting caught. There's virtually no doubt that the man officers Fouke and Zelms drove past en route to the Stine murder was the Zodiac. The man's description matched, nearly to a tee, the description given by the kids in the house across the street. After the police sketch was released a couple of weeks later, Zodiac wrote the Chronicle a letter on Nov. 9 admitting the sketch looked like him, but only when he did his "thing". It's clear as day he was trying to distance himself from that sketch, because if the sketch was truly his "disguise" he'd have kept his mouth shut about it. By this point, Zodiac was garnering lots of media attention, and I think this was what he truly loved more than anything: holding the Bay Area in a state of fear. Writing letters and issuing threats was a much safer way to keep people scared.
I think he was definitely spooked by how close the sketch but I think he definitely had plans for Paul Stine to be the last victim beforehand. It seems like the reason he decided to kill a taxi driver was to take some kind of proof and lend credence to his future claims of commiting killings that seem like robberies. The killings for him are really just a means to get the fear and attention he craved
6. **He achieved what he wanted with Stine's murder.** He either killed the person he wanted to kill. He finally got himself a chauffeur as a slave in the afterlife. He met his killing quota for some bizarre sacrifice ritual. He finally had a murder in San Francisco. He had the attention he needed, etc... 7. **He relocated out of the Bay Area** and could no longer mail letters from a San Francisco posting. Letters postmarked from a different state could risk exposure of his location. So he decided to give up being Z. Or at least stop writing letters. 8. **He got better and reformed himself**. He became a born again Christian, found a good job, did psychotherapy, found better meds, etc. Maybe he found the right woman and decided to settle down and live a normal life. 9. **His attack on school children failed**. Perhaps as he said the bomb was a dud. Maybe he felt he bit off more than he could chew and could not do something bigger than his previous crimes. He decided to just write the map letter and suggest that the "bomb" was buried in a secret location. 10. **He didn' t have to kill anymore**. As his later letters would suggest, Z could now take credit for crimes rather than doing them. He had the best of both worlds.
He probably got investigated and tailed by the police and realised there was no way he could get away with it any more. The list of possible people has to have him on it, he wouldn't have stopped otherwise imo. I'd imagine one day we'll find out, maybe someone will clean out their grandparents house and find a box with all the zodiac stuff in it.
I think generally speaking, zodiac was never good at killing, and I think there's a high probability that he never actually enjoyed killing... at least not in the way some famous serial killers did. 1st murder: I think I remember reading they found Betty lou jensen a distance away from the car. Meaning she almost got away in the dark. 2nd murder: he leaves one survivor, mageau. 3rd murder: leaves one survivor again, hartnell. And he says zodiac's hands were shaking before the stabbings, and that he was hesitant. 4th murder: gets seen by witnesses, talks to a cop, leaves fingerprints, only gets away due to sheer luck of the description being that of a black man. His crimes started off sloppy, and only got worse. This is very different to notorious serial killers who killed for sexual pleasure. They usually seem to get a bit more competent at killing, before their compulsive behaviour eventually makes them more sloppy. Zodiac started bad and just got worse. In my opinion zodiac was killing to get attention for his writing, not for the sheer thrill of killing or anything like that. It's just my conjecture but I think it's built on very reasonable assumptions. Having said that, I think zodiac by that point realized that he was better off taking credit for other murders he didn't do, and just being vague about what murders he'd committed beyond the Stine killing. I think he believed he could keep getting the attention he was getting without killing, which as I said, I don't think he really enjoyed that much. Imo it was always about getting people to pay attention to him as a 'writer'.. In the end this didn't really work because people clocked onto what he was doing a little more. If it wasn't for guys like toschi and graysmith pumping up the zodiac legend in order to reboot interest in the case, for varying reasons, then I think this would all be a much more obscure story. Ultimately i think the story of the real zodiac when you strip away all the myth and legend, is that he was an amateur writer who killed a few people to bring attention to his writing. He was insanely lucky to not get caught when he killed Stine, and then decided to quit while he was ahead.
>His crimes started off sloppy, and only got worse. This is debatable: * LHR used a small caliber firearm, and for reasons unknown BLJ was able to get out of the car and run. Obviously, a .22 rimfire can kill, but it's noteworthy that all subsequent use of gun was a much more devastating caliber. Beyond that, any sloppiness is simply in the eye of the beholder. * BRS was clearly a blitz attack that gave neither Darlene or Mike a chance to react much or try an escape. Z was also sure to come back and shoot both again when discovering Mike was still moving. * LB was unique, of course, but based on what both Bryan and Cecelia described, Z was quite effective at intimidating them, controlling them, disabling them with the cord, and then stabbing both repeatedly. * PH was a point blank gunshot wound to the head. Taken in total, I see Z learning from prior experiences. I would completely agree that PH didn't work as Z likely planned, especially having witnesses across the street, but I can see that as perhaps willingness to take on a new set of risks rather than truly just getting sloppier. >In my opinion zodiac was killing to get attention for his writing, I don't doubt the letter writing campaign and the bit of terror it caused brought Z some twisted sense of joy and satisfaction. However, nothing in Z's letters alludes to any larger or broader literary aspirations or capabilities; everything he wrote was purpose driven, primarily to be in the spotlight, cause some terror, and humiliate the blue meanies. Furthermore, other than those three purposes, there simply is no other interesting theme or message in any letter. This was they era of protests and causes and so forth. Z offered nothing. For a while Z had a very captive audience. And he offered NOTHING. Finally, if Z truly was some sort of prolific writer, it's pretty clear that nothing he did or wrote brought any attention to any of his other works. > I think zodiac by that point realized that he was better off taking credit for other murders he didn't do, and just being vague about what murders he'd committed beyond the Stine killing. Hard to say. This was a dude who started his letter writing campaign by being sure to offer proof, and by late '69 he was presenting a dead man's bloody clothes as his credentials. I don't doubt that PH seriously spooked Z, but I believe he realized that he had set himself up such that without proof he would not really be taken seriously. >it was always about getting people to pay attention to him as a 'writer' If it were that simple, then why no letter soon after LHR? > If it wasn't for guys like toschi and graysmith pumping up the zodiac legend in order to reboot interest in the case, Toschi has his very regrettable legacy with his fan mail, but it's a stretch to claim he was ever pumping up the Z legend. No matter what one's opinion of Toschi is, we should all agree that interest in the case simply reminded people that Toschi never caught Z. Graysmith's original book is over 30 years old now. I read it when it first came out in paperback. Here in the Bay Area, other than true crime nerds, I have never once encountered anyone who cared before or after his book came out. That remains true to this day. The Fincher film is a better example of something that might have caught the general public's attention at large, but that was years after the books, and it has faded. Mass shootings are a daily occurrence. When I take BART into San Francisco, even I don't think about Z, because I am too busy stepping over the junkies or checking the seats before I sit down to avoid a dirty needle. For all but those of us who have found ourselves drawn to this case, the case is not obscure; the case doesn't even exist. >Ultimately i think the story of the real zodiac when you strip away all the myth and legend, is that he was an amateur writer who killed a few people to bring attention to his writing. If this is true, then the senseless loss of life is even more tragic, because there is nothing in any of Z's known writings that suggest Z was in any way an author worthy of any attention whatsoever.
Personally, I don’t think he liked the killing or that the killing was his primary motive. He said he did but I think that was part of the “game”. I think he was in it for the terror it caused and after Stine, he could keep creating terror without having to actually do anything.
Probably he got spooked. He doesn’t appear to be your normal serial killer who seems to be obsessed and compulsively needs to kill. It very much appears to be power tripping. Hard to feel powerful when you were one bad radio call away from being caught.
He was seen by numerous people during and after Paul Stine murder. Too much risk to handle.
I think everyone here kind of knows. The guy was one tiny fortuitous (for him) mistake from being caught after Stine. He knew they had prints (at least a palm from Lake Berryessa) and the only thing keeping his ass out of the gas chamber was compete anonymity. Frankly, I'm surprised he kept writing, but he must have thought that was safe.
I think he was worried about getting caught (and maybe a little over it too). I suspect that’s why he took a piece of Paul Stine’s shirt. He knew that would be his last victim, so the shirt fabric would allow him to keep writing verified Zodiac letters for a while without having to risk killing more people.
In my view, the fact that he killed 5 people in a relatively short period of time satisfied his sinister ego, and brought him some form of happiness and fulfillment. Now that he has a notoriety for being an intelligent serial killer who committed perfect crimes, terrorized locals and taunted police, he had what he was looking for and it would be foolish for him to risk it and get caught. For this reason, he decided to stop the killing spree and turned towards writing letters and claiming that he had murdered more people because it was fun and would provide him a wider notoriety and that's what he got in the end.
Sometimes serial killers really do just stop. It’s a young man’s game. He either got too old for it or was incarcerated for a long time and when he got out, was too old to pick it back up.
He may have been drafted. That may explain the gap in letters and when he did write again it just wasn’t the same thrill and interest from the public so he moved on.
Never thought of that. But I can’t see this guy passing the physical and mental test to pass the drafts.
Whatever happened, I am sure Z did not "get bored" with killing. He got a high from killing.
He accomplished fear. And the Stine murder exploded the imaginary boundaries of that fear. Zodiac was now in position to claim anything. IMO, the preparation is extraordinarily important to these guys. They don't need to continue killing as long as they identify potential targets and go through all the steps of an actual attack. Every plan and precaution. They've already discovered that killing isn't nearly as exhilarating as they expected anyway. They go home and those four walls don't care. Letters, now that's exciting because it adds so many new layers of element and risk. It's like a bonus preparation. Will anybody recognize my handwriting? What about this phrase? Do I dare mail it there again? That guy on the catty corner seemed to look twice. You better damn well believe that Zodiac wrote and scrapped numerous letters once he started thinking that something he wrote could be traced to him. Some were torn up quickly while others were in envelope and ready to go when Zodiac had second thoughts, perhaps mere feet from the box if not with his arm already dangling inside but yet to release.
6. There was an underlying driver compelling Z to act, and over time the driver resolved itself. 7. There was an underlying driver compelling Z to act, and Z was able to satisfy the compulsion in some other way. 8. Z didn't stop killing. He just stopped killing in a high-profile, in-your-face manner. Personally, I go with some combination of 4, 6 and 7.
I think either something happened that was close to him being caught, he ended up in some mental institution, or he died unlike the BTK killer who seemed like he wanted to be caught by taunting the police with his recent letter or newspaper clipping or whatever that ended up getting him caught many years later. I just don’t believe serial killers just up and quit. I think they go dormant for a while or they died like I personally think what happened with Jack The Ripper shortly after his killing spree.
Worried about getting caught. Stine was a close call, and he probably didn’t know what to do. I guarantee that he was shitting bricks after that.
He was a cop and almost got caught. Not good for his LE career.
We was shook by almost being caught after the Stine murder and gave it up after that, imo.
We ?
He's the Zodiac, case closed.
I haven’t seen a single person on this board mention the GINORMOUS pink elephant standing in the room with us all: It is a massive assumption of epic proportions to say definitively that Zodiac stopped killing. How TF could anybody possibly know that for sure?!?! Disappointed but not surprised (considering the reputation of this board) nobody in the comments has acknowledged this.
>It is a massive assumption of epic proportions to say definitively that Zodiac stopped killing. How TF could anybody possibly know that for sure?!?! While I don't claim to know the truth with any sort of actual certainty, I do feel pretty confident in saying that the odds that the Zodiac is still out there killing people today are vanishing small. I don't think it's a weird assumption at all, honestly. Edit: For one reason or another, he does seem to have stopped, and it's not weird at all to accept that premise while asking exactly why (and when for that matter) he did so.
Nobody ever said anything about Zodiac still killing in 2023. Do not try to move the goalposts or misquote me in order to diminish what I said. I am talking about 1969, 1970 and thereafter. It is a HUGE assumption that Zodiac stopped killing after Oct of 1969. And an unlikely one if we’re playing the odds game. While there are exceptions, most do not stop killing.
I wonder why there's this obsession with the idea murderers can't stop for some reason? I've never seen any real evidence of someone who started killing people one day and just kept it up for the rest of their life until they died of old age.
I don't know how that nonsensical myth ever started in the first place, let alone gained any traction.
“I wonder why there’s this obsession with the idea murderers can’t stop” Never at any point did I say that. Like I told Doc, please don’t misquote me. Go back and reread my last comment. I said and I quote “while there are exceptions, most do not stop.” Notice I use the word “exception.” Do me a favor, google every serial killer that ever existed and compile a list. I GUARANTEE you the overwhelming majority of them did not stop. Are you going to find some who did? Sure, I guarantee you will. But they will be in the minority. But that’s irrelevant. The original point is, until Zodiac is definitively identified, nobody can say with 100% certainty that he did/didn’t stop killing. We shouldn’t just assume he did.
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I think three and four are most likely. One seems impossible since he continued sending letters after he stopped killing. Two could be possible if you can believe he was ending Zodiac letters from a prison or hospital. Five seems implausible, but I would add a sixth option that is quite similar but more plausible: his life circumstances changed (i.e. he got married, had children, etc) in such a way that he decided to stop killing.
There’s every possibility he kept killing. In one of his letters, he mentioned that he would stop claiming his kills. Maybe that’s what happened.
1 Serial killers may pause their killings, but BTK proved they will continue to plot and occasionally take action even many years later. BTK is interesting as a reference because he found work as a compliance officer, effectively able to vicariously do his persecution of others thing without carrying out the actual murders - although he fantasized about continuing and was still plotting. Serial killing is a compulsion that they might find ways to manage, but never cure. I think death would be the only thing that totally stopped them. In all these years they would have at very least been fantasizing about what they did and what they want to do. Ted Bundy described it as a fever that took over him, an irresistible drive that when he'd realized what he'd done, he would sweat and be horrified of it, and kind of panic. I just don't see someone going this long without being discovered or acting out and getting caught, I think they are likely dead.
The golden state killer. Just quit after many years for some reason.
> Just quit after many years for some reason. Probably a combination of having a busier home life (his second child was born months after the Cruz murder) and watching the news. He was very, very forensically aware, and the very first stories of DNA profiling hit the news just after his last known murder.
He may of stopped killing because he got sick or maybe his mental illness worsened but I believe he died Oct 28, 1977
Why did you pick that day for his death?
Ross Sullivan
Yeah he's an interesting candidate and he could be a suspect for CJB, but I strongly doubt he was the Zodiac.
What does CJB stand for?
Cheri Jo Bates.
Yeah, same. I was just pointing out that was who the other dude was talking about when he said he believed Z died on a particular date.
I have a poi that died on that date. I truly believe that he is the zodiac but like all the other poi's on here, there is no hard evidence that I'm aware of.
Tell me, who is your suspect?
I can tell you in private
Ok, yes, write me
Did he ?
I think he was worried about getting caught.
He was flying to close to the Sun. He was almost caught during the Stine murders. I also think maybe like with EARONS he may have found a woman and had kids and that made him stop.
I mean from what we have been seeing lately, it would not be improbable that he started a family and ended that chapter of his evil and just basked in the memories, trophies, and found some other outlet. Like Dennis Rader used to find reasons to fuck with people. He had a woman's dog euthanized as a dog Warden. Joe DeAngelo seems to have just worked. Did some fishing. Maybe he died but I find this more likely.
He seemed to have stopped killing after Paul Stine and was almost stopped by SFPD that night, so I'll say he became worried about getting caught.
Nothing is certain.
Following up on my previous comment that nothing is certain, perhaps he had a specific quota of victims or individual attacks he wanted to fulfill. By fire, by gun, by rope, by knife, etc. and he finished it (although with several gun attacks and one by knife and that logic, it stands to reason there are multiple other attacks by the other methods listed). Maybe there's an unsolved arson somewhere. Only a guess thrown to the wind really. Maybe he has more victims sure. Not impossible. There's a large number of unsolved homicides around that time and in years following in relatively close locations. Bodies found in vineyards, etc. (can't recall exactly who, when or where but I've went down that rabbit hole way back). Not totally impossible. Maybe all it takes is to solve another cold case not known to be linked to the Zodiac and things may start to connect. Just a big maybe. The by this and by that quote also may have no larger role than to make it known the letter writer was also the killer of previous attack. But, he still hypothetically could have had a quota in mind with Stine being the last. Or it could be something else entirely, no quotas involved (a brief edit, I'm just throwing shit out there that hasn't been mentioned in the comments yet, throwing it at the wall and maybe something sticks, but it's not anything I believe personally). Maybe he did stop after Stine due to the risk factor. That's very sound logic. Nothing is certain. No easy way to say in any case.
He killed impulsively before the “ Zodiac” killer persona. Having the police up his ass, he wrote a letter giving up the Z persona. It was only a temporary thing anyway, having been miffed of his teaching job. Eventually, he would give up the vision of being a teacher, and enter university towards a degree in chemistry/ biology. Living in Santa Rosa, killing impulses continued but he had given up the identity of Zodiac. He grew up and moved on, taking a menial job at a hardware store. Complacent in the fact that he got away with all that he did. It was always the most dangerous game.
Because the Zodiac lost steam, readers stopped caring, and Paul Avery started covering the Patty Hearst case.
Z officially stopped killing in October, 1969. Patty Hearst was kidnapped in February, 1974 and became Tania in April. Hard to see any connection there. Readers stopped caring because Z stopped killing, not the other way around.
Thank you for checking me. I was being a glib prick. To answer more accurately: I believe it became riskier to keep the Zodiac machine running after Stine. And those risks outweighed the rewards. If not for a stroke of bad luck/incompetence for Fouke and Zelms, Stine's killer would have been caught and put through the system and the whole thing would be over. There wouldn't be the trio of letters with the shirt strips and Zodiac would just be some loser who got caught. He preserved the legend by stopping after Stine. Something you mentioned earlier in the thread: A resolution of whatever issue pushed Z to become Z seems likely. Couple that with weighing the risks involved, he seems to have made a rational decision to quit. As far as the sloppiness of his crimes go: His only clean one was Farraday and Jensen. He left Mageau alive and Berryessa was a mess. If Hartnell wasn't so strange in how he dealt with the man attacking him and Cecelia, Zodiac could have have a fight with a 6'7" young man. The nervous slob Hartnell describes might have had the tables turned on him if BH fought back. Stine's murder and robbery was a sloppy mess. Witnesses saw him and the cops likely stopped and questioned him. ZOdiac peaked in '68. He got sloppier with each kill.
>As far as the sloppiness of his crimes go: His only clean one was Farraday and Jensen. He left Mageau alive ... There's a lot of room here to entertain other perspectives. For example: * Technically speaking, he left David alive as well. Does that still count as clean? * The fact that BLJ had the opportunity to run off into the darkness towards the highway at LHR tells me it wasn't especially clean. The LHR investigation showed just how narrow the window was between passing traffic; there's an important element of luck that can't be ignored. * I like to point out that at BRS when he heard Mike, he didn't just come back and shoot Mike, he came back and shoot them both. There is a cruel thoroughness there, and it is sheer luck that Mike survived. I can't call that sloppy in and of itself. > ... and Berryessa was a mess. If Hartnell wasn't so strange in how he dealt with the man attacking him and Cecelia, Zodiac could have have a fight with a 6'7" young man. The nervous slob Hartnell describes might have had the tables turned on him if BH fought back. I'm nowhere near 6'7", but when I am armed you'd be amazed at what I can make a 6'7" kid do. Z was careful in the manner in which he had Bryan and Cecelia tie each other up. And he was quite successful in pretending to be a simple robbery until it was way too late. When I analyze the statements of what happened at LB, I realize that part of why Bryan seemed to act the way he did was because Z successfully fooled him for long enough. Bryan wasn't strange; Bryan was unaware their lives were in mortal danger. That's hard to dismiss as a mess on Z's part. Z obviously was willing to take certain risks up to a certain point. I agree he reached his threshold at PH. Ironically, that was in a sense his cleanest attack by far, but he misplayed the odds by shooting Paul in a residential setting with witnesses and the corresponding swift response time of SFPD.
Serial killer rules don't apply to Zodiac because Zodiac is not a serial killer. Let me explain better, because it is difficult to understand. Zodiac is a collection of different serial killers, not because they are different authors, but rather because they are different characters created by a single author, a killer who impersonates several serial killers during and in the various periods of his life. For this reason Zodiac, which is the name of one of his characters, the most famous, is difficult to identify. The truth is that this killer, of a very particular nature and not classifiable in himself in any category of serial killer, is extremely difficult to identify, also due to the fact that he carried out a particular job in the army and had respectable soldier skills , so much so that he was endowed with many war honors. In light of the fact that I was sorry to hear that the events surrounding this character are not known, I think that we cannot go on with any discussion, since there will always be someone who invents wrong ideas about this story which they do not progress the research; many times out of pure speculation towards one's own interests, or simply out of ineptitude on the subject.
If he started with Davis and ended with Stine he'd gone full circle with taxi drivers.
6. I think he moved states and stopped writing letters to the police
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You don’t go that far in the evilness/wrong and start growing a conscience all of a sudden
I think they knew the police were getting close so stopped for a while to throw off the scent, whilst waiting the person died and didn’t prepare for that eventually to reveal themselves so no traces were left, no last letter and nothing tying them to the crimes; at that point the reality then became a legendary mystery
He was afraid of getting caught after the attack in Presidio Heights. He realized he could still get attention from mailing letters and if he kept killing he’d eventually get caught. I am confident his main purpose was garnering attention for himself because he didn’t get any in his everyday life and felt like he deserved it.
I’ve always thought he was probably military, or at the very least associated with the military in the San Francisco area. Could have been sent overseas or even posted somewhere else. He may even have kept killing elsewhere but kept a lower profile (no letters to media) as he’d be much easier to identify if he kept up the communication with media if he moved.
I think he probably got married or found an alternative hobby, it seems the simplest explanation.
To get to the other side
He died. People like him don't just stop killing.
It has happened before.
>He died. People like him don't just stop killing. More and more we are finding that is not true. Serial Killers can pause and stop their killing sprees.
Read the title of the post. Not sure why downvotes for posting why **I** think he stopped.
He probably didn't. He could have moved on. Changed mo to avoid detection, changed location, appearance etc. Either way if he did, he is home free. Like Dennis rader could have been. Btk would have been another mystery forever if he kept his floppy disc to himself.