First off, let me say that I am not necessarily a Ross dissenter. In fact, my first reaction to seeing his photograph alongside the composite drawing made me immediately think he was a good match. Then the old cop in me kicked in, and I decided I'd better back off and look at some of the other information here. I'm still in that process, and I find several other POIs quite intriguing as well. I have several questions about Ross, but I really haven't found a thread that seems the proper place to ask them. I also have some thoughts regarding why he may not be Z.
I've read this entire thread/or the pissing match it seems to have become. Sorry, I'm an old fart and tend to be quite blunt, probably more so as I've aged.
It seems to boil down to either he's too tall or too fat or doesn't exactly match the drawings. I can tell you from experience as an investigator that eye-witness descriptions are notoriously unreliable, even those made by police officers such as Don Fouke. I once attended an area investigator's school of instruction. During one of the speaker's lecture to us, a person walked onto the stage and handed something to the speaker then walked off. The speaker thanked the person and continued with his lecture for about another 5-10 minutes. At that time, he asked all of us to write down a description of the person who had walked onto the stage as well as a description of what he or she had done. Mind you, these were highly trained professional investigators. After giving us some time to write, the speaker selected about 10 officers at random and asked them to come up and read their descriptions. Thankfully, I was not one of them! Of the 10 descriptions, no two were a perfect match! In fact, some identified the person as female and some as male! True the encounter was brief, and we weren't paying close attention to the person, but the stage was well lit and the person made sure he turned toward us as he exited the stage. Yet, we could not agree on a description! Once they brought the person back onto the stage, I was relieved to see that my description was close, much closer than some of the others. However, this was done to prove to us just how unreliable witness testimony can be, even those who are extremely well intentioned and not under a great deal of stress.
Now imagine it is at night and you are being shot by the person you are trying to describe, or that you simply passed the person on the street without realizing the importance of what you saw at the time. Even the people who saw the Paul Stine murder would have been under a great deal of stress at seeing such a sight.
Sorry for the long winded anecdote, but I intended to illustrate that, unlike what you hear from the TV lawyers, circumstantial evidence is usually the best you can get. Fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene will trump eye-witness testimony every time.
While the likeness to the composite is compelling, I think back to the '60s and believe me, any high school or college yearbook would contain guys who look as much like the composite as Ross. I can think of several in my tiny midwestern high school that would be dead ringers, glasses and all. So, while I don't think we can entirely discount the sketches, I don't believe we can get too hung up on them either.
So, putting the sketch aside for the time being, what makes Ross a viable z and what doesn't?
What fits?
He was in California at the time.
He was in Riverside during the time period of the CJB murder, although we don't know if he was there on the day of the crime.
He worked in the library at RCC.
He was creepy according to at least some of the workers at the library. (Note: I have visited California a few times and have observed more than a few who fit that description).
It is quite possible that he knew CJB, although I have read nothing concrete in that regard.
He, according to the library worker interviewed on TV, wore military style boots and a long Army coat before but not after CJBs murder.
He was missing for a time after her murder.
There seems to be some connection between the CJB murder and Z.
He moved from Riverside to Santa Cruz, which put him closer to the area of the other Z crimes.
His brother apparently thought he was Z. (Is there credible proof of this?)
According to the TV show last week, he took a cryptology class at RCC.
He was apparently relatively intelligent since he did at least attend college.
He had a history of mental illness, although we don't know exactly what that illness was.
Questions I have.
Is there a known connection to Vallejo?
Could someone with his mental disability carry out these crimes, write the letters, write the codes, and elude police for nearly 50 years?
Would Riverside PD keep their information so close to the vest if they knew their suspect died in 1977? What would be the point?
Does Ross have any history of violent behavior? Cavorting naked in a dazed trance isn't especially violent. Granted a man was pinned inside a phone booth, but Ross may have simply stood in front of the door, not necessarily in a threatening manner.
Is there any other criminal activity?
Did Ross have a car? A driver's license? Santa Cruz is 90 to 136 miles from the Z murders.
Can someone whose employment consisted of library aid and dishwasher be mentally capable of not just committing these crimes, but of taunting police with calls, letters, cards, and get away with it? Perhaps he chose those insignificant jobs to stay under the radar so to speak...pure conjecture on my part.
We don't have enough of his writing to compare either style or content.
What size shoe did he wear?
Would military boots, like those described by the librarian, have a pattern on the heel like the print left by the killer? The print looks more like a shoe print to me.
Comments
Being an ex-cop, I tend to be a skeptic, so please keep that in mind.
Physical descriptions vary so widely as to neither include nor exclude him as far as I'm concerned.
While I have studied forensic handwriting analysis, I am far from an expert. I do know that printed writing is more difficult to compare than cursive writing. That said, I cannot see the similarity between the "Bates had to die" letters and the Z letters. The letters have a different slant and many letters don't seem to match to me. Are these the letters that the document examiner said were a match? I'm not convinced.
The desk poem seems like a red herring to me, though probably not an intentional one. I have my doubts that it is even connected.
One of the things I noticed in the Z handwritten letters is that, even though they are written on unlined paper, the lines of writing are very straight across the page. The Bates notes are rather jumbled, certainly not straight, even though they were written on lined paper. The poem is also not straight.
While there is certainly enough to keep Ross on the suspect list, my gut feeling is he was a creepy, mental guy who happened to have a connection to RCC library at the wrong time. Unless a lot more evidence can be found, I don't think he'll ever progress beyond a person of interest.
Sorry for the long post. Besides being a cop, I was an English major.
Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:02 am