Zodiac's hood & Symbol.

[smithy]

^^Haha Chappie--I'm English, Irish, Native American--and a couple others mixed in there I think. I wonder what that says about me?

It says you're a crossbreed, T.
Personally, I'm a mutt.

Say - ain't we off-topic though!
I've decided that the guy at Berryessa wore that get-up because he thought that's what The Zodiac Killer should look like.

[Victor]

^^Haha Chappie--I'm English, Irish, Native American--and a couple others mixed in there I think. I wonder what that says about me?

It says you're a crossbreed, T.
Personally, I'm a mutt.

Say - ain't we off-topic though!
I've decided that the guy at Berryessa wore that get-up because he thought that's what The Zodiac Killer should look like.

Smithy, so are you saying The Z. at Lake Berryessa was a stand-in or the letter writer using The Z. persona or The Z. doing his thing in formal dress?

[Victor]

Based on the fact that there were no witnesses at LHR, one living witness who knew their attacker but was never going to "squeal" at BRS (in fact, he "fingered' ALA even changing his story several times), the reason The Z. wore his hood was in case he were seen by anyone in broad daylight and to leave a considerable "mark" (tale for witnesses to tell before they expired) 40 miles away from Vallejo to increase Z's "realm of terror".

P.S. If I use anymore quotation marks, someone slap me.

[smithy]

^^Haha Chappie--I'm English, Irish, Native American--and a couple others mixed in there I think. I wonder what that says about me?

It says you're a crossbreed, T.
Personally, I'm a mutt.

Say - ain't we off-topic though!
I've decided that the guy at Berryessa wore that get-up because he thought that's what The Zodiac Killer should look like.

Smithy, so are you saying The Z. at Lake Berryessa was a stand-in or the letter writer using The Z. persona or The Z. doing his thing in formal dress?

Victor, yes, that's what I'm saying - it was definitely one of those three.

[Welsh Chappie]

Wonder how he would have reacted if Bryan and Cecelia would have instantly started screaming for help as soon as he appeared with the gun. He obviously didn't want to use it out there hence the knife. If he had started blasting away in the area they were surrounded by mountains and hills, the echo would have carried for miles and miles. He didn't see to have a silencer on the gun either. I think he'd have probably shot them regardless, risk assessment and the danger of capture never seemed something that Zodiac ether was willing to pay attention to and just didn't care, or he was unable to assess the risk in the first place and is oblivious.

[smithy]

Yes. IF he'd been recognised as "The Code Killer" or "The Cipher Slayer", and his victims had screamed or ran, would he have shot at them? I guess so.
Interesting, ain't it? He planned to the extent that he created the "descise" - he stalked the area - he selected Bryan and Cecelia, but....
Re: "risk assessment and the danger of capture never seemed something that Zodiac either was willing to pay attention to and just didn't care, or he was unable to assess the risk in the first place and is oblivious." Well, could be. And Berryessa (daylight) seems to be the riskiest of all, to me. It's wacky.

[Tahoe27]

Wonder how he would have reacted if Bryan and Cecelia would have instantly started screaming for help as soon as he appeared with the gun. He obviously didn't want to use it out there hence the knife. If he had started blasting away in the area they were surrounded by mountains and hills, the echo would have carried for miles and miles. He didn't see to have a silencer on the gun either. I think he'd have probably shot them regardless, risk assessment and the danger of capture never seemed something that Zodiac ether was willing to pay attention to and just didn't care, or he was unable to assess the risk in the first place and is oblivious.

Interesting thought. I have to wonder (if he would have used his gun) if he would have ran to his car parked behind theirs or just blended somewhere into the hillside.

[Welsh Chappie]

He could have been recognized as 'Zodiac' also Smithy. He signed his letters from the start in July with the Cross Hairs symbol, and on August 4th in his "In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I have had in Vallejo" letter he not only signed the letter with the Cross Hairs symbol, but this is the first letter that he identified himself as 'Zodiac'. So, had Cecelia or Bryan seen this letter that was published in the Chronicle they would have seen his symbol on the letter and recognized it as the symbol he now had emblazoned on his chest and then would have known that this man was 'Zodiac', a man who had already murdered two couple's in the past Eight Months.

I said in the last post that I think he probably would have shot them if they started calling for help but having thought about it, there would have undoubtedly bee Park Rangers within range to hear any gun shots, and would have been on alert and if they hadn't have stopped him trying to leave the scene then they probably would have, at the very least, made a note of his vehicle and registration.

[Nachtsider]

He could have been recognized as 'Zodiac' also Smithy. He signed his letters from the start in July with the Cross Hairs symbol, and on August 4th in his "In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I have had in Vallejo" letter he not only signed the letter with the Cross Hairs symbol, but this is the first letter that he identified himself as 'Zodiac'. So, had Cecelia or Bryan seen this letter that was published in the Chronicle they would have seen his symbol on the letter and recognized it as the symbol he now had emblazoned on his chest and then would have known that this man was 'Zodiac', a man who had already murdered two couple's in the past Eight Months.

Just how big was this news before Berryessa, though? I vaguely recall someone saying that Zodiac was still but a Vallejo/Benicia-area bogeyman at the time.

[smithy]

He could have been recognized as 'Zodiac' also Smithy.

Correct! By an eagle-eyed VNC reader with a good memory, at least, I guess.
San Francisco wire (UPI) were still calling him "the Cipher Killer" on the 5th, and the Vallejo News-Chronicle PUBLICISED the second letter (the August 4th letter), on the 5th, but they didn't PUBLISH it. They mentioned that the author was the "Zodiac," yes, but not as a splash - and the Chronicle didn't, nope.
It wasn't picked up by "main stream" news media, this "The Zodiac Killer" name, until post-Berryessa. So I didn't call him Zodiac. And he didn't call himself Zodiac at Berryessa either. He was small beer at the time, as Nacht says.
Does this matter much? Well, not in this context, nope.

Here's the VNC - ahead of the pack it seems with the name, but publishing an awful lot of other garbage about astrology, ho ho.
I expect we have Seagull to thank for turning it up in the first place.
Don't miss the cut-in at the bottom right.
(And I get a kick out of the third paragraph too, of course. Well, I would. )