Zodiackillersite.com

i agree with norse. they are cops working a nightly beat and they get lots of calls. this particular night they get a call of a shot fired in the possible robbery of a cab driver. i'm sure they deal with four or five similar type calls a week. hindsight's 20/20 on our part - we KNOW the call is zodiac related but to them it was just a run-of-the-mill robbery/shooting. the reason they don't stop everyone on the street and put them in cop cars or whatever scenario keeps getting suggested is precisely because they weren't taking it that seriously. i think that's the main reason the stories have changed over the past forty years - they didn't do a particularly good job of securing a crime scene, zodiac rubbed their faces in it, something did happen as far as an exchange with a person on the street, and i firmly think it became an effort to cover the fact that they probably could have nabbed a serial killer if they had followed protocol. just my 2 cents.

UKSpycatcher wrote:The teenagers rang in and described the suspect as a "white male, 5'8" in height, rimmed glasses, dark clothing, heavy build, reddish-blond hair and a crew cut." Well the next logical step is for the dispatcher to pass this description in its entirety onto the police. It would make no sense to ignore the whole description and just pass on the part about a black male. So if we take the claims at face value, the dispatcher incorrectly changed white male to black male. The description the dispatcher sent out should therefore have read "black male, 5'8" in height, rimmed glasses, dark clothing, heavy build, reddish-blond hair and a crew cut." and supposedly this made sense and was never questioned immediately. The late 1960's sported many hair cuts, but a black male with a reddish-blond crew cut sounds out of the ordinary, unless we are to believe only the color part of the description was relayed.

We don't know how detailed their description to the dispatcher/duty officer/whoever took the call was. The details you mention are from the report, I doubt that whoever called (presumably the oldest teen) had the presence of mind to list all those details when he called it in.

It could even be...that the kid didn't say anything about the ethnicity of the killer. Perhaps the dispatcher simply assumed it was a black guy. Cab mugging, black perpetrator, 1969 style. Pelissetti then arrives on the scene and gets the true description.

Just speculation on my part. I don't recall if JDean mentioned any particulars regarding what the (then) teens remembered about the call.

Another possibility, which has been offered up before, is that the caller said something like "the guy is still there, what does he look like? I don't know, he's wearing black..." and presto.

Any dispatcher worth their salt would ask for the details and if the teen couldn't recall what he had just seen 30 seconds ago, I put absolutely no stock in the description they gave to generate the composite hours later. As for the BMA, there was likely no such radio call, it was concocted to cover Donald Fouke's incompetency for letting a white suspect on his way and the police have been covering their backsides ever since. Pelissetti and Fouke claim the initial dispatch was a black male adult, is that it, couldn't the kids even give the hair color between all three of them. No, because a black, reddish-blond crew cut makes no sense. It never happened.

marie wrote:Like I was trying to express, its just not logical (Love pop ultra- Judge Judy "If is doesn't make sense, its usually not true.)

I know they were on the chase for a black man. If I'm a cop and someone says- yes, I saw him run up that street waving a gun, you NEEED to fully interview that witness.

At the very least, get his name (even if its fake) and ask him to come in for a statement.
He was a witness. And who would not increase their pace after seeing a man with a gun. Like I said, I am trying to make sense of it all, reconcile opinions, learn- but he should have been tagged and interrogated as a witness.

I also want to say "I have no idea what it means., or why.

Which is why Zodiac could have been full of crap and simply saw the two men in the cop car, and that was that.

Tahoe27 wrote:
Which is why Zodiac could have been full of crap and simply saw the two men in the cop car, and that was that.

Exactly. Z had been in very close contact with a very bloody body just minutes before. The last thing he is going to do is stop to talk with a cop - he is going to do exactly what Foulke said - casually duck out of sight.

If he can't do that, if Foulke insists on talking with him, then the last thing he's going to say is anything that would be the least bit interesting to the police. Since he was walking on a different street (Jackson) than the murder (Washington) he'd have the perfect excuse to say he saw nothing. And there wouldn't be any reason for the cops to not believe that (if they didn't see the blood on his clothes.)

Many are wondering why Z would not sprint away from the scene and I have a theory that many others have voiced. I'm thinking that maybe he figured his fleeing the scene quickly would bring even more attention to him. Let's say you murder someone and within 2-3 minutes different police units are responding to the area. If he ran he would look obviously guilty. just an opinion. He must have also had an added dose of brazen confidence to think acting calm/not running would confuse the police as to his guilt in the matter - where would this confidence that he could trick them come from, something he planted at the specific event that would throw police off anyways OR did the confidence source itself to Zodiac's overall brazen "I can get one over on you" attitude in general? Perhaps a bit of both? Again theory and opinion here as to why he would "take his time" and then casually duck out without talking to the cops.

UKSpycatcher wrote:Any dispatcher worth their salt would ask for the details and if the teen couldn't recall what he had just seen 30 seconds ago...

Aha. I see.

You know for a fact that a dispatcher worth his or her salt would demand details pertaining to ethnicity, height and hair color, in 1969, in San Francisco, when a scared kid * called the cops and told them that someone had killed a cab driver just outside their house?

Fair enough. If you know it, you know it. I wouldn't mind something solid to back it up with, though. Genuinely interested - I'm not saying you're wrong.

* Who lived in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city.

Norse wrote:

UKSpycatcher wrote:Any dispatcher worth their salt would ask for the details and if the teen couldn't recall what he had just seen 30 seconds ago...

Aha. I see.

You know for a fact that a dispatcher worth his or her salt would demand details pertaining to ethnicity, height and hair color, in 1969, in San Francisco, when a scared kid * called the cops and told them that someone had killed a cab driver just outside their house?

Fair enough. If you know it, you know it. I wouldn't mind something solid to back it up with, though. Genuinely interested - I'm not saying you're wrong.

* Who lived in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city.

Unfortunately, even today, there are dispatchers who should have been fired before they even started.

People will always look for someone to blame, and the fact of the matter here is someone did "goof"....BIGTIME. And that is one way Zodiac got it right. I have a feeling there might have been something other than blood stains in those pants!

^ lol on whatever else was in his pants also agree on the 911 dispatcher angle. Goofs happen often. Have seen many a sad and ridiculous cases of dispatchers not following protocol, especially in very intense situations like assault/homicide. Also agree on people always wanting a scapegoat.

Man it would be difficult to stay calm when all you can do is help someone from the phone and not actually in person. Must be a tough job. My heart goes out to them. But that is besides the point and I'm going OT so I digress.

A few things. Police are also there to protect the public, so if you saw a guy walking, and we'll assume they didn't think it was their POI because of an inaccurate description. Wouldn't you at least let the guy walking know there was a serious crime a block away and he should be careful and get somewhere safe quickly, at the very least...

And I don't know how well police were trained back then in behavior, but I would sense some suspicion if I saw a person just idling along who tells you he just saw a man with a gun running up a street. I would wonder why the person wasn't freaked out- the behavior clearly doesn't match whats normal, especially as many have said, in a wealthy neighborhood. Gun- run!

I don't know, just thinking out loud.

Also, I would assume dispatch would have had a written record of calls that came in? Maybe that could be FOILed if the records were saved. I am assuming they were not taping calls back then.

-m