Zodiackillersite.com

Hey guys, I am a newbie here but this bit with Paul Stine's shirt is really fascinating and got me thinking. Please help me clarify this as I absorb all this minutae.

I too have been combing through Horan's theories and I think like most of us who don't agree with him, arrive back at Stine's murder and the shirt. I would LOVE to see some original crime photos of this scene, if they are in existence, to see if this thing was ripped at the scene or if a bit of shirt could be seen as absent from the body. It would be a whole lot harder to imagine a reporter or EMT reaching in and grabbing a bit of the shirt. Not to go too deep into it but this wasn't a "Z" type killing and I find it hard to believe someone would decide that this was a crime worthy of pinning on a fictional killer. But if the shirt was shown intact in an original crime scene photo that's freaking questionable. Someone could have taken a bit of the shirt at the lab or in the ride down.

I am not sufficiently convinced of his theories to really have that be of concern, but I would love to nail that down for myself.

Another comment I wanted to jump in with is what it says about the person being a left or a righty. Presumably Z puts Stine's body in his lap as he rips a bit of the shirt. And I think it must be said, by a woman who has sewn and handled cloth most of her life, that ripping a shirt of this thinness can be done with a minimal of cutting. You could literally take a slit from the bottom seam on either side, and rip up both sides in seconds. No cutting. The only real cutting (and we are talking about CUTTING, not nicking, which would be all you would have to do through that bottom seam to start a good rip) would be the top horizontal rip, that final rip to get the piece off. Dependent on the cloth, you might have to cut across, if the grain and weave is such that it doesn't run straight across or straight down as in most cotton fabrics. This looks like your basic cotton shirt to me, so one little horizontal nick and it rips clean right across the grain with minimal effort. I bet it would have taken all of 10 seconds. Obviously the guy made a hood, he knew how to sew, he knew the behavior of fabric and I am sure this happened rapidly. But I am wondering with the positioning of the body if there is any indication of what direction he ripped first? From the photos it looked like the shirt was ripped from the left side, if Paul Stine is facing downward in your lap. Intuition seems that it would mean he was lefthanded. Thoughts?

We can't see the back of Stine's shirt in the crime scene photos. We can see that his shirt was yanked up to his chest.

This post by QT links to several relevant crime scene pictures. viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1213#p12030

What you suggest makes sense to me, mysterymachine - and as far as I know there is no other evidence which would (very) strongly suggest that Z was NOT left handed. He could have been either - or ambidextrous, as has been suggested many times!

Anyway, Stine's shirt was clearly fairly thin so ripping it would have been relatively easy once he got a tear going, as you suggest. Had Z decided to take this macabre "souvenir" before he hailed Stine's cab, i.e. as part of a comprehensive strategy? What if Stine had worn a thick flannel shirt on the night?

As far as crime scene pictures go, there are some which show Stine with his shirt seemingly pulled up at the back (EDIT Like the one Coffee Time posted above). I've always thought this was the state he was in when they found him, i.e. with the shirt in that position - left that way by Z after tearing off the swatch - which would explain why it wasn't noticed until the body was examined at the morgue.

The fact that Z was observed seemingly with Stine "in his lap" (one may question the accuracy of this phrase - the teen witnesses may have misinterpreted some of Z's movements) is consistent with him tearing off a piece of the shirt - and as such indicates that it was indeed done by the killer (and not by a prankster at the morgue).

The latter theory is very unlikely, I think. I fail to see either the motive or the relatively large conspiracy which would be required in order to make it work. And on top of that, there's the nature of the Stine situation itself: As you rightly suggest, Stine would have been a very risky choice. The hoaxer was in a rush here, it would seem. Why? He couldn't wait to get that letter (with the shirt piece) in the mail - and in the meantime Stine's real killer could have been caught at any time. He could have been positively identified by the teens across the street for all the hoaxer knew. It makes little sense - to me, at least.

The problem with the Z case is that there are enough holes, discrepancies and contradictions to last a conspiracy theorist a lifetime. If only an officer or a medic at the crime scene had been keen-eyed enough to observe that Stine's shirt had been torn...but, sadly, nobody did.

Ugh, any way to link to that image instead? or at least give a content warning. Everyone on here is probably Ok with it, but you never know, some people might not want to see huge bloody murder pictures of real human beings.

Sorry to be the moral authority all the time, but I think it's kind of disrespectful to Paul. A lot of times on TV they show murder victims and I think that if we did need to know how about the crime scene, which we the audience usually don't, then the details of the coroner would actually be far more helpful than just the photo. It seems gratuitous.

PS. I'm pretty sure that those pictures show Paul after the paramedics arrived on the scene, as the RO reports that Stine was inside of the car when he got there, not partway out as you can see.

To clarify: What I've always thought is that Stine's shirt was in that position (yanked up and crumpled, making it difficult to detect that a piece was missing), not that Stine himself was in that particular position when they found him: He was seemingly moved before the pictures were taken and they may even have removed his glasses (another debate!) before the photographer went to work.

Thanks Norse, and I agree that the idea of a hoaxer is preposterous in the extreme. But I like to have plenty of ammo and want to make sure i have a clear and cogent argument in my mind, as I am finding it a helpful motivation in combing through the evidence. And as I saw on a board a few months back (when I was still a lurker) someone mentioned that even bad suspects or preposterous theories are worth paying attention to because it forces you to examine all the details and take nothing for granted. I am finding that to be very true and a great motivator. And it also led me to start wondering about the lefthandedness of the killer. Because we know who else is lefthanded, and ambidextrous.

DuckKing, you said "I'm pretty sure that those pictures show Paul after the paramedics arrived on the scene, as the RO reports that Stine was inside of the car when he got there, not partway out as you can see."


Ok. If this is true, and I don't mean to derail the topic here, feel free to shuffle this around, but this calls the gravity of the fingerprints into question right away. How many people handled the body and were in contact with the blood, people who could readily be suspected of absently touching a handle and leaving a print? How secure was the scene? Obviously they did not go in suspecting this was a Z killing, it was a pretty routine shooting. Would they have paid close attention to these things? These minute details that could render the fingerprints absolutely meaningless in terms of eliminating the suspects? I think I started a thread on this very thing. This whole reliance on these fingerprints to eliminate suspects just KILLS me if its false. Could have been the guy who moved the body from its original position.

duckking2001 wrote:I'm pretty sure that those pictures show Paul after the paramedics arrived on the scene, as the RO reports that Stine was inside of the car when he got there, not partway out as you can see.

Would paramedics perform resuscitation on someone who's already bled to death (if the shot didn't do it first)?...if you're inferring they messed with his shirt after the cab was opened. I'd also think they'd take him out of the taxi before they tried anything.

themysterymachine wrote: How many people handled the body and were in contact with the blood, people who could readily be suspected of absently touching a handle and leaving a print? How secure was the scene?

SFPD checked the prints against police and ambulance drivers. Pelissetti got there pretty quickly, Zodiac had only just strolled away from the scene.

Generally speaking, though, I have more faith in the prints from the phone and the Exorcist letter than anything they got from a cab that God-knows-how-many people touched before the shooting even occurred. If there was a high quality photo of the so-called "bloody" print I could scrutinize, I might feel differently. I guess what it boils down to is, if they find a good suspect whose prints match prints from Stine's cab, that helps build a case against him -- the problem is eliminating suspects based on prints which may not even belong to the perp.

Re: paramedics and resuscitation. I read somewhere not too long ago that there might not have been paramedics on the scene - not in the modern sense. They had ambulance drivers (who had little or no medical training) but no medical people unless a doctor happened to be along for the ride (which could be the case under certain circumstances, I guess). The cops would be the ones who tried resuscitation and the like. Don't take my word for it, though - it's something worth checking out further.

Anyway, if the above is true, I doubt very much that they tried any resuscitation. My guess would be that Pelissetti realized just by taking a glance at him that Stine was very dead - and that was that. The fact that they moved him would have been due to them checking for multiple wounds, going through his pockets, perhaps taking photos of the body from different angles, etc. That would be my guess.

themysterymachine wrote:Thanks Norse, and I agree that the idea of a hoaxer is preposterous in the extreme. But I like to have plenty of ammo and want to make sure i have a clear and cogent argument in my mind, as I am finding it a helpful motivation in combing through the evidence. And as I saw on a board a few months back (when I was still a lurker) someone mentioned that even bad suspects or preposterous theories are worth paying attention to because it forces you to examine all the details and take nothing for granted. I am finding that to be very true and a great motivator. And it also led me to start wondering about the lefthandedness of the killer. Because we know who else is lefthanded, and ambidextrous.

DuckKing, you said "I'm pretty sure that those pictures show Paul after the paramedics arrived on the scene, as the RO reports that Stine was inside of the car when he got there, not partway out as you can see."


Ok. If this is true, and I don't mean to derail the topic here, feel free to shuffle this around, but this calls the gravity of the fingerprints into question right away. How many people handled the body and were in contact with the blood, people who could readily be suspected of absently touching a handle and leaving a print? How secure was the scene? Obviously they did not go in suspecting this was a Z killing, it was a pretty routine shooting. Would they have paid close attention to these things? These minute details that could render the fingerprints absolutely meaningless in terms of eliminating the suspects? I think I started a thread on this very thing. This whole reliance on these fingerprints to eliminate suspects just KILLS me if its false. Could have been the guy who moved the body from its original position.

According to Pelissetti the scene was pristine - or words to that effect. But what that means, in this context, is another matter. They took control prints of all personnel who was involved with searching the cab, handling the body, etc. That is on record.

But Armstrong is also on record saying that it was a "public cab" and that it was "full of prints", presumably from customers, i.e. people who couldn't possibly be checked out via control prints. So, who knows. To me, at least, it seems clear that SFPD weren't confident that any of the prints belonged to Z. If they had been, they wouldn't have relied on handwriting to the extent that they did. Or, for that matter, they wouldn't have kept Allen on as a suspect in the case - his prints were taken in the early 70s and they didn't match any print lifted from the cab or from anywhere else.