X=Z? Pros and Cons

[mike_r]

Hi-

Well, there is a smoking gun in the case against KQ but it is a smoking behavioral gun that a profiler can appreciate but not many amateurs can.

There was only one Zodiac killer. He exhibited some unique, signature behaviors. When you find the person who exhibited all of Z's unique behaviors, you have found Z, right?

KQ is the only suspect I know of who can be proven to have done an unusual thing in order to receive public attention on the front pages of two Bay Area newspapers over twenty years before there was a Zodiac killer.

He can be shown to have written a strange letter to the editor of the Chronicle shortly before Z wrote his first letters in 1969.

He wrote to me on Monarch sized paper. Is there even one other suspect who wrote on that type of paper? Not that I am aware of.

He autographed cars in black felt tip pen. Other than the ridiculous argument of people who wrote "Just Married" on cars, I don't know of another suspect who AUTOGRAPHED cars in felt tip.

The dates of two of the Z murders correspond to the birth and death of his father and mother, respectively.

KQ is the only suspect I know of who could have known what "sla" means, and he said to me in 2006 that it means "kill."

He "just happened" to be on the streets of PH shortly after the Stine murder. AP has changed his story so much that his "alibi" for KQ based on how fast AP walked around the block is a thing of the past.

ALA was a great suspect and lived close to the Vallejo crime scenes. But even he wasn't accosted by the police after any of the murders. But KQ was.

When I interviewed KQ in 2006 at HIS request to "clear the air" about his involvement in the case, he couldn't bring himself to tell me the truth and lied to me as to his whereabouts on the night of the Stine murder, as well as about his prior experience with sidearms. Had someone had to handicap what KQ was going to say to me before he and I had that meeting, people wold have said that he is completely innocent and has nothing to hide, so he will tell the truth. Wrong. So now people say that although he lied, he is still innocent. LOL. You can't win.

Mike

[Talon]

Mike, I was wondering, do you have all your thoughts and information compiled anywhere in one location where it can be read in toto? I believe you once had a web site but I can't seem to find it now. Anyway interesting stuff. Thanks

[masootz]

When you find the person who exhibited all of Z's unique behaviors, you have found Z, right?

no offense, but when you've found the person who committed five murders you've found z. everything else is conjecture.

[Norse]

Norse, since you are the resident expert here on the language, maybe you can clarify.

Generally it seems that certain languages- could be the entire Romance family of languages- have certain pronunciations that seem to stick with a speaker even 50 years down the road. I know that friends of mine who are native Spanish speakers take forever to lose their accents. Something always remains in what someone mentioned as a "sing-song' sort of cadence in the manner of speaking, but there is also the double rr in Spanish, the "s" sound in German, "r" in Asiatic speakers, etc., that will probably remain with the speaker forever in some form.
I really, honest to god, don't hear any accent on the video, but I do hear a sort of "sing-song" cadence like I mentioned. There is a rhythmic quality that strikes me as non-American. But its very, very subtle. But I am wondering if there are any sounds that would be found in the Norwegian language that could be comparable to those formerly mentioned pronunciations, something that would betray the speaker in terms of forensic linguistics as a Norwegian native even 70 years down the road? Some languages don't have that, I reckon, those particular, tough-to-erase-from-your-mindbank sounds. Whereas those Spanish "rr" and those German "zee" for "see" bits are hard to overcome. I am from the South and no matter how many decades I don't live there, I am sure someone would hear it just by the way I pronounce "in-surance" with a different emphasis. Are there any good "tells" as far as you know in general in Norwegian, or is it sort of more even in that way? I hope I am making sense.

Hey, MM!

I wouldn't call myself an expert by any stretch - but I do have some knowledge about linguistics/phonology and a particular knowledge of Nordic languages. I think I know what you're getting at, yes - and the answer is...probably, yes. There would be certain tell-tale remnants in the speech of someone who learned English as a second language. But this depends very much on WHEN the language was learned. KQ was young when his family emigrated - young enough for him to lose most traces of an accent as the years went by. That would be my conclusion anyway.

Secondly, those tell-tale traces would not be as obvious as some of the ones you mention. Norwegian and English are closely related languages. Many English words come from Old Norse. There are very few sounds in the English language which pose a problem for a Norwegian speaker - nothing like the examples you mention from Spanish or German. One possible sound would be the voiced "z", in words like...er..."zodiac" or "zero". A Norwegian might be prone to pronounce such words as "sodiac" and "sero", that is with an unvoiced sound. But this is pretty hard to detect when someone is speaking otherwise fluently and fairly rapidly - and it's something which would wear off with time.

The main giveaway would indeed be the intonation, the sing-song quality, as you mention. But this is something which will definitely wear off - and probably be lost altogether after a few years when the subject is a young person who isn't only more apt at learning the language but also more keen to fit in and to emulate the speech of his new compatriots.

[snooter]

since you guys mentioned it..what about old germanic or norse runes being key to the code (is that what you guys are thinking? and I dont see much of a comparison with those symbols to Z)..wonder if X had any contact with hitler's bunch during the war..if X was the Z he might have supported those crazies as many in norway did (sadly they are still having issues with stasi after all these years)..just drivel and uselessness i know....

[Norse]

since you guys mentioned it..what about old germanic or norse runes being key to the code (is that what you guys are thinking? and I dont see much of a comparison with those symbols to Z)..wonder if X had any contact with hitler's bunch during the war..if X was the Z he might have supported those crazies as many in norway did (sadly they are still having issues with stasi after all these years)..just drivel and uselessness i know....

I personally don't think Z's unsolved ciphers are all that complicated - and I kind of doubt that he used Old Norse for the plain text (though I entertained that theory at one point) or had any intimate knowledge of runes. Just my opinion.

As for KQ, he wasn't in Norway during WW2 - his family emigrated in the 20s, I think. KQ served in the US military (not sure which branch).

[themysterymachine]

Norse, since you are the resident expert here on the language, maybe you can clarify.

Generally it seems that certain languages- could be the entire Romance family of languages- have certain pronunciations that seem to stick with a speaker even 50 years down the road. I know that friends of mine who are native Spanish speakers take forever to lose their accents. Something always remains in what someone mentioned as a "sing-song' sort of cadence in the manner of speaking, but there is also the double rr in Spanish, the "s" sound in German, "r" in Asiatic speakers, etc., that will probably remain with the speaker forever in some form.
I really, honest to god, don't hear any accent on the video, but I do hear a sort of "sing-song" cadence like I mentioned. There is a rhythmic quality that strikes me as non-American. But its very, very subtle. But I am wondering if there are any sounds that would be found in the Norwegian language that could be comparable to those formerly mentioned pronunciations, something that would betray the speaker in terms of forensic linguistics as a Norwegian native even 70 years down the road? Some languages don't have that, I reckon, those particular, tough-to-erase-from-your-mindbank sounds. Whereas those Spanish "rr" and those German "zee" for "see" bits are hard to overcome. I am from the South and no matter how many decades I don't live there, I am sure someone would hear it just by the way I pronounce "in-surance" with a different emphasis. Are there any good "tells" as far as you know in general in Norwegian, or is it sort of more even in that way? I hope I am making sense.

Hey, MM!

I wouldn't call myself an expert by any stretch - but I do have some knowledge about linguistics/phonology and a particular knowledge of Nordic languages. I think I know what you're getting at, yes - and the answer is...probably, yes. There would be certain tell-tale remnants in the speech of someone who learned English as a second language. But this depends very much on WHEN the language was learned. KQ was young when his family emigrated - young enough for him to lose most traces of an accent as the years went by. That would be my conclusion anyway.

Secondly, those tell-tale traces would not be as obvious as some of the ones you mention. Norwegian and English are closely related languages. Many English words come from Old Norse. There are very few sounds in the English language which pose a problem for a Norwegian speaker - nothing like the examples you mention from Spanish or German. One possible sound would be the voiced "z", in words like...er..."zodiac" or "zero". A Norwegian might be prone to pronounce such words as "sodiac" and "sero", that is with an unvoiced sound. But this is pretty hard to detect when someone is speaking otherwise fluently and fairly rapidly - and it's something which would wear off with time.

The main giveaway would indeed be the intonation, the sing-song quality, as you mention. But this is something which will definitely wear off - and probably be lost altogether after a few years when the subject is a young person who isn't only more apt at learning the language but also more keen to fit in and to emulate the speech of his new compatriots.

AH Thanks for clarifying that Norse.
And lets not forget that he was pretty much past middle age when these crimes occurred- and 91 I believe when he died. And if there are no built-in tells to the language its probably superfluous in terms of tracking that to what Bryan Hartnell heard or Nancy Stover, who, sadly, as we know, is no longer here.

[themysterymachine]

the case distorts how one looks at the evidence- its prismatic.

i completely agree. it's like having 100 puzzle pieces for a 50 piece puzzle - you start trying to fit things into a narrative but unfortunately it's all too easy to pick and choose which pieces fit which narrative. i think it would be a productive exercise from a personal standpoint to start by going through all of the evidence and saying outright 'these are the things i think are connected to the zodiac killings, and these are the things i think are hoaxes/not connected/errors/etc' then going forward sticking to that framework. we're all guilty of it - i don't generally think the riverside poem is z-related, but give me a theory with that at the center and suddenly it's "well....maybe it is" - and it clouds a systematic approach to eliminating suspects and scenarios. on this web site alone there are what, fifty, maybe sixty suspects? that means it's likely that 59 innocent people are being looked at as potential zodiac killers. i'm not dogging the efforts of those involved (myself included) just saying the reality is most of what we're doing is reacting to an ever-changing quantity of information which, as you said, distorts how one looks at the evidence.

Thanks. I like that analogy of the puzzle pieces- it is SO true.

I have been reading a book lately called "The Black Swan- the Impact of the Highly Improbable" and I think I am gonna take something away with me about Z from that book. I think if anyone has signed up to these forums we can all safely state that we have had moments of real obsession, sometimes near-torturous handwringing wondering WHO- I know I have. And the fact is that Z is something of a real one-off. As I have said probably before, people like Dahmer and Gacy and Ted Bundy are as common as dirt, compared to Z. He really is unique- a black swan. It makes it harder to pin him down, but I do think that Mike has probably gotten closer than anyone in terms of sketching him out. I still think those codes are crackable. And I think that regardless of what they actually SAY, I think-completely conjecture, of course-that the chances of it being in another language are probably quite high. There is uniformity in 16 0r 17 of the lines (I am referring to the 340 cipher). It LOOKS like something is going on there. Its not THAT random. So if it has n't been solved in nigh 50 years there is a reason- and maybe that reason is that it is in another language.
But again, conjecture.

[mike_r]

Hi-

KQ's mother died on December 20, 1939. His father was born on September 27, 1887. On July 5, 1947, KQ claimed he not only saw flying saucers over Auburn, CA but that he knew that they were space crafts. Nobody else at the time (only two weeks after the term "flying saucer" was created) was venturing such a guess, civilians or scientists. His story appeared on the frunt page of the SF Examiner on July 8th). Attention seeking on a grand scale. On October 11, 1958, KQ ran his first race car at the Riverside International Speedway.

Anyone see a pattern here?

Before you start pointing out that Z always claimed that the BRS crime took place on the 4th of July as a way of discrediting this pattern of dates, remember that there is a precedent for Z relating his crimes to the nearest holiday. The "Christmass" murders took place five days before Christmas...just as the July 4th crime took place just after midnight on July 5th.

Mike

[Norse]

Interesting dates, for sure. I'm not certain that we can speak of a pattern, however. If the key is "close to a holiday", then a few minutes past midnight on July 5 is completely different from five days before Christmas(s). The first is obviously as close as you can get, the second isn't really striking at all. And there doesn't seem to be anything similar going on with either LB or PH - which is a problem if we're looking for a definite pattern.

If KQ was Z then he did strike on certain dates that would have been significant to him for personal reasons (dates of birth and death). The question is how does this fit the profile? If we presuppose - as you do, Mike - that Z/KQ was a power assertive personality, how does this jibe with the dates in question? Seems to me that a killer who opts to strike on the birthday and the date of death of his parents has...something going on which goes well beyond being power assertive.

I'm not saying A and B are mutually exclusive - just that some of these dates obviously mean a great deal if we assume that KQ was Z.