by Norse » Sun Sep 29, 2019 10:21 am
The thing is that Donald Fouke didn’t do anything terribly wrong that night. If he was indeed duped by the killer, this only happened because of the flawed description (the original dispatch) he was - at the time - working from. Hardly a huge embarrassment. And Zodiac wasn’t a part of the equation: it was a run-of-the-mill shooting, nothing out of the ordinary.
And yet - if Fouke talked to the killer, he decided to lie about it almost immediately: not lie about a Zodiac encounter, but lie about a trivial incident which took place in connection with a run-of-the-mill shooting (the general context being one in which Fouke, personally, didn’t do anything wrong).
Let’s assume that he did talk to the killer. What must have happened is this: Fouke is en route to the crime scene. He spots an individual who’s walking towards him on Jackson. This person does not fit the description of the suspect, but Fouke stops and talks to him nonetheless, wanting to know if he’s seen or heard anything: yes, the guy says, I just saw someone very suspicious running towards the park. Fouke speeds along, in pursuit, and then shortly after he receives the amended description via dispatch - and he realizes that he’s been duped.
Now, what should have happened next is this: not much later Fouke meets up with Pelissetti - and tells his fellow officer precisely what has just transpired. Because - well - why shouldn’t he? But what should have happened did not happen - did it? If Fouke talked to this run-of-the-mill perpetrator, he decided there and then - and for reasons that are anything but obvious to me - to lie about it.
The alternative is that he did tell Pelissetti - but considered it prudent to ask him (and Zelms *, one has to assume) to keep it to himself. Which Pelissetti agreed to do (he neglected to mention the incident in his report) - and, well, the pair of them have been lying about what happened ever since. But - again - why? They weren’t conspiring to cover up an embarrassing encounter with Zodiac. What compelled them to launch this cover-up was a trivial enough incident - which transpired because of an erroneous suspect description, not because Fouke screwed up personally. I don’t think that makes much sense personally.
The discrepancies, contradictions and whatnot are - well - they are what they are, I suppose. My take on it is simple: it wasn’t a Zodiac murder at the time. They weren’t exactly on top of their game, things were a bit sloppy, perhaps. And when they tried to recall the events twenty, and then close to forty, years later - they, unsurprisingly, didn’t remember too well what actually happened and in what exact order.
Bottom line: yes, something is clearly off here, what the various parties say doesn't jibe, it's a dreadful mess really - but that isn't necessarily a result of anyone lying.
* Zelms seemingly believed that they had talked to Zodiac - at least according to his wife. Possible explanations for this have been suggested: Ed Neil once proposed that Fouke and Zelms (obviously) accosted plenty of people that night (very likely some shady types too), and that it was one of these Zelms mistakenly thought was Zodiac. Doesn’t really matter, though, the salient point would be that to my knowledge his wife never said anything about Fouke instructing her husband to keep his mouth shut (and he would have, arguably, if he was worried about the truth coming out).
