Zodiac Killer Identified at last!?

[RivkahChaya]

I'm not going to argue the other points, because I've given my opinion. I just want to say that in 1969, there would be no reason for Allen, or anyone, to use "someone else's DNA," by which I assume you mean getting someone else to lick the envelop, to deliberately mislead police, because there was no way for Allen to know that 28 years later, police labs would be able to use DNA to catch criminals-- and at any rate, it would be ten years or so after that before they could extract DNA from an envelop flap.

But, if he were worried about having contact with the envelop and were just generally trying to avoid touching it, he would probably do what secretaries, who often have to moisten dozens of envelopes a day, do, and moisten it with a sponge. Getting another person to lick it would be involving another person, who then might run to the police with the story.

There was some DNA on the envelop, so someone licked it, and it wasn't too degraded for a match. People who deal with DNA samples professionally can tell when a sample is degraded, and not useful, and will not attempt a match, or will attempt one only cautiously (some mildly degraded samples can rule someone in, but not out). The DNA did not match, because it was someone else.

[Ayailla]

I read somewhere that the DNA was found on the stamp and not the envelope itself. Was that true?

Also, is it certain that the DNA found was saliva, and not something else such as skin flakes?

Sorry, I don't know much about the Zodiac killings so I just wanted to clear a few things up.

EDIT: I just want to go back to the original link posted at the start of this. An interesting link, but it WAS from the Daily Mail. I wouldn't trust them if they told me what my own name was.

[RivkahChaya]

I just want to go back to the original link posted at the start of this. An interesting link, but it WAS from the Daily Mail. I wouldn't trust them if they told me what my own name was.

It should be easy enough to look up where the DNA was, but I don't have time to do it right now. However, if memory serves, they tested more than one thing.

The article about the newest book may have been in the mail, but the DNA testing that didn't match Arthur Leigh Allen is real enough. It was done several years ago, and a major US TV network produced a documentary on it. One of the cable networks produced a doc a few years later with the guy who thinks it was his stepfather, and found the hood in an old speaker. They repeated the DNA information; I suppose they could have cribbed the entire thing from the earlier show, but they risk being charged with theft of intellectual property, and buying the footage would probably be more expensive than shooting their own. Besides, if memory serves, it looked like their style; it didn't look like what I'd seen earlier.

So, the Mail got that part right, but it's pretty common knowledge among people who follow the Zodiac story at all, which is a lot of people in the US. It's probably the second most notorious unsolved crime here, the first being the Dan Cooper ransom hijack.

[Barnaby]

If there was as much circumstantial evidence on a Ripper suspect as there is on Arthur Leigh Allen, how many of us would have a "case closed" mentality?

[RivkahChaya]

If there was as much circumstantial evidence on a Ripper suspect as there is on Arthur Leigh Allen, how many of us would have a "case closed" mentality?

Oh, I thought he was a great suspect-- until the DNA didn't match. And the fact of the matter was, there was never enough evidence for an arrest, or he would have been arrested, because he was on the police radar, because that's how Robert Graysmith knew about him in the first place.

Also, I don't think he matches the sketch, and I've seen photos of him from the late 1960s. He's too fat, and you can't fake that. If the sketch were fat, and he were skinny, I could speculate that it were some kind of disguise, but I don't know how several different witnesses came up with a sketch of a thin person.

Now, it's always been possible that the Zodiac took credit for murders he didn't commit-- that was a police theory way back, so maybe the sketch is of a person who committed a murder the Zodiac later took credit for, but I'd have to sit down and look at my book. I don't know which murder produced the sketch, and how the Zodiac came to take credit for it.

[RivkahChaya]

I've just gone back and looked at the case Robert Graysmith makes for Arthur Leigh Allen (he apparently went by Leigh, which is why you see the whole name all the time), and I used Graysmith's work, because he has done the most to try to build a case specifically against Allen. Since Allen was never arrested, there's no "official" case, like a DA case, against him.

First, the drawing of a pudgy guy in the Zodiac hood was drawn by Graysmith, so the fact that it looks like Allen is purposeful.

Second, all the evidence is mainly based on behavior of Allen before and after, but not so much during, the crimes. He has someone saying the Allen owned a Zodiac watch, which Graysmith claims were "uncommon," but I question his definition of "uncommon," myself, in that case, he says that Allen was a big fan of the movie The Most Dangerous Game (about a guy hunting humans), but it's a well-known movie from the 1930s, and California is full of old theaters re-running classic films, because tourists go to see them, and I know that film played on TV in the 70s, because I saw it when I was a kid, so I'm sure it played in the 60s, too.

Then, there's a lot of evidence tying Allen to the letters. All of that was pretty convincing before DNA ruled him out. At any rate, It's still possible that the Zodiac did just the attacks with living victims, when he wore the mask, and even possibly didn't mean to kill anyone, and screwed up (he was a media whore, and living victims to tell the story were a big deal). He may have taken credit after that for other crimes he didn't really commit.

What I'm saying, is that Graysmith concentrated his efforts on proving Allen wrote the letters-- not all his efforts, but most of them-- on the assumption that whoever wrote the letters committed all the crimes. His evidence for Allen actually committing any murder is very thin, and rests mostly on the ideas that he probably had the right kind of boot, knew how to fire a rifle, was strong enough to stab someone, etc.

That assumption may have tripped him up. He really does make a good circumstantial case for Allen, but it isn't just that they didn't find Allen's DNA on the envelopes-- they found DNA of an entirely unrelated person. And they didn't just test one thing, they tested several.

If Allen had asked someone else to seal envelopes, or lick stamps for him back them, for some letter he wouldn't reveal, I think that person would have come forward by now. Yes, the person could be dead. But it's still very curious. The Zodiac was all over the news. Anyway, Allen didn't know that after he was dead, there'd be this DNA evidence to reveal his secret. Why would he think to get someone else to lick his stamps? Even if he did, why wouldn't he just use a sponge?

[Errata]

I was always pretty sure that the Zodiac died shortly after the last murder. Not necessarily that it's the reason he stopped killing, but I think he had to be dead within two years. That was one attention whoring kind of guy, willing to go to extreme lengths to get that attention. That need doesn't go away. I'm sure he did something that got him killed.

[Smoking Joe]

A long time since I read about the Zodiac case,but If Allen had a genuine aversion to licking envelopes or stamps(many people have odd phobias) then perhaps he just got lucky ....unwittingly.There certainly seems to be an awful lot of circumstancial evidence surrounding Allen,some people might say a little TOO MUCH. Some think one cant be convicted on circumstancial evidence,but there can come a time when there is so much circumstancial surrounding a suspect,that its impossible for the suspect not to be guilty.
Similar to Oswald's case,everything was circumstancial,but its generally accepted Oswald was the assassin,except for the Amish wing of "the conspiracies are everywhere". movement .

[RivkahChaya]

The problem is that they didn't simply not find Allen's DNA, they found someone else's. If the envelop and stamps had been a blank, like they were sponge-moistened, I could believe it was still Allen. The only thing I can think is that it was one of those stamp-moisteners at an office, that had DNA from fingers, but then, there'd be more than one person's on it. I think touch DNA from a post office worker wouldn't be there after being sponge-moistened.

Anyway, there is circumstantial, and there is circumstantial. For example, Allen owned a Zodiac watch, but so did a lot of people. Robert Graysmith implies in his books that they were rare, but that's just not true. That's different from, for example, the fact the the oddity of Abby and Andrew Borden being killed over an hour apart, with Andrew's body being found still warm and bleeding makes sense if you think that Lizzie and her sister benefitted greatly from it being very clear that Abby died first (inheritance laws at the time meant they got literally everything, as opposed to a very small trust barely enough to feed them, if Andrew died first).It makes very little sense for anyone else to hang around the crime scene waiting for Abby's body to cool off, before killing Andrew, and then finding him immediately. I can't think of a single piece of circumstantial evidence that damning against Allen, and no matter how many "sort of" things you pile on, they're still "sort of." You can make up things that sound like evidence, when they are really vague, like "a victim's sister remembers her sister was meeting someone with a one syllable name," or just the absence of information, like "Allen doesn't have an alibi for X night," and then after a while say "I have 400 items of circumstantial evidence. That's too many to ignore." No, if they are all weak, then they can all be ignored.

I'm not saying Allen absolutely didn't do it, but I find the DNA non-match very compelling. He wasn't arrested, even though the police did look at him at the time, because he had a record..

I will say that I think Allen is a better suspect than any of the crackpot theories of the last 20 years or so.

[kensei]

Vallejo Detective George Bawart prepared a 30-point report in 1992, popularly known as "The Bawart Report," describing why Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac. I think it is quite compelling and hard to refute. It was intended to be used to encourage the arrest of Allen, which was being seriously considered just before Allen's death in 1992. Could there really be this much circumstantial evidence against a person if he was innocent?

http://www.zodiackiller.com/Bawart1.html

[RivkahChaya]

I've seen that before. It depends on Cheney being a reliable witness. I have a problem with Cheney in that he came forward with a lot of information as it became needed, if that makes sense. He never told anyone the story of his "friend" Arthur Lee Allen talking about hunting humans with a mag light on his rifle, and calling himself the Zodiac, until after such crimes happened, and the police questioned him. When first asked why he did not come forward with the story as soon as Allen indicated that he was thinking of hunting humans (as in The Most Dangerous Game, something else he was supposed to have said), or why he didn't come forward after the first Zodiac letter, that's when Cheney first said that Allen couched all this in terms of writing a novel.

After the DNA evidence did not match, Cheney came up with a story that Allen used to ask other people to lick stamps for him, because the taste of the glue made him sick. That's a lot of trouble to go to-- seeking out another person to lick stamps for you-- when stationery stores (that's what they used to be called-- we'd say "office supply stores" now) sell sponges in cases just for the purpose of dampening stamps and envelopes.



They cost about $8 now. They cost about three times as much on amazon.uk, but there's a similar, handheld product for about 4 pounds. They've been around forever, because the secretary at my elementary school used one.

Anyway, if there's a possibility Cheney is lying, then the list becomes less impressive.

As far as "Could there really be this much circumstantial evidence if a person is innocent?" I'm going to say yes, based on the fact that innocent people have, in fact, been convicted of crimes before. Sometimes those were convictions based on coerced confessions, and a few were malicious, but some were overwhelming circumstantial cases, plus one mistaken witness.

[Ron Beckett]

To Lick or to get a friend to lick?

It won't help the DNA experts much that you can now buy self-adhesive stamps, no licking needed.

Does any budding wiki search type person out there know what year non-lick envelopes were first made available? That fact is also DNA related.

Patricia Cornwell was pretty safe in her DNA research as her letters were supposedly 1880's and I think it was all lickable then. Or glue based.

[RivkahChaya]

They found someone's DNA on the envelopes. The assumption is that it belongs to the sender, and there is a further assumption that the sender is the authentic Zodiac. Since it seems specious to argue that back in the late 60s & early 70s, the sender anticipated DNA being taken from the envelop, and took precautions against it, I don't buy arguments that someone else's DNA was planted, or that the killer risked having a witness to his letter-sending witnessed, not to mention going to a lot of trouble, since he lived alone (IIRC), by getting someone else to lick them, when there were cheap and practical alternatives.

So I'm left with the assumption that the DNA on the envelops belongs to the killer.

It's possible the letters are hoaxes, but I doubt that too.

[Abby Normal]

They found someone's DNA on the envelopes. The assumption is that it belongs to the sender, and there is a further assumption that the sender is the authentic Zodiac. Since it seems specious to argue that back in the late 60s & early 70s, the sender anticipated DNA being taken from the envelop, and took precautions against it, I don't buy arguments that someone else's DNA was planted, or that the killer risked having a witness to his letter-sending witnessed, not to mention going to a lot of trouble, since he lived alone (IIRC), by getting someone else to lick them, when there were cheap and practical alternatives.

So I'm left with the assumption that the DNA on the envelops belongs to the killer.

It's possible the letters are hoaxes, but I doubt that too.

No
The letters were not hoaxes and they were written by the zodiac, and the zodiac IMHO is Allen. It's just not his DNA on the envelopes. There are a million ways someone else's DNA could have gotten on the envelopes:someone where they were made, someone at the store they were bought, a police officer, someone who they were sent to who opened them, a lab technician etc., etc., etc.

I would not get to hung up on the DNA.

The watch, his background, local guy, his profile, he fits the description to a t, and a thousand other things point to him, but the watch is what seals the deal for me.

Oh, and one other thing -regarding his accuser Cheney. Allen had already come under police scrutiny wayyyy before Cheney came forward and had actually been questioned.

[RivkahChaya]

I'm aware that Chaney seems to be more of an attention whore than anything else, and his convenient memories of things like Allen getting other people to lick his envelopes, popping up right after the DNA results are good mostly for a laugh, but that yeah, he came forward after Allen was already in the spotlight.

It's the total absence of Allen's DNA, when there is other DNA present, that seems odd to me.

Also, those Zodiac watches were really pretty common. You can't take Greysmith's word that they were unusual.

That said, I'm not going to be shocked if someone unearths definitive proof that it was Allen, but I'm not going to be shocked if someone uncovers proof otherwise, either.

FWIW, I don't think the Zodiac killed anyone after Paul Stine, despite his insinuations otherwise.