Is Louis Myers the Zodiac Killer?

[Abby Normal]

Randy Kenney has a youtube video that has to be seen to be believed:
http://youtu.be/9JDNE5RNC5k.

Great points from the comments on the video:

Also

Hi RC
I viewed the video. Thanks for posting-did not do much for this guys credibility. seems to have alterior motives.

[RivkahChaya]

Here's the Zodiac name cipher:



Anyone get "Louis Myers"?

[jason_c]

I generally dont believe these sorts of confessions. I certainly dont believe them when the "buddy" sells his story to a TV Station or a publishing company.

Someone mentoned Allen earlier. Im always reminded of something I read about Allen elsewhere. That on previous occasions where Allen was confronted by authority figures/policemen about crimes he did actually comit Allen almost immediately broke down in tears. It's difficult to then imagine him as calmly running rings around the police(at times under intense questioning) with the Zodiac murders.

[Abby Normal]

I generally dont believe these sorts of confessions. I certainly dont believe them when the "buddy" sells his story to a TV Station or a publishing company.

Someone mentoned Allen earlier. Im always reminded of something I read about Allen elsewhere. That on previous occasions where Allen was confronted by authority figures/policemen about crimes he did actually comit Allen almost immediately broke down in tears. It's difficult to then imagine him as calmly running rings around the police(at times under intense questioning) with the Zodiac murders.

allen was a convicted child molester and was fired from his elementary school teacher job for molesting another child. I had never heard of the crying part, but if he did it may because he was actually arrested and charged.

the most exculpatory evidence is that the dna from some of the letters dosnt match allen. but the dna was collected many years before it was tested so there is plenty of time for mistakes to be made, dna to degrade etc.

Allen is a spitting image of the witness descriptions and when 2 of the suriving witnesses saw him they said he was the man.

he owned a typewriter that matched one of the earlier letters, was in the navy (boot prints and cryptograms), was given a zodiac watch (which symbol was a circle and crosshair) shortly befor the Zodiac appeared, and there is tons of other circumstantial evidence.

When the police really started to dig into him, they discovered that he had already been interviewed by police years earlier (green river, dahmer anyone?).

also, contrary to popular belief, Arthur Lee Allen was no dummy-he had several college degrees.

[Abby Normal]

Here's the Zodiac name cipher:



Anyone get "Louis Myers"?

Hi RC
I get "Jack the Ripper". JK. ; )


I believe this crypto (and several others)have never been cracked and experts belive that its just nonsense.

I think only one has been found to be legit code and cracked-the slaves in paradise one?

[RivkahChaya]

Those watches were pretty common-- it was the official railroad workers watch. Also, people were really into astrology and the zodiac in the late 1960s and early 1970s (in the US, anyway)-- you almost can't underestimate how much. Zodiac motifs were everywhere. We had a throw pillow with the zodiac on it, and no one in my family had any belief nor interest in astrology whatsoever-- it was just so common that a pillow that was the right color my mother wanted happened to have that design. People who didn't believe in astrology could still name all the signs of the zodiac, because they came up in conversation so much.

The joke about "What's your sign?" as a 70s pick-up line was no joke, because some people were firm believers in sign compatibility-- they would trust someone with a compatible sign, and immediately write off someone with an incompatible sign.

So the Zodiac killer picking that name was tapping into the zeitgeist. He didn't need a reason like having a watch, albeit, the crosshairs symbol was on the Zodiac watch, but like I said, the watches were pretty common, even though Robert Graysmith would like people to believe otherwise. In the case of the watch, I think the symbol was the blank face of a watch, or sundial, or something, not a gunsite, but the Zodiac never did say why he picked that symbol. The zodiac itself is represented as circular, and has quadrants as well, so who knows?

Personally, I don't think Allen does look like the sketches. I think the witnesses would have mentioned that he was mostly bald on top (which he already was in the late 60s), and did not have the military cut with the widow's peak of the sketches, and I also think Allen is too heavy. He does have a small nose for such a big guy, but I can't get past either the hair or the DNA.

The DNA was not "inconclusive," which is what you'd get if it were degraded. It was "no match," which meant that the sample was good enough for a match to someone, if they had the right person. You don't need the full genome. If just the mitochondrial DNA, or the Y-chromosome had matched, they would have called it a "familial" match. If some alleles had matched, but not enough were non-degraded to say they belonged only to Allen, the results would be "consistent." We didn't get "inconclusive," "familial," or "consistent," we got "no match." That means the DNA definitely belonged to someone else.

[RivkahChaya]

Hi RC
I get "Jack the Ripper". JK. ; )


I believe this crypto (and several others)have never been cracked and experts belive that its just nonsense.

I think only one has been found to be legit code and cracked-the slaves in paradise one?

Yes, I think it's been concluded that the long unsolved ones are nonsense. This particular one is inconclusive. There simply isn't enough information to break it. You need a bigger text to decrypt something. The possibility remains that someday a name will fit it, but that it the only way it will be broken. So far, no known suspect has fit it. There is a real possibility it is nonsense as well. Some people think the Zodiac symbol represents a space, other people think the same thing of the figure 8s in circles. If the latter is true, the Zodiac has two middle initials.

At any rate, Louis Myers, counting the space, has too many symbols. Without the space, it's the right number, but still the wrong count.

Randy Kenney doesn't seem to work either.

[RivkahChaya]

Wow. I've just been Googling around, and guess who does look like the sketch? Down to the widow's peak and style of glasses. The principal at the school where Allen worked. Kinda creepy. Not that he's now my #1 suspect, or anything, but what an odd coincidence.

[jason_c]

allen was a convicted child molester and was fired from his elementary school teacher job for molesting another child. I had never heard of the crying part, but if he did it may because he was actually arrested and charged.

the most exculpatory evidence is that the dna from some of the letters dosnt match allen. but the dna was collected many years before it was tested so there is plenty of time for mistakes to be made, dna to degrade etc.

Allen is a spitting image of the witness descriptions and when 2 of the suriving witnesses saw him they said he was the man.

he owned a typewriter that matched one of the earlier letters, was in the navy (boot prints and cryptograms), was given a zodiac watch (which symbol was a circle and crosshair) shortly befor the Zodiac appeared, and there is tons of other circumstantial evidence.

When the police really started to dig into him, they discovered that he had already been interviewed by police years earlier (green river, dahmer anyone?).

also, contrary to popular belief, Arthur Lee Allen was no dummy-he had several college degrees.

As far as I know it was as soon as Allen was confronted with the child abuse allegations that he broke down and cried. A thread which mentions the incident here(near the bottom of the page).

http://zodiackiller.fr.yuku.com/topi...8#.UzGzvYWebF0

I will look for more info on this incident. It is something I have read on a few occasions.

Who are the two eyewitness who identified Allen? I assume one of them is Mageau(who is as good as worthless as an eyewitness). Who is the other?

[Barnaby]

I realize all instances of child sexual abuse are potentially traumatizing and I in no way mean to diminish the seriousness of these offenses, but does anyone know if Allen's crimes were violent versus nonviolent (e.g., inappropriate touching, etc.)

The reason being it is my general impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that nonviolent pedophiles aren't exactly the most aggressive/violent people that you will encounter. Quite the opposite. Doesn't seem to fit the profile.

[RivkahChaya]

OT, but my opinion has always been that violent sexual abuse is two crimes in one. Also not to diminish the seriousness of non-violent molestation, but you can be in a fire, and suffer either burns, or smoke inhalation, or you can suffer both. A child who has been violently raped has had both. Looked at that way, you can see how the awfulness of being in the "both" category doesn't diminish being in "just" one of the others.

[Abby Normal]

FYI. The zodiac letters also started to talk about killing children as they came bouncing off the bus.

[RivkahChaya]

But not molesting them. Totally different crime.

ETA: not that one person couldn't do both, but I don't think one implies the other.

[Abby Normal]

hey RC
do you know what year they tested allens dna against the dna found on the letters?

Where they both tested at the same time or did they do the letters first?

to be honest the dna is starting to make me waver a it about allen. especially since, correct me if I am wrong, that the dna was the same on several of the letters?

also, did they not also compare Allens finger/palm prints to ones found on stines cab and they also did not match?

[RivkahChaya]

hey RC
do you know what year they tested allens dna against the dna found on the letters?

Where they both tested at the same time or did they do the letters first?

to be honest the dna is starting to make me waver a it about allen. especially since, correct me if I am wrong, that the dna was the same on several of the letters?

also, did they not also compare Allens finger/palm prints to ones found on stines cab and they also did not match?

Off-hand, I don't know the year, but it has been in the 21st c., and yes, the envelopes matched one another; if they didn't, I would be as skeptical as anyone that the letters were even written by the Zodiac. The assumption that they were al written by one person has been there for a while, both because of handwriting and fingerprint evidence, but hoaxing is possible because the letters were published, and the letters were touched by a lot of people at the post office and the newspaper-- as much as the police tried to eliminate all PO workers and newspaper workers, they could have missed someone.

I don't know about eliminating Allen by the handprint-- there is a palmprint, but I don't know if there is an existing exemplar from Allen to compare it to.

Personally, I find the idea that he went around asking other people to lick stamps and envelopes ridiculous. I remember the days before email and computerized bill-pay, and you did have to lick a lot of stamps and envelopes. The idea that you would carry stuff around until you found someone to lick it for you, or invite someone over to do it is ludicrous. You'd use a sponge. You'd buy one for that purpose at a stationery store, or use a kitchen sponge. This is transparently a post-hoc story buy the guy who had come up with other silly post-hoc stories to explain inconsistencies between Allen's behavior and the Zodiac-- eg, that he often misspelled words because he thought it was funny, to explain why a well-educated person made so many errors.

IIRC, this is the same "friend" who came up with the story that Allen said he would use the name "Zodiac" if he ever hunted people. That story, BTW, is all hearsay. We have it from only one person, and no other, and that person has a story for every occasion.

Thinking Allen is a viable suspect really comes down to how much you believe this one person. Robert Graysmith does, and has collected a lot of what he personally considers circumstantial evidence that settles the matter for him. The problem is that what Graysmith considers circumstantial evidence, and what the police consider circumstantial evidence don't quite jibe.