Getting away with murder - The Zodiac Killer

[KC//CRIMSON]

Getting Away With Murder: 'Zodiac' Tracks An Elusive Killer

What if the brutal assassin were around today? Experts and film's star say he wouldn't stand a chance.


Nicknamed the Zodiac Killer, one of America's most notorious serial murderers claimed responsibility for as many as 37 deaths while terrorizing the San Francisco area in the 1960s and '70s. As brilliant as he was terrifying, the Zodiac Killer has baffled police for nearly 40 years. And he's never been caught.

But what if Zodiac, the subject of a new film from director David Fincher (see "Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo Hunt Ultimate Serial Killer in 'Zodiac' "), were active today?

"The case would have been over in 30 minutes," insisted Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle during Zodiac's initial reign and the author of the book "Zodiac." "We would have formed a task force and we would have shared our information. He wouldn't have stood a chance."

Zodiac toyed with police by sending coded ciphers to several area newspapers, promising that his true identity would be revealed to whoever cracked the intricate code.

Graysmith (played in the film by Jake Gyllenhaal) claims to have solved one of Zodiac's later ciphers. As expected, however, the purported solution got investigators no closer to figuring out who Zodiac really was.

Star Mark Ruffalo (Inspector David Toschi) thinks that was by design — that the ciphers were an ingenious method of keeping the police one step behind.

"No one had used the media in the way that this guy had done. He actually had most of the community trying to solve the case. Those ciphers were like the Sunday crossword puzzle for people — everybody and their sister were trying to figure it out," Ruffalo argued. "The Chronicle's circulation doubled overnight by putting Zodiac on the cover. But he was running the show."

According to Ruffalo, that would all be different today. "They wouldn't keep egging him on by printing stuff. They would have been running the media in a way that [drew] him out," like many papers' refusal to print the Unabomber's so-called "Manifesto," Ruffalo said. "[But] they didn't know how to handle it back then."

It's specifically because of Zodiac that police today would have a better shot at catching him, writer James Vanderbilt asserted, because Zodiac changed the way police cooperate with other investigative agencies.

"Zodiac killed in three or four different jurisdictions, and it was really tough for the police to coordinate everything," he said. "The reason FBI task forces exist in these situations is because of the Zodiac case."

Zodiac also benefited from living in an era well before DNA evidence could be used to link a suspect to a crime, something that would have led to his quick arrest today, Graysmith said.

"He called the Napa Police Department after he'd come down from stabbing the kids at Lake Berryessa, and [when police traced the call and found the phone booth he was using], the phone is still wet from his sweat," Graysmith recalled.

"They came that close," he sighed.

"Zodiac" opens nationwide March 2. Trailer - http://youtube.com/watch?v=jJe-Xfi0COw

This report is from MTV News.

I've read the book several times that this movie was based on. Fascinating, haunting, chilling read. What makes this serial killer different from others was his intellect. This freak was a borderline genius. Spooky.

Everything you need to know about the Zodiac. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_zodiac_killer

[Boomer.....]

Looks like a good movie.

[OhU1]

The Unibomber really was a genius. Few of these psychopaths actually are. As Stephen King once said violent acts do not take much creativity, talent, or intelligence. Ted Bundy, probably one of the most "successful" serial killers had an IQ of 118. Everything about Bundy was phony. Like all psychopaths he was just good at conning people.

[GottaHavePride]

118 is still above average, though. Since "average" is set at 100...

[Mjcpr]

Word, he's way over the Mendoleo Line.

[olevetonahill]

I missed out on a proctored (sp) test for Mensa by 1 point . Does that make me a drunk smart asz ?

[JohnnyMack]

Word, he's way over the Mendoleo Line.

Heh.

[JohnnyMack]

Oh and In.

[picasso]

Oh and In.
with Bundy?

he was a Republican ya know.



















;)

[Widescreen]

http://www.allserialkillers.com/zodiac_killer.gif
If I saw this jump out from behind a tree, I would freak out. Almost as bad as if I saw this jump out from behind a tree.

http://creative.myspace.com/groups/_ap/24bk/images/bkMySpace_v5_02.gifhttp://creative.myspace.com/groups/_ap/24bk/images/bkMySpace_v5_03.gifhttp://creative.myspace.com/groups/_ap/24bk/images/bkMySpace_v5_04.gif

[KC//CRIMSON]

This flick is getting a lot ofhttp://www.soonerfans.com/forums/images/rating/rating_4.gif and http://www.soonerfans.com/forums/images/rating/rating_5.gif ratings. Critics are digging it.


'Zodiac': Out Of The Past, By Kurt Loder


This haunting film by David Fincher is both eerie and, at several points, really frightening, too — just what you want from a serial-killer movie. Its most remarkable accomplishment, however, is more low-key. Over the course of two hours and 35 minutes, the picture lays out an enormous amount of information about the Zodiac murders in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s, a 10-month spree by a still-unknown assassin that became the basis for the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie, "Dirty Harry." "Zodiac" is packed with procedural detail, but it goes down smoothly — we never feel like we're being force-fed. And what the movie demonstrates most memorably is how an overabundance of raw data — police reports, expert speculation, conflicting witness statements — can spread not illumination, but increasing uncertainty.

Like Jack the Ripper, who despite his enduring renown actually murdered only five people during his brief rampage in 1888, the Zodiac, as he called himself, was a small-scale eliminator. He, too, is credited with just five killings (although there may have been more). But the reason his crimes continue to resonate is that, like the Ripper, he made the media an accessory to his depredations. The letters and mysterious ciphers he mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle and other local newspapers — usually beginning with the salutation, "This is the Zodiac speaking" — creeped people out in a serious way.

The movie begins on the night of July 4, 1969, in Vallejo, California, with small parties in progress and fireworks lighting up the suburban sky. At a deserted teen parking spot far from the holiday hubbub, a young man and woman (Lee Norris and Ciara Hughes) are sitting in their car talking. Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" is playing on the radio. Then, quietly, a second car glides up behind them. It just sits there. After a while, it drives off. An uneasy moment passes. But then, along with the two kids, we see headlights in the distance. The second car is coming back.

Fincher stages this first Zodiac attack with an admirable lack of pulp frenzy. We can't quite make the killer out, and he's no clearer in a pay-phone booth a bit later when he calls in his crime to the police. ("I also killed those kids last year," he tells the cops offhandedly.) The murderer subsequently mails letters to three newspapers, each missive containing part of a complex cipher which the Zodiac claims contains his identity, and which he demands that the papers print. At the Chronicle, this draws the interest of hard-drinking hotshot reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr., who's never been funnier than he is here) and a geeky, mild-mannered editorial cartoonist named Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). (The movie is based on two books about the Zodiac case written by the real Graysmith.)

The Zodiac's cipher turns out to be a stumper — the FBI, CIA and NSA all take a shot at cracking it, and all fail. Then an amateur code-breaker deciphers it. The murderer says he enjoys killing, and he believes that his victims will all become his slaves in the hereafter.

Fincher gets all of the picture's period details right — the jaunty little hipster neckerchiefs and thick leather watchbands; the big clackety electric typewriters in the Chronicle newsroom — without calling too much attention to them. And the pop music that floats through the film is dead-on without being groaningly clichéd. (Three Dog Night's "Easy to Be Hard" is just right for the opening scenes, and later on, so are the Oliver version of Rod McKuen's sappy "Jean" and the jailbait anthem "Young Girl," by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.)

The story proceeds in a series of intense set pieces. There are the actual killings, of course — especially one on the sunny bank of a lake near Napa, which conveys an inhuman brutality without descending into witless gore — and also a frightening late-night encounter in a basement between Graysmith and a weird little man named Bob Vaughn (Charles Fleischer), who may — or may not — actually be the Zodiac.

The last likely Zodiac killing, of a San Francisco cab driver, takes place in October of 1969. But that isn't the end of the case. Two San Francisco police detectives, Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), keep pursuing leads as the years mount up — and so does the freelance enthusiast Graysmith, who becomes increasingly obsessed. There's no shortage of suspects, many self-admitted, most of them bogus. But as the evidence and strange indications proliferate, one man stands out — a bald, doughy child molester named Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch). Is he the Zodiac? Toschi and Armstrong definitely like him as a suspect — especially after a bizarre confrontation at the oil refinery where Allen works. But despite their most determined efforts, they can't make all the evidence fit. The movie's point of view — which is the point of view of Robert Graysmith — is that Allen is the man. And even though the Zodiac case was never solved, Fincher manages the considerable feat of bringing the picture to a satisfying narrative conclusion.

"Zodiac" bears little resemblance to Fincher's hyper-violent 1995 serial-killer hit "Se7en." This film is more ambitious and far more subtle — it's an essay in ambiguity. And while it's a long picture, it doesn't feel long at all. I wanted it to keep going for a while — just like the Zodiac case itself, which continues to percolate to this very day.

("Zodiac" is a Paramount Pictures release. Paramount and MTV are both subsidiaries of Viacom.)



This report is from MTV News.

[JohnnyMack]

87% so far on RT.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zodiac/

[KC//CRIMSON]

Went and saw it last night. I give it two thumbs up. Really good.

[Viking Kitten]

Saw it last night. It's definitely worth checking out. Kurt Loder's review above was spot on.

[Czar Soonerov]

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[Tulsa_Fireman]

What he said.

[Frozen Sooner]

The Unibomber really was a genius. Few of these psychopaths actually are. As Stephen King once said violent acts do not take much creativity, talent, or intelligence. Ted Bundy, probably one of the most "successful" serial killers had an IQ of 118. Everything about Bundy was phony. Like all psychopaths he was just good at conning people.

How come it's always a terrorist mastemind? Really, how smart do you have to be to come up with strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing up a bus?

"OK, Habib, here's what you do. Put on this backpack full of dynamite and get on the bus. Then, blow yourself up!"

"Why do I have to blow myself up? Why not just leave the backpack on the bus?"

"WHO'S THE F-ING TERRORIST MASTERMIND HERE!"

[Viking Kitten]

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Dangit Czar. Will you please just tell me where you put the dead hooker? The house is starting to smell.

[Frozen Sooner]

Dangit Czar. Will you please just tell me where you put the dead hooker? The house is starting to smell.

Crawlspace.

And this whole problem can be solved if you just buy the garbage disposal I recommended.

[KC//CRIMSON]

Dangit Czar. Will you please just tell me where you put the dead hooker? The house is starting to smell.


check the box springs........

[Boomer.....]

The movie was good, but not as great as I was expecting. It was also very long.

[Cam]

Wife and I saw this last night. Damn good flick. Kept us interested enough to not notice how long it was.

I think I'm going to have to buy the book now. Even though there's a ton of information given in the movie, I'm sure there's some pretty interesting stuff they left out.

[Widescreen]

http://www.zodiackiller.com/

Lots of good stuff here. The people who run this site are serious about trying to figure out who zodiac was.