Mike Kelleher and Mike Rodelli

Interview: Mike Kelleher and Mike Rodelli
Posted 26 May 2001

As longtime readers will know, Mike Rodelli has been researching the Zodiac case for almost three years. In this time, he has proposed several theories and developed a suspect who was featured in a major article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Author Michael Kelleher recently interviewed him on his methods, perceptions, and opinions on the Zodiac case in general and the amateur contribution to its investigation. Both participants were generous enough to share their words with this site.

Mike Kelleher: Amid the endless claptrap that surrounds the Zodiac case, both in print and on the Internet, you have managed to gain the reputation of a quiet, serious researcher. When did you begin to look into the case and why? How were you able to separate yourself from so many other "armchair investigators?"
Mike Rodelli: Well, my reputation as being a quiet, serious researcher is certainly not one that I consciously cultivated. I'll take the question as a compliment, though! Most of the answer is simply human nature. I believe that everyone who decides to seriously apply himself or herself to the Zodiac case brings with them their own personality and approach to the work. That is what makes it such a fascinating subject and what also makes the chat rooms so interesting and, at times, exasperating. Not only is it an incredibly complex, old mystery, but it is also a study in modern day human nature and behavior. There are some very intelligent and astute people plying the web sites, as well as some people who are rather eccentric in their views.
As for my ability to do the research, my training is in natural science--I have a B.A. and M.S. in biology and marine biology, respectively. I therefore have a background that prepared me to do basic research, albeit not the type I ended up doing on this case. But the skills are essentially the same, including knowing how to ask questions and how to get the answers to them, as well as using the answers to ask more questions.
As for how I was drawn to the Zodiac case, I had recently asked myself the same question! I came to recall that when I was 15 or 16, I saw a TV show on Jack the Ripper. While I did not realize it at the time, that mystery apparently ignited an ember of interest for things unsolved, that apparently smoldered deep inside of me for a long time. I certainly did not make a conscious decision then and there to try to solve crimes, Zodiac or otherwise. But that is what I would attribute my eventual interest in the Zodiac case to.
Like anybody else who was drawn to the case, I read Graysmith's book, ZODIAC, in 1987, or so. I do not recall the exact time when I bought it, but it was around then. I read the book and was particularly taken by how frightening and fascinating the story was particularly the stark, cold look of codes, with their strange and forbidding symbols, and the message the three-part cipher revealed. I then put it on my bookshelf and would be drawn back to it from time to time, since it was still unsolved. I probably read it three or four times by the time 1998 came along.
In June 1998, I decided to read ZODIAC again, but by that time something fundamental had changed in my perspective on what I was reading. I had learned some new things related to criminal profiling. By 1997, I had read John Douglas' book, Journey into Darkness, and was exposed to some of his techniques. To make a long story short, I began to wonder if anyone had tried applying some of these techniques retrospectively to the Zodiac case. Since I saw this as a way to possibly generate a new suspect, I decided to pursue my ideas, even though I assumed that someone must already have tried this approach.
It was in August 1998 that I typed "zodiac killer" into the Yahoo search engine and found some web sites. The first was Jackson Garland's. The second was Jake Wark's, which had just come on line two weeks before. From there, the rest is history, as they say. I started corresponding with Jake and another Zodiac researcher, Jonathan Zychowski, Jr. From there, I developed my Timex/radian theory (which I am now not so sure about, given my feelings that Zodiac probably did not kill Bates) and started getting involved in really learning about the latest developments in the case in the trenches at the newgroup alt.true-crime. After that, Jake introduced me to you, and through our email correspondence you ended up doing a lot to shape my ideas on the case, and I was off and running.
As for how I separated myself from other investigators, again it was not a conscious effort on my part. I just did things my own way and according to my own temperament and training. One credo I have always tried to live by is being true to the facts of the case. Once you start denying or ignoring them, you've lost your objectivity. I am proud to have put together a story that is factual and which does not sweep anything I've found under the rug. What you see in my report is what I've found. Remarkably, in two years of very hard digging, I have yet to find one fact about my suspect that doesn't fit the case. There is no smoking gun but to date, the facts of both the case and of my suspect's life have been my best friends.
Kelleher: Do you have an opinion about Robert Graysmith's work? Was it valuable to you? How?
Rodelli: Of course, anybody who studies the Z case owes a huge debt of gratitude to Robert Graysmith's 1986 book, ZODIAC. It was (and remains to this day) the only mainstream book ever written about the case. Were it not for his book, of which almost all web sites and treatments of the case are derivative in one way or another, I would probably never have been exposed to the case at all. Or at least, I would have heard about it in a different way, probably through TV, and would not have been able to return to the case over and over again to review its facts, as is possible with a book.
However, as is the case with many modern day researchers, who now have access to much more original source material on the crimes, I have gotten frustrated and, at times, indignant over the number of errors contained in the book. However, I have also learned a bit about the conditions under which he labored from the mid-1970's on, which was obviously a time much closer to when the crimes were committed. Given the need by the authorities to suppress certain facts and the general level of provincialism that permeated the police departments (whereby they were not known for sharing information even with each other), he actually did an excellent job of putting the source material for the book together. For instance, I have heard stories of him being allowed "eyes only" looks at certain case documents and then having to run to his car to scribble down notes, etc.
The only thing I do find disturbing about Graysmith is his behavior in more recent television shows and interviews. I recently got to see a suite of five or six interviews, which he did on various shows since 1988, or so. (This was on a compilation tape that Tom Voigt put together.) The amazing thing is that there is not one of these shows in which he does not make a factual misstatement about some aspect of the case! Not one. This is very distressing coming from a man who is viewed by most as the guardian of the facts of the case--THE expert of experts on the case. While some of these errors are just inane, insignificant ones, like having Jensen running towards Benicia, instead of Vallejo when she was shot, some are more revealing. For instance, there is the whole issue of the timing of the crimes and letters and Allen's stay at Atascadero (from 1975-77), which was in a 1999 special on The Learning Channel. The fact is that the Z murders stopped some five and a half years before Allen was sent to Atascadero. Graysmith is seen in another interview stating that Art had two master's degrees and was a "potential Olympic diver". Art was a professional student and apparent sadist towards squirrels. To my knowledge, he did not hold even one masters's degree. He was also built like a linebacker and was hardly the model of an "Olympic diver", who are generally of small stature and very lean. I could envision Art winning a cannonball contest at a poolside party, but not much more than that (although I do know from Tom's site that he could apparently dive better than most people).
The point of the above discussion is that Graysmith appears to either be losing sight of the facts of the case over time or, worse, has totally lost his objectivity towards them. He seems to be aggrandizing Allen beyond what he was in life, into some mythical super-suspect, who had two advanced degrees and was a potential Olympian. In fact, as I watch him and his endless discussion of Allen's "incriminating" Zodiac watch and ring, I have begun to wonder if Graysmith is trying to convince us-- or himself-- that Allen was actually Zodiac.
Kelleher: What other sources did you find crucial to your investigation and how did they help?
Rodelli: I believe that in order to answer this question, I have to include "tools", as well as sources. Without a doubt, I owe a lot of my interest and anything I've accomplished in the Z case to one thing: the Internet. Without access to the info on the websites that were available in 1998, as well as the instant access to people via email, the chat rooms dedicated to Z on deja.com at the time and information on just about every topic you can name on the Web, I would definitely not be at the point where I am today.
There are obviously many pitfalls about the Internet with respect to privacy issues, spam, etc. But I can truly say that if I am fortunate enough to have identified Z, it is nothing short of an example of what the Internet is capable of doing on its very best day. My research on the Z case has taken me around the world. The Internet has been my passport on that virtual journey. The Z case had its roots at a time when suspect leads and interviews were written on 3x5 cards and filed in a cabinet. Nothing was computerized. But I am absolutely certain that I would never even have joined the hunt for Z were it not for the explosion of the personal computer and the Internet. It has been nothing less than my lifeline.
As for human sources, the single biggest influence on my work in its formative stages was, as I mentioned in the first question, my email relationship with you. As you probably recall, you and I had long and fascinating talks about Riverside and the aspect of the case I ended up using to find my suspect--Zodiac's letter writing behavior. Without you to stimulate and shape my thinking through your insights, I would not have eventually developed my own, personal ideas about the case: ideas that have led me to this point. Aside from yourself, there are others who have influenced me. My first email contact in 1998, one which also ended up influencing me deeply, was with my friend Jonathan Zychowski, Jr. Also my email friendship with Jake has been very productive and welcome, given the quality of his website and his insight into the case. For one thing, he has web posted two of my theories on the case (one of which, the Timex/Radian theory, I am not so sure about now!). I truly appreciate his objective opinion on the case (since he has no axe to grind, in that he does not have his own suspect to influence his thinking). Finally, my relationship via email and in person with Ken Narlow has been most gratifying. He has also helped shape my thinking (as a person who actually worked on the case in 1969 and beyond) and was gracious enough to show me and a former associate the actual site of the Lake Berryessa attack in October 1999.
There are also two topics which I had studied in the past (i.e., prior to my involvement in the case), which became instrumental in my early work on my suspect. Amazingly, both of these unusual areas of expertise, which shall remain nameless for now, were indispensable to my understanding my suspect and some of the things he did, which revealed him to seemingly be an attention-seeker of a very high order (as was Zodiac). Although they were not technically "sources", my knowledge of these topics helped me to understand my suspect at a much deeper level than someone who was not familiar with them would have been capable of doing
Kelleher: You developed an original suspect in the Zodiac case, and you did so in a very unique way. Without disclosing names, can you describe that process?
Rodelli: Roughly three months into my research interest in the Z case, in about November 1998, Jake introduced me to your work on the case. At the time, you had done research over the past year or so on the crimes and were writing your book on the case. Eventually, as I have mentioned, I developed an email relationship with you. We discussed many behavioral aspects of the case in great detail. I came to understand your views on Riverside and why, due to the overtly sexual nature of the attack on Bates, as well as the sexual overtones of the Confession letter, you believed that Z did not kill her. This is what made me begin to question the validity of my own Timex/radian theory, which I wrote when I thought Bates had been killed by Zodiac.
At the same time, I was beginning to become disillusioned with the main suspect in the case, Arthur Leigh Allen, since he seemed to be a suspect largely of his own making. To be sure, he was undoubtedly one of the usual suspects in Vallejo (thus his October 1969 interview by Sgt. Lynch of Vallejo) and gave a slick, amusing and self-incriminating interview to Detectives Mulanax, Armstrong and Toschi in 1972. That along with his Zodiac watch and ring made me sense that he might be nothing more than a wanna-be Zodiac. Some of our correspondence about the nature of child molesters bolstered my opinion to that effect. So I was open to new ideas.
For some reason, the behavioral aspects of the case had always fascinated me. Through our continued correspondence, my own ideas began to take shape and I developed a plan to use Zodiac's known behavior as a tool to at least attempt to identify a possible suspect. My idea had to do with his letter writing behavior. I figured that if he wrote to the papers as Z, he may have done so under his own name. It was a seemingly innocent idea at the time, and I had absolutely no clue that it would lead me to the point in my research where I find myself today.
The prospect of even trying to come up with a new suspect had intimidated me up to that point, and with good reason. After all, I was looking at the case from a distance of 3,000 miles and almost thirty years. It was also a case that had been picked over by some top minds around the world for all of that time. But my idea became a great equalizer, since it allowed me to zero in on a very circumscribed pool of people from a given time period.
It was by sifting through the letters to the Editor of the Northern California papers that one, single letter came to my attention in June 1999. After reading this letter, I became intrigued by both its elements and the writing style of the author. All I did was read the name on the bottom of the letter and begin researching this author. Within two weeks, I realized that he lived in close proximity to one of the crime scenes. Within a month, I realized, much to my shock and amazement, that he was virtually the living embodiment of the 1969 SFPD police sketch. From there, the research just took off until I ended up writing a 15 page, fully documented report for William White of the Napa County DA's office in March 2000.
Kelleher: Compared to the other, well-known suspects in the Zodiac case, do you feel that your suspect is equally viable? Why?
Rodelli: Due to the fact that I had studied the Zodiac case very seriously for ten months prior to developing the name of my suspect, I had the luxury of understanding the cases against most of the major, named suspects. Compared to what I know about these major suspects, in my opinion the man I have been researching can be tied more intimately into the case than any other suspect I know. In fact, the entire Zodiac case seems to revolve around both him and the facts of his life. It is simply uncanny. And the more facts I find, the better the fit seems to be.
I therefore feel that he is one of the best suspects ever developed in the case, a view that is shared by others who understand the Zodiac crimes and who are familiar with my research. Could my case be nothing more than "circumstantial nonsense". It could. But I have uncovered so many things about my suspect that it seems statistically unlikely at this point that such a number of intimate circumstances could point to the wrong person.
One of the biggest things that you see in the discussion groups of such suspects as Kaczynski (who was apparently out of CA when Bates was killed), O'Hare (who can't be tied to any of the crime scenes), etc., is that there are certain facts that you have to "apologize for" or explain away. Not everything fits these suspects. So far in my research, and I have done an extensive amount of it given my distance from the source materials (and considering that I have had no local researcher since last June), every single fact I have discovered about this man fits the case. I do not have to apologize for or rationalize anything, since the facts of his life and the case have been my best friends so far.
Ironically, when you look at this man in a superficial manner, he seems to be exactly as he described himself in the San Francisco Chronicle article: the least likely person in SF to have been Zodiac. This I do not deny in any way. (Certainly, if he is Z, it is not difficult to see why the case has gone unsolved for over thirty years.) However, when you start peeling away the veneers of respectability and become a slave to the facts of his life (as I as a researcher have become), then he is a very likely person to have been Zodiac. This amazes even me, since it was difficult even for me to accept him as Zodiac, until I learned a lot about him from my work.
To wit, if you define Zodiac not by a theoretical behavioral profile but more empirically, by what he showed himself to be in his crimes, codes and letters: aloof, superior, extremely egotistical, an attention seeker on a grand scale, a letter writer, and a man who was obsessed with certain dates, then my suspect fits Zodiac absolutely to a tee. He was and is all of these things. Both he and Zodiac seem to be cut from the same cloth.
As part of my research, I was able to locate an article, in which the author specifically describes my suspect's aloofness and the way in which he distances himself from other people. Another one described his speech pattern as being slow and deliberate, just like Hartnell described at Lake Berryessa. (In fact, Napa SO ruled out a suspect just because he spoke too quickly! Obviously, they took the deliberate speech pattern very seriously.) It was amazing to see authors find their interviewee's aloofness and manner of speaking so odd that they were compelled to mention it in the pieces they were supposed to be writing about his business endeavors.
I believe that he deserves a lot of attention from law enforcement and is a great fit as Zodiac, regardless of how unlikely a fit he may look at first glance.
Kelleher: Several months ago, you were the subject of a feature article in the San Francisco Chronicle. That article detailed your work on the case. It also generated a good deal of renewed interest in Zodiac and his crimes. How do you feel about that article? Did it help or hurt your research? How?
Rodelli: I was actually quite disappointed in the Chronicle article as a local consciousness-raising tool. I did learn a great deal about "balanced reporting" from it, although I feel that both my case and I were presented in an unduly bad light. For instance, I was stigmatized as being "unemployed". This was simply not true as of October 2000, although I was "between jobs" for a period of time last year, which certainly happens to a lot of people. The implication of an "unemployed person", who simply does not choose to work, does not describe me in any way. But the people reading the article did not and could not know this and were, I believe, subconsciously encouraged to think the worst of me from the start.
Then there was the issue of the juxtaposition of "dueling" quotes from me and from Lt. Bruton, who was in charge of the case for SFPD until August 2000. Without going into gory details, the typesetter set up two unrelated quotes, one on top of the other, the net result of which was to also put me in a bad light by seeming to pit my quote against Lt. Bruton;s quote. The fact is that my quote had nothing to do with SFPD or Lt. Bruton, and was attributable to Bill White of the Napa County D.A.'s Office. Unfortunately, that point was not clear.
As a result, the article generated about three or four emails that I was made aware of. It certainly did not have anywhere near the impact that I had hoped it would. However, it did not affect my research in any way, which keeps right on going full bore despite it. It just did not help my cause or me in any readily perceptible manner.
Kelleher: Your work has reached high levels at various law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area. In your opinion, have these agencies been serious and cooperative in following through on your leads? In short, are they doing what they can?
Rodelli: Overall, I have been quite gratified by the reaction of law enforcement to my work. The first response that I got to my report was from Bill White of the Napa County DA's Office. His father was the first Park Ranger to arrive at the Lake Berryessa attack site, so he has been exposed to the case all of his life. He said that mine was the best suspect he had ever seen in the thirty year history of the case (and was the source of my quote in the October 2000 Chronicle article). Since then, two other jurisdictions have given favorable marks to the report, which is now 25 pages long (and fully documented with facts, names, places, etc.).
As a layperson who did not understand the inner workings of a police investigation, I have had a real education over the past two years. While Zodiac researchers view naturally the case as "THE Zodiac case", in reality it is treated as nothing more than another "cold" case by modern investigators. There is good reason for this. First, Zodiac is no longer active. In addition, due to budgetary and manpower constraints, as well as new crime (which is apparently plentiful in the Bay Area), many of the jurisdictions just do not have the manpower or money to devote to the case. (I know of one jurisdiction that is keenly interested in my suspect but which lacks the ability to devote time to the case.) This is a sad but true fact.
At times when I am feeling sorry for myself and wish that the on-going investigation were proceeding at a faster pace, there is one issue that does puzzle me. I do not understand why the police are expending both time and money to try to get DNA from one of the Z letters, in order to rule out a dead suspect (i.e., Allen). I have given them a live person to interview about his possible involvement in or knowledge of the case. My suspect is now an elderly man and time is definitely not our ally, if he is indeed Zodiac.
What is more, I have no reason to believe that there is any DNA on file for my suspect. So even if they do isolate Zodiac's DNA, what good does it do the investigation into my suspect's past? There is, to my knowledge, nothing for the police to compare the DNA sample to. In order to get such a sample, it seems to me that my suspect will have to be interviewed and offer a sample--or a court order issued for such a sample--at some point in time.
However, the knowledge that my work has been taken seriously at three different jurisdictions to date is encouraging to me. I feel that in and of itself, that is an accomplishment given the level of noise and the number of competing theories out there. I have every confidence that they will eventually get around to questioning my suspect.
Kelleher: A forthcoming documentary will highlight your research efforts and profile the way in which you went about your work. It will also give you a chance to put your views before a national audience and do it in your own way. How do you feel about this?
Rodelli: Well, whether I am eventually proven to be right or wrong about who Zodiac is, I feel certain that I have uncovered within the Z case one of the most fascinating and compelling stories ever told. If true, it is definitely light years stranger than fiction! Unfortunately, I am constrained from sharing it publicly because of the threat of a lawsuit that I am under. My story is, after all, potentially libelous, if it is not borne out by an investigation or a confession. While I welcome the opportunity to discuss my work, I have to do so knowing that I cannot share too much of it. In short, I am flattered that my research will be discussed in a TV special and that I will have a chance to talk about it in that forum. However, my lot in life is that unless I am not proven correct by a police investigation or confession, I shall never be able to share with the world what I have uncovered. The nuts and bolts of my research will have to wait for another time and another forum to be explained.
Kelleher: There is much debate about Zodiac in terms of his intelligence and cunning. What is your opinion? Was this man a brilliant killer, a lucky murderer, or something else?
Rodelli: The debate over Z's level of intelligence and sophistication (as well as his marksmanship) is a surprisingly visceral one. The discussion in the chat room sites seems to be very heated over this issue, for some reason. I believe that it has to do in part with the various personal agendas that different people bring to the debate, as well as what they themselves want to get out of the debate. It is quite an odd phenomenon to behold.
My own feelings based my general knowledge of the case, is that Z was a very intelligent man, who was definitely not afraid to take big risks. While it is true that he also got very lucky in Presidio Heights, that does not detract from his level of intelligence and is simply a matter of his being confronted by circumstances that he obviously could have foreseen (i.e., a police car speeding to the site of his last crime) but maybe just didn't care about. He was, after all, far superior to his fellow man. While he was a coward in the way he killed innocent people with blitz attacks, he also showed a lot of daring.
His first code, even if used incorrectly at times in enciphering the message, showed both intelligence and deceit in its construction. It was not a Dell crossword puzzle cryptogram. He used seven different symbols for the letter "E". He also used the letter "M" in a deceptive manner, so as to make an unsophisticated person think it was actually an "E", due to its frequency in the code. His "340 code", which I can tell you is currently being assailed by some top cryptographers that I personally know of, remains unbroken to this day, despite the advent of computers, etc.
As further proof of Z's intelligence, I would cite his 1974 letters, which were described by Sherwood Morrill (the handwriting/documents expert of the CADOJ in the 1960's and 1970's) as being well-written and with excellent paragraph structure, spelling, etc. Anyone who is familiar with the case knows that Z misspelled words on purpose and for his own reasons. His 1974 letters are evidence of his ability to write in good English sentences.
That is my opinion of aspects of the case with which almost everyone is familiar. Now, from my own research into the case, I have been introduced to a level of evil, planning, arrogance and cunning that is truly scary to imagine. Most of it would tax the imagination of even a great fiction writer.
First of all, I do see some very clear and chilling clues to my suspect's identity in the various codes. They are subtle and require the reader to know who my suspect is before they become evident, but they are definitely there. That they are so subtle is to be expected: Zodiac planned them that way, so as not to be caught! One of the clues is something that cannot apply to any of the other major suspects. It is a unique enough clue, so that no matter how hard you look at the code, you could not apply the same aspect of the code to any other suspect known to me. (My analysis is not mathematical, as were many of the clues from the codes in Gareth Penn's TIMES 17. In fact, it is something that my 12 year-old niece and nephew have seen and understood.)
But it is in one of the codes/letters that I made a discovery, which is my most chilling of all. It is a clue that is both extraordinarily ingenious and incredibly evil. It speaks of a man with a devious and creative mind and deep intellect, as well as a superiority complex that is almost boundless: A man who looked down on the rest of us as mere fools, incapable of understanding his clues. This clue is so specific for my suspect, that if what I see is truly what Z intended, Zodiac can be nobody other than the man I name. When you embrace it, it essentially solves the case in and of itself.
This clue is, in my opinion, quite literally the most amazing and complex hint to the identity of a criminal ever placed in a code or letter to the police. There is nothing to even compare it to historically that I know of--a clue as damning as it is brilliant. Several of other people, both in and out of law enforcement, to whom I have shown my work for a second opinion have agreed that my interpretation is almost definitely what Z intended.
In short, the microcosm I have discovered lurking within the Zodiac literature paints a picture of a true evil genius. It is both amazing and starkly frightening to imagine what might actually have been going on unnoticed for thirty years in the letters and codes. The story, whether I am right or wrong about the guilt of my suspect, is one I'll never forget.
So to answer your question yes, I think that Z was a very, very intelligent, evil, sick, brazen and calculating man. He certainly seems to have dared us to catch him with the clues he planted in his writings. But I do agree that he was a pretty lousy shot.
Kelleher: Opinions and chatter abound in the Zodiac case, especially on the Internet. Much of this concerns WHY Zodiac commited his crimes as well as his identity. Does this kind of chatter help or hurt serious investigators? How does it impact the law enforcement view of amateur investigators?
Rodelli: I do not know how much attention the police pay to the chat rooms, like the Message Board at www.zodiackiller.com. They are generally the home of rampant, unfounded and wild speculation on all sorts of topics. What really irks me personally is the propaganda and misinformation that makes its way into the public domain through the various television specials dedicated to the case. When people who are not all that familiar with the case see this information, they accept it as fact. Since they do not keep their ears to the tracks for new developments in the case or corrections made after these shows leave the air, these misstatements necessarily color the perception of the average viewer.
As an example, I will cite the incident to which I referred earlier with Allen and his incarceration at Atascadero. Anyone seeing Graysmith on that special, detailing how the Zodiac letters stopped when Allen was in Atascadero and then the letters supposedly started again when he was released, couldn't help but see a cause and effect that is simply illusionary and, by the way, deceptive. He also states that no Zodiac murders occurred while Allen was incarcerated. The fact is that the murders had stopped long before Allen was sent away, so the point is moot.
Another example is when an expert (who shall remain nameless here) made an honest but leading error in the same show. He stated very matter of factly that when the police raided Allen's trailer or home at some point, they found a pair of size 10 1/2 Wing Walker shoes. That is, of course, the exact size and type of boot used by Zodiac at Lake Berryessa. This was a very damning piece of circumstantial evidence, and one that I frankly found hard to explain, if Allen were not Zodiac.
After I did some some prodding, this person did some research and was honest enough to admit his error to me. He said that he had mistaken a list of items that the police was looking for on their warrant with what was actually recovered in the search. An honest and forgivable misstatement, but a damning one to viewers with no background in the case. Unfortunately, it remains on film today and is disseminated to the viewing public every time the show is aired.
Obviously, the two situations above would not influence an investigator from a police department, who has access to the facts. But deliberate or accidental misstatements do hinder and untrack the investigation and mislead the general public. You sometimes have to be a serious and alert researcher just to separate signal from noise. The average viewer has not hope of (nor interest in) doing this.
Kelleher: In your opinion, if Zodiac is still living, can he be brought to justice or is the case doomed to remain forever "open?" If it can be successfully closed, how would that happen?
Rodelli: If my suspect is Zodiac, then yes I know that he is still living, although elderly. Time is running out on the investigation. I do believe that he can be brought to justice, if he is questioned by the police and provides writing, handprints and samples for DNA analysis. I am an optimist and believe that the police will make contact with him sooner rather than later.
While I am on the subject of one clearing oneself, I must make one point. In the days before the rash of airplane hijackings in the early 1970's, it would have been much easier to create false trails of flight itineraries for oneself. Since I sense that Z was a very intelligent and calculating man, he could well have done this, since I believe that he had both the time and the financial means to do so. My suspect made reference to the fact that he "traveled quite a bit" at the time of the crimes. I would therefore hope that the police would very carefully check out any alibis he may have involving plane flights and the dates of the crimes and letters. One might also ask oneself how someone could provide evidence of one's travel itineraries for what would be (for someone who is not Z) a series of random dates from over thirty years ago.
If I were able to think of the above scenario involving flight itineraries, Z could easily have thought of it as the perfect alibi.
Kelleher: Why did Zodiac kill? Has your research led you to understand his motives in a clearer light?
Rodelli: This is one of the more perplexing issues relative to my suspect, and one which has definitely held the police back when considering him. My suspect is a man who, on the surface, seemed to have absolutely no need or reason to kill, nor to exact attention from the public by killing. He is anything but an obvious profiling choice on the surface. But when you look at the case closely, there appear to be some hints as to why he may have been Zodiac.
Zodiac was an asexual killer, or at least his were not generally overtly crimes of passion or anger. With the glaring exception of Lake Berryessa, he seemed to derive little from the physical act of killing. In short, he killed people for an ulterior motive. Zodiac wanted to impose his huge ego on and control the entire city of San Francisco (and beyond) with his letters. Widespread fear and publicity seemed to be the keys to his crimes. He craved such publicity but realized that without something shocking to back up his strange letters and codes, his message would have had no teeth. So he killed in order to amass a pile of bodies, which would give him the undivided attention of the entire Bay Area. And he was wildly successful at it.
My suspect has a huge ego. He is aloof and separates himself from others as their superior in intellect and position in life. In the past, he has shown that he craves public attention on a very large scale. He showed a propensity to commemorate certain dates, including the date of a Zodiac letter. In fact, the dates of two of the three "planned" Zodiac crimes (if you count the Stine murder as an "afterthought" brought on by the taunting by Paul Avery in the Chronicle, as many researchers do) correspond to important dates related to his parents.
In short, my suspect, if he is Zodiac, seemed to kill not for the sake of killing but for publicity, to gain the control he desired over the people of San Francsico, and as to assuage some conflict related to his parents that only he understands. In fact, when viewed through the filter of this man's life, the Zodiac crimes, far from being governed by the sun, stars and planets, seem to have a very Freudian explanation as their basis, given the dates of two of the crimes and those related to my suspect's parents.
Just as important a question is why Zodiac stopped killing. If publicity were his goal, he had already achieved a saturation level of this by the time he killed Paul Stine. My suspect also had a lot to live for. So when he was nearly apprehended that night, he simply realized that the "cost/benefit" ratio of taking the risk of killing anyone else was not in his favor. He could only achieve scant little more publicity at that point (having already reached an asymptotic level of it) by killing more people, and at an unacceptable level of risk to his precious freedom. In short, he didn't choose to tempt fate by doing any more killing.
By the time he was almost caught, Zodiac had achieved his goal: the people of the Bay Area were at his mercy and petrified that he would strike again--or worse, blow up their children with a bomb. He was then able to write his letters for several more years afterwards, assured that the city would hang on his every word simply due to his reputation. And they did.
Kelleher: How do you feel about your research and the time you've spent pursuing the case? How has it impacted your life?
Rodelli: The past two years of researching my suspect have been the most exhilarating, fascinating, frustrating and anguishing of my life. In short, I wold not trade them for anything! I have gotten goosebumps more times than I can count with the various discoveries I have made. I have gone from doing research on a computer to peering at endless reels of microfilm of San Francisco (and other) newspapers, to traveling cross-country twice and having in person sit-downs with two different police departments out there.
I've also been fortunate enough to visit all of the crime scenes. When you personally visit the Presidio Heights attack site, you can understand that the kids had a great view of the cab and of Zodiac. They were not hopelessly far away or too high up, etc. They had a bird's eye view of the entire scene from their vantage point. In October 1999, I was also put in the unexpected position of correcting an error in Graysmith's book, by being personally shown the correct site of the Lake Berryessa attack by the investigator who worked on the case at the time of the crime, Ken Narlow. The map in Graysmith's book is incorrect.
I have invested many long hours and not unsubstantial sums of my own money on my research, but if I have identified Zodiac, it will all be worth it. And even if I am wrong, the story I have unearthed and the experiences I have had are somehow worth the effort I have put into the case to date.
In a broader sense, my work has opened my eyes to the fact that evil people can come from any walk of life. As Dr. Van Nuys implies in his Foreword to your upcoming book, in order for us to truly understand Zodiac, we have to confront a dark side that can exist in all or any of us. The fact is that Zodiac may not have been a known criminal or mental patient, or a much different person from people we see every day. It is just that he is harboring a very dark secret.
Kelleher: Is your work finished, or are you "still on the hunt?"
Rodelli: Finally, an easy one with a short answer! Until my suspect is either charged or cleared in the case by the appropriate authorities, my work is ongoing. I continue to do research from New Jersey and in the microfilm newspaper archives of the New York City Public Library, on the Internet, by loan of microfilm resources from California and the Library of Congress, etc. My work has gone on virtually non-stop for the past two years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, until such time as Zodiac is identified or I sense that my own research has hit the proverbial brick wall.
Kelleher: If you could give advice to other, serious Zodiac researchers, what would it be?
Rodelli: My advice to any would-be Zodiac researcher who develops a suspect, is be to be true to the facts of the case. You ultimately have to answer to them. If the facts of the case don't fit a particular suspect, then he is probably not Zodiac, no matter how hard you try to make it so. So many good and bright researchers have gotten into the terrible habit of trying to force square pegs into round holes, and/or of twisting, distorting or explaining every, single fact to fit their suspect. It is unseemly to behold. Their actions greatly diminish their cases, in my opinion.
As far as dealing with the police, my advice is to keep your reports to a compilation of provable and documentable facts. Don't send them wild speculation, send hard proof of what you postulate. Mere speculation on codes and letters as the entire basis of a case will just get chucked out the nearest window. The police have seen such stuff too many times before. While I do speculate myself on the codes and letters, I have earned a bit of license to do so because I also present them with a strong factual report, which names, places, dates, etc.
If you do accuse someone, be prepared to back up everything you say and be prepared for things not to happen immediately. Patience is a difficult but necessary commodity to come by in the Zodiac case. It was a learned behavior for me, since I wanted everything to happen as quickly as I did my research. You won't solve the case in a week, unless you have a confession or a smoking gun (or Z's hood).
See Also: Zodiac -- The Man and his Crimes
See Also: Riverside and the Radian
See Also: San Francisco Chronicle, 2 October 2002

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