In the series It Was Him, Edward Edward’s grandson Wayne Wolf, along with “cold case expert” John Cameron, claim that Edwards may be responsible for dozens of murders, maybe even more than a hundred – including the Black Dahlia, JonBenét Ramsey, and, uh, Jimmy Hoffa. Also ludicrous is his claim that his grandfather is the Zodiac killer. Apparently, Edwards (who appears to have been a lying narcissist), had a fascination with the Zodiac and claimed he knew “how it really went down”. Please…
I’ve read quite a bit about the Zodiac, and this individual is particularly cold-blooded. Those four murders he committed were execution-style. What strikes me most about the Zodiac is that he revealed a lot of his personality in how he went about his crimes. There were the execution-style murders of the lovers’ lane couples, the donning of the Wing Walker military boots, the way he noted the date, time, place and method of execution on the car doors. But most interesting, of course, are the ciphers. Clearly, this guy thinks he is carrying out important work. This is not the kind of guy who would go on tv and promote himself as a reformed criminal. He wouldn’t publish a book. I think he went about his crimes the way he did because he enjoyed being obscure and unknown. He’s probably an introvert, not an extrovert like Edwards. We’re not sure if the Zodiac continued to kill after his canonical murders, but I’m betting that if he did kill again, he’d take a very similar approach – using symbols and ciphers and writing letters, writing on the car doors, wearing military-style boots.
I have just started watching The History Channel’s The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer, but I like their approach. It doesn’t jump to conclusions about the suspects. Far too much Zodiac material approaches the case from a specific angle. This one takes a very broad approach to the background of the case – visiting the scenes of the murders,, looking at the actual forensics, instead of indulging in sensation and specious “psychology”.
One indication that the Zodiac killer would be a fastidious, conservative type is this revelation about the ciphers, as shown in the screenshot above. A conventional mind would compose a simple cipher that reads left to right, and that is how the Zodiac ciphers have been approached in the past. But as we see above, there are sections of this undecoded cipher that contain L-shaped forms, in which the symbols are the same from top to bottom as they are from left to right. It’s always possible that these blocks of text were included to throw off the decoder, or they might, when decoded, provide yet another clue.
There is also a long section analyzing the murder of Cheri Jo Bates, in which the lead detective says that there is much evidence regarding this cold case that has not been released.
If this case is ever solved, it probably won’t be through eyewitnesses or boots or ciphers, but through DNA. According to this article, DNA technology has advanced enough in recent years that material that previously didn’t yield a DNA profile might be able to provide one now.
The Cold and Missing Persons Case Archivist 