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Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

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111–120 of 221 posts

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#111
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consult a dictionary, eg., > pointing indirectly towards someone's guilt but not conclusively proving it. You are correct that within a technical legal context most evidence is circumstantial. But that isnt the only meaning of the word, and indeed, largely not what is meant.

What they meant is wrong. I can consult Merriam Webster, which agrees with what I said. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/circumstantial%20... Or Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/circumstantial-evidence Or Cornell https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/circumstantial_evidence Or basically any single law firm or courthouse https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/legal-defenses/circumst... https://www.ojp.gov…

The Cornell Law dictionary that you cited is a good summary of what lawyers and judges are likely to think: Evidence that implies a person committed a crime, (for example, the person was seen running away from the crime scene). There must be a lot of circumstantial evidence accumulated to have real weight. Compare to direct evidence.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#112

I wonder if neuroscience will ever come up with a treatment for serial killers that would cure them of their murderous obsessions. I believe some serial killers are constantly thinking about murder, while others might have two sides to their personalities that avoid thinking about the other, like a switch.

I've wondered how many potential serial killers there are out there that will never kill simply because we, as a society, have elevated video games, movies, and adult entertainment to such an extent that killing just isn't as gratifying as blowing time on WoW, Netflix, or PH.

This has probably also lost us virtuosos in other more positive fields.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#113
post #33

So two new pieces of evidence are offered up by this article, firstly that Zodiac was identified by several witnesses as having a forehead scar, including being drawn on the famous sketch of him, which matches a scar Poste had at the time. Secondly, some sort of new solution to the cipher is possible by omitting Poste's full name in some way. As exciting as it would be, I always take these claims about famous cases b…

The guy REALLY looks like the police sketches too. Almost perfectly the same, except for maybe a slight difference in nose width.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#114
"Investigators" is one of those utterly ambiguous yet powerfully dominating terms, like "Authorities" and "Scientists".

We build our epistemological hierarchies like it's 2000 BC. (Heck, like 2Billion BC, if you think of knowledge as a kind of termite-mound. Memes are the new pheromones). Fancy cellphones make no diff.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#115
post #98

Now that we have maybe identified somebody who killed, what, 37 people?, let's start identifying individuals responsible for millions of more horrendous deaths, often drawn out over months of suffering, and maybe try to stop them. The guys who first put lead in gasoline are long dead already. There were people who fought getting it out of the gasoline, and they are mostly dead, by now, too. Likewise, leaded paint. Th…

> The saturated fat is not only totally harmless,

I was under the impression that you should still keep a balance between unsaturated and saturated fats to keep cholesterol in check?

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#116
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consult a dictionary, eg., > pointing indirectly towards someone's guilt but not conclusively proving it. You are correct that within a technical legal context most evidence is circumstantial. But that isnt the only meaning of the word, and indeed, largely not what is meant.

What they meant is wrong. I can consult Merriam Webster, which agrees with what I said. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/circumstantial%20... Or Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/circumstantial-evidence Or Cornell https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/circumstantial_evidence Or basically any single law firm or courthouse https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/legal-defenses/circumst... https://www.ojp.gov…

Putting aside the very first paragraph ("What they meant is wrong"), this post makes some sound points.

It is also the case that the alleged new evidence for Poste being the killer is, in fact, circumstantial with respect to the issue of who committed the murders in question.

So, returning to that first paragraph, to establish whether what mauze meant is wrong, we must establish both that mauze meant something other than what was written, and that the intended meaning was wrong.

I do not see any conclusive evidence as to what mause meant. Furthermore, bena's reply to mause suggests that the intended meaning was 'weak'. That strikes me as plausible, but as far as I can tell, it would not be an obviously wrong characterization of the new evidence.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#117
post #107

Oh good, Ted "Cancun" Cruz will finally be put into prison. In all seriousness, my daughter in college was in a psychology class where they were talking about serial killers. The Zodiac killer came up and a guy in the class said, in all seriousness, "Isn't Ted Cruz the Zodiac killer?"

I, personally, know of no hard evidence that could conclusively prove that.

[deleted]

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#118
post #10

What are the ethics of potentially identifying deceased people as baddies? Unless there is DNA evidence which remains(which I doubt), or they find incontrovertible evidence in his home or something like that(I also doubt), this is just a guess that will drastically affect his probably otherwise-normal family whether the allegations are true or not.

This was the question on my mind as well. The alleged "perp" died in 2018, but I didn't see any mention of the duration of the group's investigation. Did this group identify him as a person of interest before his death? If so, that raises yet more more questions (e.g. no statutory limitation on murder).

> Hans Smits told Fox News he spent 10 years hiding a whistleblower who said he escaped a criminal "posse" headed by Poste. The man, who The Case Breakers only referred to as Wil, told Smits the posse roamed California's High Sierra region and that he was "groomed into a killing machine."

> Smits said he gave Wil financial, logistical and emotional support over the years and moved him around for nearly 10 years in an effort to keep him safe.

> "I'm the one that took him to the FBI office and put him on a train and sent him out of state," Smits said.

The story does not seem to explicitly state Smits is a member of the Case Breakers, but if Smits knows Wil, and Case Breakers only identify the whistleblower as Wil, it seems to imply Smits is a member of Code Breakers.

If that is all true, they were working Poste as a person of interest while he was still alive.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#119
post #115
post #98

Now that we have maybe identified somebody who killed, what, 37 people?, let's start identifying individuals responsible for millions of more horrendous deaths, often drawn out over months of suffering, and maybe try to stop them. The guys who first put lead in gasoline are long dead already. There were people who fought getting it out of the gasoline, and they are mostly dead, by now, too. Likewise, leaded paint. Th…

> The saturated fat is not only totally harmless, I was under the impression that you should still keep a balance between unsaturated and saturated fats to keep cholesterol in check?

I have not heard of any such thing. Inuit who have never had access to unsaturated fat do not start getting heart disease until they adopt a supermarket-driven diet.

Cholesterol as a measure of health is driven to some degree by Big Pharma, who would like to have everyone taking statins for the whole rest of their lives. Certainly, dietary cholesterol is absolutely harmless, always has been.

Re: Investigators say they've finally identified the Zodiac Killer

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I don't know why this keeps coming up. I am not the zodiac killer.

Please don't try to turn this place into reddit.

Please try to turn Reddit into this place.
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