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On October 11, 1969, a tragic murder once again occurred in San Francisco. It was the murder of a cab driver. It was a night time murder, happening at about 10 o’clock. But that’s not the unusual element. It occurred in an affluent part of town, Presidio Heights, where the price of the cheapest house could bank you for life. Not the smartest part of town for some hood to grease a taxi driver and blend into the neighborhood. You just can’t pick up another cab around or a bus and get back to the hubbub and safety of the inner city. Yet so far as homicide inspectors knew when they reached the scene, the killer had made a clean getaway.
It was a bloody affair. The scene that greeted them was a gruesome one. The cabby was sprawled out over the passenger seat, his head toward the floor board, his arm hanging out the open door. Blood dripped profusely from a head shot. He had been shot in the right temple, with the muzzle of the gun having been put right up to his head. But that’s not what was unusual either. The cabby’s bloodstained shirt had been torn and a huge piece was missing. His bare abdomen greeted the police as they looked in. Then, after the body was removed, they noticed the cab keys were missing and the cabby’s wallet had been lifted. A rifled body was one thing but a torn shirt was another. Also, the missing keys was unusual.
With these facts, it would seem hard to merely attribute this to a standard cab robbery that had gone bad. But if it wasn’t that, it would seem a pointless murder. Righteous indignation and knee jerk reaction may prompt some to say “Are not all murders pointless?” The fact is most are not. A point need not be a laudable one for it to be a point. The motive of cabby murders was always money. And, indeed, the cab driver’s wallet was taken, but why would the perp take the keys and then take the time, which he didn’t have, to tear a huge piece of the shirt and take it with him?
The driver was Paul Lee Stine. He was 29, working to pay for higher education; he had a wife, a cat. Typical sad story. A life, routine and predictable perhaps, had suddenly been stopped.
To compound the current mystery, witness depositions were being taken from two teenagers across the street. They had not heard any gunshot, but they had seen the killer. When they looked out they saw the killer in the passenger seat but more toward the center, with the body of the cab driver over his lap. He was going through his pockets and apparently cutting off the piece of bloody shirt. He then leaned over to the driver side and wiped the area off. He then got out, wiped off the passenger door with a white rag, went around to the driver’s side and did the same (it is not specified if he wiped off the driver’s or passenger’s door).
He then walked north on the cross street— Cherry St.— which stops at the next street over, Jackson.
In a panic, the children had called the police about the murder. Now on scene, the police were trying to figure it out. Sadly, not much evidence is ever left at a cabby killing. But the motive had always assisted SFPD in finding the perpetrator. This killing, however, was an oddball killing. Fortunately, the kids could give a rough description of his appearance: He was a white male adult, about 5.8, wearing brown pants and a dark blue or black parka jacket. He wore eyeglasses and had a conservative crew cut. His hair was reddish blond.
Within a day, of course, the teenagers were helping a top police artist draw a composite of the man they had seen. This was later amended by a police officer. By a stroke of good and bad luck, an Adam unit was near enough to have been in the neighborhood within 4 minutes. While speeding up on Jackson, the officers saw a man shuffling along toward the city, walking down the hills. Officer Don Fouke got the best look at him. They didn’t bother him because the dispatcher had broadcast that the suspect was a black adult. This guy was definitely white and clean cut. They sped on past. It was only after the broadcast was corrected that Fouke realized he had possibly seen the suspect. His careful description would help amend the composite and make the suspect look older. He was possibly in his early 40s.
All well and good. But then it happened. The San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper which was turning out to be The ZODIAC’s favorite paper, two days later received a note in the mail. With it was a piece of the cab driver’s shirt. The infamous north bay killer had now struck in SFPD’s jurisdiction. This was proof positive. But the Stine murder now gives us a very different perspective on The ZODIAC.
For one, this was proof he could drastically change his MO yet again, which indicates that killing was secondary to another motive. At Lake Berryessa he changed much of his signature and MO by donning an outlandish costume, but he still attacked unsuspecting couples. Now he changed it even more drastically. He didn’t strike young couples, but a lone cab driver. This was a killing any second-rate gunsel could have done. The description of him was also that of a very plain, even conservative looking man— quite the opposite of the angel of death cult look at Berryessa. He was quite a dichotomy.
But one thing remained the same— that non sequitur ZODIAC sequencing. He took the wallet— something expected in a cab killing— but also the keys. Why? He was no thief. He was a cold-blooded murderer. He wrote the letter the next day and mailed it off with the shirt. He wasn’t trying to confound the police with the idea of an ordinary, random cab killing. He couldn’t wait to ante up in his game of kill and seek.
The horror-scope of the ZODIAC had only been smoldering until this killing. Now San Francisco was electrified by the idea there was a mad murderer afoot playing his own murder game. His new MO revealed everyone was a potential victim. All that was required was to be in the right place at the wrong time. It is now that The ZODIAC entered the world stage as San Francisco’s public enemy No. 1.
This isn’t the place to go into the sensation that now fell upon San Francisco. Much of this October Terror only serves to obscure the details of the crime scene anyway, an examination of which is more important here.
For starters, we must conceive how this was pulled off, for certainly The ZODIAC had to do some planning aforethought. The kids heard no shot. This we know. They enter upon the story at the moment they look out the windows from across the street and see The ZODIAC going through the victim’s pockets, which means they either saw him remove the wallet from his rear pocket or he was pulling his shirt out and cutting it (he cut the tail piece). Then they saw him lean over and wipe off the driver’s side area. Then he got out, wiped the door and went around and wiped the exterior driver’s side (which door unnoted).
Taking this in sequence we can deduce a number of things. Yellow Cab dispatches and the meter (still running) combine to tell us Stine picked up his fare at Mason and Geary, quite a distance away toward the inner city. But most significantly, the cab ride was to Washington and Maple, one block short of Washington and Cherry. The sequence of events now make sense. The only place a cab driver is not going to do a California stop (roll through) is where the fare ends. He will completely stop here. It is purely my guess, but I would say ZODIAC was in the front seat. In the motions of pulling out the money to pay, he rather pulls out his 9mm and puts it quickly to Stine’s head and pulls the trigger.
Stine’s head recoils. He slumps. The ZODIAC pushes him aside and seizes the steering wheel and pushes aside his leg. He hits the gas enough to start them continuing down Washington Street. Traffic is sparse here, especially at this time of night. He cruises them down to Washington and Cherry (these are fairly short blocks) and pulls over to the curb at the intersection. He shifts and takes the keys. He now starts to go through Stine’s person to get his wallet and take his macabre tokens.
This explains why the kids did not hear a gunshot. Any sound that might have been made would have been a block away at Maple, and if anybody had heard any muffled sound there they would not have thought much of it, for by the time they look out their windows they would merely see a cab is slowly going through the intersection continuing on to Cherry Street.
The cab was found parked only slightly akimbo to the curb, which is the way a cabby might let someone off. But The ZODIAC would most likely park that way as well.
In any case, this explains why ZODIAC would have to go wipe off the driver’s side. He would have to wipe off the steering wheel, the shift, and any other place he touched when he got Stine’s body out of the way to his get arms on the wheel and his left foot on the gas and brake pedal.
Wiping the outside of the driver’s side is a little odd and hard to explain. Graysmith suggests that the ZODIAC may have leaned on the driver’s side door when he solicited him. But how many haggle with a cabby over a future fare? One raises their arm and then gets in as the driver pulls over. It is not specified in the early report wherein the witnesses’ statements are taken, so it could simply mean that The ZODIAC wiped off the back passenger side, meaning he got into the cab there. It is possible, of course, that he did ride in back and killed Stine from behind and then got into the front seat, but that would seem to make too much of a delay in getting the cab moving to Cherry.
Indeed, I find it hard to believe that ZODIAC would have shifted the car into park at Maple (if Stine had not) and then gotten out and got in the diver’s side to drive down one block. That destroys the whole cover of continuing on in the cab without much delay. Nevertheless, the kids saw what they believed was The ZODIAC wiping off the left side door/s.
The ZODIAC casually walks away down Cherry. It is a very short block to Jackson, which parallels Washington. Video.
Along here Don Fouke gets a good look of the guy. It tallies with the kids’ description, only he makes him a bit older. He adds one crucial description: possibly Welsh. Very significant. The accuracy of grouping naturally depends on how well the “grouper” is. We all know that tribes arise from groups of families that married in. Nations arise from tribes. Ethnicities share common traits, body types, even diseases, all reminders they descend from common ancestors in more recent history. But this is a digression here.
What is important to continue with is that Fouke saw The ZODIAC walking from Jackson north on Maple. Here Maple is just a dead end that goes down a small hill to a wall and beyond this is Pacific, a street that goes past the Julius Kahn Playground and then goes into the wooded area of the Presidio. Fouke reports that ZODIAC was walking along, not excessively hurrying. This makes sense. He must have been covered in blood. The Stine killing was unusually bloody. Not all head shots are. But this one was. Blood splattered the car. When his body was slumped over ZODIAC’s lap, blood must have been pouring out. There’s no need to continue with the gruesomeness. There is a point, however, which we must visualize. Bloodhounds picked up no trail. Seven bloodhound units were involved. Had ZODIAC hurried along, it seems unlikely that blood drops would not have splattered on the ground. Even one or two drops would have been picked up by the hounds.
This also makes it unlikely that The ZODIAC did what he claimed in his letter: hide in the Julius Kahn Playground off Pacific Avenue. The most likely (and direct) route to the playground is Spruce Street, one east from Maple. But Fouke sees ZODIAC walk north on Maple. ZODIAC may have written taunting things in his letter, but it seems unlikely he was more than guessing from reading newspaper accounts. There was little reason he would head into The Presidio along Pacific. Parts of the huge Presidio were still an active Army/Marine base, and the route east along Pacific is along a wooded road. He would be easy to spot walking along. If he cut through the bushes he had to have incredible night vision, and he also would have left a blood trail a hound with hay fever could have followed.
Certainly this killing was quite premeditated. Therefore he must have had a plan of escape. He certainly was not going to walk all the way back to Mason and Geary and get in his car. He wasn’t going to get in another cab or hop a bus. Rather he must have parked along Maple somewhere earlier and walked the miles to Mason and Geary. He caught a cab at the right time for his purposes and then instructed the driver (Stine) to Washington and Maple. If I am not correct in my theory that he then killed Stine here and took control of the wheel and went down to Cherry, then something happened that made him tell Stine to go a block further.
In any event, he had to have a plan to get out of there. We do know that he came back to Maple. Sadly, I do not know if Fouke was ever asked if he could remember what cars were parked along there. It is but a short street. He may not have seen one. But there may have been a noticeable space when the police finally came back with the hounds. It would have been where he parked his car. Neighbors should have (and perhaps were) asked if a car not usually parked along there had been seen earlier.
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