Detective Interview
Why do you think the police couldn't find the Zodiac?
"First of all the Zodiac case is a case that was a detective’s worst nightmare. Then the fact that all the killings were totally random and there was no apparent reason for these people to be killed, didn't help the police link together any motives this Zodiac character had. Also the media attention the case was getting was a huge problem for the police because they had to worry about what the people were hearing about the Zodiac and they also had many people calling in with possible suspect names which grew to be a list of about a thousand suspects."
“Well one of the biggest lessons the police learned after the Zodiac case was different agencies needed to have communication with each other. Because the killings happened all over, different police offices had different pieces of the case to work on but they wouldn't work together, this case was huge and the cop who solved it first would go down in history so the police saw it as a competition. Now a days you won't find that because they have been taught to work together."
How else have police investigations grown since the Zodiac case? And do you think if they had some of the tools police have now back then, they could have caught the Zodiac?
“Now we have DNA tests so if a fingerprint or anything else was left at the crime we can run it through those tests and try to match it with possible suspects. Also just the technologies we have these days help a lot in investigations. As for catching the Zodiac, because it was a case where the killer was writing to the newspapers and calling the police I do believe that the new methods could have helped the officers in this case a lot but because I wasn't there for all the investigations and because I’ve only learned about the case I couldn't exactly tell you if they would have caught this man. But I can say it would have made a huge difference to have the help of the technology in that case."
(This interview was taken with Detective R.J. Wilson, a homicidal investigator.)
