Naval Base at Patterson

Many people question this as a Zodiac crime, as I do, but there could be a military connection throughout. If this was a Zodiac crime, what are the chances the Zodiac drove a 180 mile round trip from the Bay Area, where most people believe he lived, to commit an opportunistic crime at 11.45 pm at night, in effectively the middle of nowhere. If this were Zodiac, then it is very likely he was in the area for other reasons, such as recreation, family or business engagements, and the abduction of Kathleen Johns was simply a spur of the moment opportunistic crime, he believed would be a relatively safe bet, with little chance of being apprehended.
Kathleen Johns described the man as having the traits of a serviceman, his polished boots shining from the interior dash lights. He was also in possession of a black rubber handled flashlight. These are slim pickings, but I suppose the next question to ask was where was the nearest military facility to Highway 132, west of Modesto, far enough for a buffer zone to the abduction, but that fed its traffic onto Highway 132.
The nearest facility is the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Crows Landing in Patterson, only 25 miles from the abduction site, that from 1946 onward became an outlying field to Alameda and later Moffett Field. In recent years, the Navy maintained a permanent detachment at the field that supplied crash equipment and refueling services for Naval aircraft from the stations in the area. This was an isolated airfield, that at night, certainly may facilitate the use of a flashlight. But what is important is that anybody finishing work that night, somebody who may have had a connection to this naval facility and Alameda Naval Air Station and possibly commuted between the two, had they driven back to the Bay Area that night would take the quickest and easiest route. The I-5 runs right past Nasa Crows Landing and filters its traffic onto Highway 132 only 1.4 miles before the point of Kathleen Johns abduction. Zodiac would have entered Highway 132 just behind Kathleen Johns and trailed her for approximately 2 minutes, before he made his move. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nasa+Crows+Landing,+Crows+Landing,+CA/South+Bird+Road,+Tracy,+CA/@37.5507724,-121.3006932,45779m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x8091b068933f09ed:0xbb14ea12188f929!2m2!1d-121.109444!2d37.408054!1m5!1m1!1s0x80903a6fb06a6be3:0x147ac67c51263360!2m2!1d-121.361199!2d37.6433669!3e0

The other road that runs past Nasa Crows Landing is Highway 33, this also empties onto the 132 only 4 miles before Bird Road where Kathleen Johns was abducted and ultimately her car was found burnt out.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.6383312,-121.2950997/South+Bird+Road,+Tracy,+CA/@37.6275103,-121.2925051,9662m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x80903a6fb06a6be3:0x147ac67c51263360!2m2!1d-121.361199!2d37.6433669!3e0

Here are two coincidences;
1.The immediate correspondence after the Kathleen Johns abduction was the '13 Symbol' cipher and what appeared to be three circled 8 symbols or Aries/Taurus symbols. This is the military patch of Nasa Crows Landing.



2. Bearing in mind the date of the '13 Symbol' cipher, the date of Kathleen Johns abduction and the date that Zodiac mailed his admission to the Kathleen Johns abduction, we have;
March 22nd- Aries begins on March 21st.
April 20th- Taurus begins on April 20th.
July 24th- Leo begins on July 23rd.
All three correspondences, if there is a connection to Kathleen Johns in the '13 Symbol' cipher, fall within one day of the star sign beginning date. Voila!
For the full story; http://www.zodiacciphers.com/zodiac-news/september-16th-2016

Wow that is a good way to look at it and I could see your theory being accurate. Makes me also think about Z's travel patterns for all of the letters he/they mailed in. I don't think anyone would want to mail them from anywhere near where they resided so they would go out of their way a bit to mail letters. I could see Z driving a ways to kidnap someone but a 180 mile round trip like you said might be too much.

very cool. wish I would have seen this thread earlier.

Rocketman wrote:Wow that is a good way to look at it and I could see your theory being accurate. Makes me also think about Z's travel patterns for all of the letters he/they mailed in. I don't think anyone would want to mail them from anywhere near where they resided so they would go out of their way a bit to mail letters. I could see Z driving a ways to kidnap someone but a 180 mile round trip like you said might be too much.

I don't put much stock into distances myself, and I don't believe Zodiac had to have lived in the bay area. I would say that he did more likely than not, but he could have travelled a little ways instead of killing in his backyard. Hell, he could have been someone who was in the military and was just stationed in the area for a short while. The first confirmed killing was December 1968 and the last was October 1969. That is less than a year. Maybe he was relocated at some point after the Stine murder. Maybe he knew he was being relocated so he decided to kill one more person, Stine, but didn't have much time to plan it before he was shipped out. He could have went into SF (if this is the case then he was probably stationed in Martinez or somewhere closer to Oakland than SF) to party in the city one last time and Stine was a spontaneous thing. Probably not, but maybe.