Zodiac

Just watched David Fincher's Zodiac.  (Fincher is another director everyone should know by name, and doesn't.  He directed Se7en [over-rated] and The Social Network [under-rated], among other things.)  Watched this, and cross-referenced occasionally with Robert Graysmith's book, and even bookmarked Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" as it's so haunting.  Cleaned the office and checked the Sox game while I was at it.  I do more when I'm doing more.

Anyway, I was struck by how much of a labyrinth these types of cases are.  It seems (more so from the movie than from the book) that 95% of the "evidence" is a series of interesting dead ends that lure the driven like the Sirens to their obsessive destruction.  Certainly a few of the real-life men were driven to near-insanity (and temporary insanity) by this case.  Yet when all was said and done, it's like what Hannibal Lecter said: "We covet that which we see every day."  Find the first victim; find who knew and possibly lived near the first victim; find out who fits the profile of the evidence presented.  (Bob Starr, one of the more likely suspects, lived 50 yards from the first victim, and knew her.)  In other words, keep it simple.  Play the odds.  Don't play politics.

And don't fuck up the evidence, or the crime scenes.

I say this last because I thought of the JonBenet Ramsay and O.J. cases throughout the movie.  Tons of suspects and red-herrings.  Screwed-up crime scenes; tampered evidence.  I just saw an episode of Autopsy in which the head coroner said the same thing: both murder scenes were tampered to the extent that cops were leaving bloodied handprints and shoeprints all over the place.  (The coroner said he spoke up right away about there being two killers.  He thinks O.J. was one of them.)  Anyway, these cases remain unsolved, either truthfully unsolved, or, as in the case of O.J.'s, "unsolved," because a) the cops screwed up the crime scenes and the gathering of evidence; b) the cops played politics, fought over jurisdiction, didn't share all the evidence with each other; c) the cops screwed up the interviews; d) the cops got carried away by interesting red-herrings (although, of course, they rightfully don't know this until the dead-end moment happens); e) too much time passes and people die and/or forget things; f) evidence gets lost...

You get the idea.  A labyrinth nightmare.  The Zodiac case and the JonBenet Ramsay case are similar in these ways, as the Green River case and maybe the Ripper case was as well.  In the latter two, as I believe also with the Zodiac case, the cops knew who the most-likely killer was but were unable to officially charge or arrest him for a plethora of reasons.  Such cases are an Odyssey of obsessive, nightmarish proportions.  No wonder they're not solved.

And a great quote from Graysmith's book, I found almost at random: "I have a therapist who says, 'The trick is to learn you can't corral all the rattlesnakes,'" says Fincher.  "'You just got to know where they are.'"

Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden and Jonbenet Ramsay--Books by Profiler John Douglas, with Mark Ohlshaker

The Cases that Haunt Us


One of my all-time favorite books, and definitely not for the squeamish.  The authors cover--in unbelievably great detail and depth--the crimes, aftereffects, motives, evidence and suspects involved in the periphery of the Jack the Ripper killings in Whitechapel in 1888, the Jonbenet Ramsay trial, the Lizzie Borden case, the Zodiac Killer, The Black Dahlia (see the James Ellroy blog entry below this one) and a few others.  The writing about these cases is inspired, impressive, thorough and intense.  They are also, especially when writing about 1888 Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper) and 1950s L.A. (The Black Dahlia), historically accurate and extremely fascinating.  I have re-read this book a few times now, and, like a true classic, I get a new thing out of it each time.  John Douglas's take on Jack the Ripper, especially, is definitive, and obliterates the efforts of Patricia Cornwell and others who have tackled and been derailed by the topic.  For Ripper enthusiasts, this is the one to read.

Obsession

Gruesomely fascinating, as usual.  Very good writer, and it's amazing how he's been able to keep his sanity, considering all of the insanity he's seen.

Mindhunter

Well-written, as usual, and memorable for both the writing and the content.  I wrote in a journal: "It reinforces that Epicurus quote for me: 'If God listened to the prayer of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are for ever praying for evil against one another.'"