A new look at an old serial killer

I've long been fascinated by unsolved crimes. So the other night I watched "Zodiac," about the serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area beginning in 1969 and was never caught.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., the film didn't do all that well at the box office -- maybe because the murders attributed to the Zodiac seem too few (only five confirmed) and too pedestrian compared to the atrocities we've seen nearly 40 years on. Maybe it also has to do with the film's length -- two hours and 20 minutes may be on the outside edge of most attention spans.

It's worth renting though. As near as I can tell, it stays fairly true to the facts of the case, and those facts haven't gotten any less eerie with the passage of four decades. What elevates the Zodiac killer from his deadlier brethren since are the taunting letters and cryptograms he sent newspapers and police during his brief reign of terror. Since he was never caught, those communiques today seem to confirm the mythic status the killer craved. That's too bad, since publicity often seemed more of a motive for Zodiac than any particular compulsion to kill.

The movie made me curious about the case. In the course of looking around online, I came across crimelibrary.com, which offers a factual, unbiased overview of this and several other unsolved crimes. It's compelling reading. If you haven't seen this well-written site, check it out. There are entries on a host of famous cases, including JonBenet Ramsey, O.J. Simpson -- even Lizzie Borden.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Having actually been to the cinema a couple of times recently, I've seen the trailer for this movie and was mildly interested -- but in the end did not go. I never enjoy crime movies as much as crime fiction, and your post makes me think I probably made the right decision.
September 16, 2007 at 1:07 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

That ship has sunk

Image
After a long career in journalism, I'm back in the job market. For a limited time only. All I require are a company car, a five-figure signing bonus and a six-figure salary. If somebody could swing by and clean the house once a week, that would be great too. Until then, guess who's going to be blogging like there's no tomorrow. I've worked at various newspapers for the better part of three decades. I've been a reporter and an editor and there was a time in the mid '90s when I thought I was being very clever by learning HTML. I was thinking: Job security, baby; every newspaper will be on the Internet in a few years. I was right about the last part. But it turns out most people eventually questioned the wisdom of paying for what they could get free. Who knew? Then circulation and ad revenue headed south, and corporate boards figured they could maintain profits by shrinking the product and letting people go. Now circulation and ad revenue are Thelma and Louise: st
Read more

Back to the keyboard -- but it's a new one

Image
After a writing hiatus of quite a few months longer than I intended, I'm back to work on what I will refer to as "the book." I knocked out another 500 words yesterday, and expect to make that the standard day's output. But since I've had these productive impulses before, and since they tend to expire after about a week, I'm employing a few other strategies. First: A new computer! Yep, I have decided that there are too many games on my desktop machine, it's too noisy, and it confines me to one room of the house. So I ordered a new notebook computer from Dell. It's their new 1420 model. Should be here in a couple more weeks -- although you never know with Dell -- and then the only files I'll transfer from my old computer to the new one are my in-progress writing projects. I know what you're thinking: Basically, I'm offering myself a cheap bribe to a commit to a project that will probably take a year -- long after the shiny new computer cease
Read more