He knew he'd remembered the name right, and is still tickled at how perfect the name will be - he's learned that people don't always put two and two together the way he'd once thought. If they had, he wouldn't be free right now, walking across dead winter grass in this out-of-the-way Texas cemetery, looking for the grave of a boy with a very special name.
Funny how it came together, like an elegantly rendered mathematical formula. Symmetrical, like that radian symbol he's so fond of, so familiar with.
Now, just before the light gets too dim and he will need to leave, he finds the stone.
Joseph Chandler, born March 11, 1937. Close enough to the man's own age, a little younger - even better.
The man's impassive face shifts, his lips almost curve into a smile.
Images of merrye olde London, misty Whitechapel flicker in his mind. He's never been there, but he is sure he can almost smell the place.
He takes a little spiralbound notepad from his pocket and with stubby pencil he takes pains to write down the correct spelling of the name, the date of birth. The man who will soon be Joseph Chandler to the rest of the world has slighlty slanted printing, letters start neat and straight and slowly lean down and to the right of the page as he writes. On the other side of the page he uses to note the deceased Joseph Chandler's info there are a few odd symbols, some of them astrological in origin, others taken straight from one of the code books he studied in the Navy.
It seems now that night has fallen on Texas with a kind of finality. The man turns from the grave and briskly heads across the dry grass towards his waiting car. As he goes he wonders if this is what it feels like to the snake when it sheds it's skin. A kind of relief, a pleasure that is almost sexual.
Humming off-key, a little tune about little lists written by good old Gilbert and Sullivan about 3 years before another Joseph Chandler stood in the damp London night gazing down at the mutilated remains of Ripper victim Annie Chapman, the new Joseph Newton Chandler III speeds off into his new life.
When one talks Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac Killer there as many theories about the killers identities as there are stars in the sky.
I have even written elsewhere of my feeling that at least one double murder in California last year may have had some kind of Zodiac connection, my thinking being that if Zodiac were still alive, the re-emergence of the BTK Strangler in the press set the aged killer off on a little mission to remind folks what it is serial killers truly do "best."
Article comments
1 - Embersage
Steve, As usual I am impressed with your work. Your right about the fact that we have been discussing Dennis Rader's obsession with the Zodiac Killer. I have been working along side you as well as the others on these cases for a while now. We may never know the face behind the mask. Yet he has left us with some answers, as Rader tried to do. Hiding them in puzzles and codes. We may never have all the answers to who and why. Yet we will keep on searching. For in knowledge there is power.
2 - kat self
I have been blogging on crime rant.com. I have compiled a massive file linking B.T.K. tot the unsolved Zodiac murders. I have uncovered interesting tibits such as a Zodiac letter and a map made by B.T.K. both sighed with the initals r.H. and a Japanese connection on two Zodiac writings. There's plenty of more solid connections too. I'd like to see B.T.K. prosecuted for all his crimes. I'd like to blog with like minded researchers.