Zodiac

         The thirteen symbols on page 144 of the 1997 Zodiac paperback edition is almost too good to be true. You have to expect perhaps one or more of the characters to be invalid and to be thrown out for a true identification of the killer. Anything less than that would be highly unlikely.

         I think that we have mentioned and also these paperbacks have mentioned the true Zodiac killer many times over and over again. They say that the Zodiac was overweight and walked with a limp of a sort. This could be put on display very easily and would throw sleuths off the track right from the start. The fact that he had his face covered tells us that he would otherwise would be recognized very easily and we can guess that it's quite possible he's from the Vallejo, Ca. area.

         Darlene Ferrin plays a huge role in the start of the murders and must never be discounted. She is the key to unlocking the identity of the man,or boy, who is the real culprit. Terry's Restaurant is also a large factor in solving the case. We must remember that a woman doesn't start running around with just anyone with her husband aware of this and expect him not to mind and pass it off with, "Oh she is just a very gregarious person and she has to get it out of her system."

         The killer is mentioned early in the 1997 paperback, (his real name), and several times afterwards. His name fits just right in the thirteen symbol key leaving out the three 8's and the K and the middle M. Don't make the cipher too complicated because it isn't. He's mentioned on pgs. 22, 28 and 41. Don't be thrown off course by his size because many tricks have been used throughout the years.

         There are only two general motives for murder. Love and money. And in this case of the Zodiac money is not the motive.
        
         Good luck!

         Don't forget Ricardo Gomez's website mk-zodiac.com. or mine zodiaccodesolved.blogspot.com

Zodiac

         It is interesting to note that there are conflicting views on the DVD discs about the Zodiac's personality. The one lady, I believe her name is Hagan or something close to that, is a slim blonde woman who is a criminal profiler. She says that the Zodiac was not a sadistic person and that his crimes were done fast and without much emotion such as the Lake Berryessa murder of  Cecelia Shepard and stabbing of Brian Hartnell. You can see her on the second disc walking with Brian Hartnell and going into a building where the door from Brian's car, the Carman-Ghia, had the Zodiac's death tally written in blood on the passenger door. She is very emphatic about the Zodiac being passive and non emotional in committing his crimes.

         On the other hand, Robert Graysmith describes the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside in 1966 as very drawn-out, sadistic, and gruesome. The Zodiac is also shown to be enjoying the fight that Cheri Jo Bates put up before he finished the job and almost cut her head off. Also the writing on the desktop about the blood dripping and dripping was anything but non-emotional.

         It is very hard for a layman to see how the actions of the Zodiac can be anything but sadistic because if he were doing this in a non-emotional way he would more than likely have stopped long ago. He continued his murders because he enjoyed this type of performance and like a drug, he needed more and more of this type of action. Seeing his victims suffer only added to his pleasure and he stated this in his writings.

Zodiac - Lying

         Two score and five years ago the Zodiac started his rampage with the murder of Cheri Jo Bates near Riverside, California and for all we know he could still be out there up to his old bloody tricks.

         The biggest aid when questioning a suspect is the ability to discern whether or not they are telling the truth. If you know some of the tricks you can fairly easily tell by their actions. Immediately after asking them a question they sometimes fold their arms in a defensive position. Also they start talking about a subject totally unrelated to what you were asking them and at the same time start shifting their eyes back and forth from left to right. They also might start to light up a cigarette and start chain smoking from that point forward. Casting their eyes downward and shifting in their seat is another action they might do. Nervous twitches in their face might start and also they might begin to stutter-a result sometimes of being nervous. The suspect might suddenly become very quiet or on the other hand he or she could become very agitated while being questioned. An old trick the FBI uses is to ask a question one minute and then ask the same question ten or fifteen minutes later. Sometimes the answer is the same and sometimes the answer isn't. The idea is that if the subject lies about the question, he or she has to remember how they answered so as not to conflict with the answer the second time. Also the subject might start tapping their feet or drumming their fingers on the table in front of them. The best way to question a suspect is to ask he or she questions that are relatively easy to answer to begin with and then hit them with a critical question and see if there is any movement showing nervousness. Chances are if there is some definite movement - then there is a good possibly they are lying.

         The worst thing that could happen is the fact that they could become violent on the spot and start swinging although this doesn't always mean that they are lying. Sometimes it just means that they are very unstable and can go off with very little provoking. If this individual is suspected of being like this then it's best to have two or more people questioning the subject.

         By the way add two more years to the first sentence so it reads two score and seven years ago the Zodiac started his rampage. Old Abe Lincoln was better at starting his Gettysberg Address than I am writing about the Zodiac.

Zodiac

         With the holiday season upon us now we have to stop and think that the season is no different than any other time for the Zodiac. He has no personality and therefor has no life of his own which makes it harder to track him. His life is like a walking shadow - no purpose, only that of feeding his very abnormal drives for the rest of his life. He probably has been like this for most of his life so Happy Holidays Zodiac!!

Zodiac

Don't forget mk-zodiac.com

Zodiac

         I mentioned Freudian slip two days ago and I wondered if any of you sleuths might have noticed anything that the Zodiac had said that could be classified as such. Although this might have happened as the Zodiac spoke or wrote I think the use of drugs might have played a larger part in the formation of his sentences. That is although he had a fairly high I Q, we can not assume that all he said in his writing was absolutely true. The fact also remains that we may be dealing with more than one personality in his head. Maybe two, three or four or more. The Zodiac didn't speak the same to Paul Avery as he did to Dave Toschi.

         As an example we don't talk the same way to our parents as we do to our intimate friends. Therefor there are many variations in our personalities as we talk to different people. This is mentioned in the 1971 movie Carnal Knowledge where Candice Bergen is talking to Art Garfunkle at a mixer (a college getting to know each other get together.) I guess we therefor have to take the Zodiac at his word and make the most sense out of what he gives us or gave us if he is no longer still alive. Summing this up we are different things to different people. Thank heavens no two people are exactly alike or there would be no conversation at all needed.

         We can hash this Zodiac character over and over again and still never come closer than we were before. Inflections in his speech and "psychological traits" are about the best tools that we have to use to get inside his mind and find out who he is. Also just plain dumb luck, maybe with a Freudian slip, might bring us closer to him. This man is the Hamlet of serial killers and we with a sane brain are trying to find out who he is with an insane brain.

Zodiac - Ricks

         Hello Zodiac sleuths. It's time to go back to Blue Rock Springs and Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau. As the car pulled up behind them Darlene said, "Oh no, Rick," or something close to that so Mike said. I think we can eliminate Rick Marshall but there are two other Ricks. Rick Crabtree at the house painting party and also Rick Hoffman. Those two can be researched. I don't know anything about Rick Crabtree but Rick Hoffman was at the scene trying to get information from Darlene but to no avail. She was too far gone and filled with bullets. Graysmith wrote that Hoffman was at the house painting party but he swears that he wasn't. I just wonder if that could be some kind of a Freudian slip?

           As the Zodiac wrote he left his "psychological fingerprint" by the way he constructed his sentences. A good psychiatrist might be able to identify him just by talking to him either on the street or in a one on one conversation. Even though he is psychotic, he still would leave some sort of a "fingerprint" in his speech or writing.

         The desktop poem in Riverside City College library was discovered shortly after Cheri Jo Bates was murdered and was signed rh.

Zodiac

         Of all the people that discussed the escapades of the Zodiac, the best speaker of the bunch was Ralph Spinelli. He off times used the phrase " now I want to paraphrase the following information." Ralph has long commentaries on the second disc of the two disc set of the Zodiac. He, as far as I can remember, never mentioned Don Cheney but he did mention Arthur Leigh Allen a lot. He tried to convince us that Allen was either the Zodiac or was connected to the Zodiac. The one thing that stood out was that when he said that he was the Zodiac he didn't actually say that he was the Zodiac but "I'm Zodiac." It seemed that he couldn't quite say that he WAS the Zodiac only "I'm Zodiac." There is a difference between being the actual person or acting like the real person.

         When they ran tests on Allen after he died, the tests showed positive for him being the Zodiac but after they ran them again they didn't. This must have been a big let down for Toschi, Greysmith and the bunch. He was the one who many suspected was their man. This also left Spinelli out in left field.

         There is one more thing pertaining to that thirteen symbol cipher the Zodiac said which contained his name. Using the key that the Hardens used, shift the letters once, twice or three times and use those letters and see what you get. This only works with letters, not symbols.

         Also, in the long rambling letters the Zodiac wrote, wherever he spells a word wrong, use that letter or a letter close to that letter and gather all those letters and try to make some sense out of it. I still think there is some hidden messages or names in a collection of those misspelled words.

         In closing I should remind you sleuths to visit web site mk-zodiac.com the web site of Ricardo Gomez.

Zodiac and Ciphers

         This is Daryll K. Lathers speaking. I've been away from the computer for a while as I was having my '95 Ford show truck painted which required a lot of preparation and a lot of $. The original color was Cayman Green (dark blue/green). Where I live in Upstate New York the winters are rough on paint so I figured the job was justified. Don't ever try this yourself unless you've had previous experience because you can easily ruin the job. Take it to a professional and do it right. As I was doing this I was also thinking about the Zodiac and I've come up with some new ideas which I'll share with you all.

         On page #144 of the Zodiac paperback, the one with the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog at night, the Zodiac gave us a thirteen symbol and letter cipher. He said his name was in the cipher........? You can easily make out Herb Caen or Arthur Leigh Allen. Sleuths don't be fooled!!!! This is much too simple and much too brief to figure out. Somebody, the Zodiac himself, is trying to shed the light on someone else and it follows a pattern that we've seen before, more than once. Do you remember how Ralph Spinelli and Don Cheney would shift our attention towards Arthur Leigh Allen? This is more of the same. The Zodiac didn't or does not want to be caught because he enjoys killing too much! I think we are closer than we think to knowing the real identity of the killer. I don't think that Cheney or Spinelli had the brains or especially the patience to write the long rambling messages that the Zodiac did. But - we probably have mentioned the Zodiac's name in our conversations and didn't know it. Looking for patterns, I think that this is the best shot that we have had in all our conversations. There is just one more word that might lead us to the killer ----- titwillow.

Zodiac

         Last night in a conversation with a friend I mentioned that there is a possibility that there is no real person called the Zodiac and that there is a person or persons taking credit for random murders as they occur. This could be true but with so many young attractive girls being murdered it doesn't seem likely.

         Coming up this Friday there is a radio program on WGY in Schenectady at eleven o'clock P.M. where they might be discussing past murders and the Zodiac topic might be mentioned. WGY is at 810 on the A M dial. If they do mention the Zodiac it thought I might have the availability of calling in the station if calls are accepted.

         I might have mentioned this before but Arthur Leigh Allen told Ralph Spinelli at his bar, the Crazy Horse Saloon, that he could perform a service for him such as getting rid of unwanted characters. He said he could do this because he said he was Zodiac. It's interesting in the way he put it. He didn't say he was THE Zodiac but that he was Zodiac. It almost seems to hint that he might be affiliated with another person who was the real Zodiac and that he was just an affiliate. Sorting out the truth in his case seems to be a little difficult. Remember, Don Cheney and Arthur Leigh Allen were "friends" at one time.

         There is something else I noticed. Sometimes when I read the Zodiac's messages I seem to sense a variance in continuity of his sentences. It almost seems that more than one person is writing the messages. The variance in continuity is from one message to another. There is a distinct possibility that more than one person is writing these notes. Some sentences have misspelled words in them while others don't. Also in the early messages a lot of feeling was entered about slaves in his after life while these "slaves" seemed to have dropped away in later paragraphs. You have to get the psychological "feeling" of these readings and then you can begin to tell and also feel the comparison. I guess some people would attribute this to being psychic but the feeling when reading the Zodiac's notes is impossible to avoid. Everyone who reads the Zodiac's writings gets something different and
that's what makes the enigma so fascinating.


         Until next time I am Daryll Lathers - 518 773 3263

Zodiac

         It should be noted that in the Zodiac's ciphers all his letters and symbols are very even latitude wise but not so much longitudinally. It's almost as if he used a straight edge as he wrote them. We should also pay attention to what he doesn't mention along with what he does mention. He starts out in the 11/8/69 cipher with Herb Caen and finishes with detective Dave Toschi. That means those names were foremost in his mind and in that order. I don't think he ever mentions Robert Graysmith in his writings along with many of the law enforcement officers who were at the scene of the crimes after they were enacted.

         It's almost a certainty that Donald F. and Eric Z. spoke to the Zodiac at the scene of the Paul Stein murder. It's too bad that Donald can't offer more as to what the Zodiac seemed like, personality wise, from his encounter near the murder site. That was an opportunity missed.

         Here's something to think about! As the Zodiac wrote the 340 symbol cipher, when he had a change of thought, he changed from letters to symbols. This happens throughout the whole cryptogram. In other words he left a "mental fingerprint" as he wrote. Numerology also plays a part in the cipher and is used throughout the paragraph. Seven girls and seven girls murdered in S. F. , etc.  The way he thinks or thought is something he cannot hide from the public because it is an integral part of his psychological makeup. I find the expression titwillow, titwillow, titwillow very interesting. I'll have to look this up because it sounds like it might be connected to an old English or possibly Irish limerick or poem. Therein might be a good lead as to whom the Zodiac is or was.

         In the meantime I'll keep brousing through Graysmith's paperback and wait for something new to pop into my head. Those who saw him said he was big and overweight and this might tend to make him lethargic and lazy and less likely to plant a bomb at Mt. Diablo or do anything which requires much physical labor. The one thing that we might have overlooked is the fact that he might have been caught on videotape buying some of the equipment that he needed for one of his elaborate set-ups.

         Till next time...............

Zodiac & Related Stories

          Note: As I related to Ricardo Gomez I haven't been using the computer recently because I've been too busy with other business, mainly the restoration of my '95 Ford pickup and the painting of same. An expensive deal to say the least. Anyway, a man should have a hobby or two. Just to mention, the paint,(lacquer), costs about $275 a quart, not to mention the labor.

          As for the zodiac. I am almost convinced that there might be a hidden sentence within a sentence in his big cipher of  November 8th, 1969. I've tried looking for a connection when he switches from letters to symbols and have almost come up with new meanings but to no avail. It seems he has some sort of message within a message - you can almost sense it as you are translating the cipher. Almost like he's hitting one note "too heavy." It's like having a sixth sense that tells you this.

          Now no one would be better at this than a newspaper columnist like Herb Caen. That is almost a giveaway in the small sentence that Graysmith puts in his paperback novel - 2nd edition. In fact it seems almost too easy to solve. As Graysmith says, "The zodiac would hardly come right out and practically give you his name." Maybe so and maybe not. Edgar Allen Poe said in the early 1800's' "Any cipher made by man could be solved by man." Using logic, the Zodiac wouldn't  make his ciphers too hard because that would discourage sleuths and he wouldn't be as famous as he wanted to be. We are dealing with a crazed man with a huge ego here.

          There is always the possibility that the letters he's using are just one or two away from the actual letter that he wants. That's either one or two forward or backward. That's one way to look at it. Another way might be if the letter is put down in reverse he might mean the letter before that letter. There are so many possibilities that it could make you half crazy before you came up with any solution.

          If Herb Caen were the Zodiac it would be very easy to write letters to yourself and very few would suspect that he was the killer. It is like hiding in plain sight.

          Till next time.........

Silence of the Lambs

         After the West Virginia caper Clarice Starling continues to work on the Buffalo Bill case and Lecter wants a transfer to get away from Dr. Chilton who he considers his enemy instead of his jail keeper. The Lake Oneida offer was found out to be a fake dreamed up by Jack Crawford.

         In the meantime Buffalo Bill has kidnapped another girl, a Senators daughter, and is keeping her in a pit in his house until she drops enough weight so he can use her skin for the human cover that he's making.

        Hannibal Lecter has been transferred to Memphis, Tennessee and is visited again by Clarice Starling. This is the session where Clarice becomes more familiar with him and tells him about her young life living on a sheep ranch in Montana. She tells him how she was awakened one night by the screaming of the spring lambs as they were being slaughtered. She tried to save one but he was too heavy and she was caught and sent to an orphanage in Bozeman.

        It was either in this session or the next that Hannibal tells her how to catch Buffalo Bill. I mentioned this earlier in the blog on how to catch the Zodiac. Hopkins mentions the Roman orator Marcus A. of the Roman Senate. You first have to understand the M. O. of Buffalo Bill. Simplicity--- What does he do? Buffalo Bill COVETS! What does he covet! He covets what he sees every day. All of these girls he sees every day or most every day. That is the secret of catching him. It must be that in ancient Rome they must have been bothered by serial killers or those of a similar nature.

        Clarice Starling goes to the home of one of the last victims and by trial and error happens upon the home of Jamie Gumm, (Buffalo Bill). She arrests him and in the process he turns off the power in the house. She hears a click, a pistol being cocked, and shoots and kills him.

        In the meantime Lecter escapes and takes a plane for Argentina and that's the end of the story.

        Next time I'll mention more about the Zodiac and possible tips within his paragraphs.
       
       

Silence of the Lambs

         After an encounter with Hannibal Lecter at his cell, Clarice Starling takes a hint from him and goes to a place called "Your-Self" storage facility and searches one of the storage places. It happens to be the one designated for Benjamin Raspail, a former patient of Hannibal Lecter. It was prepaid for ten years and after searching, Clarice finds the patient's head, decapitated, in a large glass jar with makeup on it. She then goes back to Lecter's cell and proceeds to ask him who killed him. Lecter  says, "Who can say," but in reality it was Lecter himself who did it and served his organs, (sweetbreads), to the symphony board - running true to form to his cannibalistic nature. As their conversation carries on we see a relationship beginning to develop between Clarice and Hannibal.

         As the movie progresses, more bodies turn up due to the pathology of the killer known as "Buffalo Bill." Clarice has to go down to West Virginia where a body has turned up in Elk River with pieces of skin missing. Jack Crawford goes with her and the girls body is examined by Clarice as part of her training. After much work it is noticed that a pupa or pod is found inserted in the mouth of the girl. Clarice takes this back to Lecter and he says that this is a symbol of change which is exactly what Buffalo Bill is trying to do - change from man to woman.

         By the way we should note that Buffalo Bill's real name is Jamie Gumm. Also all of the victims  have had an Asian pupa inserted in their mouths. Buffalo Bill had probably applied for a sex change in the three hospitals that do this type of thing. Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota and Columbus Medical Center. This type of personality has a pathology much more savage than what meets the eye.

Silence of the Lambs - Zodiac

         Before we get any further into Silence of the Lambs I should mention that we're getting close to one of the murder dates of the Zodiac. One should be very careful when sleuthing around these sites because we can't be sure that the Zodiac might be alive and well and lurking around these places. One must remember that one of these murders occurred in daylight and that tends to lessen the fear. I myself don't own a gun but I would feel safer if I had one and had it on me when walking at these locations.

         Also I feel I should thank Doctor "G" in Vallejo for this blog site and Noreen B. for the interview some months ago over the air.

         Back to the Lambs. Hannibal Lecter was being interviewed by Clarice Starling and seemed to take a liking to her in doing so. He was more interested in her past history especially that of her late father. She offered him a fake offering to go to Lake Oneida which rang a bell with me because this lake is about 100 miles west of where I live and just about in the center of Upstate New York.

Zodiac & Silence of the Lambs

Two websites should be mentioned as a reminder pertaining to the Zodiac case and related subjects:

         1.  mk-zodiac.com

         2.  zodiaccodesolved.blogspot.com

         3.  Number one is for Ricardo Gomez and number two is for Daryll Lathers


It should be mentioned that Psycho, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal can be compared to Zodiac in that the motivation for killing is quite similar. As I start with The Silence of the Lambs I'll try to interweave parts of it with the Zodiac. In the last story, Red Dragon, as Francis Dolarhyde was killing his victims not only was he becoming more and more psychotic and powerful like the Red Dragon but every time he was killing his grandmother in a symbolic way. He had a lot of strikes against him, especially his face and the way he looked.

         Silence of the Lambs - 1991

         The following note is taken from the MGM Hannibal Lecter Two - Pack.

         Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins deliver sensational, Oscar winning performances in this powerful "stunning" (Los Angeles Times) and "spellbinding" (The Hollywood Reporter) five time Academy Award  Winner, when FBI agent Clarice Starling (Foster) is assigned a case involving a monstrous serial killer, she seeks counsel from an imprisoned cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), whose fascination with the young woman is as great as his hunger for murder. As their relationship develops, Starling must confront her demons. and an evil so powerful that she may not have the courage or strength to stop it!

         The serial killer, played by Ted Levine, is so convincing that he has you on the edge of your seat especially as the movie draws to the shocking finish.

         As the movie starts Clarice Starling is in FBI training when her boss, Jack Crawford, takes her off an obstacle course and tells her that she is to interview Hannibal Lecter pertaining to a murder case involving a killer only known as "Buffalo Bill."

        



        

Silence Of The Lambs

         Before I start talking about Silence Of The Lambs you might remember how they trap serial killers by the coveting method. Well - Red Dragon is a good example. Where could you view different women at pool parties than at a color film processing company. Francis Dolarhyde had the perfect job for this type of perversion. As a matter of fact there are similar types going about this criminal type of activity right now. I believe the Hippa laws would apply.

         By the way, It's quite possible that a dozen or more people in the City of Vallejo, California actually know who the Zodiac is or was. We've talked about this a few times before but it bears repeating. Just the mere mentioning of the Hippa laws. I repeat, just the fact that one mentions this type of activity almost assures us that it is occurring at the present time. People usually mention, one way or another, what's going on in their minds. We are not too far from the truth most of the time

Red Dragon - Hannibal

         The next scene is the Graham's house in Marathon, Florida. Will and his wife and Josh are roasting marshmallows when Josh wants more and goes back to the house to get some. He's gone for a long time so Will goes to check. At the same time Jack Crawford calls and says Dolarhyde shot Mandy in the head and escaped from the fire himself. Since Hannibal gave Francis D. their address, it's likely that he's headed for Marathon to kill the family. When Will goes in the house, he finds the mirrors broken and Francis holding Josh with a knife to his throat. Will drops his gun and intimidates Josh by using the same phrases that Francis' grandmother used on Francis. This works and Francis lets Josh go and goes after Will. They fight and Will stabs Francis in the leg. Will's wife comes up the stairs and Will says to her, "Get down," and he shoots Francis. Will is wounded and so is Francis but Will tells his wife to kill him. She does and that's the end of the story.

Red Dragon - Hannibal

         After forcing Freddie Lounds to read a long paragraph on tape Dolarhyde then proceeds to  bite Freddie's toung off while he screams and then he soaks him with gasoline and lights him afire and rolls him down the parking lot of the Tattler much to the alarm of those standing in the parking lot.

         After Will's last visit, Hannibal proceeds to get the telephone number of Will's boss and coerces the lady to give him the home address of the Graham family in Marathon, Florida. He pretends to be a publishing company executive which seems to work very well. Hannibal then communicates with Francis Dolarhyde by means of the personal section of the National Tattler and after much hard work the FBI manages to get the cipher message which says, blah, blah, "kill them all." Jack Crawford calls Will on the phone and alerts him which results in the FBI going into action and they move Molly and Will's small son to Jack Crawford's farmhouse far away from Marathon, Fla. This shows the changing of an insane mind from one emotion to another. When will left Hannibal in his cell Hannibal said, "My best to Molly and Josh" and almost in the same breath he said in his cipher in the Tattler, " Kill them all."

     It should be noted that the acting of Anthony Hopkins throughout this story is nothing less than superior. Finnes and Norton also are also great. If one were to watch the movie it would be worth watching it just for their acting!

     Will Graham and Jack Crawford now go to the Chromalux Company to talk to the head manager and after applying pressure all of a sudden all facts point to Francis Dollarhyde as the serial killer. The next thing is to catch him. The night before Emily Watson wandered around in the house and Francis thinks she discovered something. In the movie Francis hears voices which he thinks is the dragon and he imagines the dragon is going to steal her away from him. He says, "No, you can't have her."

     But we're getting ahead of ourselves. While entertaining Miss Watson he puts on a film of another family. Emily says, "Is this a corporate promo? Francis says, "No, it's just some people I'm going to meet." The film shows a swimming pool scene of a mother and daughter playing. The woman is well endowed and then we are sure of the motivation of Francis' killings. Sex.

     Back to Emily's apartment and we see Emily's friend Mandy kissing Emily after an evening out for dinner. Francis sees this and feels betrayed and shoots Mandy in the forehead on the front porch he then drugs Emily and takes both of them out to the old Dolarhyde mansion in his van.

    Will and Jack have narrowed it down to the Dolarhyde Nursing Home. They are on the way when they see a large fire. It's the nursing home. Francis has set fire to it and has shot Mandy again with a twelve gage shotgun. When they get there Emily is out in front saying Francis shot himself but she is wrong. He's still alive. Mandy's corpse is burning inside when the house explodes.

Red Dragon - Hannibal

         The reporter for the Tattler is Freddie Lounds played by Seymore Hoffman. After the incriminating article that Crawford and Will Graham put in the paper Dolarhyde captures Lounds and takes him to the nursing home where he super glues him to a wheelchair and forces him to recant all the bad things he has written about him in the Tattler.

Red Dragon - Hannibal Lecter

         Will Graham, (Edward Norton), retired after his messy experience with Lecter and lived in Marathon, Florida with his wife played by Mary-Louise Parker and small son.  Jack Crawford of the FBI came to visit one afternoon and at first Will didn't want anything to do with the Red Dragon Case, but then agreed to examine the Leeds' house and the Jacobi's house in Atlanta and Birmingham respectively.

         When Will went back to Atlanta to the Leeds house he started looking through the drawers where the video tape was stored and he came upon a video called "The Deeds of the Leeds" showing Mrs. Leeds coming back after shopping with the kids. I immediately noticed that Mrs. Leeds was a very attractive woman and I thought that might have something to do with why he chose that family.  I was right. Francis Dolarhyde was a body builder and was attracted to women who were of that persuasion, but were getting ahead of ourselves.

         Francis Dolarhyde becomes acquainted with a young blind girl who works in the dark room with all types of film. He invites her to his home, the old nursing home of his grandmothers, and they become friends - more than friends. The girl is played by Emily Watson.

         In the meantime Francis wants to look at the real painting of the Red Dragon and so he contacts the Brooklyn Art Museum. Finally he goes to the museum and a woman takes him to the room where the book is that holds the original painting by Robert Blake painted in 1809. He hits the woman over the head and tears strips off the original and begins to eat the painting thinking that if he eats it, in his demented mind it will make him stronger and he will become more and more like the Red Dragon.

         In the meantime Jack Crawford and Will Graham are trying to get a handle on who Francis is so they take out an incriminating ad in the "National Tattler" which is a cheap tabloid paper hoping that Francis will come after Will instead of his family.

Hanibal Lecter - Red Dragon

         In the movie Red Dragon there are two serial killings. The Leeds family in Atlanta, Georgia and the Jacobi family in Birmingham, Alabama. Jack Crawford played by Harvey Keitel and Will Graham played by Ed Norton are the FBI agents on the case.

         At the beginning Hanibal is being used as a consultant  by Will Graham when Will suspects the killer of a case he's working on is eating the sweetbreads of his victim. He's getting too close to Hanibal when Hanibal stabs him with a knife saying "Every game must have an ending." Will recovers and Hanibal goes to prison serving nine concurrent life sentences. Hanibal was found to have killed and canabalized many victims.

         Jack Crawford is stuck on the Leeds - Jacobi case so he goes to Marathon, Fla. to talk to Will Graham. He is able to get Will to help him with his God given intuition and Will visits the Leeds and Jacobi homes in Georgia and Alabama respectively. The Leeds home is a split level house with a large back yard. The upstairs bedrooms are all blood covered and all of the mirrors in the house are broken and small mirror pieces are inserted into the orbital sockets of all of the victims. We can begin to profile the killer as having a very low self esteem.

         The actual killer is a man named Francis Dolarhyde played by R. Finnes who in character has been abused for many years by his grandmother who ran a nursinghome. The home is a run down large white rambling home with a all around porch. To make things worse he has an ugly scar on his upper lip. He is obsessed with the Red Dragon image in the book of Revelations in the Bible. In his sick mind the more victims he kills the more powerful like the Red dragon he becomes.

         Will Graham discovers the Red Dragon image cut into a tree in the back yard of one of the victims houses. Jacobi's I think. He takes this to Hanibal in his prison cell and Hanibal says this boy begins to interest me. The big problem is how is Francis Dolarhyde choosing his victims?

        

Hannibal Lecter

We're going to talk about Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic psychiatrist. The four stories are The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising.  He was played by Anthony Hopkins who is a top rate actor and did a fine job in his character.

         Hannibal Lecter was born in Lithuania January 20, 1938. He was 5' 10'' and 178 pounds. He was an American citizen. He was considered to be extremely dangerous.

         Lecter's interests: Fine Art, History, Symphonic Music, Psychology, Anthropology, Fine Cusine and Mathematics. He was an avid reader and a connoisseur of fine wines and a world travler.

         His father was a Count in Lithuania and his mother was high bred Italian Tuscan Guillano Beyisangue and from Machiavelli and Visconti bloodlines.
        
         During the Second World War the Nazis pushed into Russia but got caught up in the bitter cold winter of 1940-41. Starving and cold they retreated back through Lithuania and took refuge in Lecter's father's estate. They killed all members of the estate except Hannibal and his sister Mischa. As they were hold up in the estate they ran out of food and began to starve. They took Mischa and cannibalized her for food. Hannibal was too thin and frail so they didn't bother him. This trauma was probably the reason for Hannibal's cannibalism. From 1944 to 1970 he came to the United States and became a citizen. From 1970 to 1975 he had a psychiatric practice in Maryland. Hannibal's I. Q. was obviously in the genius range. It had to be extremely high. The same goes for Anthony Hopkins.

         I started with Silence of the Lambs which was made, or came out in 1991. Jodie Foster plays the major role along with Hopkins.

         To start this right you have to start with the prequel - Red Dragon which was made I believe around 2003. At this time Hannibal still hadn't been captured for his crimes yet and he had a good psychiatric practice going.

         We are studying all of this for two reasons

                     1) To fill up my website
                     2) To study the ways of a serial killer.
 

Psycho I & Zodiac

Note:

         In the last blog I said Psycho Made $350,000 for Alfred Hitchcock. I should have said Psycho I made $350,000,000 for Alfred. (That's three hundred and fifty million dollars profit for Psycho I alone.) Not bad !! I don't know what the following three movies made.

Note:

         It's about time we started talking a little about Zodiac or I will begin to lose some of my    obsessive-compulsive nature. All this time I've been having conversations with my friend Ricardo Gomez, mk-zodiac.com in San Francisco. When I bring up a point about who the zodiac is he always helps me by giving me info which enlarges my perspective. Ricardo is an extremely intelligent sleuth.

         I don't want to sound like a broken record but there seems to be a connection between a few of the people in the two disc collectors edition of the zodiac and the zodiac himself. I agree with George Bawart, the Vallejo detective, most of the time. He is very good in his thinking. There seems to be a strong connection between Don C----y and the zodiac. It almost seems that maybe Arthur Leigh Allen was being set up by Don. Every time Allen mentioned something that he was doing, Don would cover himself by identifying with the same action. For instance licking the stamps on the thank you letters Allen was sending out. Also leaving a large thumb print on Allen's ball of wax that Allen had in his trailer. It almost seems that the two of them were working as a team.

         Also, the remark that Darlene F. made to Mike Mageau at Blue Rock Springs when the car pulled up behind them. She called the man Rick, according to Mike. Mike said the Zodiac's first name was Rick. How much more do we need? Both of these leads can't be right. Mike got a good look at the Zodiac - only three feet away.

         We seem to be going in circular patterns of thinking but the one "ace in the hole" we have is the brain fluid of Arthur Leigh Allen. But this only works for him. I think the Vallejo Police Dept. has more information than we know.

Psycho IV

         Dying by strychnine is a slow and painful death.

         Norman said his wife tricked him by going off the pill so they could have a baby. This made Norman so very mad that he had it in his mind to kill her. He said meet me at the motel which by then was very run down. She met him there and he had the knife in his hand but couldn't hurt her. He then told her to get out of the house and then he set the house on fire finally they meet outside as the house is burning and he says the past is going up in flames.

         This is the end of Psycho  IV. As the credits roll  up you can hear the sound of a baby crying in the distance.

         Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was knighted before he died and was awarded the American Film Industry's Award. He never lived long enough to see Psycho II, III, & IV.

         Janet Leigh died circa 2010.

         Anthony Perkins died in 1992 when he was about 60 years old.

         Vera Miles is still alive I believe.

         Psycho spanned the years (1960 - 1990). It made Hitchcock a very rich man grossing in around $350,000 for him thus passing any of his other movies.

Psycho IV

         A few minutes later Chet Rudolph stumbles into the bedroom vomiting as he walks in. He says, "He poisoned us Norma." Norma says, "You little bastard. Kill him Chet." Norman was watching from the hallway as the strychnine began to take effect. Chet Rudolph collapses while Norma staggers after Norman taking swipes at him as she goes down the stairway. She continues to try to reach him but the poison has been too strong for her. Chet tackles Norman at the bottom of the stairs but Norman gets away and then finally Norma collapses in the downstairs hall. Norman takes her down to the fruit cellar where she dies. Chet dies too.

         After Norman stole her corpse the movie shows him making incisions in her stomach much like you would gut a deer. Norman treated her with chemicals to preserve her much like his stuffed birds. Then Norman sews her up and she is then preserved for "all time". This was Norman's way of keeping his mother with him for a long, long time. It seems as though this demented way of keeping his mother this way has a bit of masochism in it.

Psycho IV

         Suddenly Norman comes down dressed in a wig and old dark dress with a lace collar. (This is one of his mother's dresses.) He then begins to choke her to death. He puts her body in the trunk of the Buick Roadmaster having choked her twice, and then starts to push the car into the swamp out back. The car's tail lights are on as it rolls into the swamp with the woman pounding inside. The pounding eventually stops.

         The weather is warm and humid and Chet and Norma are upstairs in her bedroom. Chet has just finished taking a shower as they wait for "room service" from Norman.

         Down in the kitchen Norman is preparing a pitcher of ice water and vanilla for the couple upstairs when Norman reaches for the bottle of strychnine in the cabinet. It says on the bottle for Mr. John Bates to take 0.5 mg as a stimulate. This is a very small dose. One half of one thousandth of a gram. Strychnine used to be used to stimulate the system I think but I'm not absolutely sure of this. There may have been other uses of the drug. Strychnine came in about the consistency of mineral oil. Norman dumped the whole bottle in the pitcher of ice water. He then took the liquid upstairs to the waiting couple. Chet says, "Room service has arrived." Chet Rudolph drinks his glass right away while Norma plays with it and then drinks her glass.

         It's not too long before the drug hits Chet first.

Psycho IV

         Along about this time the people in the studio get into a fight. Fran, the hostess, wants to try her method of talking to Norman while the psychiatrist still wants to use his method. The psychiatrist finally leaves the program and everything calms down.

         One night Norman's mother comes home with a man named Chet Rudolph, a bartender. Norman watches from his mother's bedroom window while they go into a motel room and proceed to make love. The next morning when Norman comes down to the kitchen his mother asks him if he saw them go into a motel room because she saw Norman looking down at them from the house. Norman says "Since when did you start hanging around cheap bars?" This makes his mother angry and about then Chet comes down from the upstairs bedroom. Norman's mother says "You two say hello to each other." Norman tells Chet to take his father's robe off. Norman leaves for school.

         Chet thinks it's time for Norman to have some boxing lessons so he gets two pair of boxing gloves and they go down the stone stairs to a grassy spot and put the gloves on. Chet tries to get Norman to throw a punch and ends up hitting Norman lightly. Chet gets more and more angry at Norman for being so passive and tells him to throw one of his punches to get even. Chet finally pops Norman in the jaw and knocks him out. Norma comes by and just shakes her head. Norman is bleeding at the corner of the mouth slightly and that's the end of the boxing lesson.

         The scene changes to night-time and Norman has an older woman in a '49 green Buick Roadmaster and they're necking when suddenly Norman says he has to go up to the house to give his mother her medicine. It's probably the mother half of Norman's brain that is making him do this.             (to be continued)

Psycho IV

Note:  It should be noted that when Psycho I was made in 1960 there was a relationship between Norman and his mother that was more than mother and son. I believe that I may have mentioned this in the earlier blog. 1960 couldn't take this so the lines that referred to this were removed. Steven Ribello mentions this in his narration of Psycho in the collectors edition DVD.

         On hot and humid days Norman's mother would have Norman blot her body with orange blossom liquid starting at her feet and working up. In the movie when he got above her knees she started to giggle and they both fell off the bed onto the floor and started rolling around and laughing as they tumbled around. She felt him getting aroused and "pretended" to be very angry, smearing his face with lipstick, making fun of his maleness, putting a dress on him and locking him in a closet for a while. This emasculation seemed to be almost enjoyable to him and her. It almost seemed as they were acting out parts in a play. I was surprised that they allowed this carrying-on to be part of the movie. This seemed to have a reflection on the script writer/s almost as if they were drawing on their own experiences.

         Once, at the bottom of the stairs leading to the mansion, Norman was beating a rug when his mother came down and started hitting him with a newspaper. He asked why, and she responded, "Who else can I hit?" The paper mentioned that they were building a new main highway which would divert traffic away from their motel and thus ruin their business. This turned out to be only half true as time went on.

         About then Norman got a visit from Mrs. Lane, a next-door neighbor saying his line was busy, busy, busy.

Psycho IV

         Norma Bates was always afraid of lighting storms and would ask Norman to strip down to his briefs and crawl into bed and hold her until the storm was over. In the movie Norman is aroused and gets up and runs into his room. His mother follows him and while he is there she sees a magazine for female bras and slips in his magazine pile. She immediately tells him to take it to the garbage outside while it is raining hard. She follows him with a raincoat and tells him that she will wish that she'd been harder on him in his youth. When all of this started I began to think of incest between Norman and his mother.

         Meanwhile Norman talks to his wife on the phone and she says she forgot his birthday cake and Norman says he could make one just as easy but he's not too good at icing. They talk and she decides to pick it up later.

         One day Norman got home from school early and saw his mother going into cabin #1 of the motel. He peeped through one of the holes that his father had made and watched his mother. She was tearing the room apart and losing her mind. She was tearing the sheets from the beds and throwing them around and smashing other things. This seems to help validate the fact that she was  schizophrenic. There doesn't seem to be any cure for this mental illness. Only the fact that it can be controlled with drugs.

                                                    

Psycho IV

         Note: The voice of the older Mrs. Bates was played by Alice Hirson.

Psycho IV

         One of the first killing encounters that Norman had as a young man was with a young girl who had amorous intentions. She pulls up in a '41 or '46 Ford coupe, a car that would bring a high price to auto fans today, and asks if he wants to go and look at the fireworks in the park. He says no and that he can't because he has to watch the motel and his mother. This would have been his original mother, the one he poisoned with strychnine. A customer says he has a plugged up drain and while he goes to cabin #6 to fix it his girl-friend sneaks up to the mansion on the hill. When he comes back he can't find her so he also goes up to the house and finds her there. He suggests they go into his bedroom and she begins to disrobe. In the middle of that the mother part of his mind kicks in and he thinks he hears the mother and excuses himself. While he disappears she gets up, puts on a bathrobe and goes into the mother's bedroom and pokes the mother's feet. She doesn't know it but Norman has put on a wig and dress and is carrying a butcher knife. He comes out of the shadows and attacks his girl and stabs her to death. This is the mother part of his demented mind that makes him do this and I think this is the first killing in the list of many.
        
         The conversation between Fran Ambrose and Norman goes on and on and he mentions the fact that he stuffed her after robbing the grave of her body and weighing down the coffin with books to make up for her body. He also mentions the fact that he carried on conversations with her corpse but he couldn't make her voice sound as sweet as it did when she was alive. Norman would dress up in her clothes and talk to himself in her voice and answer in his own. This went on for many years. He was never all Norman but often only mother. The mother half was the dominant half of his split mind.

         When Norman was 5 or 6 his father died. The DVD says he was stung to death by bees. This doesn't scam with Psycho III which said Norman's father was killed by Miss Spool. The disc shows Norman and his mother sitting in the funeral parlor with a handkerchief over the father's face to cover up the spots stung by the bees. Norman giggles after his mother tickles him and she slaps him for his giggling. She did this on purpose. .......to be continued.

Psycho IV

         Since last time, Norman Bates has been institutionalized again and has fallen in love with a psychologist and has married her. She was married once before and lives in a beautiful split level house. Her name is Connie. Norman is out on parole now and is living a near normal married life. As we join Norman in the beginning of Psycho IV, it's his birthday and he's listening to a radio talk show called "Talk of the Town" on KTK, 490 AM.  The talk show is hosted by a lady called Fran Ambrose. The subject of the night is "Why boys commit matricide" or what causes boys to kill their mothers?

         As we join Norman talking to Fran Ambrose, it's early in the conversation and a young man , who has been committed, named Raymond Linette, is telling Fran about the therapy he's received at his institution. A Psychiatrist, who is also a guest on the program, remarks that the recidivism rate is much too great in institutions today. Raymond also says his mother told him that he would never amount to anything. He says, "I killed my own mother." "Is that amounting to anything or what?" His maternal grandfather is there with him and agrees with him, even though it was his daughter that he killed.

         Norman Bates manages to avoid questions that might give away his age or the location of his younger life such as "How old were you when you killed your first victim?" Also "Where were you living when all of this started?" Norman has his back to the camera and as he turns around and says, "I might have to kill again" you can see where Anthony Perkins might have had a slight stroke on the right side of his mouth--it droops just a little. Perkins was 58 years old when he made Psycho IV. He had just two more years to live. (1932-1992). You can see that age and possibly an illness was taking its toll on Perkins.

         I think Perkins had some sort of an identity issue during his life. It was well known that he had a hard time of shedding the character of Norman Bates through the Psychos I through IV. (1960-1990). This happens to some actors whose personalities are prone to this kind of malady. It's like being hypnotized by the character your playing.

Zodiac

         As I was talking to Ricardo Gomez I mentioned that there might be more to that 340 symbol cipher than I realized. Just the fact that he used letters and symbols, alternating back and forth, seems to tell me that maybe, using just the letters, whole sentences could appear. The same might be true with just the symbols. Otherwise , why would he alternate? I often got the feeling, while I was solving the cipher back in September 2012, that some of the symbols and/or letters were put there just to confuse.

         The possible fact that he might be a member of law enforcement always was in the back of my mind. Especially the story about the tape of the Zodiac's voice being in the Vallejo Police Department always made me wonder. I said to Ricardo that it was too bad that we lost Nancy Slover, who was about my age, to cancer. I would have liked to talk to her about her short conversation with the Zodiac. A voice graph would be a very handy tool in catching the killer. The fact remains that if there was a tape of the conversation with Slover, the person who got rid of it would be very close to the VPD building.

         I also mentioned that there had to be a real strong reason that Mageau left the area. He almost had to know who the Zodiac was or is and the same might be true of Darlene's sisters. For these people to be quiet for so long seems very strange. Murder is murder and the fact that it is a horrible crime doesn't fade away with time.

         Don't forget Gomez's web site, MK-Zodiac.com

         I'll start with Psycho IV soon.

Psycho III

         A fight starts between Duke and Norman. Norman hits Duke with an ashtray in the head. Duke goes after Norman  and they roll off the bed onto the floor. Norman hits Duke again with a lamp and then starts beating him with his guitar.

         The scene shifts to Statler's  Diner where Myrna, Statler and Tracy Venable are talking about Miss Spool. They mention the former owner of the diner, Harvey Leach. He's in a nursing home outside of town.

         Tracy goes to visit Harvey Leach and they talk about Miss Spool. He says she came from an asylum because she murdered somebodies husband. She was in love with Norman's father and killed him in a jealous rage. After she came back to "normal" they let her out in society and she went to work in Leach's diner.

         In the meantime, Maureen Coyle has been talking to Father Brian and says she's failed so many people and knows Norman is the man for her. Father Brian says, "Are you sure?" Maureen convinces Father Brian and packs up her suitcase.

         Norman now has three bodies to get rid of. The redhead, Duke's girlfriend, Patsy Boyle and Wayne Duke himself. He puts them all in Dukes old car and starts driving to a nearby swamp. In the  meantime, Duke comes back to life and tosses a noose around Norman's neck while he's driving. Norman slams on the brakes and Duke catapults into the front seat where Norman shoves his head into the passenger floor well and chokes him. He then leaves all three bodies, gets out, and swims to shore and goes back to the motel.

         Maureen leaves room #1 and goes up to the mansion and slowly climbs the stairs to the top landing. As she meets Norman there the mother half of Norman's mind comes alive and Norman shouts NORMAN! Maureen falls backwards down the stairs and her head is stabbed by the statue of Cupid at the bottom and she dies. Norman lays her out in the living-room as they used to do in the old days with about 150 candles lit.

         Tracy Venable comes looking for Maureen with a tire iron in her hand and examines cabin #1. She then goes to the mansion and finds Maureen and says, "You dumb, stupid girl." Just then she turns around and sees Norman dressed as his mother. He says, "Why won't you leave my poor son, my Norman alone?" He follows her up to the mother's bedroom where he proceeds to chop up her corpse with a butcher knife. He cuts off her left hand as a keepsake. The Sheriff is called and Norman is led away. This is the end of Psycho III.

Psycho III

         Norman and Maureen return to the motel in a driving rainstorm just as Katt Shea Ruben is getting ice from the ice machine and says to Duke in the office, "Well, I guess the wet look is coming back," and then goes on further down the boardwalk. Norman and Maureen start kissing in room #1 and Norman says, "I just can't go any further." He then goes up to see "mother" in her bedroom and she says, "You dirty, dirty boy. You let her come between us. It's perfectly normal for a boy to love his mother. Get me the knife from the chest at the foot of the bed Norman. Norman picks up the knife and deliberately cuts himself. At the same time Maureen comes up to the mansion and asks Norman what's wrong. He tells her to go back to her room and lock her door....

         Down in the motel Kyle and Ruthie are probably drunk and Kyle is trying to take advantage of Ruthie while she tells him that she was not a cheerleader but was a majorette. They laugh on and on and on.

         Katt Shea Rubin goes into the office and calls for Duke but he's nowhere to be found. She closes the windows and sees a john and sits down. While there, Norman, dressed as his mother comes by and scares her and proceeds to cut her throat and stabs her in the abdomen. He then puts her corpse in the ice machine with only her face showing along with one hand.

         Norman sleeps in the downstairs living-room. He wakes up when Sheriff Hunt and a deputy knock on the front door late in the morning. Sheriff Hunt has a warrant and he and the deputy go upstairs to "mother's room." Mother should be there but to Norman's amazement, she isn't. They go back down to the motel where Tracy and Duke are waiting also. It should be noted that Duke has taken "mother" to his cabin, #12. Sheriff Hunt reaches in the ice machine and we see the corpse of Katt Shea Ruben as Hunt grabs some blood covered ice and puts it in his mouth. He does not see her and slams the door to the machine down. In the meantime Tracy has told Maureen about Norman's past and she takes Maureen away to Father Brian's apartment. Norman is left alone to look for mother. He goes up to the house and looks everywhere for her but to no avail. Finally he sees a note in the kitchen which says, "I'm in cabin 12. Come see me." Norman hurries down the stone steps and hurries along the boardwalk in front of the motel with a very disoriented look on his face. The fact that he's crazy obviously shows on his face. The best way to describe his look is that of a person with no identity AT ALL. When he reaches Duke's room you can hear the T V with a Looney Tunes production on the screen. Duke starts to sing the old Irish folk song "Mother Mc Cree." I love the dear silver that shines in your hair and the brow that is furrowed and wrinkled with care. I kiss the dear fingers so tore worn for me--God bless you and keep you dear Mother........Bates. Doesn't scam does it Norman? Says Duke. to be continued

Psycho III

         Maureen Coyle has a room at St. Matthew's Hospital. Norman Bates, the sheriff and Tracey Venable all are waiting in the lobby while Father Brian is in the room talking to Maureen. Norman goes in next and offers her a place to stay, F O C, when she gets out. She says, "I left the bathroom in a terrible mess." Norman says, "I've seen it worse." He's evidentaly remembering when he killed Janet Leigh in Psycho I. They talk and he brings up the oft used phrase, "We all go a little mad sometimes." She says, "Thanks for being so kind," and Norman laughs because he intended to stab her to death like he did Janet Leigh. He continues to laugh as he walks out of the hospital room and shuts the door.

         He leaves her room and walks into the next movie set which is his mother's bedroom. Norman says, "I'm glad she didn't die," to his mother and she, (he), replies, "She will." We have to remember in all of these movies that both Norman and his mother are coming from the same brain - Norman's.

         When she gets back to the motel and her room #1 she notices that Norman has had her lavender dress cleaned and pressed. She thanks Norman and he replies that conservative clothes never go out of style. He also says that she would look good in that dress that evening. In the meantime four of the motel rooms have been occupied by Central High cheerleaders and supporters. Business seems to have picked up quite a bit. These supporters are noisy for the rest of the movie.

         Norman goes up to his mother's bedroom and talks to her, (himself.) Mother says, If this little whore is going to bother him, he should get rid of her. She asks Norman if he is ashamed of her. He says that he isn't.

         As nighttime comes Norman rents a taxicab and they both go out to a nightclub. They toast each other time and time again and then Norman asks her if she wants to dance. She says no but Norman says he'll show her how. He says his mother taught him how. He shows her the basic box step and they continue dancing the night away.  to be continued.

Psycho III

         As we go back to the diner, Tracey Venable has just decided to interview Norman Bates, much to his disliking. She came from L A and writes for the Costal magazine. As they are talking a cab over engine Ford pulls up and lets out a rider named Maureen Coyle, the lady who deserted the nunnery earlier. As she comes into the diner Norman sees the initials on her suitcase....M. C. The same as Marion Crane, (Janet Leigh), in Psycho I. This has a deep effect on Norman and he gets up and leaves the diner. Maureen asks the waitress if there is a reasonable place to stay in the area.

         Back at the motel Norman has Duke on duty in the office when he sees Maureen walking up the road and sells her a room for $25.95, the price of a double room. Duke pockets the extra $5. She goes into her room and slides into a suicidal depression. She is spied upon by Norman through a hole in the wall of his parlor later and she cuts her wrists. Norman dressed as his mother comes in with a knife and discovers her and decides to save her. An ambulance is called and she is taken to St. Matthew's Hospital.

         The next scene is at St. Matthews Hospital. con't

Psycho III

         Note: Before we go any further we should note a few things about Sir Alfred Hitchcock's M O. Whenever the bottom is about to fall out you will hear a bird, raven or crow, cawing a few times or you will see the owl or raven in Norman's parlor behind the office. As I mentioned before, after Norman does his work he goes to the mother's room and says, "Oh mother, blood...blood." Also when someone pulls up to the motel you might notice their car or truck is suddenly gone after they finish their business in the registration office. This was true for Sam Loomis and Lila Crane when they came looking for Marion. Also, the big floodlight near the motel sign was not supposed to be there. Hitch read the riot act to the crew but I think it looked fine. Without it there would be no light except for the yellow lights by each of the cabins. Most motels have a small floodlight showing off the motel rooms or cabins. I noticed when Milton Arbogast called Lila from a phone booth that he actually dialed the seven numbers of the hardware store after he put the dime in the phone and listened for the dial tone. When, in Psycho I, Maureen Tuttle, the deputy's wife, called the operator that she spoke a little too fast. When you used to get the operator it took 2 to 4 seconds or more for the operator to answer. This was when Sam and Lila got the deputy out of bed to report Marion was missing.

         As a side note, the motel has seven rooms in a line down from the office. Number 1 is on one level, no's 2 and 3 down one level, no's 4 and 5 down the next level, no's 6 and 7 down the next level. Then there is an alleyway, and then, at a right angle, number 8 begins with 9 and 10 and 11 and 12. Also, the peak of the Victorian mansion came from the movie "Harvey" which, I think stared James Stewart.

         It's interesting to note that when Norman was heading to Statler's  Diner, he was walking, instead of taking a cab. They are 15 miles apart.

         Next time we'll pick up the story as Norman reaches the diner and starts to talk with Tracey Venable and meets Maureen Coyle. Remember mother is always with Norman no matter where he goes and no matter whom he talks to.

Psycho III (1996)

         Psycho III starts in a nunnery in the West where Maureen Coyle attempts suicide in a bell tower. She doesn't succeed but another nun falls to her death and Maureen is blamed for it. She leaves for good and takes off across the desert with a suitcase towards a main highway. Along comes Wayne Duke, a folk singer in a beat up olds, who gives her a ride. Night falls and the rains come and they have to stop and sleep. Duke makes advances, she gets mad, and throws her out with her suitcase. Duke carries on to the Bates motel. Norman Bates, in the meantime, is stuffing birds with sawdust on the kitchen table when he hears Duke's horn blowing down at the motel. Norman yells down that he'll, "be right down".

         They both go into the office and Norman tells Duke there's a job opening at $5 an hour as assistant manager. Norman says they've been closed for a while for renovations but business is bound to pick up. He's booked two or three cabins for later in the week for a football game - Central vs. Fairvale. Duke says that he doesn't want a long time job but he only wants to make enough money to get his brakes fixed and that he won't be staying around long. Norman says, "Nobody ever does." That's the first dark joke of the movie. Norman decides to go to Statler's Diner and tells Duke he'll bring him back a couple of burgers. He tells Duke to remember the motel rates. $20.95 single and $25.95 double. Duke doesn't always keep to those rates. In the diner we meet Maureen and Sheriff Hunt. con't

Psycho II (1983)

         As Norman Bates is eating his toasted cheese sandwich , at night in the kitchen, a knock is heard at the back door. Miss Spool comes in and says, "I guess you were expecting me." Norman says, "I was expecting someone but I didn't know when." Miss Spool and Norma Bates were sisters and Norma stole Mr. Bates away from her and became Norman's father. When Norman was a baby Miss Spool killed Mr. Bates and kidnapped Norman. She was caught and put in a mental hospital. When they let her out she killed anyone who pestered Norman. This accounts for some or most of the murders in the former movie (Psycho).

         Norman offers her tea, milk and sugar while she explains all of this to him. While in the kitchen, Norman kills her with a coal shovel. (Back of the head). He then starts to call her mother, actually thinking she was his mother, and carries the corpse upstairs to his mother's bedroom. She says she's not tired and to put her close to the window so she can keep an eye on him to make sure he's not playing with any nasty girls. Norman comes out and stands in front of the house. End of Psycho II.

         In the first paragraph the last line should read (Psycho II).

         To be continued as Psycho III.

Psycho II

         This time as Norman is on the phone, he's either talking to "mother" in his mind or Miss Spool because she tells him to get rid of Mary Loomis for good. He says, "No mother! Mary has been kind to me. I can't kill her," and Mary hears the conversation. She tells him to hang up the phone and goes upstairs to the extension. While she is telling Norman to hang up, Dr. Raymond comes out of Norman's room and grabs her. She turns around and shoves a butcher knife in the left side of his chest. He falls over the banister to the hall floor below. Norman says, "that's alright, I'll take care of you 'cause your my loving mother." Mary argues with him and she stabs him in the stomach, chest and both hands. They fight all the way to the furnace cellar where Mary discovers her mother in the coal pile, dead. Sheriff Hunt comes in with a deputy and just as Mary is about to fatally stab Norman in the back, the deputy shoots Mary dead.

         The next scene is the police station where an officer from Bakersfield has come down to Fairdale to sit in on the proceedings. Sheriff Hunt says Mary killed her own mother over Norman. The desk man of the Fairdale Hotel is there signing papers as to what Mary said to her mother the day before. Somebody says, "everybody seems to be drinking coffee." Sheriff  Hunt says, "Ready to go home now Norman?" Norman Nods a yes.

         When Norman goes home, he goes down cellar and replaces the flagstone in the cellar floor where the knife, dress and wig were. He then throws three shovels full of coal into the furnace and looks at his bandaged hands that are bleeding a little. He then goes up to the kitchen. This is where the whole plot of the movie changes. ......con't

Psycho II

         Miss Spool was Norman's aunt - his mother's sister.

         Vera Miles gets into an argument with Mary at the hotel in town where she's staying. Mary tells her not to come out to the motel or she'll be sorry. Nevertheless Lila comes out to the motel and she is followed by Dr. Raymond to the mansion. Lila enters the house through the storm cellar doors on the side and goes into the furnace room. A loose tile in the floor holds a dress, butcher knife and cheap wig. As she lifts the tile she hears a sound like footsteps and looks up just in time to see a tall woman dressed in black shove a butcher knife down her throat which protrudes an inch out the back of her neck. She is then buried in the coal pile next to the furnace.

         Sheriff Hunt wanted Mary and Norman at the swamp so it must be the work of Miss Spool. Sheriff Hunt tells Mary and her mother, (now dead), to leave the area. Back at the mansion Norman is playing the piano when Mary rushes in and tells Norman they have to leave. Norman convinces Mary they'd be caught so they decide not to run. In the meantime the phone rings and Dr. Raymond is calling from the motel office but Norman answers, "yes mother", which infuriates Mary and she goes upstairs to the other phone and tells Norman to hang up and he does. They then sit and talk in the living room. The phone rings once more and this time Norman talks to his mother, probably Miss Spool. This infuriates Mary all the more. The plot is very convoluted.

Psycho II (1983)

         They later find Toomey's car in Falls Lake, the swamp, locked in the trunk.

         Norman quit his job at the diner and decides to recondition Bates Motel by painting it a light yellow. While painting one afternoon he sees a figure up in mother's bedroom window. It's actually Mary Loomis dressed up to look like Norman's mother. Norman then goes up to the house and is locked in for hours. A moaning voice calling Norman is heard and finally Mary opens the door and lets Norman out. Mary actually did this so she could take all the furnishings out of "mother' room" down the back stairway.

        In the meantime, two young teenagers enter the fruit cellar through a window and spread an old mattress out and start to smoke and fool around with each other. The girl suddenly hears a thump and freezes. Her boyfriend says she's just high and not to pay attention. A minute later she hears another thump and this time her boyfriend hears it too. They look through a opening in the fruit cellar door and see a woman in a black dress with a butcher knife. She exits through the cellar window but he's not fast enough and is stabbed to death while his fingers squeak a vertical pattern down the cellar window. She runs, falls down, and continues to run away as fast as she can. She actually tells Sheriff Hunt about the incident. The killer was probably Miss Spool.

         A while later, Sheriff  Hunt comes to the front door and tells Norman and Mary about the girl who is in the squad car down by the motel. The body of the boy is gone and the fruit cellar cleaned up. Mary covers for Norman.

         Upstairs Norman is washing his face when the toilet gives a burping noise. Norman flushes it and blood spills over the floor. Mary comes up and is mad. A rag is found in the toilet but nobody knows how it got there. After this Mary gets her pistol her mother gave her. Norman comes up from downstairs and says his mother is down there. They decide to sleep there for the night but Norman can't sleep. There now is sort of a romantic scene between the two and she holds Norman's head in her lap. There's small talk but it's obvious there is something between them when he tells her she smells like a toasted cheese sandwich like his mother used to give him when he was in bed with a fever.

         It's quite possible that Miss Spool did most of the killing, including Toomey. She gives it away at the end of Psycho II when she says, "when I saw what they were trying to do to my poor little boy I couldn't stand it so one by one.........." Miss Spool was Norman's aunt his   mother.                             

  

Psycho I and Psycho II

          It should be noted that the end of Psycho I Hitchcock superimposed the skull of his mother over Norman Bates' face just for about a half second. This was done on only a few of the movies and most of the audience probably missed it.

         I was talking to a psychiatrist friend of mine and it was his feeling that it's not likely that a person can have two or more distinct personalities in the same mind. Norman had two. His mother and himself.

PSYCHO II

        Norman was put in an institution for twenty two years where they erased all the bad parts of his memory under the care of a psychiatrist names Doctor Raymond. In the meantime  Lila Crane, Marion's sister played by Vera Miles went on a crusade getting over seven hundred names on a petition to keep Norman institutionalized. She, in the meantime, married Marion's boyfriend Sam Loomis who, a few years later, died. She also had a girl by Sam. Her name was Mary, played by Meg Tilly. Miss Spool, who works in the local diner, plays a major part in the murders in and around the Bates Motel, although it's not known until the end of the movie when she visits,(her last visit), Norman late at night in the kitchen of the house.

        Norman is released under the care of Dr. Raymond in the Kern County Courthouse under the objection of Lila Loomis who is thrown out of the courtroom by the presiding judge. Dr. Raymond takes Norman to the Motel, now in need of upkeep, and while going up the stairs to the house, sees someone in his mother's window. Mary Loomis dressed up to look like his mother. Both she and her mother Lila are trying to destabilize Norman and put him back in the institution because of his murdering Marion, Lila's sister, in Psycho I. Norman also meets Warren Toomey, the man, played by Dennis Frantz, who was hired by the hospital to run the motel while Norman was away. Frantz also had a major part in the T V series NYPD years later. Frantz says he's running a motel that makes money, drugs and all, and that infuriates Norman. Norman fires his motel manager and they part with Frantz saying, "My customers have a good time. What do yours get Bates? Murdered. Murdered by you, you loony!"

        Mary agrees to stay in the house with Norman and they sit in the kitchen to eat. Norman loses his appetite and so does Mary. She says she learned from Myrna, a waitress, that he'd been locked away. Norman explains and they go to bed. Mary upstairs and Norman Downstairs.

        The next thing you hear is a horn blowing at the office and Toomey yells up to the house, "Hey you nut cases I just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving." You hear a crow cawing and the next thing you see is Toomey being stabbed in the motel office by a woman in a long black dress.

Psycho I & Zodiac

     It seems strange that the tape of the Zodiac calling the police was lost. It seems that maybe someone that worked at the VPD might have taken it but this is only an assumption. More than one person had heard that tape. The tape would have given the police a voice graph of the killer which would be very, very helpful. Maybe it's still around.

    Psycho:

          Lila Crane then, after she had gone through the upstairs rooms, went back downstairs. In the meantime the conversation between Sam Loomis and Norman Bates in the office had become more abrasive. Finally, Norman said,"where's the woman you came here with ?" Norman hits Sam over the head and starts up the steps towards the mansion. Lila sees him coming and hurries around to the steps in the hall leading to the cellar. Norman comes in, stops, and goes upstairs. Lila looks toward the cellar, then looks up, and then looks again toward the cellar. She then goes down cellar. Then she goes into the next room which is the fruit cellar and sees Mrs. Bates in a chair. She taps her on the right shoulder and Mrs. bates slowly turns around. Lila sees a skeleton that has been dead many years. She screams. It's then that Norman comes rushing in with his mothers clothes on with a butcher knife in his hand shouting "I'm Norma Bates." There's so much screaming in the movie houses that most don't hear Norman at all. Sam Loomis comes in and wrestles Norman to the floor.

         The next scene is the sheriff's office in Fairvale City Hall. All involved are there. Simon Oakland plays the psychiatrist. He comes in and says the following. "I got the information but not from Norman, I got it from his mother, that is the mother portion of Norman's mind. Norman doesn't exist. He only half existed to begin with." Lila says, "Did he kill my sister?" The psychiatrist says, "Yes..........and no." He explains that there were two people in Norman's mind, Norman and his overbearing mother. The guilt caused this and there was a constant conflict in his mind. Norman was often both personalities. He could speak in his mother's voice, Virginia Gregg & Jeannette Nolan, and answer in his own. He was never all Norman but he was often only "mother." "When the mind houses two personalities, there is always a battle. Norman stole the corpse from the grave. A weighted coffin was buried. Norman stuffed her full of sawdust and treated her body with chemicals so she would keep as best she would. He was jealous of her so he assumed she was as jealous of him. But, when reality came too close he dressed up as mother with a cheap wig he bought, a dress and a butcher knife and killed whomever was in the way. She was there but she was a corpse.

Psycho I

           Arbogast walks into the motel office and then into the parlor and notices the stuffed birds on the wall. He then starts up the three tiers ofd stone stairs towards the Bates mansion. He slowly opens the main door and goes in. He then starts the slow climb to the second floor. As he gets to the top a tall person in a dark dress with a butcher knife meets him and stabs him in the face and he falls down the stairs hitting the bottom with a crash. The killer then begins to stab him numerous times and that's the end of the Private Investigator.

           Sam and Lila are still waiting at the hardware store. Sam decides to go out to the Bates Motel and does so and finds nothing except "mother" sitting in the bedroom window, not answering the door. He comes back to the store and he and Lila decide to go to see Sheriff Chambers.

          They get Sheriff Chambers, (John MacIntire), out of bed. The sheriff calls Norman Bates but gets nothing except the P. I. had left. Then the sheriff tells Sam and Lila that Mrs. Bates died ten years before. Actually Norman murdered his mother and her boyfriend with iced tea laced with strychnine but the sheriff said she killed her lover and then took some herself. ("Ugly way to die,) the sheriff said.

          Norman's real father was really killed by Miss Spool, a waitress in Statler's nearby diner, years before. She was in love with him but her sister, Norma, stole him away from her when Norman was just a baby. Miss Spool was put in an asylum for a while. She appears again at the end of Psycho II and tells Norman her story.

          Now Sam and Lila decide that they can no longer wait so they decide to go out to the old Bates Motel and try to find out what happened to Marion, Lila's sister. They are greeted by a suspicious Norman Bates who gives them cabin #10 as man and wife. At their first chance they come up to cabin #1, the late Marion's cabin, and go inside. In the bathroom they find a clue on a piece of paper which has the $40,000 less $700 on it proving Marion was there a week before. After seeing this they decide they have to go up to the mansion on the hill and talk to mother Bates.

         While Sam keeps Norman busy talking in the office, Lila goes up to the mansion and goes in. It should be noted that Norman has carried his mother down to be hidden in the fruit cellar. Lila looks around and then starts to go up to mother's room. It's all very fancy like they all were in the 1800's. Mother's body imprint is in the mattress and there is even a sink in the bedroom with roses imprinted in the basin. All very typical of that period--Victorian. It should also be noted that the floors in the house are alternating colors of oak, light and dark. Lila then goes into Norman's bedroom and finds children's toys and adult items such as a record player, 33 1/3, version of  Eroica, 1803. She also finds some porno books. In the 1800's porno was done up in nameless leather covered books. (to be continued)

Zodiac and Psycho I

Note: Is it possible that the Zodiac used a surrogate to do his dirty work?


          Norman Bates watched Marion Crane undress through a peep hole in his parlor into cabin #1 and then went up to the old mansion and waited. While taking a shower, a woman in a long black dress came into cabin #1 and stabbed Marion to death. In a few minutes Norman came running down the stone steps to the motel and discovered Marion's body draped across the bathtub.

          Norman immediately got a mop and pail and cleaned up the bloody tub and tile wall in the bathroom. He then took the shower curtain and wrapped Marion's body in it. Janet Leigh was not wrapped. A woman named Marlee Renthro was used. She was a Playboy Playmate with the same  measurements as Janet Leigh. She was put in the trunk of the '57 Ford sedan and driven to the swamp of the motel. The swamp was called Falls Lake by Universal and had a hydraulic lift in the water similar to what gas stations use. This let the car go down halfway and stop for anxiety effect. Then the lift let the car submerge all the way. (Lic. NFB-418). The car was up for sale much later with a $150.00 bill attached for motor cleaning. Alfred Hitchcock did this. The transmisasion, (automatic), and rear end, also had to be cleaned of water. There were no second takes on this operation.

          The scene now shifts to Sam Loomis' Hardware store in Fairvale, Ca. It's a week later and Lila, Marions sister, has come in to talk to Sam about Marion and the $40,000. P I Arbogast, Martin Balsam also enters the store and they all talk. Martin says he's going out on the old highway to check motels about Marion's disappearance.

          Martin Balsam stops at the Bates Motel and talks to Norman. He sees Marie Samuels on the register and at once becomes suspicious. Eventually Norman asks him to leave and he stops at a phone booth and phones Lila. He says he's going back to the motel to see if he can talk to Norman's mother up in the window of the second floor of the old Bates house. Mother is always in the window of her bedroom. He tells Lila he'll be back in an hour or less.

          This is where the plot thickens.Arbogast drives a late model Mercury sedan, '59 or so.
At the motel Norman walks down past the rooms and disappears halfway. Arbogast pulls up to the motel.  ........con't.

Serial Killers - Psycho I

          Notes:
      
              1. Marion Crane's '56 Ford plate number - ANL-709 ........Janet Leigh  July 9th.
              2. Marion Crane's '57 Ford plate number - NFB-418 ........Norman Francis Bates  April 18th.

     As Marion drove up the highway towards Bakersfield the rains came and Bernard Hermann's music kept in time with the windshield wipers----foreshadowing anyone? Up ahead the sign for Bates Motel appeared so she pulled in. I might note that they made a mistake by leaving a floodlight on on the left of the picture, but it's only seen for a second or two. They left it in the movie. Marion, (Janet Leigh), Gets out of her '57 Ford and knocks on the office door, leaving the car and wipers running. After knocking and blowing the horn she gets back in and turns off the wipers and motor. (She might not have knocked). Soon Anthony Perkins comes down from the old mansion on the hill and lets her in the office to sign in. Ricardo Gomez, from San Francisco was a big help on these finer details. We talk quite often about this movie along with the Zodiac case. MK-Zodiac.com.

     Marion and Norman talk for a few minutes  and she signs in as Marie Samuels, (her lover's name is Sam). Norman is immediately attracted to Janet Leigh and assigns her to cabin #1. He said it was closer in case she wanted anything. They both go into the cabin and he asks her to have a small supper with him and she agrees. He says he'll be back with his (trusty umbrella). Up at the house she hears his mother's scolding voice thru the motel room window. (Mother is played by Virginia Gregg.) He comes back and they decide to eat in the office parlor. The conversation runs thru all of our human emotions but there is a darkness coming on the scene that we all can feel. Norman uses the saying that "we all go a little mad sometimes" which is used in the following movies of Psycho. Meanwhile, the $40,000 sits on a lampstand in cabin #1. This conversation is one of the greatest in all of Hollywood movies. Marion is tired and decides to go to bed after a shower and therefor we come to the murder scene of which Janet Leigh is most famous for in 1960.

              ......con't

Serial Killers - Psycho I

     The idea for Psycho came from a man named Ed Gein who lived in the outskirts of Plainfield ,  Wisconsin. He did in his neighbors, mother, so called friends and others. By the way, Ricardo Gomez brought this to my attention. Anthony Perkins chose the name Ed in Psycho IV.

     It's a story about a man who runs a motel, (Bates Motel), in Fairvale , Ca. in the County of Kern. Probably in the Tulare region of Central Ca. Hitchcock chose Anthony Perkins to play Norman Bates, Janet Leigh to play Marion Crane, John Gavin to play Sam Loomis, (Marion's lover), Vera Miles to play Marion's sister Lila and others. Hitchcock's daughter also has a small part as an office worker at the start of the film. Her character's name is Pat.

     The camera focuses closely on Marion in the beginning as we see that she has a love affair that's going nowhere and cannot marry because of financial reasons. In the real estate office where she works she suddenly sees a large amount of cash, ($40,000), which intices her to steal it and take it to her lover, Sam Loomis. The real estate office is in Phoenix, Arizona which is a long drive from Fairvale, Ca. Nevertheless, instead of banking the cash, (all 100 dollar bills), she takes it and starts a drive to Fairvale, Ca. in her 1956 Ford sedan. Halfway there she decides to switch cars and stops at a used car lot, (California Charlie's), and is shadowed by a trooper, (Mort Mills), who suggests that instead of pulling off the road and napping, there are plenty of "safe" motels in the area. The first dark joke of the film. At the car lot she buys a 1957 Ford sedan for $700 and her car and she takes off in a storm for Fairvale.

           Notes:

                1. Film time - 11/59 to 2/60
                2. Cost $800,000
                3. Profit to Hitchcock - $357,000,000.
                4. Release to public - 6/60

to be cont.