Santa Rosa Press Democrat Articles

[Seagull]

I looked through old issues of the Santa Rosa paper to see what they had on the Zodiac case and when they started writing about it. I was surprised that the LB attack was the first they had on the case. There were no articles about LHR or BRS nor were there any articles about the three part cipher sent to the newspapers.

This is what I found on the LB attack. The first article was on the Monday after the attack although Santa Rosa did have a Sunday newspaper. On Sept. 29th there were two different articles in two different editions of the same day's paper. The Oct. 1st article has a little tidbit at the end I was not aware of and that is that Cecelia's funeral was to be broadcasted on PUC's radio station. Santa Rosa had a 5.6 earthquake late the night of Oct.1st, it did a lot of damage and the next few days of newspaper coverage was mostly quake news so no more Zodiac.

[smithy]

D>, fabulous stuff.
A couple of things:
First, it's quite interesting to compare the rather more modulated "straight reporting" of the earliest of those articles to the more lurid "yellow journalism" (or purple, take your pick) of later on, isn't it? Without it actually being "a serial killer!!!!!" who bombs buses and shoots kiddies, it's all a bit more calm, hmmm?

Second, it seems like it's Donald Townsend who is playing join-the-dots for the media, here. He's the one with the marvellous statements "We think he's a madman" "We've got a psychopathic killer" and "...she received about two dozen knife wounds".
I'd no idea he was so forthcoming. Perhaps that's why the later edition on the 29th has a UPI wire story credit; it's not "local" any more.
Thanks again for these marvellous materials.