Zodiac, Jack the Ripper, Aleister Crowley, and L. Ron Hubbard

Some of you were amused, and some annoyed, when I dared to discuss the odd suggestion that L. Ron Hubbard masterminded the Zodiac murders.

Years ago, I heard a couple of would-be Zodiac sleuths kick around that notion; it's the sort of wild idea usually discussed only after the second round of brewskis. Perhaps immortalizing the theory in cyber-ink was a naughty decision. But you folks should know my sense of fun by now.

Steve Huff's favored theory -- the theory which perhaps now deserves pride of place -- holds that the Zodiac crimes were committed by Joseph Chandler -- or rather, by the mystery man who moved to Ohio and took that name. Huff now addresses Xymphora's suggestion that Chandler may also have been responsible for another series of unsolved murders in Ohio, between 1979 and 1982. (Xymphora has a few more words on the subject today.)

Count me as a very tentative Chandlerite. Even so, a sense of mischief compels me to add a few more observations on the Hubbard theory:

1. Yes, Hubbard was fairly old at the time of the killing spree. I never said Hubbard committed the actual murders. He had associates. Years ago, Harry Martin (a Northern California newsman with an affection for oddities) published a fairly persuasive series devoted to the proposition that the Zodiac killings were a team effort -- an idea which may explain some of the conflicting testimony.

2. The ominous mystery man at Darlene Ferrin's painting party -- the one who (like Hubbard) loved strawberry shortcake -- was (like Hubbard) too old to fit later descriptions of the killer. Yet Ferrin's associates believed him to be linked with the slaying. Xymphora, who questions whether author Robert Graysmith concocted the party (or at least the details concerning same), links to a page which confirms that witness Pam Hukaby did attend this event and did see a mystery man. If this older man helped to engineer Ferrin's fate, then we have further reason to believe that the Zodiac crimes had more than one author.

3. Huff reminds us that "Zodiac was thought to have been former navy, possibly a native Californian, and to have a background in engineering." All of which fits Hubbard fairly well. He (badly) commanded three ships during World War II, and remained obsessed with naval matters thereafter. He was not born in California, but he spent many years in this state. He took courses in engineering, although he was a poor student.

4. Huff also argues that Zodiac was an "anglophile." This also fits Hubbard, who spent time in England.

5. Zodiac's letters had occult overtones. I need not recount here the famed story of Hubbard's interactions with Jack Parsons.

6. Zodiac quoted from Gilbert and Sullivan. This page (written, I am sorry to report, by a die-hard Hubbardian) offers a brief first-hand account of Hubbard attending a G&S performance in England. (As a side note, this page offers a hilarious anti-Hubbardian G&S parody.)

7. (Okay, this one is really stretching it, but what the hell...in for a penny, in for a pound...) Huff, like other Zodiac buffs, argues that Zodiac modeled himself on Jack the Ripper. Hubbard was fascinated by the works of Aleister Crowley; in a recorded speech, Hubbard once referred to Crowley as "my old friend," even though the two never actually met. Crowley once wrote an article which claimed to offer an occultist solution to the Ripper murders. The article was not formally published, but copies of the manuscript circulated in "fringe" circles, and Hubbard may well have stumbled across it. (The story of Crowley's involvement with the Ripper saga represents another long, strange trip, which we must save for another time.)

Best to stop here -- any further, and I might actually talk myself into this idea. For now, I offer it simply as mordant entertainment.