Post by Any of N on Apr 18, 2019 3:28:46 GMT
I agree with what others have posted in that the "Custer Essay" and "Mad is the Word" don't mean much now that JJD has been identified and arrested. I was hopeful this board would finally track down that 6th grade teacher or find who assigned the Custer homework before April 2018, but it didn't wind up being the case.
I'm still really interested in that map, though. It was drawn with so much care. Half of it looks like it was traced from a photograph and the other half looks free-hand. The detail work is very precise in some places (the size and position of each AC unit on top of the shopping centers, for example) and very crude in other places (the big cul-de-sacs without houses). It's not on any official paper. There's no street names. There are some markings that seem significant (some utility poles, for example), but obvious symbols and names that are missing.
I haven't been convinced that any of the guesses about its use in the past were correct (and was really disappointed in Paul Holes pushing the real estate angle in the months leading up to JJDs arrest). In my opinion, it was too crude to have professional use (architect, home-builder, civil engineer, etc. would want to see more and different information). But its too well made to be insignificant. A map to a party at a friends house, for example, would have had less detail in how it was drawn and more detail in the street names.
So, I think the map may still give some additional detail to this case (including the scribbling on the back). It won't solve anything, but it may shed light on an unknown attack, JJD's mysterious life in the 80s, other nefarious things he was up to in those days, or other smaller mysteries within the broader case.
It could be something very mundane. By way of comparison, think back to all the talk of the diamond knots. At one point Larry Pool poured water on various theories and speculation by saying, “It only tells me he had the dexterity to tie that kind of knot under some degree of stress.” If the map truly was drawn by DeAngelo, it might simply be that it shows an interest in neighborhood layout. That would have aided his planning of ingress and egress routes and with his quick getways. Kind of obvious, but it's not nothing.
That doesn't address things like the detail of the AC units on top of the buildings. Who knows. Maybe that was a mechanically inclined criminal indulging a side interest while sketching a map to kill time. My mind goes in this direction because the map, like the essays, seems like such a big tease. Where are those names, labels, and dates that should be there?
The weird way "punishment" is scrawled out on the back is, I admit, very creepy. But that's only if it actually is DeAngelo's work. Think how silly we'll feel if it's unrelated to the case. If Drifter were here he might be saying that people want the map to have significance because it makes for such a cool narrative.
