Philip Arthur Thompson

LAWYERS, GOONS & MONEY

A TALE OF THE CIA, COP-KILLERS, A BEAUTIFUL (DEAD) WANNABE ACTRESS, & WANGANUI’S MILLIONAIRE MURDERER



You wouldn’t read about it, except perhaps in the book or movie that someone will inevitably pen about this story. IAN WISHART has the world exclusive on how a gun-runner, bank robber and murder suspect with links to a CIA black op has ended up building a new life for himself in sleepy, provincial New Zealand, while a worldwide manhunt spanning three decades had failed to find him

DrDoogie

Mar 10, 2009


FYI: Anybody who may be researching PAT independently: He is listed alternately as Philip or Phillip (one or two "l"'s) on different sites - sometimes even within the same site.

I have been able to place him living in Kings Beach area of Lake Tahoe circa late 1968. His father and another family member also lived in South Lake Tahoe, but I have not been able to pin down a date for them. The family member (brother? cousin?) also seems to currently own a cabin located about one mile from where Donna Lass lived. I will do a property search to see if this cabin was owned by the family in 1970. Also, it should be noted that he was taking Betty Cloer to Lake Tahoe when to pulled off of Highway 50 and raped, then murdered her in 1971.The Lass disappearance may have been his "work" even if he is not Zodiac.


I have been looking at Thompson for several months and there is much to like about him as Zodiac. (BTW, Tom, I am not the anonymous emailer - I actually would have preferred that this not make it into the forum at this time. There is a different investigation involving Thompson that is moving forward and I do not want to interfere.)Was the woman who has contacted you named either Virginia McCullough or Kate Dixon? They run the Newsmakingnews.com site mentioned above which is both the primary source of information and disinformation about Thompson. Or could the woman have been "desertfae" who believes that PAT was involved in her father's murder in 1981?The physical attributes you mention are correct. PAT is listed as 6'4" - taller than any report of Z's height. Also, I have yet to find a picture of PAT that resembles the PH composite.Thompson has long career as a criminal in Northern California dating back to (at least) 1967. He has resided in of the areas that one would expect to find Zodiac living - East Bay Area, Santa Rosa and Lake Tahoe. He has been a suspect in several murders that were also thought to have been possible Z crimes (including Cloer). And oddly enough, but I believe the following facts are extremely significant as to why the Zodiac crimes have not been publicly solved: PAT has been involved with the CIA since 1967 and has also been a paid FBI informant.Recent finds (thanks to the assistance of another poster here that I will refrain from naming until I have permission) have brought two extremely interesting facts to light:
(1) PAT's father was a policeman in Oakland who was fired and jailed for corruption - a possible motive for Zodiac wanting to taunt police, and
(2) PAT was arrested in 1975 in Sacramento for a murder that was thought to have been committed by the SLA. A news report at the time even says that the gun that PAT was suspected of using was found in one of the SLA safehouses discovered after Patty Hearst was captured. If the SLA letter is authentic (which is the general consensus of LE) - how many Z suspects actually have a connection with the SLA?



DrDoogie


Mar 10, 2009#5

Has anyone here ever wondered why, with all of the wealth of evidence that the Zodiac killings provided, no killer was ever identified? Crimes with a small fraction of this amount of clues have been solved easily, yet the Zodiac crimes remain one of America's great mysteries.What if the Zodiac case has not been publicly solved because solving it would open up a "can of worms" that would be worse for the authorities than the thought of a serial killer on the loose? What would possibly fit the criteria to match this hypothetical scenario?One of the most plausible explainations of the Kennedy assasination that I have found is that it was perpetrated by a small group of people with connections to CIA operations concerning Cuba. The CIA did not neccessarily have complicity in the assasination, but that the people who were involved were CIA assets acting independently and that exposure of their involvement would have led to major embarrassment to the Agency. As a result, the assasination was pinned on "lone-nut" Lee Oswald and the subsequent coverup was done to protect the CIA from embarrassment.What if the same scenario played out in the Zodiac case? What if it was discovered that Zodiac was, in fact, an employee of the CIA with provable ties to the agency? It would then make sense that two things would occur: (1) the killer would never be officially linked to the Zodiac crimes, and (2) he would be nuetralized as a threat by being convicted of other, less sensational crimes that would not draw as much media attention and scrutiny. He would have been effectively "put on ice" without any threat of exposure.Philip Arthur Thompson fits the above scenario exactly. It is clear to any astute researcher that PAT's ties to the CIA go back to when he started working on the staff of a man named Alan M. May in 1967. May was the liaison between the Nixon White House and the CIA. Years later, May was fingered as the "bag man" who delivered the payoff to the Iranian regime during the infamous "October Surprise". Thompson was involved in gun running/drug smuggling with the Contra armies in Central America - mirroring the CIA efforts detailed in the late Gary Webb's expose' "Dark Alliance". And PAT also was working for Cabazon Arms - a joint military weapons venture between the Cabazon Indian tribe and Wackenhut Security (a suspected CIA front company).During his entire life, it has been clear that PAT has received "special treatment" when he has had numerous confrontations with the law. He was hired on staff by Alan May even though he had no known skills other than being a violent criminal. He received a concealed carry weapons permit from Yolo County even though he was a convicted felon and was barred from even owning a handgun. He was released on his own recognicence when he was discovered in a warehouse that he had rented filled with stolen property from a series of robberies of banks and armored cars (remember, he already had a long rap sheet at this point). While awaiting trial on that case, he was arrested in Los Angeles for an armed robbery of a jewelry shop and a murder-for-hire. He pled guilty, but his deal allowed him to remain free while he appealed his guilty plea (huh?!?). There are other examples where this man was caught red-handed involved in awful violent crimes, yet he always seemed to walk away unscathed - so much so that news articles quoted the amazement of law enforcement that PAT 'semed to live a charmed life".In 2004, the SFPD deactivated their investigation into Zodiac. Has anyone ever heard of such a move? I could understand that they would "move it to the bottom of the pile", but why make a public statement about it? Well, PAT was matched up through DNA to the Cloer murder in 2003 and if, hypothetically, PAT also matched up to the Zodiac forensic evidence at the same time, then the timing of SFPD's announcement suddenly makes sense. They would have been angry and frustrated that their search was being squashed and, unable to publicly proclaim the Federal interference with the case, they may have done the next best thing - doing something so odd that it should have raised red flags with the public that something was rotten.(This theory is premised on the DNA evidence from the Zodiac crimes being much more precise than we have been led to believe. I have no evidence to contradict the "partial" DNA samples that have been claimed, but I find it strange how every tangible bit of forensic evidence seems to have this cloud of suspicion around it.)