Zodiac’s bomb letterscoupled with the myriad unsolved bombings around the Bay Area could more than account for Zodiac the “By Fire” of the Halloween card.

But what about By Rope? On my list of questions, I still had, “Where are the strangulations?”

Leslie Perlov in February 1973, and Janet Taylor in March 1974 were strangulations, but of course their killer has been apprehended and convicted in recent years. John Getreu was found guilty and subsequently confessed to both murders.

I specifically searched for cold case strangulation murders at Stanford, or of Stanford students, and lo and behold, I found one.

Between 1 am and 4 am on the morning of July 17, 1976, Edward Alan McNeill, age 27, was found dead in his apartment in Menlo Park. He was a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at Stanford. There were traces of adhesive around his mouth and the death was ruled a strangulation. There were no signs of struggle.

The similarities of Edward Alan McNeill to David Levine and Eric Abrahamson should be noted. All three occur at times when school is out of session. All three victims were involved in the sciences at their respective universities, Levine in physics, Abrahamson and McNeill in chemistry. Two of the three murders, Levine and McNeill, involved no struggle. All three would have had access to computers.
Star students were emerging as a theme. As a PhD candidate, Paul Stine could be described as a star student, as could Emma Brown. That would be five star college students. It makes one wonder.

He was strangled without struggle in his own apartment. It would seem one would have to know their attacker for such a circumstance. This murder is much less famous but appears to be another 1970s Stanford cold case murder.

Three days after the death of Edward Alan McNeill, biochemistry grad student David R. Charney committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot.j