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if Rader's military records place him in northern California at the time of the Zodiac murders, it might be worth a closer look.

Not worth looking at because:

BTK's MO was entirely different from Zodiac's. Control of the victim was of supreme importance to Rader; it was part of his illness. Zodiac did not try to do anything but kill his victims quickly.
The motives of the two were entirely different. BTK was a sex killer. We do not know what motivated Zodiac, but unless the act of killing in and of itself was sexually gratifying, sex was not why he murdered people.
They used entirely different weapons.
Recognition and publicity were important to BTK. Rader once complained that he wasn't receiving any notice, and asked what he had to do to get it. Well, had Rader been Zodiac all he would've needed to do to be noticed -- very quickly -- was to start one of his taunts to law enforcement with 5 small words: "This is the Zodiac Speaking..."
They used different weapons. Serial murderers have changed weapons, but it's pretty rare.
It's really not easy to fit Raders overseas deployments into Zodiac's schedule.
This theory is really old. It's not original with the fellow blog-posting in 2/2016. There are discussion of this on ZodiacKiller.com going back eight years. See for instance: http://www.zodiackiller.com/discus/messages/27/984.html?1171493202
Finally, for all of you who absolutely insist on DNA evidence and will accept nothing else, we have Rader's DNA. We also have what we believe is Zodiac's DNA from a stamp on an envelope he mailed to police in the days before licking a stamp became an incredibly stupid thing for a serial murderer to do.
If law enforcement could have matched those markers, they would have done it, years ago.

People have considered this possibility, as well as the possibility of Zodiac being several other serial murderers. Steve Hodel, an LA detective who wrote a book claiming his father was the murderer of the Black Dahlia and several other women in LA in the 1940's, even tried to make the case in a later book that Zodiac was also his dad.

Most of the people who know about these cases believe that any resemblance between BTK and Zodiac was a result of Rader's lack of originality: he copied some things from Zodiac. That's all.

Your bullet points 1 and 5; control and changing weapons; in all fairness, at Lake Berryessa the Zodiac did control the victims. And he used a knife instead of a gun.

That said, I believe the Zodiac will be the same as every other serial killer; a pathetic loser that nobody has ever heard of.

Another little note, I believe the Zodiac case will be solved some day. Notice how science is getting better and better at DNA. They identified the Grim Sleeper from his sons DNA. And every day more and more people are having their DNA recorded in government databases. I think the day will come when you will be able to enter the Zodiacs DNA into a database and a computer will respond with his name, address and Social Security number. Of course, he’ll probably be dead by then.

I have wondered if the code-cop Rader did his first killings in the Philippines.

Don’t recall if anyone has studied on whether Zodiac was actually more than one scum like the Smiley Face Killers are suspected to be.

You have Sharon Tate’s dad at the Presidio; Satanist Army officer there; Manson and his early haunts in the bay area; the Zebra killings—— a shame that Harry Callahan was not real.