New Serial Killer?

Shock and awe! It seems that there may be a new serial killer lurking somewhere in the United States. On June 21st the body of Megan Lynn Touma was discovered in the bathtub of her hotel room at the Marriot Fairfield Inn. Touma was assigned to the 19th Replacement Detachment on Fort Bragg. At the time of her death, she was seven months pregnant. Her body went undiscovered for four days due to a "Do Not Disturb" tag which had been left on her door. Only after having received complaints of a foul odor did the hotel manager investigate Room 143. According to the affidavit, the bed in Touma’s motel room had been pushed slightly away from the wall. A nightstand and a lamp that was on it were askew, but there is no mention of a struggle. Police say that the decomposition of the body made it difficult to tell the cause of death and it is still being examined by the State Medical Examiner.

On June 25th an "oddly smeared" letter was sent to the Fayetteville Observer who reported it to the police. They agreed to withhold publishing the letter until it could be linked directly to the crime scene to avoid causing needless alarm. It turns out that they didn't have to wait long when only 2 days when police released a list of items removed from the crime scene. Among them were 2 sections of drywall containing a “red substance suspected to be blood” (which turned out to be lipstick) forming the signature symbol on the letter. The following was subsequently published.



The symbol is that of course of the Zodiac Killer of the 1960s. The Zodiac Killer, whose identity still remains a mystery, had gunned down 5 people in Northern California from December of 1968 to October of 1969. His letters were received by police for 5 years after the killings had stopped. That's a year per victim before the taunting crypotgraphs ended.

The fact that he refers to the killing of Touma as a "Master Piece" leads me to believe that although he has admittedly killed in other states, they might have been hurried or rushed jobs. Being that they occurred over a spread of multiple states it is easy to imagine the cases going unlinked. He seems giddy and excited to me; perhaps we can take this to mean that his "Master Piece" with Touma's murder was him perfecting both his ritual and his ability to remain under the radar. He goes so far to call the police incompetent and claims to have been watching the investigators as they scoured the scene. The fact that there is still no publicly released autopsy report has me thinking either one of two things. The first of which being that they *have* determined a cause of death and it clearly marks it as a homicide. If that were so it would give credence to our mystery killer's letter and no police force ever wants to be in National spotlight and unable to catch a taunting serial killer. The second of which being that they have not yet determined a cause of death due to "advanced decomposition". This *to*me* means that he really *has* perfected his ritual and method and we can expect to see this sort of thing again. A body submerged in water decomposes at half the rate of an exposed body. This of course varies depending on the temperature of the water, but even after just 4 days the body should NOT be in an unidentifiable stare of decomposition. It should seem fairly simple to extract the cause of death....