Zodiackillersite.com

In short, it's not a question of underestimating his ability to do this or that - but a question of establishing what his life situation was. If he was in the system - it's possible, at least in theory, to establish precisely where he resided and so forth.

If he was not in the system, this becomes much harder, not to say potentially impossible. And if he was a drifter, I doubt very much that he looked even remotely tidy (clean shaven with a crew cut - I've never seen a homeless person sport that look).

Marshall wrote:The complexity of the Z letters seems to have been going downhill starting around this time, much as Ross' mental abilities.

If you consider complexity to mean including ciphers, which you are, then yes, they were less complex in that sense but I'm not sure it's a reliable indicator of Zodiac's mental state or ability or deterioration thereof. My problem is the letters themselves. Yes they stopped containing ciphers but they did begin containing a level of complexity regarding handwriting styles and I have to consider that if one is capable of that then I can't see any hindrance mentally to being able to produce ciphers.

I personally think they were just too much work and he'd taken it as far he could in regards pay-off. ie. the 340 the 32 and the 13 were all still unsolved. If they aren't real or don't contain anything then it could be suggested that in itself was an indicator that he had lost interest in that aspect. If they are real then it could equally be suggested that the reason for ceasing to produce them was due to him deciding there was no point until the previous ones had all been solved.

Just my thoughts on it but simply put, I think there are too many competing (apparent) factors to safely correlate mental deterioration with no longer producing ciphers.

traveller1st wrote:

Marshall wrote:The complexity of the Z letters seems to have been going downhill starting around this time, much as Ross' mental abilities.

If you consider complexity to mean including ciphers, which you are, then yes, they were less complex in that sense but I'm not sure it's a reliable indicator of Zodiac's mental state or ability or deterioration thereof. My problem is the letters themselves. Yes they stopped containing ciphers but they did begin containing a level of complexity regarding handwriting styles and I have to consider that if one is capable of that then I can't see any hindrance mentally to being able to produce ciphers.

I personally think they were just too much work and he'd taken it as far he could in regards pay-off. ie. the 340 the 32 and the 13 were all still unsolved. If they aren't real or don't contain anything then it could be suggested that in itself was an indicator that he had lost interest in that aspect. If they are real then it could equally be suggested that the reason for ceasing to produce them was due to him deciding there was no point until the previous ones had all been solved.

Just my thoughts on it but simply put, I think there are too many competing (apparent) factors to safely correlate mental deterioration with no longer producing ciphers.

But we know from the librarians that Ross had taken classes on handwriting styles. So he was trained in that specifically so to speak wasn't he? A mental illness would not have made him forget that. I think what she meant was that the letters which were written in 1970, really over a four month period in 1970, didn't show any level of sophistication. They were mostly ramblings about buttons and using song lyrics to convey a message about who he was looking to kill, etc. One was just a card with only a few words added. So the point was it didn't require much time and effort and he could have easily written them when he was out of the hospital or when he was lucid. We know from our source that he was out of the hospital at times and he was known to wander around the beach area in Santa Cruz in 1970. His conservatorship wasn't even put into effect until December 18, 1970. Only one letter was written after that at all.

BTW, did you ever contact the source again morf? Trying to lock down some of those dates could be really helpful.

JeffP wrote:But we know from the librarians that Ross had taken classes on handwriting styles. So he was trained in that specifically so to speak wasn't he? A mental illness would not have made him forget that.

Or how to create ciphers either ergo mental illness not a safe indicator or correlation to the ciphers stopping.

traveller1st wrote:

JeffP wrote:But we know from the librarians that Ross had taken classes on handwriting styles. So he was trained in that specifically so to speak wasn't he? A mental illness would not have made him forget that.

Writing in a different style isn't the most difficult thing in the world but it is more involved than simply changing a letter here and there. There are rules and these would have to be adhered to, maintained and adapted for each instance. As far as I can tell Zodiac managed that...

Ross' condition could also help explain that though:

http://www.signsofschizophrenia.net/schizophrenia-and-handwriting.html

Here are a few of the characteristics of schizophrenia and handwriting:

Capital Letters: Often capital letters get reversed and other pen strokes are reversed or disconnected entirely. Sometimes a person suffering from schizophrenia will capitalize letters in the middle of a word (unfortunately this does not mean that people who type this way on the internet are necessarily schizophrenics; they are probably just teenagers).

Style: Sometimes a person with schizophrenia will use several styles of handwriting on the same page of writing...

No.

Zodiac's style choices were cognitive. They were not as a result of mental illness. I'm sorry to be so blunt on that but that's my professional opinion. He could have been mentally ill but the style choices and decisions made in character selection in those 'different' letters are not caused by illness. No way.

Marshall wrote:Sometimes a person suffering from schizophrenia will capitalize letters in the middle of a word.

That's interesting to note.

To the best of my knowledge Zodiac never did that. I say to the best of my knowledge because I would prefer to check everything before giving a definite reply but it's always been a particular bugbear of mine that this myth exists. That Zodiac mixed upper and lowercase letters incorrectly in his writing. He didn't. I think he incorrectly capitalized one word in all those letters and it was in the LA Times letter. He wrote 'They' when it should have been 'they' because it was after a comma.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Trav, I defer to your expertise on this -- but the author of the confirmed Z letters wrote with a certain amount of convention, no matter what style he elected to use. Whether the misspellings are intentional or not, there is at least an attempt to structure sentences. I am not aware of any capitalizing, mid-word. I mix my U&LC often when writing quickly, mostly out of an attempt to be efficient and more easily understood. Z seems to have labored a bit more over his missives (although I'm speculating, here.)

TBH I would be speculating too in that regard. The official line is that for the most part his missives were freely written although I would have to do some research to ascertain 'exactly' what that means. As a quick answer I'm not sure if he labored over them. I'm not sure if he made some things look that way. I think he might have. Then sometimes I change my mind lol.

Anyway. We seem to have drifted off topic here. Best pull it back.

Well two things we know about Ross that are wild cards here are one, Ross learned about writing in different styles, and Ross was likely was on meds that might effect his writing