Ross Sullivan is the Zodiac

[Boo!]

It's a shame the letter isn't a Z, but it's still interesting that he uses the same type of 'flourish' on other letters. I would need to see the whole thing to have a real opinion on it though. Not that I'm any expert

Edit - Actually if that 'flourish' is just another letter, maybe a 'U', it isn't that interesting at all?

[Cremcraw]

It looks like the word "hi" to me, rather than an individual letter. Hard to tell out of context, though. Still intriguing, but I no longer consider it the game-changer I first thought.

[margie]

It may have been mentioned before ... I may have mentioned it before ... I have always thought that the Bates letter write turned the page to write the letters. All the letters look constructed to me as if none of them are natural flowing letters. Perhaps that is how the letter writer chose to disguise the writing.

Also - there has been mention of the paper that Ross wrote in regard to disguising handwriting or a paper on ciphers (it's late and I forgot what the paper was on that he wrote) ... I am wondering if that paper has been provided / shown on this site? Or it is just hear say? If it's on this site or another - I'd love to see/read it.

[CuriousCat]

I have always thought that the Bates letter write turned the page to write the letters.

I remember back in school in the '70's a classmate showing me how if you turn the paper on an angle it makes your writing have a cool slant to it. That was on lined notebook paper and easy to keep neat and in line, doing it on unlined paper you will end up with your entire sentence angling down, like Zodiac's does.

[duckking2001]

it's going to be the letter Z by Ross that carries the most weigh it matches the Bates letter Z symbol at the bottom-the nay-sayers, doubters, and critics can say what they want, but if it's legit, it's a match short and simple. How many more 'coincidences' with Ross must there be before it's no longer all a coincidence?

One squiggly line "matches" the Bates letters, which isn't found in any of the dozens of Zodiac letters...and you think that not only carries the most weight, but actually solves the case.

I actually said before that I felt good about Ross' writing, based on what little I had seen. The difference is that I actually look at the evidence, unlike you and Paul who have zero objectivity and nothing will convince you that Ross isn't Zodiac, other than maybe having someone else be arrested for it.

Everyone else who is totally convinced that they know the Zodiac is and have produced hundreds of examples to support them are wrong, but this can't possibly be the same thing because these things are right.

The number of "coincidences" don't matter. That's what you don't understand. Every coincidence carries the same value: None. Adding up a million of them doesn't equal one substantial connection. That's what people who have no good information do to convince themselves that they are right, they twist everything to suit their purpose and blow up every meaningless thing because they think quantity matters over quality.

Robert Graysmith wrote 300 pages about Arthur Leigh Allen. Does anyone really think that he was a better suspect in 2000 than he was in 1990?

80% or more of the good information on Ross was uncovered within a few months, and since then hundreds of pages more have been said about him. Does that really make any sense?

If he really was the killer there should be LESS connections, not more to him. Zodiac's criminal activities involved hours of his lifetime. Since you have hundreds of "coincidences" between him and the Zodiac, you should have millions of things that don't have anything to do with him, right? Yet, Surprise! Almost everything that has been found connects him to Zodiac in some way.

I finally found something that's not a coincidence.

I know you don't want to hear this and it's probably a waste of my time to say all this. Why can't I just look at the evidence and shut up? I would love to and I would have welcomed this thread being what it should've been: some new Ross handwriting.

Instead we get the 50th thread saying that Ross is totally the Zodiac and everyone else is just too stupid to see it, including the real detectives and investigators on the case.

[up2something]

I tend to agree with the duck. My h's look like the Bates letter z when you turn them sideways, too. Meh. I raised an eyebrow when this was presented as a comparable match to the symbol; now we know it's nothing more than another in a series of useless coincidences. Sure, Ross is a reasonable POI and it's been discussed to death why that is. Reasons why he's not Zodiac have been discussed to death as well. Maybe someone in LE will take a moment to check this yearbook sample out (assuming it's legit), but it carries no weight if that's the best ya got.

If you want to play around with handwriting some more, member Eric P Norman provided Ross' Selective Service Records a few months ago. Ross contributed his signature. A couple individual letters look like those found in the Citizen letter... again, so do mine. Yawn.

Ross Signature.jpg

The full thread is here... http://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=2660&p=52514#p52514

Happy speculating!

[up2something]

I can even claim Ross' "R" is identical to the one on the envelope addressed to Riverside PD.

The R.jpg

And all I had to do was rotate the R 45 degrees. Hell, we can do this all day long.

[doranchak]

We have to be very wary about coincidences. It is fairly easy to pick two people and find a lot of strange coincidences between them. It has to do with "the law of large numbers". One particular coincidence may seem rare, but there were millions of chances for a rare coincidence to appear. With enough chances, a rare coincidence is guaranteed to occur. I like to use the golf ball analogy. A single blade of grass in a huge field of grass feels very lucky to be struck by a golf ball. There are billions of other blades of grass yet I was hit! But certainly a blade was almost guaranteed to be struck by the ball.

When we examine a particular set of coincidences between two people, we have to consider how many blades of grass were around waiting to be struck by the ball.

Another useful example is the birthday paradox. In a room of only 23 people, there's a 50% chance that two people share the same birthday. That seems weird, because there are 365 possible birthdays in a year! You might think only 23 comparisons of birthdays are happening, but in fact there are 231 comparisons of birthdays. WIth so many comparisons, that's why the chance of a shared birthday goes up to 50%.

The coincidences dug up by investigators have to escape the "shadow of reasonable doubt" cast by this phenomenon.

[Boo!]

I think the height description rules out Ross, or any other tall suspect. We have Mike Mageau, Brian Hartnell and the Stine witnesses all saying roughly the same thing. A man around 5' 8" to 5' 10" AKA average adult male height. Facial appearance and weight can change but height of an adult is locked, not counting for eye witness error. But 3 separate accounts of the Zodiacs height is pretty good to go on. I would also say that if Z was over 6 feet tall, that would be a pretty standout feature which no witness ever states.

That isn't very useful for telling us who the Zodiac is. But it is very useful for telling us who the Zodiac most likely isn't. It seems highly likely to me that Z is less than 6 feet tall, so very improbable that Ross Sullivan is our bad guy.

IMO.

[BigMajestic]

So Ross has too many coincidences. He needs less things in common to be Z. And someone else's "h" is similar to the Bates letter "h" so matches with Ross' handwriting are irrelevant. I don't get why it bothers some so much that others believe strongly in a poi.