Mailboxes

[Soze]

I started looking into the 940 zip after I reread the post by Shaq. I'm sick (with very little attention span) and had a limited amount time to look. I didn't see anything about a sectional being in San Mateo. Doesn't mean there is and doesn't mean there isn't. I did see that burlingame had a mail processing facility. I don't know now if that's what it was actually called. I recall trying all avenues including p & dc. They ended up closing and transferring all operations to San Francisco Evans location. As we know Evans location wasn't in existence at time. Don't recall date. Swear up and down I bookmarked page but, sadly, it appears I didn't. Looking again I see pages that show burlingame in existence as of 2016. At this point I am rather wondering if we are not tripping on names. Some say sectional center. Some say regional. Then there's p & dc and mail processing center. 4 so far for what we think is the same thing. Are we sure about that? I'm not so confident. Maybe a breakdown in structure for the USPS is in order.

Soze

[shaqmeister]

So, where is this - this thread, I mean; not the diversion into the discussion of unproven mail intercepted at mailboxes - going, for those who don't feel it's quite dead yet?

We have been able to discover, to date, some very important pieces of information:

• mail processed with a 'San Francisco' postmark could, in fact, have been mailed from anywhere within the boundaries of San Francisco, San Mateo (State & City), the NW of Santa Clara (including Palo Alto) and Mare Island (Navy);
• mail processed in the usual way would always go through the Sectional Centre Facility and would be postmarked and cancelled by the standardised P-B Mk. II face-cancellers;
• of all the mail sent by the Zodiac and bearing a San Francisco Postmark, all those which were mailed on a weekday were processed in this manner;
• of all the mail sent by the Zodiac and bearing a San Francisco Postmark, only the three out of four which were mailed on a weekend (one Saturday, two on Sunday) received a hand stamp, hence evidencing processing in a different manner.

Q: How, then, could it come about that just the three weekend-mailed letters were processed differently (hand-cancelled) to those mailed on a weekday?

• they cannot have been dropped in a mailbox, because even at the weekend they would have been processed through the face-cancellers at the SCF?
• they cannot have been handed over a post-office counter, because:
  
  1. they would not have been accepted without first requiring that the Zip code be added;
  2. the two Sunday PM postmarks could not have been applied through this method, as PO counters were not open on Sundays.
• two (at least) cannot have been dropped in a mail collection inside of a PO, without using the counter services as, again, they could not have achieved Sunday PM postmarks.

Q: What's left?

Well, unless anyone else can come up with a plausible alternative then - subject to confirmation, of course - it can only be that they were hand delivered to the SCF directly, which is looking likely is at Rincon Annex, and dropped in a collection box there.

Q: And, what else can we learn if we can demonstrate that this was, in fact, the case?

• We would have evidence that, just as Zodiac was apparently free to kill at the weekends and holidays (and only at such times), so was he free to hand-drop letters in San Francisco at the weekends (and only at the weekends);
• As he could have dropped mail at the Rincon Annexe on even a weekday out of counter hours, were he to either live or work in San Francisco, then we would have strong evidence that he does neither;
• If we were to then pursue the possibility that, not living in San Francisco, his route to the Rincon was over the Bay Bridge, then this would rule out the whole of San Matteo and Santa Clara and leave only Mare Island, and identifying Zodiac as military (Navy).

Apart from all that, though ... yeah, this thread is just about dead. Nothing happening. Nothing to see here at all.

[Simplicity]

I think the only saving grace here is the concept i mentioned earlier that the zodiacs stamp useage displays a repeatable fuzzy logic that denotes the distance between where he post from and to.

1. Cipher 2/3 & 3/3 with 2 stamps (suggesting he is on the opposite side of SF) and 4 to 1/3 vallejo

2. Belli letter with correct postage with mimicking of lettering, this suggests he was in the vicinity and i suggest that correct postage affirms this and that he purchased those Thomas Jefferson 1c stamps whilst in this part of town and posted relatively nearby. Hand stamp and the fact the letter arrived prior to Christmas may affirm all of this.

(This was countered with the idea that the 1c stamps might have been left overs he already owned despite his non use of 5c stamps)

3. Kathleen johns incident and 1 stamp envelope, i suggest zodiac moved east (closer to SFC) prior to this incident which aligns with the incident being more easterly and possibly confirmed by the pleasanton letter later on. Also the button letter 1 stamp and it’s contents (thinking around Berkeley) i believe affirms this.

4. Halloween card with 1 stamp, i think the Zodiac was closer to paul avery than he would have liked at this time and see his use of 1 stamp to be very suggestive of this.

If you follow this logic it really highlights richmond / presidio and might aid the original aim of this thread by eliminating large sections of SF.

Lastly after reading about those postmark machines and the electric eye used to detect stamps it really made me think about a big bright yellow bus and how the zodiac intended to not blow up a truck, irrelevant.

[Xcaliber]

<of all the mail sent by the Zodiac and bearing a San Francisco Postmark, only the three out of four which were mailed on a weekend (one Saturday, two on Sunday) received a hand stamp, hence evidencing processing in a different manner.>

On what day please was the 4th letter that was mailed on a weekend machine-cancelled?

[Xcaliber]

<two (at least) cannot have been dropped in a mail collection inside of a PO, without using the counter services as, again, they could not have achieved Sunday PM postmarks.>

It's possible the Rincon Annex lobby (not the counters) was open on Sundays and mail could be dropped in a slot, and my guess is that mail would have achieved a Sunday postmark. If the lobby wasn't open my guess is mail dropped in the freestanding boxes in front of Rincon Annex on a Sunday before the pickup deadline would have similarly achieved a Sunday postmark,

[Xcaliber]

<As he could have dropped mail at the Rincon Annexe on even a weekday out of counter hours, were he to either live or work in San Francisco, then we would have strong evidence that he does neither;>

If he was driving, parking around Rincon Annex was very difficult if not impossible on weekdays, at least until about 7pm. On weekends it was no problem.

Rincon Annex was an easy driving trip from San Mateo County, typically easier than from the east bay.

[shaqmeister]

On what day please was the 4th letter that was mailed on a weekend machine-cancelled?

The 'Dripping Pen' letter, together with the second cipher, was postmarked "PM 8 Nov 1969," Saturday, the day before the 'Bus Bomb' letter got its hand-cancelled postmark, "Nov 9 PM 1969" (Sunday).

The former was machine-cancelled with a P-B Mk. II, showing the two bars on the wavy-line cancellation, and was double-stamped with 2 x 6¢ Roosevelts.

Dripping Pen 11-8-69.jpg

[shaqmeister]

<two (at least) cannot have been dropped in a mail collection inside of a PO, without using the counter services as, again, they could not have achieved Sunday PM postmarks.>

It's possible the Rincon Annex lobby (not the counters) was open on Sundays and mail could be dropped in a slot, and my guess is that mail would have achieved a Sunday postmark. If the lobby wasn't open my guess is mail dropped in the freestanding boxes in front of Rincon Annex on a Sunday before the pickup deadline would have similarly achieved a Sunday postmark,

Yes, especially if Rincon is the SCF and operating on a Sunday, I certainly have it in mind that the lobby could be open even when the counters are closed. Not the small, local POs though.

[shaqmeister]

<As he could have dropped mail at the Rincon Annexe on even a weekday out of counter hours, were he to either live or work in San Francisco, then we would have strong evidence that he does neither;>

If he was driving, parking around Rincon Annex was very difficult if not impossible on weekdays, at least until about 7pm. On weekends it was no problem.

Rincon Annex was an easy driving trip from San Mateo County, typically easier than from the east bay.

Thanks, X. Another very important bit of insider information!

I suppose, though - and we're surely getting ahead of ourselves at this point - you would only call it an easier drive if you were coming from San Mateo County. If he were forced to come from the Vallejo area, that being where he lived, he would at least have only had to barely touch into the city, East Side from the Bay Bridge, to get to Rincon. And, given that we are probably supposing that he had a very pressing motivation to get there, on account of the letters containing the two sections of Stine's shirt, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded parking away and leaving himself a little (lumbering, Welsh-style) walk.

[shaqmeister]

One of the things that I have found difficult of late has been locating old pictures of Rincon Annex, particularly ones that might illustrate how it may have at least been possible for it to function as a Sectional Center Facility. It is, I have to be honest, hard to get past finding anything relating to Rincon that is not either about a.) the modern Rincon Center, b.) images of the Art Deco exterior and grand entrance doors or (mostly) c.) the murals.

What I had specifically been looking for was an image that would give an indication of it having had a substantial loading bay at the back, or somewhere.

Finally, I have been able to locate the following photo from late 1940. (IIRC, it would only have been built a couple of years or so by this time.)

I think this helps me to feel a little more open to the idea that Rincon Annex was far more than just an up-scale city Post Office.