Lake Berryessa Letter???

[Marshall]

And a copycat Lake Berryessa attacker just happens to have identical writing to the Zodiac, enough to fool the experts???

Do you mean the tiny writing sample on the car door?

Try an experiment. Write a few words on a piece of paper, letter size. Then draw the same words on a large vertical surface, in big letters, while kneeling or bending over. See how closely they match.

There are dozens of entire letters that "the experts" say are inconclusive. But these few words on the card door are conclusive? I have to believe some "experts" are not convinced of that.

It still doesn't address the question, though of why a guy who kills to brag about it actually excludes this one - supposedly his masterpiece - in his letters. He's distancing himself from it, mentioning that he is the guy killing in the north bay area, to differentiate his crimes, and himself, from LB.

[StitchMallone]

Why stop there and lets make Morf do some push ups and crunches while he tries to write on a car door like Zodiac! I seen enough myself of the Zodiac's writing to believe he wrote on the car door. As for his master plan was SF and terrorize the big city he was from. Amazing he stop after that and no proof of other attacks.

[duckking2001]

Unless you want to say the "north bay area" extends all the way to LB.

Good point. What do you think he meant by that? The only other thing that might make sense would be Vallejo, although I wouldn't really call that the north bay either.

It makes sense that he would want to remind people of LB, since no letter. I don't see why he would need to remind people of his other crimes, since he knows that his letters and ciphers were published and everyone knows who the Zodiac is. Doesn't mean that he didn't, since like I said he did a lot of things that didn't make sense.

[Tahoe27]

And a copycat Lake Berryessa attacker just happens to have identical writing to the Zodiac, enough to fool the experts???

Do you mean the tiny writing sample on the car door?

Try an experiment. Write a few words on a piece of paper, letter size. Then draw the same words on a large vertical surface, in big letters, while kneeling or bending over. See how closely they match.

There are dozens of entire letters that "the experts" say are inconclusive. But these few words on the card door are conclusive? I have to believe some "experts" are not convinced of that.

It still doesn't address the question, though of why a guy who kills to brag about it actually excludes this one - supposedly his masterpiece - in his letters. He's distancing himself from it, mentioning that he is the guy killing in the north bay area, to differentiate his crimes, and himself, from LB.

And this time, with Paul--"to prove this", takes a piece of Paul's shirt to mail in...and takes personal belongings. He is more adamant to prove it is him this time around--and so soon after LB. Why? He could have just written on the cab door.

[joku]

This non-mention of the lake is perhaps a clue in itself; that Z was brought up in Monticello, the town razed to the ground and sunk below Berryessa reservoir - under protest from locals who were displaced and wiped off the map to benefit North Bay towns including Vallejo and Benicia.

If the homeland you loved was wiped out, flooded and renamed by outsiders, could you bear to utter its new name, or even say it was a "lake"?

It's not hard to imagine one of Monticello's unhappy, displaced sons winding up in Vallejo - the country boy in the industrial town that took away his home. A resentful outsider getting into trouble.

Good point about the lack of mention being a clue in itself. If not from Monticello, he may have actually lived near enough the lake to consider it, in hindsight, too risky to bring any more attention to it.

A guy wearing a crazy outfit stalks and butchers two people, writes all over their car door... and later decides that listing it among his attacks (like he did on the car door) in a letter which includes the bloody shirt piece of a man shot in the head at point-blank range is drawing too much attention?

I don't follow that. Certainly the Stine killing and letter was going to bring up, and even amplify, the LB incident. By everyone else that is, but curiously, the one exception is Z himself. He doesn't mention it.

I don't think it was the same guy.

I don't think the Berryessa attack went completely according to Zodiac's plan. Hartnell was probably not meant to survive - as happened at BRS, after Zodiac heard Mageau whimper, he went back and targeted a few more shots in him. Thus, I think it was Zodiac's intention to kill all his victims. As Hartnell played dead, Zodiac probably thought he had the job finished. Yet, failing again to kill the other victim must have been embarrassing to him. I don't think the crazy costume was necessarily something he had planned a survivor to recount afterwards (as I think he wore it more for himself than anything), in which case all we would have gotten would be two victims and a note on a car door.

[Paul_Averly]

And a copycat Lake Berryessa attacker just happens to have identical writing to the Zodiac, enough to fool the experts???

Do you mean the tiny writing sample on the car door?

Try an experiment. Write a few words on a piece of paper, letter size. Then draw the same words on a large vertical surface, in big letters, while kneeling or bending over. See how closely they match.

There are dozens of entire letters that "the experts" say are inconclusive. But these few words on the card door are conclusive? I have to believe some "experts" are not convinced of that.
.

Your "copy cat sure knew how to nail a bunch of Z writing traits that had not become established with the few letters up to that point. I don't know who said inconclusive, but he managed to trick Napa and the DOJ.

How about this one, how did your "copy cat" know to use blue felt tip marker on the car door? only a few letters published, and they were printed in black and white, no mention of blue felt tip marker...

He could have used black, or red, maybe green...
http://zodiackillerfacts.com/images/196 ... 20COMP.jpg

But he also nails the correct pen and color on his first try! He must have stopped copy-catting when he won the lottery.

[Druzer]

If the writing on the door was blue that would be a noteworthy clue, but the Chronicle on Oct 2 69 was correct when they wrote that the lettering on the door was in black ink. I haven't gone through the reports in some time but if you watch an hour and eleven minutes in to the This is the Zodiac Speaking documentary where Hartnell goes to visit the door you can see that it is black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0jnsbZwys Never the less I am pretty darn sure it was Zodiac.

[Druzer]

Richard has written another good piece about the Berryessa copycat idea.
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/zodiac-ne ... hed-my-pen
In the comments he points to Wikipedia for a definition of the North Bay
area, which does include Napa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Bay ... o_Bay_Area)

[Tahoe27]

And a copycat Lake Berryessa attacker just happens to have identical writing to the Zodiac, enough to fool the experts???

Do you mean the tiny writing sample on the car door?

Try an experiment. Write a few words on a piece of paper, letter size. Then draw the same words on a large vertical surface, in big letters, while kneeling or bending over. See how closely they match.

There are dozens of entire letters that "the experts" say are inconclusive. But these few words on the card door are conclusive? I have to believe some "experts" are not convinced of that.
.

Your "copy cat sure knew how to nail a bunch of Z writing traits that had not become established with the few letters up to that point. I don't know who said inconclusive, but he managed to trick Napa and the DOJ.

How about this one, how did your "copy cat" know to use blue felt tip marker on the car door? only a few letters published, and they were printed in black and white, no mention of blue felt tip marker...

He could have used black, or red, maybe green...
http://zodiackillerfacts.com/images/196 ... 20COMP.jpg

But he also nails the correct pen and color on his first try! He must have stopped copy-catting when he won the lottery.

The pen color on the car door, as mentioned above, was black.

Zodiac's actual handwriting was published in the Vallejo newspaper (as was the BRS phone call) prior to the Lake Berryessa attack, which included the way he wrote digits and dates.

[Paul_Averly]

If the writing on the door was blue that would be a noteworthy clue, but the Chronicle on Oct 2 69 was correct when they wrote that the lettering on the door was in black ink. I haven't gone through the reports in some time but if you watch an hour and eleven minutes in to the This is the Zodiac Speaking documentary where Hartnell goes to visit the door you can see that it is black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0jnsbZwys Never the less I am pretty darn sure it was Zodiac.

Looks like it was black, my memory was blue. That video also shows however that the writing was done with felt tip pen. How does a copy-cat know to use the same type of pen?

These bogus copy cat claims continue to persist, and the people who make these claims never back much up outside of vague "it was in the paper, he could match it from that."

I would challenge anyone claiming the handwriting was copied from the few letters published up to that point to find what he used. They won't because they can't. The early letters didn't provide the traits found in the later letters and the car door.

Just like
-felt tip pen
-The pleated pants (that the LB copy cat copied from the future PS Z)
-The use of letters and punctuation not found until later letters.
-The almost identical script in his call after the crime.

And even when there is a attempt to say a copy-cat was so good he nailed so many of these intricacies perfectly, they fail to remember the LB didn't copy the established MO AT ALL!