The Car Door

[BillRobison]

Morf:

Noooooooooo, the phone call was received almost 45 minutes after the first dispatches. And again, his "details" included wrong information, like "two miles north of park headquarters." So, no, it's not all that convincing. If it had come it at 6:40 instead of 7:40, then yeah, that would have been convincing.

Even if the same guy who attacked the kids made the phone call, that doesn't prove he wrote the letters, anyway, since THAT guy also neglected to mention "This is the Zodiac speaking."

If the only evidence he wrote the letters is the colons on the car door, that would get laughed out of court. Is there ANY other evidence? I know Johnson and some reporters thought there was, but apparently, there wasn't.

Sure, MAYBE it was the same person, but there is no actual evidence that it was. Lots of people have claimed that Morrill officially said so, but I've never seen any actual reports referring to that. There IS a report of photos of the car door being SENT to Morrill, but no mention of his conclusion. Outside of Gryasmith's book, of course. But that book is FULL of misinformation about these files, so I don't put much faith in it.

Are you and Smithy saying there is no other evidence? I can't find any, and neither can anyone else.

[UKSpycatcher]

This reminds me of the God argument. If you make a claim, then the burden of proof is on the claimant, not the listener to prove what you claim is a falsehood. You are correct, there is no concrete evidence to prove it was the Zodiac who made the call, but likewise there is no proof it was anybody else either. We could use the same argument for all the crimes. Even the directions given by the caller after the Blue Rock Springs attack were incorrect, but this only serves to demonstrate that the caller was not very good at giving directions. Even the Paul Stine shirt piece has been dealt the conspiracy angle and yes it could have been sent by somebody other than the killer, as with the Melvin Belli letter, but lets be honest here, if the fingerprints on the car door at Lake Berryessa, Presidio Heights, the Napa phone booth and the letters all matched, along would come another set of hoax theories that would cast doubt on it being the killer. All you can do in the Zodiac case is try to apply the most logical scenario to the order of events. If we assume the killer wrote on the car door at 6.30 pm and made the Napa phone call at 7.40 pm, then the 30 mile journey of approximately one hour, would tie in, with little or no diversions. Again a handwriting match from the car door to the letters is a fruitless comparison, they are a close match, but will never be exact. The killer was stooped down, he had just brutally attacked two people, full of adrenaline, in an exposed position, writing on a different surface with larger writing, so there would always likely to be discrepancies. You do not need Sherwood Morrill to prove one way or another, you just need to apply logic, as to why the handwriting could be slightly different. Even if the DNA from the stamps, on all the letters matched, it is still no proof they were sent by the killer, somebody else could have licked them, and thus no matter what 'proof' is finally revealed, there is always going to be somebody to bat it down and argue to the contrary. After 45 years you are searching for a proof that does not exist, in the minds of others.
The Zodiac Killer must have thought by sending the swatch of Paul Stine's shirt, would prove he was indeed the killer, but what he didn't realize, he was to create a bigger adversary than the police themselves, in the shape of Thomas Horan and his co-conspirators, that has ultimately proved conclusively, that no matter what logic or evidence you supply, there is always a loophole to be exploited, to create another theory. It is a never ending argument and one that does nothing but blur the lines between fact and folklore even further.
Here's another theory, the swatch of Paul Stine's shirt was sent by an ambulance crew member, a policeman, a reporter at the Chronicle, the three kids over the road ran over and took a piece of the shirt, the occupier of the closest house popped out and removed it, I was visiting the USA from England and was the perpetrator. The man observed by the three teenagers never existed, they just made it up, the murderer was a woman dressed in a disguise. Prove that these scenarios are not possible. Its time to apply the likeliest scenario, based on the knowledge we have, rather than looking for hypothetical solutions that have even less foundation than the ones we already have.

[murray]

Thank you, UKSpycatcher.

[smithy]

UKS - you're saying that there's not enough evidence, which is why people cast doubt on the Zodiac "series" actually being a "series" at all? I agree.
And you're also saying that even if there were more evidence (like fingerprints or matching MO's or similar physical descriptions or something else, footprints, hair, matching weapons or ballistics or something) people might still doubt - yet you can overcome that doubt with logic? Gotcha.
Thank you, indeed.

Say, I've noticed old Doubting Thomas Whats-his-name doesn't answer posts on his website any more. I think he's given up.

Are you and Smithy saying there is no other evidence? I can't find any, and neither can anyone else.

Eh? As before, I'm saying the guy who wrote the letters wrote on the door. That's it. Simple. Get it? I still don't understand why you have a problem with that.

[BillRobison]

Smithy and everyone:

I'm not trying to "convince" ANYBODY of ANYTHING. Believe anything you want. I was just curious if anyone here knew of any actual EVIDENCE that the person who wrote the Zodiac letters wrote the message on Bryan's car door. I couldn't find any, not here, not on any other Zodiac website. Why is that such a touchy subject?

I did find out that some police officers and reporters had grossly exaggerated the supposed evidence of a connection. Those exaggerations were disproven at the time, but NOT in the media. Over the years, Graysmith and others have repeated those exaggerations anyway.

The basic assumption has always been, and apparently still is, that there is enough evidence to rule out a possible copycat. For example, everyone commenting on this thread assumed, thanks to Graysmith, that the symbol on the attacker's hood proved it, because only the person writing those letters and a few cops and reporters knew about that symbol. But that simply isn't true. The symbol and the rest of Zodiac's had been published in the newspapers, after all. So the symbol does NOT rule out a possible copycat, after all. A lot of people have assumed that the fingerprints on the phone booth ruled out a possible copycat. That's not true, either. Never was. Graysmith propagated a myth that Hal Snook "botched" those fingerprints, and THATS why they don't prove anything. That's not true, either.

What in the world is so upsetting about that?

[Norse]

Don't think that's true - or fair - Bill. There are some very knowledgeable people on this board who have studied the case for years. They know very well that the Zodiac symbol doesn't prove anything in-itself. They are perfectly aware of what was published and what was not - and I can guarantee you they haven't been fooled by Graysmith, of all people, into believing anything.

The fact that hand writing doesn't prove anything is well known. The fact that the cops don't seem convinced about ANY of the fingerprints - is also well known. People have been discussing the possibility of LB not being a Z crime for years - and I think many are open to THAT particular possibility. The latter is not the same as a full scale hoax, though - that's one thing.

Another thing is that in a case where there is no positive, undeniable, physical evidence linking all the crimes in the series together - you have to either conclude that it stands to reason these crimes are connected nonetheless, or conclude that they are isolated crimes "linked" only through the letter writing of "Zodiac". Even the latter can be subjected to some doubt, though. How can we know that "Zodiac" wrote all these letters? We can't. There is sufficient confusion as to which of his missives are "real" to cast doubt on pretty much all of them. Maybe no single aspect - crime and/or letter - in this case is linked to any other aspect (much like the fingerprints)? Even a hoax theory becomes difficult to maintain under these sad circumstances.

It's possible to apply common sense, though. That can save the day still.

[smithy]

I was just curious if anyone here knew of any actual EVIDENCE that the person who wrote the Zodiac letters wrote the message on Bryan's car door. I couldn't find any, not here, not on any other Zodiac website. Why is that such a touchy subject?

Mr Robison - that handwriting's not a bad match at all, as I think several people have said. I know I have.
Beyond that, I BELIEVE there's that quite characteristic colon, the one that appeared in the second letter. "Fourth of July:".
That colon was written on the door. It's evidence that the guy who wrote the earlier letters wrote on that door. EVIDENCE, yes? No?

That letter wasn't in the press before the Berryessa attack. Good old Graysmith says so in the yellow book, you'll find. He says "None of these facts have ever been made public". He reproduced the letter in that book, too - and wrote under it "This letter has never before been reproduced". Yes? No?

Who is touchy? Not me. I couldn't give a chocolate teapot. I don't feel I need to "convince" you of that.
I am mildly cerous why you're in denial about that writing on the door, but that's it.

Just say you think it's a coincidence why don't you? It's there, indisputably. Do you think it's a coincidence?

Oh! Amazingly, in one of the textbooks about handwriting disguise (was it Springer or Koppenhaver or W. Harrison? I don't know - it was one of them) they talk about zoned letters and slant and size and stuff, but also about using circular periods. They say it's a disguise characteristic, because it helps to imply that the person doing the writing is younger - indeed it's a characteristic often employed by teeenage girls. Ha!
(It might have been J J Harris or O Hilton.)
Anyway, it's certainly in one of the text books that they used to give to policemen and forensic guys and so on.
No, I'm not saying that the Zodiac was a teenage girl. That would be silly.

[Coffee Time]

Well, that would fit with the airplane glue, his knowledge of photo tracing, and all the murders (the ones he claimed, at any rate) being in separate jurisdictions. At least one handwriting analyst at the time DID think Zodiac's handwriting was contrived, even if Morrill believed otherwise.

[BillRobison]

Smithy:

I don't quite follow you. There is no doubt that the Vallejo Times Herald published a photocopy of the entire first letter, including the symbol, right? Someone posted a copy of that above. Like so many things, that's just one more Graysmith lie.

My question was simply, is there ANY other EVIDENCE besides the possible match of the handwriting? Whether someone could have copied it or not, is there ANYTHING else linking the Zodiac letters to the Berryessa attack?

Sure, I'd say it's possible the person who wrote the letters wrote on the car door. But I was genuinely surprised that all the other presumed evidence didn't exist, and that it's equally possible it was a copycat. I mean, the totally different MO is pretty hard to explain.

Nothing rules out a copycat; nothing rules in the Zodiac. Not much to base a manhunt on. Not much to convict, or acquit, a defendant on. No common fingerprints, nothing that wasn't already published in the papers, no other link to any other Zodiac murder. Not even a letter, let alone a letter with a piece of Cecelia's shirt or a page out of the joke book in it. Forgot to tell EVERYONE "I'm the Zodiac!"

Maybe it was Zodiac. Then again, maybe not.

[Norse]

The fact that he doesn't brag about it in subsequent communications is odd - yes. And, no, there isn't anything besides the writing on the door which connects LB to the rest of the series. As far as we know, I should add. We don't know for sure that LE doesn't sit on something they haven't made public. That goes for all the crimes and crime scenes.

What does connect LB on a general level, however, is obvious: the killer wore a Zodiac costume and wrote a Zodiac message on the car door.

Now, consider this: If I am a copycat and wish for some reason or other to pin LB on the killer I've read about in the paper - the one who uses a certain symbol as a signature - do I bother to dress up in a homemade Halloween outfit complete with symbol, given that I intend to kill both my targets? I don't know. Perhaps I'm just as nuts as the guy I'm trying to emulate. So, yes - perhaps. The costume is clearly superfluous, though. A ski mask does the trick just as well - the main thing is the writing on the door.

The person who wrote the letters, on the other hand - he is very much into this Zodiac persona and these symbols. He portrays himself as an executioner and might conceivably dress up as precisely that for his own benefit, regardless of who he intends to kill.

Playing devil's advocate against my own devil's advocate - or something. I'm not convinced of anything when it comes to Beryessa.

NOTE It has been mentioned before and it isn't entirely outlandish either: The reason why Z doesn't brag about Beryessa could be the chronology, pure and simple. He doesn't get around to it. Stine comes around not too long after - and that one is the big one for Z, it seems. Bloody shirt pieces, bomb threats follow, he's the talk of the town in the big city, etc.

Who knows? The man wasn't well. And he was inconsistent when it comes to many things. He may have had his own reasons for not bragging about Beryessa. Maybe he found out that knifing people to death wasn't really his thing - maybe he simply didn't regard Beryessa as a "success" for whatever reason.