Zodiackillersite.com

Yes. And then it's a chicken and egg kind of thing to be considered here as well.

If you're looking at a doodle, then get the idea that it's not a doodle but shorthand, then determine it's Gregg, then find that it's Gregg for "something-something" minus the vocals - and THEN discover that this actually matches up with an unsolved murder which fits the time frame (and roughly the general aspects) of the Z case...well, that's pretty damn compelling.

But is that what we're dealing with here? Or are we dealing with someone looking for an unsolved murder to fit the idea that the doodle might be shorthand for "something-something"? There are plenty of unsolved murders which fit the time frame and which could have, conceivably, possibly been committed by Z.

And there's the "two different chickens" theory, too.
Those two characters might be Gregg and it might even reference those two seperate murders - personally I'm not so sure - but it doesn't have to be contemporaneous with the "Little List" text. We know the evidence hasn't been treated especially reverentially. It may just be someone else's doodling!

FWIW I'm impressed with the "shorthand" notion. I think that's a good explanation of the word spacing and of the various strange spellings in the Little List letter - the creation of the letter having actually been two-stage, at least in part. The lyrics gathered in Gregg, stenographer-style, then the text written out afterward. The writer doing this to try and "keep up" with the lyrics from the record. That seems feasible.

Is this also evidence, perhaps, that the writer is THINKING in shorthand and phonetically as he's writing - at least some of the time, throughout?
Or is what we're looking at in at least some of the letters that they were actually composed in shorthand and then "translated into text"...?

I can see some reasons why the letters might have been composed this way - at least in part.
- Because deliberate "bad shorthand" errors or "bad translation into text" would generate text which differed from the writer's "normal" freehand offering. (Even in respect to the spaces, inter-word and intra-word....)
- So that the writer could prepare his text in a more public space, then "write it up" later. (But then why not just wait until you get home....?)
- So that he could "keep" his original text for later reference in a more "secure" way - sending out the "unencoded" version only. (Buy a small safe...!)
And perhaps even - brace yourself for a radical idea:
- Because it was being dictated? (Ha! Don't be silly.)

The "Belli" letter.... Hmmm. And "loose" is a very strange "phonetic" misspelling.
The "Citizen" letter's very different. It just doesn't have the same kind of "composed phonetically" look about it at all - and although it does have mistakes at "express" (ion), "consternation", a little stumble at "running" and also at "justifiable" - those mistakes are different from the letters in the "Zodiac" lexicon and even treated quite differently; crossed out.
Perhaps because it wasn't composed "phonetically" - even in the guy's head. It's "normal freehand".
Interesting.
Any truth here?

I think much of this makes sense. There could be something here. As an explanation for both the spelling and the spacing, the shorthand angle works - I'm buying it.

Z: A crazy guy who was used to writing in short-hand and whose habits in that regard shaped his written communications as such to the extent that - well - to the extent that we see evidenced in his letters. Yes - I think this is plausible. At the very least I think it's an idea well worth looking further into.

Re: Handling (or mishandling) of evidence.

Yes, smithy - I have thought about that too. It's a disturbing notion, but I think it's possible. Someone could have "doodled" on the paper after Z sent it. Wasn't there a similar suspicion raised regarding another letter - some marks, holes (made by a paper puncher?) or something of the sort, seemingly made by the investigators?

Norse - I'm pleased you buy it too, and re: suspicions of evidence being treated heavily-handledly, yes there were, and more than that.
It's also been said that some of the materials turned up in an ex-detectives garage at one point. (Although maybe that was the dreaded Graysmith.)
I don't know if that's true - but it certainly seems that the Phillips map was pinned to a board and that the "Citizen Code" note and cipher key had holes punched in it so it could be placed in a lever arch file, if we can believe our own eyes.
So yes, the evidence has often been treated less reverentially than any such item would be in this more enlightened age. That's progress, I guess.

I think this Gregg discovery - if it is one - has some interesting implications about the level of preparation the writer undertook, about his concentration levels, and certainly about his intelligence level and possible professional background. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions Charlie drew on the web site I've lifted this from btw - the "grew up outside the US in early life" and age-group stuff. I'd dearly love to know which version of Gregg the author "seemed to be" familiar with, since that would fix the dates of his potential schooling more accurately. I need to re-read it - maybe it does.

If that's really a "Yours Very Seriously" message in Gregg at the end of that one Bates letter, I'm amazed that option's not been considered or commented on in the public domain before. Crazy.

Finally, It surprises me that this thread hasn't drawn more comments! Maybe it will.

Let's presume for the present - and for the sake of further discussion on this interesting topic - that Z had knowledge of shorthand, and that the latter is no less than an explanation for his idiosyncratic spelling and his habit of splitting up words in a certain, rather striking fashion.

To what degree might this narrow down a list of possible Zodiacs out there? Let's work from the generally accepted theory that Z was a white male between the ages of 25 to 45 (hardly controversial!) and that he lived and worked in the Bay Area (hardly controversial either!) Let's also presume that Z was very familiar with the art - he mastered it and was so accustomed to using it that certain effects or by-products of using the technique regularly had become second nature to him and carried over into his handwriting (or printing).

What sort of people were familiar with shorthand back then? Certainly MORE people than these days, that's obvious. Secretaries: Yes. Male secretaries: No doubt less common than female ones in most lines of work, but not all. Military secretaries of a certain kind would arguably have been more likely to have been male. Reporters: Yes. Not regular reporters? Don't think regular reporters knew shorthand as a rule. But some reporters (court reporters? Reporters who covered politics and political press conferences regularly?) would have - and my guess would be that most of these would have been male in the late 60s. Court stenographers: Certainly. I'm guessing here that male ones were the exception back then (it was a typically female occupation, wasn't it?)

Secretaries (of many kinds - but most kinds would have been women back then, that's fair to say?)

Reporters (of a certain kind, court reporters not least but also others)

Stenographers (male ones would have been rare - I surmise, at least)

Any other professions (or occupations in general) in which a knowledge of shorthand would have been required - or at least likely? Something medical, perhaps? I'm just thinking out loud - but a specialized sort of "medical secretary" of some kind?

We're on the same page for most of this I think, except that like coding and encoding the ciphers, I think Gregg was used for disguise, just as the techniques from JJ Harris's textbook on the subject for cuniform, rounded dots, speed differences, baseline changes, etc. was used. Technique. From '66 onward.

If this guy's a Secretary or a Reporter, (not a Stenographer in the classic sense - not using a Stenotype machine) we can also rationalise further since:

a) He knows newsroom layout
b) He's a "student of Crime" - borrowing from Jack The Ripper and the Lindbergh letters
c) He's a good researcher. (Chemical bomb stuff, electrical circuitry stuff?
d) He's older. (He likes Groucho? At 25?

And what's wrong with this picture. Anything?

Nothin' wrong, as far as I can tell. He would have been all of the above, to a degree.

Possible...counter point: Groucho. If Z was a bit of an eccentric, say, and I think there's good reason to assume he was, then it's not inconceivable that he may have liked Groucho even though this would've been uncommon for his age group.

Let me get this absolutely clear, smithy: What you propose is that our man used shorthand as a means to disguise his handwriting; the two-step approach you allude to above: He wrote in shorthand, then "transcribed" his own text, the end product thus being skewed to a degree, not natural writing but something more, say, artificial. Correct?

If so, we are certainly on the same page. What I said above may have been unclear on this point - I rambled on about "second nature" and whatnot, but a) this may not be the case and b) if it IS the case, it would pertain to his SPELLING, not the rest of it. The rest of it may be pure artifice - but I have a thing for the spelling being natural. And what is proposed in the article makes sense in that regard: He just translates his originals (shorthand) into written English, simply not caring about the spelling. X (shorthand for "cruise") becomes "cruse" or "cruze" or...whatever. He doesn't care, he writes it as he sees it - or hears it - without bothering to defer to accepted standards. Demonstratively so, one might even say - to the point where an eyesore like "cid" makes its appearance.

What I propose is this: He wasn't a good speller to begin with. He wasn't someone who composed written texts in standard English frequently. And he was decidedly non-deferential in his attitude (not necessarily in everyday life, but definitely when he did "his thing"). And he knew shorthand well, probably to a professional standard, so to speak.

The trick, the two-stage trick of using shorthand and transcription to produce artificial handwriting, combined with the factors proposed above - explains the spelling. It is natural in the sense that he doesn't strain himself to come up with erroneous ways of spelling words - and in the sense that he simply wasn't a very good speller to begin with. It's unnatural in the sense that he clearly knew that the likes of "cid" wasn't right - but there the element of demonstratively not-giving-a-f**k comes into play.

I don't think he was a completely "natural" speller - no. I think the Badlands letter demonstrates that - but it also demonstrates that he could certainly spell very well indeed when disposed to do so, or that he reached for a dictionary when he reached his limits. "I would like to express my consternation" huh?
You think maybe he didn't compose written texts in standard English frequently? I can't imagine anyone would bother to learn Gregg unless they did, frankly.
If he was a reporter then he may have used a typewriter more often than a pen, yes, but either way I think he did write - often.
Yes, he was decidedly non-deferential in his attitude - at least in the letters.
Yes he seems to have known shorthand well, very possibly to a professional standard, (whatever that might mean.)

What's wrong with the picture? Well, there's an elephant in it.
I'm still a fan of the "letters written by a hoaxer" view - which is undoubtedly strengthened by the idea that the letters were put together by a journalist or a reporter, yes indeed-y. Skilled writer + access to information from a reporter's perspective = Riverside Confession letter and indeed allllll the rest.
Not that people in those careers can't become multiple murderers, of course, but hey, this background certainly helps if you did NOT commit any murders....
Isn't a pity about the shirt and the car door eh?

I don't think he was a completely "natural" speller - no. I think the Badlands letter demonstrates that - but it also demonstrates that he could certainly spell very well indeed when disposed to do so, or that he reached for a dictionary when he reached his limits. "I would like to express my consternation" huh?

Badlands is what it is, I guess. I'm not sure it was written by anyone but a "citizen" myself. But in general I'm open to the idea that he could have reached for a dictionary. I don't think he was a pathologically bad speller - just a bad one. Plus a really careless one. Plus something else on top of that.

You think maybe he didn't compose written texts in standard English frequently? I can't imagine anyone would bother to learn Gregg unless they did, frankly.
If he was a reporter then he may have used a typewriter more often than a pen, yes, but either way I think he did write - often.

Fair point. I suppose people who used Gregg would also be - as per their work, which is why they learned shorthand in the first place - required to write plenty. Not their own things, though, as much as mechanical reproduction work. But, yes - it's a bit hard to imagine an incredibly poor speller working as a secretary, say.

Yes, he was decidedly non-deferential in his attitude - at least in the letters.

Glad we agree on that, at least.

Yes he seems to have known shorthand well, very possibly to a professional standard, (whatever that might mean.)

Well, it means that he probably used shorthand in a professional capacity. As a secretary, for instance. I can't imagine many people would have bothered to learn shorthand unless is was for work. And it wold seem too much of a stretch to propose that our letter writer was someone who learned shorthand just for the purpose of writing the Z letters - no?

What's wrong with the picture? Well, there's an elephant in it.

There is? The hoax business you mean? Or something else?

I'm still a fan of the "letters written by a hoaxer" view - which is undoubtedly strengthened by the idea that the letters were put together by a journalist or a reporter, yes indeed-y. Skilled writer + access to information from a reporter's perspective = Riverside Confession letter and indeed allllll the rest.
Not that people in those careers can't become multiple murderers, of course, but hey, this background certainly helps if you did NOT commit any murders....
Isn't a pity about the shirt and the car door eh?

Yes - I gathered as much. And yes - no doubt, a journalist or reporter might very well have had knowledge of shorthand. So I can see why you'd be interested in that angle - certainly. I'm interested in it for a slightly different reason, I suppose - but that's alright. Interesting is interesting.

Can I ask you a question, smithy? And this is meant in all openness and honesty - I respect you and I like your style as a poster even though I don't necessarily share your convictions (or suspicions, more like it, perhaps?): Without getting into precisely who did what and when - WHY did he or they construct this thing? What is the motive for the hoax? I'm not saying you absolutely, positively HAVE to come up with a motive in order to support the theory - but I do think it would help a great deal.

All the best,

Norse

Norse wrote:Badlands is what it is, I guess. I'm not sure it was written by anyone but a "citizen" myself. But in general I'm open to the idea that he could have reached for a dictionary. I don't think he was a pathologically bad speller - just a bad one. Plus a really careless one. Plus something else on top of that.

Like booze maybe? A narcotic? Yes, I think that's quite possible.

.... it's a bit hard to imagine an incredibly poor speller working as a secretary, say.

Point!

[he was decidedly non-deferential in his attitude - at least in the letters] Glad we agree on that, at least.

We're three-for-three in agreeing so far; I don't get that a lot. We agree on quite a few points. No-one else has yet even said they think Gregg's a possibly contributory feature of the letters! Ha!

[professional standard]... means that he probably used shorthand in a professional capacity. As a secretary, for instance..... no?

Yep. I was thinking of "professional standard" as perhaps the speed and accuracy levels acheived - but it's a moot point really. Yes, he used it in a professional capacity, agreed. (Say, what's going on here? We just agreed on something again?)

The hoax business you mean? Or something else?

Yes that damn hoax business - big elephant. Now he knows Gregg, like a reporter, or an ex-editor policeman, as has been suggested in hoax theory discussions elsewhere? Well, phooey.

..Yes - no doubt, a journalist or reporter might very well have had knowledge of shorthand. So I can see why you'd be interested in that angle - certainly. I'm interested in it for a slightly different reason, I suppose - but that's alright. Interesting is interesting.

Can I ask you a question, smithy? And this is meant in all openness and honesty - I respect you and I like your style as a poster even though I don't necessarily share your convictions (or suspicions, more like it, perhaps?): Without getting into precisely who did what and when - WHY did he or they construct this thing? What is the motive for the hoax? I'm not saying you absolutely, positively HAVE to come up with a motive in order to support the theory - but I do think it would help a great deal.
All the best,
Norse

Thanks Norse I appreciate that. As message boards go(!) you seem to be a genuine and interesting poster too, who sticks with it and keeps his mind around the details (like the "38 hole" in the Rambler roof, for instance.) I enjoy your posts. And I'm in the minority (HUGELY) lets face it, with this hoax stuff despite my convictions AND suspicions.
I may have already sidetracked things here but I won't push it too far; I think "motive" is one for another thread, where people know they're coming through the looking-glass into topsy-turvy hoax land. I'll start a thread.