New DNA Story

[RTF]

The ABC narrator is the one who states that Holt's test "exonerates" ALA. Holt does not state this. She only says that ALA "could not have contributed the DNA that I detected in the stamp."

She said "on the stamp."

Yes, O apiligose. Unfortunate typo... "i" being next to "o" on the keyboard.

[mike_r]

Hi,

The reason you don't test the outside of a stamp on letters that were handled by untold numbers of people over many years is that without having safeguards in place to ensure that you are not just recovering a contaminant DNA, you are headed for trouble. You have to assume the worst not use the single sample to "exclude" suspects. You would have to recover the same DNA from many envelopes. It's a common scientific principle called "replication of results." Now I know that there is a nuanced difference between "eliminating" a suspect and what Holt said about the samples simply "not matching" suspects without further comment on their guilt or innocence but the clear implication that night is that those three suspect were eliminated by DNA, which is a death knell. I know because I was told specifically after the show by ABC that Qvale was eliminated by DNA and that I should move on with my life, etc. SFPD should have come out the next day in the local news and clarified that the sample came from the outside of a stamp in order to give better context to the "elimination." However, they satisfied themselves to just privately admit to LL that the sample was "invalid" and "premature." This info should have been disseminated to the entire viewing public on the ABC show.

The other thing you have to be careful of is saying they found genetic material "behind a stamp." Unless Holt specifically swabbed just the underside of a stamp, we can't be sure of that. The standard procedure for obtaining DNA from a stamp, as per Alan Keel in 2007, is to immerse a small piece of the stamp FRONT AND BACK WITH THE TINY PIECE OF ENVELOPE STILL ATTACHED TO THE BACK OF THE STAMP into an extracting solution. (That is why you often see stamps on Z letters with small square pieces cut out of them.) The reason they do this is that in a normal situation, the amount of DNA on the licked side is so great that it overwhelms any contaminant on the outside. However, this was not the case in the Z letters where there was little to no genetic material on the glue side which, along with the near absence of saliva and cells led to the conclusion by Keel (and, as I understand it from Ray Nixon, by Holt, as well in 2002) that the stamps, etc., had not been licked. Therefore, that being the case, if Holt used the standard extraction technique on the stamp in question, the DNA could have come from the FRONT of the stamp in that instance, too. And BTW, if the sender did not lick the stamp, then it is much more unlikely that his DNA is on the front of the stamp, either, assuming he wore gloves as he seemed to do when handling letters (i.e., palm prints would have been all over many of the letters/envelopes, which they were not).

Lets' face it: The place you recover meaningful DNA from a letter is in the glue of the stamp and flap. If it is not present there, you have to be very forthright about that fact and that the DNA you did recover came from the front of an envelope that has a very high probability of having exogenous DNA on it that is not related to the criminal. The whole show was very sloppy and thoroughly misleading-- and maybe intentionally so to boost ratings.

While it is certainly valid to say that the "entire envelope" is evidence, that is really a disingenuous statement because there is evidence and there is BEST evidence. The BEST evidence comes from the glue of the stamp. The quality of any DNA recovered only from the FRONT of a stamp in the absence of DNA from the back is not very good evidence at all. The DNA from the sender is in the glue. If it is not there, then it is a crap shoot when the letter was not protected for 25 years or whatever.

Mike

[Xcaliber]

Tremendous breakdown Mike.

In my opinion yours is the most compelling book on the case.

When they took handwriting samples from suspects, did they have any of them write with gloves on?

[Xcaliber]

And in thinking about it, you'd also want handwriting samples with the POI's hand suspended in the air, the way someone would write when they didn't want to make contact with the paper.

[TomVoigt]

And in thinking about it, you'd also want handwriting samples with the POI's hand suspended in the air, the way someone would write when they didn't want to make contact with the paper.

The 1974 Exorcist letter was an authenticated Zodiac correspondence and he did not write it using gloves or in any other unusual way.

[Druzer]

Tom or Mike, is it true that the Exorcist letter yielded a match of some kind to the 1978 letter?

[mike_r]

Hi,

Alan Keel said that one of the 1974 letters was matched through DNA common to both it and the April 1978 letter. He said he "did not recall" which one of the 1974 letters it was but I don't necessarily believe him because they info may be a hold back. I can only say that the sole 1974 letter to be tested for DNA as of the time Keel left SFPD was The Exorcist letter. Maybe another one was tested afterwards but also, in 1978 when Toschi was accused of writing the 1978 letter, he was publicly accused to penning one of the 1974 letters--and that one was also the Exorcist letter, as noted in newspaper articles at that time. Funny how that one always comes up. It would also be the odd man out in terms of palm prints being found on it, unlike any of the Zodiac letters. If it is a hold back, SFPD made sure the palm prints were publicized years ago by showing every criminal being arrested being printed for palm prints. This way if someone confessed and said they left palm prints on the Exorcist letter, they'd know they were a false confessor (IF the Exorcist letter is the second fake).

The police can be tricky that way in a case where there are few hold backs.

I'm sure SFPD knows which one is the second forgery but they ain't saying.

Mike

[capricorn]

Where is a list of ALL THOSE "In the Mix" officially at this time?

[RTF]

Where is a list of ALL THOSE "In the Mix" officially at this time?

The most official "official in-the-mix" list used mostly by officials is:

Earl Van Best
Lee Van Cleef
Rip Van Winkle

[Druzer]

Thank you so much Mike. I have been trying to follow your writings about DNA for a while now but it remains difficult to keep track of the implications. I've started reading your book by the way and fully intend to pick your brain about it when I'm through. It is very good so far.

The 78 letter has long confounded me. It seems in 1978 it was initially viewed as authentic, then it was questioned and publicly declared a fake. Perhaps it truly remained in the hoax category for Law Enforcement until DNA testing when they then learned it connected to one of 1974 letters, probably Exorcist. If these two matching correspondences were the only Zodiac letters that still had DNA material is that because they were stored better than all of the others or because they were both from the same hoaxer? Something that compounds the mystery for me is the relationship between the unpublished Dec 69 Fairfield letter that promised 38 victims and the Exorcist letter that claimed 37 victims with the threat of doing something nasty if ignored. The Fairfield envelope is less than convincing as an authentic Zodiac correspondence but if 1974 Exorcist and the 1978 are hoaxes could they be from the same hoaxer who wrote the Fairfield letter?