Hunted: The Zodiac Murders (The Zodiac Serial Killer Book 1)

by Mark Hewitt

  Entire volumes have been written on the science of behavioral analysis. It is beyond the scope of this work to recreate what other authors have already so admirably written on the subject.

  ***

  The Confession letters, so called because of the title centered across the top of the page, were postmarked Riverside, California, and delivered despite their lack of postage stamps. The press copies were eight inches wide by unknown length since the top and bottom of the letters had been torn off by the writer for reasons unknown.

  The police attempted to identify the letter’s author. Even when typed—a clever means of disguising any handwriting idiosyncrasies—letters can be traced to their creators. Typewriters have a unique signature that can yield a match for investigators who check the height of individual characters, distinctive wear patterns, or other unique characteristics of the specific letters. The writer of the Confession letters apparently anticipated this: he sent only carbon copies of the typed original, possibly a fourth or fifth copy produced by a multilayered sandwich of papers and carbon sheets. The text was therefore difficult to read, and virtually impossible to link to a specific machine.

  Though titled “THE CONFESSION,” the text of the letters would more aptly be described as a narration of events infused with the promise of additional killings. The only “confession” present was a taunting braggadocio. The killer was apparently proud of his work, and looked forward to repeating it.

  The motive behind Bates’s death, according to the letters, was revenge because of “BRUSS OFFS” she had apparently given the killer “DURING THE YEARS PRIOR.” This provided for the killer—in his eyes—a reason to kill not only Cheri Jo, but any other women he might choose. He promised to choose more.

  The police quickly accepted the authenticity of the letter. They felt strongly that the wording could only have come from the responsible party. By November 30, the RPD advised that they had reviewed news releases, and none of them had mentioned the disabling of the middle wire of the distributor. Also, other points in the letters suggested to them that the writer was the killer: the manner of the murder was correctly described in the Confession letters, as was the mention of a phone call to the police. His quote, “ITS ABOUT TIME,” may even have been a veiled reference to his lost watch. As late as October 20, 1969, the RPD sent a memo to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, attention Captain Donald A. Townsend, declaring, “The person who wrote the confession letter is aware of facts about the homicide that only the killer would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect.”

  The argument would have been forensically bolstered had a piece of the blade been left at the crime scene. The letter writer had claimed that his knife had broken during the struggle, but no piece was located in or around Bates. In a follow-up report, investigators noted that if the responsible knife was ever discovered, it might have a piece missing or be broken. The police could not independently confirm the killer’s claim. The police could also not confirm that a telephone call had been placed by the killer, another specific claim made in the letter.

  When a string of murders were perpetrated hundreds of miles away in Northern California, including a few that seemed related to the attack on Bates, the connection was eventually made. Some investigators became convinced that Bates’s death was just one in a series that included: the murder of a couple outside Vallejo; two attacks on two other couples that would each leave a woman dead and a male survivor; and the brutal slaying of a cab driver. However, not everyone believed that the serial killer who would come to be known as the “Zodiac” was responsible for the death of Cheri Jo Bates. Many lists of the killer’s victims omit Bates, or relegate her to a list of possible victims. Such skepticism won many followers due to the unique aspects of the October 1966 attack. Bates was alone, she was killed by a slice to the jugular with a knife, the murder occurred in Southern California, and the follow-up letters were more poetic than the matter-of-fact style the killer known as the Zodiac would later employ. The Zodiac’s future actions and communications would seem borne of a different mind, in the opinion of many.

  Despite the differences that exist between the murder of Bates and the future killings of the Zodiac, the similarities strongly suggested to some investigators that Bates’s murderer was in fact the same man who would in time terrorize the San Francisco Bay Area. The modus operandi (MO) may have changed, as they often do between the kills of a serial killer, but to many the criminal signature clearly linked the events. Not only did the killer’s actions during and after the attack match those of future murders (the behavioral details), ample internal evidence—details found within the letters themselves—demonstrated that the writer also penned the known Zodiac letters that would threaten the people of Northern California just a few years later.

  The behavioral attributes of the killer surrounding the attack that would link him to additional murders included writing taunting letters, sending multiple copies of nearly identical letters, placing a telephone call in connection with a murder, communicating with the authorities through the U.S. Postal Service approximately four weeks following an attack, and bragging to the police and the press through his mailings. Sending almost identical copies of a letter to more than one recipient was a rather unique activity. Bates’s killer would do this twice, with the Confession letters (2 times) and the Bates letters (3 times, discussed below). The Zodiac would perform this action following attacks in Vallejo just three years later. While the killer claimed in the Confession letters to have made a telephone call in regards to the murder (which remained unconfirmed), The Zodiac would actually call two times in post-attack behavior, and write about one of these conversations. The timing of the Confession letter—almost exactly four weeks after Bates’s murder—would be the length of time between an attack and a letter, or series of letters, on at least three occasions surrounding Zodiac attacks. The killer’s action of drawing the police and the press into the drama of the murder, with plenty of taunting, was another stunt the Zodiac would perform repeatedly.

  Additionally, many of the writer’s unusual literary traits would follow him in future missives. Even though later communications would never be as poetic or contain the grammatical flourishes of the Confession letter, the use of specific language, grammar, spelling, and punctuation would identify the same hand at work. The Confession letters contained the unusual word “TWICHED,” incorrectly spelled with the second “T” omitted, as though the writer could not spell the word or wanted investigators to believe that he could not. The killer would do the same in 1970 using the word “twich,” without a second “T.” Where the Confession letter writer began a sentence with the word “Yes,” with no accompanying punctuation following the word, he in a future letter would do the same. The Confession letter writer advised that the letter be published “FOR ALL TO READ IT.” He would later request the publication of numerous letters and parts of letters. Similarly, future communications may have incorrectly used ellipses (a series of periods) without an accompanying space, just as was present in the Confession letters. Bates’s killer twice started sentences in the Confession letter with the words, “I AM,” a trait that would nearly become a staple of Zodiac mailings.

  In another most compelling similarity, the Confession letter writer compared a sex act to an incident of violence—and found in favor of the violence, noting that her breast felt warm in his hand, though only one thing was on his mind. This was exactly the same sentiment expressed by the Zodiac in the solution to the three-part 408 cipher that would be composed in 1969, in which he claimed that killing was “more fun than getting your rocks off with a girl.”

  There are several possibilities that explain the similarities. The Bay Area killer had read about, studied, and attempted to copy someone else who was responsible for murdering Bates; two killers had independently stumbled upon an incredible coincidence of astronomical proportion; or one murderer was responsible for the Confession lett
er (and evidently the death of Bates) and additional murders in Northern California. There is also the faint possibility that two killers operated, as some have hypothesized, one in the north and one in the south, the one in the north writing all of the communications, and thereby claiming in Bates a murder he did not commit. However, as details will bear out, this is in the view of many a highly improbable occurrence.

  In 1971, the serial killer commonly known as the “Zodiac” would claim Cheri Jo’s murder as his own, calling it his “[R]iverside activity.” He did this only after an article appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle reporting on the connection between that murder and the Bay Area killings. The Zodiac may have been admitting to the crime merely because the series had been made public, and he was acting on a desire to regain control of the flow of information. He would add, “There are a hell of a lot more down there,” referring to other supposed murders for which he was responsible in Southern California.

  From first receipt of the Confession letters, the authorities in Riverside believed that their creator was in fact the killer. The narration of events outlined in the communiques had the feel of a murderer re-living his encounter, and the description of the small knife and the wounds to her head, throat, and neck would corroborate with the autopsy details. Though it was possible that someone close to the investigation could also have possessed enough knowledge to create such missives—even if the writer of the letters was not a cop, he could have overheard a conversation somewhere or picked up the knowledge in any number of ways, such as befriending the family of an officer—the RPD at the time held the opinion that the writer was responsible for the death of Bates.

  The RPD also believed the motive stated in the Confession letter, and began a search in earnest for a spurned love interest. This would prove to be a firmly held belief on its part, a dogma that would continue to petrify over the years.

  The FBI was ushered into the case to evaluate the letters. The field office in L.A. requested that the FBI laboratory do an examination of the Confession letters, making the request in an airtel dated December 1, 1966, which was received two days later.

  An “airtel” was in essence an internal memorandum and was often used as a cover letter to describe the contents of a package of documents. More urgent messages were sent via teletype directly to the receiving location. The use of airtels was inefficient and was later replaced by more effective means of communication. But in 1966, they were in common use by the offices of the FBI.

  Responding on December 22 to a letter sent by the RPD on the first of that month, the Bureau presented its professional analysis of the Confession letters, opening FBI file #9-46005-1. After a consultation with U.S. Attorney John F. Lally in Los Angeles, it notified Riverside that extortion could not be considered because no specific targets were named or clearly identified. As requested, the FBI searched its anonymous letter file to find similar threatening communications. Nothing of use was found, and the Confession letter was added for future reference.

  In their correspondence with the FBI, the RPD shared some of their progress on the case, including the fact that there were no suspects, that they believed that the murder occurred around 6:00 p.m., and that the killer was likely also responsible for the letters.

  ***

  The Bates Letters

  At the six-month anniversary of the Bates attack, probably in response to newspaper coverage of the crime, three more letters arrived. These short, eight-word notes, each written on a single piece of ordinary, lined, loose leaf binder paper, provided little new information to the authorities. Two of the letters declared in mostly block lettering “BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE.” They were addressed to the RPD (“Riverside Police Department, Riverside, Calif”) and the Daily Press (“Daily Press, 3512 14th Street, Riverside, California). Joseph Bates, grieving father of the deceased, received a nearly identical iteration that was in title case (addressed, “Joseph Bates, 4195 Via San Jose, Riverside, California”), “She Had To Die There Will Be More.”

  At the bottom of the letters sent to the police and press, a small symbol, appearing to the police to be a Z with a flourish, was centered as though it were an identifying signature. The marks may have been used to distinguish these two notes from the alternate version of the letter sent to the victim’s father (which replaced the word “Bates” for the more appropriate word to the father, “She”). The squiggles have also been interpreted by some as a numerical 2 and a numerical 3, both later altered to look similar to one another, making them originally function as page differentiators—the letter to the victim’s father being an unmarked first page.

  Each of the three envelopes bore 2, four-cent Abraham Lincoln stamps, and was postmarked April 30, 1967. It would not be for more than three years, on November 16, 1970, that Sherwood Morrill, the State of California’s Questioned Documents Examiner, identified the Bates mailings as having come from the same author of numerous Zodiac letters that had been sent in 1969 and 1970. At the time they were received, the RPD wondered what, if anything, these notes could add to the case.

  ***

  The Desktop Poem

  Earlier—sometime in December of 1966—a custodian at the RCC library, while stowing furniture in a separate storage room, discovered a desk whose soft plywood surface had been defaced with a poem. The desk was likely available to students in the library around the time of Bates’s murder. Its doggerel, if tied to the killing, was only obliquely related.

  The prose went as follows:

  cut.

  clean.

  if red/

  clean.

  blood spurting,

  dripping,

  spilling;

  all over her new

  dress.

  oh well.

  it was red

  anyway.

  life draining into an

  uncertain death

  she won’t

  die.

  this time

  Someone’ll find her.

  just wait till

  next time.

  rh

  Etched with a blue ball-point pen, the words appeared to describe the unsuccessful suicide attempt of a woman wearing a red dress. The only real relationships to Bates’s murder were the poetaster’s references to death, to cutting, and to blood. Bates did not wear a red dress on the night of her demise. The poem may have carried no connection to the case at all.

  The desktop message was signed at the bottom by the initials “r” and “h,” interpreted by some to be the initials of the killer of Bates. The letters could also have been a reference to blood typing, which distinguishes a blood’s “rh” factor. At the time of the murder, the president of RCC, where the murder occurred and the poem was discovered, was R.H. Bradshaw, another possible reference to the two signatory letters. Even “Robin Hood” had to be considered as the correct interpretation of these initials.

  Because of its possible connection to the murder, the tabletop poem was dutifully collected and preserved by the police for its future forensic value, along with the entire surface of the desk. It would re-emerge in time as an important piece of evidence when Sherwood Morrill of the FBI matched its lettering to future Zodiac letters. At the time, however, the tabletop and the three Bates letters were not considered to be real evidence in the case. They were presumed to be the product of a copycat or hoaxer—or possibly two—and were promptly filed away.

  Dated November 1, 1967, just past the one-year anniversary of Bates’s death, an unusual letter, signed “with hope, Patricia Hautz, Fellow Student,” arrived at the desk of the editor of the Press-Enterprise. The typed page referenced a previous article in the newspaper, the writer suggesting that another story about the boy responsible for the killing could be “more rewarding.” It could cause others to think about the lives of their own children, the note suggested. “Are we laying the blueprint for another killer?” is a question the writer hoped might be brought to mind by such an article. Not only was there no “boy�
� to report on, no Patricia Hautz could be located, leading to suspicions that the note was tauntingly authored by the killer.

  The mysterious writer was never publicly identified. If the letter was a hoax, it was a puzzle to the police as to why someone might compose and send it. If Bates’s killer himself was responsible for the effort, perhaps he had a message to convey, or he hoped that the public would take something instructive away from his brutal attack. Many years later, one journalist laid claim to locating a Patricia Hautz, now living under her married name, who admitted to writing notes to editors around that time. Though she provided handwriting samples that could be compared to the Hautz letter envelope, her claimed desire for anonymity prevented any public confirmation of authorship. In other words, though the missive remains an enigma, it may have been an innocuous letter to the editor.

  Nearly three years later, on October 20, 1970, the RPD sent a letter to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, attention Captain Donald A. Townsend, as a follow up to a telephone conversation that was conducted three days earlier. In it, Sergeant H. L. Homsher of the Detective Division outlined his reasons for believing that the Bates murder was directly related to a series of killings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even though Riverside was a long way from the Bay Area, there appeared to be a sufficient number of similarities to investigate whether there was provable linkage between the two cases: a common criminal signature and a similar modus operandi, possible evidence that the same killer was responsible for the entire collection of murders. Of particular interest were the similarities between the attack on Bates and a subsequent attack at Lake Berryessa that had occurred in September of 1969. Both involved the damaging or defacing of a Volkswagen automobile, both ended with a knife attack, both involved the murder of a woman, and both led to the subsequent taunting of the police with notes and possibly a telephone call.