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

by Mark Hewitt

  The note ended with a vituperative P.S. demanding that the letter be published, with an accompanying vague threat if it was not. As so many of his previous threats were never carried out, few paid the words much heed.

  At the very bottom of the page the writer inked several unusual shapes, including a heavy dot, a dot with a “tail,” some thick lines, and what looked like a large “I,” roughly the shape of a tiny cucumber. The ambiguous picture has come to form a Rorschach test slide, researchers positing many, many possibilities as to what the shapes must mean. Whether these mysterious markings contained any information at all, such as a visual puzzle, or were presented as a red herring was never established.

  Investigators found many perplexing aspects to the letter.

  There was no familiar rhetoric. There was no use of the word “Zodiac” nor the killer’s iconic phrase, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” There was no crosshairs symbol, and where one would be expected, in his running tally of victims, he instead used the simple word “Me.” It was a most peculiar Zodiac letter, separated by nearly three years from the killer’s last note.

  The words “su[i]cides grave” from The Mikado quote led readers to infer that the Zodiac had committed a suicide, either literally or metaphorically. The verse, almost exactly a quote from The Mikado Opera, was correctly indented from the left margin, each line following an identical indentation. The two lines of the song were correctly divided, the start of the second line flush with the indented left side of the page. The final three words, a three-fold repetition of the word “titwillo” was the only portion of the verse that was transcribed incorrectly. Instead of what appeared, the first word should have been replaced with “Oh willow,” and the other two appended with a final “w”: “Oh willow, tit willow, tit willow.” Yet, even with these shortcomings, a complex layout was apparent. The three words were carefully set in a poetic display, centered on the lines: two words on the first line; the final word centered on the final line.

  The P.S. with which the letter closed was indented correctly following the rules of bullet points. It was left justified and the lines of the message were each indented. Even the letter’s “score keeping” was slick. It was right justified on the last two written lines of the page.

  Investigators did not know how to interpret this new missive. More questions emerged than answers. Why, for instance, after nearly three years of silence, did the Zodiac deem it necessary to write again? What did the markings at the bottom of the page signify, if anything? And was this the last letter that would be received?

  From the professional structure of the words on the page, it appeared that the Zodiac was copying from a printed version of The Mikado, and not recalling words stored in his mind. All the man hours that the police spent interviewing Mikado actors and members of troupes who staged the play in the late 1960s, as well as the technical support staff for these companies, led nowhere in pursuit of a criminal who may have once again outsmarted his pursuers. Maybe he owned a printed copy of The Mikado, but had copied it slightly incorrectly to frustrate the investigation.

  Though SFPD experts had declared it authentic, and the document examiner in Sacramento believed that it was from the Zodiac, the SFPD nevertheless asked Washington, D.C., in a letter dated February 14, to compare the Exorcist letter to previous Zodiac writing. The next day, the FBI laboratory declared that all the threatening letters, including a photocopy of this new one, Qc63, along with a photocopy of its envelope, Qc62, were probably from the same hand. Even though certain threatening letters were not written as freely as others, and most of the specimens in its possession were photocopies, some of which were not clear, the FBI laboratory declared the new material authentic, “Hand printing characteristics indicate all of the threatening letters, including [the Exorcist letter and its envelope] were probably prepared by one person.” The lab promised to provide cryptanalysis separately.

  Also on Valentine’s Day, the FBI field office in Sacramento in an airtel to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C. requested the examination and analysis of the strange symbols that appeared across the bottom of the Exorcist letter, as well as the courtesy follow-up of a report on its findings to the Sacramento and the San Francisco Field Offices. But no clear interpretation of the marks could be developed. The March 1 reply from the lab suggested that some of them bore characteristics of Chinese or Japanese writing, but they were not complete radicals. The middle portion of the letter was identified as a quote from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. Portions of The Mikado had been previously quoted in specimens, the report noted.

  Earlier, on February 6, the FBI had prepared for the benefit of its Los Angeles Field Office a summary of the Zodiac case, which now included the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates. All but the murder of Bates were committed within the regions served by the San Francisco and Sacramento divisions, which had, at the prompting of the police agencies of jurisdiction (i.e. the VPD, Solano County Sheriff’s Office, SFPD, and Napa County Sheriff’s Office), requested examinations by the FBI Laboratory and FBI Identification Divisions. As a result, the FBI lab possessed several samples of the Zodiac’s hand printing, and the FBI identification Division, Latent Fingerprint Section held some latent prints on file, noting that “some or all of these latent prints may belong to the “ZODIAC.” The January 29 letter is being processed, and if authenticated, will [be] added to the material held by the laboratory and Identification Division.”

  The report noted that no questioned writing or latent prints from Riverside had ever been submitted to the FBI lab or to the Identification Division. Apparently, the Riverside detectives felt no need to expand the scope of its investigation or bring in outside assistance. The request was finally made for Riverside to submit its materials to the FBI laboratory for evaluation.

  On February 21, the Latent Fingerprint Section provided the FBI Sacramento Field Office with a report on the status of the case. Thirty-nine latent fingerprints, eleven latent palm prints, and two latent impressions (fingerprint or palm prints) previously reported remained unidentified. A number of individuals had been compared but no identifications were effected. Ten additional fingerprints were previously identified with elimination prints. With due caution, the report added, “Unless comparisons are conducted with the known prints of ‘Zodiac,’ it is not possible to determine if any of the previously reported prints are his.” It further noted that it was also not possible to determine which fingers made most of the previously reported prints; therefore, it was not possible to create a composite set of prints that could be classified and searched in the main fingerprint file. Not only did the prints not match anyone, but they did not match one another from crime scene to crime scene: “Comparable areas of unidentified latent prints previously reported on items from different crime scenes, as well as latent prints on different envelopes and letters, were compared with each other, but no identifications effected.”

  With the sending of the Exorcist letter, the Zodiac went quiet.

  Or did he?

  Another Transition

  The Zodiac may have undergone a second metamorphosis following the writing of the Exorcist letter in January, 1974. The killer of 6, and maybe more, may have resurfaced with additional pseudonyms. Eschewing his usual the “Zodiac” as his title, he may have re-established communication under the new monikers “Red Phantom,” “A citizen,” and “a friend.”

  In the same year that it received the Exorcist letter, The Chronicle was sent three additional strange notes. They were recognized for the oddness that they represented, both in terms of their messages and their anonymity. Carefully fished out from among other pieces of mail by the Post Office, they were each turned over to the police for a closer examination. Sherwood Morrill, by now retired as the Questioned Document Examiner for the State of California, still kept a close eye on the case, and offered his services whenever they were needed. He quickly identified familiar characteristics in the handwriting of their author, and deemed them authent
ic Zodiac letters, albeit with no reference to the Zodiac, his past crimes, or any future threats. It was as if, opined the retired examiner, he hoped to slip these letters past the editors of the papers and past investigators.

  Three 1974 letters

  If authentic—and there was much dispute about whether they were or not; few serious graphologists would offer a settled opinion on such short samples of handwriting—the three letters revealed that the Zodiac was capable, and willing, to proffer multiple personae.

  SLA letter

  The early half of the 1970 was an assuredly radical time in California. One radical organization that arose was the Symbionese Liberation which earned media attention through multiple criminal acts. Most notably, the Symbionese Liberation Army or SLA kidnapped and brainwashed newspaper heiress, Patty Hearst.

  Postmarked February 3, 1974, the SLA letter was contained within an envelope that bore one Eisenhower eight-cent stamp and the hand printed address, “Editor San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California.” The FBI labeled the two items Qc64 and Qc65. The FBI lab’s analysis concluded that sufficient characteristics in the writing made it impossible to determine whether the letter and the envelope were written by the Zodiac. At the same time, no clear evidence existed that someone else wrote them. In other words, it may have been a Zodiac letter, but it may not have been.

  The short missive stated simply,

  Dear Mr. Editor,

  Did you know that the

  initials SLAY (Symbionese

  Liberation Army) spell “sla,”

  an old Norse word

  meaning “kill.”

  a friend

  What exactly the editor was meant to do with the information was not explained. It was vaguely Zodiac-like in its reference to “kill” and in the author’s apparent arrogance. It yielded no fingerprints or other identifying data, so it was set aside as inconclusive, and possibly irrelevant, to the investigation. The investigation noted that the word “kill” was underlined, and a period rather than an appropriate question mark completed the sentence.

  If it was a Zodiac letter, it may have been a reference to the Zebra killings of the previous month, or something prompted by the SLA group that was making headlines at that time. It is equally possible that it was sent by some helpful citizen who noticed an interesting, but most likely irrelevant, connection between the name of a terrorist group and an Old Norse vocabulary word.

  Badlands Postcard

  Three months later a postcard arrived. Postmarked May 6 and hand addressed to The Chronicle (“Editor, SF Chronicle, 5th & Mission, San Fran”), the eight-cent Samuel Adams, pre-stamped card read as follows:

  Sirs-I would like to

  express my

  consternation concerning

  your poor taste & lack of

  sympathy for the public, as

  evidenced by your running

  of the ads for the movie

  “Badlands,” featuring the

  blurb - “In 1959 most people

  were killing time. Kit & Holly

  were killing people.” In

  light of recent events, this

  kind of murder -glorification

  can only be deplorable at

  best (not that glorification of

  violence was ever justifiable)

  why don’t you show some

  concern for public sensibilities

  & cut the ad?

  A citizen

  Numerous Zodiac-like details suggested that it might have come from the killer. The reference to killing, the subject matter of a movie—similar to the Exorcist letter—and the generous use of ampersands instead of the word “and” were each very familiar to investigators who had poured over the Zodiac’s many letters.

  Other details suggested that the postcard may not have been from the Bay Area’s most infamous serial killer. The criticism of violence and the concern for “public sensibilities” were entirely new and ironic for such a violent criminal, if it was penned by the Zodiac. Also, the keen sense of spelling, and the correct use of grammar and punctuation, was very unlike the other Zodiac communications.

  Like the SLA letter, the Badlands postcard was set aside. Its stunning content—unexpected abhorrence of violence and holier-than-thou attitude—led investigators to question whether it was from the Zodiac, and to puzzle over what it might mean if it were from him.

  Count Marco letter

  The third and final suspected Zodiac letter of 1974 was postmarked July 8. Its envelope was addressed “Editor, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California.” The single, white page inside read as follows:

  Editor—

  Put Marco back in the, hell-hole

  from whence it came—he has

  a serious psychological disorder—

  always needs to feel superior. I

  suggest you refer him to a shrink.

  Meanwhile, cancel the Count Marco

  column. Since the Count can

  write anonymously, so can I –—

  The Red Phantom

  (red with rage)

  If from the Zodiac, the Badlands postcard introduced hypocrisy: a killer who deplored even the mention of violence. This new letter, if it was from the killer, doubled down. It was an appalling case of irony, the pot calling the kettle black. A vicious and brutal serial killer was accusing a newspaper columnist of having a “serious psychological disorder.” Possibly from the irate tone of the words and nothing more, investigators were intrigued by the possibility that this could have come from their quarry. The arrogance and the need to write anonymously were both noticeably familiar.

  The missive could have been written in response to one of two (or both) recent columns that Count Marco had published in The Chronicle: “Is Being Called Sexy Degrading?” which appeared on Thursday, July 4, 1974, or “Why Older Men Have Trouble In Bed,” appearing on the following Monday.

  The FBI Field Office in San Francisco finally sent three copies each of the Count Marco envelope, the Count Marco letter, the Badlands postcard signed “a citizen,” and the reverse side of the Badlands postcard, in an airtel dated August 16, to the FBI in Washington, D.C., along with a request to compare the collection with the previously filed Zodiac material to determine whether it too was created by the killer. By this time, they were being represented in the press as authentic Zodiac notes. The items were eventually labeled Qc77 to Qc80. The envelope of the Count Marco letter, bearing an illegible postmark, read simply, “Editor, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco.” The postcard, postmarked “POSTAL SERVICE, CA 945 P 8 May 74,” was addressed “Editor SF Chronicle 5th & Mission San Fran.”

  The FBI in Washington, D.C. replied on September 6. The lab was not as confident as the press in the material’s origin. It noted that differences of the Marco letter suggested but did not prove that the letter was composed by someone other than the Zodiac. It was not definitively determined whether the Badlands postcard was written by the Zodiac, but “similarities were noted that indicate the card was probably prepared by the writer of the Zodiac letters.”

  1978 Letter

  In early 1978, a new letter purporting to be from the Zodiac arrived at the offices of The San Francisco Chronicle to the astonishment of investigators and news reporters alike. If it could be proven to be from the Bay Area serial killer, it was the first time that the Zodiac had communicated in nearly four years. It meant that the killer was alive, not incarcerated (unless of course the letter was cleverly spirited out of prison with the help of an accomplice), and active in promoting himself. It also meant the killing may not have stopped.

  But the long gap in writing, and some details of the new communication, gave investigators a reason to be cautious. Postmarked April 24 and received the next day, the one-page hand-printed letter, together with its envelope, was immediately presented to the SFPD to be processed by its laboratory. It was forwarded to the FBI on May 15, with the information that the SFPD lab had already processed it
for prints and indentations.

  Though it had been more than four years since authorities had last heard from the serial killer, the one-page letter represented itself as an authentic Zodiac communication, complete with the familiar opening line, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” Like all of the previous Zodiac letters that were received after the Stine letter, it also omitted the period from the end of the iconic phrase, cum title. In a familiar uneven script resembling the Belli letter, the writer presented a tone and a series of threats eerily similar to that of the Zodiac’s body of work. Either the Zodiac had returned from retirement or someone who had a great deal of knowledge about the case had sent a copy-cat, hoax letter. Either way, it was huge news.

  If fake, it was by no means the first phony Zodiac letter. Not by a long shot. For the previous decade, the case seemed to bring out every attention seeker, armchair comedian, and manipulative wag, who each needed to add to the story or simply enhance its mystique. Many forged Zodiac letters arrived at the offices of the press, the police, or even the anonymous citizen. Most were easy to recognize for their poorly copied handwriting, their un-Zodiac-like tone, or their fanciful flights into decidedly non-Zodiac topics; few were as carefully prepared as this one.

  Reporters from media outlets that longed for the former, headline-rich days of dealing with the Bay Area killer swarmed police officials, digging for quotes, insights and, above all, new information about the murderer. Dave Toschi, now working alone on the case since Armstrong’s transfer to fraud detail, was suddenly in great demand for comment. But the renewed attention came at a great cost to the investigator—and the investigation.

  Former Chronicle serialist Armistead Maupin was among the first to raise doubts about the new missive’s authenticity. Two years earlier, following his use of Toschi as a resource for his Tales of the City fictional serial, he had received fan mail stemming from a column that featured a character based on SFPD Inspector Dave Toschi. The subplot was added to provide suspense to the serial and readers to the column. His suspicions about these fan letters were aroused when he noted typewriter similarities among all of them. This new Zodiac letter bore some similarities to the letters he had received: in particular, it identified Dave Toschi by name. Maupin approached SFPD administrators with his concerns.