Zodiac Cracked

by Marianne Koerfer

  When I examined Warren’s documents that contained his corrections and handwriting along with the Zodiac letters and envelopes, as little of the samples that exists in these documents, both contain misspellings, inversions, and a particular outstanding writing problem … the letter q. Throughout Zodiac’s letters, it is easily apparent that he cannot decide how to make the letter q. In Warren’s documents, I found the same q problem, and in one instance the q was printed as a g. But the difficult q in both documents was the same. Zodiac’s check mark r runs rampant throughout both sets of documents. Both writings also contained the letter u with a very straight left side stroke. The letter u actually appears in reverse in two of his personal documents. The dropped i appearing throughout the Zodiac letters can also be found in Warren’s documents.

  As a teacher, Warren was quite capable of correcting the spelling and grammatical usage of others, and he could surely make use of his advanced vocabulary. He wrote an outstanding article in one of the documents I examined that demonstrated his expressive writing ability. I was able to obtain two business letters he wrote that were just as impressive. In both cases, however, he wrote them longhand and then had another person actually type them. In the two business letters sent by Professor Warren E. Estes that I obtained, both have the usual personal initials of the author in capital letters followed by the typists’ initials in lower case at the bottom of the page. All three of these documents contain correct spellings throughout as they were physically created by another. In one of Warren’s documents, he stated, “professional astronomer has ‘stumbled’ upon the pleasant discovery.” Zodiac would state in a letter to the Los Angeles Times on March 13, 1971, “I do have to give them credit for ‘stumbling’ across my Riverside activity.” Stumble is a word that can imply physical or mental movement and is used here in both documents as a mental movement, a usage that is obviously common to both Warren’s and Zodiac’s writing vocabulary.

  When I first viewed the printing in Warren’s documents, I was immediately aware I was viewing printed words containing the same style lettering I had been reading in the Zodiac letters for months. Matching Zodiac’s handwriting to a suspect’s handwriting is what law enforcement has been waiting to do for over forty years now. The two business letters of Warren’s that I obtained were typed but contained his strange handwritten signatures. Every letter in his first name was written in cursive and very distinct as if written by a second grader who had just learned how to write his name in cursive, with each letter written very carefully and clearly as if in a painful slow manner as to be perfect. Warren was clearly struggling to create the double r in his first name. When the first name was finished, the middle initial and last name suddenly converted to that of a typical cursive signature. The middle initial was a sudden beautiful and cursive E with a period after it, followed by the beginning of a beautiful cursive Este and then a pen stroke that just as suddenly did not make the final s but scrolled back to cross the t and then scrolled back again. It was an eerie discovery to see that the merging of Zodiac and Warren Estes could also be seen in their signature … a two-person signature in one with Warren being Zodiac the collector and Estes being the astronomer. A name equally as difficult to write as it was to live.

  On April 30, 1967, six months after Cheri Jo Bates was murdered, three letters were mailed out—one to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper, one to the Riverside Police Department, and one to Joseph Bates (Cheri Jo’s father)—all with the same message. The envelopes were all addressed in scrawled printing as was the short letter inside advising, “BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE” (in Joseph Bates’s letter the word BATES was substituted with SHE). I have made an uncanny find in one of Warren’s documents. He had corrected the word baited, which appears in the middle of a sentence, to its homonym Bated, but the correction was printed with a capital B instead of a lowercase b to be used in the middle of the sentence. One month later, in December 1968, he would kill for the first time as Zodiac. His dysgraphia had crept into a common word in a sentence that he superimposed into the name of his first victim, Bates.

  There are two places that Zodiac’s crossed circle earth symbol appears besides his letters. The first place is in one of Warren’s documents. The symbol appears once before the word earth and in another sentence after the word earth with both symbols drawn into a typed document. This document was written three months after the murder of Cheri Jo Bates. The following month, Warren would give a lecture on transit times (sidereal time and mean daily time). No symbols are ever used again in any of his documents. But starting with the first letter received from Zodiac on July 31, 1969, Zodiac would use the crossed circle earth sign in all his letters except for the last letter, the Exorcist letter of January 29, 1974, which did not contain the symbol.

  The second place Zodiac uses the symbol other than in his letters is on the door of the white Karmann Ghia belonging to the stabbing victim at Lake Berryessa. Zodiac drew the symbol on the passenger-side door and listed the following message below the symbol:

  [symbol]

  Vallejo

  12-20-68

  7-4-69

  Sept 27-69 – 6:30

  by knife

  The message was written with a felt-tipped marker pen as were some of Zodiac’s letters. The only location mentioned is Vallejo, appearing to infer that all three murder incidents were in the city of Vallejo, but they were not … one was in Vallejo, one in Solano County, and the last listed date and “by knife” was at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, which is where he was when writing the message. Just how well did Zodiac know the area if he did not know this fact? He may have known the area enough to fluently get around, but he did not know the technical boundaries of the area as most people actually living in a particular area do not know exactly where the jurisdictional lines are drawn. Furthermore, Zodiac probably did not really care to express a jurisdictional area as in his letters he only mentions Vallejo, San Francisco, and the “North Bay area.” The only actual law enforcement agencies he writes about by name are the San Francisco Police Department and the Vallejo Police Department. The rest of his rantings are about the cops, the police, the pigs, the blue pigs, Vallejo cop, SFPD, city police pig cops, and the blue meannies [sic]. The killer was not interested in any technicalities of his random killing sites, nor was he interested in any law enforcement jurisdictional technicalities. He killed and ran … cops are cops.

  In the killer’s letter of August 4, 1969, we see him identify himself for the first time as “the Zodiac.” One month later on September 27, 1969, the killer physically appeared as Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner from The Mikado. Wearing his black hood, he would strike at Lake Berryessa. But in that same August 4, 1969, letter, Zodiac writes details of his first two killings in the Vallejo area. But he writes about the killings in the opposite order than they actually occurred. He cites the Fourth of July incident that occurred in 1969 and then writes about the Christmas incident that occurred in 1968 before his first citing. A dyslexic reversal in his writing can be seen here. In his next letter of October 13, 1969, he writes about the Paul Stine taxi killing that he committed just two days prior to the receipt of this letter. There is a time lapse of two months between these letters.

  The curious note here is that there was a killing in between these letters—the Lake Berryessa Zodiac hooded incident that occurred on September 27, 1969. In Zodiac’s October 13, 1969, letter, he never mentions the sensational Lake Berryessa stabbings. As a matter of fact, Zodiac never mentions the Lake Berryessa incident in any of his further letters. All we ever get in writing from him is the message on the door of the Karmann Ghia that was written at the Lake Berryessa site on the afternoon of the stabbings. I have to believe here that the police have a Zodiac letter that includes the Lake Berryessa stabbings but have never acknowledged and released that letter to the public or that the dripping pen card received on November 8, 1969—one month after the Paul Stine taxi killing—speaks of the Lake Berryessa stabbings in t
he 340 symbol cipher that was included in the card. The 340 symbol cipher is the last remaining cipher yet to be cracked. It is unreasonable to believe that this ranting, taunting madman would not brag about his gruesome hooded exploit.

  Zodiac copycat letter writers have been continuously active over the years since Zodiac first came onto the scene. They have kept the police busy screening and identifying the counterfeits. But I am going to tell you here that Zodiac himself was a copycat letter writer. As we know, Warren’s father, Fred, was an avid amateur entomologist who maintained an extensive butterfly collection that his young son worked with over the years. I have obtained copies of letters from 1931 through 1938 that were exchanged with Dr. Edwin P. Meiners, a St. Louis, Missouri, physician and amateur entomologist who was interested in the medicinal study of insects. Fred Estes exchanged these letters with Dr. Meiners to bring butterfly specimens into their collections from each other’s respective geographic area. All the letters were typewritten except for two handwritten postcards sent by Fred Estes. Each letter had a “Dear Sir” or “Dear Dr. Meiners” or “Dear Mr. Estes” salutation, and each ended with “Sincerely” or “Sincerely yours.” Every letter contained the words collect, collecting, or collection multiple times. The letters all contained “lists” of what Fred Estes or Dr. Meiners were requesting or sending. Sometimes the list was in sentence form or column form, and sometimes the items (butterfly specimens) were numbered. A postcard dated December 21, 1937, ended with the following message:

  “It is quite warm here. Feels like collecting weather,

  Merry Christmas Fred Estes”

  Does all of this sound too familiar? In Zodiac’s letter of December 20, 1969, he wrote:

  “This is the Zodiac speaking I wish you a happy Christmass [sic]”

  In Zodiac’s letter of August 4, 1969, sent to the San Francisco Examiner, he states:

  “I shall be very happy to supply even more material.”

  In Fred Estes’s letters of October 26, 1931, and December 21, 1937, to Dr. Meiners, he states:

  “I expect to order some material from him soon.”

  “I am sending you a lot of material today.”

  These particular letters were being exchanged as Warren was growing from five years of age to twelve years of age … a most impressionable time. Without television and video games in the 1930s, catching, packaging, mailing, and receiving butterfly specimens along with watching and helping send and receive these letters and packages would have been a constant form of anxiety and entertainment combined for the young Warren. He would have gone out into the fields and forests with his father to collect and then return and assist in killing, packaging, and even mounting the specimens. His father taught him how to make the butterfly display boxes, and Warren later used that skill to make boxes and cages for his own “collection.” The local post office, built in 1912 and now a museum, was located at 3580 Mission Avenue in Riverside, a healthy walk from the Estes house and past the grammar school. Warren would have been obediently excited to take that hike or ride to the post office with his father, and he would have been equally obedient as an adult to be able to collect, cage, kill, and write letters—just like his father had taught him.

  Using the mail to send for and receive items is something both Warren and Zodiac continued to exploit in their deadly childhood adult games. In Zodiac’s letter of November 9, 1969, he advised:

  “killing tools have been boughten [sic]

  through the mail order”

  In Warren Estes’s newspaper interview that references his Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo made-for-TV movie dated December 1977, he advised:

  “had 100 [tarantulas] shipped from outside California.”

  The Zodiac letters appearing in this book were all mentioned in an FBI communiqué stating that the Bureau’s forensic questioned document examiners advised that one person may have prepared all the letters, including the Riverside letters and the desktop message. If the letters were written by the same person, then in fact we do have the killer’s diary.

  The Zodiac was clever enough to send his letters to the newspapers not just to get the headlines but also to raise the probability that his letters would get printed at all as the police would have just kept the letters for investigation and evidence purposes. However, Zodiac would not have been clever enough to outwit today’s forensic technologies. If DNA is available from any of the known letters and envelopes or has been developed from any crime scene evidence, it still must be matched to a suspect. Warren Estes needs to be seriously looked at as that suspect. His DNA is available for consideration, and so are his handwriting samples. But handwriting analysis is of course so much more than just spotting letters that look alike. Strokes, pressure, starting and stopping point, and slants are just the beginning of the analysis. Grammatical use, spelling, and punctuation are also considered. And there are the paper and envelopes themselves that need to be forensically analyzed for size, watermarks, folds, age, disguised scribes, ink, pencil, felt pen, typewriter impressions, stamps, postmarks, mailing addresses and return addresses, fingerprints and palm prints, and miscellaneous markings. The point is clear here that the analysis is best left to the FBI’s expert forensic examiners. And we need to err on the side of caution here as we are attempting to apply logic to the writings of a drug-induced raging madman … a risky proposition. We also need to be careful not to make the facts and traits fit the suspect or make the suspect fit the facts and traits … they must align on their own merits. In the case of Warren Estes as a Zodiac suspect, his profile, traits, means, and abilities are compelling to say the least, and I believe it is productive for law enforcement to take a look at him.

  [permission Western Historical Manuscript Collection–Columbia.]

  Fred Estes’s butterfly collecting letter and postcard.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE MIKADO

  Zodiac—Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner

  Groucho Mikado—Lyrics

  Disguise—Hood

  In two of Zodiac’s letters, he quoted parts of two different arias from the Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera The Mikado. One letter was received on July 26, 1970, and the second letter was received on January 29, 1974. Both had been sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Mikado is presented in two acts with continuous productions being played around the world since its first 1885 presentation in London at the Savoy Theater. The opera has since been performed by professional and amateur artists, including college productions, and has also been made into film. The story is set in a fictional Japanese town. The plot finds a young schoolgirl engaged to Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner. The story is filled with torture and death presented in comical lyric and line. The police had diligently tracked every production of The Mikado in the area, reviewing persons who may have starred in the role of Ko-Ko as Zodiac had quoted two of this character’s arias. They also looked into any questionable types who may have had anything to do with a production of the opera … no suspects were developed.

  As my investigation of the Zodiac has been geared away from previous work done on the case, in an effort to not duplicate what has already been developed and to attempt to find new information, I did not pursue The Mikado in the same media as the police had as they had thoroughly depleted any further leads. But as it is certain that Zodiac knew The Mikado well enough to quote it extensively in his letters, he would have to be looking at a copy of the lyrics or at least heard it over and over again to retain all the tricky words to the musical numbers. It was obvious that Zodiac must have been listening to records or tapes.

  I soon found that in the late 1960s, Sony Music Entertainment had released an LP in mono and in stereo of The Mikado starring Groucho Marx. This recording was produced from the Bell Telephone Hour Mikado that aired on NBC-TV April 29, 1960. The Bell Telephone Hour was a one-hour television show that aired weekly broadcasting a variety of fine entertainment. Groucho was cast as Ko-Ko with Helen Traubel as Katisha, an elderly lady in love with the M
ikado’s son.

  In 2007, DRG Records had just issued a wonderfully clear stereo CD of The Mikado starring Groucho Marx. I obtained the CD and was amazed at what I saw and heard. The CD insert pictures of Groucho in costume say it all … he is wearing a squared-front black Japanese costume hat that appears to be approximately three inches high and six inches square. The thing sits on the top of his head and is tied under his chin with a narrow knotted cord. He is of course wearing his trademark dark rimmed glasses. The CD cover pictures Groucho as Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, wearing the squared-front black hat and enhanced costume with large flat hanging banner-type sleeves emblazoned with a white circle containing two back-to-back medieval executioner axe head blades.

  Zodiac could have just worn a ski mask to hide his identity at the Lake Berryessa murder site, but hiding his face was not the reason for his disguise. He planned on stabbing the young couple to death, and so no description could have been given of the killer in a ski mask or an executioner’s hood. Knowing Zodiac was a Groucho Mikado fan, we only have to place the picture of Groucho in his Ko-Ko costume alongside the Zodiac costume sketch to know what the disguise represents. The chosen hood was strictly for the perverted pleasure of the killer, who knew the hood would further confuse and scare the victims, thus enhancing his deviant killing thrill. Zodiac had to kill during the day so that he could wear his costume and be seen by his victims. He had made his own costume hood square on top and may have worn it over a duplicate of the Groucho Ko-Ko costume square hat to keep its form. By killing with a blade and wearing the square-top hood with his Zodiac crossed circle emblazoned on the front chest flap, he had become Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner. The clip-on glasses completed the role of Groucho Marx as Ko-Ko. Groucho wore his personal glasses throughout the entire production, adding to the comic performance, and actually played the role as Groucho because he just could not be anyone else. Zodiac had accommodated Groucho by attaching glasses to his mask.