1/29/74 "Exorcist" Letter Mailed to the SF Chronicle - Zodiac Discussion Forum

The Exorcist Letter symbols are probably just golf ball identification markings.

BDHolland — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 18:16:25 +0000

Yes it's probably golf yet again. It has the theme of identity.

The Exorcist letter (January 29th, 1974) contains some strange symbols at the end.

Looks random and odd. Despite the usual spelling out of “To Kill” I have another explanation for them. In fact, To Kill might not even be mutually exclusive with my explanation, so I think it works as the Zodiac intended.

In golf, to identify the ball with the owner, they take a pen and draw a unique symbol on the ball. It can be a simple dot. A line. A signature. A scribble. All sorts of shapes. You can keep a note of other players symbols before you all begin.

Usually with a sharpie-type pen. ?

When people collect lost golf balls from the course, you can find an assortment of choice markings.

Some of them even thick and untidy.

How about a circle around that 8 for the Z13 cipher?

Even the top players have their symbols.

I would suggest that either the symbols are his own or he knows the symbols of professional golfers at the time and has arranged them in the Exorcist symbol.

Really nothing more or nothing less than that. A simple clue to golf again.

If the symbols can be matched to contemporary golfers at the time, it would be great. In the meantime I think this is consistent with my pines find.

Just keeping it all simple and parsimonious with the one theme. Golf. He stuck with the theme because it wasn't discovered in his other communications especially the Pines card. If it works, it works.

I just hope officials assigned the case weren't golf buddies and him their secret pal.

The suicides grave

Cragle — Sat, 17 Aug 2019 12:39:22 +0000

This is something I sent to a friend a short while back. Ramble alert! Sorry I may not make this very clear but I’ll try my best. For me this is by far the most interesting of any of his letters. If you look at the “TitWillow” position in relation to the rest of the letter, directly after “Signed, Yours Truly :” he has used it as his name so to speak. Not Z, Zodiac, Crosshairs or any other related motif. It is my belief that he uses this passage as a metaphor for both himself and this letter. “He plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the suicides grave”. His last known letter was in 71, then out of the blue this appears 3 years letter. During this time he has “Killed” the Zodiac off (effectively he has committed the suicide of his Zodiac persona). This letter itself is the “Echo from the Suicides Grave”. HE even uses “me” in his score count. By using the Mikado reference people would be under no illusion who it was from but without the need of resurrecting the Zodiac. To add further weight to this the envelope contains all the extra paraphernalia that was in the stamp book that he used for the majority of his earlier mailings. By adding these to the envelope he was showing that he was finished as Z. This letter is also very interesting in it’s construction. The whole structure of the letter is professional and not the previous ramblings, the Grammar is correct, even the spelling for the most part is correct. Also how would a previously, for the most part poorly educated man, understand the meaning of “Satirical Comedy”. It feels to me as though he is saying I’m still around but I’m doing what I said I would, I’ve changed my way of “collecting slaves”. I’ve resurrected myself as something different now.

William Peter Blatty dies

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:55:15 +0000

Exorcist writer William Peter Blatty dies aged 89 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... es-aged-89

The sign points to Hayward

falpel — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 13:39:57 +0000

Probably the Zodiac used a latter version of the 1969 routemap, so the symbol doesn’t fit perfectly, but the “92” and “82” spots help to understand that this is actually the location the Zodiac pointed to. The “Hesperian Blvd” spot is the only one that doesn’t fit the scheme, because it has wrong angle and shape. It points to an area enclosed between Hesperian Blvd, Industrial Blvd and W Tennison Rd. Perhaps, is this the location he wanted to show us?

"Exorcist" cipher : 8 image/theory

thedude — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 19:15:06 +0000

So here is my full theory. The symbols drawn on the bottom of the Exorcist card have always reminded me of an attempt to draw a digital number. I just arranged them according to their sizes. The thicker/darker lines closer together seemed to make sense. The number 8 just naturally evolves. And the "ME-37" always struck me as an absurd number of kills. So does it reflect the true number of kills? Next, I looked at the date. JAN 29, 1974. I thought maybe ME-37 was an age (later I saw where someone had already come up with that idea and someone's POI was that age.)

So I looked at my POI's birthday , FEB 8, 1936, and he was also 37 years old, but only for eight more days. So, was it another clue to his identity? Was he counting down the days? Lastly, i believe this "note" might have been intended for someone. (I know that is where I lost most of you ) I believe that the Mikido reference has a very significant purpose.

Exorcist: Golden Globe winner, articles from Jan. 28th

Coffee Time — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 23:01:11 +0000

The Exorcist letter was postmarked January 29th.

The Symbol - My Thing

Nin — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 03:52:37 +0000

As posted at http://zodiackiller.fr.yuku.com/topic/7 ... XOG8UYl9QI MY THING Here is a very "simple" solution to the EXORCIST symbols at the bottom of the letter: And upside down: I did not rearrange any of the symbols! Can you figure it out? The first time I looked at the EXORCIST letter and the symbols on the bottom, I was curious about the distance between the upside down exclamation like symbol/ the period and the main group of the symbols. In all those years I came up with the help! referring to the movie The Exorcist. But I had to rearrange the symbols, like most of you, who tried to find a way. I always used to enjoy the Mad Magazine fold ins! For some reason I thought about it during the last couple of days when investigating an individual. In the Mad Magazine the fold in would include folding directons or orientation points. A couple or more little arrows would have to be matched from both sides to get the picture. Usually the picture would be satirical of some kind. So I am looking at the letter and do not see any such points. However, I see the ! and the . and think they may have to be matched. When trying that, I only get a single fold, not a real fold in like in Mad Magazine. Also, some parts of the symbols in the main group would neutralize each other. That does not seem right and does not lead anywhere. I go ahead and fold along the middle of the orientation line and then again along the outline of one of the symbols: Then I folded the dot . over to the "letter" i and get the !, which can be seen as a g. Very similar like this g right above: Funny is, one way it shows My and the other way around it's ThiNg. The M and N is used as a double symbol. When I saw it first, I did not know if it was an M or an N. h and y can be interchanged too: image hosting 5mb free image host Something....my Thing: And we definitely know what "his thing" was.. -Nin

What's the ultimate significance of this letter?

Trystero — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 08:59:21 +0000

Hi, guys. I’m new to the forum, so I hope you don’t mind me taking the initiative to create a new topic like this. I tried to search for similar topics, but couldn’t really find any. Essentially, my question is this: why do you think Zodiac wrote this letter after a near three-year hiatus, and what was he trying to communicate? I guess you could argue it serves the same function as many of his earlier letters, which was to increase his public profile while giving the police the pieces to a puzzle Z didn’t think they could solve. But there are a couple of perplexing things I’ve noticed about this letter that seem to point away from it being intended as a simple “Hey, I’m still here.” Here are a few points I’d like to raise for your consideration, and I’ll try to summarize them as briefly as I can, because I don’t want this turning into an essay, lol. Any feedback would be appreciated. 1. First off, why write a letter like this after nearly three years if it was only intended to throw his name back into the hat, so to speak? A simple message saying “This is the Zodiac speaking. I am still here, etc.” would have sufficed. If Z was in jail or an institution during the period between letters, as has often been speculated, there’d be even less sense to it. The casual tone doesn’t match the other letters, and aside from the threat to do “something nasty” if the letter isn’t published, Z doesn’t exhibit any of his characteristic anger. 2. Has anyone ever adequately explained why Z broke his silence to review The Exorcist (and quote The Mikado)? It seems extremely odd to me that a serial killer would risk sending in a note that could potentially contain evidence (and did) because his inner Roger Ebert was just itching to get out. I mean, Z was a very idiosyncratic person, to be sure, but he showed he had more common sense than that on multiple occasions. I can’t help but believe that there was a specific reason for mentioning The Exorcist (though I have no real idea what it is). 3. Most important of all, why does the Zodiac no longer refer to himself as such? There’s no traditional “This is the Zodiac speaking” opening, no crossed circle--in fact, no mention of the name at all. He signs his name instead with a quote from The Mikado and draws that mysterious symbol at the bottom of the page. The quote is obviously suggestive of suicide, so is it a suicide note (or a prelude to one)? Or is it intended as the symbolic suicide of the Zodiac persona, which the man behind the letters had created with the media’s help? The unexplained symbol could represent a new character he’s created, or a return to his “normal” personality. I think it was on the special features of the Zodiac DVD that Sharon Pagaling-Hagan gave her behavioral profile of Z and noted that she felt the Exorcist letter was symbolic of the Zodiac character’s death and that the Badlands letter was symbolic of his rebirth as “A citizen.” And I think she also said it was possible that Z had committed suicide sometime after the last of his ‘74 letters. I’ve probably cribbed a lot of this stuff from her analysis, truthfully. What I’m convinced of, though, is that there is more to the Exorcist letter than meets the eye. Perhaps something that could unmask him, given the proper context. So, thoughts? Opinions? Be gentle.

Symbols at bottom stenciling

Darla Jones — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 20:18:12 +0000

When I saw these symbols for the first time, I thought to myself, what is he stenciling? The more I look at it, the more it does seem like he was drawing in the blank spaces of something. It seems hard for the hand to be that steady in the one area where there are rounded edges going into other rounded edge parts. A pen that followed the outline of what ever it was that he put down on the paper would leave a mark like this.

Sullivan

Quicktrader — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:45:26 +0000

Hi, both, the Little-List-letter as well as the Exorcist-letter refer to Mikado by Gilbert/Sullivan. It should be considered, that those two letters had been sent approx. 3.5 years apart from each other. In my opinion this really weird, as nobody would usually refer to a theatre play twice over years. Even an actor would rather refer to another play he currently is into, if not again playing the same role (such as Koko). Indeed, both texts actually do refer to Koko's role, implying that IF Z was an actor he may have had played the role of Koko. In the Exorcist letter, Z mentions: Signed, yours truley: He plunged him self into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the sucides' grave titwillo titwillo titwillo Now there is another possibility - Z mentions 'Signed, yours truley', therefore 'signing' his comment about the exorcist movie. Usually someone 'signs' with his or her name. The text phrase ('He plunged himself..') itself, however, does not contain any name. One may think that he refers to a 'tomtit', what somehow appears to unlikely being a name. Or 'Koko', which would refer to his role in acting. A third possibility, however, is that it refers to Gilbert/Sullivan, therefore referring to his true name, which might have been 'Sullivan'. With our POI 'Ross Sullivan', this could also explain why the author had referred to this particular play twice over those 3.5 years. QT