OBS… I am NOT saying that Bob Cordray is the Zodiac, I just think it is important to research him due to that the Zodiac apparently choose to use part of his strip in one of his possible communications.

In this link there is a picture of Robert "Bob" Cordray and his wife Barbara:
The computer I am using that I can’t post that photo so if somone else could do it I would be thnakfull

http://www.shastawildliferescue.com/history.html

Contributors Barbara and Bob Cordray

(This is where the photo is in the link, and if a mod could copy it and place it here, that would be great)

Prior to moving to North State, Barbara Cordray taught kindergarten for 25 years in Escondido while husband, Bob, successfully created two comic strips, “Smidgens” and “Alex In Wonderland.” When the Cordrays retired, they came to the Redding area to be close to family and to begin a new phase of their lives that revolved around a special connection with nature and wildlife. The Cordrays always had a special attachment to animals – from their dog, Pepper to their pampered mules, Joseph and Isaac, to their barn cat. Once settled on their 30 acre Kitty Hawk property, the Cordrays kindled their love of nature. A pond set amidst trees and meadows provided the perfect setting for their special connection with wildlife. Barbara passed in January of 2005, Bob in August of 2006.The mules have found a great home with lots of love and acreage and thanks to one of Shasta Wildlife’s volunteer’s, the Cordray’s beloved dog, Pepper, continues to enjoy a charmed life! With their generous support to Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation, the Cordray legacy will live on

Traveller1st would you please take a look at the handwriting ?

There wasn’t really a lot to work with and it was quite small. However. Whilst some of the letters will bear some similarities I wanted to concentrate on one where Zodiac seemed to have some consistency. To my eye Bob’s hand writing is too ‘squat’ even though it’s printing the dimensions are all off. This can be seen, I believe, when comparing the Uppercase M’s.

Z, in most cases, liked to use a relatively high midpoint for his M’s. The only instances where he doesn’t are on ‘one’ of the bates letters, the Halloween Card and the Badlands Card. In those cases he drops the middle to the baseline. (I know T, I know but it’s not that simple It really isn’t … trust me ).
Anyway, I hope that makes sense. I’ve tried to show it here. Bob’s mid point is above the baseline but falls short of Z’s most used midpoint average.

I also don’t like Bob’s R. Sorry Bob. lol.

Thanks you very much Traveller, great work as usual

I understand what you are saying, but I am not 100% in agreement.

I think (counting Zodiac’s "M" from the left) that Zodiac’s "M" nr : 6, 11, 13, 16 and 17 could IMO have been written by the same person as the first big "M" by BC.
By that I am absolutely not saying that I think it is a match, I would say as FBI do something to the effect; "we can’t say it is a match, but there are enough similaries so that we can not exclude the handwriting either"

I would also like to add that I kind of like BCs :

In panel 1: "To" "Jo" "s" "LL" "o" "-" "B"

In panel 2: "T" "wis" "to" "Jo" "S" "-" "B"

The issue we have a problem with here is scale and reference. We are restricted somewhat by only having images to work with. It is a lot easier for us to discount or consider handwriting when there are obvious differences or similarities to compare. When we have a limited exemplar to work with then it becomes a lot more difficult. There are however certain things that we can work with. The M in this case I feel is one of those things. The area that interests me is the relationship between the centre (the dip) and the outside ascender and descender (the legs).

In Bob’s M we have short legs and a dip that comes to the mid-point of those legs. This gives the character an overall ‘square’ shape.

In Zodiac’s his legs are quite long or tall if you prefer and his dip doesn’t come down all that far from the top so compared to the legs it’s baseline is well above the mid-point and consistently so. The only time this doesn’t happen he drops the baseline of the dip to the same baseline as the legs. Now everyone is free to argue that some of those M’s are ‘dubious’ in origin. That’s fine but the simple reality is that Bob’s M doesn’t match them either in that respect lol.

I have brought Bob’s M up to scale to make it easier to view the relationship between the dip and the legs. TBF the reality I suspect is that if we were to view it to scale even the difference in size and height compared to Z’s would be quite apparent. So….no. I’m just not seeing it. Even with a limited exemplar it seems there are sufficient and demonstrable differences and that’s just in one character.

Foreigner, where was this Guy living in 1968-74?

Foreigner, where was this Guy living in 1968-74?

I don’t know Morf, I have not been able to find any information concerning that period.

Robert Lee Cordray, cartoonist of Smidgens, was 6th cousin 3x removed to Darleen Ferrin.

Soze

Robert Lee Cordray, cartoonist of Smidgens, was 6th cousin 3x removed to Darleen Ferrin.

Soze

Soze, that’s funny! LOL

The Fk has always been speculated upon within this postcard. Some believe it may be somebody’s initials and Zodiac is responding to an article written by the said person, or possibly a police officer quoted in the article, as he had done in previous communications. Some believe it to possibly be his initials or an abbreviation of F@@k.
This postcard was the immediate correspondence after the Donna Lass disappearance. The family traveled to South Lake Tahoe from Sioux Falls, hired a private detective during the September of her disappearance and made appeals for information regarding Donna Lass. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article on September 26th 1970. Just nine days later Zodiac authored the ’13 Hole’ postcard. Was it a direct response to the family, designed in a disguised and subtle way, to intimate he knew the family a lot more than anyone could imagine. The addressed 1974 Christmas card may have borne this out.
"There are reports city police pig cops are closeing in on me. Frances Kukar, I’m crackproof. What is the price tag now?"

The Fk has always been speculated upon within this postcard. Some believe it may be somebody’s initials and Zodiac is responding to an article written by the said person, or possibly a police officer quoted in the article, as he had done in previous communications. Some believe it to possibly be his initials or an abbreviation of F@@k.

To my own thinking, I find it hard to see how the relevance of ‘Fk’ in this context could need a lot of speculation. A straightforward analysis, undertaken in a way that avoids or minimises ambiguities, is all that’s needed. It would go something like this:

[list=1]

We are therefore looking for the bigram ‘kF’ in the Z340 (with, as stated, ‘k’ representing the reversed ‘K’). There is only one occurrence of this, and it just happens to coincide with having as it’s first symbol that very ‘k’ which jumps out as being the only symbol that has undergone glaring ‘correction’, from an apparently original ‘K’.

Zodiac’s productions of his ciphers have always been written meticulously, whilst at the same time he has not been too bothered about errors in the actual selection of symbols or the underlying plaintext. This ‘correction’ is therefore quite deliberate, and must have been included to suggest that there is some important ‘starting point’ (clue) to the decoding of the cipher in and around this symbol. The ‘Fk’ on the 13-hole card is therefore merely reiterating his first clue (whatever that was), through again drawing our attention to this region of the cipher.

That’s pretty much it, really.

Somebody has probably already noticed and researched this before, but the cut-out date should be somewhat easy to find. I know that in the newspaper I grew up reading, they ALWAYS spelled out the name of the month. So, in this communication, using "Mon., Oct. 5, 1970" in that exact form, punctuation included, could be used to rule out certain newspapers as the source of the date cutout. It may not be enough to rule IN a particular newspaper, but until it’s been thoroughly researched we’ll never know.

I can’t figure out how to resize an image to upload it here. However, the Oakland Tribune has that exact same format, including punctuation and abbreviation.

I can’t figure out how to resize an image to upload it here. However, the Oakland Tribune has that exact same format, including punctuation and abbreviation.

So does the archived Sierra club minutes

I can’t figure out how to resize an image to upload it here. However, the Oakland Tribune has that exact same format, including punctuation and abbreviation.

I’ve played around with it and still can’t figure it out. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that the cutout was NOT from the Oakland Tribune (as much as I’d like it to be).