2/?/1974 Zodiac's 'SLA' letter to the SF Chronicle - Zodiac Discussion Forum

Postmark of 2/14/74 mentioned twice in FBI files

morf13 — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 21:10:01 +0000

I have found at least 2 mentions of a 2/14/74 postmark for this letter in the FBI files.

Unless there is a big flat out mistake in the info shared between local police & FBI, the postmark on this letter was clearly 2/14/74, although if you closely, the bus bomb letter is marked incorrectly as April 20, 1969, so we know that this process is not perfect. If they made, 2, not just 1 mistake here in this memo regarding dates, that would say a lot about the state of things with the investigation back then

feb14.png

SLA LETTER NOT BY SLA

mike_r — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 07:02:01 +0000

The Zodiac killer sent well over a dozen letters and greeting cards to the press. Most of these letters have visible and identifiable postmarks on them. It is one that has no visible postmark on it that is causing the most controversy as to both its author and origin. I think that everyone can agree that the so-called "SLA" letter was received by the San Francisco Chronicle on February 14, 1974. That much we know. What we do not know is either when or from where it was sent. This is where Zodiac researcher Richard Grinnell comes in. Grinnell located an FBI document alleging that the envelope that contained the letter was postmarked in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles on February 3, 1974, a day before the famous kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst in Berkeley, nearly 400 miles to the north. From these facts, as well as by using a letter allegedly sent by an SLA member to Randolph Hearst, the father of Patty Hearst, Grinnell alleges that the SLA letter was not written by Zodiac but by a member of the SLA itself. After all, the final shootout between the SLA and the authorities took place in a suburb of Los Angeles, Compton, CA. So the group had definite ties to the Los Angeles area where the SLA letter was mailed in February 1974. Or did it? Maybe Grinnell has not done his homework. Let's take a look at what my research into this allegation has uncovered. I have been told that I have to accept that the SLA letter was, in fact, postmarked in Los Angeles in early February. This is despite the fact that there is no postmark whatsoever visible on the letter. I have also been told that this letter was sent by the SLA and that in attributing it to Zodiac I am "pushing a false agenda" that the Norse reference in that letter fits in with other Norse references in the Zodiac case, like Odin's cross, slaves in the afterlife, etc. Here are some facts and observations: If the SLA letter was postmarked in Los Angeles, someone has to explain why it took 11 days to reach the Chronicle on February 14th. The current Postmaster General, Mr. De Joy, was not in charge of the postal service in those days and the mail did not move that slowly. There was also no pony express at that time that I know of. So why did it take so long to arrive? Kathy Soliah, who was of Norwegian extraction, and who would be the most likely person associated with the SLA to have been familiar with Old Norse (Hey, try to ask her yourself if she wrote the SLA letter. I did last year, but sadly she never replied.), was not yet a member of the SLA in February 1974, according to a former SLA member, with whom I exchanged emails. She did not join until after five of the core members were killed in May 1974 in Compton, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles. And at any rate, Soliah was not from SoCal but from Berkeley. So once again, if not Soliah, who wrote the SLA letter? Also according to this former member, the SLA HAD NO PRESENCE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA UNTIL MAY OF 1974. This is crucial to understand. So not only who from the SLA wrote the SLA letter, but who mailed it? Who from the SLA had ties to Los Angeles at that time? Apparently, nobody. This question is for people like Grinnell to contemplate. All eight of the the non-incarcerated members of the SLA as of February 3, 1974 (DeFreeze, Atwood, Perry, Wolfe, the two Harrises, Hall and Mizmoon) were preparing to kidnap Patricia Hearst the next day, February 4th. My PRESUMPTION is that they were all in Berkeley planning the mission not mailing a letter in Los Angeles and then driving 400 miles to rejoin their comrades. So again, who from the SLA was even in Los Angeles? All eight members were, for all intents and purposes, accounted for. I've learned through research that Patty Hearst was originally taken hostage in order to try to effect a "prisoner exchange" between the SLA and California officials, in order to get two imprisoned members, Russell Little and Joseph Remiro, freed from Vacaville. So why would the group want to write a snarky, smart-ass letter that served them no purpose by characterizing themselves as "a bunch of killers" (i.e., SLA means "kill" in Old Norse; killing is therefore synonymous with the SLA) and make the police and FBI redouble their efforts to free Hearst? (Note: The group had admittedly already killed School Chancellor Marcus Foster of Oakland in November 1973, so they were "killers." However, why call attention to that fact if you wanted to effect a prisoner swap? The situation had changed and the motives of the SLA had evolved by February 1974. Calling themselves "killers" would have been counterproductive to their own purposes at that point in time.) On February 10, 1974, someone allegedly from the SLA sent a letter to Patty Hearst's father expressing her alleged remorse over the kidnapping. That letter was, like the SLA letter of February 3rd, signed with "a friend." This supposedly seals the deal and proves that the SLA letter was penned by the group. However, signing an anonymous letter "a friend" is a very common way to end an anonymous missive. Also, the Hearst letter and envelope are typed. The SLA letter and envelope are hand printed. The Hearst letter is signed "A friend." The SLA "a friend." Had both been signed "ferocious flamboyant friend," or something else unique like that, then it might have meant something more. However, in light of the more important fact that nobody from the SLA can be placed in Los Angeles to mail the letter, the interest in the similar "friend" signatures on the letter pales in comparison. My source from the SLA stated on August 18, 2020, "There is no connection between the SLA and the Zodiac killer." That pretty much sums it up. Whoever Zodiac was, he certainly was not a member of the SLA. The SLA was not formed until the end of the summer of 1973. They did not even exist in 1969 when letters started being sent by Zodiac. Of the male members, DeFreeze was black, Wolfe was only 17 in 1968 and living on the east coast, Remiro was 21 in 1968 and at any rate was imprisoned when the SLA letter was sent. Bill Harris was 23 in 1969 and arguably could have been Zodiac. I don't know enough about him yet to say if he was in the Bay Area in 1968 when Zodiac claimed his first victims. Harris was likely in Berkeley on February 3, 1974. But if he was Zodiac, begin amassing the evidence against him and prove it! Envelopes: This is where the rubber truly meets the road in this discussion and where we can see that it is unlikely that anyone but Zodiac wrote the SLA letter. When you look at the hand printing on the SLA letter in a vacuum, it certainly does not jump off the page to me that it was penned by Zodiac. But when you take a close look at the envelope, that is a different story. Here are several envelopes from Zodiac letters: http://www.zodiackiller.com/StineEnvelope.html http://www.zodiackiller.com/340Envelope.html http://www.zodiackiller.com/BombEnvelope.html http://www.zodiackiller.com/JohnsEnvelope.html and SLA: http://www.zodiackiller.com/SLAEnvelope.html It's hard to look at these envelopes and not see the similarities. And note that the November 8, 1969 envelope contained a piece of Stine's shirt, thus proving its authorship as being from Zodiac. So either all of these letters were written by Zodiac, or Zodiac was part of the SLA. Or someone from the SLA either copied the handwriting of Zodiac for the SLA letter for some unknown reason. But remember, the SLA was not in Los Angeles in February 1974. Furthermore, here is a quote from the ex-member: " You are correct. There is no connection between the SLA and the Zodiac killer. And the SLA had no connection to LA until after they left SF with Hearst." There it is in black and white. So the evidence seems to show that, regardless of the timing and his reason for being in Los Angeles on February 3, 1974 (assuming that the letter was posted from there on that date), it was, in fact, the Zodiac killer who sent the SLA letter, not the SLA itself, which, once again, would not have benefitted from its contents. Nor is there any reason why they would have benefitted from imitating Zodiac's handwriting on the envelope but not attributing the enclosed later to him. The fact that a letter took eleven days to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco is suspicious. Given the fact that there is no postmark on the SLA that is in the public domain, it is impossible to verify with the FBI said about it. Again, there was no SLA presence in Los Angeles in early February 1974. All of the members seem to have been accounted for in NorCal preparing for the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. The letter did not serve the ends of the SLA. It simply makes no sense that they would have and even could have sent it. I believe this is an example of an otherwise well-intentioned researcher not taking his research far enough, or speaking to the right people, to get to the facts that were necessary to better resolve the issue. Again, nobody from the SLA was the Zodiac killer, and the SLA was not even L.A. in Feb. 1974. Period. The only other explanation for the SLA letter that might make sense is if Kathy Soliah, who had Norwegian roots, while not yet a member of the SLA in February 1974, and who began supporting the group on some unknown date, may have been in Los Angeles at the time (remember she was from Berkeley, 400 miles north) and wrote and sent the letter. But this would not explain why she would have made an effort to imitate the handwriting of the Zodiac killer on the envelope. So it seems an equally unlikely scenario until proven otherwise. To summarize, the hand printing on the SLA matches the printing on other known Zodiac letters from well before the SLA was even formed. Kathy Soliah, according to someone who knew her, would not have written the SLA letter. There is not even a shred of proof that she was in Los Angeles in early February 1974. Zodiac was not a member of the SLA, according to someone who was a member of the group. Therefore, that leaves us with one logical conclusion to reach: The Zodiac killer wrote the SLA letter, and if it was posted in Los Angeles on February 3, 1974, he must have been there for a business meeting or some other function on that day. And if someone else from Los Angeles penned that letter, it is yet to be explained why he copied the handwriting of the Zodiac killer on the envelope without indicating anywhere in the letter, if his goal was to pin it on Zodiac, that the Zodiac killer was even the author of the SLA letter! The more obvious way to pin the SLA letter on Zodiac would have been to come out and say it was written by him in the letter or to at least put a crossed-circle signature on the letter, not to copy the handwriting on the envelope and expect someone to figure it out! The SLA letter, therefore, seems to be exactly what it appears to be, a snarky letter from Zodiac once again trying to show everyone how smart he was and how dumb everyone else was. He knew something you didn't. And what he knew was in Old Norse, which suggests the Zodiac had Norwegian roots. It was not, as some apparently believe, the SLA branding itself as a bunch of killers the day before they kidnapped Patty Hearst. Finally, Grinnell found handwriting links between the envelope of the SLA letter and the Count Marco letter, saying that since the SLA letter was written by a member of the SLA that the Count Marco letter must also been written by someone from the SLA. However, my research has proven that the SLA letter was most likely written by the Zodiac Killer. Therefore, the Count Marco letter was also likely written by the Zodiac, as well. I therefore am not the one pushing a "false agenda." In looking only at the Count Marco envelope but not comparing the SLA envelope to the earlier Zodiac envelopes seems to suggest an agenda of proving the SLA letter was written by someone other than Zodiac. Again: 1)The SLA had absolutely no presence in Los Angeles in early February 1974. 2)A former member of the group says that the Zodiac Killer was not a member of the SLA. And in order for that to be true, based on the nearly identical handwriting that appeared on several envelopes, he would have had to have been Zodiac before the SLA even existed. Mike

S.L.A. letter not Zodiac

Richard Grinell — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 18:50:39 +0000

Having visited this site for many years and used many letters and documents secured by diligent researchers on this site, for which I am very grateful, I thought I should place this document regarding the Symbionese Liberation Army the other way. The problem with the S.L.A envelope is that it's an nth generation reproduction, so the postmark is less than clear, but the FBI files clearly state it was mailed one day before the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, on February 3rd 1974, from Los Angeles County (somewhere Zodiac had never previously mailed any correspondence from). The FBI files state : Qc64 Photocopy of envelope postmarked "U.S. Postal Service, CA 913 PM 3 FEB 1974", bearing the hand printed address "Editor San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco, California". Qc65 Accompanying photocopy of sheet of paper bearing the hand printed message beginning "Dear Mr. Editor, Did you know that the....." Just one week after the February 3rd 1974 S.L.A. letter (which began with Dear and ended with a friend), on February 10th 1974, a Symbionese Liberation Army letter was mailed to the Hearst Family or FBI, beginning and ending in exactly the same fashion. So, we are left with two options: Zodiac suddenly appeared after 3 years and just happened to write a letter about the Symbionese Liberation Army, one day before the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst - which would be an amazing coincidence, or The Symbionese Liberation Army wrote the S.L.A letter, one day before the kidnapping. The February 10th 1974 letter from the Symbionese Liberation Army, should be proof positive, they were also responsible for the February 3rd 1974 letter, mailed just before the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst. The 'Hearst Family' letter may have been authored by Sara Jane Olson (born Kathleen Ann Soliah), who could also be responsible for the S.L.A letter mailed from Los Angeles (913) just a week earlier, on February 3rd 1974. She was closely affiliated to the Symbionese Liberation Army. The "Old Norse" element of the letter drawn from her Norwegian-American ancestry.

Possible meaning of SLA letter

JGOLD — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 16:37:45 +0000

My take on the SLA letter. I think this is what the zodiac meant. All his letters I found had clues and possible meanings to them.

"Lake Berryessa Mystery Killing," Feb. 13th

Coffee Time — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 00:05:51 +0000

I'm slowly clicking through the Vallejo Times-Herald archives from 1974, this is my 2nd find that lines up with one of the letters. Online sources say the SLA letter was sent or received on February 14th.

Old Norse

morf13 — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:51:34 +0000

Been some discussion about 'old Norse',so I wanted to start a thread about it. Just posting one little think I found interesting.Did Z learn this factoid from a newspaper Editor? Or,was he a newspaper Editor spilling factoids to his readers?

Symbionese Liberation Army

ophion1031 — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:31:36 +0000

A thread to take a closer look at the Symbionese Liberation Army itself. Was Zodiac a member of this radical group? The SLA was not as recognized as most of the other radical organizations of the era, but Zodiac obviously knew of them. This group , formed in Berkeley 1971 by Russell Little and Robyn Sue Steiner, was made up of mostly middle and upper class white folks.

Marking after the letters SLA

vasa croe — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:55:37 +0000

So there is a marking that I guess could be perceived as a "Y" after the letters SLA written with the abbreviation spelled out in parentheses after it. Has this been determined to be a "Y" conclusively or are there any other thoughts on it? I was looking at the Exorcist letter and the particular way that the character is drawn after the SLA initials seems very much like the characters drawn in the Exorcist letter. It is also not written in the same manner as the "Y" at the end of "Army", which makes me think that it may not be intended to be a "Y".

February, 1974 'SLA' letter to SF Chronicle PHOTOS

morf13 — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:22:45 +0000