This is very interesting stuff. Mike r deserves some credit for using the correct methodology to narrow the field of potential suspects. Just don’t think that Mr X is the guy.

Druzer,

He sent it for the reason he sent many of his other letters. To be snarky and to show the police how much smarter he was than them.

Thanks for the reply Mike and I apologize if I came across as antagonistic when I described the equation as simple – I thought it was at the time. It is frustrating trying to discern the motivation of a scoundrel.

Ensuring publication seemed an essential element to all Zodiac communiqués although he was clearly not always successful in achieving coverage. One difference I see between the consistently self-serving Zodiac and this SLA author is that even though the idea of Z’s return emerged 4 days earlier the author must have known the anonymous letter would not necessarily be recognized as Zodiac greatly jeopardizing the chances of publication… but on the other hand the author likely spent only a few minutes on it. Whoever sent it, it is clear that we have spent more time thinking about it than they did.

I honestly don’t expect anyone to be interested enough to read the rest of this ramble but I need to write it before I can move on with my day!

One notion supporting the theory the Exorcist letter writer as the author of the SLA letter (pointed out on Richard’s site) lies in the unconfirmed yet compelling suggestion by Kevin Robert Brooks that the symbols at the bottom of Exorcist can be arranged to spell "To Kill". I find that difficult to believe and may favour another suggestion on Richard’s site that the author is evoking the graphic similarity to the "corrected K" section in the 340. At any rate they are both as interesting as the explanation that the design was intended (like the 340?) just to waste time.

Ultimately we have several possible coincidences to consider.
– A potential Zodiac letter (SLA) is sent within a week of a letter overtly implying Z authorship (Exorcist) mentioning Norse mythology (arguably a Z campaign theme) and both have handwriting and envelope design traits associated with Zodiac.
– Exorcist letter suggests a kill count of 37 + threat of doing something nasty if not published which would be 38 (the same figure threatened in the unpublished Dec 69 Fairfield letter)
– If Exorcist is Zodiac (and its design spells ‘to kill’) then it is remarkable that 4 days later someone else used the same phrase in a zodiac-like letter sent to the same paper.
– Someone not affiliated with the SLA sent this warning the day before SLA kidnap Hearst.
– An SLA hoax regarding SF killings was sent to the LA Times just prior to Feb 3, possibly before the Exorcist letter was published Jan 31st.

No conclusions here folks! Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this mystery is that unless a solid theory emerges linking Z with SLA the answer would surely not get us any closer to IDing the son of a gun. As always I blame Richard. Until tireless Richard mounted the horse that Z was still writing twelve years after this alleged correspondence I was quite content to believe that none of the 74 letters were Zodiac. Now I don’t know what to think. Thanks for the discussion everyone. Sorry for the rambler!

Hi,

Sure Richard. But just so everyone knows, you cast the first stone by telling everyone I KNEW for a fact that Z had not sent the SLA letter and also by questioning my motives for having it in my, book since knew that the letter was written by someone from the SLA. But you did not read my mind correctly. I’d appreciate if you refrain from these ad hominem attacks in the future. But we can draw a truce at this point. The funny thing is that before this discussion, I was not certain if Z had sent the SLA letter. But now that I’ve dug deeper, I feel more confident that he did.

Druzer,

I thought about it and have an even better explanation for you: By 1974, Zodiac may have felt some separation between himself and the time of the Zodiac crimes. He had already dropped more obscure Norse clues, like slaves in the afterlife, the bumerke on the Avery card and Odin’s cross. Since he was feeling a bit more confident and maybe more brazen (see my two bus bomb explanations for examples of KQ’s brazenness), he wanted to give a clue that was a bit more obvious.

From my own perspective, my suspect traveled for a significant part of the year in the 1960s and 1970s. He told me that face to face. So he may just have found himself in Los Angeles and saw the Feb 3 article that Coffee Time was skillfully able to find in the LA Times. So he decided to let out a little slack in his clues and gave us one that was more specific and that hit much closer to his Norse roots. He may have felt MORE comfortable by being out of the Bay Area when he did this because if the police ascribed the letter to being from him by the obvious handwriting match on the envelope, they might think he had moved to SoCal and started looking for him there.

So that may be the explanation you are looking for: a real clue to Norse culture that tres in all the more obscure ones but somewhat protects the killer, in that he trades the more specific info for the enhanced security of sending it from a new location that is safely outside the Bay Area.

This argument about the "Chinese" at the bottom of the Exorcist letter saying "TO KILL" is on very shaky ground.

Tom used to have an animation on his website that rearranged the gibberish into "LEIGH."

I can rearrange the gibberish if using the most prominent (capital) character as being a "K" into KJELL. It’s not that hard, really. But I don’t even go there in my book.

I am sure there are many, many, many other permutations for other suspects. So to say "if" it says "TO KILL" is a VERY BIG and unconvincing IF!!

Also, what is a two word phrase in Old Norse that an American is supposed to know that means "kill" for a crossword puzzle?

Mike

Thanks for your thoughts Mike. Something in this narrative is strange and coincidental but I can’t conclude which part! I think there are a lot of valid arguments here and I appreciate you taking the time to go through it.

Just look at the printing on the SLA envelope and ask yourself if it is Z’s. Sure looks like it to me. Why did someone else wait over 3 years or whatever to reproduce it AND bring up a not-too-subtle Norse reference?

Looks like Zodiac’s "Editor" on all 3 of the envelopes to me (RP, SLA and Dripping Pen posted by RG). I mean, I can totally understand why they thought he sent them. The content, the tone, the formatting. Modern scans would be nice.

Unrelated thought: If you remove the Exorcist letter from the equation, you have 3 "anonymous" 1974 (alleged) Zodiac letters.

3 July 31st letters to 3 newspapers, 3 parts of the 408, 3 newspaper names on the Pines card, 3 "Bates had to die" letters. Sure are a lot of 3s in this case.

Hi guys I’m back with you…

I checked more documents and found the document that stated the Slay letter was sent on the 3rd and received at the 4th. It was being used in this thread but there was no indication when this document was typed (that would have cleared a lot of discussion, lol)

Here it is:

As we all can see now the document was written on the 8th. So the info of the letter was known on the 8th so the letter itself could not have been postmarked on the 14th.
I was confused as well but now I hope the date discussion is now solved.

Greets,
Eduard

Hi Eduard,

The doc is from the 8th of MARCH, not February.

From your old pal…just keeping things real.

They are good though to be digging stuff up. Keep at it.

Richard,

I had not gone back and read your reply until just now. The whole point about qvale is that for 20 years people have been trying to prove that he’s not the Zodiac but nobody’s been able to come up with any convincing evidence that contradicts my case. I don’t have to Place him in Vallejo or Benicia on a specific date. That’s a bit much asking a person place a specific suspect at a specific place at a specific time 50 years ago. Give me a break.

Years ago a guy named Scott Bullock on Voigt’s site said that he was going to undertake a project to prove that I was a charlatan and a liar and that Cavalli wasn’t the Zodiac Killer. He was never heard from again. Where is his evidence? It doesn’t exist! People accuse me of "only looking for evidence that includes qvale." That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard in my life. You can’t going to a newspaper looking from year to year trying to find anything that has to do with qvale and say that you’re "only looking for evidence and includes him." How could you possibly know what the next article you read is going to say? It’s a joke. And if you think I found exclusionary evidence but covered it up then go look for it and everybody. I’ve looked high and low for ANY evidence and all I have found is evidence includes him.

As an example, when we spoke to Lindsey Robbins in September 2003 the first thing he said about Qvale was that there was "no way" it could be he who killed Stine. I was standing next to Jim eavesdropping on the phone call Jim was having and I thought I was finished kaput cooked. Lindsey said that he grew up with that family and he played with qvale’s kids, so wouldn’t he know if it was qvale or not stalking around Stine’s cab?

The only problem is that his belief system was built around one thing: that qvale never wore glasses because for all the time that Lindsey knew him he never saw him wearing glasses. Then we learned that Lindsey didn’t meet qvale until the 70s when he looked a lot different than he did in the 60s. After he learned that Qvale wore horn rimmed glasses in the 1960s, his tune changed immediately and when he saw qvale’s photo from the 1960s all of a sudden he changed his tune very fast and had a very visceral reaction to that photo. He said that only a fool say that qvale didn’t look like the sketch and like the man that killed Stine. And this was from a person who shortly before that was telling Jim that there was no way it could be Qvale. So I put myself out there and if he hadn’t asked Jim what about qvale Jim thought made him the Zodiac and if Jim had not replied that every photo we had of Qvale showed him wearing those horn-rimmed glasses I would have walked away that day thinking the qvale wasn’t zodiac. But luckily Lindsey asked that question and Jim told him about the glasses he wore and that’s what brought Lindsey around to the other side of the argument.

I extend the same offer to you as has been extended to people for the last 20 years. Find evidence that excludes Qvale as being the Zodiac Killer. I’ve tried because I’ve tried to find ANY AND ALL evidence about him not just inclusionary evidence but I haven’t stumbled across any exclusionary evidence. Scott Bullock seems to have tried and we never heard anything more from him. So knock yourself out. I’m not going to stop you. It’s just that everything I find about him ties him into the case including the profile and virtually everything about his life.

You’re not inventing the wheel here trying to say that "we should find evidence to exclude qvale."

What I can show is that he’s a person who liked to drive sports cars around on the back roads of the Bay Area. That provides him with the familiarity of these areas needed to be the zodiac irrespective of the fact that I can’t place him on Lake Herman Road at 11:15 pm on December 20, 1968, which would be an impossible task for any human being.

Richard,

I had not gone back and read your reply until just now. The whole point about qvale is that for 20 years people have been trying to prove that he’s not the Zodiac but nobody’s been able to come up with any convincing evidence that contradicts my case. I don’t have to Place him in Vallejo or Benicia on a specific date. That’s a bit much asking a person place a specific suspect at a specific place at a specific time 50 years ago. Give me a break.

Years ago a guy named Scott Bullock on Voigt’s site said that he was going to undertake a project to prove that I was a charlatan and a liar and that Cavalli wasn’t the Zodiac Killer. He was never heard from again. Where is his evidence? It doesn’t exist! People accuse me of "only looking for evidence that includes qvale." That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard in my life. You can’t going to a newspaper looking from year to year trying to find anything that has to do with qvale and say that you’re "only looking for evidence and includes him." How could you possibly know what the next article you read is going to say? It’s a joke. And if you think I found exclusionary evidence but covered it up then go look for it and everybody. I’ve looked high and low for ANY evidence and all I have found is evidence includes him.

As an example, when we spoke to Lindsey Robbins in September 2003 the first thing he said about Qvale was that there was "no way" it could be he who killed Stine. I was standing next to Jim eavesdropping on the phone call Jim was having and I thought I was finished kaput cooked. Lindsey said that he grew up with that family and he played with qvale’s kids, so wouldn’t he know if it was qvale or not stalking around Stine’s cab?

The only problem is that his belief system was built around one thing: that qvale never wore glasses because for all the time that Lindsey knew him he never saw him wearing glasses. Then we learned that Lindsey didn’t meet qvale until the 70s when he looked a lot different than he did in the 60s. After he learned that Qvale wore horn rimmed glasses in the 1960s, his tune changed immediately and when he saw qvale’s photo from the 1960s all of a sudden he changed his tune very fast and had a very visceral reaction to that photo. He said that only a fool say that qvale didn’t look like the sketch and like the man that killed Stine. And this was from a person who shortly before that was telling Jim that there was no way it could be Qvale. So I put myself out there and if he hadn’t asked Jim what about qvale Jim thought made him the Zodiac and if Jim had not replied that every photo we had of Qvale showed him wearing those horn-rimmed glasses I would have walked away that day thinking the qvale wasn’t zodiac. But luckily Lindsey asked that question and Jim told him about the glasses he wore and that’s what brought Lindsey around to the other side of the argument.

I extend the same offer to you as has been extended to people for the last 20 years. Find evidence that excludes Qvale as being the Zodiac Killer. I’ve tried because I’ve tried to find ANY AND ALL evidence about him not just inclusionary evidence but I haven’t stumbled across any exclusionary evidence. Scott Bullock seems to have tried and we never heard anything more from him. So knock yourself out. I’m not going to stop you. It’s just that everything I find about him ties him into the case including the profile and virtually everything about his life.

You’re not inventing the wheel here trying to say that "we should find evidence to exclude qvale."

What I can show is that he’s a person who liked to drive sports cars around on the back roads of the Bay Area. That provides him with the familiarity of these areas needed to be the zodiac irrespective of the fact that I can’t place him on Lake Herman Road at 11:15 pm on December 20, 1968, which would be an impossible task for any human being.

I apologize for not knowing much about your POI, Qvale. Can you post your “top ten reasons” why he is a good candidate? Maybe keeping it to two sentences each, so that people like me might understand better?

The burden of proof is the obligation on a party in a dispute to provide sufficient warrant for their position. The one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim. I am not making any claim on who Zodiac was, so have no obligation. I could realistically pick 10,000 men from the Bay Area with some, little or no circumstantial evidence and suggest they are the Zodiac Killer – then say to you – prove he isn’t the Zodiac Killer. You have already admitted it’s "a bit much asking a person place a specific suspect at a specific place at a specific time 50 years ago" , therefore it would be equally impossible for you to rule out any of my 10,000 suspects on the same reasoning. Therefore, the challenge you have presented to me is equally impossible – and quite frankly you know it. I know full well, that whatever I presented to you as an argument against Kjell Qvale would automatically be rejected. I have nothing against you Mike for having a suspect you truly believe in, but I also know that it is a pointless task trying to convince ardent supporters of certain suspects to dissuade themselves of that suspect. Which is why I don’t bother anymore. As I’ve stated many times before, if DNA is found over 10 Zodiac letters that doesn’t match Qvale, it will be his secretary that licked the stamps. But that eventuality will likely never be presented to you.