I posted it earlier in this thread:

viewtopic.php?p=52742#p52742

Thx, totally missed it somehow. I guess he got a good FBI copy?

-m

I was attempting to overlay the two versions of the Albany letter to see if I could pull any further details out in the cipher- the clean looking one from Lafferty’s book and the typical one we see. No matter how much tweaking I did, I was unable to get them to overlay in its entirety and then started to notice some differences that could not fully be explained by photocopying or printing effects. This leads me to believe Lafferty may not have had a good copy but rather tried to trace it.

The most obvious from the "bad" copy is the l in "below" (red arrows) and the beginning of the v in "victim" (blue arrows) are clearly shorter in Lafferty’s version. These, at least, seem to indicate he either did a bad clean up of the original, or traced it making some errors. There are also numerous flourishes apparent in the "bad" copy that do not repeat into his version- a hook at the end of the T in "START" (green arrows) and the downstroke in "But" (orange arrows). The downstroke, however, is left in "Better" in the same sentence, though is different in other places in the writing. The y in "you" also looks off to me. There are many other slight differences though some could be explained by the grainy photocopying artifacts.

As for the cipher, I question a lot of it as a result of this finding at least for the beginning characters that were redacted by the FBI. Any thoughts on this?

-m

That’s a great observation. I didn’t even think of the possibility Lafferty may have embellished the source material.

Here are some animations I whipped up of overlays of the FBI copy (in white) and Lafferty’s copy (in grey).

I didn’t get them to overlay exactly in the same spots (due to some variations and warping in the images). But it was good enough to notice some thickening in the pen strokes, perhaps indicating the embellishments you observed.

I think what it leads to is the potential for the bottom cipher in Lafferty’s version to have been embellished. I will just have to trust the FBI translation and assume they had a better copy for the majority of their decipherment though the FBI report says they were sent a photocopy and not the original. I assume the non-Lafferty version came from an FBI FOIA not included in the FBI "vault" information? Or maybe he did see the original NY copy? I don’t have his book to know.

I can FOIL NYS State Police and see if I can get a better copy given today’s technology, assuming the evidence wasn’t destroyed. Heck, maybe I can even get an unredacted copy that the FBI returned…

But in any case, the l and the v I mention above clearly show concern in Lafferty’s version, thus it makes me question some parts of the cipher:

The red arrow in the "bad" copy looks to be pointing toward a well rounded corner that is absent in Lafferty’s. I think it is hard to confirm it is the symbol used for N in the cipher- with such bad detail it looks like a box with a dot in it. The blue arrows also seem a questionable interpretation. The line extends down, and no bottom to the box shape is visible at all, though neither of these rule out they may be different symbols yet homophonic for N. Others to be called into question are symbol 5, maybe 6, 7, and 8, and symbol 4 is just odd.

-m

I think what it leads to is the potential for the bottom cipher in Lafferty’s version to have been embellished. I will just have to trust the FBI translation and assume they had a better copy for the majority of their decipherment though the FBI report says they were sent a photocopy and not the original. I assume the non-Lafferty version came from an FBI FOIA not included in the FBI "vault" information? Or maybe he did see the original NY copy? I don’t have his book to know.

I can FOIL NYS State Police and see if I can get a better copy given today’s technology, assuming the evidence wasn’t destroyed. Heck, maybe I can even get an unredacted copy that the FBI returned…

But in any case, the l and the v I mention above clearly show concern in Lafferty’s version, thus it makes me question some parts of the cipher:

The red arrow in the "bad" copy looks to be pointing toward a well rounded corner that is absent in Lafferty’s. I think it is hard to confirm it is the symbol used for N in the cipher- with such bad detail it looks like a box with a dot in it. The blue arrows also seem a questionable interpretation. The line extends down, and no bottom to the box shape is visible at all, though neither of these rule out they may be different symbols yet homophonic for N. Others to be called into question are symbol 5, maybe 6, 7, and 8, and symbol 4 is just odd.

-m

I already did that NY state police could not find anything related to this letter

Richard Grinell posted this cleaned up version

Richard Grinell posted this cleaned up version

Yes, I had stumbled onto that, but think it is nothing more than a clean up of the original which I traced to Voight, but he does not say how he got his hands on it (anyone know?). The FBI was sent a copy, and they in turn sent copies to CA LE so he may have gotten a 3rd-4th generation copy. My biggest issue with Grinnell’s cleaned up version isn’t so much in the text portion, but rather how the cipher detail was pulled out. Below I am putting a couple examples- the top being in the cipher where clearly some photocopy dots were left behind after cleanup. The other is just more evidence of the clean-up, a tad sloppy as the D was cut off.

I have sent a FOIL request to NYS Police so hopefully can get a better version and possibly even more of the full police report. We’ll see, it may have been destroyed.

-m

Couldn’t help but notice the timing of this;

"Flash forward 40 years to the most extensive manhunt in the history of the Adirondacks.

For 12 days in 1973, upstate New York was spellbound by reports of a vicious four-time killer loose in the mountains, escaping one dragnet search of the wilderness after another, eluding tracking dogs and hundreds of police.

Robert F. Garrow, who once lived in Albany, killed with a sadistic bent campers and others.

Each August day of the search a different Times Union reporter showed up at the scene in Hamilton County near the wilds of Speculator, where Garrow had tied a Schenectady teenage camper to a tree and stabbed him to death, touching off the search.

*************************************************************************************

I ran into this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f4c99pBi4g

This is from July, 1978, and mentions ones " knew" that Zodiac was Robert ________________. I wonder if there is anything to this as to be above Robert Garrow.

Has anyone else run into this information before??

****************************************

Reporters would check in with police at a command post, but then often found themselves near the center of police activity. While not directly involved with trying to flush Garrow out of the woods with which he was so familiar, reporters were nearby. Perhaps not as close to the action as Joe O’Heaney was, but far closer than a police reporter would get today.

Often, the press now learns of a crime by checking e-mail and finding a news release dispatched by a police agency’s public information officer.

In a stolen car, Garrow escaped by roaring through a roadblock in the Speculator-Indian Lake area. A troop car in hot pursuit lost a fan belt as Garrow sped off. Garrow ended up at his hometown of Witherbee. Police trailed the killer’s nephew, teenager David Mandy, who took food to his uncle in a thicket about a half-mile from the home, and Garrow was shot and captured by state Environmental Conservation Department Officer Hillary LeBlanc of Ballston Spa.

In September 1978, Garrow broke out of Fishkill State Prison by scaling a 15-foot barbed wire fence and eluded police for three days before he was killed in a gun battle with correction officers while still on prison grounds."

For those of you that don’t know, Garrow was convicted of a murder in which he told his victims something very similar to what z told his victims at Berryessa, that he was an escaped prisoner and was taking their car to Mexico, or something along those lines.

Here’s a bit;

"Garrow went over to the first tent he saw. He pointed his weapon at Carol Ann Malinowski and David Freeman who were still in their sleeping bag. "There was this couple in this tent," he said at trial, "they had no clothes on…I had my rifle with me and I asked them for some gas…I remember her putting her pants on…I don’t think she put a bra on, she didn’t have one." He soon rounded up all four campers at gunpoint and told them he wanted to siphon some gas out of their car. But Phil Domblewski objected. Garrow brandished his rifle and pointed it at the group. He marched them all into the woods. "I’ve killed before and I will again if I have to!" he told the frightened teenagers.

Garrow was physically a big man. He weighed 210 pounds and stood 5 feet 11 inches. He was larger and more intimidating than any of the campers. "Then is where everything, you know, all that pressure where I went berserk, I didn’t know what to do," he told the court later. Once he herded them into the woods, he tied them all to separate trees, out of sight of one another. "I remember having people tie each other up and, I don’t know which one tied which one up…the girl was tied up last," Garrow said. The terrified victims tried to reason with the stranger but Garrow seemed not to hear them. Domblewski especially refused to back down."

I had some articles about this, and recall the details and conversation went down similar to zodiacs at Berryessa, not saying there is a connection to z, but find it odd that while this guy that was from Albany was on the loose in Aug 73, a possible z cipher was mailed from Albany

Please check out what I wrote in the middle of a story about Robert F. Garrow, as a possible Zodiac, IN THE ABOVE MESSAGE FROM MORF.

Feather

A poster by the name of Ian (at zodiacciphers.com) suggested Richard Durst. Look at his double L’s and capital N. This is sure similar. The guy lived in Westchester, NY back then too. Later lived in "Eureka", CA. Maybe he liked to copy Zodiac’s stuff.

I very much don’t think the Albany letter was written by Zodiac.

A poster by the name of Ian (at zodiacciphers.com) suggested Richard Durst. Look at his double L’s and capital N. This is sure similar. The guy lived in Westchester, NY back then too. Later lived in "Eureka", CA. Maybe he liked to copy Zodiac’s stuff.

I very much don’t think the Albany letter was written by Zodiac.

I don’t see anything about this writing that looks like Zodiac’s. Please don’t fuel that guy’s theory that Durst was Zodiac

Since there is absolutely NOTHING to me about that Albany letter that makes me think Zodiac wrote it, I think someone else did, hence, why I think Durst’s writing looks like the Albany letter.

Could someone post the Albany letter and the Durst writing side-by-side? I’m too lazy, hahaha…

I don’t think EITHER writer was the Zodiac, but that writing certainly looks very similar in both!

-glurk