Sounds like Bell and Howell is now headquartered in Ann Arbor. Their longstanding division there is University Microfilms (UMI). Make of that what you will.
EDIT: Now headquartered in Durham, NC. Had moved to Ann Arbor in 2001.
They also had an Education Group that started in 1966. Hm.
In 1965, a year after the Walker murder (1964) and a year before the Bates murder (1966), the Boles family was killed.
On August 13, 1965, the Boles Family, a father, mother and two sons, were murdered in Crestline, California. The father was an aerospace engineer for Hughes Aircraft. Aside from making aircraft, Hughes Aircraft was involved with computers, the Defense Department, the space program and satellites.
Thus the Boles Family Murders would fit the possible pattern of "High Tech Murders", which could include Joyce Walker (November 26,1963, Manhattan Beach, Ca, employee at Space Technologies Laboratory, involved in missiles and spy satellites) Valerie Percy (Suburban Chicago, Sept. 16, 1966, father worked for Bell & Howell, maker of computer like business machines and cameras for military aircraft & space program), the Bricca Family (Suburban Cincinnati, Sept. 27, 1966, father Jerry Bricca was chemical engineer at Monsanto & Linda Bricca’s father owned company with Defense Dept. contracts), Sims Family (October 22, 1966, Florida, father was as press noted a "nationally recognized computer expert") and Robison Family (Michigan, June 25, 1966, father’s company was working on announced plan to clear forests near airports to build computerized warehouses for air cargo business). Cheri Bates father worked at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory.
Also of interest, the Boles Family Murders cabin in Crestline, Ca, is just 27 miles to the Bates murder scene in Riverside, ca, and 92 miles to the Joyce Walker murder site in Manhattan Beach, Ca. At the old ZKS board, Morf noted the Boles Family Murders in Crestline is also just 15 miles from San Bernardino, site of the school of Patricia Hautz and Zodiac POI or more likely possible classmate of Zodiac nicknamed "Zode" aka MLZ.
The Boles family were killed by .22 LR bullets, same types as used at possible Zodiac murder of Domingos & Edwards Santa Barbara 6/4/63, Zodius murder of Robison Family 6/25/68 and Zodiac murder of Faraday & Jensen 12/20/68. Police in the Boles case determined that the gun used had six right twists and grooves and the pistol used was most likely a High Standard, sold at Sears as a JC Higgins. Police in Zodius Robison Family Michigan murders on 6/25/68 and Zodiac Faraday & Jensen California murders on 12/20/68 also determined weapon used had six right twists and grooves, with police concluding the most likely pistol being used was also a JC Higgins.
Darlene Boles was found on top of one of her sons, and she either did this on purpose to shield her son or was placed on top of him. The female was also placed on top of the male in Domingos & Edwards, California 6/4/63, Bricca Family Murders, Ohio September 27, 1966 and Robison Family murders, Michigan 6/25/68.
Boles Family:
Boles Murder cabin in Crestline is 92 miles to Walker murder site in Manhattan Beach, and 27 miles to Bates murder site in Riverside:
Boles murder site in Crestline is 15 miles to San Bernardino, site of school of Patricia Hautz, probable writer of letter to press in Bates case, and "Zode", possible POI or more likely possible classmate of Zodiac. Info noted by Morf and graphic by Rand:
I note that It is interesting how many victims in some prominent unsolved murders have ties to computers, high tech, aerospace and/or defense industries.
The Boles father was an aerospace engineer for Hughes Aircraft, involved in high tech, aircraft, missiles, the space program and satellites.
When killed in 1964, Joyce Walker worked for Space Technologies Laboratory, involved in missiles and spy satellites. The father of Valerie Percy was CEO of of a high tech business machine and camera company that made equipment for spy planes. Percy was killed September 18, 1966. A week later the Bricca family was murdered, Jerry Bricca worked as a chemical engineer for Monsanto Chemical, and the father of Linda Bricca owned a company that did contract work for the Defense Department. The bodies of the Bricca family were found on September 27, 1966.
October 30, 1966 Cheri Jo Bates was murdered. Her father worked at a Naval Weapons facility.
I mean, perhaps 2% or less of the population would have worked in these industries? It seems odd that all of these victims would have such ties.
Placing the Boles Family Murders in perspective with other family and coed murders, most with high tech links, concentrated in the 1965 to 1968 time period specifically, and in the overall 1963 – 1969 time period generally.
June 4, 1963……………………….December 20, 1968
Domingos & Edwards………………Faraday & Jensen
Santa Barbara, California…………Vallejo, California
Gun 6 Right Twists……………….Gun 6 Right Twists
JC Higgins Pistol…………………JC Higgins Pistol
.22 LR……………………………22 LR
Super X Ammo…………………..Super X Ammo
August 13, 1965…………………..June 25, 1968
Boles Family……………………….Robison Family
Crestline, California………………Michigan
Gun 6 Right Twists……………….Gun 6 Right Twists
JC Higgins Pistol…………………JC Higgins Pistol
.22 LR…………………………..22 LR
Ammo Brand Unknown…………..Super X Ammo
MODERATOR
Correcting something:
The lunar missions involving Bell and Howell (and Hughes Aircraft) are Surveyor. The article I posted was not focused on Apollo, but on Surveyor, the unmanned missions to the moon that preceded Apollo. I’ll check to see if Bell and Howell had any Apollo involvement.
This report looks like it’s from the 1980s. If it were from the Sixties
It involves GIDEP, a cooperative data exchange service of reliability data among the services and industry partners. GIDEP was run at the NORCO facility, where Joseph Bates worked.
By the late 1950s, MED had acquired extensive information on the reliability of electronic and mechanical components. Consequently, MED was given responsibility for providing the contractors involved in the Fleet Ballistic Missile Weapons System, reliability data regarding components being considered for use in the Polaris missile. In 1959, this resulted in the establishment of Inter-service Data Exchange Program (IDEP.) IDEP was a cooperative effort of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the purpose of which was to reduce duplications in the testing being conducted by various contractors. By facilitating the sharing of test data on missile parts with defense contractors, IDEP served to eliminate duplications of components, and staff time, a huge cost to the nation’s defense efforts. ( http://www.gidep.org/about/opmanual/appen-g.pdf , Accessed 2015: 1)
In its initial form, IDEP’s sole responsibility was the ballistic missile program. While IDEP only had one data exchange, each service maintained its own management office. Over time, the number of participants in IDEP increased. Significant among these participants was NASA, which joined in 1965, and the Canadian Department of Defense, which joined in 1966. The addition of these organizations to IDEP led to a slight change in its name from the Independent Data Exchange Program to the Interagency Data Exchange Program. The program continued to grow as a result of mergers and the addition of new participants. By the end of the 1960s, over 130 industry contractors were on the distribution list for data indexes. (Ibid: 2) In 1968, GIDEP assumed the responsibility for or the collection and distribution of the hard copy calibration file previously maintained at Vandenberg Air Force Base
At this link for a 1984 report, it says TRW was contracted to handle some aspect of it for the Air Force. I’d like to know when that started.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a145470.pdf
Ballistic Missiles Office has subcontracted all GIDEP ALERT related efforts to TRW. All distribution and reporting within BMO is handled by TRW. Space Division has similarly contracted GIDEP related efforts to Aerospace, Inc.
I think this might be big.
According to this NASA history, TRW/STL and ITT worked together on communications satellite bids in the mid-1960s.
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4217/ch9.htm
However, in September 1962, Leonard Jaffe, director of the communications group under Stoller, suggested that a medium-altitude system similar to Telstar would be best.91 Then, on 25 February 1963, NASA announced its intention to concentrate on geostationary satellites. All of these opinions and decisions complicated Comsat’s task of selecting a satellite operating system.
The Comsat request for proposals received four responses in early February 1964. One design group consisted of AT&T teamed with RCA, while another had TRW teamed with ITT. Hughes and Philco individually submitted the other two proposals.92 Neither the Philco, the AT&T-RCA, nor the TRW-ITT proposal was for a geosynchronous system. Hughes had the only geosynchronous satellite proposal.
Still, no decision on the basic Comsat system had been made. Comsat had pushed forward with Early Bird (Intelsat I), an experimental operational system, and Intelsat II, the special-purpose system launched to provide NASA communications services. When Comsat granted the Early Bird geosynchronous contract to Hughes, the communications company also awarded two study contracts for medium-altitude-orbit satellites to two teams, AT&T-RCA and TRW-ITT.
We’ve never linked Joan Webster to the California series, Zodiac or SoCal. And we still haven’t specifically. But this does appear to link ITT, her father’s company to TRW/STL, which we have been discussing due to Joyce Walker. When did Mr. Webster work there?
This history is pretty dense to read. Hughes Aircraft won the bids for Intelsat 1 and 2. I think it says TRW won the bid for Intelsat 3.
Again, this doesn’t mean that Zodiac has anything to do with these companies. We’re just discussing possible links. Zodiac might or might not work at ITT or TRW. Or Hughes. Or McDonald’s.
From 1986:
I don’t know what this means in relation to Z, if anything. But here it is.
Applications of American Satellite/ITT World, ITT World for international multipurpose INTELSAT earth station at Vallejo, CA and to establish channels of communications.
Joan Webster’s father was a vice president at IT&T, in the defense division, in 1981 when his daughter was abducted and murdered. I do not know what year he started working for IT&T. That is very interesting that IT&T was involved in satellites.
Prior to his employment at IT&T, he worked at the CIA. So he may well have been involved in spy satellite technology on that end of it when he worked at the CIA.
MODERATOR
I’ve found this online reservoir of aircraft and aerospace industry yearbooks. You can see what each company was working on in the prior year.
https://www.aia-aerospace.org/wp-conten … R-BOOK.pdf
Here’s 1967 (for the year 1966).
https://www.aia-aerospace.org/wp-conten … R-BOOK.pdf
Anyone want an Oceanside office for Hughes, at least in 1966?
Total employment rose nearly 5,000 to more than 30,000 at the ten Hughes facilities in Culver City, Fullerton, Malibu, El Segundo, Canoga Park, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Oceanside and Newport Beach in California, and Tucson, Arizona
I guess that could be Hughes Tools Co. or other Hughes operation. For all I know, a lot of these defense contracting companies had facilities in Oceanside.
I looked up what office they had at Oceanside. If it’s what I just found, it’s going to be ….. interesting. I want to look into it a little more.
So I confirmed Hughes in Oceanside in a government report online. Hughes Aircraft owned a company called Vacuum Tube Products Inc. in Oceanside. Hughes Aircraft purchased the company in 1959.
Address in the 1950s: 506 S. Cleveland Street. This address is almost due east of where they found Ray Davis’ abandoned cab (400 block of S. Pacific Street, near an intersection with Pine Ct.). There’s a railyard in between, but even going around to the nearest road it’s only about a 1/2-mile walk, according to Google. I assume it’s shorter if you cut across the railyard between the two points. The address is also near the intersection with Washington Ave. which is interesting.
Address listed in the 1962 report: 2020 Short Street. Apparently that’s 2020 Oceanside Blvd. now. That site appears to be an industrial park now. It’s considerably further away from any Davis murder site. That 1962 report is at the actual time of the Ray Davis murder.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/291404.pdf
This is a 1952 brochure going into detail about the company (7 years before the Hughes purchase and 10 years before the murder).
http://www.one-electron.com/Archives/Tu … ochure.pdf
This is well before the murder. But it has some items that jump off the page:
– At that time – 10 years before the Davis murder and 7 years before purchase by Hughes – VTP only had 9 employees. So this is not a huge company at that time.
– Their staff had several engineers, it seems like electrical engineers.
– They made or sold or did something with machines that used cathode ray tubes, eventually used in radar screens, geiger counters, oscilliscopes, etc.
– They were already dealing with the cream of the crop of defense contractors, like Hughes, Convair, Bendix, etc.
– They were dealing with the US Navy.
– They were dealing with Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
– They were dealing with the National Bureau of Standards, which operated at the NORCO location on the west coast in 1952. A year later the Navy took over and it became NOLC. The brochure lists NBS in Washington, ftr.
– They were involved in spot welding. That sounds more exciting than it turns out to be. I’m not sure spot welding requires a full hood. It’s a small machine. I do wonder about Bulaw Welding and Bricca.
– There’s a picture that says "Hydrogen Firing – Brazing – Atomic Hydrogen Welding," which sounds ominous as heck.
Here’s additional company history:
Just dawning on me where the Bricca murder occurred. Circleville, Ohio. Just 10 years after the murder a series of letters began to be mailed to people in Circleville regarding their own personal lives and it continued on up to 1993. Just thought it interesting given the vet was pretty much drug through the mud. Not claiming he was innocent. Just saying.
Just dawning on me where the Bricca murder occurred. Circleville, Ohio. Just 10 years after the murder a series of letters began to be mailed to people in Circleville regarding their own personal lives and it continued on up to 1993. Just thought it interesting given the vet was pretty much drug through the mud. Not claiming he was innocent. Just saying.
The Bricca family were killed in suburban Cincinnati, in Hamilton County. Circleville is 100 miles away in Pickaway County.
I believe the vet was innocent. People, including some journalists, hypothesized an affair between Linda Bricca and the vet she worked for, but there was no solid evidence of an affair. And no evidence pointing to his guilt in the brutal triple murder.
When I was communicating with the Hamilton County Sheriff Major Crimes Squad, I asked the detective about the theory that the police essentially "know" who did it, this local vet, but can’t prove it. He told me that was false. He stated there was no evidence pointing to the vet, and the overkill brutal stabbings of husband, wife and child did not fit the pattern of a spurned lover, but fit more in line with a psychopath. He told me the sheriff’s department considers the Bricca case open, and there is no outstanding suspect. He thanked me for the info I provided on the Zodiac as a suspect in the Bricca case and possible ties between the Bricca murders and the Percy and Robison murders. He told me he found it particularly compelling that in the possible Zodiac case of Domingos & Edwards the killer put the body of the female on top of the male, as did the killer in the Robison family murders. He told me this matched what happened in the Bricca case, as the body of Linda was placed on top of Jerry, and that this was very rare behavior. He also mentioned the bindings in the D & E case and the Zodiac case of Hartnell & Shepard. He considered Zodiac a suspect worthy of further investigation in the Bricca case.
The HCSD Major Crimes Squad later put out a press release stating that they now considered Zodiac a suspect in the Bricca murders and would seek to compare DNA recovered from the Bricca house with any possible Zodiac suspect DNA, if any existed. At that time, none existed, but apparently it seems they now have or soon will have possible Zodiac DNA. So I plan to soon recontact the HCSD Major Crime Squad and let them know if this new discovery, so they can compare the Bricca crime scene DNA with the possible Zodiac DNA.
The link no longer works but you see the headline.
MODERATOR
Well that’s really odd. I got Circleville from somewhere. Geez. All red faced now.
A little more on VTP: This is a 1958 company catalog.
http://www.one-electron.com/Archives/Tu … atalog.pdf
It lists the Short Street address, further away from the crime scene. So the company either had moved away from the Cleveland Street location by then. Or they had two locations. I want to find out more about the Cleveland St. location.
Of the Midwest murders, The Robison case has the best case against a local suspect. If what the cops say is true. There’s no possibility, one would note, of testing the evidence. It does seem like there’s a lot of doubt among Z posters.
With Bricca, the case against the vet isn’t strong at all. The cops were obviously desperate for a suspect. In one article I read on Bricca and Dumler, a detective talks about how following the playbook leads to solving 85 percent of murders. The vet is an 85 percent answer to a 15 percent crime.
In the Sims case, the local suspects …… who knows? Some people think the case is strong. I can see why they might feel that way. But I’m pretty skeptical about it. You have to believe the word of a person who is very unreliable, and a story that came out after she got dumped by the accused. There’s a lot of weirdness going on there.
Did William Thoresen kill Valerie Percy? I don’t see much evidence. The case amounts to he lived nearby, he was the only local no-gooder in a wealthy community, and he probably killed people. He’s an easy magnet for whatever goes wrong in the neighborhood. It’s a lot like Arthur Leigh Allen, IMO, just with a lot less Percynchronicity. Thoresen probably did kill people, But they don’t seem to be compulsive thrill kills. They were for money or to stop people from testifying against him. Also, he’s always impeccably dressed. He doesn’t seem lik a mocassin sort of guy.
As far as the teenage burglar suspect and Percy …. that seems weak. Shades of William Heirens. Trying to pin a 15 percent crime on a local burglar.
Anyone looking for a weird proto-hippie military-industrial company located in Santa Barbara and owned by Hughes Aircraft?
I give you the Santa Barbara Research Center.
– Did fuze work for the Navy, which was a specialty of NOLC.
– Worked with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory system.
– Worked with NOLC, but the date on the website is given as 1967.
– Worked with infrared, an element in fuze work.
– This location was big on creating sensors for various things.
– developed sensors for the Surveyor 1 Spacecraft.
– Worked on satellites.
– Mentions some contact with ITT and TRW around 1960.
– Apparently around 1960, before Hughes really turned it into a company shop, it was really loosey-goosey, filled with smart guys with a streak of free spirit.
Keep in mind Vandenberg AFB was one of two places they found the lot number for the Gaviota Beach ammunition being sold. The other was a store in Santa Barbara. Or so the Internet tells me.
However, the location of this company is 25 miles from Gaviota Beach. That seems like a long way to drive. Vandenberg is 10 or so, and that seems a little long.
