Excellent analysis of the desktop compared to Zodac’s writing (created by Traveller1st)

This is moving on to compare the Bates letters and envelopes with the desk. I’ve decided to keep it all in the one thread as it was all part of the same piece of work.

Ok, here’s the easy bits first. I was always planning to eventually get to the riverside documents in relation to zodiac so I’ve had this starting point in mind and it’s the capital R’s.

Basically I think they are the same (changing this to similar). The interesting thing is that they aren’t the same across the 3 riverside envelopes. So either it’s just a coincidence that he disguised those the letter R’s in the course of trying to write differently or he was consciously aware that they were unique in and of themselves. The envelope that has the non matching R’s also has two R’s on it that don’t even match each other.

The R’s I’m comparing them with are from Zodiac envelopes. At a cursory glance I think I can show links to the envelopes and the desk and also more stuff connecting the envelopes to Zodiac. Will post when I can. The actual letters will prove more challenging, as you can imagine

This one turned out more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

Comparison of the bus bomb envelope with the confession envelope.

Points noticed.

1. Use of block angular capitals in both.
2. Use of non-angular capital S in both
3. S from back of bus bomb letter quite similar
4. Placement of calif identical when lined up as I have done here.
5. A lot of matching angles in SF CHRONICLE and ATT: CRIME

Comparison of the E’s on the confession letter against the E’s on the Paradice/Slaves thingy on the back of the Halloween card.

A green dot means a straight copy n’ paste and just re-sized.

A red dot means re-sized but also stretched horizontally to help show the similarities.

The similarities are on the arms/legs of the E’s. Their length in relation to each with the bottom predominately being the longest and also the spacing between them.

One of the Riverside envelopes compared with the desk poem. All are straight copy and paste and re-sized. The only one rotated was the ‘SS’. I point this out because as a straight lift even the writing angles match in most cases.

Oh it never ends lol. Ok, here’s the poem compared with one of the riverside letters. The one sent to Bate’s Father.

It never occurred to me that I’m basically matching shapes until I looked at this one. By that I mean, Up until now I had been matching letters to the same letters and words to the same words. Due to the craziness of the printing in these, that was more difficult but I noticed matches in the shape of construction of certain letters that were similar to the construction of letters that weren’t the same letter.

i.e In this you will see a letterform under the n in the top row and the same letterform under two of the h’s in the poem. That letterform is actually the letter r from the riverside letter. You will also see a letterform paired to the e in red in the poem, that letterform is an e but I have also paired it with the c in the word cut as the construction shape matches. I have also used the looping M and cut it and flipped it to show similarity of the creation of that shape in the creation of the w’s in the poem.

There is also some baseline similarities in that the letter displays a similar inter-word drop down and level out (indicated in red).

The e’s are represented by e’s you’ll be glad to hear lol. The d’s, of course the same, and you dill notice that the similarity in the d’s comes from the ascender as it kinks slightly as it rises away from the bottom of the letterform before continuing on which from a distance gives the ascender a slightly curved appearance.

One final thing regarding the letters. As chaotic as they appear to be in their construction I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I have over-layed all 3 letters and you can see that, even though they don’t line up perfectly, they roughly follow the same layout construction. Even the one to Bate’s Father, which was worded differently. This says to me that he thought about how to make his writing look crazy and when he decided he was happy with it, he duplicated the approach for all three letters.

Here is the desktop from the movie "Zodiac". While it is a prop, I have every confidence it is like the original. In the documentary, they talk about how they tried to replicate everything as closely as possible.

And a photo from Cheri’s high school yearbook:

Very cool T. Thanks for posting.

It’s quite interesting actually that at a distance it looks pretty good but once you start looking closely at it the shape of the letters are different. They should have taken a to scale print out and covered the back in graphite to trace an exact copy onto the desk and then go over it in pen. But that’s just a technical aside. What I find interesting is the comment/query "Morrill got a handwriting match off wood?" as it was put in the Fincher movie but just the fact that the doubt was floating around about how possible it was. Well here we have an example of someone trying to copy the writing style of the original on the same material but doing it freehand and you CAN see the the differences showing through because it’s a different author. Just because you can’t test for things like pressure and paper manufacture and so on doesn’t mean that you can’t affect a reasonably accurate analysis on what you can compare IMHO.

Forgive my ignorance but was the original written in felt tip pen?For some some reason I always imagined it being scored into the wood with a ballpoint pen (as I did with many punk bands names on wooden desks at school)thats why I never give much credence to a writing match as its hard to form certain letters doing it that way.

Forgive my ignorance but was the original written in felt tip pen?For some some reason I always imagined it being scored into the wood with a ballpoint pen (as I did with many punk bands names on wooden desks at school)thats why I never give much credence to a writing match as its hard to form certain letters doing it that way.

It was a ballpoint Gort. I know what you’re saying about the ‘traditional’ approach to ‘scratching’ something into a desk. There can be certain altering factors though.

Firstly and obviously the surface of the desk and the desk itself. What grade of wood is it? There would be a marked difference in the ability to write on a hardwood desk vs a softwood desk. Then there’s the condition of the surface i.e what it’s been sealed with. A ballpoint would struggle to write anything at all on a varnished surface, that’s why you had to scratch into desks, to break through the varnish to the absorbent wood surface. Now the desk at RCC was reported to have been in storage, possibly because it was due a sand and resurface or it was just kept as a spare and had been replaced with newer one, I don’t know but I would say there’s a good chance that what ever the surface was or whatever condition it was in wasn’t such an impedance as would require more pressure and a ‘scratching’ rather than a ‘writing’ approach.

We can see that the desk has been written on rather than scratched. He had to go over some bits but I think enough of the desk allowed for natural enough writing for a comparison to be affected.

There’s also the pen as well. We don’t know what condition the pen was in or how good it was. Ballpoint pens vary depending on quality and even at that sometimes it’s pot luck. Maybe less so these days but I can remember using bp’s that struggled to write on paper never mind wood then you had the other one that allowed too much ink past the ball and you ended up with thick, wet sticky writing that took ages to dry.

Actually I’m now wonder if that’s what caused the smears. Would make sense. So in that instance you would have the added assistance of more ink being applied so it would help with the writing due to again, less pressure being needed and therefore more freedom to writing normally.

I could be mistaken, but I believe that I’ve read that the poem was on the bottom of the desk, which would be unvarnished.

-glurk

Thats correct

Forgive my ignorance but was the original written in felt tip pen?For some some reason I always imagined it being scored into the wood with a ballpoint pen (as I did with many punk bands names on wooden desks at school)thats why I never give much credence to a writing match as its hard to form certain letters doing it that way.

It was a ballpoint Gort. I know what you’re saying about the ‘traditional’ approach to ‘scratching’ something into a desk. There can be certain altering factors though.

Firstly and obviously the surface of the desk and the desk itself. What grade of wood is it? There would be a marked difference in the ability to write on a hardwood desk vs a softwood desk. Then there’s the condition of the surface i.e what it’s been sealed with. A ballpoint would struggle to write anything at all on a varnished surface, that’s why you had to scratch into desks, to break through the varnish to the absorbent wood surface. Now the desk at RCC was reported to have been in storage, possibly because it was due a sand and resurface or it was just kept as a spare and had been replaced with newer one, I don’t know but I would say there’s a good chance that what ever the surface was or whatever condition it was in wasn’t such an impedance as would require more pressure and a ‘scratching’ rather than a ‘writing’ approach.

We can see that the desk has been written on rather than scratched. He had to go over some bits but I think enough of the desk allowed for natural enough writing for a comparison to be affected.

There’s also the pen as well. We don’t know what condition the pen was in or how good it was. Ballpoint pens vary depending on quality and even at that sometimes it’s pot luck. Maybe less so these days but I can remember using bp’s that struggled to write on paper never mind wood then you had the other one that allowed too much ink past the ball and you ended up with thick, wet sticky writing that took ages to dry.

Actually I’m now wonder if that’s what caused the smears. Would make sense. So in that instance you would have the added assistance of more ink being applied so it would help with the writing due to again, less pressure being needed and therefore more freedom to writing normally.

Thanks Traveller I see what your saying.I also remember ballpoints many years ago that allowed too much ink past the ball like you say,it does look as if that was possibly the case here with the smears etc.Great comparison work by the way,very compelling!

As i said before, in regard’s to Bates being a Zodiac victim, there are two school’s of simple thought/belief. Group A. Believe Zodiac was responsible for Bates murder. Group B. Do not think Zodiac was responsible for Bates Death. I myself fall into the latter Group, Group B.

When the Police, using the media (Chronicle) said they did not believe Zodiac was responsible for the Lake Herman Murders, and said they would require more info from Zodiac to be convinced, Zodiac responded "Dear Editor. This is the Zodiac Speaking. In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I have had in Vallejo, I shall be very happy to supply even more material." And he went on to give very specific details of the scene and murder that only the killer could know. Zodiac never did this with Bates.
Also, Zodiac wrote in November of 69 that "To prove that I am the Zodiac, Ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my collecting of slaves." So Zodiac, in late 1969, is clearly stating that Lake Herman Road was his first kill. it wasn’t untill much later, in 1971, that Paul Avery had written an article in the Chronicle in which he claimed Zodiac possibly responsible for Bate’s murder that Zodiac actually took credit for it by saying "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my Riverside activity", and gave no mention of any details at all.

Anyway, i’ve just noticed something that i find interesting, maybe others won’t and will see it as trivial but, the desk top poem writer never uses capital letters, not even to print the initials at the end. That to me is odd seen as the letter writer uses all capital letters in the typed confession, and upper and lower case letters in other letters and envelopes. Is the writer of the desk top poem and the confession (and other letters) two different people?

Just a thought.

Some people’s typing habits may be different from their handwriting habits,but those are interesting things you have noted

Good spot Wc.

There’s something in the back of my mind, almost like a ‘writing on desks etiquette’, about writing either in all caps or all lowercase but rarely a mix. I think it was to do with surface resistance and established ink flow direction. If you were writing on a surface like a desk with a ballpoint, once and if you managed to get it going, you had to avoid any sharp changes in direction or this would disturb the ink flow. That’s why uppercase characters on desks are more often closer to ‘scratched in’ rather than written because the ink takes a while to get going after the sharp angle changes.

If you were writing in lowercase, it was easier to stay in lowercase as the ball and the inkflow have already established themselves as working with those movements, i.e more rounded motions. Using both upper and lowercase causes a more unreliable flow of ink. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, depending on the quality of the pen and the qualities of the surface, this could make a difference as to how you approach writing on wood.

So, I would consider the surface as a possible reason for the lack of uppercase characters.

Also,

The title starts with an uppercase and, as the rest of it is a poem, perhaps there’s a precedent in that area of literature for not using uppercase throughout certain poetic structures? The lowercase signature may be an extension of that to keep it ‘in style’

Some people’s typing habits may be different from their handwriting habits,but those are interesting things you have noted

Ty. When writing to Cheri’s Father, the author correctly capitalizes the name, Joseph Bates. The rest is in correct lower case. The confession envelope (printed with handwriting) is all capitalized, all except the letter i. The author of the poem does not capitalize anything, including his own (supposed) initials, r h.

This could, of course, just be the authour trying to throw the investigators, but that seems unliekly and would not make sense. Why would he author the poem in all lower case including initials, then use all capital letters in his typed ‘Confession’, as well as handwritten address on the envelope? Why would he write the poem, then try and disguise his hand by going from all lower case, to all upper case? Doesn’t make sense.

The author of that poem may have simply been a disturbed student, or someone who did it for a joke. I just can’t see why the killer would write that on the desk and risk having a library attendent see it after he leaves if he was known to any of the staff there. If he was not a student, then surely the same sort of thing will apply. If the staff see a man sitting at a desk, who doesn’t seem to belong or stands out as odd, maybe a bit older, then that would draw attention to him in itslef so writing that and having it found where he sat would only serve to allow a description of him to be given.

I think, obviously, Cheri’s killer was someone that knew her, (not necessarily meaning that she knew him, I think he may have admired/fantasized about her from a distance, stalked her maybe and thats how he knew her car), and was around her own age and didn’t look out of place in a Campus Library (she also felt comfortable enough to go with him into that ally, if he were, say 35-45 as Zodiac was often described, I doubt she would have gone with him into a dark, secluded Ally). The ‘Confession’ claim that her murder was payback for the times she rebuffed his advances is total rubbish IMO. I mean if he genuinely had been given the cold shouler by Cheri several times, or even once, then he isn’t going to admit that in a letter because that will just send LE to every one of Cheri’s frineds & family asking had she mentioned being asked out and being bugged by anyone in the last fews months and years? Odds are, if she had be approached several times by an unwanted admirer, she’d have told her friends "So an So asked be out again yesterday, he’s creepy’ etc.

Her murderer was probably similar in character to Zodiac, A loner who cannot communicate with Women, and so vents his rage on the very sex that, due to his own inadaquacies, he is unable to have relations with. (All speculation & opinion, i know. But it is the the most likely IMO)

WC-

I pointed this out earlier, but the poem was actually written on the bottom, underside of the desk. So it even being called a ‘desktop poem’ is misleading. Unless the teacher / librarian / custodian / whoever was going around looking at the bottom of each desk, it would not have been noticed.

-glurk