Any thoughts on why the "letter" to Cheri’s dad was different from the others? "She", instead of "Bates"? And no "Z" signature. Incidentally, I have some thoughts re the "Z". I think it started out as an Aries astrological symbol and was, for some reason, altered to a "Z" Remember, Ramona High’s annual was titled "Aries". And, I suspect, few incoming frosh had a clue as to what Aries was. No doubt they asked and were told, by those older and wiser, that it was "A sign of the Zodiac".

If anything, the sign looks more like a lopsided Scorpio symbol than an Aries.

The ‘she’ may have been an attempt to give the letter to Cheri’s father a cruel, personal touch. No idea why it had no signature, though.

One thing is interesting with the Bates letters…this (modified) Z symbol does not necessarily represent ‘Zodiac’. It was much later when Z gave himself his name. Nevertheless did choose this letter/symbol as a signature..possibly representing another name starting with the letter ‘Z’.

QT

Isn’t that our squiggly "Z" symbol again in the Joe Bates letter? Right there, overdrawn on the "E"?

A couple good theories I have heard about the symbol at the bottom of the letters were that they are the initials MLZ all rolled into one in a combination (the initials of ‘ZODE’ from San Bernardino, and the other theory was that since there were 3 letters sent, that each one had a little number at the bottom so the author knew which one was which. By the way, mailing 3 different letters with the same message, to 3 different recipients,sounds familiar,doesn’t it? Of course it does, Zodiac did it in August,1969, (not a very common practice)just one more reason I have zero doubt that Z mailed these letters in the Bates case. In my mind, any valid Zodiac suspect lived in Riverside in 66-67

Isn’t that our squiggly "Z" symbol again in the Joe Bates letter? Right there, overdrawn on the "E"?

Yep noticed that earlier as well.

A couple good theories I have heard about the symbol at the bottom of the letters were that they are the initials MLZ all rolled into one in a combination (the initials of ‘ZODE’ from San Bernardino, and the other theory was that since there were 3 letters sent, that each one had a little number at the bottom so the author knew which one was which. By the way, mailing 3 different letters with the same message, to 3 different recipients,sounds familiar,doesn’t it? Of course it does, Zodiac did it in August,1969, (not a very common practice)just one more reason I have zero doubt that Z mailed these letters in the Bates case. In my mind, any valid Zodiac suspect lived in Riverside in 66-67

Didn’t have time earlier to post but you just posted what I wanted to say about the three letters mailed the same day to different places.That to me screams out Zodiac wrote the letters alone beside other facts.

A couple good theories I have heard about the symbol at the bottom of the letters were that they are the initials MLZ all rolled into one in a combination (the initials of ‘ZODE’ from San Bernardino, and the other theory was that since there were 3 letters sent, that each one had a little number at the bottom so the author knew which one was which. By the way, mailing 3 different letters with the same message, to 3 different recipients,sounds familiar,doesn’t it? Of course it does, Zodiac did it in August,1969, (not a very common practice)just one more reason I have zero doubt that Z mailed these letters in the Bates case. In my mind, any valid Zodiac suspect lived in Riverside in 66-67

Didn’t have time earlier to post but you just posted what I wanted to say about the three letters mailed the same day to different places.That to me screams out Zodiac wrote the letters alone beside other facts.

We are in agreement then. Throw in the confession letter, the misspelling of twitch(twich),and the use of the word ‘SHALL’ both match Zodiac, and scream Zodiac to me. I am confident that Zodiac mailed ALL of the Bates case letters. I am still on the fence about him killing Cheri, but lean towards YES. The fact Zodiac’s writing matches the desktop writing in my eyes(and according to Sherwood too)puts Zodiac inside RCC, close proximity to Cheri. Odds are, he was a student, teacher,janitor, etc in RCC. The problem is, we do not have a complete list of students and employees from RCC during the crucial 66-67 years. I have looked long and hard at her Ramona classmates,and was never to find anybody with those initials that moved to Vallejo (only two fellow students with different initials). Hell, as time permits, I might even take another stab at it. This time around, I have a 1970 Vallejo phonebook to work with too.

The thing about the Bates letters that gets me is that three were mailed and three were mailed the first time Zodiac appears.
Also the "voice" once again from the author. The verbage is familiar to me. Calling someone by their last name, making statements.
Here’s the bad news. Last night I watched a PBS Frontline show on CSI forensics, the real folks. Fingerprint analysis is useless. It is conducted by
human beings, who frequently get it wrong. In fact, they went back to the same examiners with matches they made, gave the examiners
another crime scenario, and 50% came back with no match after having previously matched them. There is no machine that compares fingerprints.
And handwriting is even worse in terms of subjectivity. Ballistics analysis as well, purely subject. In fact it is all junk science which we have been accepting in criminal trials as valid evidence for years. Scary. The only reliable evidence is DNA, which if mishandled can be useless as well.

Here is the good news, we have DNA evidence for Cheri Jo’s Killer, the hair in the blood on her hand, from the struggle with her killer.
And possible hits on the Timex watch, which appears to have been ripped off during a struggle.
The next trick then, is to tie this suspect to the Zodiac Killer and how…

The thing about the Bates letters that gets me is that three were mailed and three were mailed the first time Zodiac appears.
Also the "voice" once again from the author. The verbage is familiar to me. Calling someone by their last name, making statements.
Here’s the bad news. Last night I watched a PBS Frontline show on CSI forensics, the real folks. Fingerprint analysis is useless. It is conducted by
human beings, who frequently get it wrong. In fact, they went back to the same examiners with matches they made, gave the examiners
another crime scenario, and 50% came back with no match after having previously matched them. There is no machine that compares fingerprints.
And handwriting is even worse in terms of subjectivity. Ballistics analysis as well, purely subject. In fact it is all junk science which we have been accepting in criminal trials as valid evidence for years. Scary. The only reliable evidence is DNA, which if mishandled can be useless as well.

Here is the good news, we have DNA evidence for Cheri Jo’s Killer, the hair in the blood on her hand, from the struggle with her killer.
And possible hits on the Timex watch, which appears to have been ripped off during a struggle.
The next trick then, is to tie this suspect to the Zodiac Killer and how…

Some good points, and you are right, alot of stuff can be fouled up by humans. A couple things regarding ballistics, every gun barrell leaves it’s own fingerprint on a bullet when it fires it. Just like our own finger prints, no two guns in the world will have identical markings. That being said, I remember an unsolved mysteries show where a person was killed,and somehow, they found a gun in a man’s closet(dont remember the details). They tested it for ballistics,and got a match to the bullet that had killed the person. The gun owner swore that the gun had not been fired in ages, and never moved from it’s spot in the closet. He also verified he was the only one with access to it. Police never charged him, but suspected him. I read recently that there was an error in the ballistics report itself,and it turns out, his gun was not the murder weapon. Human error was to blame.
I had a similar situation years ago. I had an old Chevy Impala broken down and sitting in my parents yard here in NJ. It had not run in years, and I never took the plates off, just left it sitting. One day, I got a parking ticket mailed to my house from the city of Philadelphia for parking illegally with that Impala,and it included my plate # on the ticket. I had not been to Philadelphia in a while,and had never been there in that car. The first thing I thought of was that the plates had been stolen off my car. I ran out and checked, and was happy to find them still rusted onto the back of my car where they had been for years. I called up Philly and discovered somebody had made a typo someplace, andsimply been a digit off on the plate# when they entered it,thus giving me a ticket. Point is, human error is something that is always a possibility even when working with DNA and prints,or ballistics.

Human error is one thing,it can happen. Police ignorance or blinders (as we see in the Bates case)is something else altogether

Yep agreed about the letters and almost 100 % positive they are Z’s handwork. As for her murder yep also still on the fence but leaning towards he did it.

Isn’t that our squiggly "Z" symbol again in the Joe Bates letter? Right there, overdrawn on the "E"?

I’m not so sure about that, to me it looks more like the author almost slipped with disguising their handwriting and messed the ‘E’ up to hide something (not hide anything special mind you, just a ‘damn that looks like my normal ‘E’ moment).

As for the squiggle itself, I think there are too many valid permutations for anyone to really get to the bottom of it at this time. The best we can hope for is working out/finding out if the ‘Z’ aspect is in any way linked to Zodiac.

Slightly off topic but still relevant, I’ve often mulled over these letters in comparison to the desk poem. Now we obviously don’t know the year the desk poem was written other than prior to Dec 1966, but if it was written by Bates’s killer then it’s probable it wasn’t very old at the time of discovery. When i was at school I’m sure I did my fair share of desk carving but i would never have put my initials to something as noticable as a long poem, chances of capture and sever punishment would have been pretty high. So the author was either unusually keen to take credit, or the ‘rh’ is another symbol that just so happens to look like those 2 letters. Fast forward to the Bates letter and we again see the need to take credit for the letters with a ‘signature’, but this is notably missing from Joseph Bates’ letter. I’m not a psychologist but to me that indicates he knew the family and subconsciously took steps to distance himself from their letter (in a purely selfish way of course, not to spare the father’s feelings).
I’m not sure how useful that is but I think it does lend more weight to the links between the two writings.

We know the Bates Letter writer knew where Cheri Jo’s Dad lived and it was a veiled threat. Perhaps information Zodiac easily acquired after the murder, but noted
he knew where the Dad was, none the less. The problem is there is just not a lot of sample for a handwriting comparison with just these letters alone.
Zodiac is always telling us about his compulsion to kill, he is always threatening more murders, but wanting us to know about him, and asking us for help with his sub- conscience. Ding, ding, ding…same voice in these Bates letters. IMO

No mystery about Cheri’s Dad getting a letter, either the letter writer knew where Cheri lived already,or looked her dad up in the phonebook. The person that mailed the letter to him was a cold person looking to torment her Dad