I started to say trav but, again, something told me glurk. Not sure why.
Soze

I may have mentioned stuff like this before. In the case of this letter, I doubt that the number of underscores matters, but sometimes with typed redacted documents, counting the spacing can help to figure out what names might fit, or be too long, or too short. It can be helpful to look at, once in a while.

-glurk

I started to say trav but, again, something told me glurk. Not sure why.
Soze

. . . but sometimes with typed redacted documents, counting the spacing can help to figure out what names might fit, or be too long, or too short.

-glurk

That’s why I was thinking of you.

This letter/typed redacted, to me, are no different really. There is no visible name in place and your still counting the spaces either way. I don’t have a problem with anyone doing either but neither are at the top of my list of things to do in this case, unless the redacted information shows traces of a word like it was for Crow in the Jensen case. Makes things a little different.

Soze

I’m a newbie to the case so I’m starting back up this old thread because it fits hahaha.

The thing that bothers me most about the confession letter is it doesn’t match the scene. I haven’t read any of the police reports, but the Inside Detective article mentions CJB’s car windows were down and her books/term paper were inside. Her brother (?) also mentions how much she loved that car. It seems odd that she would leave the car in that state if she was walking home with someone with no intentions of returning that night. This leads me to believe either her killer overpowered her in the parking lot once she exited the car to investigate why it wasn’t starting, or the killer was or posed as an authority figure, including possibly a school employee, to get her to leave with him.

I’m a newbie to the case so I’m starting back up this old thread because it fits hahaha.

The thing that bothers me most about the confession letter is it doesn’t match the scene. I haven’t read any of the police reports, but the Inside Detective article mentions CJB’s car windows were down and her books/term paper were inside. Her brother (?) also mentions how much she loved that car. It seems odd that she would leave the car in that state if she was walking home with someone with no intentions of returning that night. This leads me to believe either her killer overpowered her in the parking lot once she exited the car to investigate why it wasn’t starting, or the killer was or posed as an authority figure, including possibly a school employee, to get her to leave with him.

Well he is lying a lot because we also know she fought back and hurt him.

Read the Zodiac profile in John Douglas book "The Cases That Still Haunt Us". He dissects The Confession letter better than anything I have read elsewhere and the insights answer your questions and more. Basically her assailant is a 100% stranger killer and that is established both at the start and the end of the letter despite the writer alluding to knowing her.

Since her assailant was left bleeding, the car scene in unlikely to be staged because that means her assailant would have to clean up first. The staging would be done to make it seem like she left somewhere she never did. So while I keep this in mind I think the lack of reported blood evidence near her or on her car is consistent with it not being staged after the event. He would have left blood there IMO.

There is blood at the start of the alley and a blood trail leading to a highly scuffled area where a fight took place. Bates fought back. It is believed he left the blood trail during his escape telling us which way he went.

One thing is that her car is not as far away as one might think and was partially visible from part of the alley apparently. So it is feasible she may have tried to quickly chase after some people back at the library when her car failed to start. Just ran up the road a bit to see if she could still see them to call out and met up with the "Good Samaritan" who happens to be Mr. Fix it but abducts and murders her instead.

Anyway the abduction scenario seems the most viable. He probably did the Lake Berryessa all over again. I just want your car and money, come with me so I can leave you over here and make my getaway.

Yeah lies and obfusication are a big part of the letters. And the letters give the impression Z/CJBs killer had a serious Napoleon complex. But something about this letter just seems…off. even for a confession letter from a murderer.

Most of the letter describes the crime differently than the scene, but the whole car thing, to me, really turns the MO on its head. Based on the fact no one remembers Cheri being in the library after 6:30, and the witness sees the cigarette smoking man around 9:30, I’m thinking there are two possible scenarios:

1.) The killer was trolling the location specifically, knew the library closed at 9, saw a lone car in the parking lot, disabled the distributor, and laid in wait

2.) The killer was stalking Cheri specifically, saw her leave the library and walk/catch a ride with someone else. They knew the Bug belonged to Cheri and knew she would be returning within a few hours and waited for her

Yeah lies and obfusication are a big part of the letters. And the letters give the impression Z/CJBs killer had a serious Napoleon complex. But something about this letter just seems…off. even for a confession letter from a murderer.

Most of the letter describes the crime differently than the scene, but the whole car thing, to me, really turns the MO on its head. Based on the fact no one remembers Cheri being in the library after 6:30, and the witness sees the cigarette smoking man around 9:30, I’m thinking there are two possible scenarios:

1.) The killer was trolling the location specifically, knew the library closed at 9, saw a lone car in the parking lot, disabled the distributor, and laid in wait

2.) The killer was stalking Cheri specifically, saw her leave the library and walk/catch a ride with someone else. They knew the Bug belonged to Cheri and knew she would be returning within a few hours and waited for her

There is stuff unexplained in the reconstruction in particular the person you talked about and a car. That car appears to be something they may have tracked following CJB to the library with other witnesses. Which means CJB was stalked at least prior to arriving. There is a newspaper piece on a bearded man being sought also.

I actually have no explanation for the smoking man being there if connected in some way unless he was watching out for someone else. Yet he didn’t seem disturbed by the witness who greeted him. Let himself be seen. Odd one. He is supposed to be wounded if he is the killer.

I think the car following her is probably an important connection they originally sought after. She attended Church that morning with her father so was out and could have been observed quite early by the stalker.

He gave up quite a bit at the crime scene. Prints, footwear and watch. It might be possible the smoking guy was out with the lighter looking for his belongings after coming back. That would mean he was waiting around even after he murdered her or actually turned back to go to the crime scene again. Yet what is a guy obviously wounded and bleeding doing standing there smoking like nothing just happened. Very odd. A man standing somewhere smoking. A murderer elsewhere cutting a victims throat. A witness passing by. Do you know what scene that resembles?

Whitechapel, 1888, Elizabeth Stride, throat slashed, attacker seen by a witness as well as a smoking man standing nearby. Smoking man followed the witness. The witness was named Israel Schwart I believe.

Jack the Ripper letters are obviously an inspiration behind the Zodiac and form any detailed profile of him regardless of it we think the JtR letters are a hoax or not. The inspiration is obviously there for the Zodiac. The need to use a knife at Berryessa was a likely a desire stemming from reading about JtR. The problem is the Zodiac was not a picquerist or sexual sadist and so didn’t understand JtR was using his knife as compensation for of his sexual issues. I think that is why he was nervous, the stabbing frenzied and failed to kill one target. He just wanted to copy JtR in some way and with a knife. Strange for someone so experienced after the CJB murder. He did learn to tie them up first. I think that is the lesson he learned following CJB fighting with him. Yet if tied up why doesn’t he do more than what he did to CJB? It’s almost like the guy watching out in the CJB case has swapped roles with the killer for LB and the watcher somewhere else instead. The man seen walking through the countryside is a good candidate for the watcher at LB.

Anyway notice I was talking about the Zodiac there and JtR letters? Well The Confession Letter writer fits right into the same JtR inspired hypothesis.

The details of what was done to CJB are quite shocking. The autopsy reads like her attacker was very close to perform post-mortem mutilations on her. It’s overkill.

If the Zodiac is recreating fantasy scenes from other serial killings and movies then I am sure a bit of digging around might unearth potential candidates for the other crimes. There is nothing unusual about the Zodiac and Hollywood themes or horrors. He brings them up all the time. I am going to think about this some more.

Yes the old Studebaker. Did it say specifically it was a Commander? I’m assuming that was the model as Graysmith calls it a Tucker Torpedo, which looks similar.

The bullet nose Commander was only made for 2 model years, 1950-1951. In 1966, there certainly couldn’t have been very many of these in the Riverside area.

After reading about the murder, then reading the Confession letter, to me it felt transcribed. Like it was written by a witness or accomplice, or the killer dictated the events to someone and said, "Make it sound good but different from what I actually did."

I find the reference to the "brownett" in high school odd as he also mentions CJB rejecting his advances for years. She was 18, and if she wasn’t rejecting him in high school, when was she rejecting him? If you’re trying to create a dead end by claiming a false relationship, why expand on that false relationship?

I’m not 100% certain the Zodiac killed Cheri but it seems like this would be the easiest case to solve cold out of all of them. My gut instinct tells me Cheri’s killer knew she was dating two men, and that it would probably hinder/obscure the investigation.

Solving the Bates case would require the cooperation of Riverside Police Department which is, to be charitable, highly unlikely. Is it possible to petition the California Dept. of Justice to have RPD release the Bates file?

Solving the Bates case would require the cooperation of Riverside Police Department which is, to be charitable, highly unlikely. Is it possible to petition the California Dept. of Justice to have RPD release the Bates file?

there have been other cases where the family has sued for the investigation records successfully. jennifer kesse’s family was a recent one. does bates have any living siblings/relatives?

This is a bit tangential, but there are a few things that always come to my head about her murder.

CJB’s death is estimated 9:30pm to 10:30pm. The library closed at 9pm. Surely whoever closed it had to make the rounds to make sure everyone was out yet no one reported seeing her leave or check out books at that point. Where was she at? The time of death is well after the official close time. She couldn’t have been just leaving the library in a normal fashion.

The killer had to know that CJB would be at that location after the library closed at 9pm. He had to know that she wouldn’t just walk out at 9pm, try to turn on her car, and when it didn’t turn over, just go back in the library to call someone. How in the world would he know that? He also had to know that that was her car.

I get why RPD thought she was out with a boyfriend because of the timeline weirdness. But if it was a boyfriend, why would she contact a friend to study with her if she had a different prearranged plan? Why would she not tell the friend she was also planning to meet a boyfriend? Why would she mention a problem with her research paper at work that day? Why would she have checked out books? If it wasn’t prearranged, how would a boyfriend have been able to contact her in the library without anyone noticing?

Getting to the Confession letter then, it seems to me that some of its qualities are these: It is told with a theatrical flourish with an odd detachment to defining the audience. The language often has a poetic feel to it. The person who wrote it knew how to use a typewriter or teletype and understood how carbon paper worked. They made an effort to format the letter. It is teasing in format, the author going to the trouble of typing out a “By _____” line without a name. The author appears to have knowledge of previous criminal cases, particularly how killers got caught. I don’t know if the Confession letter is the actual killer, but whoever wrote it likely is the kind of person who spent a lot of time at a library or had access to library materials and equipment.

Solving the Bates case would require the cooperation of Riverside Police Department which is, to be charitable, highly unlikely. Is it possible to petition the California Dept. of Justice to have RPD release the Bates file?

there have been other cases where the family has sued for the investigation records successfully. jennifer kesse’s family was a recent one. does bates have any living siblings/relatives?

Yes, she has a brother Michael Bates.

The author of the "Confession" says at the end of it

Yes I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning.

What did he mean by this? From what I´ve red about the murder, there is no report of a call made by anyone claiming to have killed Bates. Was it just a lie?

Hi,

The interesting thing about the Bates case is that in ZU, RG changes the car from Studebaker to Tucker Torpedo. That would be a huge change, if that is what kind of car it was. My colleague Jim reached out to RG this summer and RG said he must have read that somewhere because he has very little knowledge of cars and would not have substituted one for the other by happenstance. We asked him to look for the reference but so far no response.

A Studebaker and a Tucker looked similar to one another and could have been mistaken for each other by the casual observer. But the significance if it was a Tucker is potentially huge.

The author of the "Confession" says at the end of it

Yes I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning.

What did he mean by this?

https://zodiackiller.com/DarkAlley.html

In the CJB case, the killer was not experienced, yet. Imagine a guy, younger than 20, having a pocket knife at all, feeling the ‘power’ to kill CJB was a big thing already.

QT