As you may know, a decade ago I had a website called:"The Cheri Jo Bates website". On it I collected everything I recieved from other amateur researchers and what I found on the internet. The purpose was to keep the case alive and help other researchers with their research and their ideas about her case. It gave me a lot. I had email contact with Bill Barnett (main suspect for the RPD in this case) and 2 VPD detectives that didn’t work on the case but still were interested in it.
When I collected scans of the Bates Die letters (there were a lot out on the web back then but also in bad shape through people messing with them to fit their websites) I stumbled on a very bad scanned version. Normally I would not post such a picture but then I decided to do so. Why?
I saw that the scan showed indentings on the letter. When writing is fashioned on a sheet of paper resting upon other pages, the indentations or impressions produced are transferred to those below. if the pen or pencil isn’t pushed too hard the indentings will not be visable for the human eye.I had worked at the Dutch crimelabs in Rijswijk (as lab-technician) and knew there was a way that
these transferred impressions could be detected by use of bright light from a certain angle.
A scanner produces a lot of light when scanning over a paper. Most likely this is why it became visable on the picture I found on the Internet.
Below the original picture from my old website with the indentings circled in red:
Let me be clear…I still don’t know if Zodiac killed Bates but even today I feel 100% sure he is the writer of the Bates Die letters (if he didn’t kill her he was claiming it possible to just try to hurt her father and the police etc.). If the Bates Die letter writer was indeed the same man that became the Zodiac I thought we possible had forensic evidence in our hands that could lead to the answer who Zodiac was.
I decided to contact the RPD. The response I got was kinda strange. The case was closed (although I knew it was still open), they had no machines or forensics standby to try to make indentings visable and besides the notes were so old no physical evidence would ever show up accoording to them. The whole feeling I got from them was:"Go take a hike".
At that time Mike R. had developed a suspect and I found out myself, that the weekend of the murder of Cheri, his suspect (who had a high-profile public life) was actually in Riverside at that time. When Mike’s evidence against his suspect came larger than life (I decided to help him out with digging up some new things linking his suspect to Z-stuff) my focus shifted away from Cheri’s case.
I finally decided to take the website down because whatever it would yield through third parties, RPD would never use it for trying to solve this case. I had spend so many hours trying to make this case clearer for everyone (all newspaper articles in order of date etc.) and it was all for nothing, in my eyes.
Because of family life in itself (second kid born, wife got ill) I decided to close the door on my Z-Cheri research for my own good and that of my family (remember what happened to Graysmith in the Zodiac movie? I bailed out sooner and better). I got a little help distancing myself from Z-research because when I helped Mike R. stand his ground against some bashful critics on "the other site" I got kicked off from that forum (with no appearent reason). Oh well…
A few years later, I revisiting some Zodiac-related websites (even got posting rights on the forum that kicked me years ago). Somehow the feeling of being part of a solution to the Z-case didn’t came back. I saw people fighting each other trying to convince others that their private suspect, really was Zodiac and others just were plain wrong.
Another feeling raise up…I am from the Netherlands (where nobody cares about this case) and I wasn’t even born when he did his "thing" (why trying to butt in something that was already over when I was still sucking on a bottle of milk?).
But you all know, somehow Zodiac invades your mind. Sometimes you see a true crime program and you get reminded of what Zodiac did (or did better than those who got caught). Again I decided to return to the Z-community.
I saw several forummembers asking about my old work and theories. Then I decided to return active in trying to help researchers of the Zodiac case. Especially with info from the Bates case because I believe this case is probably Z’s first work (probably he wasn’t that mature as a killer back then and could have slipped somehow) and the evidence is more usable (other Z-letters were treated with ninhydrine baths and sprays (for fingerprints) which destroys all other physical evidence like DNA or indentings.
The Bates Die letters are in my humble opinion a good way to try to extract possible new evidence usable in this case.
Now we see that the technology in the past decade has changed enormously to the better (checking this forum on my cellphone where ever I am instead of a computer that stays at the same place).
This is the change for me to once again pursue my ideas about the indentings and try to retrieve them with the new technology.
Not because I believe RPD will pick up on it this time, just because I need to know who he was (Ooops Graysmith mood is kicking in again! 
). Possible this could lead to my favorite suspect (then I know we were right, Mike!!!) but most likely something new will show up that will shed new lights about this case.
I will not restart my website again but will share my findings, old website stuff and opinions on the Cheri Jo Bates case on this board. On this board only, because I see that the way people communicate with each other here is in a good and respectful way. A way I haven’t seen in most of the years I have been actively researching this case.
That last part is a great compliment for the moderators of this forum, you deserve this.
Take care,
Eduard
Eduard, I am glad to see you back in action, and hunting Z. We certainly need all the help we can get. I think your indentation post is a good one, and while I don’t think there is any chance MrX was zodiac, I do agree with you that Zodiac likely wrote all of the questioned Bates letters, and desktop. Keep up the good work!
There is more than one way to lose your life to a killer
http://www.zodiackillersite.com/
http://zodiackillersite.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/Morf13ZKS
I will not restart my website again but will share my findings, old website stuff and opinions on the Cheri Jo Bates case on this board. On this board only, because I see that the way people communicate with each other here is in a good and respectful way. A way I haven’t seen in most of the years I have been actively researching this case.
That last part is a great compliment for the moderators of this forum, you deserve this.
Take care,
Eduard
Eduard,
That is a very nice compliment, thank you so much! And we always look forward to your ideas & research! Thank you for the trust & sharing with us!
Zincerely, Zam*
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If Zodiac ever joined a Z forum, I’m sure he would have been banned for not following forum rules. Zam’s/Quote
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MODERATOR
Eduard, Are my eyes deceiving me? It looks like there could be words above what you circled and going in the same direction, is that correct ? Four of the letters look like Hern. I always felt that that piece of paper was from Cheri Jo’s note book, it would be something Zodiac would do to prove he was her killer. What are your thoughts on that ?
Morf and Zam, thank you for your kind words I appreciate them.
Sandy,
Long time no see! In all those years we both are on this case (you waaaaay longer than me!) we never had one single online bash with each other despite that we had friends that were on opposite sides in discussions. Thank you for that.
Sandy, Your eyes are correct. There are more places in this letter where you could find indentings.
Just like you for years I thought the notepaper looked like schoolpaper and I directly assumed that the killer took it from her car and used it as proof he was the one that killed her. That was untill her brother Micheal contacted me via my website about his sister. He was pleased to see that someone (from the Netherlands) was still trying to get attention for the case. He told me that the things that were missing out of her VW bug were only schoolbooks. he couldn’t tell me what the titles were.
A few years later I read a news article about the VW Bug and the same was written by the reporter (given me more proof that the story is true).
So if Micheal remembers right after all those years, the notes need to have come from the "Bates Die" writer himself and not Cheri. This makes the indentings more useful to possible read new info which may id our unsub. He was the one making the indentings on the page above and not Cheri (what could have been if the notebook paper was hers).
Sandy, good question I hope you are helped by it.
Greetings from the other side of the great pond,
Eduard
P.S. My excuses for my sometimes bad phrasing or grammar, English is not my native-language (but hey, I speak better English than most of you Dutch 
)
Ok guys, now I got a good task for all of us:
The piece of paper appears to derive from a ring binder as it shows up 22 holes on the left side, as it might be very common for such a ring binder.
HOWEVER, it was perforated three times, therefore it might have had only three rings instead of 22. In the top perforation, the three-ring-perforation is ‘dominant’, therefore had perforated away the #3 of the 22-ring-perforation. Not exactly the same with the lowest of the three-ring-perforation holes.
I may conclude that..the paper may come from a ring binder with minimum 22 holes. Another piece of paper was put on it, to e.g. avoid those holes becoming black, or, to hide from others what was written on the other side of the paper. Copied letter (not necessarily by Z). Later, e.g. FBI, had perforated exactly with three holes. Also to note the dog-ear corner on the top right of the copy.
Just a small detail but imo worth to note. Besides that, imo the letter was written with the ‘wrong’ hand, e.g. the left one.
QT
*ZODIACHRONOLOGY*
Re: the image of the page.
Apologies if this has been said already, my eyes are getting better but I can’t read large blocks of text easily so I did my best but didn’t see this ‘proposal’ mentioned as an explanation.
If you notice on the image evenly(ish) spaced horizontal lines on the scan these are most likely fold marks. In that respect I would, in honor of the thread title, describe these as indents or indentings. As to the ‘marks’ on/around these lines, well, if you look to the left hand edge of the image you will see 3 black dots that aren’t part of the page but are over it. There is also a darker margin that these are set in. I suspect what we are see here is due to the ‘evidence’ actually being inside a transparent binder page/envelope (whatever it’s called but you get what I mean) with a transparent but most likely colored band/margin on the left hand side.
Having spent many years working with photocopier and scanners and having too, on occasion, attempt to copy/scan things in those covers … it’s a nightmare. For one thing the light bounces off them and depending on the angle it hits at can practically obscure, if not actually obscure, parts of the page. I say depending on the angle because it is, or was, practically impossible to get those transparent sleeves to sit flat and not buckle once you put the lid down on the copier/scanner. Given that the edges of the image are black, as are the 3 holes, if memory serves me right, this happens when you leave the lid open on the copier/scanner so the light emitted only bounces back off something on the glass and the rest doesn’t bounce off anything and as such doesn’t register anything except black. If this was the case, which I believe it was, then it would make it even more likely that there would be ‘distortions’ on the transparent sleeve to show up in the image.
So my feeling is that the distortions on the image are caused by the surface of the plastic sleeve.
But…I was looking at the image and it does look like there are some shapes in there that appear to be something written. My honest feeling, given my other observations, is that those could be indentations of something written but I would suggest that they are on the plastic sleeve and not on the page itself.
What bothers me is that this piece of evidence appears to have been placed in this sleeve and then the 3 binder holes appear to have been made through the page (hence them being black). The reason for the holes on the page being white is that the back of the sleeve is opaque (I suspect). THEY PUNCHED HOLES IN THE EVIDENCE ??? …If I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing. Sadly, I might be. 
Anywho, those are my thoughts about it.
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
Hi,
Here a better copy of this letter.
I think the scan you are looking at was made from a copy of the evidence from a 22 binder police map (you can see the black background being punched with holes for the 22 binder). The 3 holes in the note were actually not punched by the police but because the notebook had 3 binders. So here we have a copy of a copy of the evidence.The paper copy you now see was just put in the policemap as paper.About the plastic sleeve…Could well be but those sleeves (especially the holes) would not cover parts of the document (the document is away from the holes when put in the sleeve). I can’t explain why in some holes the lines of the note are visable…
To check a copy of a copy (a lot of bright light was involved twice so contrast would play part of it) is hard but not impossible. What concerns me is that if the cops saved this scanned document as paper for all those years how do I know no destortions of that paper I will detect? The sleeve thing bothers me, how to be sure if a sleeve wasn’t used? And if it was how to explain the lines in the holes?
Eduard
Yes it’s tricky.
Not sure I can get my head around it given the clearer image you just posted. Not sure what we are looking at anymore lol, a scan of a print out of copy of a photograph of a page? Or just a photo of a page possibly in a clear cover? Or not?
I must take a look at that last image you posted. I would imagine, given the clarity of the image, that it was somehow copied in as natural a state as was possible, ie not in a sleeve but it looks like a scan of a page that has been punched for a binder (hence the white holes), so not a photo or scan directly from the original. Still, even at that it seems to be quite clear so not the worst thing to work from.
It’s good to talk these things out. Even the scans of the evidence in this case are their own little (semi?) mysteries
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
Traveller1st wrote:
It’s good to talk these things out. Even the scans of the evidence in this case are their own little (semi?) mysteries
You are right, Traveller.
There are so many different versions of the same Zodiac letters and/or Bates notes you can find on the internet (not knowing the true source of it).
Webmasters that are posting the pictures of those documents use the scans to their own interpretation. Some raise up the contrast to show you how the writing looks (losing the details in the proces), some resize them to fit them in the design of their website (also detail loss for the scan) or some digitally watermark them (letting us know they were the first to show it online but in the proces just wiping away or overwritting parts of the letters). It’s a jungle out there
Thanks for your thoughts,
Eduard
