This is a little chart I made for myself to have clarity on how much the handwriting differs from one letter to another or not. Basically trying to determine if there would have been multiple authors. Overall, it’s quite consistent, it’s mainly the difference of pen used that makes them look different.
https://www.zodiackiller.com/BelliLetter.html
But the Belli letter truly stands out among all others. It is the only one with a rather significantly different handwriting on the letter, to the point where I could literally attribute it to someone else, even the handwriting on the enveloppe and its interior differs from this point onward. But it contained a piece of shirt from Stine, so it seems quite doubtful it could have been someone else.
Considering it is the only letter where the Zodiac calls for help, and considering it was sent to a lawyer, and that the handwriting looks rather calm and clean I wonder if he may have been on medication at that moment? Note that the next letter is the My Name Is letter, and it is the longest amount of time that elapses between two letters other than between the July 26 1970 and March 13 1971 letter. Just before the Belli letter there was almost a month and a half and those two previous letters were about the bomb threat, he even stated they would likely not hear from him for a while because of the supposed complexity of his bomb plot.
Another interesting thing I noted is in the Buttons letter https://www.zodiackiller.com/ZButtonLetter.html
The start of the letter has the exact same writing as the Belli letter, but then it starts to shift to his typical writing.
The handwriting strangely differs across different envelopes and their interior from Dec 20 1969 to July 24 1970. Then it returns to the former handwriting.
So if those envelopes actually have someone else’s handwriting on them, they would have likely been aware of their content considering they would written the address, nothing would have prevented them from reading their content. This would imply an accomplice, whether he was interned or not.
Also, the Chronicle envelope definitely has the same distinctively different handwriting as those other letters. So if there was someone else involved, it would seem they mailed the Chronicle letter.
There may be another explanation for the different handwriting on the envelopes, who knows.
There are many reasons why handwriting can alter from letter to letter. The speed the letter is written, the time of day, the angle of the writing surface, the location the letter was written, and the type and size of the writing implement. Just glancing over an nth reproduction of a letter and just declaring a letter Zodiac or otherwise (or even the original) is not a reliable method to determine a letter genuine or not. The same can be said of plucking individual alphabetical letters from communications months or years apart and placing them alongside each other. Just look at the writing on the car door and find the discrepancy between the same author’s letter style. Handwriting comparisons should be considered, but they are just a small part of determining a letter authentic or not, but cannot be used as the solitary reason to include or exclude a communication.
There are at least three Zodiac communications between November 9th and December 20th (five if you include the pasted correspondence on Dec 10 & 11). The Belli letter isn’t the only letter to "call for help", because the December 7th 1969 Fairfield letter asked for help thirteen days prior and wasn’t publicly released. What is far more important than handwriting is content. This can often point to the validity of a communication or otherwise. I’m sure that the majority of Zodiac investigators have summarily dismissed such letters as the "Fairfield Two" but that in no way reflects on whether they are genuine or not. 99% of Zodiac sleuths could deem the Fairfield letters genuine, or 99% could deem them "fake Zodiac", but it’s totally irrelevant to whether they are or not. They either are Zodiac letters or not. But you certainly cannot make that determination by just looking at the handwriting.
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/
“I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.” Edward R. Murrow.
It’s far fetched, but for the sake of argument I’ll take it seriously.
Lets suppose that the Zodiac really did live in some cartoon universe where his evil delusions and killing spree could be silenced with a bit of pharmaceutical intervention. Lets pretend for a moment that unlikely scenario is true. The next question becomes: would such medication, presumable a first generation typical antipsychotic (in this scenario it has to have enough grunt to silence some serious demons), improve, or impair ones handwriting? On this point we can be very confident that the answer is the latter. Very few people completely escape the drug-induced parkinsonism and tremors caused by anti-psychotics now days. First generation stuff like Chlorpromazine will put serious ants in your pants, at least when it hasn’t knocked you out cold. Antipsychotics can be pretty amazing though, and with a bit of fine tuning the muscle tenseness, involuntary movements and tremors can be managed, but I’m telling you for free, it ain’t gonna improve your penmanship.
Serial killers often have a depressive phase and it is around this time that they make mistakes and get caught.
Dahmer and his escaping victim, DeAngelo and the hammer incident. Kemper even turned himself in.
Zodiac’s face was seen. He was nearly caught. He would have been in pieces mentally. What you are seeing there is likely his real handwriting.
These days I side with the view he is bad at handwriting and spelling and masks that defect by enhancing it with more mistakes. Hartnell thought the Zodiac wasn’t very smart either. The Zodiac didn’t expect Hartnell to live. Another reason for his downward spiral.
Obviously the Zodiac’s handwriting, linguistics and how he looks has been noticed by people around him but they don’t give him a second thought because of ‘who’ he is. Way too much evidence for it to be anything less.
www.zodiachalloweencard.com has a 400 paged book for free containing the super solution with an overarching explanation of the cards and more.
Maybe meds is wrong, it could have been alcoholism for example. Another possible indicator for William Grant I guess.
BTW was it known that a lot of the words are literally traced over in the Times Herald and SF Examiner letters? You can overlay them and move one letter around to find many of the words are traced. The most obvious even to the eye was "Western", it just so happens to be on a different line probably because the paper was of different size. Sometimes the same words are traced but from different lines. I don’t really understand why tracing would have been desired (and was obviously abandoned).
Obviously for the SF Chronicle everything was written without doing that.
I wonder why he didn’t keep mailing multiple copies to different papers.
I’m curious where this image of this chart originated?
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
I’m curious where this image of this chart originated?
I made it, it was for my own use. Made it easier for me to visualize if the differences in handwriting were random or related to the passage of time.
I’m curious where this image of this chart originated?
I made it, it was for my own use. Made it easier for me to visualize if the differences in handwriting were random or related to the passage of time.
Would you mind elaborating on the coding you used?
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
I have to say, that chart is pretty great. I’m quite impressed.
I have to say, that chart is pretty great. I’m quite impressed.
Agreed, but I wish OP would explain the meaning of the codes and what was used to categorize them.
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
So it’s just that I originally felt the letters have multiple handwritings, also for the enveloppes.
So I thought I’m going to actually look at them and note in a chart how similar they are to the original handwriting of the trio letters which I consider the "original".
Since I noted that the enveloppes sometimes also had a different handwriting than the letters, I couldn’t just write "Handwriting style A, B, C", I decided to label the handwriting separately for the envelopes, the interior of the envelopes, and the letters.
When the handwriting looked different enough I gave it its own letter to distinguish it. H-Int-A just means "Handwriting – envelope Interior – Style A".
I then listed them based on the date ascribed to them from oldest to most recent.
I color coded the handwriting styles to see easily if the style changed back and forth, or if it remained consistent over some periods of time.
I also color coded how much time elapsed between the letters, although I could be missing some other Zodiac letters in this list.
When I first finished the list I had like four different handwriting styles for the letters, but I went back to re-analyze to make sure they were really distinct and realized they were the same, and that it was instead the difference in pen used that made them look different, but when you looked really closely at how the letters were written you could tell the handwriting was a lot closer, enough to be from the same hand. After re-evaluating it all, I ended up with only two distinct styles for the letters.
In any case, it changed my perception that there were multiple handwritings for those letters, I now believe the handwriting is consistent except for the Belli letter, but then we see that handwriting style briefly in the Buttons letter shift to the other style, so that also makes me think it’s all the same person but for whatever reason his handwriting style can shift between two different styles.
For the writing on the envelopes, there seems to be two very distinct handwriting styles, present even in the original trio of letters (the one sent to SF Chronicle), but they both generally look like the two styles identified on the letters. So I would say that those are also from the same hand, it’s just that again for whatever reason his style changes from one to the other.
For whatever reason the style that is far less common on the letters (almost completely absent except in the Belli and Button letters) is far more common on the envelopes, present on almost half of them. We also see how for whatever reason that handwriting, on the envelopes, remains the same one from December 20 onward. There is briefly a third style coupled with that one the bus-bomb letter (a capitalized and square-like letters in SF CHRONICLE), so I gave it its own code "Ex-C", but that style is never seen again.
That’s all, there’s nothing special to the chart, it just made it a lot easier for me to note these differences, where the differences were, and their potential relevance to time. I now believe there is a single author, at least for those letters.
Do you have any background in handwriting analysis or questioned document examination?
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
Do you have any background in handwriting analysis or questioned document examination?
No, it’s my own conclusion. If anyone with such experience wanted to do as much they are free to do so. But I wanted to figure out if I should still believe there were multiple authors or not, and I now believe there wasn’t.
Zodiac was trolling. He was being sarcastic in that letter. Oh …. I’m just so depressed I can’t find the inspiration to set my bomb off. Woe is me. He was riffing on the Jim Dunbar caller. While Zodiac was deranged. I think this points to Zodiac not being dysfunctionally mentally ill.
Maybe meds is wrong, it could have been alcoholism for example.
I have wondered that exact same thing about Zodiac. Alcoholism does have certain behavioral tells, some that seem to surface in the letters. The handwriting "degenerating" over the course of the message is a tell. Just speculation, but I think Z was a drinker to escape the stresses of his pathology.
That was too much!
