Anyone find it strange that on two separate occasions, Zodiac’s letters were postmarked on Sunday?
November 9th, 1969 and July 26th, 1970
If you look at the postmarks themselves, something should stand out to you. They are hand cancels. This particular type of cancel is known as a Four Bar Killer Cancel. While letters may be processed on Sunday, they would have only been processed at the large mail centers by machines. They should have received machine cancels.
Interesting, QOC. FWIW, the Bates letters also appear to have been mailed on a Sunday. Kinda interesting that most of his letters during the 1969-1971 active writing period seemed to occur around the weekends.
Of 12 confirmed letters during this period, I count:
Monday- 5
Thursday- 3
Saturday- 2
Sunday- 2
Do you happen to know if the cancellation marks would somehow designate which post office processed a letter back then? I recall Mike Butterfield saying years ago that most of Z’s letters could be traced to a particular area of San Francisco but I’ve never seen that confirmed and don’t even know HOW it could be determined. It would certainly be interesting to know what post office or what general area in SF these were mailed from.
San Francisco is such a large city that all the mail goes to a large sorting and distribution center where the mail is processed and marked by machine. Once it is collected I don’t think there is any way to determine where it was originally placed into a mail collection box. The machine generated postmarks do have a number that identifies which particular facility processed the mail.
With a four bar killer cancel it makes it impossible to determine anything about the origin or path of the mail.
In fact, if a person had access to an old hand cancel, or had the skills to fake one, a letter could appear as though it had been sent through the mail, but may have just been placed in the mail box by the writer.
Quick question. Did they have Sunday mail delivery back in the 60’s? I was born in 86 and I as long as I could remember Saturday was the last day of the week that they delivered.
The USPS has never delivered mail on Sunday.
Interesting discussion gang. If the USPS was not open on Sundays, how could they post mark them on a Sunday? Could it be that the letters came in late on Saturday and afteer a certain time, get stamped for the next day, like a bank does with a check?
There is more than one way to lose your life to a killer
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Hey, wait a sec, what if Z stamped them at his job or business on Sunday, using one of those meters? Did they have those postage meters in the late 60’s? We mail out at my job lots of letters, and we have a stamp machine that just swipes the letter and postmarks it. I never tried to do one on a Sunday obviously.
Here’s a history on meters:
http://www.pitneybowessmallbusiness.com … eters.html
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
USPS does not deliver mail on Sundays. But postal workers DO in fact work on Sundays. The mail keeps running, it is just that the deliverymen do not deliver on Sundays.
-glurk
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I don’t believe in monsters.
USPS does not deliver mail on Sundays. But postal workers DO in fact work on Sundays. The mail keeps running, it is just that the deliverymen do not deliver on Sundays.
-glurk
So mail still can postmarked Sunday.
