Well, I think that what is bad is that they revealed what they are thinking and how they approached the case/letters. It seems flawed from the outset. But let’s hope that RPD has some useful info to share this time around, not the "42 stab wounds" or the misleading melodrama surrounding their pet suspect they told us about in 2000 or so.

Mike

Riverside stuff might not ALL be shared on this documentary, for the viewing public, but the investigators were privy to reports. There is the show, and behind the show.

Well, it will be a start if they don’t share any disinformation, as they did in 2000.

Mike

Oh, boy., This is complete trash. First of all, it is a big assumption to say that Zodiac wrote the Confession. We don’t know that, and while I don’t agree with Kelleher and Van Nuys on their profile, their analysis of the differences between Z’s letters and the Confession in TITZS strongly suggests two different authors. Second, we know that Z (if he did not kill Bates) very carefully studied and imitated the techniques of the Bates killer (overposting letters, automotive ruse on Johns, etc.). The text of the Confession was published in 1966 and was therefore available for all to see. Using those same words could easily be a homage by Z to the Riverside murderer. I’ve always warned about "chickens and eggs" in the Bates vs. Z cases. Which behavior came first and which could have been aped by Z? And to compare two words and say they’ve made a strong link to Riverside seems to be overly dramatically interpreting the evidence.

BTW, they are feeding the Confession to their computer in order for them to get it to think like Z. Everyone knows the old saw, "Garbage in/garbage out."

If the entire show is this type of stuff, we’ll be in for a long ride.

Mike

Actually, they will discuss something that I have been saying for years, (Carmel the computer finds it )that essentially ties the Confession letter to the Zodiac letters(besides the handwriting link already established). I do find it odd that some people try and link their pet Z suspects to Riverside, then later are dismissive of Riverside links to Zodiac.

Hi Morf,

No. It is not "odd" at all if you are talking about me. My susp was definitely down there that weekend. I just don’t think Z killed Bates or wrote the Confession but was INFLUENCED by her murder and later wrote the Bates Had to Die letters. I don’t think that is too hard to understand at all. I am not at all dismissive of the Riverside links to Z. Not in any way. I just look at those links differently than you do…and you didn’t need "Carmel" or whatever to notice twich and squirm. Geez, just use your eyes. And if Z did write the Confession, it does not change a thing for me. But the entire tenor of that letter is different from what Z ever wrote. Not even close. But who knows? Maybe they will convince me that I am wrong. Let’s see what they got….

Mike

Hi Morf,

No. It is not "odd" at all if you are talking about me. My susp was definitely down there that weekend. I just don’t think Z killed Bates or wrote the Confession but was INFLUENCED by her murder and later wrote the Bates Had to Die letters. I don’t think that is too hard to understand at all. I am not at all dismissive of the Riverside links to Z. Not in any way. I just look at those links differently than you do…and you didn’t need "Carmel" or whatever to notice twich and squirm. Geez, just use your eyes. And if Z did write the Confession, it does not change a thing for me. But the entire tenor of that letter is different from what Z ever wrote. Not even close. But who knows? Maybe they will convince me that I am wrong. Let’s see what they got….

Mike

We’ll just agree to disagree. Tenor & tone are matters of opinion. Shared words, phrases, same spelling errors, wanting to be published in the paper, etc, are not debatable or matters of opinion. They are shared between the Bates case writer and Zodiac. And the fact that the writer just happened to have writing that was close enough to Zodiac’s to fool writing experts? Yeah, I don’t buy it.

You are right, I didn’t need ‘Carmel’ which is what I was sarcastically referring to. Let’s just say, I have a hunch that ‘Carmel’ didn’t actually come up with that material about twich/squirm

So much is for show…..Twich and squirm came out years and years ago, still neat the computer recognized it. I remember talking about this at Tom’s 10 years back. Zodiac liked to copy things. Nothing at this point would surprise me.

So much is for show…..Twich and squirm came out years and years ago, still neat the computer recognized it. I remember talking about this at Tom’s 10 years back. Zodiac liked to copy things. Nothing at this point would surprise me.

No doubt, technically Z could have reached for a southern CA case 6 hours south from years before and chosen that case to steal stuff from. But to have close enough writing to fool writing experts, I can’t buy that combo.

"Does the Z 32 cipher use numbers to indicate a position on the map? Kevin Knight’s artificial-intelligence program CARMEL can easily investigate such possibilities systematically—and could provide some interesting results."

http://www.history.com/news/the-zodiac- … at-we-know

Can’t wait to hear more about this!

Also….Episode 2 is "The Military Connection"

Hi Morf,

No. It is not "odd" at all if you are talking about me. My susp was definitely down there that weekend. I just don’t think Z killed Bates or wrote the Confession but was INFLUENCED by her murder and later wrote the Bates Had to Die letters. I don’t think that is too hard to understand at all. I am not at all dismissive of the Riverside links to Z. Not in any way. I just look at those links differently than you do…and you didn’t need "Carmel" or whatever to notice twich and squirm. Geez, just use your eyes. And if Z did write the Confession, it does not change a thing for me. But the entire tenor of that letter is different from what Z ever wrote. Not even close. But who knows? Maybe they will convince me that I am wrong. Let’s see what they got….

Mike

I agree, I don’t believe Zodiac killed Bates. But what interests me is the idea someone in plain sight (presumably) wrote a poem which might be linked to the murder. That doesn’t seem consistent with a killer who took pains to hide his identity. An example of that would be his use of excessive postage. This is often seen in mail bombers, who have a natural nervousness about a package being returned to them or otherwise calling people’s attention to it. Zodiac did that. In the Blue Rock Springs murders he appears to have made a run back up and down the road prior to striking. He attempted to clean off portions of the interior of Stine’s taxi. He wore an elaborate disguise at Lake Berryesa. He communicated in code and likely didn’t reveal his name even while saying he would. But he is supposed to sat in the open carving the poem onto a desk? You could make the argument he did it when nobody much was in the library, but that would miss the point. Someone with this pattern of behavior was too careful to do that even in an empty library. But handwriting experts find a link to the letters, so how do you reconcile the two arguments? It would make sense if Zodiac worked at Riverside and had access to the desk at times when he could have assumed he would remain unseen.

Morf,

I am trying to make you understand that since the Confession was published for all to see, the notion of "identical phrases," "identical spelling errors" and "identical words" is rendered meaningless because Z could have gotten those "shared elements" from reading the Confession and incorporating some of that writing into his own letters in order to feel closer to that murderer/letter writer. Tenor and tone are not all that subjective. There are glaring differences between the way the Riverside writer wrote the Confession and his thought processes and the way Z wrote; these are not academic subtleties. Have you read TITZS? That is one thing I thought they really got right when I first read it.

If the same person wrote the Confession and the Z letters, I think it will surprise a lot of people. The Confession writer was fantasizing about women. The Z letters are in-your-face and written by a guy who liked to bark out lists of orders. What do they say? The writer of the Confession was a poet who couldn’t feel and the Z letters were by an engineer who couldn’t write (or at least convinced people that he couldn’t write!).

Mike

I always considered the line "lone people in the night" from the July 31, 1969 Zodiac letter to be a bit poetic myself.

Soze

Morf,

I am trying to make you understand that since the Confession was published for all to see, the notion of "identical phrases," "identical spelling errors" and "identical words" is rendered meaningless because Z could have gotten those "shared elements" from reading the Confession and incorporating some of that writing into his own letters in order to feel closer to that murderer/letter writer. Tenor and tone are not all that subjective. There are glaring differences between the way the Riverside writer wrote the Confession and his thought processes and the way Z wrote; these are not academic subtleties. Have you read TITZS? That is one thing I thought they really got right when I first read it.

If the same person wrote the Confession and the Z letters, I think it will surprise a lot of people. The Confession writer was fantasizing about women. The Z letters are in-your-face and written by a guy who liked to bark out lists of orders. What do they say? The writer of the Confession was a poet who couldn’t feel and the Z letters were by an engineer who couldn’t write (or at least convinced people that he couldn’t write!).

Mike

This killer couldn’t evolve from a twisted letter writer in the Bates case, somebody on the edge of becoming something more than twisted? Then changed by the time he became Zodiac, and realized what power he held after scaring the bay area with murders under his belt?? The key thing you are missing, that I am trying to get YOU to understand is, forget the tone, the message, etc in the bates case writing, I don’t find it believable on top of all of that stuff that the Zodiac’s writing was so close to the Bates writer to fool seasoned docs examiners, Sherwood, the FBI,etc. it’s totally up to you what you want to believe, it’s a free country. Me,I’ll stick with LE’s official conclusion that the writing in the Bates case belonged to Zodiac.

The Argosy article from 1971 shows a pic of the desk poem and other Bates stuff. AFTER Zodiac link was found in Riverside. You think Zodiac saw this writing and copied it. What source published all of the info for Zodiac to use? Since he needed all the wording and a good image to try and disguise ALL of his handwriting to resemble that Bates material. In Zodiac’s July 1970 "little list" letter, he wrote "Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream + twich and squirm" but the Argosy article didn’t come out till 1971. So, a challenge for you- provide documentation that Zodiac in SF bay area, prior to the Argosy article had enough material to steal the twich/squirm stuff from the confession letter, and had images of the handwriting by the Riverside writer to use for himself closely enough to fool writing experts…… I’ll wait for the source…..if it exists

…He wore an elaborate disguise at Lake Berryesa. He communicated in code and likely didn’t reveal his name even while saying he would. But he is supposed to sat in the open carving the poem onto a desk? You could make the argument he did it when nobody much was in the library, but that would miss the point. Someone with this pattern of behavior was too careful to do that even in an empty library. But handwriting experts find a link to the letters, so how do you reconcile the two arguments? It would make sense if Zodiac worked at Riverside and had access to the desk at times when he could have assumed he would remain unseen.

I agree and have always thought that if the desktop scribble really was done by Zodiac, he must have had some form of off-hours access to the library, either as a direct employee of the college, some kind of contractor/contractor employee (weren’t they building new part of the school at that time?) or a student with special access. It would be all too risky to do something like this while there’s a chance of being seen.

As for the style in the confession letter and confirmed Zodiac letters, I don’t think they cancel eachother out. Several years passed between the confession and the triple letter. It is possible that his focus and motivation could have developed during that time, from anger about romantic rejection to a more generalised disdain towards people.

Morf…

Not to beat a dead horse here (and I hope we all can stay focused on the History Channel documentary, or move to previous threads), but a detective magazine wrote all about Cheri and shared the Confession Letter publicly in 1969.

Morrill: Zodiac wrote the Riverside stuff
Shimoda: Zodiac didn’t write the Riverside stuff
FBI: Inconclusive