Morrill did authenticate it. I have no idea why it’s never listed as a confirmed letter/card.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/zodiack … t4762.html

Morrill authenticated a lot of things that are really questionable. I’ve discussed at length why any authentication based only on handwriting analysis needs to be taken with a grain of salt – particularly with Morrill.

If law enforcement believe the Exorcist letter was truly Zodiac, this communication should be one of the first ports of call when searching for DNA.

Sadly, a cold case like Zodiac is not a priority, so as far as we know only the most definite Zodiac letters are undergoing DNA analysis. Hopefully there is more going on behind the scenes than we know of.

I want to make clear that before I ever spoke to Alan Keel, Lyndon Lafferty had an almost identical conversation with him in I believe the late 1990s and that conversation is covered in his book. So I’m not making this stuff up about Alan Keel. In fact I never make any stuff up LOL. I suggest that anyone who has Linden’s 2012 book go to page 350 and read his account, which is totally independent from mine. I also did not copy Linden’s account because I had my conversation with keto five years before Linden’s book even came out.

So what keel told me in late February of 2007 is that he first tested the zodiac letters for saliva and found that they were only Trace Amounts or background amounts of saliva not the amount that he would expect if someone has licked them. He indicated that it would not be unfair to say that the stamps had been applied and the letters sealed with nothing more than tap water. Then he told me about two other letters that have abundant saliva and an abundance of DNA on them. He told me that one of them was the 1978 letter and that the other one was one of the four 1974 letters but that he could not recall which one. When he said that I’m sure my eyes popped out of my head because I was rabid to know which 1974 letter it was! I have a feeling that the information may be a hold back, as may be the DMV letter. But whatever the case Keel did not reveal the name of the 1974 letter.

So when I was tasked with trying to figure out which 1974 letter it was I went to the chart that was released in 2000 of the DNA testing results on the letters from sfpd. This is somewhere around page 430 in zodiac unmasked. This is the DNA testing on the letters that would have been done during Keel’s tenure at the department. And I simply noticed that for 1974 the only letter that had been tested was The Exorcist letter. That’s the sole basis of my conclusion that the most likely forgery, unless there was subsequent testing any of the 1974 letters, is the Exorcist letter. So that’s my position and if they want to prove me wrong by telling us which letter it is, then so be it.

The thing that Chaucer did not mention and someone was saying that Toschi never spoke to any amateurs and that he had m blown me off, etc., is this. Immediately after the 2002 ABC show aired I was desperate for answers because after ABC telling me that they essentially thought I had solved the case they were telling me that Qvale been eliminated by DNA. So I located Toschi and I called him and we had several conversations during one of which he told me that Stine’s glasses have been recovered mangled from under his body. From everything I’ve learned since then I don’t believe that the glasses were recovered. And someone told me (and I don’t remember who it was but maybe I can try to find the quote) that Toschi seemed to enjoy putting out disinformation to people and seeing how long it took to get back to him and through whom. I can’t verify the that’s what he did, however, I remember being told that.

Just for the record, after I spoke to Toschi in late 2002 I was going out to the Bay Area in 2003. And I asked Toschi if he would meet with me and he said yes. So when I got out there I called his office where he was working at the time and his secretary politely informed me that Toschi was now not able to meet with me due to his having a heavy schedule but he wished me a good stay in the Bay Area. So a little bit of both stories are correct. He both blew me off and spoke to me.

By the way what happened in lyndon’s interactions with keel is that Keel seemed to be in of Toschi’s DNA to compare to the DNA from the 1978 and 1974 letters. So Linden told him that he had a letter the Toschi had written that Lyndon had opened with a letter opener so that the seal was intact and he offered to send it to keel. At first Keelrd accepted his offer but then later he called back and said nevermind we don’t need it but it was a very awkward type of thing and I don’t think he ever verified that they had toschi’s DNA and that it did or didn’t match the other DNA. But that doesn’t surprise me either because that’s probably a hold back in order not to tarnish SFPD’s image. They’re very image conscious you know.

Morrill stated that the letters in the handwritten address on the Pines card "conformed and are consistent with all other Zodiac writings I have examined." This was repeated nearly verbatim in the YB, so I’m not sure where the confusion started, or if it fell under "it’s Graysmith, so ignore" in an era when they didn’t have Newspapers.com.

It was not on the list of letters or cards that were to be re-analyzed in 1978.

I haven’t found any evidence that it was disputed by anyone other than Harvey Hines, and I kind of doubt that’s the reason Morf put it in the unconfirmed folder. Sure, the Pines card has an air of dubiousness, there are (compelling) allegations, but it should probably be in the confirmed folder with the HC and the 1974s.

The Pines card is almost certainly genuine, as you can confidently tie it to another later 1971 communication. Harvey Hines never disputed the Pines card – in fact he based a whole theory around it.
The following is an excerpt from the unreleased 120-page Harvey Hines report, regarding his investigation into the missing Donna Lass. The following picture show a unique image of the Pines Card created by Harvey Hines.

"After studying the card, I drove to Nordin, located on old Highway 40, north of Lake Tahoe, and found the SIERRA CLUB. I learned the club was not called the Sierra Club. It was named the Claire Tappan Lodge and it was a private club for Sierra Club members only. I believed if I followed the directions on the postcard I would find Donna Lass’ grave. I believe she was buried near the Sierra Club and most likely on the Donner Ski Ranch. I would later have the pictures of the Sierra Club developed. Then using a copy of Zodiac’s card, I cut out the phrases he had pasted on his card. Using these phrases, I overpasted them on the copy of the Sierra Club picture. It was striking similar to the original card".

Many people believed that a police officer forged the Pines card. But that wasn’t the case. Harvey Hines crafted a version of his own, which was ultimately misinterpreted.

Looks like GS had access to the same lab report that Voigt got. I assume Mike doesn’t have the 2007 paperback, where it’s page 383, lol.

(Interestingly: SLA letter, Lab #13. Postmarked February 14th. SLA doesn’t appear on Voigt’s copy at all.)

GS also says the palm prints were found in 2001. Which is weird, because (as I said before) they were mentioned in FBI files from 1974. Also, why on earth would it take 27 years to find very large prints?

Thanks for clarifying the Toschi thing. I can’t actually verify the Perez quote right now, so it’s possible I’m just repeating hokum I read a million years ago. The Duffy Jennings stuff is from Voigtboard.

The Pines card is almost certainly genuine, as you can confidently tie it to another later 1971 communication. Harvey Hines never disputed the Pines card – in fact he based a whole theory around it.

Voigt has claimed for years that Harvey Hines told him this in 1999 — that Toschi admitted to forging the Pines card.

http://www.zodiackiller.com/discus/mess … 1171560031

Which, again, is confusing, because that would debunk Harvey’s key piece of evidence. Then you have to wonder if Toschi would lie about it, even if he thought Harvey was a kook.

My guess is the story has got mixed up somewhere along the line. Hines fully advocated the Pines card as Zodiac. Hines did in effect "forge" a new Pines card – and the idea that Toschi would willingly tell Hines he forged the card, sounds unlikely.

There is a paperback version of Lyndon’s book? Never heard that one . Anyway I’m here to admit that my memory is not infallible LOL. The DNA discussion in lyndon’s hardback Edition begins on page 318 not page 350.

Just a couple of random thoughts. First I would have no problem with considering graysmith as the source of the 1978 letter. Like Toschi he certainly has an agenda for doing so. As regards the palm prints and the late date I believe if I remember correctly that they had difficulty for lack of a better term "disambiguating" the multiple superimposed prints from one another until they were able to get a computer to do it. Now I don’t remember where and when I heard that but I remember hearing it at some point. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know.

The other thing about The Exorcist letter is you have like 20 zodiac letters that came before it and not one with really a palm print to speak of and all of a sudden you’ve got someone who’s leaving a swarm of palm prints on the letter. Now I don’t know how much they knew about palm prints in those days and if Toschi would have known about them but my guess would be that he would have had a better chance of knowing about them than graysmith. So if this is a forgery maybe that tips the scales a little bit towards graysmith. Obviously Graysmith could have also had a motive for writing the 1978 letter. Oh and one more thing about The Exorcist letter. It’s a very elaborate clever letter and I think that maybe as a Cartoonist Graysmith was a little bit more imaginative than Toschi may have been. The reason I make that point is people always said that the Exorcist letter is too weird to have been written by a Forger . Maybe I’m reaching with my point but I just wanted to put it out there.

Just a note. I dictate these posts on an Android because my cable got knocked out like a tree that fell down during last week’s storm and I’m too lazy to type on my phone. So if there are any typos I missed I apologize. Every time I say Toschi’s name I have to go back every spell it cuz my phone doesn’t understand it LOLg

A couple things…

It’s worth considering that Hines may have dismissed Toschi’s claim of forging the Pines card and plowed ahead with the conviction that it was real. That wouldn’t mean Toschi was lying; it would just mean that Hines thought he was – or worse – went ahead with his theory despite knowing the card was faked. I don’t know Hines, but most people who did say he was a pretty honest and honorable guy, so my guess is the former.

Secondly, in the heat of the Zodiac investigation, Morrill took a laissez-faire approach to “analyzing” the letters. He claimed he could “glance” at writing and know “immediately” if it was Zodiac or not. Again that is a grossly negligent approach to a forensic science. You wouldn’t want a fingerprint expert or a ballistic expert “glancing” at evidence and making a snap judgement.

My opinion – and I fully admit it’s just an opinion – is that the last known confirmed Zodiac correspondence was the LA Times letter. It’s possible that the Exorcist letter is genuine, but with the connection to Toschi growing, I place it in my own personal “possible” folder, rather than confirmed.

I go with the 1987 letter as the last sure bet.

There is a paperback version of Lyndon’s book? Never heard that one .

I thought you were referring to the DNA results in Unmasked there. I’ve only skimmed the GS books, so I had to search for those. I did read Lafferty’s from beginning to end. Sure sounded like somebody dumped a bucket of ice water on Keel before he called Lafferty back.

I’ve always thought it might have been iced coffee. Yeah whatever happened it was very weird. There’s a weird quote from Keel in Lyndon’s book. Here’s the quote, "The 1974 and 1978 letters were written by Toschi but he will not cooperate and give us any body fluids so we can test his DNA . We can’t have somebody follow him all day long waiting to catch him spitting."

I guess Keel has never watched Forensic Files lol. Don’t they know they can follow him into a restaurant and grab his fork or glass? It sounds like an awful naive statement coming from a forensic scientist.