Found this article that may be about him, starts off sort of similar to the Bates confession letter.

I think I’ve nailed it! Richard Marshall was Joe Don Dickey.

I found two articles in the Hamlin (TX) Herald. The first is a thank you letter written upon the death of Dale and Joe Don’s father, Jewel "Jim" Dickey, signed by both Dale and Joe Don. So, Joe Don was still living in 1975.

July 3, 1975

The second is an obit for Dale and Joe Don’s step mother dated July 14, 1975. She names Joe Don Dickey as living in San Rafael CA and that is exactly when Richard Marshall lived in San Rafael!

Wow great work Seagull.

Now, why did he use fake names???

Graysmith claimed he used a fake name in SF and listed that he was an engine mechanic with no address listed,just a phone#. Anybody know what address this was?

Also, Seagull, did you have any interest in the Guys who turned Marshall in as a suspect?

Wow great work Seagull.

Now, why did he use fake names???

There are a couple of reasons I can think of as to why he may have changed his name. First he was peripherally in the theater business, I’m not sure if he had acting aspirations but that MIJ article I posted here,

http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=11

says that he sang in musical productions as a child, second page of the article. Joe Don Dickey sounds a bit less dignified than Richard Reed Marshall.

Secondly, Marshall was said to have been gay. If so, he may have wanted to spare his family any embarrassment were he for some reason were to make the news as being gay. Perhaps accusations or even an arrest on some sort of morals charge. Marshall changed his name back in the 50s when it was not at all acceptable to be gay. And perhaps there was some sort of unpleasantness that occurred while he was in the military.

What does not make sense to me in either scenario is why he would change his birthdate as well. He made himself a couple of years younger.

I wonder what the significance of the changed birthdate was to him and why he chose that particular name. He did go to the trouble of applying for a new SSN instead of simply changing his name, assuming he already had a SSN.

Graysmith claimed he used a fake name in SF and listed that he was an engine mechanic with no address listed,just a phone#. Anybody know what address this was?

Also, Seagull, did you have any interest in the Guys who turned Marshall in as a suspect?

I’m really late to the party on Marshall. I have never given him much thought as being a viable suspect. I do not know who accused him of being Zodiac or if they are the same people that said Marshall killed Joe Don Dickey and took his inheritance or what ever that story is about. But if it is the case and both are the same then their story is full of holes. To be fair, the information available online today was not available to the accusers back in 1976, they may not have made the accusation if it were.

Also, clueless about Graysmith but will check his books and see what he said.

Graysmith claimed he used a fake name in SF and listed that he was an engine mechanic with no address listed,just a phone#. Anybody know what address this was?

Also, Seagull, did you have any interest in the Guys who turned Marshall in as a suspect?

I’m really late to the party on Marshall. I have never given him much thought as being a viable suspect. I do not know who accused him of being Zodiac or if they are the same people that said Marshall killed Joe Don Dickey and took his inheritance or what ever that story is about. But if it is the case and both are the same then their story is full of holes. To be fair, the information available online today was not available to the accusers back in 1976, they may not have made the accusation if it were.

Also, clueless about Graysmith but will check his books and see what he said.

I’ll PM you their names

Graysmith claimed he used a fake name in SF and listed that he was an engine mechanic with no address listed,just a phone#. Anybody know what address this was?

I’m looking through the Yellow Book for a reference to this. What I have found that relates to Marshall is on pages 224-225 with the heading Friday August 25, 1978. I’m not finding the info you are asking about though. It’s confusing to read through Graysmith’s investigation because he changed the names of so many people.

I do know that Marshall had an address on Bush St in SF but I’m not sure when exactly. Marshall had The Avenue Theater in SF, too, that was on San Bruno Ave.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1945

I’m with you Deb, never saw Marshall as a great suspect, but there really isn’t a whole lot of info on him posted anywhere. Good work finding those articles. The question I have is if he was still Joe Don Dickey in 1975, when did he start using the name of Marshall and why did he fill out a SSN form under the Marshall name in 1950?

It’s possible that his family still thought of him as Joe Don Dickey, not Rick Marshall. That’s the name he grew up with and the name that people in Hamlin knew him as. If he had been named Rick Marshall in the thank you letter or his step mother’s obit people would have wondered who he was.

It’s possible that his family still thought of him as Joe Don Dickey, not Rick Marshall. That’s the name he grew up with and the name that people in Hamlin knew him as. If he had been named Rick Marshall in the thank you letter or his step mother’s obit people would have wondered who he was.

Very good point. This whole thing is very weird.

People don’t use fake names or defraud the govt by making fake ss applications unless they are doing something shady or have something to hide

Dickey/Marshall may have gone AWOL from the service and that is the reason for the name change(s) and also the change in his date of birth. By making himself two years younger he would have been too young to have been drafted into WWII.

We do not know anything about his military service except that he told the MIJ he had served in WWII and Korea, that could have been a lie. Graysmith said in the Yellow Book that Marshall had been in the Navy but that is not borne out by the military information we do have. That says Dickey enlisted June 8 1944 when Dickey was 18 years old. It does not give a branch of the service but it does say he was a private and the enlistment city was Camp Wolters.

The equivalent of private in the Navy is seaman, were Dickey in the Navy the military register would have said seaman. Camp Wolters, now Fort Wolters, was an Army installation back in 1944.

Coincidentally there was another Joe Dickey, Joe Ben Dickey was born in Texas March 26, 1926, just 13 days after Joe Don Dickey. He was in the Navy during the Korean conflict.

I’m having to rethink some of my speculations after looking through the Rick Marshall threads at Ophion’s forum. He has someone there named Galaxie500 who posted a few of the same articles I’ve posted in this thread and they were posted six months ago or more ago. I did not think to look at Oph’s for anything new on Marshall because he was the one who started this thread.

There is an article that Galaxie posted from the Abilene Reporter News July 21, 1950 that says Richard Reed Marshall of Hamlin has volunteered to join the Navy. It was posted Jan. 9, 1016, a little more than halfway down the page.

http://zodiackiller.forumotion.com/t327 … r-articles

I went back to Ancestry but did not find a Richard Marshall connected to Hamlin. The date of the article is interesting because I think it predates the SS app filled out by Marshall when he was living in Seattle Washington. If you look at that app it gives a birthdate of April 7, 1928 and the box to the left says that Marshall was 26 years old when he filled out the app. That would mean the app was filled out in 1954. The date at the bottom is barely legible.

Galaxie posted quite a few articles that I did not, some of them placing Marshall/Dickey in places that have not been known before now. The Marshall threads are worth a read if you want more info on the guy.

I’m having to rethink some of my speculations after looking through the Rick Marshall threads at Ophion’s forum. He has someone there named Galaxie500 who posted a few of the same articles I’ve posted in this thread and they were posted six months ago or more ago. I did not think to look at Oph’s for anything new on Marshall because he was the one who started this thread.

There is an article that Galaxie posted from the Abilene Reporter News July 21, 1950 that says Richard Reed Marshall of Hamlin has volunteered to join the Navy. It was posted Jan. 9, 1016, a little more than halfway down the page.

http://zodiackiller.forumotion.com/t327 … r-articles

I went back to Ancestry but did not find a Richard Marshall connected to Hamlin. The date of the article is interesting because I think it predates the SS app filled out by Marshall when he was living in Seattle Washington. If you look at that app it gives a birthdate of April 7, 1928 and the box to the left says that Marshall was 26 years old when he filled out the app. That would mean the app was filled out in 1954. The date at the bottom is barely legible.

Galaxie posted quite a few articles that I did not, some of them placing Marshall/Dickey in places that have not been known before now. The Marshall threads are worth a read if you want more info on the guy.

Wow, I didn’t even see that yet. Haven’t been online for a few days. Marshall just gets more and more interesting by the day.