…Yet the FBI conclude that the Fairfield and Belli letters "MAY" have been written by the author of the previous letters i.e., Zodiac.

Too bad Zodiac didn’t put in a piece of shirt like he did with the Belli letter.

"May" doesn’t do a lot for me…know matter who says it. Could have, but maybe not.

The Belli letter showed some distortion or signs that Z tried to change his writing, yet we know(thanks in part to the shirt piece)that Z wrote it

…Yet the FBI conclude that the Fairfield and Belli letters "MAY" have been written by the author of the previous letters i.e., Zodiac.

Too bad Zodiac didn’t put in a piece of shirt like he did with the Belli letter.

"May" doesn’t do a lot for me…know matter who says it. Could have, but maybe not.

The Belli letter showed some distortion or signs that Z tried to change his writing, yet we know(thanks in part to the shirt piece)that Z wrote it

The F.B.I. should have known about the shirt too, but ultimately they are studying handwriting.

The only difference with the Belli letter, imo, is he was writing more patiently. Otherwise, it truly is a match. He even returns back to his more lazy style…not to mention paper and pen. I wonder who it was working that day at the good ole F.B.I.? lol

Thanks to Seagull for finding this article,due to the timing, and mention of cops getting killed, I have little doubt that the caller in this case,was also the Author of ‘THIS STATE IS IN TROUBLE’ letter. Was it Zodiac? That remains to be seen

Fresno Bee
Dec 20 1969
Page 1

"Zodiac" 10 Are Marked For Murder

SAN JOSE (AP)- The Highway Patrol station here reports receiving a telephone call from a man identifying himself as "Zodiac" and threatening to kill five patrolmen and a family of five by Monday.

Sgt. Robert Rengstorif said he took the call at 10:10 p.m. Friday from a man who told dispatcher Shirley Searcy he was "the Zodiac" and wanted to speak to the man in charge.

Rengstorif quoted the man as saying:
"I am going to kill five of you officers and a family of five between now and Monday."

The patrolman said the call was not recorded and there is no way of knowing who it came from.

A killer who calls himself Zodiac first struck a year ago in Vallejo and has killed a total of five persons.

His last known communication was a month ago in two letters addressed to the San Francisco Chronicle

Thanks to Seagull for finding this article,due to the timing, and mention of cops getting killed, I have little doubt that the caller in this case,was also the Author of ‘THIS STATE IS IN TROUBLE’ letter. Was it Zodiac? That remains to be seen

Fresno Bee
Dec 20 1969
Page 1

"Zodiac" 10 Are Marked For Murder

SAN JOSE (AP)- The Highway Patrol station here reports receiving a telephone call from a man identifying himself as "Zodiac" and threatening to kill five patrolmen and a family of five by Monday.

Sgt. Robert Rengstorif said he took the call at 10:10 p.m. Friday from a man who told dispatcher Shirley Searcy he was "the Zodiac" and wanted to speak to the man in charge.

Rengstorif quoted the man as saying:
"I am going to kill five of you officers and a family of five between now and Monday."

The patrolman said the call was not recorded and there is no way of knowing who it came from.

A killer who calls himself Zodiac first struck a year ago in Vallejo and has killed a total of five persons.

His last known communication was a month ago in two letters addressed to the San Francisco Chronicle

Interesting find..haven’t heard about that call before. Nor have I ever seen this ‘There is no doubt I will do my thing’ letter mentioned in the FBI files on the other thread..would be cool if we could get this additional cipher.

QT

I probably have more to do on this and comment on but this was a PM I sent to morf the other night. This was a quick set of comps to illustrate what I spotted. The bolder overlays on the ‘state’ letter are the 1978 letter.

I have started to compile and get files ready for a compilation presentation of the disputed and possible hoax material.

I got distracted.

I was placing the images on a page in photoshop to begin to gather them and organise them. When I spotted something that I’m not sure if I noted before or, if I did, it’s now in a different context for me after the discussions on the ‘state letter’ thread. More importantly that the state letter was written in 1969.

It’s to do with the word ‘speaKing’. That uppercase is deliberate to illustrate a point. In that word the ‘k’ is more like a ‘K’ it’s too big for the surrounding characters. I’ve always noted that because it screams tracing to me and not taking enough care to pick a ‘k’ that is proportional. That makes sense to me and I was happy enough until this.

That out of place case k is also used in the 1978 letter that got Toschi in trouble. Not only that look at the other overlays and how similar they are. The shapes of certain characters, the word and character spacing on the top line, the word better, the same out of place k, spacing in words with ‘oo’ in them (overlays here are at 20% black for ease of viewing).

So….what the?

Why is a 1978 hoax showing so many similarities to a 1969 hoax? I think just the K thing alone is enough to say that at least part of the 78 letter was based on the 69 letter. Let’s suppose these are hoaxes, what I don’t get is why would a hoaxer wanting to produce a believable fake, take a reasonable chunk of nearly 10yr old probable fake as the basis for it?

There’s other things about that 78 letter that I’ve noticed. One just today and it’s that it uses two different types of lower case ‘w’. One and the most prevalent is the rounded bottom w. The other, used once, has sharp a bottom. The other place that happens is in the Belli letter. So that’s a rather specific thing and it’s almost unseen by most people because it’s probably only been used once in the bulk of the accepted letters. Yet it turns up in the 78 letter.

Just to add, that behaviour, if it is a behavior of coping something from really far back in the writing campaign of Z has been done before, IMO. With the 1966 desk poem and the 1974 Citizen letter. I say copying but it could be a recycling of styles.

Good eye Trav, I am looking forward to the final works

Good eye Trav, I am looking forward to the final works

Thanks and me too lol.

The inclusion of the Belli comparison above can probably be ignored for now. It’s just a little thing that popped up on my radar but it’s possibly misleading in this context for now so apologies for that.

What I’m trying to get my head around is the relationship between the ‘state’ letter and the ’78 one. Is this one hoaxer copying another hoax? Is it the same hoaxer? The last question of course, is it Zodiac? That will be more complicated to consider and as such I would like to hear people’s thought’s on what is going on here considering the similarities, the choice of inspiration if copied and also the fact that the ‘state’ letter wasn’t public.

I have no preference other than to hopefully find some direction based on other’s opinions, as to how best proceed.

The spacing of the word ‘Zodiac’ in the opening lines of both letters is of interest, and seesm to match. The stuff connected to the Belli letter interesting too. Let’s not forget, the FBI said that all 3 of these contained disguise and were not freely written, including the Belli letter.

The spacing of the word ‘Zodiac’ in the opening lines of both letters is of interest, and seesm to match. The stuff connected to the Belli letter interesting too. Let’s not forget, the FBI said that all 3 of these contained disguise and were not freely written, including the Belli letter.

I think that is a very interesting point Morf, but just to get the wording exactly correct, the FBI said that in regards to both Fairfield State is in Trouble and Belli that they "probably contain some distortion and were not written as freely as the other threatening letters in this matter."

The spacing of the word ‘Zodiac’ in the opening lines of both letters is of interest, and seesm to match. The stuff connected to the Belli letter interesting too. Let’s not forget, the FBI said that all 3 of these contained disguise and were not freely written, including the Belli letter.

I think that is a very interesting point Morf, but just to get the wording exactly correct, the FBI said that in regards to both Fairfield State is in Trouble and Belli that they "probably contain some distortion and were not written as freely as the other threatening letters in this matter."

I would take that as, he tried to disguise his writing

The spacing of the word ‘Zodiac’ in the opening lines of both letters is of interest, and seesm to match. The stuff connected to the Belli letter interesting too. Let’s not forget, the FBI said that all 3 of these contained disguise and were not freely written, including the Belli letter.

I think that is a very interesting point Morf, but just to get the wording exactly correct, the FBI said that in regards to both Fairfield State is in Trouble and Belli that they "probably contain some distortion and were not written as freely as the other threatening letters in this matter."

I would take that as, he tried to disguise his writing

Well I am not sure what they mean. "Disguise" implies intentionality, a deliberate attempt to change. either in an attempt to hoax a letter or perhaps real Z trying to hide his natural tendencies.

To me "distortion" does not automatically imply disguise. It could mean an intentional effort to change. But consider if a person was on alcohol, drugs or other altered mental state, their handwriting could be distorted, but not as part of an effort to disguise. Also if a person was writing in a car, on a bad surface, in a bad posture, with a poor pen or pencil, their writing could be distorted, but not done so on purpose.

I shifted from leaning towards Fairfield as perhaps real and now actually lean towards Fairfield being probable fake, on the basis of the envelopes with zip codes and postage due, but I think "distortion" as opposed to "disguise" actually helps those (like you?) who still lean towards these being perhaps real.

In our first poll, 4 said probable fake, 4 said probable real, and 8 said unsure. And I know several people still lean towrds them being real, and there are points in that favor, and in any event, as Trav shows, some real mystery even if they are not done by Zodiac.

Anyway a small point but it does say distortion, so I just wanted it correct.

This is something I’ve often wondered about. Many of the FBI reports state that (a letter) "contains some distortion." But isn’t that a really peculiar word choice, "distortion?"
I’ve never completely understood exactly what they mean. The word itself has a number of different meanings, but in regards to handwriting, I still don’t get it.

-glurk

EDIT: I Googled the phrase "contains some distortion" and found a few different things, such as:

In Optics – "The G12 lens is optically corrected, but still contains some distortion"
In Audio – "The mono sound is adequate, but contains some distortion"
In Electronics – "Even after filtering the signal contains some distortion"
In Map-Making – "EVERY map ever created in the history of man contains some distortion"
In Philosophy – "All European views are based on the ethics of Aristotle and contain some distortion"

Not much to be found for handwriting, though. Such an odd word to use.

It is,

I had started to write a reply on my own thoughts on it then the cloud thing happened. Turns out not such a bad thing cause I have since remembered my previous idea on this lol.

What I ‘think’ they are saying with the word distortion in this context is that there are consistencies or maybe at best, similarities between the handwriting and Zodiac’s handwriting. Possibly even compelling similarities. Now were talking under close magnified scrutiny. What I suspect they encountered were similarities and probably a partial pattern or consistency to them. The ‘distortion’ in these cases are were they encountered breaks in the patterns. A new variation or style previously not encountered within the Zodiac letters.

The problem being that there were enough boxes being ticked to make them suspicious of possible authenticity but then they encountered elements that were a ‘distortion’ of the pattern they were identifying but because some important boxes were already ticked this wasn’t enough to say, ok, deal breaker, not him.

That’s my thinking on it. I don’t think it has to just mean that but I suspect it’s a reasonable part of it. Distortion implying, we are seeing ‘something’ in this but there are other elements, new elements that we can’t account for.

And, I agree with morf. I think it also means disguised or a different style. Again those have different implications of meaning and if we consider that Zodiac was writing letters in different styles it becomes a real CF to try and explain to yourself what you may or may not be looking at. By his own actions Zodiac made, I feel, identification more difficult.

I think distortions covers several aspects as to why they couldn’t rule the letters in or out.

The spacing of the word ‘Zodiac’ in the opening lines of both letters is of interest, and seesm to match. The stuff connected to the Belli letter interesting too. Let’s not forget, the FBI said that all 3 of these contained disguise and were not freely written, including the Belli letter.

But why distort it, say you’re Zodiac and yet write envelopes in a manner Zodiac never used before, at a time he was trying to prove his letters were from him?

Distortion for letters he wasn’t claiming were him…I get that.

While the FBI may have said the Belli letter was distorted, I think it was just "neater", but his real writing does shine through.

While the FBI may have said the Belli letter was distorted, I think it was just "neater", but his real writing does shine through.

Totally agree. So if they level the term distorted at the the Belli letter does it simply mean ‘different from the norm’?’