I don’t see any of the two letters being a hoax at all..am no handwriting expert, but in seconds can find multiple indications why this in fact might even be verified to be Z’s handwriting.

QT

I am with you on the 1986 and 87 letters being from Zodiac. The idea of him saying that cars make good weapons is exactly what I believe he did to a female victim off of Highway 4 . Her name was Teresa Brown, ( A waitress working in Walnut Creek, who lived a couple of blocks from my home) she was forced off of the highway late at night and then stabbed to death.
This is the same highway where "someone"tried multiple times to force me off late at night on my way home from Oakland during the late 80’s mid 90’s.
I do believe Zodiac used his car as a weapon many times , Isobel Watson being one of his few surviving victims.

The March or May 1986 letter I believe could have been sent on May 5th 86 , the stamping was unclear as to May or March 6th, 5’s and 6’s look a lot alike. Being that May 5th was May Day. Zodiac liked playing word games "in my opinion". Sending the letter on May Day was not only a holiday ,but those words were used in the military" May Day -May Day", as a "warning message".
Sort of like when he sent the "Eureka" card , the word Eureka was used as a "Eureka moment". Not too many younger people would have used that word, but I and other elderly people did.
In the 86 letter he claimed to have killed a couple up near Sacramento about two week prior. That would be about April 22 86 when Koy Len Saechao and Choy Fow Salee were shot as they sat in their car on Highway 99 and interstate 5 in Sacramento. 15 shots were fired with a small Cal gun.
"Someone" directed the CHP to where he said he saw an accident? That person was thought to be a hitchhiker, but he could have parked his car some distance and was thought to be a hitchhiker? Zodiac has been known to direct police to his crime scenes usually by phone, but there wouldn’t be a phone handy near that crime scene.

I wonder which Walnut Creek bar/restaurant Teresa Brown had worked? And where she had lived? Same with your street..all three together could be a nice triangle to narrow down the area Z should have been well known as a neighbor..

QT

She worked at the Renaissance Bar and Restaurant ( Renaissance meaning re-birth like Zodiac believed in ?) Teresa had lived in Lake Tahoe and Oregon before moving to Antioch. She was divorced from her husband who lives in OR.
I haven’t seen any pictures of her, but I know a relative of hers and could ask her if she has one I can share? Not sure but I think Teresa’s mother still lives in the house that is only a few blocks from mine, I don’t feel comfortable asking her any questions.
As you know I have two suspects, one has a cousin that lives behind Teresa’s house. (Just another odd tie in.)

Qt I just realized that the 1986 Zodiac letter which is thought to be a hoax and the murders of Saechao and Salee that took place on April 22 1986 was two years prior to Theresa Colleen Browns murder on April 22 1988 ! Her prior last name was Klock , pronounced Clock , Its about Time????

Qt I just realized that the 1986 Zodiac letter which is thought to be a hoax and the murders of Saechao and Salee that took place on April 22 1986 was two years prior to Theresa Colleen Browns murder on April 22 1988 ! Her prior last name was Klock , pronounced Clock , Its about Time????

Could be accidential but who knows..the name thing is rather unlikely. What is interesting is the Walnut Creek/Antioch connection, that she worked as a waitress (like Dee) and that she was found at Willow Pass Road (tit willow..). Here’s an article:

‘IN 1988, DARLING GIRL’ IS STABBED AN INVESTIGATOR IS CONVINCED A WOMAN LIVING IN ANTIOCH WAS KILLED BY SOMEONE SHE KNEW.

Concord The sun was just beginning to swell above the hills when the California Highway Patrol officer noticed the black skid marks on eastbound Highway 4 at Willow Pass Road. Peering down into a ravine from the side of the road, he spotted the two-door brown Mercury Montego. It was upright, but facing the wrong direction. When he reached the bottom of the ditch, the officer found the car empty, and the passenger side window broken out. He found the bloody body of a 30-year-old woman in a thicket of bamboo about 15 feet away. Theresa Colleen Brown had been stabbed to death. Nearly 12 years later, her slaying remains unsolved. While investigators have not determined a motive, Contra Costa County sheriff’s Sgt. Mark Hale said he does not believe it was a random killing. "We don’t feel this is a stranger who did this," he said. "This is not a wandering, hobo hitchhiker who jumped off a train. This was someone in the area." Brown’s mother, Loise Proulx of Antioch, remains eager to find out who killed her daughter. "It would mean everything to me," she said. "If I knew who it was and he was executed, I’d be there to watch him. I would want him punished." She even wrote to then-Gov. Pete Wilson asking him to offer a reward for information about her daughter’s death but to no avail. Proulx described her daughter as a "darling girl," devoted to her children. Brown liked to go out on Friday nights and loved to laugh. After separating from her husband, Brown left Oregon in January 1988 and moved to her mother’s house in Antioch with her youngest, a 4-year-old boy, in tow. Her then-husband, who still lives in Oregon and was living there with their two older children when she died, is not a suspect, Hale said. Their youngest son lives with his father now. At the time of her death, Brown had worked for about two weeks as a cocktail waitress at the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in Walnut Creek. She had a tough facade, but was also described by co-workers as very friendly and outgoing, Hale said. Brown seemed to have made most of her acquaintances in bars, and some of these casual friends were "biker types," Hale said. Brown’s sister Mary Knibbe said Brown was "carefree and innocent" but began hanging out with a tough crowd shortly after moving to Antioch. Still, on most nights Brown went straight to the baby sitter’s house to pick up her little boy after her work shift ended, Hale said. On the night of her slaying, Brown did not mention that she had other plans, and the baby sitter expected her to pick up her son. She never showed up. Brown was last seen at 2:15 a.m. April 22, 1988, when she left work. Her body was discovered at 6:30 a.m. Other hotel employees told police there had been no problems with customers that night and several had watched Brown get into her car and leave alone, Hale said. He believes she met her killer somewhere later. There were signs that Brown had sexual contact after leaving work, but Hale doesn’t know if it was with the killer or someone else. What Hale said he does believe, though, is that before Brown’s killer stabbed her, he terrorized the 30-year-old, chasing her down the freeway and running her car off the road. After the crash, the killer hiked down into the ravine after her. Before she was stabbed, Brown had either been dragged out of the car, Hale said, or she was already out of the car and trying to run away. Proulx and Knibbe both said they believe Brown was killed because she knew something the killer didn’t want her to know. Hale said this was one of several possible motives detectives have considered.’

There’s some more here:
http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtop … 606&p=3542

Andrea Ingersoll, Sharon Marie Mattos, Lisa Diane Norrell, Michael Tan, Jessica L. Frederick, Tammie Davis, Rachael Cruise, Rakesh Pal Gopi…most of them in the 90ies so I’d rather guess its not our but another serial killer guy..but still possible, who knows..

QT

The ‘r’ is right.

I did not realize that the two 1987 letters arrived so close together. The one that is the topic of this thread was declared phony but it doesn’t seem there was a determination made on the second letter.

1987 was two years before I met Darlene’s sister Pam. She and I were being taunted by a man claiming to be Zodiac years before we met on March 19th1990. More than likely that was the year that my suspect left the note for me, letting me know that Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac book was released. He wanted to help me catch the Zodiac, is what he told my friend as he handed her the folded note that he had written minutes before. No way did he trace Zodiac’s writing, she saw him write it ! One expert said it was too much like the Zodiac’s writing to be from him? He made sure he put everything he had written in the past in that note, thinking that I would recognize it once I saw his writing in Graysmiths book.
1986 was when Graysmith was on the "People are Talking" TV show announcing his new book. It is that sort of media attention that Zodiac seems to react to, so I still stand behind QT, that both letters were from Zodiac. I would expect to see more communication coming, because of the 5 part History Channel series. It ends on "Hanukkah" and nine days before the Lake Herman Rd crime anniversary. I believe that Graysmiths Z book stirred the Zodiac up and that he not only wrote, he killed more females. The girls that were tortured and murdered were killed by a man who phoned the Pittsburg Ca. police and told them he was the killer and that he was the Zodiac. Antioch police believe that Zodiac was at some point living in Antioch. I have a lead that I am checking on, to find out why they believe Zodiac was living in Antioch. If they have an address, I would like to do a paper trail and get that persons name! I also believe that Zodiac has sent other letters that were thought to be a copy cat when in fact it was from Z. What are the qualifications that make a handwriting person an expert? Fifty percent of them graduate at the bottom of their class, what does that tell you?

I don’t see any of the two letters being a hoax at all..am no handwriting expert, but in seconds can find multiple indications why this in fact might even be verified to be Z’s handwriting.

QT

Yes, it’s true what you say…similarities exist…however in the case of these two communications…there are perhaps too many indications of dissimilarity. It is nice to know if a work purported to be authored by Zodiac and authenticated by ‘experts’ is the real deal. The letters after all are the key to identifying him. I submit you can be your own expert on Zodiac writing, with enough patience and observation, and a primer of what to look for, to confirm or discount the findings of others.

I used to play video games when Zodiac was doing his ‘thing.’ I was not an expert on them but no one could touch me on certain xy vector Atari offerings of the era. I took the time and became expert on how those particular games were made to the point where I could play several hours on one quarter. To do that meant that I watched characteristics in front of me many hours at a time.

I also studied the published letters this way, many hours, and like Morrill, I believe I could recognize his handwriting very quickly. Like you I have no claim as a handwriting expert, with one exception.

One thing these two letters do not have are a propensity to separate suffixes ever so slightly from their root. This and the way which certain letters follow other letters preceeding them, stand out from the other confirmed texts. While Zodiac had many similar ways of creating the same letter or character, one thing that he almost always did was own his style with a hurried pen. He tried to begin carefully on some, but by the end could not wait to get it stamped and ‘rushed’ to editor. We see that in his style, but, not in these two under discussion. While the g and y tails are similar they are short and appear painstakingly drawn. The d isn’t our telltale cursive single stroke d, and the most giveaway character of all, the ampersand, is missing. The last letter Zodiac may have written claimed he was ‘in charge of all things.’ The style of his writing says differently.

Nice observations , except Zodiac didn’t always write his d’s in one single stroke. The d’s that he did in his cursive style yes , but when he printed the d’s they were in two strokes.
Some of his K’s were in two strokes and others in three. His capital R’s , were in two strokes, some done in one. His lower g’s did have different lengths for the tails.

Over the many years, his writing had to change somewhat, mine sure has.
I wouldn’t discount letters, just because they are not exactly the same as the 1969 letters. I believe that Zodiac was very busy in 1987, Graysmith’s 1986 Zodiac book probably stirred Zodiac up, is my guess?