Interesting, Mike.

In my mind, there’s a pretty big difference between NO saliva cella and FEW saliva cells. If used tap water, one would assume there would be no presence of saliva. Even a little bit of saliva on a stamp or envelope should mean something.

Well I think the point he was trying to make is that from his experience analyzing letters you expect to see a large amount of saliva on something that was licked. Such was the case with the two forgeries. Don’t forget that his method of extraction which he explained to me involved taking the stamp that was still attached to the envelope and putting the whole thing into an extracting solution. I think the one thing people always forget is that there can be contaminants saliva on the outside of a stamp as well as small numbers of contaminant cells and that could be the reason for the Trace Amounts of saliva.

What Keel was expressing was his surprise that there wasn’t the amount of saliva and number of cells he expected on a letter that had been licked. A small number of cells and the small amount of saliva can be accounted for by the extraction technique which would have taken cells and Trace Amounts of saliva off the front of the stamp. And everyone knows that the front of the envelopes had been exposed to contamination for years prior to this testing. So I don’t think the Trace Amounts, or as he told me once, the background amount of saliva prove that Zodiac licked the stamps. What Keel was implying is that they prove that Zodiac did NOT lick the stamps and envelopes.

Mike_R as far as I remember reading in your posts elsewhere you explained this by saying that the Zodiac had some DNA awareness. That he seemed to know that in the future his DNA could be retrieved and therefore he didn’t leave his DNA on the letters by licking them.

Here is the issue with this. The Zodiac did plenty of other things in his crimes that could have left DNA, especially at the LB and the PH crime scenes. So even then the idea he is DNA aware isn’t making much sense. It is 1969 and obviously you would have be on the cutting edge of research to be believing in that remote possibility because scientists had already given up on sequencing human DNA because it was too big. Look how long it took to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project 1990 to 2003. In the late 60s no one thought this would be possible because of those sizes. It was only when Alec Jeffreys made a massive breakthrough in profiling in the mid-80s that everything changed on it’s head a bit earlier but that HGP is basically supercomputers crunching numbers over a decade or more.

Another thing is that JJD/EARONS was forensically aware but he even left semen at crime scenes. JJD has training in police science, a degree, and another degree in criminal justice or something. This is in the 70s and yet look at everything he left behind despite being one of the most forensically aware serial killers of all time.

The Zodiac is not DNA aware and not afraid of leaving DNA behind in his letters. He was afraid of leaving behind saliva.

What the Zodiac is aware of is secretion status testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretor_status

Secrertors vs non-secretors.

Secretors can have their BLOOD TYPE determined from their saliva.

This was around even decades before the Zodiac was on the scene. It is one of the oldest blood tests we have in science. Blood testing was a huge scientific topic since the dawn of science. We had lots done there by the 1960s. Heaps. That’s because blood is obviously important for us to know about.

So this is what I am going to say to you and to everyone else reading this. If people for years here have been trying to guess why the Zodiac didn’t leave saliva then you did not know about secretion status testing (which is fine because it’s higher level education in biology) and not something you are expected to know unless you studied chemistry, are a forensic scientist or work in/with law enforcement somehow and know about it.

The biggest evidence this is the case is that the Zodiac community for decades couldn’t put that one together. Secretion status testing is why he didn’t leave saliva.

Keel should have been absolutely aware of that and so should have LE. I fail to see how they couldn’t have written down somewhere that the Zodiac was forensically aware of secretion status testing.

It’s a big clue.

Where have I ever said that Zodiac was aware of DNA? I’ve never said that, I’ve never believed that and I don’t believe it now. What I believe is that because of my suspects association with horse racing he was aware of saliva testing 4 at least medications which is what they used saliva for at the racetrack in the 1960s. And it’s not impossible that he knew of secretor status.

By the way my suspect was a huge horse owner and breeder and he was also the president of Golden Gate Fields in the 1960s when zodiac was active. So if anyone should have known about saliva testing at the track it was him. But he denied to me in my two thousand six face-to-face meeting with him that he knew anyting about saliva testing which two prestigious equine veterinarians extremely suspicious.

I have a background in science so I would not be stupid enough to propose that in the 1960s someone had pre knowledge of DNA. That definitely would not cut it in any left-brained discussion of the zodiac evidence.

Michael Butterfield was correct when he stated people heavily invested in suspects have an agenda. No doubt you see that Mike with respect to other people, but fail to see it in yourself. They equally see it in everybody else but also fail to see it in themselves. Your claims about the SLA letter being postmarked February 14th and your explanation about "Sla is an old Norse word meaning kill" are not correct. Admittedly, this isn’t pivotal to your claim of Qvale being Zodiac, but it drives to the heart of keeping a story on track when you know it is patently false. You may very well be correct with respect to the DNA observations you have detailed extensively, but surely you can understand why people have their reservations. When they ruled Qvale out in the documentary, it turned out to be less than reliable science. However, if DNA was discovered on 10 Zodiac envelope seals which matched one another, but didn’t match Qvale, would Qvale’s secretary now have licked the stamps (akin to Graysmith’s excuses), or would you admit you were mistaken. People will obviously be sceptical about the tap water claim because they possibly believe it is in your interests to never have verifiable DNA found, so as to keep Qvale riding high, irrespective of whether it is true or not. Observers are justifiably sceptical when people make cases for their suspects and rightly so, because the desire to keep a suspect on track is a powerful one.

Where have I ever said that Zodiac was aware of DNA? I’ve never said that, I’ve never believed that and I don’t believe it now. What I believe is that because of my suspects association with horse racing he was aware of saliva testing 4 at least medications which is what they used saliva for at the racetrack in the 1960s. And it’s not impossible that he knew of secretor status.

By the way my suspect was a huge horse owner and breeder and he was also the president of Golden Gate Fields in the 1960s when zodiac was active. So if anyone should have known about saliva testing at the track it was him. But he denied to me in my two thousand six face-to-face meeting with him that he knew anyting about saliva testing which two prestigious equine veterinarians extremely suspicious.

I have a background in science so I would not be stupid enough to propose that in the 1960s someone had pre knowledge of DNA. That definitely would not cut it in any left-brained discussion of the zodiac evidence.

Maybe that is the case. I have never read a Zodiac discussion of secretion status testing and the Zodiac in the same phrase. Do you have it in your book?

I went searching years back and there are no posts here on it. I made some on Reddit. RG has a few in a comments section about it since 2018. What I did read was posts asking you how the Zodiac could be aware of DNA profiling back in the 60s. So the impression I got there was that somehow the suggestion was horse saliva testing has identification properties the Zodiac was afraid of being known about himself and as a consequence was able to also hide his DNA. A lucky break for the Zodiac. Maybe that is what you were saying.

Cortisol levels are what are being measured from horse saliva. Maybe there is medical tests for medicine but why secretion status? If you are horse breeder then you understand breeding and have papers for your horses showing you the stock lines they come from etc.

claims about the SLA letter being postmarked February 14th and your explanation about "Sla is an old Norse word meaning kill" are not correct. Admittedly, this isn’t pivotal to your claim of Qvale being Zodiac, but it drives to the heart of keeping a story on track when you know it is patently false.

I don’t think that is his proposition. That was my proposition of which was part of a larger picture. If it goes or remains it has no impact. For example it still looks like the Zodiac is using mailing dates in reference to crimes. viewtopic.php?f=79&t=4874

This is what got Phil Sins connecting Bates to the Halloween card. Like I said, we don’t have to be right about everything, just some things. However there are fatal errors that cause the entire system to collapse. This wasn’t one of them.

claims about the SLA letter being postmarked February 14th and your explanation about "Sla is an old Norse word meaning kill" are not correct. Admittedly, this isn’t pivotal to your claim of Qvale being Zodiac, but it drives to the heart of keeping a story on track when you know it is patently false.

I don’t think that is his proposition. That was my proposition of which was part of a larger picture. If it goes or remains it has no impact. For example it still looks like the Zodiac is using mailing dates in reference to crimes. https://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=4874

This is what got Phil Sins connecting Bates to the Halloween card. Like I said, we don’t have to be right about everything, just some things. However there are fatal errors that cause the entire system to collapse. This wasn’t one of them.

The SLA letter is not pivotal to the case (which I have already conceded), but it thrusts to the heart of intrinsic bias. When you choose to cite original source material such as police reports, or FBI reports in a book or presentation, but then choose to dismiss two original FBI files stating Feb 3 and Los Angeles because it doesn’t sit well with your theory, you can understand why people are sceptical to your motivations. That is why I brought it up in respect to DNA. The claim that Zodiac used mailing dates is an inherently flawed argument, because he cannot ultimately control the postmark date irrespective of when he mails a communication, or whether the postmark gets stamped by the machine correctly, whether the ink impression will be clear or not, whether the postmark falls over a stamp, whether it rains and smudges the postmark etc.

You believed the SLA letter was Feb 14 and baked this into your theory. You now know this is not true, but will continue with this narrative, in order to keep the story alive. I have used the SLA as one example (but can give you many more) of people maintaining a narrative over truth, because the truth is inconvenient to the version they are selling. None of us are right about everything, but when an inconvenient truth arrives, we either accept we were wrong or begin creating an alternative reality. Mike has done some excellent work, but inevitably people cannot separate the fact he has a suspect alongside his assertions on the DNA. Having a suspect or suspects, as you’ve proved, inevitably will cause you to bend the crimes and communications towards your suspect. Otherwise what is the point of writing the book. The idea is to sell a story, not be completely objective.

This is not slagging off your or Mike’s ideas, it is pointing out an obvious flaw to having a suspect and approaching a subject without intrinsic bias.

claims about the SLA letter being postmarked February 14th and your explanation about "Sla is an old Norse word meaning kill" are not correct. Admittedly, this isn’t pivotal to your claim of Qvale being Zodiac, but it drives to the heart of keeping a story on track when you know it is patently false.

I don’t think that is his proposition. That was my proposition of which was part of a larger picture. If it goes or remains it has no impact. For example it still looks like the Zodiac is using mailing dates in reference to crimes. https://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=4874

This is what got Phil Sins connecting Bates to the Halloween card. Like I said, we don’t have to be right about everything, just some things. However there are fatal errors that cause the entire system to collapse. This wasn’t one of them.

The SLA letter is not pivotal to the case (which I have already conceded), but it thrusts to the heart of intrinsic bias. When you choose to cite original source material such as police reports, or FBI reports in a book or presentation, but then choose to dismiss two original FBI files stating Feb 3 and Los Angeles because it doesn’t sit well with your theory, you can understand why people are sceptical to your motivations. That is why I brought it up in respect to DNA. The claim that Zodiac used mailing dates is an inherently flawed argument, because he cannot ultimately control the postmark date irrespective of when he mails a communication, or whether the postmark gets stamped by the machine correctly, whether the ink impression will be clear or not, whether the postmark falls over a stamp, whether it rains and smudges the postmark etc.

You believed the SLA letter was Feb 14 and baked this into your theory. You now know this is not true, but will continue with this narrative, in order to keep the story alive. I have used the SLA as one example (but can give you many more) of people maintaining a narrative over truth, because the truth is inconvenient to the version they are selling. None of us are right about everything, but when an inconvenient truth arrives, we either accept we were wrong or begin creating an alternative reality. Mike has done some excellent work, but inevitably people cannot separate the fact he has a suspect alongside his assertions on the DNA. Having a suspect or suspects, as you’ve proved, inevitably will cause you to bend the crimes and communications towards your suspect. Otherwise what is the point of writing the book. The idea is to sell a story, not be completely objective.

This is not slagging off your or Mike’s ideas, it is pointing out an obvious flaw to having a suspect and approaching a subject without intrinsic bias.

Do you have access to all the letters? Do you know all the mailing dates? No we don’t. Do I still hold on the 14 in SLA card after our discussions? No I don’t. It’s not in any update I do. It was never fatal to anything. Hence why it still developed regardless.

It’s a big claim to say the Zodiac had no control over the dates that got added to the letters. That one kinda got me. You believe he didn’t know when his letters would be stamped when he dropped them in the box? That idea of no control and Zodiac doesn’t sit well with me but I will accept it if that is true but I am skeptical that he had no control over it. I think it’s more regular than maybe you are suggesting. More predictable.

I get your point about bias. However the following are just as much biases.

– The Zodiac will never be identified by anyone online.
– The Zodiac left no clues to his identity in any of his communications.
– The puzzles are nonsense.
– Bias gets in the way of correctly identifying the Zodiac.

They are all subject to bias. Some of those points actually result in profiles and some people don’t even know their own position can result in positive claims about the Zodiac. For example the story at LB was fantasy containing no truths. That is a positive claim.

I can step back and see bias plenty but I really enjoy reading people who think they are totally removed from bias by making various claims that aren’t neutral at all. Meaning "I don’t know" or "I have no position on that". That’s neutral.

You don’t escape it. You aren’t some observer looking in unaffected by it all. You don’t remove yourself from claiming something about the Zodiac by saying a negative.

I had typed out a long email but I lost it and I’m not going to retype it. Richard, I am well aware of your arguments and as I’ve said a million times all the other letters have been copied a hundred thousand times but you can see the post marks on them. With the SLA letter you can easily see the stamp and you should see the postmark crossing the stamp but you don’t. Somehow magically the ONLY the postmark has disappeared and gone poof over the years but the stamp is still visible. When I see a verifiable copy of the SLA letter with a postmark of February 3rd on it I’ll believe you.

I’m well aware of the possibility that someone from the SLA wrote the letter. But there’s even confusion on your site where the FBI says that the letter was postmarked on February 3rd from Los Angeles and then another document says was postmarked on February 14th, which you claim to be the wrong date. But if you can’t see the postmark on the envelope yourself, how do you know which is the right date which is the wrong date? Oh it was because the FBI said so. And God knows IMthe FBI has never made a mistake. I also queried some people on the internet and they were at a loss to explain why it would take a letter 11 days to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 1969. Just because it was 50 years ago doesn’t mean that the mail was not very efficient in those days. In fact with the new guy we have as the postmaster the mail may even be slower now LOL.

As for mr. Butterfield, he’s the biggest phony in the case. He paints himself as an agenda less researcher. But he has an agenda. And that agenda is to discredit anyone who had the audacity to have an original idea and develop their own suspect because he couldn’t. He’s so pathetic. He used to actually advertise on his message board for someone else that develop a suspect and then share it with him and they would split the the research and of course the glory. He conned me out of the lake Herman Road police reports with some sad story about wanting to make sure that he got the crime scene correct in his book and then he sold or traded with Tom and those police reports ended up on Tom’s site and are still there today. And when I publicly confronted Butterfield about having conned me out of them, instead of apologizing he attacked me personally on some now-defunct website.

So please don’t lecture me about Butterfield and his theories of agendas.

I never said that they used secretor status in horse racing. All I know is that even today using urine they test the winners of every race and make sure the horse didn’t cheat. I assume they testing for illegal medications not just cortisol but I don’t know the exact regimen they use. But again I never said that probably would have known about secretor status from horse racing. But it was knowable at the time and it was possible that he knew about it from whatever source.

But he was the president of the racetrack and claimed he had no idea what was taking place in the drug Barn. That just doesn’t sound true and it didn’t sound true to the to veterinarians I spoke to. If Qvale was innocent why would he have to hide his knowledge post-race drug testing via saliva, which was an everyday event in the 1960s at the track where he was president. How could the president of the racetrack be so ignorant when he has to have his hand in everything.

With multi-generational copies, the reproductions get less and less detailed. The envelope on Tom’s site is invisible, but the envelope I have shown is much clearer, but admittedly date free. Travel back to the original and it is likely visible. I haven’t seen the postmark, but I would have to believe either [1] The people at the FBI cannot read, or [2] They are deliberately lying and just inventing the date and location. And I cannot see either being realistic claims. The later document you describe is just a compilation list made in error, not the original. That is why its compiler got the postmark for the Badlands card wrong. Anyway, I know that you know all this, and didn’t bring it up to bore you to death. I have always been honest in respect to your DNA work and thoughts on the 1974 letters, which has sound justification and reasoning.

I will say BD Holland, I know for a fact I won’t solve the Zodiac case from the keyboard of my computer. In fact, I would put my chances at zero. Didn’t believe I would in 2012 and believe even less now. It’s one thing believing you have solved the Zodiac case or believing it is possible, to convincing others you have. Without that solid, tangible evidence such a multiple fingerprints, DNA or a future scientific breakthrough, convincing the overwhelming consensus of the Zodiac community that you have cracked the identity of the Zodiac, solved a cipher, or solved a card is a hopeless task for the most part. Writing an article or presentation to satiate ones own belief is satisfying enough. I am glad you still believe the Zodiac case can be cracked online, but sadly I don’t. But I wish you well.

I will say BD Holland, I know for a fact I won’t solve the Zodiac case from the keyboard of my computer. In fact, I would put my chances at zero. Didn’t believe I would in 2012 and believe even less now. It’s one thing believing you have solved the Zodiac case or believing it is possible, to convincing others you have. Without that solid, tangible evidence such a multiple fingerprints, DNA or a future scientific breakthrough, convincing the overwhelming consensus of the Zodiac community that you have cracked the identity of the Zodiac, solved a cipher, or solved a card is a hopeless task for the most part. Writing an article or presentation to satiate ones own belief is satisfying enough. I am glad you still believe the Zodiac case can be cracked online, but sadly I don’t. But I wish you well.

Nobody is going to convince anyone in a professional capacity in this case without a hard evidence match. I don’t expect anyone here to be able to do that because they don’t have access to the hard evidence. So we do what we can to help others who have that. That’s all it’s about. Anyone announcing the case is solved obviously hasn’t. That will come from the FBI and local law enforcement or not at all and will be forensically supported or some undeniable evidence that reaches the same conclusions.

I know for a fact that the easiest position to take is to just reject everything with low probabilities. Just bet against it and the majority of the time you will be right. We can do it at the race tracks, casinos and the Zodiac case if we want.

Majority of the time isn’t all the time though.

Low probability events happen. We expect low probability events to be behind breaks in this case.

I’ll give you an example. Ted Kaczynski’s brother recognizing the linguistics needed to break the case.

I’ll give you an example that would have caught JJD. Whoever would have come across the article about a cop who caught shoplifting dog-repellent and fired over it. That was JJD.

Not to mention Dennis Rader actually left clues to his identity in his puzzles that if applied to the DNA dragnet would have likely succeeded instead of failing. http://www.tabloidcolumn.com/btk-puzzle.html

Breaks are usually low probability events.

Do you really think I expected to be where I am today? That I started a website somewhere about the Zodiac and that as a website owner I would break the case? Hell no. Most of you had no clue who I was until 2019 and yet I have been reading since 1998. I just never had anything to add. No websites. No Zodiac anything. That came later. When I realized what I had and worked on it I knew I had something that was serious enough to able to be matched against not just what was out there but have explanatory power over a lot of things.

I just bothered to go back and do what people had forgotten to do. Which was to check out the Tim Holt comics when they were all finally scanned. If I didn’t do it, someone would have remembered to do it. You just all forgot.

#14 scan wasn’t available until April 18th, 2019.

#8 scan wasn’t available until Apr 3rd, 2019.

#30 had been out since March 13th, 2011.

#22 had been out since Nov 13th, 2014.

Tahoe27 only had #30 to work with. She found the original connection on Dec 30, 2013.

Nobody could have developed anything unless they had a Tim Holt collection. <— Hello!!!

I also want to restate again the same thing I have always have. No matter where you go or read with my POIs, everything is pointing at them and nothing away from them. I know you are getting this also which is why you are falling back onto generalizations like there is no way in hell the internet can be used to solve this case.

Yet the Zodiac is one of the few cases where it’s not a good idea to say that because there is a TON of evidence in this case and the Zodiac couldn’t predict mass data analysis anymore than he could predict DNA profiling.

Tahoe27 gave you the break you all needed by busting that wide open.