From the 6/17/74 Vallejo Times

No real person by this name has EVER existed, I checked multiple databases. This does not scream Zodiac, and maybe the writer just made the name up, but maybe Z,if he was writing papers, would feel the need to use a fake name.

What about this particular letter caught your interest?

Sounds like something my dad would have wrote back then!

The person doesn’t exist.

The person doesn’t exist.

Ok, wow. I’m just kinda curious how many letters you had to go thru to find one person who didn’t exist.

I would have thought using a fake name back then (you really can’t nowadays, most papers call you to confirm your identity) was not unheard of.

This is interesting but I agree with you. Even if you found a letter or many letters, imo they’d all have different names (most of them made up) as Zodiac would be too cautious to use his real name. Or even if he used his own name, how would you ever be able to prove he was Z?

It is not a crime to write a letter to an Editor so unless he wrote a confession or threat, it seems like this is a waste-of-time. I mean no criticism and applaud your efforts.

FWIW, I am personally getting more upset the more I read as I wonder "what are the odds" and how many coincidences could there be?

I am almost positive my guy read the "concerned citizen" letter to me over the phone during a long distance conversation we had saying he wanted my opinion before he mailed it and I remember telling him I thought it was just wonderful!

He also would encourage me to write letters to the papers when we’d discuss something going on in the news.

As I’ve posted before, there are so many seemingly innocent things my guy has said and done over the years that only now make me wonder. Were it not for keeping up with the investigations done here, I’d never even think about many of the things that were said and done so many years ago but when I read something that triggers a memory or makes me think "wait a minute" and I reflect back and almost self-hypnotize myself, I am amazed at the memories that come flooding back and I can almost remember verbatim some of the conversations, remarks and the topics we were discussing and where we were at the time.

After seeing that comic book, I am positive my guy had the exact one. He showed it to me after we started talking about gambling and roulette while sitting on the beach one day talking for hours and drifting from one thing to another. It was getting warm and we were thirsty so he left me on the beach, walked to his apt. to get us some cold drinks and came back with the comic book along with a few other items. I remember teasing him about looking like the guy on the cover in the red outfit if he had a handkerchief tied around his face and also talking about the fishnet stockings the girl on the left was wearing.

He also, I am pretty sure, had the Sagittarius stationery someone posted a picture of and showed that to me while sitting on the beach (near Riverside) and the same one Cheri Jo’s father was said to have gone to the day she was murdered. I seem to remember thinking it kind of odd that a guy would have stationery like that as it looked more like a girl thing to me and telling him about some I had been given as a gift when I was about twelve that had my astrological sign written in letters in the girl’s skirt. (This stationery or note paper was very popular with one girls back then).

He IIRC told me his aunt (who was not blood-related but a very close friend of his mother’s) had given that to him as a gift. (In later years, I remember we got into a big discussion about cooking when he was visiting me and he told me this same woman he referred to as his "aunt" had given him a fish knife which he used to cut big pieces of salmon into steaks. (He said he’d become very friendly with the butcher in the market he shopped at and that the butcher would save him a good fish when they came in before they got sold out). Again, I kind of wondered about this as I knew he was a good cook but he was always talking about going out to restaurants to eat and was single so was kind of surprised he’d go to all this trouble for salmon.

Sorry to be so long but these things that make me go hmmm really give me the creeps as I feel horrible to even suspect my guy based on such ordinary things that could be entirely coincidental but there are just so many of them it makes me wonder and worry.

Sorry for the delay in replying, I was just scanning thru some names and background checked a few of them, and that’s how I found out that Guy did not exist, not that it’s a crime to make up a name in a letter to the editor.

I disagree about Z using his real name. He was an egotist, and wanted to see his name in print. I think he likely used his real name at some point, but probably stopped using it after the Z campaign started.

I have always thought Mike R’s method was good, which is what lead him to MrX, although I personally do not think MrX was Z, but the strategy is worth trying.

By the way, I have the remainder of the 1968 letters to the editor I will post here tonight or tomorrow

Here’s the 7/1/68 to 7/15/68 letters to the editor, and there are some interesting ones for sure. Lots of letters about guns, people with RH initials, and one guy starts a letter off "I am mildly saddened" just as Zodiac wrote, "I am midly curious"

Dive in Everybody!

Here’s 7/16/68 to 7/31/68:

Here’s 8/1/15/68 to 8/15/68

8/16/68 to 8/31/68, includes a letter written by Gareth Penn!

Here’s the Gareth Penn letter:

8/21/68 & 8/28/68 Were blurry, here are better copies, one that jumps out is written by a Jack Wayne Essex, he seems like somebody that might call himself, ZODIAC

9/1/68 to 9/16/68

Here’s the Gareth Penn letter:

Typical Penn. (Garbage!)

Mike – I don’t see any "Zodiac" yet – but I’m delighted you’re looking. I still think there’s something from him out there someplace – I’m convinced of it. And in his "real name" too, perhaps.

As usual with Penn, my eyes glazed over.

Do you think he wrote to the Chronicle during this time? We know that he was in Riverside and Vallejo before SF, so personally I think that he might not have written them until after he "became Zodiac" and was more likely to write to his local papers. Just a feeling.

This. The Zodiac originally targeted The Vallejo-Herald Times with his three-part ciper, choosing it first among his three papers. When The Chronicle ran with the story, The Zodiac dropped the other two, but he certainly favored the VHT. So if The Zodiac wrote to a paper before July 1969, I’m sure he chose the VHT.