<As he could have dropped mail at the Rincon Annexe on even a weekday out of counter hours, were he to either live or work in San Francisco, then we would have strong evidence that he does neither;>

If he was driving, parking around Rincon Annex was very difficult if not impossible on weekdays, at least until about 7pm. On weekends it was no problem.

Rincon Annex was an easy driving trip from San Mateo County, typically easier than from the east bay.

On what day please was the 4th letter that was mailed on a weekend machine-cancelled?

The ‘Dripping Pen’ letter, together with the second cipher, was postmarked "PM 8 Nov 1969," Saturday, the day before the ‘Bus Bomb’ letter got its hand-cancelled postmark, "Nov 9 PM 1969" (Sunday).

The former was machine-cancelled with a P-B Mk. II, showing the two bars on the wavy-line cancellation, and was double-stamped with 2 x 6¢ Roosevelts.

<two (at least) cannot have been dropped in a mail collection inside of a PO, without using the counter services as, again, they could not have achieved Sunday PM postmarks.>

It’s possible the Rincon Annex lobby (not the counters) was open on Sundays and mail could be dropped in a slot, and my guess is that mail would have achieved a Sunday postmark. If the lobby wasn’t open my guess is mail dropped in the freestanding boxes in front of Rincon Annex on a Sunday before the pickup deadline would have similarly achieved a Sunday postmark,

Yes, especially if Rincon is the SCF and operating on a Sunday, I certainly have it in mind that the lobby could be open even when the counters are closed. Not the small, local POs though.

<As he could have dropped mail at the Rincon Annexe on even a weekday out of counter hours, were he to either live or work in San Francisco, then we would have strong evidence that he does neither;>

If he was driving, parking around Rincon Annex was very difficult if not impossible on weekdays, at least until about 7pm. On weekends it was no problem.

Rincon Annex was an easy driving trip from San Mateo County, typically easier than from the east bay.

Thanks, X. Another very important bit of insider information!

I suppose, though – and we’re surely getting ahead of ourselves at this point – you would only call it an easier drive if you were coming from San Mateo County. If he were forced to come from the Vallejo area, that being where he lived, he would at least have only had to barely touch into the city, East Side from the Bay Bridge, to get to Rincon. And, given that we are probably supposing that he had a very pressing motivation to get there, on account of the letters containing the two sections of Stine’s shirt, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded parking away and leaving himself a little (lumbering, Welsh-style) walk.

One of the things that I have found difficult of late has been locating old pictures of Rincon Annex, particularly ones that might illustrate how it may have at least been possible for it to function as a Sectional Center Facility. It is, I have to be honest, hard to get past finding anything relating to Rincon that is not either about a.) the modern Rincon Center, b.) images of the Art Deco exterior and grand entrance doors or (mostly) c.) the murals.

What I had specifically been looking for was an image that would give an indication of it having had a substantial loading bay at the back, or somewhere.

Finally, I have been able to locate the following photo from late 1940. (IIRC, it would only have been built a couple of years or so by this time.)

I think this helps me to feel a little more open to the idea that Rincon Annex was far more than just an up-scale city Post Office.

From 1970

From 1970

Really, really nice find, Cragle! I can’t believe it’s been as difficult as it seems to have been to find any reference to Rincon Annex of the day resembling anything like "the major mail handling center in the city."

Well, I’m pretty much sold.

And checking the banner heading on newspapers.com – I don’t have a subscription, so can only see a small image front page, but the typesetting matches completely – it looks like this was in the The Times of San Mateo, CA, for Friday, March 20, 1970, which was of course during the couple of weeks or so when the Postal strikes were happening across the States.

Thanks for this.

From 1970

Really, really nice find, Cragle! I can’t believe it’s been as difficult as it seems to have been to find any reference to Rincon Annex of the day resembling anything like "the major mail handling center in the city."

Well, I’m pretty much sold.

And checking the banner heading on newspapers.com – I don’t have a subscription, so can only see a small image front page, but the typesetting matches completely – it looks like this was in the The Times of San Mateo, CA, for Friday, March 20, 1970, which was of course during the couple of weeks or so when the Postal strikes were happening across the States.

Thanks for this.

Sounds about right but I had it on Newspaperarchive. You can read via the OCR link for free on newspaper

One of the things that I have found difficult of late has been locating old pictures of Rincon Annex, particularly ones that might illustrate how it may have at least been possible for it to function as a Sectional Center Facility. It is, I have to be honest, hard to get past finding anything relating to Rincon that is not either about a.) the modern Rincon Center, b.) images of the Art Deco exterior and grand entrance doors or (mostly) c.) the murals.

What I had specifically been looking for was an image that would give an indication of it having had a substantial loading bay at the back, or somewhere.

Finally, I have been able to locate the following photo from late 1940. (IIRC, it would only have been built a couple of years or so by this time.)

I think this helps me to feel a little more open to the idea that Rincon Annex was far more than just an up-scale city Post Office.

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but there have been forum posts (which I don’t buy into) that the Zodiac was a resident, at least part of the time, of that YMCA in the background, which is on the Embarcadero a block and a half south of the Ferry Building.

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but there have been forum posts (which I don’t buy into) that the Zodiac was a resident, at least part of the time, of that YMCA in the background, which is on the Embarcadero a block and a half south of the Ferry Building.

I’ve had a look at this. It’s in the absolutely massive Ross Sullivan thread. I certainly don’t buy into RS at all, but even looking at the idea generically, I’m not noticing anything that would favour the Y on Embarcadero for any reason. An interesting pursuit, all the same.

[Edit: spelling]

Shaq, I agree. To my knowledge no one has placed Ross Sullivan in the Bay Area during times of Zodiac activity. Some of the disciples apparently latched onto that YMCA because it was one of the few in San Francisco that offered resident boarding, and I believe there was a reference to Sullivan having lived in a YMCA previously.

Meanwhile, it still seems worth understanding definitively — under what circumstances would letters be hand-postmarked ‘San Francisco’ that were not handed to a human clerk, and two of which received Sunday postmarks.

So,…

Q: where do we think things stand following Cragle’s great find today of a direct reference, from the time of the Postal strikes in march 1970, to Rincon Annex having been "the major mail handling center for the city" and – given we are already expecting there to be a single Sectional Center Facility covering 940-1, 943-4 – for the 940 section?

Are we at a point where we can accept as a strong working hypothesis that the three hand-cancelled, weekend-posted mailings:

• ‘Bus Bomb’ letter to the Chronicle, hand-cancelled 09 November 1969 (Sunday, PM) and containing a piece of Stine’s shirt (assumption: priority mailing, with wish to reduce risk of getting lost in the post);[/*:m:gikhsg9b]
• ‘Belli’ letter, hand-cancelled 20 December 1969 (Saturday, PM) and containing another section of shirt (assumption: priority mailing); and[/*:m:gikhsg9b]
• ‘Little List’ letter to the Chronicle, hand-cancelled 26 July 1970 (Sunday, PM)[/*:m:gikhsg9b][/list:u:gikhsg9b]

were hand-delivered directly to the Annex at the weekend, very likely to expedite ‘cut-out-the-middle-man’ delivery?

This idea was one suggested by @Xcaliber, and appeared indicated from needing to find a solution that would resolve an otherwise seemingly inconsistent body of facts:

• that only these three letters, each of which was processed with a weekend postmark (two Sunday, one Saturday), were hand-cancelled. All the weekday letters went through the regular machine cancelling process;[/*:m:gikhsg9b]
• that any mail dropped in a regular mailbox, even at the weekend, would always be processed through machine cancelling at the SCF and only these (for some reason) weren’t; and[/*:m:gikhsg9b]
• that any letter handed over the counter at a local PO would have required to have had the Zip code added (none of the Zodiac letters did) and could not have achieved a Sunday PM hand-cancellation at such a PO, since they weren’t open Sundays.[/*:m:gikhsg9b][/list:u:gikhsg9b]

Alternatives have been considered as to other potential ways in which two of these letters could have received both 1.) hand-cancellation and 2.) a Sunday PM postmark, and those presented thus far have, in degree, been variously rejected. The most superficially plausible of these was the possibility that the letters in question had, for whatever reason, failed the regular machine processing (too bulky, non-flat profile) and been pulled and hand-cancelled as a result. To counter this, however, it is only necessary to reflect on how this ‘explanation’ would require that the facer-cancellers somehow managed to achieve a 75% fail rate on Zodiac letters at the weekend, against a 0% fail rate on weekdays.

Xcaliber’s fundamental idea is (if I understand it correctly) that these letters, having been hand-dropped at the Rincon Annex directly – in either a lobby mailbox or a freestanding one outside – were (as per a routine procedure that we have yet to confirm) pulled as each having obvious local destinations, and were processed through immediate hand-cancellation and bagged for delivery the next day, thus avoiding the face-canceller process.

Because of this idea of local destination being a key part of the hypothesis, it was thereby felt strongly required that not only were these letters hand-dropped at the SCF, but that the SCF be at Rincon – hence local to the two destinations for the three letters in question, the offices of the Chronicle (two letters) and Belli’s apartment on Faraday (one letter).

The following map demonstrates the proximity (locality) of the three:



(@Xcaliber: please correct me if I have missed, or misrepresented, anything.)

“This isn’t right! It’s not even wrong!”—Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)

 

Meanwhile, it still seems worth understanding definitively — under what circumstances would letters be hand-postmarked ‘San Francisco’ that were not handed to a human clerk, and two of which received Sunday postmarks.

For me, I think that this would be the clincher. Personally, I’m satisfied from our investigations so far that this couldn’t be achieved anywhere other than at the SCF, which I am likewise satisfied was at Rincon. My hope is that we can somehow get confirmation that mail dropped directly in a Rincon mailbox of a weekend, PM, and identified as being local in destination, would be hand-cancelled for convenience and bagged directly for delivery the next morning.

That said, I’m not hopeful of being able to get confirmation of this by any other means than finding a source who can describe the process from personal experience.

I think we can still aim for getting this evidence, but it is on account of the perceived difficulty in attaining it otherwise that I posed the question in my previous post as, Are we willing yet to accept the notion of these three letters having been hand-delivered to Rincon as a strong working hypthosis?

And the thinking behind proposing this provisional acceptance, at this stage, is that I think its probably more immediately profitable to move on to begin thinking about what the implications are, therefore, for how all the other (non-hand-delivered) letters were mailed, and where from?

I suppose also, to offer my response to my own question, I personally do feel that the hypothesis of direct, hand-mailing at Rincon of the three weekend letters is currently shown to be very strongly supported, and worthy now of seeing what else we can extrapolate from it.

Shaq, exquisitely presented in both posts, including via the map.

I agree that we need to consult with a USPS person who worked at Rincon Annex during that era, or otherwise knew it well.

To throw in one more twist, I read in a postal worker’s forum a couple of comments that indicated the automatic machines (nationwide) didn’t operate on Sundays. I may have picked this up out of context, and it may not apply to Rincon Annex in 1969.

All the more reason though, that we need an expert to straighten this out.

I agree that we need to consult with a USPS person who worked at Rincon Annex during that era, or otherwise knew it well.

I’m still hopeful we might get a response from @Chaucer‘s e-mail to the guy who wrote the article about working at Rincon in the 60s/70s. I had sent a similar request to someone else between 1-2 weeks ago, and only got a reply this morning. My reply, unfortunately, didn’t produce any pertinent information.

To throw in one more twist, I read in a postal worker’s forum a couple of comments that indicated the automatic machines (nationwide) didn’t operate on Sundays. I may have picked this up out of context, and it may not apply to Rincon Annex in 1969.

As ever, X, nothing gets by you! Keeping us honest right down the line.

This needs clarifying, then.

That said, I don’t think we should be too worried. One of our three weekend letters – Belli – was hand-cancelled on a Saturday, whilst we have the example of the ‘Dripping Pen’ letter, which was alternatively machine-cancelled on a Saturday. So, even for Saturday, there are clearly both options available – the former, as we are supposing, being the method of processing hand-dropped mail to local destinations. It would at least seem likely, then, that the same would be the case for Sunday, but we’ll see, I’m sure.