It’s my understanding that ALL letters were written on Woolworths paper but the August letter was specifically Eaton.

Correction if I am wrong please

Soze

The opposite and all letters was written on the Eaton paper accept for The Fifth Avenue one I’m mentioning that could only be bought at Woolworths. Again why I think it’s important is he probably had to be in the bay area that day with enough free time to respond back to the police the same day. After that he went back to the Eaton paper in the rest of his letters. Why I like to know where this one was mailed at.

Ps. we discussed this before and in one of your post you mentioned how important where the 5th Avenue letter was mailed from. I agree! Here is the the link to the older post. Ps. you started the topic as well.
viewtopic.php?f=98&t=3241&p=52148&hilit=eaton#p52148

Well. Well. Huh. I sure did. I wonder what got me so turned around? Interesting.

Soze

Likely, that he wrote that letter at his place of work rather than his home. He read the paper that morning, snuck away during a break and hurriedly wrote the letter on work paper, then mailed it during or after work. The rest were written at home on his own Eaton paper.

Would that timeline make sense?

Well. Well. Huh. I sure did. I wonder what got me so turned around? Interesting.

Soze

It happens and hard to remember all the stuff about this case.

I tried the best I can. Please feel free to amend

To clarify the first 4 letters were sent from one of those districts in the western part of CA?
Edit: realise you were talking about the later Halloween card

If he didn’t live in San Francisco, logic might say he worked there, and had a somewhat flexible job, that allowed him to make the various weekday mail drops.

Maybe he was a cab driver.

I think he was a truck driver. He was doing deliveries and that is why he knew his way around. Maybe we could narrow down the type of deliveries he was making by looking at an old directory to see what businesses might have been around the mail drops?

That’s interesting! I would take the alternate view: I think it lends credence to the idea he WAS from Vallejo. Think about it…if you are a murderer and don’t want to get caught. Do you mail taunting letters from the mailbox down the street? Or do you mail them from places AWAY from your home to avoid detection? I think he avoided mailing letters from the east side of the Bay to avoid having any investigation near where he lived.

Also, (and I know I may get slammed for saying this) "actual" Zodiac letters – meaning those excluding any mailed after 1970 – were all mailed from either north San Fran or Reno. So if we exclude the questionable ones, it really comes down to those locations.

Even the 11th mailing (the Pace card) is questionable. So you have one confirmed letter from Reno and the rest in north San Francisco. Not sure what that indicates, but I think it’s interesting nonetheless.

It was the Kathleen Johns and the Halloween card which had the 89 postmarks Chaucer, I’ve not included the Pace or Pines cards.

I don’t know, working on that logic would he commit two attacks in Vallejo, Make a phone call from Vallejo and Napa and send a letter to the Vallejo newspaper ?

Unfortunately I am struggling to find a good copy of the Dragon Card envelope so I still have not got a clue where that one was mailed.

Was Vallejo considered a big town for people who lived say in Lodi? Was there a news station in Vallejo at that time?

<There is certainly a pattern centered on the east and west, indicating that if he lived in Vallejo, he may have entered via the Golden Gate Bridge, passed the Richmond area and headed to the financial district.>

One point though — if he lived in Vallejo he typically would have taken Highway 80 and the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, as opposed to the Golden Gate Bridge.

He would have taken the Golden Gate Bridge if he lived in Marin County — or Sonoma County towns such as Petaluma or Santa Rosa.

Is it assumed that he drove? Could he have caught public transport and gotten off in Rincon and then posted his letters and then gone on to work? That would tell me he lived in Oakland and drove around on the weekend to kill.

Speaking for myself, I don’t see Eureka needing to be looked at at present time. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be looked at in future or at least brought up now as something to consider later. Again, just me, but I don’t think we are wanting to consider any personal person of interest at this time either. Not on my agenda but could be someone else’s.

Soze

I want to interject here about the letter sent to Vallejo police that was written in pencil. It named someone called Jerry and they lived at 56 Beach St. There is a Beach St in Vallejo but there are also several others including Oakland which is a short bus ride across the bay with a stop at the depot in Rincon area.

Said San Jose but was thinking Sunnyvale. Here is some of what I wrote at zk in 2011 about sectional centers:

According to this site: http://www.admsi.com/blog/bid/10349/SCF … n-To-Do-ItThe postal service has what it calls a BMC (Now known as a NDC), a main hub for all of its post offices. There are 29 NDC’s covering the entire country. California is the only state that has 2 – one in Los Angeles and the other in San Francisco. The San Francisco NDC is located in Richmond. The NDC branches off into Sectional Centers. There are 17 sectional centers located in California alone. This list of sectional centers can be found at http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm300/L005.htm.The San Francisco sectional center covers zip codes with a 3-digit prefix of 940, 941, 943 and 944. These zip codes cover 3 counties: San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo. Within these zip codes, there are 28 cities it covers:Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, Daly City, El Granada, Half Moon Bay, La Honda, Loma Mar, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, Millbrae, Mountain View, Montara, Moss Beach, Pacifica (My Favorite), Redwood City, Pescadero, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Gregorio, South San Francisco, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Stanford and San Mateo. The above list can be found at http://www.555us.com/555ca/555ca_zipcodes.htm.Here is a map showing the coverage area of the San Francisco sectional center:It should be noted that there are cities within the area outlined above that are not mentioned as being covered by any zip code. At this time, I do not know why that is. Anyway, I had mapped out all of the cities listed above, found it to be a little messy, and so I just put a border around the coverage area for visual purposes. As you can see, there is a wide area the Zodiac could have lived, worked or passed through to have had a San Francisco post mark. I do find the NDC reference interesting in regards to the locations within California coupled with the Zodiac letters as a possibility of the Zodiac having knowledge of the postal service. Could just be a coincidence though. Soze

I thought one later letter was said to have been posted at San Mateo. Surely it would have gone into the general dump of SF?

I don’t know why it is so hard for Google to answer a simple question like "When did the San Fran. USPS move to 1300 Evans?"

So, I’ve had to resort to some deeper research.

The closest maps of San Francisco that I can find to the 1969/70 period are from 1966, in the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. It is very clear on the 1966 map I have looked at that, whilst the Rincon Annexe post office is clearly shown:

nothing is likewise shown for the Evans location of the current USPS Sectional Centre Facility:

More to the point, it is evident from overlaying this second map on a modern (2019) Google map of the same region that there has clearly been some significant land reclamation in the area of India Basin since 1966.

The red box in this image marks the location of the current SCF at 1300 Evans which, as can be seen, would have been largely under water as late as 1966.

couldn’t he have caught the bus in oakland and gotten off in Rincon and then walked to post the letters just 2 blocks away?

I’m not sure I’m buying that. I have the polk directories for 1968 through 1972 in front of me. The Rincon Annex is listed under "branches" for the post office. Not a negative as, if I am remembering correctly, a sectional can also take in mail from the public like any other post office. However, I am looking for "sectional center" in all but not finding it. I do see "regional office" in all. The regional office is located at 631 Howard Street. Is this the sectional center given your contact states "regional"? Maybe. But then in 1969 and 1970 a new listing for the PO pops up. It’s called the "Postal Concentration Center (Time Section). I am curious what is meant by "Time Section". Anyhow, that address is 390 Main Street (corner of main and Harrison. Large building. Covers whole block.) It’s at this location from 1969 through 1972.

Page numbers for post office in polk directories are 832, 844, 842 and 696 for the years 68, 69/70, 71 and 72 in that order.

Anyway, I’m thinking we might need the postal concentration center at 390 main and not Evans or mission.

Soze

Do you have any directories of Oakland from 1968-9?

I don’t know what to say about the military thing except that I don’t see him (the Zodiac) as a military man.

Again, it certainly wasn’t the case that I was wanting to present evidence that Zodiac might be military. I was merely demonstrating that the evidence points to the ‘Postal Concentration Center’ at Main Street having been an operation for processing military mail and so, as such, cannot be the USPOD ‘Sectional Center Facility’ that we are looking for.

Given so many men have military service of some sort, maybe he had a stint but didn’t stay in.

Are there specifications, postal wise, that suggest one stamp is good for this length of travel, 2 for this length and so on?

Pricing was done on a ‘zone’ basis. (note: not the same meaning for ‘zone’ as we got caught up in previously; completely different.)

This, again, from the 1969 Post Offices Directory:

However, this is easy to interpret in the case of the letters that were mailed to San Francisco addresses. Having been processed through the SF Sectional Centre to SF destinations, these would all have been ‘local’ zone.

We can certainly look at it more closely, but I would tend to think that the overpostage was merely to draw attention to the envelope, and get it to stand out once it arrived at its destination.

If not, then who are we looking at? Someone who could construct a sophisticated cipher that has beaten all attempts to break at after 50 years, but who doesn’t understand postage rates?

Isn’t this for Parcels not letters?