Lafferty’s book is full of these anecdotes about SFPD.

He claimed that in 1971, Toschi told him that Zodiac could be "as old as 50." Later, he found out Toschi had accused him of making up a suspect who was 50 years old, just because Toschi said that to him.

LL also said that nobody outside SFPD knew about the palm prints on the Exorcist letter until they showed up on TV.

Also, I stumbled across an article from the mid-’70s that attempted to squash rumors of a falling out between Armstrong and Toschi. So I tend to think there’s something to that part of Lafferty’s book (he says they became "bitter enemies").

Then there’s Shumway’s crazy comment to Butterfield that he thought the L.A.T. letter was a fake by Toschi, which got a lot of buzz on the old Voigt boards. There does seem to be a widespread belief in LE that Toschi wrote fake Zodiac letters, which is weird if he was quote-unquote "cleared."

Agree, CT

Separately, these incidents, rumors, and claims are easy to dismiss, but when you look at them all together it really seems like Toschi wasn’t the heroic straight shooter that he’s been portrayed.

I could be totally off base about all of this. I hope I am, but I haven’t been provided a good reason why yet.

I forgot all about this FBI file from the Gareth Penn era. Author casually mentions that Toschi wrote fake Zodiac letters "to get additional publicity for the case."

Hi,

It is interesting to note that in the FBI document they say that the "letters" are from "1979" and they use the plural not the singular. Does this mean they’re talking about the single 1978 letter? It actually doesn’t make any sense that Toschi would have attempted to pen any zodiac like letters in 1979 after being accused of writing the letter in 1978. So it seems like the FBI is capable of getting things wrong after all and that this may be one instance. Might they have made other little mistakes along the way too?

Yup, definitely some hardcore "IIRC" and half-assing it there. They might be lumping the Caen letter in with other forgeries like the Channel 9 letter.

I forgot all about this FBI file from the Gareth Penn era. Author casually mentions that Toschi wrote fake Zodiac letters "to get additional publicity for the case."

The thing about this is while the FBI might seem like the source that dug deeper with it, the FBI Zodiac files we all have seem to indicate the source is Maupin. So it comes full circle IMO. Maupin is the source of the original claim, the FBI noted it and referenced it, but how much deeper did they go than this? I think they maybe didn’t and just relied on the blowout from Maupin’s claim and Toschi admission to sending in fan mail for the Tales of the City articles. So it may be that he was taken off the case because of the publicity surrounding that event, his own admission to doing it elsewhere, rather than any hard evidence he did that particular communication. Also if his DNA is on it, then he might be able to suggest contamination but all that depends on many things forensically like the source of DNA.

If Toschi did write it then a suggestion could be that it was done to draw the Zodiac back out into claiming the letter wasn’t from him. If that is the case, then Maupin busted that plan and Toschi possibly punished as a consequence of that failed endeavor. If he didn’t write his own fan mail, the plan may have worked.

Whatever way we look at it, I think Toschi got a raw deal and jettisoning the lead investigator did nothing to help the case which is evident from the results.

According to Maupin, before he came forward, he reached out to Caen’s people, and they informed him that they, too, had received suspicious fan mail for Toschi, and they suspected Toschi of sending it. On top of that, I recently found what appears to be more self-praising fan-mail from 1976. The columnist’s little zinger at the end, "I just hope this barrage of bouquets doesn’t make him mad," sounds vaguely sarcastic to me. So maybe these accusations would have caught up with Toschi sooner or later.

A detective writing fake letters alleged to be from the killer, that ALSO were "authenticated" by "experts," is obviously B-A-D news. At best, the defense would have a field day, at worst, Toschi could have been accused of being the Zodiac. That’s partly why I’m still reluctant to say, "Yep, he did it!" Unless someone close to the investigation feels they have nothing to lose, I don’t think we’ll ever know unless a) Zodiac gets hauled into a courtroom, or b) FOIA laws eventually require the disclosure of all unreleased files on this case…before we die of old age.

I think what’s most interesting about the Keel chatter is that certain people at SFPD still thought Toschi was a viable candidate.

Caen’s people.

Now that is very interesting. I suspected that Maupin had communicated with someone else before this. I never really accepted that Maupin acted alone on his instincts. It seems to me that the suspicion was in the air. I wonder if it wasn’t the Zodiac himself who made the initial suggestion somehow that got the ball rolling. That would be the sort of nonsense he would get up to, IMO. The chatter within departments is also interesting. Could the Zodiac have seeded it or injected himself into this somehow? That’s why the whole thing always sounded like some sort of a sting operation to draw him out. There is something around this whole episode that doesn’t feel right at all, IMO. However feelings and evidence are two totally different things.

I lived in the Bay Area at that time, and remember some of this Toschi stuff in the news. One undercurrent, and my memory is cloudy on this, is that Toschi new who the zodiac was and was trying to somehow trip him up with this letter writing escapade. My wife actually worked in the same office as Armstrong’s wife and we went to a party at their house. I believe Toschi was there. I wonder if Toschi may have fabricated this backstory of a sting operation in order to justify his actions.

I lived in the Bay Area at that time, and remember some of this Toschi stuff in the news. One undercurrent, and my memory is cloudy on this, is that Toschi new who the zodiac was and was trying to somehow trip him up with this letter writing escapade. My wife actually worked in the same office as Armstrong’s wife and we went to a party at their house. I believe Toschi was there. I wonder if Toschi may have fabricated this backstory of a sting operation in order to justify his actions.

I find the sting operation theory more plausible than the noble cause corruption theory.

I lived in the Bay Area at that time, and remember some of this Toschi stuff in the news. One undercurrent, and my memory is cloudy on this, is that Toschi new who the zodiac was and was trying to somehow trip him up with this letter writing escapade. My wife actually worked in the same office as Armstrong’s wife and we went to a party at their house. I believe Toschi was there. I wonder if Toschi may have fabricated this backstory of a sting operation in order to justify his actions.

I find the sting operation theory more plausible than the noble cause corruption theory.

"The Cases that Haunt Us" by John Douglas spends a large amount of time dealing with how to carry out a sting operation on the Zodiac and drawing him out. While he isn’t accurate about everything in the case he did get a folder of stuff on the Zodiac when he was asked to look at a suspect in the 90s. Obviously he is talking about ALA. He had to send the folder back again. I think he came across things that made him think detectives were doing this and so spent time talking about it in this book in the hope if in the future the Zodiac would be unmasked, all that would come out. Then he would say "see what I wrote decades ago…"

That’s my take on it. That chapter has a Zodiac profile which is very good. I won’t speak about the other chapters conclusions on other infamous murders because I think he got some wrong but I think he is on the right track with the Zodiac.

I lived in the Bay Area at that time, and remember some of this Toschi stuff in the news. One undercurrent, and my memory is cloudy on this, is that Toschi new who the zodiac was and was trying to somehow trip him up with this letter writing escapade. My wife actually worked in the same office as Armstrong’s wife and we went to a party at their house. I believe Toschi was there. I wonder if Toschi may have fabricated this backstory of a sting operation in order to justify his actions.

I find the sting operation theory more plausible than the noble cause corruption theory.

If Toschi fabricated letters and lied to interested parties about details of the case, I think it has more to do with his own narcissism and thirst for attention. I think Toschi enjoyed seeing his name in the paper as much as Zodiac did, and Zodiac was happy to let copycats like him do his dirty work. I’m not in anyway suggesting Toschi was Zodiac, but similarities in their personalities are hard to miss.

At the end of the day, I believe we need to re-evaluate Toschi’s involvement in this case, both in his official and unofficial capacity.

Many think the 1978 letter may have been copied from the Dripping Pen Card envelope, published in the November 16th 1970 Chronicle. In essence, it was a forgery because of its extreme similarity to previous correspondence/s. David Toschi was an intelligent detective with many years experience. The question I ask, is why would David Toschi design an envelope so extremely similar to one of the only publicized envelopes in the case (when he attempting to convince it’s not a hoax), when he had access to a plethora of Zodiac writing? If the 1978 envelope was forged (not Zodiac or Toschi), wouldn’t one expect a hoaxer to mimic the only envelope available to him.

You make a good point, RG, and I don’t have an answer. Could be a coincidence. Could be that’s the envelope Toschi chose to copy. Who knows?

What I would love is for a fresh look at all of the Zodiac correspondence. Have modern handwriting analysts and questioned document examiners review them using modern techniques. We have relied on 40 or 50 year old evidence in this regard. I wonder if a new look would be worthwhile.

7. Allegedly, Toschi also told Hines that Zodiac could be “50 years old or even older”. He said this despite all public information regarding the Zodiac’s description stating that the oldest he could be is 45 years old. Where does Toschi get the information that he could be older? Worse, if this information is true, then why is he keeping a key piece of identifying evidence to himself?

All the 60+ Zodiac finger/palm/impression prints (LC A-10042) are classified belonging to ages: 40-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-75 etc. Never a age below 40. I haven’t calculated the average but I suspect it will be 50+. That may have been his source.