I don’t. I think that it was made like that. A bad batch.

Hey dude what kind of cards are you holding ? Just trying to think what the could’ve been may have been .

Hey mike r go fish . Never heard the make of paper they we’re on . Sorry The only sla letter that I have ever seen look like it was written in crayon with a solid white background . Bad copy

Hey dude what kind of cards are you holding ? Just trying to think what the could’ve been may have been .

Pocket aces.

Hey old buddy old pal . just kidding . But you have been a member here since 2013 SOoooooo you’ve been around the block . And if you are saying that You have that gooood of a hand I believe you . Damn give a hint please!!! Crickets ….

I will. I promise. I’m still organizing my thoughts.

Sounds good Thank you !

Hey dude what kind of cards are you holding ? Just trying to think what the could’ve been may have been .

Pocket aces.

Late to the party, what’s all the excitement about?

By the way, I think(not 100% sure, my memory is slipping HA)that there was a mention regarding paper size/type of paper in the FBI files

Well at least I made it to the party !!!!! Great news !!!

Hey dude what kind of cards are you holding ? Just trying to think what the could’ve been may have been .

Pocket aces.

Late to the party, what’s all the excitement about?

By the way, I think(not 100% sure, my memory is slipping HA)that there was a mention regarding paper size/type of paper in the FBI files

Thank you Morf, I’ll see if I can find something in the FBI files. I haven’t read any of those yet. I’m looking for specifics. Anything that confirms that the paper used wasn’t perfect. Or a bad batch. Recently there’s been some movement and I’m running some things down.

I am posting this on behalf of Jarett, who wanted to share this information.

Having read that the 4 August paper watermark differs from those on the 31 July letters, I decided to see if this was a provable assertion. It turns out that this is false. Zodiac used the same paper stock for all four letters.

There is a simple experiment that anyone can conduct if they wish to prove that the 31 July letters have the same FIFTH AVENUE watermark found by the FBI on the 4 August letter. The high quality scans on Tom Voight’s site of the Chronicle and Examiner letters contain visual watermark information. It can be most easily isolated on the backpage of the Examiner letter. (The image is available here: https://www.zodiackiller.com/SFEL2HR.html ) The watermark is located in the relative bottom left hand corner, an area where the writer left no pen marks:

To isolate the watermark, load the image into Photoshop (or equivalent) and then rotate the canvas 90 degrees counterclockwise. Then, flip the canvas image horizontally. Crop the image down to the relevant area.

These three steps will produce the following:

The next step is to adjust the levels. By setting the black point slider to 118, the midtone slider to 0.58 and the white point slider to 243, I was able to get the most satisfactory results. What one ends up is this:

At this point, the watermark is visible, but a way to make it even more evident is to invert the color palette. This produces the following:

To achieve even greater visibility, one can go over the letter forms with the dodge tool at 50% exposure and set to a range of highlights. The end result– and this is the only step in this process which involves any manipulation of data not found in the original image– is the following:

This step is only offered for reference, as it’s impossible to fully draw out the letter forms. The “t” in FIFTH and the “n” in AVENUE are not particularly visible, so I’ve approximated based on the faintly visible letter forms.

This definitely proves that the watermark was the same on all four letters. To my mind, this in no way diminishes from Richard Grinell’s theory that the Zodiac hand-delivered the 4 August letter, which I find completely plausible and the most likely happenstance. But it does suggest both a less frenzied, more intentional approach in regards to this correspondence.

As far as I can tell, the confusion regarding watermarks did not exist prior to the publication of Graysmith’s Zodiac Unmasked. I can’t quite explain how Graysmith made this mistake other than to say that it’s clear it somehow derives from a 17 June 1988 FBI report about two “Zodiac” letters. This is the only explanation– the EATON MONARCH watermark isn’t mentioned anywhere else.

I’d like to know your opinion on if all the monarch size paper was cut out of square? Or Jarett’s if possible. Is it possible to know?

I’d like to know your opinion on if all the monarch size paper was cut out of square? Or Jarett’s if possible. Is it possible to know?

Only if he replies to you via email to me. For whatever reason he is having difficulty joining this forum.

For what it’s worth, there was also a Woolworth’s in Presidio Heights on California Street, a few blocks from the crime scene.