What does this suggest? Either he’s not using his own hand to form the printed letters, and in all likelihood, it’s not just one person behind the letters and their construction. Why? Even if you were to trace a specific lower case letter e for example, you’d start tracing from the same place on the letter e consistently, not start forming the letter as tracing it from the top middle in one Communication, then next time you write trace the e’s starting from the bottom tail end consistently. You should have a fairly flowing and consistent pattern of marks appearing if you are writing in you own freestyle free flowing hand and not, as this author seems to be doing, leaving tell tale blobs of ink build up consistently in the same place in The Belli Letter, but then completely different position and placement in the Little List letter, once again appearing consistently in the same place throughout the entire letter yet not consistent with the Belli lower case e’s.

I realise this may be slightly confusing so can people put my concern to rest in regards to how clearly it comes across in the above examples and writing I write above? Do people see what i am getting at is what i am mostly concerned in discovering. And I don’t mean that in a condescending sot of way in which I imply its due to everyone else being a bit dim lol, no, i mean it could read as non clear or understandable because of the way i myself have worded it and appear more confusing than clear and obvious. If its not clear and anyone does suggest it is not clear to them because of the way I worded it, or the poor quality of the cropped examples of Z letter’s I used, either or any reason, let me know because I want to then word it differently and use better and more concise examples in the letters.

I confuse myself sometimes lol.

The suggestion elsewhere is that the "d’s" are in fact "p’s" drawn upside-down.
I.E: with the paper rotated 180 degrees.
On some letters.
Not all of them.
Hmmmm.
Similarly that the "b’s" are "9’s" here and there. Or something.

Besides the letters themselves, we should also consider the odd way in which he splits his words up,it’s very unusual, and I think we could find these habits in his every day writing. For example, he always, always, always, splits words with a GHT in them, such as NIGHT, RIGHT, LIGHT, etc, always splits them after the G. It’s a habit, its not intentional

The last ones here are a comparison to between Z & Fred Manalli, as you can see, Manalli’s every day writing contained the same odd habits as Z, and this could not be disguised-

Maybe this is a habit he formed as a child when learning to read and write. I don’t know if this customary or used in schools in America, but over here, for the children who seem to have difficulty spelling words, or maybe showing signs of dyslexia, the teachers would teach them to say the word in their head before writing it, and if it has several syllables, to break the word down into mini words themselves in their heads and then write each one down one at a time to form the whole word. For example:

Caravan would be broken down into three smaller, easier to handle sections of Ca-ra-van.

Criminal would be mentally said as Crim-in-al.

Maybe that is how Zodiac learned to write and didn’t just break the words down mentally, but conscious or unconsciously, the way he saw and maybe even pronounced the word as a series of syllables instead of one flowing word, maybe he instinctively wrote the words this way also?

Maybe that explains Zodiac’s methodical, measured cadence. Maybe he spoke the words the way he broke them down in his mind.

Christ-mass is another he used. Here he isn’t breaking one word down into two syllables, but is taking the one word Christmas, and adding an extra ‘S’ to the end to form two separate words of Christ and Mass.

I think the CHRIST MASS may have been intentional, as well as the spelling errors

I think the CHRIST MASS may have been intentional, as well as the spelling errors

I agree. Otherwise we have a man who has learned the skill of Cipher Message Construction and can come up with a wonderful system of encoding, but cannot spell some of the more basic of words in the English language to put anything into the cipher itself without spelling things incorrectly several places though-out it.

Kinda like building a house without a roof, a bit useless really.

Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters.

I tend to think the same thing. I don’t think he used tracing – or a more ingenious method – to produce artificial handwriting. I think Z was a) crazy and b) confident that he wouldn’t get caught. Going to great lengths in order to mask his writing just doesn’t strike me as something he’d do. Might be wrong, of course.

Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters.

I tend to think the same thing. I don’t think he used tracing – or a more ingenious method – to produce artificial handwriting. I think Z was a) crazy and b) confident that he wouldn’t get caught. Going to great lengths in order to mask his writing just doesn’t strike me as something he’d do. Might be wrong, of course.

Please provide a source /link for the statement that: "Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters"

I recall Sherwood(or somebody else maybe)stating that if they were behing Z in a bank,and Z wrote out a check, that he would recognize the writing

For starters the thickness of each character is completely different between the two samples, so Z used two different pens. Case Closed.

well, not really. I see what you are getting at. I would agree that the point at the end of the "e’s" in the first sample comes from ink bleed off at the end of the letter formation. It doesn’t look like he drew the "e"s in reverse to me. With that in mind what would cause the "dot" at the top arch of the "e" in sample 2? If he started there, but that doesn’t add up. I don’t know how to explain that one.

If you look closely you will see that he always presses more leaving a thicker stroke, or an ink blot at the end of his letter formations in sample 1, and does the oppose in sample 2. Due to the less thick lines and some of the words that seem to be applied with less ink…maybe just an image distortion, not in the original text…maybe his pen was running out of ink and he was pressing it harder when starting the character.

To me both the "e"s and the "p"s look like they were made the same way. You can see that his "d"s are constructed totally different between the two. My guess would be that the second writing was a more rushed style, since it seems to me that doing a loop would be sloppier/faster than lifting the pen and drawing a straight line.

Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters.

I tend to think the same thing. I don’t think he used tracing – or a more ingenious method – to produce artificial handwriting. I think Z was a) crazy and b) confident that he wouldn’t get caught. Going to great lengths in order to mask his writing just doesn’t strike me as something he’d do. Might be wrong, of course.

Please provide a source /link for the statement that: "Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters"

He is quoted as saying so in a newspaper article – it’s been posted both here and elsewhere. I can’t recall exactly where, but I’ll gladly provide you with links when I do.

It’s a piece in the "where are they now?" genre, almost – about Toschi, mainly, but Morrill is mentioned (and quoted) too. He says that he would like to see Z caught before he dies among other things.

There’s a difference in ‘expert judgement’ and ‘expert opinion.’ S.H, given the author has never been unmasked, can and is only offering his expert opinion here. It am not for one second trying to say that this should or would diminish what he said or dismiss his ability to his job, I admit openly that I am in no position to challenge his claim and he being the expert is far more likely to be correct on this issue than someone like me, a layman in the issue, who may say or think that the Z letters were not written by a natural hand. But there are instances where, as few and far between as they happen, experts get it completely wrong. I seem to remember one FBI profiler offer us that the BTK would be (And this isn’t word for word, it’s my general recollection of what it was he predicted) "Lone white male, unmarried and has difficulty relating to women with a harboured hatred of the female gender. He would have had many, short lasting jobs as he is likely to not be able to hold down long term employment."

Well, we know how accurate that expert opinion turned out to be.

Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters.

I tend to think the same thing. I don’t think he used tracing – or a more ingenious method – to produce artificial handwriting. I think Z was a) crazy and b) confident that he wouldn’t get caught. Going to great lengths in order to mask his writing just doesn’t strike me as something he’d do. Might be wrong, of course.

Please provide a source /link for the statement that: "Sherwood Morrill was convinced Z wrote in his natural style – and that any "everyday" sample found would match the Z letters"

He is quoted as saying so in a newspaper article – it’s been posted both here and elsewhere. I can’t recall exactly where, but I’ll gladly provide you with links when I do.

It’s a piece in the "where are they now?" genre, almost – about Toschi, mainly, but Morrill is mentioned (and quoted) too. He says that he would like to see Z caught before he dies among other things.

Courtesy of Seagull: