This is traced/copied – there can’t be any doubt about it. So he DID do such a thing – at least once.

PS What we all agree on, at least, is that Z’s printing is contrived, masked, disguised, faked…call it what you will, to a large extent. And this begs the following question: What did Morrill mean when he stated – seemingly plainly enough – that it was natural, something Z used on an everyday basis? I just don’t get that. I find it a positively unsettling statement on his part.

These are pictures of the same envelope, regardless of how they’ve been marked on our electronic files, etc. Here’s a comparison of the high-res files, labeled Chronicle and Examiner respectively. Not only is the writing identical (too identical to be different envelopes), but there is even the same smudge on "both" envelopes. Truth is, I don’t think we have the back of the Chronicle envelope. Just two copies of the Examiner.

I’m not sure I follow you, Smithy. The text appears on the back of two separate envelopes, sent to the Chronicle and the Examiner. Are you suggesting a mix-up of some sort, as far as the circulated reproductions (photos) of these envelopes are concerned?

EDIT Up2something posted while I was writing there…

Yes – I see it now. It certainly seems to be the same envelope (the identical marks/dots seem conclusive).

Bizarre…but how has this come to pass? And what about the missing semicolon?

Someone needs to update their document galleries…actually, several people need to do that. Does anyone have an explanation for this? The missing semicolon in particular?

Thanks for the heads up, Up2something!

Re: Morrill

I don’t want to give the impression that I doubt either Morrell’s talent or his professionalism. I don’t.

But there are some things I find peculiar and/or worrying:

1. His claim that Z’s handwriting was natural. At least, he seems to say that it was. To me it looks less natural each time I look at it. Perhaps Morrill means something else by "natural" than I think.

2. His conclusion that the car door message was undoubtedly Z’s handiwork. I’m not saying that it wasn’t. I just find it strange that he was – again seemingly – so sure it was Z. The medium is completely different from any of the exemplars Morrill would have used for comparison.

3. His conclusion that the desktop poem was Z’s work. What goes for LB goes doubly for this one. The poem was carved into the surface by means of a ballpoint pen. From what I can gather several of the LE representatives who handled the CJB and the Z cases respectively had doubts about Morrill’s verdict here.

4. His conclusion that Z wrote the "confession" letter. He must have reached his conclusion regarding this letter based on the envelopes alone. The writing on the one the killer (or whoever sent it, I should rather say) sent to the press is all capital letters.*

5. His insistence that the ’78 letter was not a forgery – which went against the conclusions of 4 (?) other experts.

6. The fact that Morrill’s reasoning is not available in any report I know of. We know what his conclusions were – we don’t know how he reached them.

* The envelope sent to the police has, to my knowledge, never been made public. One of the remaining X factors in this case, I’d say: Perhaps there were lower case letter there – and perhaps these were the main basis of SM’s conclusion.

Hey TMM, I’m not picking on you – your opinions as good as mine or anyone else’s, but you’re confusing me.

Norse, I have to disagree that the letters appear to be faked. I think that that would have betrayed itself earlier on, been something demonstrable. I am fairly certain that that would have been something easy to catch by a graphologist or a documents expert.

A little searching on the net a while back found me this: http://scholarlycommons.law.northwester … ntext=jclc and it’s all you need to see that several of the things that appear in the letters are text-book "diguise" techiniques which should have been – and probably were – recognised as such by document examiners, immediately. Elements of the letters certainly seemd to be "faked" – ie they are unnatural to the writer.
And it’s very obvious.
Further, I’d suggest that the letters provocatively and deliberately contain "disguise" techniques intended to be recognised by law enforcement.
There’s a list of about 12 "disguise" attributes in all the text books to this day. It’s worth finding them and thinking about them in respect to the letters.

"Re: For one thing we already know what pen he wrote with- a Papermate Flair."
We do? I don’t recall anyone ever definitely saying so. Anyone in authority who has access to the letters, that is. Can you quote someone who has? Please God this isn’t ruddy GS again.
Wiki tells us (and it’s right about everything all the time, of course) that "In the 1960s, the fibre or felt-tipped pen was invented by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company, Japan. Papermate’s Flair was among the first felt-tip pens to hit the U.S. market in the 1960s, and it has been the leader ever since."
So maybe you’re right. But is there a definitive and educated LE opinion about it out there somewhere?

Re: "I think you would have found far more "soaking" of the pen into the paper if he was tracing."
You do? I don’t know. I know the letters have been subject to ninyhdrin tests, which hasn’t helped us philosophise (we’re speculating right?) about stuff.
Personally I certainly think the "overheard projector" stuff is absurd. GS came up with that, I DO know.
That ’78 letter certainly does look like it was made up of old spare parts from earlier letters. Hmmm.

Re: "I think that Z wrote with his natural RIGHT hand, and that he was ambidextrous."
Wait a second – is this just opinion or do you have some qualifications as a document examiner? The FBI have never said this – or anything like it. No-one else has either that I can yet find.
Mr Horan was shot down here:
http://www.amazon.com/handwriting-not-f … nk20248-20
– by a full time DE(?) called Wakshull when suggesting left or right-handed attributes can be gleaned from the letters. Who’s right? I don’t know.

re: "Occam’s razor. Its the simplest and I think best explanation."
Occam’s Ruddy Razor. I would rather have facts than guesses or probablities. I bet you would too. But anyhow, here’s the ultimate conusion for me "…..he knew they would never test his right hand, as he was left handed. Clearly he was righthanded- the rightward slant."
Nope, I’m lost. I know GS came up with – and stressed – the "Leigh Allen was ambidextrous and that’s why his handwriting didn’t match" stuff, but hey, he had another book to sell.

Oh, while I’m here, the first letters slope downward, the second’s flat (I wonder why?) the door slants downward, Hal Snook’s report slants UP….?

Ok, I will try and address everything you have said in this.

I believe it was the FBI report that I read that they had figured out it was a Papermate Flair. It was the first felt-tip pen available in America and it was widely used by draftsmen.
Perhaps I was not clear on my wording about the letters being "faked". What I meant by that is that I don’t think they were traced using a projector. And it stands to reason if you are tracing something you moved slower, causing more ink to be absorbed by the paper. Just so you know I am not making it up- this is from a website called questioneddocuments.com- "The forger places the pen point in contact with the paper, and then starts writing. When he is finished with the name or some portion thereof, he stops the pen and lifts it from the surface. This may cause an emphasized blunt start or ending where the pen was placed in contact with the surface. At times this contact is held so long that if the pen contains a fluid ink it will wet the paper and migrate outward from the contact point.".
ALso, regarding pen pressure- "Again, because the pen is moving slowly rather than with the dynamic movement associated with most genuine writings, the ink line remains constant in thickness, resulting from the same constant pressure exerted on a slowly moving pen. There will be little, if any, tapering of internal lines."
I guess you could say this is something of canonical graphology. Anybody who has read enough true crime or mystery stories has bumped up against some handwriting analysis. I reckon that was why I wasn’t more explicit in sourcing it.

I am not sure if you read the rest of the posts, but for about 8 pages people were discussing the reasons why the letters (and by letters in this case, i mean the individual characters) had different starting and stopping points. This I think is an indication of ambidexterity. This is why I bring this up. I invite you to go back and read the other posts on this thread I made re. ambidexterity, maybe that will make what I am saying more clear. I am not trying to finger any one person. But it seems pretty clear to me that people are coming up with convolutions to explain why on some characters he begins at one point, with the same character later on in the letter he starts with a different one, when the simplest explanation is right there. You may disregard Occam’s razor as being a useful tool, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is useful in arguments that tend to get convoluted (like Z). Left and right handed people have a tendency to begin the shaping of their letters differently. If you are ambi, this would explain how you would find different starting points. I can’t think of any other reasonable explanation.
As far as a rightward slant goes, the car door at Berryessa was what I was referring to. This is clearly slanted down the right. Its a generally recognized supposition that a rightward slant indicates a right hand. For a lefthanded person to write with a rightward slant would be terribly difficult- you have that hooking-around hand that I mentioned in another post- which is actually something they try and dissuade lefties from doing as it is so counterintuitive- but it would make it especially difficult to fake a rightward slant. Especially on a car door, after you just stabbed two people.

Also, just for the record, while I do recognize that GS got some facts wrong, I do believe in respect. I think we can all relate to his obsession with the case. His being the whipping boy on pretty much every forum I have visited doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t think its appropriate nor necessary to prove anyone’s point. I am not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater on that one. I know that seems to be the party line in the Z online community, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially when i have seen other "lights" in the Z community doing things that if it came from Graysmith, would practically have had him tarred and feathered.

Re: Morrill

I don’t want to give the impression that I doubt either Morrell’s talent or his professionalism. I don’t.

But there are some things I find peculiar and/or worrying:

1. His claim that Z’s handwriting was natural. At least, he seems to say that it was. To me it looks less natural each time I look at it. Perhaps Morrill means something else by "natural" than I think.

2. His conclusion that the car door message was undoubtedly Z’s handiwork. I’m not saying that it wasn’t. I just find it strange that he was – again seemingly – so sure it was Z. The medium is completely different from any of the exemplars Morrill would have used for comparison.

3. His conclusion that the desktop poem was Z’s work. What goes for LB goes doubly for this one. The poem was carved into the surface by means of a ballpoint pen. From what I can gather several of the LE representatives who handled the CJB and the Z cases respectively had doubts about Morrill’s verdict here.

4. His conclusion that Z wrote the "confession" letter. He must have reached his conclusion regarding this letter based on the envelopes alone. The writing on the one the killer (or whoever sent it, I should rather say) sent to the press is all capital letters.*

5. His insistence that the ’78 letter was not a forgery – which went against the conclusions of 4 (?) other experts.

6. The fact that Morrill’s reasoning is not available in any report I know of. We know what his conclusions were – we don’t know how he reached them.

* The envelope sent to the police has, to my knowledge, never been made public. One of the remaining X factors in this case, I’d say: Perhaps there were lower case letter there – and perhaps these were the main basis of SM’s conclusion.

I have always had a problem with that desktop. It just seems too pat, Cheri Jo wasn’t wearing a red dress and so on. And a ballpoint pen on wood- wood has grain, just like cloth has bias so it rips along a certain line- and wood grain really guides your pen so that you aren’t going to write in a way that is comparable to your original handwriting. I think he got it wrong on that one. After all, he also said Rick Marshall’s handwriting matched Z’s. I don’t know how much veracity we can put on Morrill especially since colleagues of his disagreed.

Incidentally, it occurred to me last night, that the initials on the Cheri Jo Riverside desktop were RH. "Red Herring".

Re: Morrill
I don’t want to give the impression that I doubt either Morrell’s talent or his professionalism. I don’t.

Neither do I. I do doubt all the conclusions that are offered in his name in books by other people (Greysmith for instance!) though. Having done the minimum of research in respect to handwriting disguise techniques I now know that anyone being paid as a document examiner would have cottoned on to the obvious disguise aspects of the letters (and the door) very quickly. I expect he did.
What the BS was in respect to the ’78 letter, then (his opinion was reported in the press as I recall), who knows?

TMM
– you believe an FBI report says it’s a Papermate flair? Right-o. I haven’t seen that report – I’d like to, if you can find it please, thanks. It’s not important, really, it’s just that when any of us reports things as facts, it’s nice if they are facts.
– if you write slowly etc. and blaa blaa, yes of course, thanks. Fake then? No. "Disguised"? Yes.
– re: ambidexterity and all that hokey – it’s still hokey. No qualified examiner’s ever said so about these letters – and in fact the only one who has commented in respect to this case that I can find actually says there’s no way you can tell which hand a writer used. Yes? No I don’t mean people who have read some true crime fiction and bumped up against the idea of documentation analysis (or whatever you said), I mean a document examiner.
And the slope? I reiterate – the first letters slope down, the second letter is nice and flat – so are "the rest", Hal Snook’s report (if it’s his – remember him? He was right handed) slopes UP, March ’71 the letter slopes down again. How strange!
Is that about who is left and who is right handed? Perhaps, perhaps not. Is it about whether the writer was aware of the fact that the parallelism of written lines is one of the factors DE’s look at? Perhaps so.
Here – this is useful: http://www.amazon.com/Handwriting-Ident … 084931285X
It’s not about questioned documents – it’s specifically about handwriting.
BTW do I think all qualified document examiners necessarily know what they’re talking about 100% of the time? Well, no I don’t.

Has anyone said that perhaps the letters come from more than one person, which might be why the pressure’s different, or why the letters appear to be shaped differently? Or that perhaps the fact that they were getting at least hundreds of letters a day at one point is why we have rubbish like the SLA and the "Red Phantom" (he’s red with rage!) garbage cluttering up the "evidence"?
If they have I’ll scroll back.

Greysmith is quite obviously a liar and a profiteer – but we should credit him with keeping "this case" in the public eye and also thank him for giving us all a fun hobby.

These are pictures of the same envelope, regardless of how they’ve been marked on our electronic files, etc..

Indeed!
Many thanks.

Smithy, we are going to have to agree to disagree about GS. I agree that I think he would have done the world a service if he had deeply examined ALL the suspects- that would have been the proper way to go about it. But I don’t think he is a liar. You have to remember, no matter what your opinion, that his "opinion" is shared by many detectives who actually worked on the case. Did he present his case as a detective would? No. Of course not. But he didn’t invent something out of whole cloth. Apart from that I don’t think a further discussion about this topic is warranted on this particular thread.

I have written to a few experts in graphology- which is tricky, as its a bit of an art and not quite a science. But I would welcome other opinions from those who have actually studied this at length. I would like to hear their opinion of the formations of these characters. Ambidexterity is rare enough, that it could perhaps give us one more clue about who wrote these letters. Because, in my opinion, its the ONLY thing that we know for sure the killer (or someone close to him) constructed. Everything else is a bit hazy.

I am also DYING to see some letters by Muharem Kurbegovic, the Alphabet Bomber. The last really verifiable Z letter was written before he set the bomb at LAX in 1974. He was a chemical bomb expert, loved writing letters to the press, and he seems to be someone no one has paid any attention to in relation to Z. I can’t rule him out just yet. I am working on it. I am especially excited that he operated down here in Los Angeles, which means I might be able to get ahold of a lot more info than I could if i lived in, say, New Jersey. The crimes happened here.

Also, Smithy, can you post that URL again? Its saying it doesn’t exist when I click on it= perhaps because its in the body of a post on a forum? Not sure.

TMM – I like to disagree on occasion – I agree to disagree!
I’ve changed that URL for you – the snipped one didn’t work. The book it will take you to I found very useful.
Blimey… and here’s the same book where you can actually READ some of it. Ho hum.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X-2X … on&f=false

Smithy, we are going to have to agree to disagree about GS. I agree that I think he would have done the world a service if he had deeply examined ALL the suspects- that would have been the proper way to go about it. But I don’t think he is a liar.

Sorry but I can’t let that one go.

Here’s a fun drinking game. Do a shot every time that Graysmith lies in just this paragraph and you’ll get wasted.

n an MSNBC interview for the movie, Robert Graysmith responded to criticism that he focused too much on Allen and not enough on the evidence by saying, "Well, if [the killer] leaves a footprint and it’s a Wing walker shoe that they only made 169,000 pairs and they are sold only on naval stations and his father is a naval commander. It’s a size 10½ shoe, you can only get it if you are a dependent or an enlisted person, if he works across the street from the first victim, if he says two days before the first murder, ‘I am going to hunt people, I am going to put a light on the end of my gun, I’m going to taunt the press, I’m going to taunt the police and I’m going to call myself ‘Zodiac’,’ who two days before receives a Zodiac watch, I think at some point when you have a guy who has to be a chemist, who can build electronic bombs, who knows cipher—I don’t know if you want to call any of that evidence, but I think if you wear the same-sized gloves and the same-sized shoe and you have a catalog in your basement that advertises a bomb-disposal outfit that has a square hood, then at some point you have to say, ‘It is probably this guy.’ I am not one of those people. If they catch someone else, that’s not going to bother me, but I’m satisfied it’s him."

Neither do I. I do doubt all the conclusions that are offered in his name in books by other people (Greysmith for instance!) though. Having done the minimum of research in respect to handwriting disguise techniques I now know that anyone being paid as a document examiner would have cottoned on to the obvious disguise aspects of the letters (and the door) very quickly. I expect he did.
What the BS was in respect to the ’78 letter, then (his opinion was reported in the press as I recall), who knows?

Perhaps it was "politics", as has been suggested by many. Those who accused Toschi of fabricating the letter knew very well that he hadn’t actually fabricated it – and Morrill just stepped in, misguidedly, to speak up for his old friend, knowing very well on his part that the letter WAS a fabrication.*

As for your general take on it, I think you may be right. The Riverside/Berryessa business in particular bothers me. I would like to know precisely what material Morrill was handed, precisely what questions he was asked (and how, let’s be blunt, leading they were) and precisely what answers he offered. I don’t think a QDE would have submitted a firm conclusion regarding that material based on the exemplars – but that’s just my opinion.

If one looks at what the federal experts had to say about the Halloween card, for instance, one gets – in print – what you’d expect an expert in the field to say: The small amount of writing available is inconclusive. There are points of similarity between the writing and that of the person responsible for other "threatening communications", but a conclusion cannot be drawn. In other words, it could have been Z – but then again it might not have been Z. I wouldn’t be surprised if Morrill said something similar about certain other missives and messages – and that others decided to go with A rather than B, based on less than scientific criteria.

Maybe we’ll know some day – there must be reports somewhere, perhaps within the material which is yet to be made available to the public.

* I’ve read a very convincing analysis of the events by a level headed guy recently. He points the finger not at Toschi but at another supposed friend of Morrill’s. This as an apropos to duckking’s drinking game, one might say.

In fairness to Morrill:

Mr. SHERWOOD MORRILL concluded that the three envelopes and letters along with the printed poem on the desk had been prepared by the same person responsible for the Zodiac letters (…)

Investigation continuing.

MELVIN H. NICOLAI
Special Agent

From the CADOJ report.

So, Morrill did NOT (it would seem) conclude that Z authored the "confession" letter – only desktop + bates notes/envelopes x 3.

Still interesting that the second confession envelope (sent to RPD) has never been released. Then again, maybe nobody thought to ask?

Smithy, we are going to have to agree to disagree about GS. I agree that I think he would have done the world a service if he had deeply examined ALL the suspects- that would have been the proper way to go about it. But I don’t think he is a liar.

Sorry but I can’t let that one go.

Here’s a fun drinking game. Do a shot every time that Graysmith lies in just this paragraph and you’ll get wasted.

n an MSNBC interview for the movie, Robert Graysmith responded to criticism that he focused too much on Allen and not enough on the evidence by saying, "Well, if [the killer] leaves a footprint and it’s a Wing walker shoe that they only made 169,000 pairs and they are sold only on naval stations and his father is a naval commander. It’s a size 10½ shoe, you can only get it if you are a dependent or an enlisted person, if he works across the street from the first victim, if he says two days before the first murder, ‘I am going to hunt people, I am going to put a light on the end of my gun, I’m going to taunt the press, I’m going to taunt the police and I’m going to call myself ‘Zodiac’,’ who two days before receives a Zodiac watch, I think at some point when you have a guy who has to be a chemist, who can build electronic bombs, who knows cipher—I don’t know if you want to call any of that evidence, but I think if you wear the same-sized gloves and the same-sized shoe and you have a catalog in your basement that advertises a bomb-disposal outfit that has a square hood, then at some point you have to say, ‘It is probably this guy.’ I am not one of those people. If they catch someone else, that’s not going to bother me, but I’m satisfied it’s him."

Yeah, I agree that he got a bit over his head, especially in interviews after the fact. He kind of mashes stuff together. Obviously ALA didn’t receive the watch 2 days before, but there were friends of his that said he wore WIng Walkers (even tho they weren’t found), his dad WAS a decorated Naval vet, he did major in biology and chemistry- and they found bombs in his basement. I think there is something there with Allen but I wish he had treated everything with a more even hand. He had tunnel vision. But to suggest he is just doing it for cash is a little extreme. If he is doing it for cash, why did most of the detectives agree with him? And lets not forget, if what Don C says is true, Allen is the one. ANd Cheney passed a lie detector test. AND, before he died, they were serving him with another search warrant. Surely the decades of focus on ALA was not all invented by Graysmith. Compared to someone like Gaikowsi, or ANY of the other suspects I have looked at, he has way more on his side. And yes, its circumstantial- but so is ALL the other evidence against anyone else!

Sorry for the digress off topic, I heard from one of the the so-called experts- the vice president of the American Handwriting Analysis group, and she said that "she wasn’t really sure". Thanks experts!