This was actually discussed a few years back, in the context of whether the handwriting in general was Z’s natural hand or whether he was attempting to disguise same in some way. I’ve never seen the actual "claim"but it was claimed, that experts said the handwrinting was natural because the letters were written at speed.
While not an expert, I don’t know how that could be , especially in relation to the Stine letter…as WC points out in his first post, these dots only occur when there is a
pause/the nib stalls on the page. At face vale it appears it was written slowly and methodically….but does that mean the handwriting is contrived? I also wonder if the "slant" just gives the illusion of speed?

I had always assumed the Z’s letters to be genuinely written and in his own style but then I realized something. I have been the first person many time to point out that with Zodiac never take anything at face value or as it often isn’t at it appears, and yet I realized that I had never questioned the letters authenticity. I can only put this down to the style, rhythm and all round appearance that the letters gave were one of consistent normal writing. It’s only really been the last week or so that I have seen a fair number of people state they didn’t think the letters were natural and I just couldn’t see that claim being true so thought I have a close look see if I could see anything. That’s when I saw the od dots. The dots don’t prove anything either way. But I will say that I was quite confident about 3 days back that the letters were genuine and that was really that. Even though I have not gone from a believer that the letters are genuine to now believing them fake, no. But what it has done is made me accept the possibility they could be unnatural written. I’ll be over there sat on the fence if you want me

This was actually discussed a few years back, in the context of whether the handwriting in general was Z’s natural hand or whether he was attempting to disguise same in some way. I’ve never seen the actual "claim"but it was claimed, that experts said the handwrinting was natural because the letters were written at speed.
While not an expert, I don’t know how that could be , especially in relation to the Stine letter…as WC points out in his first post, these dots only occur when there is a
pause/the nib stalls on the page. At face vale it appears it was written slowly and methodically….but does that mean the handwriting is contrived? I also wonder if the "slant" just gives the illusion of speed?

Interesting note about the slant. He does vary it so it could be a device to not necessarily introduce the illusion of speed but just introduce another variation to distance it from his own writing. If he were introducing it as a speed illusion then ….well, scary biccies because it would be the indication of an intricate mind at work.

In any other way I would say that we were perhaps attributing aspects to his writing that aren’t necessarily there but there IS something there that isn’t normal but it’s like trying to nail fog to the wall. Is it there or isn’t it? My feeling is that IT is there but as to what IT is I’m not sure. Is there enough to decide that his writing, as a whole, is fabricated? I don’t think there is but there are things that cast doubt on this in my mind.

The thing I can’t reconcile in my own mind is the overall picture. Most of the letters are in a recognisable hand. That’s not in dispute, it’s the letters that aren’t that worry me. The citizen letter and the Marco letter are both written by the same person, from what I’ve discovered, and that is also the person who wrote the rest of the letters. So if the person who wrote those is capable of producing those differing styles within months of each other then what else was he capable of within the previous letters?

Smithy, and I hope I’m representing your view correctly mate, thinks that it would be silly to write those letters, any of them, in your own hand. It would, wouldn’t it? and as such we come full circle. The contentious letters seem to suggest that he was more than capable of subterfuge in this field.

Timings and so on suggest that most of it should be his own hand. I have no problem with that. Honestly it’s easier that way but what if. That’s the part that troubles me. What if he did have a ‘style’ that he used only for the Zodiac stuff? Even in the ‘heat of the moment’ like Berryessa and Presidio Heights. He may have let something slip but are those slips a normal departure from his own hand or are they slips from a disguised hand?

WC brings up the question of fluidity and it’s a very relevant point. Many years ago I translated my own own handwriting into a font and I was immediately presented with that problem. Although all of the characters were in my own hand, once translated to a font the spacing and positioning of the characters was problematic, ie. it didn’t look natural. That’s all fine and good but those problems can easily be overcome if you are writing, by default we follow an unseen line, even if we are making it up, so in that respect characters and words work together.

Is that what we see in Zodiac’s wavy lines, odd spacing, truncated words at the end of some lines? I don’t know TBH but it would make for a good argument for sure.

I don’t need any of these speculations to be a reality. Even if it were all true it may not help us find this guy but it would, at the very least, bring us a little closer to who he was and how he thought.

This was actually discussed a few years back, in the context of whether the handwriting in general was Z’s natural hand or whether he was attempting to disguise same in some way. I’ve never seen the actual "claim"but it was claimed, that experts said the handwrinting was natural because the letters were written at speed.
While not an expert, I don’t know how that could be , especially in relation to the Stine letter…as WC points out in his first post, these dots only occur when there is a
pause/the nib stalls on the page. At face vale it appears it was written slowly and methodically….but does that mean the handwriting is contrived? I also wonder if the "slant" just gives the illusion of speed?

I had always assumed the Z’s letters to be genuinely written and in his own style but then I realized something. I have been the first person many time to point out that with Zodiac never take anything at face value or as it often isn’t at it appears, and yet I realized that I had never questioned the letters authenticity. I can only put this down to the style, rhythm and all round appearance that the letters gave were one of consistent normal writing. It’s only really been the last week or so that I have seen a fair number of people state they didn’t think the letters were natural and I just couldn’t see that claim being true so thought I have a close look see if I could see anything. That’s when I saw the od dots. The dots don’t prove anything either way. But I will say that I was quite confident about 3 days back that the letters were genuine and that was really that. Even though I have not gone from a believer that the letters are genuine to now believing them fake, no. But what it has done is made me accept the possibility they could be unnatural written. I’ll be over there sat on the fence if you want me

For now, if pushed, I would say that we are looking at a hoaxer who is also the murderer. He writes his own letters (possibly disguised) but he also writes the ‘other’ letters to create more ‘noise’ in the case. He is both the real thing and the hoaxer…quite clever?

Ok now I really am confused. I read that comment twice and still didn’t understand it lol.
What I got was "It is a hoaxer but he’s a killer also. He writes his own letters, but also may write the ‘other’ letters." I have no idea what that means lol. I think you may be saying, in regards to the killings anyway, that a real Zodiac comes along and commits murder. Then, someone else see’s this and decides "I want some of that" and then they go out and kill as ‘Zodac’ and whilst this happens the original Zodiac just vanishes?
I have no idea what you were saying about the letters thought

No. He plays a double game. Not only is he the murderer and writes his own letters but he is also the hoaxer who writes his his own hoax letters.

I know I’m late to the dance.

I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe one of the letters is written with a ballpoint pen. Cheap pens make blobs like that or even a good one will if a bit of lint gets stuck on the business end.

As to Manilli, he’s a favorite of mine and I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed a two-dot "i" anywhere else.

I know I’m late to the dance.

I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe one of the letters is written with a ballpoint pen. Cheap pens make blobs like that or even a good one will if a bit of lint gets stuck on the business end.

As to Manilli, he’s a favorite of mine and I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed a two-dot "i" anywhere else.

Good Ole Fred keeps popping up in this case, doesnt he?
Fred’s on my top 5 Z suspect list too, more like top 3.

Kind of playing catch up on this entire thread, sorry. We know Z used a special paper, a heavier stock than you would usually use. I was recalling how back in the day when Z was writing it was clear he was using a felt pens. Felt pens back then were a whole lot different then today’s. To write on paper, they pretty much sucked. I would get those blobs all over the place. I always thought it odd that Z would use such a tool for writing.
Your point Chappie is well taken, with the lower case "e", however if you notice in your example, in the letters preceding the ‘e’, you see the blobs. This is what I recall when using the old felt pens of the 60’s. You could go along and write for a while, and no blobs, but once they started, you would see them everywhere, and they would do it very randomly.

I recall my father always had them he worked in a factory setting, I worked in warehousing and we used them exclusively for logging in part #’s, order #’s, qty’s., and it became something I looked for back then. who was using them, well restaurants used them, Auto places, and the list went on. It showed me the usage was vast in business. But one thing about Z, we know he wrote letters with them and he had them with him, at home, and in his car. It could have just been a coincidence that he had one with him ready to go at LB. Always seemed odd to me.

No. He plays a double game. Not only is he the murderer and writes his own letters but he is also the hoaxer who writes his his own hoax letters.

Ahh rite, I got ya.

I know I’m late to the dance.

I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe one of the letters is written with a ballpoint pen. Cheap pens make blobs like that or even a good one will if a bit of lint gets stuck on the business end.

As to Manilli, he’s a favorite of mine and I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed a two-dot "i" anywhere else.

Patinky, yes pens will do that and that’s what I said could be responsible for the effect. However, if that were the case, then the resulting dots of ink that formed would do so either at the point of first contact with the paper, or because he left the pen tip in contact with the paper for a second or two at the end of each letter E. If this were the case, and He were writing in his normal hand, then every time we see this blob of ink on a letter E, we should see it in the same location on each specific E, and consistent not only throughout one correspondence, but throughout them all. That isn’t so in the letters.
If I saw a blotch of in at the base of each lower case E, and it appears consistently throughout his letters in the same place, I wouldn’t have created a thread to point it out because the explanation would be obvious. It’s the fact that there is no consistency that make’s it a point of interest because if he was writing in his own fluent hand, these blobs should always appear in the same position on each letter E, A etc, and do so in each of the Zodiac’s letters consistently.

And if we put the issue of the dots not being in the same place on the letter E in one letter as they are in another to one side, and we just simply put them down to his allowing the pen tip to be in contact with the paper for a second or two which causes the ink to form at the tip and transfer itself onto the page as a thick dot then even that argues for someone who is not writing in one fluent and easy motion because he’s obviously stopping long enough at the end of each lower case E, A etc long enough to cause a mark that is visible. Well that means that he isn’t writing as we would do naturally in a consistent and fluent motion.

I know I’m late to the dance.

I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe one of the letters is written with a ballpoint pen. Cheap pens make blobs like that or even a good one will if a bit of lint gets stuck on the business end.

As to Manilli, he’s a favorite of mine and I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed a two-dot "i" anywhere else.

Good Ole Fred keeps popping up in this case, doesnt he?
Fred’s on my top 5 Z suspect list too, more like top 3.

Well I’ve become very interested in F.M also recently after I discovered he lived at/owned a house in Presidio Heights. I mean Zodiac did seem to ignore escaping onto West Pacific Avenue through the far easier, closer and safer entrance at the top of Cherry street which, had he really intended to escape into Julius Kahn area, would have likely done. Also, The Eight year old witness saw and then named a man he saw as a suspect in the incident which suggests the man must have been local to Presidio Heights for the kid to recognize him.

I know I’m late to the dance.

I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe one of the letters is written with a ballpoint pen. Cheap pens make blobs like that or even a good one will if a bit of lint gets stuck on the business end.

As to Manilli, he’s a favorite of mine and I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed a two-dot "i" anywhere else.

Patinky, yes pens will do that and that’s what I said could be responsible for the effect. However, if that were the case, then the resulting dots of ink that formed would do so either at the point of first contact with the paper, or because he left the pen tip in contact with the paper for a second or two at the end of each letter E. If this were the case, and He were writing in his normal hand, then every time we see this blob of ink on a letter E, we should see it in the same location on each specific E, and consistent not only throughout one correspondence, but throughout them all. That isn’t so in the letters.
If I saw a blotch of in at the base of each lower case E, and it appears consistently throughout his letters in the same place, I wouldn’t have created a thread to point it out because the explanation would be obvious. It’s the fact that there is no consistency that make’s it a point of interest because if he was writing in his own fluent hand, these blobs should always appear in the same position on each letter E, A etc, and do so in each of the Zodiac’s letters consistently.

I understand what you’re saying, Chappie. But I think the writing instrument and type of paper are a part of the explanation for dot-blobs vs no-blobs. In my experience with ball-point pens from the late 1960s-1970s, they were anything but consistent in their blobbing abilities.

The type of pen used could explain how some letters seem to show these dots while other don’t, but that doesn’t explain why they appear consistently at the top and in the centre of the lower case E’s in one letter, then appear in another letter underneath it at the end of the e’s curve. If Zodiac were writing in his normal handwriting, then regardless of the pen used, if blobs of ink show up on specific letters such as Lower Case E, A P etc, then they should show up in the same place on the E’s A’s and P’s in the Little list letter as they do in the Paul Stine confession. But they don’t. The type of pen used can explain why they show up in some letters and not others, but that can by no means explain why they appear consistently on the letter E in one letter in one spot, and then consistently appear in another position in the next letter. If he were writing in his normal hand and these blobs were due to his leaving the pen in contact with the paper for a second each time he wrote the letter E, then in the letters that the blob’s are visible, they should be in the exact same place in each correspondence