I see this topic has been dead for about 2.5 years but i have a silly question. How does anyone know this is actually Hal Snook’s writing? I understand his signature in on the page but that doesn’t prove that he actually wrote the report. I’ve searched and have yet to find any other example (or supposed example) of Snooks handwriting. I actually just listened to a horan radio show (started listening to one a while back but it just made me squirm and had to stop it. This time i was out of town and had no access to any sorta internet and happened to have one of his radio spots stored on my phone.) and i could spent hours pointing out how he is doing EXACTLY what RG did. Stretching truths, inventing facts, labeling his own assumptions as pure fact…its disgusting! Anyways, i recalled the Snook report while listening to the show but couldn’t remember ever seeing any other examples that supposedly were written by Snook. Thanks

Ask him to show proof of this. It’s a wild and baseless theory, and is laughable. There’s simply no way that he would have got his hand on a Stine shirt piece that quickly (if ever). Horan’s theory sounds great to people that do not know anything about the case, but to people with common sense that have researched the case, his theory & book are a joke!

It’s like simple math:

1-Zodiac wrote some letters and used the crosshair symbol

2- Zodiac attacked at Berryessa while wearing a crosshair hood

3- At Berryessa, somebody wrote on the car door,that writing is matched to the same person that wrote the previous z letters

4- Stine is murdered and a piece of his shirt is removed

5- Before it is logically and remotely possible that Snook could have gotten his hands on that shirt piece, it’s mailed to the SF Chron along with another letter. That letter writing also matches the previous Zodiac letter writing.

End of story! His entire ‘theory’ hangs on the fact that Snook had to have, no MUST HAVE, obtained some of the shirt, but he can provide ZERO EVIDENCE to support this claim.

END OF STORY!

Depending on when you listen to Horan, he has the following theories of how the shirt pieces ended up in a Zodiac Letter:
1) Snook wrote the Stine Letter and stole the shirt from the morgue or evidence locker;
2) Snook only wrote the first few Zodiac letters. The Stine Letter was written by Keith Power. Power stole the shirt pieces from the morgue or the evidence locker;
3) Robert Graysmith wrote all the letters after the Debut Letter. Accordingly, he stole the pieces of Stine’s shirt from the morgue or police evidence locker;
4) Some unknown person stole the pieces of Stine’s shirt and gave them to Snook, who wrote the Stine Letter, but subsequent letters were written by Power/Graysmith

However, Snook was still responsible for the codes. He thinks that the codes harken back to Snook’s days with the Philippine Scouts. The symbols are some indigenous Philippine language: Eskaya. If you look up the language, it looks nothing like the Zodiac symbols.

Hi-

If Hal Snook’s handwriting did not look like Z’s, would anyone be interested in him? Does Horan have background on this guy like he was an attention seeker on the front pages of the local newspapers long before there was a Zodiac killer? Did he have a habit of writing on cars in felt tip or using Monarch sized paper? Did he live near one of the crime scenes and was spoken to by the police afterwards? Oh, wait. That is somebody else.

I have a funny feeling (and again, I can’t handle Horan’s "bitter, angry man" writing style, so I have not read his theory) that Hal Snook became a suspect as the letter writer only because his handwriting is close to Z’s. Am I making an incorrect assumption?

Mike

No, he thinks Snook was trying bring attention to the drug trade in the area and the corruption amongst various law enforcement entities. Horan posits that Snook used the Zodiac ciphers to communicate with someone at the CIA because he could not reach that person through "normal channels" as they would be monitored.

Sounds as if Horan is hedging his bets with Snook by saying that someone else may have written on the door. What are the other possibilities? Another independent hoaxer? Land?

Mike

Horan thinks Dennis Land was the LB killer. Horan posits that Land was a copycat Zodiac, ironically a copycat of the nonexistent Zodiac that Snook made up to give him cover for communicating with someone at the CIA. Horan also asserts that Dennis Land and his brother committed the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders.

I think Horan adjusts his theory as each of his suspects and claims is ruled out by people here with common sense.At one point, didnt he indicate an egyptian guy was the perp?

Yes. He thinks Zayed was the PH Killer. He thinks David Ott was the LHR Killer. For BRS, the killer is either James Crabtree, Richard Hoffman, or Andy Nicolatas. Dennis Land is the LB Killer. Bob Barnett killed CJB. I haven’t heard him address Johns.