But if he was mistaken about the ’78 letter, how can we be sure he was right about the desktop poem? In both cases there were other experts who reached different conclusions.

Sherwood was correct about the 1978 letter, in that it was Zodiac’s handwriting, but he failed to realize it was a forgery. Major difference is that one can’t go back in time and forge the desktop before anyone even knew about Zodiac.

It wasn’t Zodiac’s handwriting though…as you say, it was a forgery. While it may have looked like it, it was not. If the writing didn’t look like Zodiac’s, a handwriting expert would not be necessary. That is the purpose of handwriting analysis.

As Sherwood himself put it, there are basically certain aspects one looks for when determining if writing is fake. He didn’t have those luxuries when determining if the desktop poem was Zodiac’s. The one that should have been (by appropriate means) determined a fake, was the 1978 letter.

It was a damn good fake and one has to wonder who had the knowledge, beyond what the general public had, to pull that one off.

Well, if it was not a member of the general public – who only had access to what had been reproduced in the papers at the time – then the list of suspects isn’t long.

As for the desktop and methods of verifying someone’s writing (or printing), this is where it becomes most bothersome that we don’t have any actual, detailed reports.

We don’t know in what manner Morrill reached his conclusion. We don’t know what he had to say about that factor which strikes me – from a layman’s perspective – as the trickiest one, namely that the thing was written on a varnished wooden surface, and not a piece of paper. He obviously took this into consideration – but I would love to see what his exact thoughts were on this.

Z’s handwriting is mainly printing – as distinguished from cursive or script or whatever you want to call it. The former is more generic, less individual than the latter to begin with – and it’s my understanding that this would be even more true when the letters are more or less carved into a surface (carving or not, at the very least, the technique is clearly different from the one you use when writing on paper, it has to involve a different sort of force/pressure, for one thing).

There are some people that theorize Graysmith forged the 78 letter using the overhead projector method he mentions in his book

There are some people that theorize Graysmith forged the 78 letter using the overhead projector method he mentions in his book

It does make one wonder, since it was stated by the SFPD "DNA obtained, not authentic Zodiac letter" how they knew it was not authentic if they didn’t have Zodiac. They either knew who the DNA matched, or as Nachtsider had put it…it was a woman’s.

If they knew who’s it was, why not say so? I wonder if it was Graysmith, why would that not have become public info? They had no problem putting Toschi in the news…why not Graysmith?

Regarding Z’s suggested (by myself a few pages back) possible behavior of responding to things that were relevant to him (i.e it was him) we could maybe add this as well.

http://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=512

I think it was Zodiac simply acknowledging the kids who saw him. A…"I know you saw me…keep quiet" sort of thing.

That concerns the motivations behind the bus threat possibly being a veiled threat against the ‘kids’ who saw him at PH. Whether or not it’s a reality is a different matter but I do like it as a pattern of behavior. Self preservation via veiled threat possibly indicating actual involvement/relevance as opposed to just claiming stuff because he could.

I don’t think the 78 letter could have been a woman because I’m almost certain this was the first letter checked for DNA in 2001/2002. The claim ( Graysmith) that they first believed it was Allen was true….then ( no explanation) they changed their mind. That was scrapped and they tested A N Other letter/stamp.
I can’t see them collecting DNA from Graysmith/Toschi at that time, so there must be some other explanation.

I don’t think the 78 letter could have been a woman because I’m almost certain this was the first letter checked for DNA in 2001/2002. The claim ( Graysmith) that they first believed it was Allen was true….then ( no explanation) they changed their mind. That was scrapped and they tested A N Other letter/stamp.
I can’t see them collecting DNA from Graysmith/Toschi at that time, so there must be some other explanation.

Yes – I can buy that. It would explain how they could conclude with certainty that it wasn’t legitimate without having anything in particular to compare the DNA with – and I agree that the latter is, well, let’s just say it complicates matters considerably. They may have been able to retrieve Toschi’s (or Graysmith’s) DNA from good sources – but is that something they would have done? And I doubt they had their DNA on file, so to speak – why would they?

So, yes – the female DNA explanation is a pretty solid one. At least based on what we know at the moment.

Regardless of who it was, IIRC the conclusion back then was – basically – that the fake was so good that it couldn’t have been produced by just about anyone. The likely faker was someone with access to actual Z letters – or so I believe they concluded.