Interesting article Dave, thanks for posting it. Kind of odd too run such a story on the opposite coast of Zodiac’s activity, in 1973, when he had been quiet for so long.

One thing to note, despite Zodiac being quiet for a couple years, this article runs in NY out of the blue, and 30 days later, we get the unconfirmed Albany NY letter:
viewtopic.php?f=77&t=60

The Albany letter reads, "you were wrong, I am not dead or in the hospital", almost as if the writer is responding to somebody or to an article,etc. I wonder if the article Doranchak posted mentions Zodiac has not been heard from in a while, and may be dead or in a hospital?

Google the Reporter’s name, and you will see that Kermit was also involved in comic book production too

Morf the answer to your question is in the 1st paragraph:

A screwball with two hobbies, killing and cryptograms hasn’t been heard from in quit awhile. Zodiac-watchers are firmly convinced he’s in jail or in a mental hospital or just dead.

“then comes the NY letter a few weeks letter”?????????

Does anyone have concerns about the way Kermit wrote this article, read it and tell me what you think? I’ll point it out if no one sees it.

Dave O very nice find and post…

Daniel

Wow, great stuff. I couldn’t make out the words in the article. That’s amazing! Zodiac or not, it would seem like the article is what prompted the Albany letter & cipher.

In May of 1973 Sherwood Morrill announced his retirement and there was a comprehensive article in the Chronicle about it.

viewtopic.php?f=84&t=28

Not sure of how widely the announcement was distributed across the nation but perhaps it could have been the inspiration for the writer of the back east article.

In 1971, the reporter for this article was a Chicago Tribune Staff Writer, not sure when he wound up in NY.

I’m really interested by the last part of this, which looks like:

"Someone tried speeding … by feeding the cryptogram into …"

And I guess the remainder of the article is missing? I’m sure they mean feeding it into a computer. I’d certainly like to read the rest of that part.

-glurk

EDIT: Never mind. I just found the text in the images, which are hard to read. "feeding the cryptogram into a computer, which failed miserably."

I’m really interested by the last part of this, which looks like:

"Someone tried speeding … by feeding the cryptogram into …"

And I guess the remainder of the article is missing? I’m sure they mean feeding it into a computer. I’d certainly like to read the rest of that part.

-glurk

It continues on page 2 shown above.

I wish we had an intern to transcribe all these old articles.

I wish we had an intern to transcribe all these old articles.

Me2

I’m really interested by the last part of this, which looks like:

"Someone tried speeding … by feeding the cryptogram into …"

And I guess the remainder of the article is missing? I’m sure they mean feeding it into a computer. I’d certainly like to read the rest of that part.

-glurk

EDIT: Never mind. I just found the text in the images, which are hard to read. "feeding the cryptogram into a computer, which failed miserably."

I find that an interesting statement. Must have been on lousy computer.

While I am no cipher expert, when shown the solution, it seems quite basic and easy to understand exactly how it created it.

Was just browsing and I spotted this. Apologies if this has been picked up on. The ‘style’ of presentation ie the torn paper graphic surround I think I’ve seen before for printing/highlighting sections of Z’s letters. Prob borrowed the layout from the Chron.

Obviously not a realistic depiction of the actual shape of the letter. Then I spotted the weird, practically cursive ‘am’ in ‘I am’. Seems nothing is real, they have re-drawn the handwriting in the letter for the article as well. Example below, included Washington as well because of the squared off tail on the g. Bet they couldn’t get a hold of an original so they’ve redrawn it, again, prob from the Chron.

Turns out the Chron re-drew it first although the ‘I am’ might be slightly different in the one in this thread. Hard to be sure because of the quality. Either way neither of them are Zodiac’s handwriting.

Seems like alot of trouble to go thru to draw the entire letter by hand,also seems like they would have needed a copy or photo of it to draw it so closely

It does but I wonder if it had to do with transparencies and maybe even permission. Back in the day, when the only place that could scan a transparency were repro houses, you had to trace the image on a lightbox so that you had something to paste onto your artwork. Then at repro stage the transparency would be scanned and dropped into the artwork an sized according to the image you had traced.

My guess is that is what we are seeing here. A tracing for artwork. Maybe LE didn’t want an actual image of the letter going out, much less being handed around a print room for the purposes of being photographed or scanned for press.

Either way thought it was interesting. Oh and it’s really not that much work, not for back then. Try tracing a ‘photo’ of a crowd scene for print. Every face, every body, everything in the scene because it wasn’t for just scale but also cropping reference for the printers.

Towards the end, before us humble design houses got things like computers and scanners that could scan transparencies we even tried rigging up our photocopier with tin foil to try and copy the flipping things. Didn’t work of course.

I have one of these photos from the Chronicle. I think it might even be this letter. I will check.

Either way…wow. Looks like some people there had to get quite familiar with it, even if they were tracing it.

Good eye trav!