A ball point pen, are you sure that it wasn’t a 16 penny nail. Some thing that could write onto the sirfest of the desk top.
Those old desk tops, the wood can be quit hard, not soft.
P.S. Great Job By The Way TRAVEllER 1ST.

A ball point pen, are you sure that it wasn’t a 16 penny nail. Some thing that could write onto the sirfest of the desk top.
Those old desk tops, the wood can be quit hard, not soft.
P.S. Great Job By The Way TRAVEllER 1ST.

I’m sure they could be but IIRC it was a plywood desk as opposed to a hardwood desk.

Trav,

Getting back to the "g’s" and "y’s"……Do you find there’s a patterns here, even across the "unproven" communications. Seems to me that while he does switch between a straight and looped leg on the "g’s"(at times) , the "y’s" are consistently straight legged.

I haven’t done enough research but I wonder if using a loop on a "g" and a straight "y" is normal. Aren’t people inclined to treat both the same?….two loops or both straight…no sure!

Hi Wier,

The ‘pattern’ thing might be minor and by that I mean not necessarily consistent enough across all of the written material. I’m not sure yet. The problem is that there’s quite a lot of stuff and I think I’m starting to decide that a lot of it may be natural. I’ve been looking at unrelated handwriting samples and there is always a variation, even in the same characters, when people write.

There IS however something there in Z’s writing. Some of the variations are deliberate, they have to be because they are in letters written in a disguised hand. What I’m not sure about is if he extended that throughout the bulk of what we consider his ‘usual’ writing style.

In that respect, things like the y’s and g’s aren’t something that I could quickly form an opinion on. You are quite right to bring them up though because, as you note, the g’s at least do seem to fall into the category of having been possibly artificially created. Nothing is ever simple though because I’ve seen examples again, in unrelated writing, where a mix of straight and curved tails on g’s is not uncommon.

The y’s I’m really not sure on yet but they have been on my radar so to speak for quite some time. Initially it was because of the relationship between the tail and the stroke. Long straight tail and a relatively high and short stroke and, for the most part, at a consistent angle. I honestly don’t know myself if how you do your g’s would necessarily influence how you do your y’s. I agree that you would think it would but I’m not so sure. You see a g has rounded components to it so it could be that when it comes to writing, creating a y might actually be more similar to creating a T.

Then we have the desk. Assuming it is him, this is the only place where he uses y’s with a rounded top (I think). My initial feeling on this is that it was dictated by the wood. Rounded strokes being easier to maintain as the pen moved across the grain. But either way there it is as an example of that type of y being in his arsenal to use. If I were to guess I would say that is his ‘real’ y. The style of it is consistent with other elements of his writing – L.A Times letter envelope of ’71. I have reasons for suspecting that this is his actual writing but that part of the investigation will come later.

You see now why I called this ‘The Big One’, it’s not just comparing one thing to another but also looking at why he uses one type of style here and another there and then trying to see what that tells us, if anything. If you focus on one aspect you have to relate it to everything to put it in context and while doing that you spot something else that relates to another thing A real mesh I tells ya.

Hope that wasn’t too long and boring lol. Not even sure now if I answered your question although I’m not sure I could.

Thanks Trav…..I wasn’t sure myself, it was something in the back of my mind for a while, that I thought might be true as opposed to having done the research. Having been looking over it for the last hour again, I’m still not sure. With regard to the "g’s" in particular it might be half natural as you suggest. Again I haven’t spent enough time on it yet but it appears that the "loop" appears when he’s writing slower/trying to be neat and lessens where it appears he’s rushing /writing at speed. (apart from the two g’s in the word "suggest" in the Count Marco which I believe are deliberately contrived). The Y’s consistent throughout I think.

I’ve also been looking at unconnected handwriting samples re the downstrokes of g’s and y’s and they do differ ( still not enough info in) however, it does appear that they are more likely to be the same in joined writing…as opposed to printed. There might be something to that in general worth exploring….looking at Z’s words that have not been printed. Dunno!

I’ve also been looking at unconnected handwriting samples re the downstrokes of g’s and y’s and they do differ ( still not enough info in) however, it does appear that they are more likely to be the same in joined writing…as opposed to printed. There might be something to that in general worth exploring….looking at Z’s words that have not been printed. Dunno!

Well it’s good to know I have some company into this exploratory descent into madness lol. That’s why I’m taking my time over this. Mostly because most of time I don’t have any direction or focus so this thread will be sporadic (Sorry DK I’ll maybe condense it just for you after it’s done). Now, you think that the patterns you were looking for are more prevalent in cursive as opposed to printed writing? That may prove important. My apologies for only just taking this info on board. My information filter is mostly set on "Oh look, a squirrel", I get there in the end though You see, as far as I understand it, you can’t compare cursive to printing. Now that’s from the document examiners POV, although I don’t really believe that to be case, I think it’s far more difficult, yes, but if you’ve found, or think you’ve found, a pattern that might provide a bridge then that is most certainly interesting. So we should incorporate having a look at that idea at some point. Thank you Wier.

I got side tracked on this stuff Trav and have not as yet followed up with any in depth analysis. I want to recheck a few things and will get back when my thoughts are clearer.

I got side tracked on this stuff Trav and have not as yet followed up with any in depth analysis. I want to recheck a few things and will get back when my thoughts are clearer.

It’s the nature of this case, there’s so much to look at. I work the same way, do a little bit of something then leave it for ages until my thoughts return to it.

See, something told me that you two ( Wier & Trav) would get along well. Great minds think alike!

Trav,

Haven’t formed an opinion yet re what this means( if anything) but I’ll just outline my observations and see where it leads us. I’m concentrating on the downstrokes of the "G’s" and "Y’s". The latter are straightforward as Zodiac’s "Y’s" are probably one of the most consistent letters throughout his communications…two strokes, the longer slightly angled but straight.

The G’s are more complicated….if you track them from the beginning you will see that all the downstrokes (with the exception of one " squiggle") are straight. However even at that, you get the impression that there’s a "loop" there waiting to break out. That does not happen until we see it in the word "Washington" in the Stine letter and showing up for a second time there in the word "seeing". There’s an odd one here and there in the next two communications and then for the first time ( Belli letter) all the G’s have loops….why? because Z is writing with care.
When you come to examine subsequent communication you will note, that when Zodiac is taking his time, trying to be neat the G’s have loops and when he speeds up they disappear.
Curiously all 3 suspect letters " Sla" , "Citizen" and the Red Phantom give clear examples of the overall trait ( Z writing g’s with loops and Y’s straight).
Perhaps, I don’t know, but the most telling is the Citizen. While Z appears to be writing faster, each G has a loop. Is that closest to his natural hand?

Finally…just looking at different handwriting unconnected with this case (plenty of examples available on the web) it appeas that in the majority of cases people use the same downstrokes for g’s and y’s whether straight or looped.

I think the citizen letter was not intended by Z, to be intercepted as a Z communication,and therefore, likely didn’t disguise it. I think you are right, it’s likely he normal unhidden writing style

TRAV,Regarding the citizen letter and comparison to Manalli, what is it you were pointing out in this image you created? (By the way, not to go off topic but, we don’t have a full large sample of a fully printed writing from Manalli, he always converts to both cursive and printing mixed. Wonder what a full sample of printing would yield from Fred?)

Thank you for that Wier. Most interesting.

My biggest, ever evolving, headache in this is, what is real and what isn’t, i.e what, if any, is his real handwriting or closest to it. I think there may well be a case for your observations on the g’s and y’s that their own micro evolutions could yield some direction in this aspect.

I think the ‘speed’ argument may back that up. It’s simple and logical and feels right. So, in that respect we are possibly seeing a pattern that is influenced by something that we know occurs naturally in all handwriting. The fact that this appears to be showing up in Z’s writing is good because, albeit only two characters, so far, it gives us a starting point for looking at shape and form. Hopefully we can extrapolate that outwards through the other characters to find similar traits. Nice.

Regarding the final 3 letters it’s no surprise that you would associate the appearance of the traits to him taking his time. Those letters are obviously written in a disguised hand but more than that, they are all different and not just a single difference but three. That has been a constant throughout all of his writings. This changing of style, mixing things up. This is why I think your observations will prove important because, whilst there are commonalities between all of the written communications, there’s so much subterfuge employed that it becomes confusing as to is actually real.

This shifting ‘subterfuge’ habit is what bothers me about the Citizen letter. I don’t think it’s his real writing. Given that it appears between the SLA letter and the Marco letter I see it as part of that group. As such, noone would claim that either the SLA card or the Marco letter are his real handwriting either so I see no reason and, through my own research, no evidence that it would be the closest to his real writing. It’s a construct and you generally take your time over those, perhaps why your observed traits show up in those 3.

My suspicions at this time are that things like the car door, the start of the Exorcist letter, the LA TImes envelope and the word ‘Over’ at the bottom of the first page of the July 31st 1969 letter to the Chronicle, might be the closest to his real writing. These seem to be looser and larger then the rest of the stuff and it’s the appearing ‘larger’ aspect that I find interesting. We mentioned this before in relation to the Desk and more recently in relation to the size of the postcards used. His writing was quite small. Now I’m starting to wonder if that wasn’t part of the overall subterfuge. Writing small limits identifying characteristics and to add to that he mostly used a felt tip pen, not the first choice instrument for detail. So when I see something that’s more open an employs more space in it’s construction and around it, it kinda sticks out like a sore thumb and I have to wonder why it’s there and how does it fit into the picture.

TRAV,Regarding the citizen letter and comparison to Manalli, what is it you were pointing out in this image you created? (By the way, not to go off topic but, we don’t have a full large sample of a fully printed writing from Manalli, he always converts to both cursive and printing mixed. Wonder what a full sample of printing would yield from Fred?)

IIRC

In this I was just showing a, not very detailed, example of how, when a sample of Fred’s writing was overlayed on the citizen letter the overall shape and form of the characters and the line and word spacing, weren’t uncomfortably different from each other.

There is another characteristic that shows up in the Citizen Letter that curiously, does not show up anywhere else. This time though, it’s not only a change in individual letters but something that shows up in three different letters….for me it’s something that’s not faked and comes from someones natural style.
Take a look at the "r’s", "p’s and especially the B in "badlands.(which is almost signature like)

This letter appears to be written at speed, like so many of the other known Z letters….it is very curious that a few of these didn’t slip in before, No?
It appears to be a speed related characteristic.