So, I don’t have a whole lot of experience with academia. I do know some law professors. It’s not uncommon for professors to move around the country for jobs. O’Hare was a lecturer. I don’t know if he is a tenured professor at Berkley now, but I would imagine that he is by now. It is equally plausible that he thought his prospects of getting a full-time, permanent position at Harvard were not great and that is why he moved. I can’t get into his head, and Harvard never gave a reason for his departure.
As for O’Hare being in SF in 1969, he said he was there in the Summer of 1969. But that would potentially exclude the LHR murders. Depending upon when he left, it could exclude both LB and PH. But, even assuming he was in SF at the time, it’s very difficult for anyone to account for the whereabouts on very specific days decades ago. If you asked me where I was on June 23, 1989, the best I could tell you is that is was Summer vacation after my 6th grade year. I was probably at a park playing basketball or at home playing video games, but I really have no idea. O’Hare would probably give a similarly vague answer regarding where he was for each of the murders, assuming he was even in SF. And this dovetails into my larger point that there is really no way for him to prove that he wasn’t the Zodiac Killer, unless the Zodiac Killer is caught and confesses. It is impossible to prove a negative.
I really don’t think O’Hare looks like the sketch. Kjell Qvale looks a lot like the sketch, but I don’t think he was the Zodiac either. I think Rodelli made a far better case against Qvale than Penn made against O’Hare. And Qvale didn’t really do a good job of rebutting Rodelli’s case. Although, I think it is probably because Qvale found the allegations absurd and refused to really engage with them on any serious level. But O’hare and Qvale do have one thing in common: both were very consumed by their careers (and in Qvale’s case, his many hobbies). I know a few law professors and they work 70 or more hours per week. Now, they only teach 2-3 classes per week, but research consumes their lives. And the constantly attend conferences all over the country. O’Hare strikes me a way too busy to be writing Zodiac letters and composing ciphers. The only way Qvale could be the Zodiac is if he had a meth addiction and never slept.
As to what O’Hare should have done or what your or I would have done in response to allegations, that is all largely irrelevant. We’re not O’Hare. We don’t think like he does. I don’t see consciousness of guilt simply because he refuses to thoroughly respond to what he considers to be absurd allegations. And, it begs the question, why did he stop? If he was the Zodiac, did he stop because Penn and Grant accused him? But there was roughly 7 years before Penn accused him. What was he doing from 1974 to 1981? I guess you can say he killed Joan Webster. But, there is no evidence linking him to that murder. Ray Grant seems to think he was off killing 4-5 other victims from the late 70s to the late 80s. However, he offers no evidence to like O’Hare or even the Zodiac to those crimes. Do you believe that O’Hare would remain silent after Graysmith’s book? The NY Zodiac? Fincher’s movie? It just doesn’t seem likely. I would bet the farm that Zodiac would have at least wrote a letter when NYPD thought Zodiac relocated to NYC (remember, that was a three-year period where SFPD consulted with NYC).
Cold Facts;
My impression here is that you are, at best, arguing semantics.
I’d be interested in hearing about O’Hare. I think that Gareth Penn finding mathematical solutions to arriving at O’Hare is interesting enough, given that Zodiac was what he was. But Vegas Lawyer appears to only be giving you some basic info and you’re responding as if you are, yourself, Gareth Penn.
Joan Webster. I saw a sketch of the potential suspect in her case, and he greatly resembled Gareth Penn. I’m sure this has been discussed, but I think it’s relevant.
And again, in regards to O’Hare…I understand curiosity being aroused, but let’s look into it. I personally don’t know enough about Penn’s allegations to understand any significance of 1360 SP, but I’d like to know. What does 1360 SP signify?
What does 1360 SP signify?
I could never find an explanation of this. Maybe Cold Facts has one. Best I can tell, O’Hare said in his Washington Monthly article that his license plate was assigned randomly by the DMV. But Ray Grant stated in his book that 1360 SP does not fit the pattern for license plates issued to either commercial or noncommercial vehicles in MA. Therefore, it must be a vanity plate which was specifically requested by O’Hare. Why would he lie about that? So, assuming this is true, it is weird that O’Hare would request a vanity plate and later claim that he did not. That doesn’t make him a killer, though. Other than that, I haven’t figured out the significance of 1360 SP to the Zodiac case.
What does 1360 SP signify?
I could never find an explanation of this. Maybe Cold Facts has one. Best I can tell, O’Hare said in his Washington Monthly article that his license plate was assigned randomly by the DMV. But Ray Grant stated in his book that 1360 SP does not fit the pattern for license plates issued to either commercial or noncommercial vehicles in MA. Therefore, it must be a vanity plate which was specifically requested by O’Hare. Why would he lie about that? So, assuming this is true, it is weird that O’Hare would request a vanity plate and later claim that he did not. That doesn’t make him a killer, though. Other than that, I haven’t figured out the significance of 1360 SP to the Zodiac case.
Well if it doesn’t signify anything that is either common knowledge amongst Zodiac researchers, or isn’t explained in detail by Penn…
Then he’s whacked.
“It is equally plausible that he thought his prospects of getting a full-time, permanent position at Harvard were not great and that is why he moved.”
If you assume O’Hare’s primary motivation was job security, his academic resume doesn’t make any sense. He was, for example, fully established as associate professor at MIT (1971-1979) before taking a short stint (1979-1981) with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and then for some reason grabbing onto the bottom rung of the academic ladder at the JFK School (1981-1991). He acted as if his career was secondary to some private hobby, which, if you believe Ray Grant’s timeline, that the Zodiac Project was scheduled to come to an end in August 1989, it was. There’s no reason to build tenure anywhere if you know you’re going to be dead when you’re 46 years old.
“If you asked me where I was on June 23, 1989, the best I could tell you is that is was Summer vacation after my 6th grade year. I was probably at a park playing basketball or at home playing video games, but I really have no idea.”
You just wrote two sentences speculating about where you might have been and what you might have been doing on what I assume was a random date for you: June 23, 1989. O’Hare, who went to the trouble of writing a Washington Monthly article on the subject, has four canonical Zodiac dates to work with, any of which will serve to eliminate him as a suspect (for most of us, anyway), and yet, he hasn’t written even one sentence.
“O’Hare strikes me a way too busy to be writing Zodiac letters and composing ciphers.”
If he had three people helping him, one of whom concentrated on composing the ciphers, that wouldn’t have been a problem. In any case, the Zodiac events were sporadic enough, with most of the murders presumably taking place within a ten-month span, to fit almost anyone’s schedule. Bill Cosby was a busy man, and yet, if you believe his accusers, he still managed to rape 60 women in his spare time.
“I guess you can say he killed Joan Webster. But, there is no evidence linking him to that murder.”
O’Hare was in the Eastern Airlines Terminal the evening she disappeared. Joan Webster had no reason to accept a ride from anyone, since Logan Airport is connected to the T subway system, which would have taken her right back to Harvard. But she was a graduate student in Architecture, might well have had a nodding acquaintance with O’Hare, who had architectural degrees from Harvard and would have been a familiar face in the departmental offices. She would have accepted a ride from him without thinking twice.
“Do you believe that O’Hare would remain silent after Graysmith’s book? The NY Zodiac? Fincher’s movie? It just doesn’t seem likely. I would bet the farm that Zodiac would have at least wrote a letter when NYPD thought Zodiac relocated to NYC (remember, that was a three-year period where SFPD consulted with NYC).”
November 1990: Ray Grant’s mailing to Harvard.
December 1990: The Eureka Card is mailed to the SF Chronicle. The card could be an acknowledgement by O’Hare that the Zodiac puzzle had been solved (eureka!) and that, therefore, there would be no curtain call. The card contains a Xerox featuring two post office box keys. Ray Grant was a mailman in 1990, and the address of his publishing house was a post office box. The front of the card shows a snowman wearing Groucho glasses. The 1971 movie The Zodiac Killer features a mailman who dons Groucho glasses before committing one of his murders. Additionally, the version of the Little List song in the letter of July 26, 1970 is the Groucho Marx version.
“Joan Webster. I saw a sketch of the potential suspect in her case, and he greatly resembled Gareth Penn. I’m sure this has been discussed, but I think it’s relevant.”
The sketch of the man seen walking with Joan Webster could be a lot of people. Both Penn and O’Hare were known to have worn beards during various stages of their adult lives. It’s also possible the beard was fake.
“Best I can tell, O’Hare said in his Washington Monthly article that his license plate was assigned randomly by the DMV. But Ray Grant stated in his book that 1360 SP does not fit the pattern for license plates issued to either commercial or noncommercial vehicles in MA. Therefore, it must be a vanity plate which was specifically requested by O’Hare. Why would he lie about that? So, assuming this is true, it is weird that O’Hare would request a vanity plate and later claim that he did not.’
O’Hare implies that the phone number he had at one point when he lived in Cambridge was assigned randomly; he doesn’t mention his license plate in the article. I don’t have Grant’s book in front of me, so I’m not sure if this information was in his book or on one of his websites. But supposedly Grant went to O’Hare’s address in Brookline in 1989 and took a picture of the white van parked in O’Hare’s driveway with the license plate 1360 SP. He then called the Massachusetts DMV and asked how the plate numbers are issued for vans, and the DMV person explained there were two types of vans which were issued plate numbers—commercial and noncommercial—and each had its own typical sequence. If I’m not mistaken, one just had numbers, and the other had numbers which were preceded by a letter. So any plate which didn’t fit that pattern was a vanity plate which had been requested. Plus the backing color of the plate would tell you if it was a vanity plate. Then the DMV person added, off the record of course, and presumably from the information on file, that O’Hare’s plate was a vanity plate that he had specifically requested.
Since both Penn and Grant say that O’Hare’s plate was 1360 SP, and Grant says he actually saw the plate on O’Hare’s van, I tend to believe O’Hare had that license plate. The question is, Why would he request it?
“Well if it doesn’t signify anything that is either common knowledge amongst Zodiac researchers, or isn’t explained in detail by Penn… Then he’s whacked.”
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Who’s “whacked”?
We have two remaining Zodiac ciphers, Z13 and Z32, and what they signify isn’t common knowledge amongst Zodiac researchers, either. They are artifacts at this point.
The same is true of a license plate that reads 1360 SP. The significance of the plate, at this point, is that O’Hare requested it, even though his article says he has no patience for puzzle games. It is, at the very least, Zodiaclike behavior.
It’s worth pointing out that Jake Wark, who was the press secretary for the Suffolk County DA’s Office in Boston for 15 years, and is currently Director of Communications at Executive Office of Public Safety and Security in Greater Boston, was a prominent Zodiac Killer researcher two decades ago, and wrote a number of articles about the case which are available on the Wayback Machine.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/zodiac/river_1.htm l”> https://web.archive.org/web/20150209235 … ver_1.html
http://members.aol.com/jakewark/index.htm l”> http://web.archive.org/web/200804081313 … index.html
I assume Jake stopped commenting on the Zodiac Killer case as a requirement of employment at the DA’s office. But Jake Wark pointed out that O’Hare had made a number of inappropriate comments, if one assumes him innocent, in one case citing a scenario that was almost identical to the Lake Berryessa assault in one of his research papers. The tone of his Washington Monthly article is similarly tone deaf; it’s not at all dissimilar to the public posture Ted Bundy took regarding his crimes, as if even the suggestion that he’s a serial killer should be dismissed out of hand.
Ray Grant’s entire theory makes no sense whatsoever. According to Grant, the Zodiac Project was supposed to come to an end on a date certain in 1989 (in May, if I am not mistaken). Grant claims that his warnings to MIT and Liberty Mutual stopped the Zodiac’s plans. But, why did the Terminus Event have to occur on that specific day? I get that there was a plan, in his mind. But plans get altered all the time. Why in the world would four people spend more than two decades on a project only to abandon it because they couldn’t pull off their finale on a given date? That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard!
O’Hare’s vanity plate doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the Zodiac murders or ciphers. If you want to make that claim, you’re going to have to provide some evidence to support that. You have not foreclosed the possibility that O’Hare’s van had that plate when he bought it and he merely renewed the plate.
Can you place O’Hare in the terminal the night Webster was abducted? I have never seen any evidence that he was there. Source please.
So, O’Hare just gave up killing and became a tenured professor? The problem with this argument is the same problem with Ray Grant’s argument that he stopped the Terminus Event: if he’s right, the event didn’t happen and won’t happen; but; if he is wrong, the exact same thing occurs, which is nothing. Whether he’s right or wrong, the same events occur. There is no way to falsify his arguments.
Another problem with accepting anything that Ray Grant or Gareth Penn has to say about the Zodiac case is related to O’Hare’s 1967 Progressive Architecture article. The picture in question in that article that is supposedly doctored uses the same logic that moon-landing conspiracy crackpots use to determine that the Apollo moon photos were faked. It relies upon an analysis of shadows, which is often dubious. Whether the photo is a fake or not is not germane to my analysis. Penn’s conclusion is…he found a triangle in the photo that corresponds to an "invisible" triangle that he allegedly found in a Zodiac letter. He found this "invisible" triangle by connecting various random spots in the letter. The object in the Progressive Architecture photo allegedly depicts a triangle of the same angles as the "invisible" triangle in the Zodiac letter (if I am not mistaken, it was the letter where the Zodiac claimed he shot a man in a parked car with a .38). If you think that is sound methodology, I can’t help you. Penn then goes no to conclude that the points of this triangle will correspond to the location of Joan Webster’s body and the sites of the last two Zodiac crimes when placed over a map of Boston. So, how O’Hare would know in 1970 or 1971 that he was going to move to Boston and commit very specific crimes nearly 20 years later is beyond me. He ‘s either a psychic or a time traveler (not to mention that Joan Webster was a toddler when that Zodiac letter was written). Additionally, how Penn divined any of this, even if he is correct, is beyond my understanding.
And, of course, Joan Webster’s body was not found in Boston and no attacks ever occurred at the MIT Tower or the Liberty Mutual building in Boston. So, Penn was either VERY wrong or you have to believe that Ray Grant put on his underoos and cape to stop the Terminus Event (which is the plot of a great movie…he should have written that as a screenplay and made millions rather than as a non-fiction true crime book!). If you believe that Ray Grant stopped the Terminus Event, I have a bridge to sell you.
If O’Hare is the Zodiac, he is must be the smartest criminal to ever live. He makes Bond villains look like drooling morons eating crayons. This would also make Ray Grant and Gareth Penn the greatest detectives to ever live. And if that is true, nearly every poster on this site is horribly wrong about the Zodiac case by orders of magnitude. Every law enforcement agency has missed the boat by miles. Is that really logical?
Be careful he will add you to his ignore list.
Be careful he will add you to his ignore list.
If he does, he’s running from debate. If his case is so strong, he should relish the opportunity to prove me wrong.
Be careful he will add you to his ignore list.
If he does, he’s running from debate. If his case is so strong, he should relish the opportunity to prove me wrong.
Time will tell.
@dreamnine-nine The Hoax Theory, as articulated by Horan, does have one insurmountable hole: someone had to make the BRS call, and in doing so, they had to connect the LHR murders to the BRS murders within 30 minutes without knowing whether or not the BRS murders were similar to LHR (because the Hoax Theory requires the caller not to be the murderer). How could the caller know that the BRS shooting would not be immediately solved? In my mind, the only way that this is remotely possible is if you are the BRS killer and you also committed the LHR murders.
@tahoe27 If LB was just a copycat, then what happened to the copycat? Was he just one and done? Why didn’t Zodiac mention the copycat? If the copycat went so far as to kill as Zodiac, why did he not also write letters as Zodiac?
