Many years ago, Zodiac researchers on Mike Morford's forum unearthed some of the likely sources for the pasted newspaper cuttings on the 13-Hole postcard. Recently Jibberjabber, who once contributed to the Zodiac Tapatalk forum. has been thoroughly trawling the newspapers.com website - and by using keywords related to the remaining snippets of text found on this communication, he has unearthed some fresh information that shows the Zodiac Killer was likely preparing this postcard as early as September 25th 1970 (unless he maintained a stockpile of old newspapers for this very purpose). It has been shown previously on this website that some of the wording pasted on the 13-Hole postcard was an update to his Little List letter mailed on July 26th 1970, which was unreleased to the public at the time the 13-Hole postcard was mailed on October 5th 1970. This strongly indicated that the 13-Hole postcard was a genuine Zodiac communication not claiming the disappearance (and possible murder) of Donna Lass from a South Lake Tahoe casino on September 6th 1970.

Vasa Croe found a significant piece of text from the Smidgens comic strip, reading "The pace isn't any slower! In fact it's just one big sprawling subdivided rat race". The particular example below (found by David Oranchak) is from the Oakland Tribune on September 25th 1970. The Zodiac Killer took eleven consecutive words from this comic strip.

From the San Francisco Examiner on the same date (September 25th 1970), Brubaker then discovered the source of the wording "Some of Them Fought" and "It Was Horrible", contained exclusively in two subheadings in another column entitled "The Wounded Lie in the Hallways". 

Jibberjabber then emailed me a further source from the Oakland Tribune on September 25th 1970, containing "You'll hate me" and "but I've got to tell you" in the same line of text. This shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the Zodiac Killer was predominantly searching newspapers from one date in the calendar, securing "The pace isn't any slower! In fact it's just one big", "Some of Them Fought", "It Was Horrible", "You'll hate me" and "but I've got to tell you" to paste onto his 13-Hole postcard. 

Sent to me by Jibberjabber, the word "thirteenth" was also likely sourced from the Oakland Tribune on September 25th 1970 in an article entitled "Our Failing National Health".

Every pasted (complete) word in the message that isn't inverted can now be accounted for in the 13-Hole postcard, sourced from September 25th 1970 and mailed on October 5th 1970 in the form of a postcard. As of this moment, Jibberjabber is trying to identify the source for the remaining inverted text on the communication. The amount of effort displayed in trawling these newspapers to find the desired text, to not only continue the theme of the publicly unreleased Little List letter, but to deliver a specific message, strongly suggests that this correspondence was not prepared by an idle hoaxer.

THE "PACE" POSTCARD AUTHENTIC 

​Thanks to Jibberjabber for his diligent work in this matter. Cragle, another contributor to the Tapatalk forum, has previously found the same and similar newspaper cuttings related to the 13-Hole postcard. I appreciate their efforts to establish a greater understanding of the Zodiac Killer.

UPDATE: Jarett Kobek, author of How to Find Zodiac, has previously unearthed "THERE ARE REPORTS" from the beginning of the upside-down text on the postcard. It was sourced from the San Francisco Chronicle on September 23rd 1970.

Zodiac Killer investigators and amateur sleuths will often quote "original source documentation" in their research as the most valuable resource in their arsenal. You will see this referenced in many Zodiac books where it is used to validate a suspect or promote a theory in the Zodiac case. One of the more recent books, released by Tom Voigt entitled "Zodiac Killer:Just the Facts", lays out the police reports in a more readable format for people to access this "original source documentation". Although this is a noble endeavor, to supply information contemporary to the Zodiac murders in Northern California, the researchers who read this information will often cherry pick the information that benefits the story they are selling, and ignore the information that doesn't suit their narrative. So, while this "original source documentation" is extremely important to have at our fingertips, it routinely gets bent and twisted out of shape by individuals trying to sell you fictional versions of reality. 

Taking fiction to a completely new level, you can read "Zodiac Killer Solved" by Ray Grant, which is the perfect example of how to completely dismiss certain eyewitness accounts and bolster others, to paint a preconceived picture you have created in your mind. What Ray Grant does in his book, is create a fictional story of multiple "Zodiacs" and cherry pick certain details in the police report that suit his narrative, while ignoring and fabricating other accounts. One such example in his chapter on Lake Herman Road is his account of Robert Connelly after he left the Marshall Ranch, quote "Connley (sic) saw the Faraday Rambler now parked in the Gate #10 turnout, but with no one inside it". While this is true, he accompanies this text with a picture of Robert Connelly and Frank Gasser heading east to Benicia at 11:05pm, with the Rambler positioned on the east bank of the turnout, which is pure fiction based on the two recorded accounts of Robert Connelly in the police report. Ray Grant has wilfully and deliberately left this out of his story about Lake Herman Road to mislead the reader into believing his contrived narrative. However, he is not alone when it comes to deception such as this.   

Robert Connelly in his first statement to police on December 21st 1968 was recorded as "a light colored 1960 Rambler S/W that was parked at the gate. It was parked southwest of where we finally found the car. This discrepancy wasn't noted at first." In his second interview on December 26th 1968 "Connelly insists that the Rambler was parked on the bank. That would be the south side. He did not see any person in the car."

The police sketch on the left clearly depicts the Rambler on the south/west bank. Due to a slightly erroneous compass drawing on the sketch, the Rambler was in fact facing south and parked on the west bank. In his book, Ray Grant deliberately placed the Rambler on the east bank when Robert Connelly passed the turnout at 11:05pm, despite two statements by Connelly to the contrary. That is because he chooses to believe some eyewitnesses over others to manipulate the story he is selling. There are countless other examples throughout his fictional retelling of the Zodiac story.

​The overwhelming majority of Zodiac researchers believe that the Zodiac Killer arrived at the Lake Herman Road turnout on December 20th 1968 and pulled alongside, and to the right of the Rambler, before exiting his vehicle and beginning the attack. While this may be true, it is certainly not the obvious choice based on the eyewitness statements in the police report. The last eyewitness to pass the turnout before two vehicles were spotted in the turnout, was Robert Connely. In other words, the last position we know the Rambler to have been placed in the turnout before Zodiac arrived, was on the west bank facing south. David Faraday could have initially parked on the east bank, relocated to the west bank, before being forced back across the turnout by the arriving Zodiac (the Rambler was detailed in three different positions that night in the police report). Or David Faraday could have wilfully moved his vehicle twice. However, this doesn't change the fact that the Rambler was last spotted alone in the turnout on the west bank before Zodiac arrived. The question therefore, is why was the sighting by Robert Connelly doubted by the police, and why do Zodiac investigators largely ignore the testimony of Robert Connelly, to paint a certain narrative of a Zodiac Killer who arrived at the turnout and pulled immediately to the right side of the Rambler? The answer can be easily explained. They ignore the details in the police report and repeat the story passed down from the many decades before. It is often more comfortable to go with the "argumentum ad populum" (what most people believe), rather than question the narrative we have been conditioned to accept.

Two weeks after the December 20th 1968 murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, in the early morning hours of Friday, January 3rd 1969, Matthew Burrell (46) was shot in his vehicle in the parking lot of a tavern at the intersection of Interstate 80 and Magazine Street. Investigators found his vehicle slammed into an adjoining motel sign, having been blasted in the back and neck by a shotgun through the rear window of his car. They concluded he had either attempted to escape from the approaching killer, or had slumped forward after the attack and accidentally struck the accelerator.

Sheriff's Deputy Russ Butterbach (assigned to the December 20th murders) indicated they were searching for clues to identify any possible link between the two cases. Sergeant Lawrence Kramer pointed out that different weapons were used in the Friday murders on December 20th 1968 and January 3rd 1969, but unbeknownst to him, this was to become a feature in all four of the canonical Zodiac attacks. Three days after the murder, on January 6th 1969, an abandoned foreign vehicle containing shotgun shells was found parked on Columbus Parkway in Vallejo. The registered owner was traced to Berkeley  This location, on Columbus Parkway, would become the setting for the Zodiac Killer's second attack on July 5th 1969, when just after midnight, Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin were shot multiple times in their vehicle in a parking lot at Blue Rock Springs. 

Darlene Ferrin (22) lived at 1300 Virginia Street, Vallejo, and was working as a waitress at Terry's Waffle Shop at the time of her murder, situated on Magazine Street, Vallejo, just off Interstate 80. The Waffle Shop and tavern were in close proximity to one another, on the same street.

I would like to revisit something I've covered previously regarding the Exorcist letter mailed on January 29th 1974 and the "My Name is" letter mailed on April 20th 1970. When the Zodiac Killer designed the Exorcist letter he wrote "signed, yours truley" and then proceeded to paraphrase a verse from Tit-Willow and Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. One would have thought that placing "signed, yours truley" preceding this verse was a prelude to his identity. When we visit the entirety of this act from The Mikado, it becomes apparent that the next line in the verse following what Zodiac quoted is "Now I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name is(n't) Willow, titwillow, titwillow".

​In this instance we have a trinity of coincidences, where the Zodiac Killer tempts us with a signature from the verse, from which we can form the sentence of "my name is", that he previously used in his April 20th 1970 letter as an introduction to a mystery 13 symbol code and his name.

The Exorcist letter broke with tradition when he used "Me" instead of his crosshairs as an identity, before giving us his running victim total. Bearing in mind the aforementioned correlation between the Exorcist letter and "My Name is" letter, I couldn't help thinking his identity of "Me" would be found in the 13 symbol code using an extremely simplistic method. There is little doubt that the Zodiac Killer knew a 13 character code could not be solved using conventional techniques because of its length, so very likely created something superficial. The fact that this letter was mailed with an AM postmark on the same day the Robert Salem murder broke in the morning edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, with the Zodiac pseudonym scrawled on the wall of the victim's apartment - likely meant that this letter was prepared in haste. A code created this quickly has a high probability of being solved - a code with one repetitive feature of three circled 8's. Using the shift technique the Zodiac Killer employed in the 340 cipher, solved by David Oranchak (USA), Sam Blake (Australia) and Jarl Van Eycke (Belgium) in 2020, I used a period 8 shift in the code to select new characters 8 places to the right. 

Using a circular shift pattern, the first circled 8 right-shifted to the letter "M", the second circled 8 right-shifted to the letter "E", and the third circled 8 right-shifted to the Zodiac crosshairs, thereby equating the Zodiac Killer's identity to "ME", just as he had done in the Exorcist letter on January 29th 1974. Both of these correspondences tempted us with a name, both communications can be linked to The Mikado and the "my name is" phrase, and the April 20th 1970 code can easily reproduce the "Me" signature present in the Exorcist letter using the standout numerical feature in the code.

​Another communication, mailed on October 27th 1970, also featured a name synonymous with The Mikado, when the Zodiac Killer wrote *peek-a-boo you are doomed" around the knot-hole of a tree. Peek-a-boo was a character from an 1888 production of The Mikado, entitled The Capitalist. But take a look at the "ME" in the word doomed, in a card that stated "I feel it in my bones, you ache to know my name, and so I'll clue you in." 

Recently you may have read claims from the Zodiac Tapatalk forum that a woman was responsible for hoaxing both the 1986 and 1987 letters mailed to the Vallejo Times-Herald and San Francisco Chronicle. This, of course, has been put forward without any evidence to corroborate such a claim by an individual who relies on the members of his forum just accepting him at his word. Unfortunately, many of the posters on this forum will uncritically accept everything delivered from his keyboard.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, somebody claiming to be the "Chinese Zodiac Killer" mailed several terroristic threats to media outlets, and was eventually identified and sentenced to jail time in 2023. This story featured heavily in the newspapers. On April 24th 1978, somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer mailed a rather benign letter claiming "I am back with you" and "I am waiting for a good movie about me, who will play me". Tales of the City author, Armistead Maupin, would ultimately come forward and suggest that Inspector David Toschi may have been the author of the 1978 letter, based on little more than a perceived correlation of handwriting between the 1978 letter and fan letters David Toschi wrote for the Tales of the City series. Off the back of this, a well respected homicide investigator was questioned by his superiors, demoted and had his name splashed in many newspapers, before being cleared of any wrongdoing.          

Tom Voigt claimed in 2022 that the 1987 letter "was hoaxed by a woman", and when challenged on her identity retorted "I'm not going to throw her under the bus by naming her, she is still a source of mine". He added that she "had police contacts because of who she was". In 2023, Tom Voigt wrote this on his own forum regarding the 1986 letter: "I know who wrote it and so do police. And she wasn't Zodiac". So let's break this down for the individuals who still believe and accept the statements of Tom Voigt, who without evidence, readily dismisses the Riverside Police Department who claim an individual owned up to writing the three Bates letters in 1967, yet readily accepts what he has been told by another police department.

The Zodiac Killer murdered five innocent people, with friends and relatives of the victims desperate for some kind of resolution to this case. This woman, claimed by Tom Voigt to be known to him and the police, mailed terroristic threats on May 6th 1986 owning up to the murder of Koy Ien Saechao (48) and Choy Fow Saelee (40) in Sacramento on April 22nd 1986, and mailed threats to kill children on October 28th 1987. Yet, despite the fact that the "Chinese Zodiac Killer" was plastered all over the media and jailed for his crimes, and Inspector David Toschi was defamed in the newspapers for several months and demoted, this woman has seemingly avoided any newspaper coverage of her serious crimes and avoided any legal ramifications for her terroristic threats of murder and mayhem.

​If you believe what you read on the Tapatalk forum, this woman's identity is being withheld by Tom Voigt and the police in an apparent lack of transparency, despite this woman being a malicious criminal. I wonder what Inspector David Toschi (if still alive) and the families of the five victims would make of this? A woman, who has claimed and threatened murder, and attempted to derail and divert the Zodiac Killer case on at least two occasions, who is facing no consequences for her actions. There is, however, one good reason why this woman was never named in the newspapers and held accountable for her criminal deeds - she didn't exist. This fictitious woman was created in the mind of an individual who cannot refute the arguments put forward for the 1986 and 1987 letters being genuine. It's much easier to shut down the debate on these two letters by introducing fiction to his followers, who he knows will never question his perceived authority.      

What inspired the Zodiac Killer to mail two letters in near tandem to the San Francisco Chronicle and Vallejo Times-Herald on October 28th/29th 1987 after seventeen months of apparent inactivity, since his last communication on May 6th 1986, claiming the double murder of Koy Ien Saechao (48) and Choy Fow Saelee (40) on April 22nd 1986? The letter to the Herald read in part "This the Zodiac speaking. I am crack proof. Tell herb caen that I am still here. I have always been here. Tell the blue pigs if want me I will be out driving around on Halloween in my death machine looking for some kiddies to run over". 

On October 17th 1987, just eleven days before the October 28th 1987 letter, a long and detailed Napa Valley Register newspaper article supplied to me by Zodiac researcher Jibberjabber, announced the retirement of Kenneth Narlow, "the last active investigator of the unsolved Zodiac serial killings". The newspaper read "One of Narlow's most memorable investigations resulted from an attack on two Pacific Union College students at Lake Berryesss in 1969". He stated "Sometimes I look and say to myself, how close did we really come to this guy". It seems that Zodiac may have replied inside of two weeks by stating "I am crackproof" and promised to reignite his terror on Halloween night. The Kenneth Narlow story may have invigorated the Zodiac Killer to fire off two more letters, but what inspired the Zodiac Killer to mention the prospect of running over kids in his car and referring to the The Car movie, released in 1977?

Just over a month before the arrival of this correspondence, on September 12th 1987, Jose Santo Bugarin (26) and Rodolfo Alvaro (31) were traveling on King Road, San Jose, California when their car slammed into four children playing on the front lawn of a residence, killing three and injuring one. The driver then backed over the bodies and left the scene. Both were apprehended a short time later. The Chicago Tribune reported "A hit-and-run driver slammed his car into four children playing on the front lawn of an East San Jose house, backed over the bodies and sped away, police reported. Three of the children died. A witness, Eddie Petersen, 19, said the driver ''was knocking over kids like they were nothing. A neighbor, Frank Azevedo, who lives two houses away from where the children were run over, said Alberto Marquez, father of at least one of the victims, was working in his garage and saw the accident. Azevedo said the father tried to pull the driver from the car, but he suspect backed up and sped away. Jose Santo Bugarin, 26, was arrested shortly afterward Saturday evening when he struck another vehicle a few blocks away. Police said they found several beer bottles in the car and arrested Bugarin and a passenger, Rodolfo Alvaro, 31. Bugarin was arrested on three counts of second-degree murder. Alvaro also was arrested on murder charges". This story was covered extensively in the newspapers.

STILL DRIVING AROUND IN 1987 [PART TWO]