Forty-two days before the mailing of the April 24th 1978 letter which stated "I am back with you. Tell herb caen I am here", somebody made a telephone call on March 13th 1978 to an individual in the Mission District proclaiming "This is the Zodiac. Tell the press I am back in San Francisco". The obvious similarities in the language indicates there could be one individual responsible for both messages. The person who received the telephone call is unlikely to be some random member of the public, but somebody relevant to the Zodiac Killer case who lived in the Mission District in 1978 and had some influence in passing on the message. It could be somebody in the media or somebody connected to law enforcement, so if anybody can offer a suggestion please post it on any relevant Zodiac forum. The incident was obviously taken seriously because it was personally investigated by Inspector David Toschi - and if not reported in the newspapers - made the mention of David Toschi in the 1978 letter even more curious, in accompaniment to the use of "I am back" in both messages, along with "Tell the press" and "Tell herb caen".

This phone call was captured as a recording on a voice answering machine, but I suspect it was routinely dismissed as a hoax as many phone calls had been previously and likely lost to the hands of time, despite no evidence for such a conclusion. Much evidence has fell by the wayside through incompetence and lethargy in the Zodiac case, and this phone call is just another example of a missed opportunity.

On May 5th 1978, just 11 days after the "I am back with you" letter, somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer phoned the San Mateo Police Department and falsely reported that a bomb had been placed in the Transamerica Pyramid at 600 Montgomery Street. This too had a loose connection to the 1978 letter, which mimicked the Melvin Belli letter mailed on December 20th 1969. Both the 1978 and Melvin Belli letter began the introduction with "This is the Zodiac speaking I", which were not only grammatically incorrect in both instances by failing to punctuate between "speaking" and "I", but were the only two communications to date that didn't keep the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction exclusively on one line. Something a copycat would have been expected to do, had he copied at least four Zodiac letters published in the newspapers. An image of the Melvin Belli letter has yet to be discovered in any newspapers up to April 24th 1978, making this grammatical anomaly difficult to explain from the standpoint of a copycat. The 1978 and Melvin Belli letters also inversely mimicked each other by the use of  "I can not remain in control for much longer" in 1969 (one example) and "I am now in control of all things" in 1978. Bearing in mind these comparisons between the two letters - and the Melvin Belli letter was mailed to 1228 Montgomery Street in San Francisco - it is unusual that the telephone threat on May 5th 1978 was directed against the Transamerica Pyramid at 600 Montgomery Street, just 600 meters south of the Belli residence. The law offices of Melvin Belli at 722 Montgomery Street, purchased in 1959, were even closer to the Transamerica Pyramid at a mere 100 meters.

​It should also be noted that the 1978 letter was thought to have been mailed in either San Mateo or Santa Clara County, just like the Exorcist letter on January 29th 1974. On April 28th 1978, the Chronicle reported that "Toschi said yesterday that the common, white envelope had no outstanding marks and that the single piece of plain white stationary on which the note was written contained nothing that would give us any indication where he might have gotten it. It was also learned that although the envelope bore a San Francisco postmark, other notations on the cancelation indicated that the letter might have been mailed in San Mateo county or Santa Clara county and was brought here for processing". The threat towards the Transamerica Pyramid was phoned into the San Mateo Police Department.  

When the Zodiac Killer last claimed he was to plant a bomb on June 26th 1970, he utilized the peak of Mount Diablo on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay in Contra Costa County, which dominated the skyline at 3,849 feet. When the Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972 it was the tallest building in San Francisco, with an elevation of 853 feet. Would it really be a surprise if the Zodiac Killer had chosen the two most prominent landmarks on the San Francisco Bay Area skyline to threaten its residents with bombs? The Transamerica Pyramid would also feature in the 2007 Zodiac film directed by David Fincher, shown in time lapse photography to depict the transition of time between Zodiac events.

However, this wasn't the only similarity between the Melvin Belli letter and 1978 letter. Not once, in any of the widely touted list of authenticated Zodiac Killer communications from July 31st 1969 to January 29th 1974, did the killer ever cross out a spelling mistake (or otherwise) with a straight line (he blacked out errors). The Badlands card (not authenticated) on May 8th 1974 did scruffily cross out the misspelling of consternation, but failed in any capacity to identify its sender, such as the Zodiac introduction or his crosshairs. The Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969 and the April 24th 1978 letter both inserted an unnecessary word (just once) into the correspondence, spelled it correctly one alphabetical letter shy of completion, and then very neatly (almost ruler like) crossed out each word. Not only did the 1978 letter carry the identical introduction and punctuation error as the Melvin Belli letter, as well as being very deliberately and carefully written, but both inserted an unrequired word into the message before crossing it out, despite it being spelled correctly thus far. These are the only two communications up to April 24th 1978 that carried both of these features. The newspaper reports of the Melvin Belli letter never showed an image of the letter, or the straight line deletion of the so-far correctly spelled word, meaning the author of the 1978 letter could never have copied the aforementioned deviant introduction, or this 'correction' technique from the Belli communication, unless he authored both.          

When we look at the similarities between the Melvin Belli letter and 1978 letter described above, we also have to note that the 1978 letter was specifically using language adopted from the Belli letter when stating "I am now in control of all things". Just over eight years earlier, the Belli letter stated  "I will loose control again and take my nineth & possibly tenth victom" and "I will loose all controol of my self & set the bomb up. Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer". Therefore, the introduction similarity of "This is the Zodiac speaking I" between the two letters ​(with grammatical error), and the crossed out wording only existing in these two letters up to April 24th 1978, in all likelihood influenced the author of the 1978 letter when designing this latest correspondence. The introduction, the correction technique, and the use of the word "control" regarding the Zodiac Killer's mindset were unique only to these two letters up to April 24th 1978. Since these anomalies could not have been reasonably created without access to an original image of the Melvin Belli letter, it is reasonable to conclude - because Paul Stine's shirt piece was included with the Belli letter - that the 1978 letter is a genuine Zodiac correspondence without any doubt. 

Exactly one year before the murder of Paul Stine in Presidio Heights, Melvin Belli appeared in an episode of Star Trek on October 11th 1968 entitled "And the Children Shall Lead", playing the character Gorgan. When referencing the Melvin Belli letter in 1978, the Zodiac Killer stated "I am waiting for a good movie about me. Who will play me". 

Excerpt from Wikipedia on And the Children Shall Lead: "The federation starship Enterprise arrives at the planet Triacus. Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and First Officer Spock beam down in time to witness the death of Professor Starnes, the leader of a scientific expedition team. The other members of the expedition, apart from their five seemingly unconcerned children, seem to have died at their own hands. The crew bring the children back to the Enterprise, where McCoy evaluates them and determines that they are suffering from lacunar amnesia, unaware of what happened to their parents and unable to grieve. However, when left unattended in one of the ship's rooms, the children chant an evocation and summon a glowing humanoid named Gorgan. He advises them to take control of the crew in order to get to Marcus XII, his preferred destination. The eldest child, Tommy, uses mental powers Gorgan has bestowed on the children to trick the crew into steering the ship while presenting illusions that make them think they are still in orbit above Triacus. Upon reviewing a troubling expedition film recorded by Starnes, Spock, McCoy, and Kirk return to the bridge to find the children and Gorgan fully in control of the crew. Unable to break their hold on the crew, Spock observes that the children are merely possessed by Gorgan, who must be the evil embodiment of an ancient group of space-warring marauders released by Starnes's archaeological survey".

1978 letter: "I am now in control of all things". ​

The 1998 San Francisco Police Department DNA chart of suspected Zodiac correspondence shows that DNA was obtained from the 1978 letter, but it was deemed not authentic. If we believe that investigators correctly cleared Inspector David Toschi of any wrongdoing in the manufacture of the 1978 letter, then it is hard to argue against this communication being created by the same individual who mailed the 1969 Melvin Belli letter, with added shirt piece from the Paul Stine murder. The Zodiac speaking introduction with grammatical error on the opening line and the correction technique employed in the 1978 letter, which mimicked the Melvin Belli letter from 1969 (allied to the use of "control" in both communications), could only have been reasonably crafted by one person. If it wasn't David Toschi who wrote the 1978 letter, it was the Zodiac Killer. The DNA obtained from the 1978 letter has already ruled out both Arthur Leigh Allen and Lawrence Kane many years ago. The 1978 letter being genuine would also rule out Ross Sullivan, who died in 1977. If David Toschi didn't author the 1978 letter, the search for Zodiac DNA is effectively over - we have had it for 25 years and counting.      

It has regularly been stated that there was an approximate four year hiatus in Zodiac communications from 1974 to the arrival of the "I am back with you" letter on April 24th 1978. If you believe in this 4 year absence of Zodiac communications, then the following information from page 204 of Robert Graysmith's Zodiac paperback book should be of interest. Despite Robert Graysmith often playing loose with the facts of this case, the following information within his book concerns Inspector David Toschi directly.

​It stated that on March 13th 1978 at 2300 hours (just over a month before the "I am back with you" letter) somebody made a sinister phone call to an individual living in the Mission District of San Francisco, whose home voice recorder had stored the message. Apparently David Toschi responded to this incident. When played, the message read "This is the Zodiac. Tell the press I am back in San Francisco". The reportee stated he has no idea why the call came to him. Over four years had elapsed since the January 29th 1974 Exorcist letter, yet here we have a malicious phone call from somebody claiming to be Zodiac with the words "I am back", just over a month before the April 24th 1978 letter mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle stating "I am back with you". Another comparison between the two is "Tell the press I am back" and "Tell herb caen I am here". Both concerning the newspapers. Herb Caen was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column ran in the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly sixty years. 

Would Inspector David Toschi seriously listen to a sinister voice recording with these words, then fashion a hoax letter 42 days later using the same phraseology, while inserting the wording "That city pig toschi is good". While possible, it seems wholly implausible. After four years of perceived inactivity, what is the likelihood that the San Francisco voice recording and letter are two separate individuals perpetrating a hoax with identical wording, within a month and a half of one another? As with the Oklahoma radio station recording of an individual claiming to be Zodiac, I suspect this recording was also summarily dismissed as a hoax and lost to the hands of time. I am not suggesting it was the real Zodiac Killer, but losing or tossing away potential evidence that may later gain significance, should be avoided. This voice recording may have seemed unimportant on March 13th 1978, but less so on April 24th 1978.

​On May 5th 1978, just 11 days after the "I am back with you" letter, somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer phoned the San Mateo Police Department and falsely reported that a bomb had been set in the Transamerica building at 600 Montgomery Street (the same street of Melvin Belli's residence in 1969). Although it is difficult to separate the hoaxers from the real Zodiac Killer, we do have the common phraseology in the voice recording and letter on March 13th and April 24th 1978, that while not compelling, is nonetheless interesting.  

THE THREAT ON THE TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID 

Mike Rodelli is convinced that DNA will not solve the Zodiac case because the authenticated letters were not licked by the sender. Mike Rodelli spoke to Alan Keel in 2007, who was a Criminalist at the San Francisco Police Department from 1996 to 1999. He gave Mike Rodelli the following information: "that there were two letters in possession of the department that, in contrast to the "true" Zodiac letters, had abundant saliva and DNA-containing oral epithelial cells on them, that DNA was easily extracted from these two letters, and that the DNA extracted from these two letters matched between them. These two letters were considered forgeries, since the "true" Zodiac verifiable letters had not been licked by the sender". According to Mike, Alan Keel had "analyzed two letters, one of which is the 1978 'forgery', and finds that this letter and one of the 1974 letters are loaded with saliva and cells. He then easily extracts DNA from both of these letters using the more primitive DNA technology of that time and finds that the DNA matches between those two letters, thus proving that one person sent both".

On October 29th 2021, Mike Rodelli stated on the Zodiac Killer message board "The fact remains that in 2007 Keel told me, as he had told Lafferty before me, that there is a 1974 forgery based on DNA and the ONLY 1974 letter that had been tested for the presence of cells during Keel's tenure (as demonstrated by the DNA chart that I believe Keel made in about 2000) was the Exorcist letter. This is not rocket science.  Even if it is not the Exorcist letter that Keel was talking about, it IS a candidate as being a forgery whose DNA matches the 1978 letter based on the information in the chart".

In his book, The Hunt For Zodiac, he stated "Now there was DNA proof that whoever had penned the April 1978 letter had also penned one of the 1974 letters. And apparently it was not Zodiac. According to the chart of DNA testing results compiled by SFPD's lab in ca. 2000, the only one of the 1974 letters that had been tested by Keel up to that time was the January Exorcist letter. This was the letter that had a swarm of palm prints on it. This created an interesting dilemma that lends credence to the possibility that this is a forged letter. Zodiac had penned a dozen letters prior to writing the Exorcist letter and had never left even a single palm print on them. So why had he suddenly and carelessly taken off his glove(s) to write this one and leave a virtual montage of his palms all over it. From that standpoint alone, it makes sense that someone else may have written the Exorcist letter, its bizarre content notwithstanding. While it is possible that one of the other three letters was tested for DNA subsequent to the compilation of the DNA summary chart that Keel had assembled, I believe that on balance the most likely candidate for being the 1974 forgery is the Exorcist letter until proven otherwise". Mike Rodelli is almost certainly correct that the 1974 Exorcist letter is overwhelmingly the most likely DNA match for the 1978 letter (because it was the only tested in the DNA chart), but here is the almost certain proof that neither the 1974 Exorcist or April 1978 letter were forgeries. 
​
Take a look at the address style, spacing and handwriting of the Exorcist letter envelope (below), and compare it to the two April 1970 communications (in particular the Dragon Card envelope). These two April 1970 envelopes had not been publicly released by 1974. They were the only confirmed Zodiac communications to use the address style of San Fran (dot) Chronicle prior to January 29th 1974. The January 29th 1974 author (if a hoaxer) could never have produced such similarity, or had knowledge of the address style of the April 1970 communications. But the real Zodiac Killer could have. 

​Mike Rodelli is confident that the SLA letter mailed in 1974 was authored by the Zodiac Killer, stating "Envelopes: This is where the rubber truly meets the road in this discussion and where we can see that it is unlikely that anyone but Zodiac wrote the SLA letter. When you look at the hand printing on the SLA letter in a vacuum, it certainly does not jump off the page to me that it was penned by Zodiac. But when you take a close look at the envelope, that is a different story". Mike then gave me a list of envelopes here, to compare with the SLA envelope. If Mike is confident that these comparisons strongly argue for the SLA letter being Zodiac, there is no way he can argue against the Exorcist letter envelope being the same author as the two April 1970 communications (particularly the Dragon Card). If the two April 1970 communications are genuine Zodiac, then so is the Exorcist letter. If the Exorcist letter is genuine, and the argument in favor of the Exorcist letter DNA matching the 1978 letter DNA by Mike Rodelli is correct, then the 1978 letter is genuine too. 

In the link above, Mike Rodelli argued that the writing on the SLA envelope is consistent with the Stine envelope, 340 envelope, Bus Bomb envelope and Kathleen Johns envelope, stating "It's hard to look at these envelopes and not see the similarities. And note that the November 8, 1969 envelope contained a piece of Stine's shirt, thus proving its authorship as being from Zodiac. There it is in black and white. So the evidence seems to show that, regardless of the timing and his reason for being in Los Angeles on February 3, 1974 (assuming that the letter was posted from there on that date), it was, in fact, the Zodiac killer who sent the SLA letter, not the SLA itself, which, once again, would not have benefitted from its contents. Nor is there any reason why they would have benefitted from imitating Zodiac's handwriting on the envelope but not attributing the enclosed later to him".

Again, if Mike Rodelli is claiming these envelope comparisons are good proof the SLA letter is genuine, he now cannot with any good conscience claim that the comparisons between the Exorcist envelope and the two April 1970 envelopes are not equally as good. Especially when the April 28th 1970 envelope had never been released into the public domain for the author of the Exorcist envelope to copy (not only the handwriting, but the format of San Fran (dot) Chronicle). This being the case, Mike Rodelli (based on his statements) must now accept that the Exorcist letter and SLA letter are genuine Zodiac correspondence. Therefore, if Alan Keel is correct and the 1978 letter DNA matches one of the 1974 communications, we are left with the Badlands card or Red Phantom letter for Mike Rodelli to choose from. But this is what happens to the SLA envelope when we add the "tails" from the Red Phantom envelope. Bearing in mind the SLA envelope wasn't available for the author of the Red Phantom envelope to copy, the writing is virtually indistinguishable from one another, along with a single comma and address format. If Mike Rodelli finds "It hard to look at the envelopes he suggested and not see the similarities to the SLA envelope", he cannot fail to see the similarity between the SLA envelope and Red Phantom envelope. If he believes that the SLA letter was authored by the Zodiac Killer, he now must accept (using his arguments) that the Red Phantom letter was authored by the Zodiac Killer as well. Fortunately, in his book he does.    

However, in his book Hunt For the Zodiac, he also makes an extended case for the Badlands letter being the Zodiac Killer, stating "In it (the Badlands letter), the anonymous author is accepted based on hand printing as having once again been Zodiac". So, Mike Rodelli is arguing that the SLA letter, Badlands card and Red Phantom letter are genuine Zodiac, but the Exorcist letter is the one he questions most. But if he accepts the arguments he has given for these communications being authentic Zodiac (including the SLA envelope handwriting), he can only come to the conclusion that the Exorcist letter is genuine too. We can therefore conclude, using Mike Rodelli's own words, that if Alan Keel showed a DNA match between the 1978 letter and one of the 1974 letters (and all the 1974 letters are genuine), then the Zodiac Killer licked the envelopes and stamps on the 1978 letter, Exorcist letter, SLA letter, Badlands card and Red Phantom letter. In other words, he never used tap water. The only way that Mike Rodelli can maintain the claims made at the beginning of this article, is to say the comparisons between the two April 1970 envelopes and the Exorcist envelope are not as valid as the comparisons he has made between the SLA envelope and the four envelopes he listed. In good faith, that argument cannot be made. The reality is, that the Exorcist letter is genuine Zodiac correspondence, and contrary to the arguments Mike Rodelli has made. 

WHY THE 1978 LETTER IS GENUINE ZODIAC CORRESPONDENCE  

There are a number of individuals in the Zodiac community who have long vouched for suspects, confident to degrees of near certainty they have found the elusive Bay Area murderer, while simultaneously claiming that the Zodiac Killer was an extremely clever individual, deliberately misspelling his words to misdirect us into believing he had a lower intellectual capacity. Therefore, these individuals should think twice about using the Zodiac communications with unabashed confidence to proclaim their suspect had theatrical leanings, was proficient in mathematics, had a penchant for comics and the movies, or had artistic leanings. A killer who can misdirect by way of spelling mistakes, can easily misdirect by composing three musical numbers from The Mikado, or reference a comic book. The Zodiac Killer could very easily have painted a picture of himself completely antithetical to the person he actually was. So, when somebody arrives at a suspect based on the Zodiac communications, they may want to re-evaluate and consider a suspect completely opposite to the one they have chosen. It is extremely difficult to support the idea of misdirection, only when it suits the conclusions you have already concluded. In other words, a Zodiac Killer who only misdirects when you say so. But did the Zodiac Killer deliberately misspell in his communications? The evidence doesn't support this claim.  

In an article in the San Francisco Examiner on January 30th 1978 entitled Zodiac:4 Years Later,  Sherwood Morrill, a respected documents examiner stated "He is an intelligent guy and we know he deliberately misspells some words because he sometimes spells them correctly". If the Zodiac Killer was intelligent and deliberately misspelling words to misdirect investigators into believing he was less intelligent, why would he spell the word "buttons" in the Dragon card on April 28th 1970 incorrectly, and then nine words later spell it correctly. If the Zodiac Killer was deliberately manufacturing his spelling mistakes, did his attention span falter after only nine words. An intentional and wilful deception would be categorically undermined by such a correction. Twenty-four words later, he would again spell the word incorrectly. This doesn't appear to be an individual achieving a grand deception by constantly fluctuating between good grammar and bad.

Three months later, on April 24th 1978, the Zodiac Killer claimed he was now in "control of all things", unlike the Melvin Belli letter when he was afraid he would "loose all controol" and "loose control". Despite the claimed four year hiatus between the January 29th 1974 Exorcist letter and the April 24th 1978 letter, the Zodiac Killer seemingly didn't forget to mail both communications from San Mateo County or Santa Clara County according to the impression given by investigators. Yet he couldn't remember how to incorrectly spell the word "buttons" twice, within a time span of approximately thirty seconds, eight years earlier    

Mike Rodelli is convinced that DNA will not solve the Zodiac case because the authenticated letters were not licked by the sender. Mike Rodelli spoke to Alan Keel in 2007, who was a Criminalist at the San Francisco Police Department from 1996 to 1999. He gave Mike Rodelli the following information: "that there were two letters in possession of the department that, in contrast to the "true" Zodiac letters, had abundant saliva and DNA-containing oral epithelial cells on them, that DNA was easily extracted from these two letters, and that the DNA extracted from these two letters matched between them. These two letters were considered forgeries, since the "true" Zodiac verifiable letters had not been licked by the sender". According to Mike, Alan Keel had "analyzed two letters, one of which is the 1978 'forgery', and finds that this letter and one of the 1974 letters are loaded with saliva and cells. He then easily extracts DNA from both of these letters using the more primitive DNA technology of that time and finds that the DNA matches between those two letters, thus proving that one person sent both".

On October 29th 2021, Mike Rodelli stated on the Zodiac Killer message board "The fact remains that in 2007 Keel told me, as he had told Lafferty before me, that there is a 1974 forgery based on DNA and the ONLY 1974 letter that had been tested for the presence of cells during Keel's tenure (as demonstrated by the DNA chart that I believe Keel made in about 2000) was the Exorcist letter. This is not rocket science.  Even if it is not the Exorcist letter that Keel was talking about, it IS a candidate as being a forgery whose DNA matches the 1978 letter based on the information in the chart".

In his book, The Hunt For Zodiac, he stated "Now there was DNA proof that whoever had penned the April 1978 letter had also penned one of the 1974 letters. And apparently it was not Zodiac. According to the chart of DNA testing results compiled by SFPD's lab in ca. 2000, the only one of the 1974 letters that had been tested by Keel up to that time was the January Exorcist letter. This was the letter that had a swarm of palm prints on it. This created an interesting dilemma that lends credence to the possibility that this is a forged letter. Zodiac had penned a dozen letters prior to writing the Exorcist letter and had never left even a single palm print on them. So why had he suddenly and carelessly taken off his glove(s) to write this one and leave a virtual montage of his palms all over it. From that standpoint alone, it makes sense that someone else may have written the Exorcist letter, its bizarre content notwithstanding. While it is possible that one of the other three letters was tested for DNA subsequent to the compilation of the DNA summary chart that Keel had assembled, I believe that on balance the most likely candidate for being the 1974 forgery is the Exorcist letter until proven otherwise". Mike Rodelli is almost certainly correct that the 1974 Exorcist letter is overwhelmingly the most likely DNA match for the 1978 letter (because it was the only tested in the DNA chart), but here is the almost certain proof that neither the 1974 Exorcist or April 1978 letter were forgeries. 

Take a look at the address style, spacing and handwriting of the Exorcist letter envelope (below), and compare it to the two April 1970 communications (in particular the Dragon Card envelope). These two April 1970 envelopes had not been publicly released by 1974. They were the only confirmed Zodiac communications to use the address style of San Fran (dot) Chronicle prior to January 29th 1974. The January 29th 1974 author (if a hoaxer) could never have produced such similarity, or had knowledge of the address style of the April 1970 communications. But the real Zodiac Killer could have. 

Mike Rodelli is confident that the SLA letter mailed in 1974 was authored by the Zodiac Killer, stating "Envelopes: This is where the rubber truly meets the road in this discussion and where we can see that it is unlikely that anyone but Zodiac wrote the SLA letter. When you look at the hand printing on the SLA letter in a vacuum, it certainly does not jump off the page to me that it was penned by Zodiac. But when you take a close look at the envelope, that is a different story". Mike then gave me a list of envelopes here, to compare with the SLA envelope. If Mike is confident that these comparisons strongly argue for the SLA letter being Zodiac, there is no way he can argue against the Exorcist letter envelope being the same author as the two April 1970 communications (particularly the Dragon Card). If the two April 1970 communications are genuine Zodiac, then so is the Exorcist letter. If the Exorcist letter is genuine, and the argument in favor of the Exorcist letter DNA matching the 1978 letter DNA by Mike Rodelli is correct, then the 1978 letter is genuine too.   

On January 29th 1974, a letter was mailed from either San Mateo or Santa Clara County to the San Francisco Chronicle by the Zodiac Killer for the first time. The letter (minus the Asian symbols) was published in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper on January 31st 1974, but the envelope was not released into the public domain prior to the arrival of the April 24th 1978 letter. Up to 1978, every single Zodiac communication that carried the *Please Rush to Editor" message on the reverse side of the envelope was either written in diagonal fashion or not contained on one line - except for one - which was written using a single line and was parallel to the upper and lower edges of the envelope. That was the Paul Stine envelope (containing the shirt piece) mailed on October 13th 1969, which was also withheld from the public domain prior to April 24th 1978.

​The only available envelope addressed to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper that the 1978 letter author had available for them to mimic, was the November 8th 1969 envelope released in a newspaper article on November 16th 1970. This newspaper article clearly shows the front and back of the envelope, with "Please Rush to Editor" written in level fashion on the front of the envelope and in diagonal fashion on the rear of the envelope. The author of the 1978 envelope seemingly did an excellent job mimicking the handwriting on the front side of the November 8th 1969 envelope, yet inexplicably failed to write "Please Rush to Editor" in level fashion on the front of their 1978 envelope. Additionally, the author of the 1978 envelope failed to write "Please Rush to Editor" in diagonal fashion on the rear of the envelope, again failing to mimic the November 8th 1969 envelope - instead opting to mimic the Paul Stine letter which was never released into the public domain. In fact, the 1978 envelope was the only communication connected to the Zodiac Killer with the writing "Please Rush to Editor" in diagonal fashion on the front of an envelope. This copycat certainly wasn't very observant - apparently losing his train of thought from one side of the envelope to the other. Also, according to investigators, the author of the 1978 letter managed to mail the communication from either San Mateo or Santa Clara County, just like the Exorcist letter, four years earlier. Strange how he apparently never forgot that.

According to Zodiac researcher Mike Rodelli, criminalist Alan Keel stated that DNA matched between the 1978 letter and one of the 1974 letters (almost certainly the Exorcist letter). It has been shown recently that the Exorcist letter is without doubt authentic Zodiac correspondence, so if Alan Keel is correct, then the 1978 letter is genuine too. We don't actually need the DNA match that has been accredited to Alan Keel, because comparisons between the Melvin Belli letter and 1978 letter, along with the indented writing analysis, is good enough reason to validate the 1978 letter.

​The one thing we know about the Zodiac Killer was his eagerness to follow the newspaper coverage about his crimes and communications, often responding directly in subsequent letters to the San Francisco Chronicle. Being a narcissist, there is every chance the Zodiac Killer kept news cuttings of his escapades, just like many narcissistic trends on social media today. This may explain why he was able to respond to law enforcement quotes in the newspapers after eight years had passed (unless the following is a coincidence). One such example was the 1986 'Freeway' letter mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle on May 6th 1986. This letter began, "This is the Zodiac speaking. I am still out here and crack proof". This is what Inspector David Toschi stated in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 26th 1978 after the arrival of the latest Zodiac letter. Was the introduction in the 1986 letter a response to Inspector David Toschi after an eight year hiatus?            

This is what Inspector David Toschi said to the San Francisco Chronicle on August 26th 1976, the same day a Zodiac "Deep Real Estate" advertisement was placed in the personal column of the newspaper.  

In fact, the 1978 letter may have been a response to the above article, when the Zodiac wrote "Tell herb caen I am here".

This excerpt (left) was taken from the San Francisco Chronicle on January 31st 1974 after the arrival of the Exorcist letter two days earlier. It tells you that law enforcement believed the letter was mailed in either San Mateo county or Santa Clara county. Roll forward just over four years later with the arrival of the 1978 letter, that many believed to be an idle and lazy hoaxer who just mimicked the handwriting from previous Zodiac communications.

The letter and envelope of the 1978 letter was examined by law enforcement. Here is what was written in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 28th 1978: "Toschi said yesterday that the common, white envelope had no outstanding marks and that the single piece of plain white stationary on which the note was written contained nothing that would give us any indication where he might have gotten it. It was also learned that although the envelope bore a San Francisco postmark, other notations on the cancelation indicated that the letter might have been mailed in San Mateo county or Santa Clara county and was brought here for processing". Law enforcement, at the time, considered this the first contact from the Zodiac Killer since he last wrote the Exorcist letter in January, 1974. If this analysis by law enforcement is correct, then the individual who mailed the 1978 letter, mailed it from the same location as the Exorcist letter, separated by just over four years. They say old habits die hard.      

To indent writing is to begin text with a blank space between it and the margin

Take a look at the the four consecutive known letters from April 24th 1978, May 2nd 1978, May 6th 1986 and October 28th 1987, shown below. Now imagine these are from different authors hoaxing Zodiac letters. All four managed to use "indented writing" on the opening introduction of "This is the Zodiac speaking", which was never used prior to 1978 in any of the four published introductions in the San Francisco Chronicle (or in any Zodiac communications). This means that despite having the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction available for them to mimic, all four (or multiple) authors failed to keep the introduction in line with the text beneath it (signifying a consistent change in pattern). Subsequent to the introduction, all four authors also began with the personal pronouns of "I" and "You".  In three of these the text begins with "I". All of these three examples fail to use correct punctuation between "speaking" and "I". Ideally, these two words should be separated with a comma or full stop (period), but in every instance the author fails to do so, just like the authenticated Melvin Belli letter from December 20th 1969, an image of which was not available to the author of the 1978 letter (if they were a hoaxer). This should prove beyond any reasonable doubt we are dealing with one author who penned the December 20th 1969, April 24th 1978, May 6th 1986 and October 28th 1987 letters. It should also prove it was the Zodiac Killer who wrote at least four of the letters, one of which we know has generated a DNA profile. If the 1978 envelope has DNA beneath the stamp and/or envelope seal, why not the others? The 1978, 1986 and 1987 letters are almost certainly genuine Zodiac communications, so why were law enforcement attempting to secure Zodiac DNA from two of the July 31st 1969 envelopes nearly four years ago, when they already have it?

From August 4th 1969 to March 13th 1971 the Zodiac Killer mailed 12 authenticated letters (inc. Fairfield letters} that carried the introduction of "This is the Zodiac speaking" on the first line of the message. Of these 12 letters, only the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969 failed to keep the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction exclusively on the main first line (ignoring the "Dear" intro). It was written "This is the Zodiac speaking I". The San Francisco Chronicle published at least four of these introductions, which included the October 13th 1969, November 8th 1969, April 20th 1970 and March 13th 1971 letters (shown here).

The author of the April 24th 1978 "I am back with you" letter (if a hoaxer) had every opportunity to just mimic any one of these published introductions, yet he chose to mimic the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969, which broke with tradition. The Melvin Belli message began with "This is the Zodiac speaking I", but was grammatically incorrect in failing to place a comma or full-stop between "speaking" and "I". Therefore, the author of the 1978 letter (if a hoaxer) managed to imitate the message on the opening line of the Melvin Belli letter (including the punctuation error) despite the fact an image of the Melvin Belli letter was not published in any newspapers. Sadly, this is another avenue that will be ignored.     
​​Relevant articles: We Already Have Zodiac DNA, Still Driving Around in 1987 [PT2].

Thanks to Druzer for his great work on this topic of indented writing.    

This excerpt (left) was taken from the San Francisco Chronicle on January 31st 1974 after the arrival of the Exorcist letter two days earlier. It tells you that law enforcement believed the letter was mailed in either San Mateo county or Santa Clara county. Roll forward just over four years later with the arrival of the 1978 letter, that many believed to be an idle and lazy hoaxer who just mimicked the handwriting from previous Zodiac communications.

The letter and envelope of the 1978 letter was examined by law enforcement. Here is what was written in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 28th 1978: "Toschi said yesterday that the common, while envelope had no outstanding marks and that the single piece of plain white stationary on which the note was written contained nothing that would give us any indication where he might have gotten it. It was also learned that although the envelope bore a San Francisco postmark, other notations on the cancelation indicated that the letter might have been mailed in San Mateo county or Santa Clara county and was brought here for processing". Law enforcement, at the time, considered this the first contact from the Zodiac Killer since he last wrote the Exorcist letter in January, 1974. If this analysis by law enforcement is correct, then the individual who mailed the 1978 letter, mailed it from the same location as the Exorcist letter, separated by just over four years. They say old habits die hard. Proving the authenticity of the Exorcist letter.

In the San Francisco Examiner on August 3rd 1978, four experts, Keith Woodward (head of Los Angeles documents department), John Shimoda (Postal Service crime laboratory), Robert Prouty (Chief documents section/Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation) and Terry Pasco (also Criminal Identification and Investigation), all deemed the 1978 letter a fake. Keith Woodward described the 1978 letter "a carefully drawn copy of the true Zodiac printing". He concluded it "was a poor attempt by an unknown writer". John Shimoda declared it "an attempt to duplicate Zodiac letters and is not authentic". Robert Prouty and Terry Pasco said basically the same thing, while Robert Graysmith disingenuously turned on this letter when he realized the DNA extracted from it didn't match the profile of Arthur Leigh Allen, claiming a light table may have been employed to hoax the letter. He then boldly trumpeted the above arguments of handwriting analysis - a subjective analysis - that has forever divided document examiners in the case of JonBenet Ramsey and the three-page ransom note supposedly authored by a "foreign faction".

Handwriting analysis cannot be used to exclusively and definitively argue for the authenticity, or otherwise, of a Zodiac communication. However, it can be used as a supporting argument where other evidence exists. This still hasn't stopped vociferous sections of the Zodiac community buying into the notion of an authenticated list of Zodiac communications based solely upon the narrative they have been sold from day one. 

Let us look at the words of John Shimoda, who stated that the 1978 letter was "an attempt to duplicate Zodiac letters and is not authentic". The author of the 1978 letter was that good at duplicating Zodiac letters, they failed to duplicate the opening introduction of "This is the Zodiac speaking", which was always self-contained on a separate line in every confirmed Zodiac communication mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Times prior to 1978. The hoaxer had four examples of this to copy from the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, when it released images of the ​October 13th 1969, November 8th 1969, April 20th 1970 and March 13th 1971 letters to the public (see images below). The hoaxer failed to copy any of these. Instead, they wrote "This is the Zodiac speaking I" (mimicking the unreleased image of the Melvin Belli letter and its punctuation error). The author of the 1978 letter had the January 29th 1974 Exorcist letter available to them - widely published in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 31st 1974 - yet they failed to misspell "truly" to "truley", clearly evident in the Exorcist letter. The author of the 1978 letter failed to add a customary running total, which would have been the easy option to choose for somebody wanting to convince us they were Zodiac. Instead they placed the word "guess". The author of the 1978 letter failed to keep the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction in line with the text beneath it (thanks Druzer). In the 1978 letter they used "indented writing" (to indent is to begin text with a blank space between it and the margin). This absence of indented writing during the introduction phase was present in every published letter up to 1978 (see below). So, you can see that the claim of the 1978 letter author attempting to "duplicate Zodiac letters" from the newspapers, carries no merit whatsoever. This individual wasn't attempting to copy anybody. 

If there is one letter that "suspect chasers" have a vested interest in dismissing out of hand, it's the 1978 letter (because a DNA sample has been obtained from it). If their suspect's DNA is available for comparison to a genuine Zodiac letter tomorrow, then it would only be a matter of days or weeks before their suspect is possibly confined to the compost heap of history, along with many other poor suspects in this case. They cannot take that chance, so play the odds and reject the letter beforehand. It is in the interest of "suspect chasers" to never accept the bloody taxicab fingerprint as originating from Zodiac (if their suspect's fingerprints exist on file), to never accept that Zodiac licked the stamps and envelopes, to never accept the 1978 letter as genuine, and for a minority, that DNA is never found in the Zodiac case. The longer they can promote their suspect, the better.

The Zodiac community have been eager to constantly enquire about the round of DNA testing reported in 2018, but show little interest in submitting the 1978 letter for familial DNA analysis. The reason for this apathy, is that many have looked at the 1978 communication and concluded it wasn't authored by the Zodiac Killer, primarily because they didn't like the handwriting or the tone of the letter. You cannot argue with research like this. For those who believe the 1978 letter is genuine, the search for Zodiac DNA is over. 

According to Alan Keel, Criminalist at the San Francisco Police Department, San Francisco, California from 1996 to 1999, he "revealed that there were two letters in possession of the department that, in contrast to the "true" Zodiac letters, had abundant saliva and DNA-containing oral epithelial cells on them, that DNA was easily extracted from these two letters, and that the DNA extracted from these two letters matched between them. These two letters were considered forgeries, since the "true" Zodiac verifiable letters had not been licked by the sender". According to Zodiac researcher, Mike Rodelli, Alan Keel had "analyzed two letters, one of which is the 1978 'forgery', and finds that this letter and one of the 1974 letters are loaded with saliva and cells. He then easily extracts DNA from both of these letters using the more primitive DNA technology of that time and finds that the DNA matches between those two letters, thus proving that one person sent both". 

In Mike Rodelli's latest book In the Shadow of Mount Diablo he makes it obvious that he believes the SLA and Red Phantom letters are communications mailed by the Zodiac Killer. He is also fairly confident that the true Zodiac letters were not licked by the sender. This being the case, then he must accept that the SLA and Red Phantom letters should have no oral epithelial cells on them. The Badlands postcard was pre-stamped, so provided no opportunity for reliable DNA testing. Therefore, the only possible match between the DNA from the 1978 letter and one of the 1974 letters, using Mike Rodelli's thought process, had to be between the 1978 letter and the Exorcist letter. If Alan Keel's claimed statement is correct, then I agree. The problem however, is that the Exorcist letter is almost certainly genuine Zodiac material because of the comparison between its envelope and the unpublished envelopes from April 1970 (which hadn't been published by January 29th 1974). So, if the Exorcist letter is genuine, so is the 1978 letter.        

If the SLA and Red Phantom letters had been tested and had hypothetically produced a full DNA sample, then Mike would probably agree that the DNA on both letters should have matched (and therefore was secreted from Zodiac). In fact, they couldn't have been tested to produce a full DNA sample, because if they had been authored by the same individual, the 1978 letter would have matched at least two 1974 letters, not one (as apparently claimed by Alan Keel). This is apparent in the DNA chart, that doesn't attribute anything to the Red Phantom letter in comments, and doesn't even include the SLA letter at all. If correct, then the statements of Alan Keel implies that both the 1978 and Exorcist letters have a full DNA profile, which can then be stored and entered into CODIS when required, or used in the science of genetic genealogy. Unless this DNA "print out" has been mislaid or thrown away (which would seem inconceivable), then the profile of these communications can be used, much like Joseph James DeAngelo Jr, to search for any genealogical links that may be relevant to a killer operating in the Bay Area of Northern California.  

FOLLOW UP ARTICLES:
THE GENETIC IDENTITY OF THE KILLER      WE MAY ALREADY HAVE ZODIAC DNA

Based on Mike Rodelli's book and everything he has stated over the last few years, we should today have the ability to either incriminate or exclude Kjell Qvale as the Zodiac Killer.once and for all. According to Alan Keel, Criminalist at the San Francisco Police Department, San Francisco, California from 1996 to 1999, he "revealed that there were two letters in possession of the department that, in contrast to the "true" Zodiac letters, had abundant saliva and DNA-containing oral epithelial cells on them, that DNA was easily extracted from these two letters, and that the DNA extracted from these two letters matched between them. These two letters were considered forgeries, since the "true" Zodiac verifiable letters had not been licked by the sender". According to Mike, Alan Keel had "analyzed two letters, one of which is the 1978 'forgery', and finds that this letter and one of the 1974 letters are loaded with saliva and cells. He then easily extracts DNA from both of these letters using the more primitive DNA technology of that time and finds that the DNA matches between those two letters, thus proving that one person sent both". The only problem with the statements by Alan Keel is that the 1978 letter is unlikely to be a forgery. 

On October 29th 2021, Mike Rodelli stated on the Zodiac Killer message board "The fact remains that in 2007 Keel told me, as he had told Lafferty before me, that there is a 1974 forgery based on DNA and the ONLY 1974 letter that had been tested for the presence of cells during Keel's tenure (as demonstrated by the DNA chart that I believe Keel made in about 2000) was the Exorcist letter. This is not rocket science.  Even if it is not the Exorcist letter that Keel was talking about, it IS a candidate as being a forgery whose DNA matches the 1978 letter based on the information in the chart". Mike Rodelli is correct. The only communication from 1974 that can conceivably match the DNA from the 1978 letter is the Exorcist letter. Mike also stated on the Zodiac Killer Net forum "This is where the rubber truly meets the road in this discussion and where we can see that it is unlikely that anyone but Zodiac wrote the SLA letter. When you look at the hand printing on the SLA letter in a vacuum, it certainly does not jump off the page to me that it was penned by Zodiac. But when you take a close look at the envelope, that is a different story". Mike then shows comparisons between the SLA envelope and the Stine envelope, 340 envelope, Bus Bomb envelope and Kathleen Johns envelope, arguing "It's hard to look at these envelopes and not see the similarities. And note that the November 8, 1969 envelope contained a piece of Stine's shirt, thus proving its authorship as being from Zodiac".       

Therefore, if Mike Rodelli is being fair-minded and believes the SLA handwriting is consistent with these other communications, then he should have no argument conceding that the handwriting and construction of the Exorcist envelope handwriting is consistent with the envelopes from April 20th 1970 and April 28th 1970, which he believes are Zodiac communications. Mike should therefore come to the same conclusion, that since the two April 1970 envelopes were the Zodiac Killer, then so is the Exorcist letter. The April 1970 communications were the only two confirmed Zodiac envelopes to carry the address of San Fran (dot) Chronicle prior to January 29th 1974. The envelopes were also never released into the public domain, meaning the Exorcist letter author could not have mimicked them.       

Mike should now agree that having established the Exorcist letter as genuine Zodiac material - and using the findings of Alan Keel and Mike's correct argument that the 1978 DNA should conceivably match the Exorcist letter DNA (being the only ones tested in the DNA chart) - we have to conclude that the 1978 letter is genuine as well. Mike went on to say on the Zodiac Killer message board "Keel further allowed, although not in this email but in a conversation I had with him at about the same time, that there was so little saliva on the Zodiac letters that it would not be unfair to say that they had been sealed with tap water and the stamps applied with tap water. So if you're wondering why after 20 years we still don't have a verified sample of Zodiac's DNA it's because the only DNA he may have left on these letters is from when he applied the stamps to the envelopes. If he wet the stamps with water but didn't wear gloves then as he applied the stamps to the envelopes the glue could have pulled a few odd cells off of the tips of his fingers thus leaving essentially touch DNA on the stamps. That is why if they do have Zodiac's DNA today it is because of this minute number of cells that they have had to find using the most Advanced Techniques available".

The argument being that the "true Zodiac letters" had few cells, whereas the fraudulent Zodiac letters had "had abundant saliva and DNA-containing oral epithelial cells". However, we have now established that the Exorcist letter is genuine, just like the two April 1970 communications. Yet these two envelopes have few cells found in the DNA chart, whereas the Exorcist letter has abundant cells, despite one author throughout. This disproves the contention of Alan Keel that the 1978 letter is a forgery, that matches one of the 1974 communications. All it proves is that the Zodiac Killer authored the 1978 letter and one of the 1974 communications. These findings also disprove the notion that the Zodiac Killer didn't lick his envelopes and/or stamps. The only way to argue the findings presented above, is to claim that there is unfounded similarity between the Exorcist envelope handwriting and the two April 1970 envelopes, while simultaneously claiming there is a similarity between the SLA envelope and the Stine envelope, 340 envelope, Bus Bomb envelope and Kathleen Johns envelope, But this would be an argument in bad faith.

The DNA chart stating that a "DNA sample was obtained" from the 1978 letter appears to back up Mike Rodelli's statement of this letter producing enough DNA to create a profile, based on the findings of Alan Keel. This being the case, if the profile of the 1978 letter matches the profile of the Exorcist letter, then we have a full DNA profile of the Zodiac Killer. Forensic genetic genealogy can now be used to discover the ancestry of the killer and ultimately identify him, in similar fashion to that used in the case of the Golden State Killer, resulting in Joseph James DeAngelo,Jr. pleading guilty to thirteen counts of murder on June 29th 2020 

FOLLOW UP ARTICLE: WE MAY ALREADY HAVE ZODIAC DNA   

On April 24th 1978, a letter arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle declaring "I am back with you", authenticated by documents examiner, Sherwood Morrill. Then came the arrival of San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Armistead Maupin, who joined the San Francisco Associated Press in 1971, and went on to launch nine novels that included the popular Tales of the City series. He caused a stink when he revealed that Inspector David Toschi had forged fan mail in regards to his character in the Tales of the City series, which resulted in Inspector David Toschi being demoted to pawn shop detail despite no solid evidence he crafted the 1978 letter.

​Then came further handwriting experts claiming that the 1978 letter looked traced and too similar to previous correspondence. In the San Francisco Examiner on August 3rd 1978, four experts, Keith Woodward (head of Los Angeles documents department), John Shimoda (Postal Service crime laboratory), Robert Prouty (Chief documents section/Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation) and Terry Pasco (also Criminal Identification and Investigation), all deemed the 1978 letter a fake. Keith Woodward described the 1978 letter "a carefully drawn copy of the true Zodiac printing". He concluded it "was a poor attempt by an unknown writer". John Shimoda declared it "an attempt to duplicate Zodiac letters and is not authentic". Robert Prouty and Terry Pasco said basically the same thing. 

The experts concluded that the 1978 was effectively a "copy", attempting to duplicate authentic Zodiac letters. So how did the author of the 1978 letter duplicate the Melvin Belli letter introduction, when an image of this communication had never been published in the newspapers. If the author of the 1978 letter was attempting to imitate previous Zodiac communications so precisely, then why didn't he duplicate the introduction of "This is the Zodiac speaking" from at least four letters published in the newspapers?. He couldn't have been imitating the Zodiac Killer very well. Here is an excerpt from a previous article. ​

​From August 4th 1969 to March 13th 1971 the Zodiac Killer mailed 12 authenticated letters (inc. Fairfield letters} that carried the introduction of "This is the Zodiac speaking" on the first line of the message. Of these 12 letters, only the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969 failed to keep the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction exclusively on the main first line (ignoring the "Dear" intro). It was written "This is the Zodiac speaking I". The San Francisco Chronicle published at least four of these introductions, which included the October 13th 1969, November 8th 1969, April 20th 1970 and March 13th 1971 letters (shown here).

The author of the April 24th 1978 "I am back with you" letter (if a hoaxer) had every opportunity to just mimic any one of these published introductions, yet he chose to mimic the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969, which broke with tradition. The Melvin Belli message began with "This is the Zodiac speaking I", but was grammatically incorrect in failing to place a comma or full-stop between "speaking" and "I". Therefore, the author of the 1978 letter (if a hoaxer) managed to imitate the message on the opening line of the Melvin Belli letter (including the punctuation error) despite the fact an image of the Melvin Belli letter was not published in any newspapers (to my knowledge). One would have expected a Zodiac copycat to mimic any one of the four introductions available in the San Francisco Chronicle  - but they didn't. The 1978 author mimicked the only one not publicly available in the Chronicle. Both letters also began with the author addressing the receiver by way of "Dear Melvin" and "Dear Editor". From August 4th 1969 to March 13th 1971, this "addressing of the receiver" within the letter was only performed twice (8/4/69 and 12/20/69). These observations may suggest the Zodiac Killer authored the 1978 letter after all. When you consider the same introduction present in the Melvin Belli and 1978 letter, was it just coincidence that the Melvin Belli letter stated "I can not remain in control for much longer", to which the 1978 letter replied with "I am now in control of all things"? 

According to Mike Rodelli, Alan Keel, Criminalist at the San Francisco Police Department "revealed that there were two letters in possession of the department that had abundant saliva and DNA-containing oral epithelial cells on them, and that the DNA extracted from these two letters matched between them". The San Francisco Police Department DNA chart concurred that a DNA sample was obtained from the 1978 letter. Zodiac researcher, Michael Butterfield, curator of the Zodiac Killer Facts website, wrote in an article entitled The Magic Bullet, that In the late 1990s San Francisco police obtained DNA from a suspected Zodiac letter, and the DNA did not match Allen’s DNA. That communication was the 1978 letter, described in comments in the DNA chart as "DNA Sample Obtained". The evidence above, strongly points to the 1978 letter being a genuine Zodiac letter, unless of course, the hoaxer just happened to ignore the widely publicized letters in the newspapers carrying the usual introduction, and instead opted to mimic the introduction and error in punctuation in the Melvin Belli letter, which they could never have seen an image of.  

In late 2017 there was optimism regarding a new round of testing of the Zodiac letters. In early 2018, the Sacramento Bee reported that "Vallejo police Detective Terry Poyser, who has worked the Zodiac case for four years, said his agency has submitted two envelopes (in late 2017) that contained letters from the Zodiac Killer for a type of advanced DNA analysis that previously had not been available in the case. Poyser declined to identify the lab, but said it would attempt to obtain a full DNA profile from saliva on the envelope flap and stamps. He said he expected to have results back from the lab as soon as in the next few weeks, and almost certainly by summer". But according to the above sources and the "DNA Sample Obtained" comment by the San Francisco Police Department laboratory, we already have a DNA sample from the 1978 letter. Therefore, with little doubt, we have DNA from the Zodiac Killer - and have done for many years. This DNA from the 1978 letter should now be run through the genealogy database to generate fresh information in this long-standing case. If Alan Keel is correct, then we definitively have a full DNA profile of the Zodiac Killer from the 1978 letter, that he claimed matched one of the 1974 letters (which could very well be the Exorcist letter, as this was the only 1974 letter processed for DNA according to the chart). This sounds plausible, because recent information has shown that the Exorcist letter is without doubt genuine Zodiac correspondence based on comparisons between envelopes. All of this should exonerate David Toschi of having any involvement in forging Zodiac letters, and exclude Arthur Leigh Allen once and for all. But if the Exorcist letter and 1978 letter matched in DNA - and the 1978 letter was considered a forgery by investigators - why hasn't the Exorcist letter been more heavily questioned as authentic? Irrespective of any matches noted by Alan Keel, if the 1978 letter provided a DNA sample, then we may be able to identify the Zodiac Killer if the arguments made using the Melvin Belli letter stack up.

ADDITIONAL READING: A PATTERN OF WRITING  

From August 4th 1969 to March 13th 1971 the Zodiac Killer mailed 12 authenticated letters (inc. Fairfield letters} that carried the introduction of "This is the Zodiac speaking" on the first line of the message. Of these 12 letters, only the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969 failed to keep the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction exclusively on the main first line (ignoring the "Dear" intro). It was written "This is the Zodiac speaking I". The San Francisco Chronicle published at least four of these introductions, which included the October 13th 1969, November 8th 1969, April 20th 1970 and March 13th 1971 letters (shown below). The author of the April 24th 1978 "I am back with you" letter (if a hoaxer) had every opportunity to just mimic any one of these published introductions, yet he chose to mimic the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969, which broke with tradition. The Melvin Belli message began with "This is the Zodiac speaking I", but was grammatically incorrect in failing to place a comma or full-stop between "speaking" and "I". Therefore, the author of the 1978 letter (if a hoaxer) managed to imitate the message on the opening line of the Melvin Belli letter (including the punctuation error) despite the fact an image of the Melvin Belli letter was not published in any newspapers (to my knowledge). One would have expected a Zodiac copycat to mimic any one of the four introductions available in the San Francisco Chronicle (images below) - but they didn't. The 1978 author mimicked the only one not publicly available in the Chronicle. Both letters also began with the author addressing the receiver by way of "Dear Melvin" and "Dear Editor". From August 4th 1969 to March 13th 1971, this "addressing of the receiver" within the letter was only performed twice (8/4/69 and 12/20/69). These observations may suggest the Zodiac Killer authored the 1978 letter after all. Up to and including 1978, the Melvin Belli and "I am back with you" letters were the only two letters that opened with the message "This is the Zodiac speaking I". Therefore, was it just coincidence that the Melvin Belli letter stated "I can not remain in control for much longer", to which the 1978 letter replied with "I am now in control of all things"?

This, along with the observations shown in a previous article, should help to authenticate a letter long believed to be a hoax by many in the Zodiac community. This could very well rule out David Toschi as the author of the 1978 letter and finally clear his name altogether. The San Francisco Police Department DNA report states that a "DNA sample was obtained" from the 1978 letter. Therefore, if the 1978 letter is genuine, we already have the Zodiac Killer's DNA. If anybody has information showing that the Melvin Belli letter was published in the newspapers prior to April 24th 1978, please let me know and this article will be amended or deleted.   

I would like to thank Zodiac researcher Druzer, whose initial insights into the structure of the Zodiac letters have made all this possible. Including the article "A Pattern of Writing".  

Druzer, an extremely intelligent Zodiac researcher, noted the indented lines on certain Zodiac letters as a way to help ascertain whether particular communications may be genuine or otherwise. The structure and composition of a letter may tell you more than the handwriting itself. There is a complete change in how the Zodiac letters were structured from 1969 to 1971, compared to how the letters were structured subsequent to 1971. As pointed out by Druzer, any hoaxer subsequent to 1971 has numerous early Zodiac letters from the newspapers to analyze with respect to their structure (in particular, how the killer opened with the introduction "This is the Zodiac speaking"). In every single Zodiac communication in 1969, 1970 and 1971 where the Bay Area murderer opened with "This is the Zodiac speaking", he began the introduction in line with the text below on all 12 occasions (including the Fairfield letters). Here are two examples:     

Subsequent to 1971, we have the 1978 letter (4/24/78), the Channel 9 letter (5/2/78), the 1986 letter (5/6/1986) and the 1987 letter (10/28/1987). All of these letters began with the introduction "This is the Zodiac speaking", but each time the introduction was offset from the left margin and the text below. If these were all different hoaxers, then it is rather uncanny how all these authors not only ignored how the Zodiac Killer structured his main opening line to conform with the text below, but they all structured the opening line in the same fashion. Of the 12 Zodiac letters in 1969, 1970 and 1971, only the Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969 failed to keep the "This is the Zodiac speaking" introduction exclusively on the main first line (ignoring the "Dear" intro). It was written "This is the Zodiac speaking I". One may have thought a hoaxer would adopt the introduction used the majority of the time, but instead the two 1978 letters, the 1986 letter and the 1987 letter followed a similar pattern to the Melvin Bellii letter, contrary to what would be expected of a hoaxer. 

You will notice below that three of the later letters failed to insert a full-stop or comma after the introduction, and before the rest of the text. Exactly the same as the authenticated Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969. All four of the communications below begin with either the subject of "I" or "You" after the introduction, rather than something non-personal. It has been shown extensively on this website how the 1986 and 1987 letters should be included as confirmed Zodiac correspondence. This being the case, the 1978 letter and the Channel 9 letter should be regarded as worthy contenders also. The change in style from 1969, 1970 and 1971, to 1978 onwards, shows a distinct pattern of "Zodiac" development in his style of writing. 

Another pattern that can be observed in the widely believed Zodiac letters, is that the August 4th 1969, October 13th 1969, November 8th 1969, November 9th 1969, December 20th 1969 and April 20th 1970 letters all have the introduction "This is the Zodiac speaking" with no significant gap to the second line. Then a seemingly conscious change, when the June 26th 1970, July 24th 1970, July 26th 1970 and March 13th 1971 letters all left a distinct gap between the first and second line (March 13th 1971 slightly less so). This shows a marked change in pattern by the Zodiac Killer. However, the latter four communications were pre-empted by both Fairfield letters on December 7tth 1969 and December 16th 1969, which both placed a noticeable gap between the opening introduction and the second line.