Many people have asked the obvious question of why did the Zodiac Killer make the effort of obtaining a second Halloween card to painstakingly cut out the skeleton from this card to paste onto the October 27th 1970 card we are all familiar with? Thanks to the great work of SmallOrbit from the Reddit platform, we now know the identity of that second Halloween card. The Zodiac Killer would also cut out a rectangular section from around the eyes of a young girl from the inner portion of this second card, to affix onto the skeleton in the appropriate place. It appears as though a additional skeleton was pivotal to the choice of the Zodiac Killer once his October 27th 1970 Halloween card was opened. It may also be significant that he took the time to add the eyes of a female to the skeleton he pasted on his card inner. Bearing in mind that the Zodiac Killer was now claiming a fourteenth victim - and Donna Lass is the only victim he has ever claimed between July 26th 1970 and October 27th 1970 - we could be forgiven for believing the skeleton with the female eyes was meant to be Donna Lass. The thirteen eyes (representing thirteen souls) looking at the latest Zodiac victim in skeletonized form.

This 1970 greeting card, and the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971, were the only two mailings by the Zodiac Killer to San Francisco Chronicle journalist, Paul Avery. The Pines postcard, with its "Lake Tahoe" reference and punch-hole, is widely believed to be referencing the burial site of Donna Lass. It's almost as though the Zodiac Killer was directing Paul Avery and law enforcement to the remains of Donna Lass on March 22nd 1971, who he had implied was his fourteenth victim by addressing Paul Avery five months earlier. If the Zodiac Killer was claiming Donna Lass as somebody he murdered in the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971 - and he only raised his victim count by one between July 26th 1970 and October 27th 1970 - then the Halloween card's fourteenth victim had to be Donna Lass, who disappeared between these dates on September 6th 1970. There really isn't any other option.​

Having fashioned thirteen "floating eyes" on the Halloween card inner to possibly represent his previous victims, it may have necessitated the adding of female eyes to the skeleton's skull to represent his current victim. With the choice of a skeleton being representative of the time elapsed between September 6th 1970 and October 27th 1970, and the probability that Donna Lass had been buried in a shallow grave somewhere around Lake Tahoe, unlike his previous victims, who were discovered at the site they were murdered. It's possible that the choice of skeleton was indicative of Zodiac's lack of faith in law enforcement to find Donna Lass in the next few months, until such time he provided additional clues to the police to aid in the discovery of her body (such as the Pines postcard). But why would the Zodiac Killer choose to bury his latest victim, something he had never done before?

​Maybe because of his fascination with puzzles, having previously given us a code and map on June 26th 1970, in which he claimed to have buried a bomb somewhere in northern California. Then followed this up on July 26th 1970 by giving us the phrase "The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians & # inches along the radians", to further help pinpoint its location. If the Bay Area murderer was prepared to play games with a bomb, why wouldn't he play games with a body? This isn't beyond comprehension, because he mailed the cryptic Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971 with a punch-hole and associated directional markers, such as "pass Lake Tahoe areas", "Sierra Club" and "around in the snow". These were obvious location points designed to direct law enforcement to a specific area beyond the lake. In 2024, I used the punch-hole and the directional aids on the Pines postcard to identify an area by Chubb Lake and Yuba Gap, just 1,000 meters from where the partial remains of Donna Lass had been discovered in 1986 (but not identified until 2023). The punch-hole sat over the remains of Donna Lass.

It was also interesting that the Zodiac Killer had chosen a 1962 UX48 Abraham Lincoln postal card on March 22nd 1971, lacking postage and issued nine years before this mailing. So was the Abraham Lincoln card chosen for a specific reason? I noticed that the address side of the postcard had the crosshairs and "Zodiac" around the punch-hole, with the upper point of the crosshairs touching the letter "D", which was the first initial of "Donna". Across from this was the "Abraham Lincoln" stamp with the initials "A" and "L". If the punch-hole represented the burial location of Donna, then this could have been fashioned to read "D .A. L" or Donna Ann Lass. The front of the postcard pointing to her name, and the reverse side pointing to her burial location.  ​

Therefore, we have two cards, both addressed to Paul Avery in the space of five months. The Pines postcard appeared like a cryptic puzzle giving us clues to the name and burial location of Donna Lass, with the October 27th 1970 Halloween card only increasing the victim count by one since July 26th 1970, spanning the period that Donna Ann Lass was last seen at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino. A Halloween card, in which the Zodiac Killer went to great pains to add a second skeleton with female eyes to the card inner.

But what would be the point of burying Donna Lass and playing this quite extraordinary game of "hide and seek" with her body? Even if law enforcement had identified the general area of a possible burial site from the Pines postcard directions, there would be no guarantee they would find the specific location of her body after months or years had elapsed. I wonder if her burial site had been marked by the signature of Zodiac. On something like a heavy rock, that would stand the test of time? Although this may seem unlikely, it falls a long way short of impossible. 

On October 6th 1970, the Zodiac Killer mailed the 13-Hole postcard with the number 13 on the card, so why didn't the Zodiac Killer raise his victim count to fourteen here, if indeed, he was the murderer of Donna Lass on September 6th 1970? It is possible he wasn't ready to yet lay claim to this murder for any number of reasons, but could have pasted the phrase "Fk I'm crackproof" to indicate he had now achieved "Fourteen kills" (or "Fourteen killed") as another cryptic clue. The use of fourteen within this card could have begun the theme of "fourteen", which continued in the Halloween card three weeks later by way of "14" and "4-TEEN". The Halloween card symbol on the envelope and card inner also appeared to have the letter "F" in its design, so the Zodiac may have replaced "Fourteen killed" with "Zodiac Fourteen".

However, this doesn't change the fact that the Zodiac Killer, according to most researchers, was claiming the murder of Donna Lass on March 22nd 1971, and his victim count only increased by one between July 26th 1970 and October 27th 1970. Therefore, the Zodiac Killer, by mailing the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971, has left us with the inevitable conclusion that the Halloween card must have been claiming Donna Lass as victim number fourteen. This being the case, are we to conclude that the skeleton he pasted onto the Halloween card inner, was the imagery of his misdeeds near Yuba Gap in Placer County? 

If the Zodiac Killer was the abductor and murderer of Donna Lass from the Sahara Tahoe Hotel on September 6th 1970, then one might have expected him to claim or insinuate her murder in his next communication, the 13-Hole postcard. Despite later suggesting his involvement in her murder on March 22nd 1971 when the Pines card was mailed, he never increased his victim count from the July 26th 1970 "Little List" letter to the 13-Hole postcard on October 5th 1970 by the Zodiac Killer, which spanned her abduction. Or did he increase the victim count and we simply didn't recognise it? The Pines postcard and 13-Hole postcard both contained punch-holes (suggestive of victims), both contained pasted text, and both carried inverted wording within the postcard. The inverted phrase of "around in the snow" on March 22nd 1971 was clearly referring to the murder and burial location of Donna Lass, so where was the reference to Donna Lass in the inverted text on October 5th 1970?

The construction of the October 5th 1970 postcard may have began just over two weeks after the disappearance of Donna Lass, because all the newspaper cuttings identified on the postcard were sourced from the Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner (all separated by only 9 miles)  The cuttings were taken from publications dated September 23rd and 25th. 

On the day the 13-Hole postcard was mailed, a newspaper article by The Orlando Sentinel carried the headline "Zodiac, Killer Of 5 or 13, Silent As Police Wait". The 13-Hole postcard carried a cutting of the number 13 and used the word "police" in the inverted text - so was this section of text giving us a clue to the total victims killed, which now included Donna Lass? The text read "There are reports city police pig cops are closeing in on me. Fk I'm crackproof. What is the price tag now?" Could this have been cryptic in nature, just like the Pines card mailed 5 1/2 months later, telling us surreptitiously that he was the murderer of Donna Lass and reading "There are reports city police pig cops are closeing in on me. Fourteen killed I'm crackproof. What is the price tag now?" In other words, responding to The Orlando Sentinel headline of "Zodiac, Killer Of 5 or 13" on October 5th 1970 (or earlier newspaper that carried the same or similar question).  

​It would mean that the main body of the postcard was reiterating the victim count from the Little List letter on July 26th 1970, but teasing us with the cryptic clue of "Fk" to suggest that there were now "Fourteen killied" in total. This may have been repeated when the Halloween card arrived 22 days later, on October 27th 1970, when he added 13 "floating eyes" to the card, but added the number "14" on the hand of the first skeleton, placed "4-TEEN" atop of the second skeleton, and used the letter "F" once again in the strange symbol at the foot of the card (and on the envelope). The "F" in "Fk" on the 13-Hole postcard may have denoted the number fourteen. The "F" in the strange symbol on the Halloween card may have also denoted fourteen, by combining "Z" and "F" to give us "Zodiac Fourteen". The four dots giving us a clue that "F" meant fourteen. This would mean that the Zodiac Killer gave us two cryptic clues containing the letter "F" in a span of 22 days. The Zodiac Killer could also have added the 14th punch-hole of his career to the Pines postcard, to make up for the one he deliberately withheld from the 13-Hole postcard on October 5th 1970. A postcard in which he decided to use "Fk" instead. But did the Zodiac Killer specifically invert his text in two postcards to represent one victim? That of Donna Lass.

The information provided here will be nothing new to people who have read the comments of the previous article, but I wanted to expand on that article for people who don't want to trawl through the comments section.

On November 16th 1970 Paul Avery produced a comprehensive newspaper article about a potential connection of Zodiac to the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates and the associated communications, which included the Desktop Poem. The newspaper article detailed the two Confession letters mailed on November 29th 1966 and read "Two unstamped envelopes, one addressed in large black print to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the other to "Homicide Detail", were dropped into a rural mailbox". The newspaper article then detailed the three "She/Bates Had to Die" letters from April 30th 1967 and the writing on the Riverside Desktop Poem.

The only communication featured visually on November 16th 1970 was the "She Had to Die" envelope mailed to the "Press Enterprise" newspaper, with two 4 cent Abraham Lincoln stamps issued on November 19th 1965 (see image below). In other words, Abraham Lincoln was integral to the "She Had to Die" envelope and the Paul Avery article. The next communication mailed by the Zodiac Killer to Paul Avery was the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971 featuring 4 cent pre-stamped Abraham Lincoln postage from 1962. The Pines postcard had insufficient postage for 1971, yet the Zodiac Killer chose this postcard from 9 years earlier. Was this a deliberate choice to mimic the postage from the "She Had to Die" envelope and send a subtle message to Paul Avery? The Pines postcard was the first and only time the Zodiac Killer used Abraham Lincoln postage during his known reign of terror. Ordinarily I would say this was coincidence, until you consider the Confession letter envelope mailed to the Riverside Press-Enterprise as well.    

The Confession letter envelope mailed to the Press-Enterprise newspaper (see below) also featured in the Paul Avery article on November 16th 1970, and was "addressed in large black print". This envelope contained the footnote of "attn: crime", meant for the crime department of their newspaper. As stated above, the next Zodiac communication addressed to Paul Avery was the Pines postcard carrying the footnote "att. Paul averly=chronicle" on the address side. Both of these footnotes were unconventionally placed in the bottom left corner under the address of the newspapers, rather than top and center, above the address. Since Paul Avery was involved in the coverage of "crime", both communications made a point of addressing the relevant personnel within the newspaper, using the word "attention". This was also the first and only time the Zodiac Killer did this in any of his correspondence. We now had the 4c Abraham Lincoln postage and "attention" seemingly mimicked from the Confession and ​"She Had to Die" envelopes, mailed to the Press-Enterprise newspaper. The Confession letter envelope to the Press-Enterprise newspaper had been made public on December 1st 1966, so it is possible the Pines card was deliberately engineered by the Zodiac Killer to somewhat mimic this communication.    

The final connection is more tenuous, but there is a strong argument that the Riverside Desktop author was reminiscing in the present tense about the attempted murder by knife of Miss Atwood. She was stabbed several times on the Riverside campus by Rolland Taft on April 13th 1965, but managed to escape and survive. Here is a relevant snippet from a previous article:

All we have to do to connect the desktop poem with the Confession letter, is look at the title of the desktop poem, which reads "Sick of living/unwilling to die". The desktop poem begins with "Sick of living", and the Confession letter states "I am not sick. I am insane". The desktop poem title uses the word "unwilling", to which the Confession letter states "She was then very willing to talk to me" and "She went very willingly". One referenced an unwillingness to die, whereas one claimed Cheri Jo Bates went "willingly" to her death. In other words, Miss Atwood resisted her death and didn't die "that time", but Cheri Jo Bates died hard and willingly. The desktop poem title uses the phrase "to die", with the Confession letter stating "I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die". This brings forth another connection between both communications with the word "time" central to both. The desktop poem uses the word "time" twice, when stating "She won't die, this time someone'll find her. Just wait till next time", whereas the Confession letter uses the word "time" three times by stating "I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die". We have the words "sick", "unwilling" (in root form) and "time" from the desktop poem, used 6 times in the Confession letter by way of "sick", "willing", "willingly", "time", "time" and "time". In fact, the words "die" and "time" are used in the same context in both communications by the sentences "she won't die, this time someone'll find her" and "I said it was about time for her to die". If you add in the three Bates letters of "Bates had to die", "She had to die" and "She had to die" into the equation, we have the phrase "to die" used 5 times in all three communications.

Miss Atwood escaped the clutches of Rolland Lin Taft in 1965, expressed by the desktop author when they stated "she won't die, this time someone'll find her", but reminded everybody that the next time Cheri Jo Bates wouldn't be so lucky by finishing the poem with "Just wait till next time. rh". That "next time" may well have been Riverside, Halloween, denoted by a lower case "r" and "h". 

Ricardo Gomez of Mk-Zodiac showed the possible inspiration for the Riverside Desktop poem through a newspaper article from - you've guessed it - the Press Enterprise once more. The newspaper carried the headline "Clean-Cut Youth Sought in Stabbing". This was the referring to the attempted murder of Miss Atwood, who undoubtedly would have had "blood spurting, dripping and spilling" over her dress. But the Desktop Poem began with "cut, clean", appearing to mimic the newspaper headline. The Desktop Poem seemed to borrow from the Press-Enterprise headline of "Clean-Cut Youth Sought in Stabbing" from April 17th 1965, as did the Pines postcard when it used the pasted word "Sought", despite being sourced from a later newspaper headline. If this last observation isn't stretching the truth too much, we now have the 4c Abraham Lincoln postage, the "attention" attribution in the bottom left corner, and the word "sought" from the Pines postcard relevant to the three Riverside "communications" from 1966 and 1967.

In January 1969 the "Inside Detective" magazine revealed details of the Cheri Jo Bates murder and the Confession letter mailed on November 29th 1966. The young woman was found close to the Riverside City College library on Halloween Day morning (October 31st 1966) by college caretaker, Cleophus Martin​.

Fast forward to October 27th 1970 and the Halloween card mailed by the Zodiac Killer, which Phil Sins believed contained characteristics of her murder and the 1966 typed letter. One of the main features of the Halloween card was the wording By Fire, By Gun, By Rope and By Knife, with the two Confession letters beginning with "The Confession" and the word "By", followed by several underscores. The Halloween card also featured the signature of "Z" for the first time, that three weeks later, on November 16th 1970, would become a pivotal argument of Paul Avery that the Zodiac Killer was claiming the murder of Cheri Jo Bates by using the letter "Z" to sign off two of the "Bates Had to Die" letters on April 30th 1967. In fact, the Halloween card communication used the letter "Z" twice, just like the 1967 letters (which had not been publicly released by October 27th 1970). This, off the back of the Little List letter on July 26th 1970, which contained the line "Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream + twich and sqwirm" and appeared to borrow wording from the Confession letter. However, this falls short of producing an undeniable link between Riverside and the Zodiac Killer. We must find something from 1966 that was unreleased to the public, which the Zodiac Killer could have slipped into his Bay Area communications. The obvious place to look was the two communications following the Halloween card.

On March 13th 1971, the Zodiac Killer insinuated his involvement in either the murder of Cheri Jo Bates or the Riverside communications by writing "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there". He followed this up with the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971, which like the Halloween card, was personally addressed to Paul Avery. Because Paul Avery authored the newspaper article on November 16th 1970 about Riverside and the Confession letters, did the Zodiac Killer give any incontrovertible proof of his involvement in Riverside in the only communication that carried the name of Paul Avery subsequent to this date? (ie: the Pines postcard).

​The only time the Zodiac Killer used the word "attention" in his address on an envelope or postcard, was when he wrote "att. Paul averly=chronicle" on the address side of the Pines postcard. The only other time we see the word "attention" within the address of a communication linked to Zodiac, was the Confession letter envelope mailed to the Daily Enterprise in Riverside, with the wording "attn: crime". Bearing in mind that Paul Avery was instrumental in featuring the Confession letters in his newspaper article on November 16th 1970, it is noteworthy that the Zodiac Killer combined "attention" and "Paul Avery" four months later (on March 22nd 1971), when this same word was also abbreviated on the Confession letter envelope to the Daily Enterprise newspaper in 1966. It is standard practice to use the abbreviated form of "attention" (accompanied by a name) above the address on an envelope or postcard, but in both the Confession letter and Pines postcard the author abbreviates the word "attention" in the bottom left corner, under the address, Was this a further subtle clue of Zodiac's involvement in the Riverside communications? However, the Confession letter envelope mailed to the Daily Enterprise newspaper was released to the public on December 1st 1966 (see below).  PART TWO.   

The first three paragraphs are taken from a previous article, with the following information a completely new analysis.  

When determining whether the "concerned citizen" card mailed to Sergeant John Lynch on August 10th 1969 was written by a helpful member of the public or the Zodiac Killer, we need look no further than the "good citizen" letter mailed on October 7th 1969. Taking into consideration that the "concerned citizen" card was not in the public domain in 1969, the "good citizen" author would also adopt the word "citizen" in their signature, address the communication to Sergeant John Lynch once again, and refer to the July 31st 1969 cryptogram by mentioning "code letters", just as the "concerned citizen" author was addressing the "code letters" by supplying us with a key to the 408 cryptogram. Also, both communications would use the word "name" twice. 

​These are compelling reasons to believe that both communications were composed by the same author. The question being; is the wording in the "good citizen" letter that of a helpful citizen or a mischievous individual playing games with the police. The "good citizen" letter read "On occasion, while thinking of the code letters, the pencil wrote: Go to 56 Beach Street. I get the name Jerry, perhaps he knows people or his name is XXXXXXX".  

The "good citizen" letter was postmarked October 7th 1969 and mentioned 56 Beach Street, which is the old block numbering from the original planning maps, which comes out as 1654/1656 on the street numbering. The address at 1654/56 Beach St, San Francisco, California is a condominium home that measures 2,141 sq ft, and was built in 1938. Irrespective of the exact numbering, Beach Street is just 240 meters from the Presidio of San Francisco, where eyewitnesses saw a white male, about 40 years of age, weighing 170lbs, sporting a blond crewcut and wearing glasses, running into Julius Kahn playground shortly after the murder of Paul Stine on October 11th 1969. Of all the places in northern California or the Bay Area the author could select, the composer of the "good citizen" letter was not only referring to Zodiac's code letters, but managed to choose the location of Beach Street bordering the Presidio, in which the Zodiac Killer was seen running into just four days later. Possibly coincidence, but noteworthy nonetheless. The "good citizen" author may have been referring to Beach Street in San Francisco just a matter of days before the Zodiac Killer first struck in the big city, before mailing a letter on October 13th 1969, again detailing a destination in the form of a street name - this time "Washington St and Maple St".  ​

I have long believed that the Zodiac Killer lived in Vallejo during his first three crimes, but for the purposes of objectivity we will look towards San Francisco as a possible home location of the Zodiac during and after the Paul Stine murder (and possibly before). When the Zodiac Killer mailed the Bus Bomb letter on November 9th 1969 he gave us an indication to his movements in Presidio Park a month earlier, writing "The dogs never came with in 2 blocks of me + they were to the west + there was only 2 groups of parking about 10 min apart then the motor cicles went by about 150 ft away going from south to north west".

It was apparent that after entering Julius Kahn playground the Zodiac Killer suggested that he had traveled 2 blocks east, which placed him close to Presidio Boulevard that went from south to north west in the south-eastern corner of Presidio Park. From a location 150 feet shy of this road, he was extremely close to the Lyon Street steps and his exit route from the park. If the Zodiac Killer had headed northwards from this location to the Marina District and the area around 1654/1656 Beach Street, he could have opted to walk for 25-30 minutes or enter a vehicle parked on Lyon Street for the 5 minute journey. 
​
​If the Zodiac Killer mailed the "good citizen" letter four days before the Paul Stine murder, one could argue that he didn't just pluck the Beach Street address and the name "Jerry" out of thin air. It is possible that he lived close to this location (or within a reasonable distance) and was familiar with somebody who lived or frequented either 1654 or 1656 Beach Street. As an example, he could have lived somewhere within the green circle shown below  The reason I've positioned the circle this way will become evident in a moment.   . 

At the time of the Paul Stine murder on October 11th 1969 Donna Lass worked at the Letterman General Hospital in Presidio Park and lived at 4122 Balboa Street, San Francisco. However, according to Robert Graysmith she moved from this address a few months later and relocated to 225 Mallorca Way in the Marina District. If a few months was three or four, Donna Lass could have moved to 225 Mallorca Way in January or February 1970  Either way, it is possible she moved into an area where the Zodiac Killer lived. He was heading in this general direction after killing Paul Stine, and was referring to 56 Beach Street (1654/1656 Beach Street) on October 7th 1969, only four days before the murder. The 1654 Beach Street address was a mere 300 meters from the 225 Mallorca Way home that Donna Lass moved into. She would have spent several months at an address 300 meters from the residence mentioned in the October 7th 1969 letter, before heading off to South Lake Tahoe on June 5th 1970.

​In the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971, the Zodiac Killer pasted "Sought Victim 12", indicating that he had previously targeted Donna Lass between the April 20th 1970 letter (10 victims) and the Button letter on June 26th 1970 (12 victims). Therefore, if the Zodiac Killer had sought her in San Francisco as victim number 12, he would have set his eyes on her between April 20th and June 5th 1970 (when she left for South Lake Tahoe). Because the Dragon card on April 28th 1970 didn't increase the Zodiac Killer's victim total, we can narrow down the time he sought Donna Lass as victim number 12 to between April 28th 1970 and June 5th 1970 (probably sometime in May 1970). During this time she would have been living at 225 Mallorca Way, close to the Beach Street residence. Donna Lass and the Zodiac Killer may have been living near to one another in the Marina District of San Francisco, in an area that had relevance to an address mentioned in one of Zodiac's letters. If we could positively identify the "Jerry" in the October 7th 1969 letter (assuming they exist), it may edge us a little closer to resolving this mystery. 

It has always been difficult to reconcile how the Zodiac Killer could be claiming Donna Lass as a victim when he failed to increase his count from the time of the Little List letter to the 13-Hole postcard, which spanned her disappearance on September 6th 1970 but maintained the victim count of thirteen.

On October 27th 1970, the Zodiac Killer attached the number 14 to the skeleton's hand to signify an increase in the victim count, next to the text "I feel it in my bones, you ache to know my name, and so I'll clue you in". What if the Zodiac Killer was asking us to guess the name of his fourteenth victim, who was represented by the skeleton, necessitating the adding of a blindfolded skeleton on the card inner to symbolize an identity hidden, with the wording "But, then why spoil our game". 

​The 13-Hole postcard may have used thirteen punch-holes to represent thirteen victims, the Pines postcard may have used one punch-hole to represent the murdered and buried Donna Lass, but in the Halloween card the Zodiac Killer only added 12 eyes to the one in the knot-hole of the tree, to make thirteen again. So was the inner skeleton our fourteenth unidentified victim that the thirteen eyes were looking at, with the author playing a sort of cryptic game to discover the victim's name? The sort of cryptic game he played with the Pines postcard, which also never made it clear what victim he was referring to.

In the Pines postcard it has been widely considered that the punch-hole was the burial site of Donna Lass, and we had to "peek through the pines" to discover her grave. This methodology may have been employed in the Halloween card with the eye looking through the hole in the tree, with the wording "peek-a-boo you are doomed". In other words, we had to "peek.through the pines" to discover her skeleton. The hole in the tree and the hole in the Pines postcard both being a window to death. The number count atop of the skeleton signifying a new, but yet undiscovered head count - and symbolic of a victim undiscovered for 51 days.

​This could play into the notion of the strange design on the envelope and card inner, where a case can be argued for a joined "L" and "F" with 4 dots in between, signifying "look four fourteen" or "look for fourteen" from a phonetic standpoint. With all thirteen eyes trained on the inner skeleton facing right, it's possible the author is asking us to look for a victim he was keeping close to his chest in some sort of macabre game (whether he was responsible or not). A game he would reinvent on March 22nd 1971. By October 27th 1970 it was still unknown what had happened to Donna Lass, so it's possible the Zodiac Killer played on this uncertainty in this card and the one five months later, which were both linked through journalist Paul Avery.  ​

Was the position of the pasted skeleton on the Halloween card inner representative of the "Danse Macabre", in which skeletons escort living humans to their graves in a lively dance. In this instance, the skeleton of Donna Lass leading us to her gravesite, not dissimilar to the Pines postcard, that seemed to carry instructions to her burial location. "The Danse Macabre, also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory from the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death. The Danse Macabre consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer. The effect is both frivolous and terrifying, beseeching its audience to react emotionally. It was produced as memento mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain are the glories of earthly life. According to legend, Death appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle. His skeletons dance for him until the cockerel crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year". Wikipedia. 

Was the design of the Pines postcard driven by a desire to inform investigator's where the body of Donna Lass was buried, or were the measurements related to it just an unusual coincidence? The initial point of interest was the upside down pasted wording of "around in the snow" and whether we had to flip the postcard through 180 degrees to locate the remains of Donna Lass "around in the snow". In doing so, it repositioned the punch-hole west of the "Sierra Club" pasting on a horizontal plane, exactly like the relationship between Yuba Gap and the Clair Tappaan Lodge Sierra Club. The 2.19 inch distance between the "Sierra Club" pasting and the center of the punch-hole was 14.02 miles using the Mount Diablo map scale of 6.4 miles to the inch, employed by the Zodiac Killer on June 26th 1970. This distance on Google maps landed just shy of Yuba Gap, 997 meters southwest of the jawbone of Donna Lass, within the 1.96 square mile circle represented by the punch-hole. Then we measured the radian angle between the home of Donna Lass and Yuba Gap, and the radian angle between the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino and Yuba Gap, which both fell between 303 to 304 degrees. Five radians and magnetic north was 303.5 degrees in 1970. The three measurements of radians and inches (set to Magnetic North) that Zodiac suggested we use to locate his buried bomb on June 26th 1970 and July 26th 1970 can all be used in relation to the Pines postcard. The 2.19 inches from Clair Tappaan Lodge Sierra Club and the 5 radians set to Magnetic North from Donna's home or workplace, both fall inside the punch-hole on the Pines postcard.  

On July 26th 1970 the Zodiac stated "The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians & # inches along the radians" and positioned a crude black circle around his crosshairs, close to 4 radians and Magnetic North (246.2 degrees). It was clear that to locate his buried bomb we had to first use radians to locate a position around the circumference of his crosshairs and then use inches along that radian to pinpoint the target. The location "concerned" radians and inches, so the claimed buried bomb was likely to be close to a whole value but not necessarily exact.

​The Zodiac Killer's measurements were probably nothing more than a rough guide in 1970, which is why he placed SFPD next to the crude circle to help us on our way. Therefore, it was quite surprising to discover that both Yuba Gap and the center of the punch-hole were situated extremely close to 5 radians and Magnetic North (at most a one degree error). The distance between the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino and Yuba Gap, and the home of Donna Lass and Yuba Gap measured 6.83 and 6.86 inches respectively (an 83% to 86 % accuracy over one inch). Both distances were approaching 44 miles by crow. A distance of 44.8 miles would have been 7 inches.

But if these radian values of four in 1970 and five in 1971 were deliberately engineered (or that we were required to use whole radian values to locate the buried bomb and buried Donna Lass), can we therefore conclude that the Pines postcard was mailed by the Zodiac Killer? If the Bay Area murderer placed his crude circle at a position representing 4 radians and Magnetic North on July 26th 1970, then he was using radians in a manner that was flawed. They should be measured anticlockwise from the 3 o' clock position, yet the Zodiac Killer gave us a zero on the Mount Diablo map in the north position and wrote "is to be set to Mag. N", suggesting that we needed to measure radians clockwise. This appeared his intention based upon the position of the crude circle. If the author of the Pines postcard wasn't the Zodiac Killer (and the 5 radians and Magnetic North from abduction to burial was intentional), then this individual would have made exactly the same error as the Zodiac Killer by using clockwise radians from the north position. How likely is that?   

On June 26th 1970 the Zodiac Killer mailed a Phillips 66 map with the instructions "the map coupled with the code will tell you where the bomb is set". He claimed he had buried a bomb. A month later another communication was sent with extra clues of "The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians & # inches along the radians" and crosshairs with a bold, black circle positioned at close to 4 radians set to Magnetic North (246.2 degrees). When the Zodiac Killer mailed the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971 he used a punch-hole (another circle) and the wording "Sierra Club", "pass.Lake Tahoe areas" and "around in the snow", coupled with an advertisement of Incline Village, to probably direct us to the burial site of Donna Lass.

Using measurements between the "Sierra Club" pasting and the punch-hole (after inverting the postcard), I was able to determine that the 1.96 square mile punch-hole around Yuba Gap captured the location of the jawbone of Donna Lass, discovered on December 31st 1985. This suggested that the author of the Pines postcard knew where the remains of Donna Lass were. If the circles in both instances were the location of a buried mystery that we had to solve, could the Zodiac Killer have added another layer to the Pines postcard to identify the burial site of Donna, similar to the June 26th and July 26th 1970 letters? In other words, did the Zodiac Killer bury Donna Lass at a specific location west of Clair Tappaan Lodge Sierra Club?  

The three major locations regarding Donna Lass were her 3893 Pioneer Trail Road home, the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino where she worked and the Yuba Gap area where her jawbone was found. So I placed a compass rose over the 3893 Pioneer Trail Road home and the casino, and calculated the position of Yuba Gap in degrees. From her 3893 Pioneer Trail Road home it measured 303.5 to 304 degrees. From the casino it measured 303 to 303.5 degrees. There could be a margin of error of one degree. The measurement of 303.5 degrees is exactly 5 radians and Magnetic North (5 X 57.3 + 17). Therefore, the Zodiac Killer may have twice given us a "circle" denoting a burial location, and both times it was positioned at a radian value plus Magnetic North. In 1970 from Mount Diablo, in 1971 from either the home or work address of Donna Lass.  

​A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART ONE)
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART TWO]
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART THREE] 

Expanding on my last article, I have calculated the position and area of the punch-hole on the Pines postcard to 1.96 square miles, and placed it over the map below. If the punch-hole was intended to be a burial or deposition site, then the measurement and direction of this punch-hole with respect to the "Sierra Club" pasting on the card, coupled with the map scale, means that the jawbone of Donna Lass falls inside the punch-hole created by the author of the postcard (shown on the map below).This technique was previously used by the Zodiac Killer on June 26th 1970, when he used radians and inches along those radians to pinpoint the location of a buried bomb. Only this time in the Pines postcard it was a human being. 

Years ago I identified a location for this bomb alongside a road close to Ingleside Police Station of 4 radians and 5 inches (tilted to Magnetic North). Long time Zodiac researcher, Andrew Gray, later took these measurements and slotted them into the Z32 code, reading "Estimate Four Radians and Five Inches". The word "estimate" allowed for a margin of error. When the Zodiac Killer crafted his Bus Bomb letter on November 9th 1970, he may have used the 9 o' clock position tilted to Magnetic North to identify the Salesian High School of teacher Daniel Williams, who had just been targeted for death by somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer. The 9 o' clock position had been highlighted along with 0, 3 and 6 on the June 26th 1970 Phillips 66 map.

So this technique of using a clock face, radians and inches (measurements) to identify a location, is not without precedent. On this occasion the Pines postcard author placed the punch-hole of 1.96 square miles.over the remains of Donna Lass. This location also landed on the 9 o' clock position of a clock face from the Sierra Club of Clair Tappaan Lodge. But were these measurements created deliberately by the Zodiac Killer, or was he just lucky when he applied the "Sierra Club" and punch-hole 2.19 inches apart on the same horizontal plane, and used "around in the snow" upside down, which when flipped through 180 degrees forced a change and corrected their east-west relationship to one another? It's rather curious that the newspaper read in January 1986 that remains had been "found in 2 inches of snow", given that the author of the postcard likely expected her to be found "around in the snow". Read more.  

​A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART ONE)
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART TWO]
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART THREE]   

In previous articles I wanted to evaluate how accurate the Pines postcard was in identifying the location where the jawbone of Donna Lass was discovered on December 31st 1985 near Yuba Gap. Because the phrase "around in the snow" was inverted 180 degrees and we had a punch-hole in the postcard that many believed was her burial location, I decided to flip the postcard upside down. What we notice from here is that the center of the punch-hole is now west of the "Sierra Club" pasting, with the center of each being in perfect horizontal alignment. The postcard used by the author was a USPS Abraham Lincoln 4 Cent Blank Postcard that measured 5 9/16 by 3 1/4 inches (5.56 by 3.25 inches). 

​So using the map scale of 6.4 miles to the inch, used by the Zodiac Killer when mailing the Mount Diablo Phillips 66 map in 1970, I measured the distance between the "Sierra Club" pasting and the center of the punch-hole. It measured 2.19 inches, which I multiplied by 6.4 miles to the inch, to get a distance of 14.02 miles. Drawing a perfectly horizontal line westwards from Clair Tappaan Lodge, the 14.02 miles ended just above Interstate 80, directly below the eastern edge of Chubb Lake (in the top right image shown below). The jawbone location was only approximated as one mile northeast of the I-80 at Yuba Gap (in the top left image shown below). I then had to calculate the distance between the location identified by the Pines postcard and the actual (but approximated) location of the jawbone. The remains of Donna Lass could have been deposited or buried anywhere in California or Nevada, yet the Pines postcard identified a location only 997 meters (or thereabouts) from the actual location of the jawbone (if my interpretation is correct). This can be seen in the bottom image below.

If I had drawn a line on Google maps from Clair Tappaan Lodge to the estimated location of the jawbone, it would have measured 13.62 miles, so from a distance standpoint, the accuracy was 97.1%. The angle deviation was approximately 2 degrees. In other words, there was an error of 997 meters over 14.02 miles. But was the Pines postcard created with these calculations in mind, or was it purely accidental? The phrases on the postcard such as "pass Lake Tahoe areas", "Sierra Club", "peek through the pines" and "around in the snow", pasted onto an advertisement of Incline Village, with a punch-hole added to the postcard, does lend to the notion of an author giving us directional markers. That is why I decided to measure the distance between Clair Tappaan Lodge (Sierra Club) and the punch-hole. 

The distance from the "Sierra Club" pasting to the right side of the punch-hole (with the postcard inverted} is 2 1/16 inches (2.06 inches), which when multiplied by the map scale of 6.4 miles to the inch, gives us a distance of 13.2 miles. Westwards from Clair Tappaan Lodge, this takes us to Vista Point just below Yuba Pass. Therefore, from the right side of the punch-hole to its center encompasses 13.2 miles to 14.02 miles, with the jawbone estimated at 13.62 miles and inside these parameters. The jawbone was 2 2/16 inches from Clair Tappaan Lodge, with the center of the punch-hole at 2 3/16 inches from Clair Tappaan Lodge, meaning its author had 1/16 inch error to the location the jawbone was ultimately discovered. The left edge of the punch-hole measures 14.78 miles. This means that the punch-hole will capture 1.58 miles east to west and north to south. The jawbone will comfortably fall inside the punch-hole. All figures were rounded off to two decimal points.
​
The punch-hole may have denoted the burial site on both sides of the postcard, with the letter "D" of Zodiac and initial "D" of Donna positioned over the crosshairs, and the Abraham Lincoln stamp, initials "A" and "L" positioned horizontally to the right. This gave us "D", "A" and "L", the initials of Donna Ann Lass originating from the punch-hole. . 

A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART ONE)
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART TWO]
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART THREE]   

The following is a fishing expedition of the type I don't like because it involves excessive interpretation and stretching the bounds of reality when examining the Zodiac case. But I'm going to do it anyway. Rubislaw32, a regular contributor to this site, highlighted the fact that the Zodiac Killer had used a 1962 UX48 Abraham Lincoln Postal Card on March 22nd 1971 when he mailed the Pines postcard, that most (but not all) believe was a cryptic reference to the disappearance of Donna Ann Lass on September 6th 1970. Why did the Zodiac Killer dig nine years into the past and select a postcard to mail a communication in 1971, unless it was chosen for good reason?

The pasted clues on the reverse side of the postcard included "sought victim 12", "Sierra Club", "Peek through the pines", "pass Lake Tahoe areas" and "around in the snow". But did the Zodiac Killer give us any extra clues on the front of the postcard that pointed toward the missing nurse? If the punch-hole on the reverse side of the card was depicting the burial or deposition site of Donna Ann Lass, could there be a clue to this on the front side of the card by the punch-hole, that somehow indicated her name?

The punch-hole on the front face of the postcard was positioned where you would normally place a name and return address, but the Bay Area murderer just wrote "Zodiac", with the letter "d" being touched by the north prong of the crosshairs. On the right side was the Abraham Lincoln 4c stamp. The initials of Abraham Lincoln are "AL". So reading from left to right we have "DAL", which are the initials of Donna Ann Lass. At the bottom of the postcard the Zodiac Killer wrote "attn. Paul averly = chronicLe". The two things that stood out were the use of the letter "L" in Paul Avery and the capitalized "L" in Chronicle. Therefore, from top down we have the "DL" of Donna Lass. Although this is probably another case of seeing patterns where they don't exist, I wanted to discover if there was any connection to the punch-hole (burial site) and the name of Donna Ann Lass. There is a way to get "DLF" (Donna Lass Fourteen) from the Halloween card envelope but I'm not going there, because that would almost certainly be seen as stretching the fabric of reality.  

This is the third and final instalment re-examining the Pines postcard (March 22nd 1971), and determining whether the pasted "Sierra Club" and punch-hole were really designed to point us toward the deposition or burial site of Donna Lass, using the measurement of inches and a map scale as the conduit. This idea was rejected by some commenters on VT Squire's Reddit post regarding my analysis of the postcard as a directional tool.

​Wolf4968 stated "Does anyone really think the Zodiac, or the hoaxer/card sender, sat and measured cards by the hundredth inch, thinking, "There's the skeleton key to this whole thing, that they'll never figure out!!!".? Really?" The Zodiac Killer took the time to create at least 30 communications and mail them to the newspapers, he encrypted several messages in ciphers and codes, using a period 19 shift in his design of the 340 cipher, and mailed a Phillips 66 Map and code, challenging us with "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians" so we could unearth his bomb. So does Wolf4968 think that the Zodiac Killer would really sit down and measure the distance in inches between two points on a postcard using a standard classroom ruler, that would take but a few seconds? 

The more important question is determining whether the punch-hole on the Pines postcard was intended to identify a deposition or burial location, and was its positioning relative to the pasted "Sierra Club" of any significance? What we do know is that the Clair Tappaan Lodge "Sierra Club" on Donner Pass Road is directly in line (on the east-west axis) with the location of Chubb Lake where the jawbone of Donna Lass was found on December 31st 1985. The pasted "Sierra Club" on the postcard is also perfectly aligned with the punch-hole on the east-west axis. The distance between the center of the punch-hole and pasted "Sierra Club" was 2.19 inches (2 3/16 inches}, which equated to 14.02 miles using the map scale of 6.4 miles to the inch. This was the distance (by crow) between Clair Tappaan Lodge and the location of Donna's remains near Chubb Lake (to within a few hundred meters).

​It must be noted that after the jawbone and teeth were discovered on December 31st 1985, Sheriff Donald A. Nunes stated that a more detailed search would be conducted on January 4th 1986 looking for more remains at the 5,300 feet elevation. Later in January a skull was discovered near to where the jawbone was found.

The area close to the eastern side of Chubb Lake sits at an elevation between 5,300 and 5,400 feet, so matches the elevation described by Sheriff Nunes and the location of the jawbone described in the newspaper as "found in 2 inches of snow, a mile northeast of Interstate 80 by Melvin Bennett, who along with his son was enroute to fish at the reservoir". Yuba Gap sits at an elevation of 5,790 feet, Yuba Pass sits at 6,710 feet and Emigrant Gap sits at 5,200 feet. Despite these observations, we need to go further and see if the Zodiac Killer did anything else to support the notion that he identified burial or deposition sites using directional markers.

Sometime in May 1971, the Zodiac Killer mailed the 148 character cipher and letter, using language straight out of the Ed Gein handbook, when he wrote "I will skin three little kids and make a suit from the skin", and "I will send a patch of human skin if their is some left over". Ed Gein, known as "The Butcher of Plainfield", dug up corpses from the cemetery to make an array of ghastly household objects from human skin, and began to fashion a "woman suit" so "he could become his dead mother and literally crawl into her skin". So when the Zodiac Killer threatened to "skin three kids and make a suit from the skin", it is almost certain he was referring to the murdered Kathy Snoozy, Debra Furlong and Kathy Bilek, who, he was not only claiming as his victims, but who he was threatening to dig up from the cemetery, just like Ed Gein previously.

This theme of burial sites would continue on July 13th 1971, when the Zodiac Killer mailed the Monticello card with pasted text, stating "Near Monticello Shought Victims 21 ...... In The Woods Dies April". The postcard was referring to Kathy Bilek, who was stabbed in the Villa Montalvo woods in Saratoga (near Monticello in San Jose) on April 11th 1971. Kathy Snoozy was buried in the Oak Hill Memorial Park & Cemetery in the Monticello neighborhood of San Jose. The Zodiac Killer used the phonetic namesake of Kathy Bilek and the location of Monticello to identify the burial location of Kathy Snoozy, who he had previously claimed alongside Debra Furlong on November 8th 1969.

​Somebody would later visit the cemetery housing Kathy Snoozy on September 18th 1973 and remove a tombstone from the grounds, placing it at the front gates with the pseudonym "Zodiac" scrawled on it. We don't know for certain whose tombstone it was, but it doesn't take much guessing. This person had desecrated a gravesite at the Oak Hill Memorial Park & Cemetery, but thankfully they fell short of removing body parts from the depths. 

When the Zodiac Killer wrote in the Los Angeles letter on March 13th 1971, stating "The reason I'm writing to the Times is this, They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others", I am not sure he was aware that "burial" was to become a feature of all his next three communications. The overlapping features in the Pines postcard and Monticello card are fairly obvious from the standpoint of directional markers. The Pines postcard contained "pass Lake Tahoe areas", "Sierra Club" and "around in the snow". The Monticello card had "in the woods". and "near Monticello".

We know that Kathy Bilek's body was found "in the woods near Monticello", so it's likely the body of Donna Lass would have been found "around in the snow" near the "Sierra Club" had she been discovered in March 1971. The remains of Donna Lass were found approximately 14 miles from the Sierra Club. The remains of Kathy Snoozy were buried nearly 10 miles from the Villa Montalvo woods. The Monticello card was identifying the location of Kathy Bilek's body in the Villa Montalvo woods in Saratoga, by using the Monticello gravesite of Kathy Snoozy as the directional tool. The Pines postcard also contained two key markers by having the "Sierra Club" location and the punch-hole to identify the "burial" site of Donna Lass. Hopefully, this goes someway to showing how "burial locations" and "body sites" would become the main focus of the Zodiac Killer in 1971. The 148 character cipher/letter and Monticello card were simply continuing the theme of the Pines postcard, mailed on March 22nd 1971. If the Monticello card is ever released to the public it will be curious to see what positions relative to one another the Zodiac Killer pasted the wording "in the woods" and "Monticello", and the distance between them. Or whether it was unnecessary in this instance because he named Monticello.  

A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART ONE)
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART TWO]

The newspaper cutting from 1986 describing the discovery of Donna Lass' remains stated that Melvin Bennett on his way to Lake Valley Reservoir at Yuba Gap discovered the remains one mile northeast of the I-80. In other words, while traveling to Yuba Gap he discovered the remains one mile northeast of this location. Yuba Gap is situated on Interstate 80. The red arrow in the image below points to the approximate location of her remains (jawbone). The red cross in the image below is the position 14.02 miles from the "Sierra Club" of Clair Tappaan Lodge. This was the distance found in the Pines postcard between the pasted "Sierra Club" and punch-hole (body location) in the previous article. This means that the estimated location of her body, shown by measurements in the Pines postcard, was only 1,000 meters away from where the jawbone of Donna Lass was ultimately found. The remains of Donna Lass were found close to Chubb Lake Road, Forty-Niner Way and Gonelson Canyon Road, the latter of which sits approximately 500 meters from the jawbone location described in the newspaper. All accessible from Highway 20. We have to note that the description of "one mile northeast" is obviously an approximation by the newspaper. It could be, as an example, anywhere from 0.7 to 1.3 miles from the I-80 at Yuba Gap. The word "northeast" can also be interpreted to some extent. Slight changes to the angle and distance could make the location identified from the Pines card calculation slightly more accurate (or less so). Either way, the proximity is noteworthy.

Although these calculations were done with hindsight, had they been presented before the discovery and identification of the remains of Donna Lass, they would still be rejected. If I had said in 2020 that body parts of Donna Lass will eventually be found just below Chubb Lake based on calculations involving the Pines postcard - and in 2023 they were shown to have been found just 1,000 meters away from my prediction - what do you think people would have said? They would have said "coincidence" and dismissed the findings as sheer luck. This may well be correct, but what if it wasn't. It would prove that the designer of the Pines postcard created it with purpose and the full knowledge of Donna Lass' "burial site".

A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART ONE)
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART THREE]

Several months ago I analysed the Pines postcard to see if the punch-hole and pasted "Sierra Club" text were used by the author of the postcard to show the burial or disposal site of Donna Lass, who was last seen at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino on September 6th 1970. Because the author had pasted the words "around in the snow" upside down, it gave me the idea to rotate the postcard through 180 degrees and measure the distance from the edge of the pasted "Sierra Club" (Clair Tappaan Lodge) and the center of the punch-hole. The remains of Donna Lass were discovered somewhere by Camp Spaulding or Yuba Gap, which were perfectly aligned with Clair Tappaan Lodge on the east-west axis, just like the punch-hole and "Sierra Club" on the postcard. I made the mistake in the earlier article of assuming the postcard was the US standard size of 5.8 X 4.2 inches. The postcard used by the author was a USPS Abraham Lincoln 4 Cent Blank Postcard that measured 5 9/16 by 3 1/4 inches (5.56 by 3.25 inches). 

I really don't mind individuals challenging claims made on this website, but am highly suspicious of people like VT Squire, who has consistently trashed everything I've ever written, with little to no exception. So in response to his Reddit article picking apart my analysis of the Pines postcard (and in the interest of fairness), I have decided to analyse his claims, without bias, that my measurements and conclusions were incorrect in my previous article - from which he correctly pointed out some flaws. His analysis of the postcard width using a crude scale and pixel count from border to border was 5.39 inches (well inside my assessment of 5.80 inches). Therefore, in reality, the distance between the punch-hole center and "Sierra Club" was 2.122 inches according to VT Squire, giving us a distance of 13.58 miles (2.122 multiplied by the map scale of 6.4 miles/inch). My measurement of 15.3 miles west of Clair Tappaan Lodge to the location of the body (or to the center of punch-hole) was nearly 2 miles off according to VT Squire. However, the historical records show that this postcard was 5 9/16 or 5.56 inches wide, not the 5.39 inches calculated by VT Squire. But he was closer than me.        

The above image was taken from a seller on Ebay who provided a handy scale next to the ​USPS Abraham Lincoln 4 Cent Blank Postcard. I checked numerous other sites regarding this postcard and its exact measurement was 5 9/16 inches in width (5.56 inches). Less than my original estimate by 0.24 inches, but 0.17 inches more than that given by VT Squire. I then took the image used by VT Squire (with small scale) and color tinted the edge to define the exact size of the postcard beyond the pasted advertisement. I then superimposed this image exactly over an original of the blank postcard and placed a ruler from one edge to the other measuring 5 9/16 inches (5.56 inches). This enabled me to measure the distance between the center of the punch-hole to the edge of the "Sierra Club" pasting. It measured 2 3/16 inches (2.19 inches). To get the distance in miles I had to multiply 2.19 by the 6.4 inches/mile map scale (6.4 X 2.19) = 14.02 miles. Therefore, the distance between Clair Tappaan Lodge and Camp Spaulding/Yuba Gap where the remains were found, should be 14.02 miles if the postcard was an accurate representation of her final resting place. The distance of 14.02 miles west of Clair Tappaan Lodge lands slightly south of Chubb Lake, just over a mile shy of Camp Spaulding, and 400 meters shy of Yuba Gap. For all intents and purposes, the distance in miles between the pasted "Sierra Club" and punch-hole of 14.02 miles, is where the remains of Donna Lass were found in 1985/1986. The punch-hole (not the center) does extend to 2 5/16 inches (14.78 miles), which travels beyond Yuba Gap and to the edge of Camp Spaulding, that lies south of Lake Spaulding. 

VT Squire's analysis was pretty accurate and forced me to reassess my original article regarding the deposition site of Donna Lass. But his claims that I attempt to manipulate data to achieve a desired result is false. If I make mistakes I will endeavour to correct them, as shown by this re-examination. Hopefully, he will now do the same in his Reddit post.. 

A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART TWO]
A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE PINES POSTCARD [PART THREE]

Although much of the following has been covered before, I feel it is necessary to re-examine certain elements of the Donna Lass case, a 25-year-old woman, who worked as a nurse at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino in Stateline, Nevada, and was last seen at this location on September 6th 1970. Sixteen years later, in 1985/1986, some of her remains were found near Camp Spaulding and Yuba Gap, but were only belatedly identified as her in December 2023. This breaking news caused a major stir in the Zodiac Killer community with renewed hope - but as happens in many cases - this awakened story has effectively disappeared from the discussion forums once again, and an unspoken resignation has returned that no further developments will be forthcoming. One of the key questions surrounding her murder was the question of Zodiac involvement, which will be examined here.

Still persisting to this day, some Zodiac sleuths are still claiming that the individual who created the Pines postcard and mailed it to the San Francisco Chronicle on March 22nd 1971, was insinuating that Donna Lass was their twelfth victim. However, the postcard never claimed Donna Lass as victim number 12 on March 22nd 1971, only that they "sought" her when she had the potential to become victim number 12. The Zodiac Killer claimed 10 victims on April 20th 1970 and 12 victims on June 26th 1970, when Donna Lass was still living and working in San Francisco for much of this time.

She had left for her new job at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino on or around June 5th 1970. Her savings account at the Bank of America located at 3701 Balboa Street (close to where she lived at 4122 Balboa Street) had remained dormant since early June. So if the Zodiac Killer had "sought" Donna Lass as victim number 12 in San Francisco, then he had trailed or stalked her between April 20th 1970 and June 5th 1970. The Dragon card mailed on April 28th 1970 showed no movement in the victim count, so this window could potentially narrow from April 28th 1970 to June 5th 1970. If this were the case, then the Zodiac Killer had a maximum of 39 days in which Donna Lass could have been "sought" as victim number 12. The fact that Donna Lass worked and lived close to the Presidio Heights murder of Paul Stine, at a time when she had the potential to become the Zodiac Killer's twelfth victim, certainly wasn't lost on the designer of the Pines card. By fashioning a postcard that combined both South Lake Tahoe and San Francisco, its creator was attempting to convince law enforcement that there was a connection between the Zodiac Killer and the missing nurse, navigating through two states and lasting several months.

If Donna Lass was killed by somebody she knew, then creating a Pines postcard shifting the attention toward the Zodiac Killer could be seen as beneficial to the murderer. However, this postcard was mailed 6 1/2 months after the nurse went missing, so any benefit gained by such a move would have drastically diminished. You would expect somebody hoping to focus attention toward the Zodiac Killer and away from them, to have crafted the postcard in the early part of the investigation by overtly claiming her murder, not insinuating this in a cryptic communication the following year. Also, if the phone caller to the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino on September 7th/8th was the murderer of Donna Lass (and author of the Pines postcard), he could easily have implicated the Zodiac Killer by phone on any date between September 6th 1970 and March 22nd 1971, but we know of no "Zodiac Killer" calls between these dates.

The creator of the Pines postcard didn't just fashion any old communication, they took the time to add a "Forest Pines" advertisement onto face of the postcard and searched for relevant directional text in the form of newspaper cuttings to paste onto it, while punching a hole in the top right corner and scalloping all four sides. Then they acquired the knowledge to know that Donna Lass would have been "sought" as victim 12 in San Francisco at the appropriate time she lived and worked there. This person placed some considerable thought into the design of this postcard, unlikely to have been created by somebody attempting to shift the disappearance of Donna Lass toward the Zodiac Killer, who could have done so with far less effort. The time and effort, along with the subtlety employed in the creation of this communication, is something we know from previous Zodiac correspondence. 

This subtlety was clear to see, when four months after the arrival of the Pines postcard, the Zodiac Killer mailed the Monticello card on July 13th 1971 claiming the murder of Kathy Bilek on April 11th 1971, again using a retrospective victim total. The pasted text read "Near Monticello Shought Victims 21 ...... In The Woods Dies April". The Zodiac Killer was retrospectively claiming he "sought" Kathy Bilek before her murder, just as he had done with Donna Lass from San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe. If he didn't murder Kathy Bilek when using this tactic, what are the chances that he killed Donna Lass but was telling the truth on this occasion? To establish whether the Zodiac Killer knew Donna Lass from San Francisco and/or South Lake Tahoe enough to trail her from one state to another, we have to return to the phone call received by security guard, Gordon Petrovich, at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino on September 7th/8th 1970. We have to determine if the phone caller knew Donna Lass to some extent, or was a complete stranger. The following section is taken from a previous article.     

It is fairly obvious that the story of the mysterious phone call to the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino didn't originate from the police, so its origin must have come from the killer of Donna Lass for the following reasons. The security guard at the casino, Gordon Petrovich, claimed he received a phone call from somebody calling themselves Mr. Davis on either September 7th or 8th, who stated Donna Lass had been called out of town for a family illness. If Gordon Petrovich had murdered Donna Lass, it would be totally ridiculous to pretend he received a phone call from Mr. Davis about an illness in the Lass family, that he knew would be denied later by the landlord of Donna Lass, Nick Davis. This could only have served to draw suspicion upon himself. Also, why would Nick Davis ring Gordon Petrovich and report a family illness that never was, if he had murdered Donna Lass? Once the family illness story was found to be fake, likewise, Nick Davis would have brought suspicion upon himself. Neither of these two men would have had anything to gain by fabricating a story of illness in the family of Donna Lass, that would eventually be found out to be a lie. 

When Donna Lass began working at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino in June 1970 it would have been her responsibility to supply the casino with her contact details (phone number and/or current address), and encumbent upon her, to acquire the contact details (phone number) of the casino in case she needed to ring them in the event of unforeseen circumstances, such as an illness to herself, family illness, accident or medical emergency  By September 6th 1970, this most certainly would have been done. If Donna Lass had really received an urgent message from her family because of an illness, what would have been the appropriate response - waste valuable time trying to locate her landlord, Nick Davis, asking him to ring the casino on her behalf - or simply making the phone call to the casino herself by using a public payphone or asking to use her landlord's phone? If the relations of Donna Lass did have an illness in the family and only had the phone number of Nick Davis by way of contacting her, he would have then made contact with Donna Lass, who would have rang her family back enquiring about the gravity of the situation, before contacting the casino. Any phone call received by Gordon Petrovich of the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino, on behalf of Donna Lass, makes little sense. The only person who had anything to gain by reporting a family illness on behalf of Donna Lass, is an individual who knew that Donna Lass was incapable of making the phone call herself, because she was either under duress at the time, or dead.   

According to Jo Anne Goettsche, who was visiting Donna Lass during this period, she had no way of contacting Donna Lass by phone when she arrived at the casino and found her friend absent. Therefore, Donna Lass had no phone in her apartment. But this still doesn't explain the obvious path Donna Lass should have taken if she had somehow received a message from her family about an illness. She would have notified her workplace by using the nearest convenient public or private phone. Or made the call en route to South Dakota (apparently without her vehicle). If the family of Donna Lass had wanted to contact her in an emergency, what phone number would Donna have given them? She would have given them either the phone number of Larry & Ann Lowe (where she previously lived), the Monte Verdi apartment landlord (if she had relayed this to her family yet) and the casino. Or any combination of all three.

Donna Lass had just moved into the Monte Verdi apartments, so how likely is it that the family of Donna Lass had the phone number of the landlord, Nick Davis, to even ring him about a family illness? And even if they had, why would Nick Davis bypass Donna Lass and inform the casino of the family illness himself, rather than informing Donna Lass of the family illness and her taking responsibility in notifying the casino?

The mysterious phone call using the name of Mr. Davis, which he denied was him, must have come from a murderer familiar enough with Donna Lass to know the name of her landlord. Another question that must be asked - is how many people (then or today) would know the name of their friend's landlord? Taking into account that Donna Lass had just moved into the Monte Verdi apartment complex, there may have been some friends that would have known her plans, but how many of these friends would have known that her landlord was called Mr. Davis? One such friend (or casual acquaintance) that may have been privy to this information, would have been somebody who lived at the Monte Verdi apartments themselves. Possibly somebody who informed Donna Lass previously that the Monte Verdi apartments were a good place to live. Often, people move into future premises on the recommendations of others - usually friends they trust.

The Zodiac Killer was clearly familiar with San Francisco on some level, so it is feasible he could have known Donna Lass from the Letterman General Hospital where she worked, or from activities outside of her employment. He could have lived or worked close to her 4122 Balboa Street address - and chose Presidio Heights as a suitable location for his October 11th 1969 murder based on local knowledge.

​It is also possible that when Donna Lass went missing in South Lake Tahoe and the newspapers printed her previous employment at the very park the Zodiac Killer claimed he escaped into, the Bay Area murderer would almost certainly have known that linking himself to her disappearance was an opportunity too good to turn down. He must have calculated that investigators would forge the connection between South Lake Tahoe and San Francisco through her profession, and hopefully boost his credibility on March 22nd 1971.

​The delay between the Donna Lass disappearance and the arrival of the Pines postcard may have been an indication he wasn't her murderer. He could have waited 6 1/2 months to satisfy himself the young nurse wasn't just missing, or that her real murderer would likely not be found. On the other hand, it is possible he was unaware of the Donna Lass story until early 1971.

Establishing a connection between the Zodiac Killer and South Lake Tahoe in advance of Donna Lass' murder was further confused by several threatening phone calls (reported in the Sacramento Bee newspaper on December 15th 1969) aimed towards school buses from Incline Village and Tahoe City in November 1969. There may have been a fair number of hoax Zodiac calls throughout the years, but this person claimed to be the Zodiac Killer and threatened Incline Village by Lake Tahoe, nearly 1 1/2 years prior to the mailing of the Pines postcard which contained an advertisement of Incline Village. This, on its surface, appears to lend credence to the Zodiac Killer being responsible for the Pines postcard. Or, that he wasn't responsible for the 1969 threat and somehow gained access to the Sacramento Bee newspaper article after the fact (had kept the newspaper when bought, or kept a cutting in his possession from the time), or had it stored in his memory bank and decided in 1971 to choose anything he could find in the newspapers concerning Incline Village to paste onto his postcard, so as to cement a connection between both. By issuing a second malicious threat involving Incline Village, maybe the Zodiac Killer was hoping law enforcement would take his latest threat more seriously, just as he had done by adding "sought victim 12" onto the postcard and again linking himself back to activity in the Bay Area and vicinity.            

The murderer of Donna Lass, when traveling from South Lake Tahoe to the body deposition site (had this been his route),  bypassed innumerable earlier and more remote locations where he could have separated himself from her body, assuming she was dead. Yet he chose to select an area popular with campers, fishermen and hikers, which appeared far riskier. This may suggest a familiarity with the area of Camp Spaulding and Yuba Gap, because killers will often choose a deposition site based on knowledge and risk level, rather than areas they are totally unfamiliar with. The murderer of Donna Lass could have known pockets within the area of Camp Spaulding and Yuba Gap that presented minimal risk in darkness, despite it being a popular area with locals and tourists alike. This is an argument for "better the devil you know" over uncertainty. If this deposition site was chosen because the killer was a previous or frequent visitor to this location in Placer County, while simultaneously knowing the name of Donna Lass' landlord, we could be looking for somebody known to Donna Lass whose history is connected to this tourist destination. He may have stayed, drank or eaten at any of the several lodges or establishments that lay close to Camp Spaulding and Yuba Gap. He may even have visited this area with Donna Lass during the brief three months she lived at South Lake Tahoe. I certainly don't know with certainty, but I strongly suspect that the killer and victim in this case were known to one another, in absence of the Zodiac Killer.   

"Considering the fact that offenders transporting a dead body are subject to time, distance, speed, weather, geographical, and effort constraints (Häkkänen et al., 2007), it is not surprising that in the current study, most offenders did not travel to dispose of the body, but rather, left it at the murder site. Similarly, as most sexual homicides are committed by strangers, it is possible that as suggested by Häkkänen et al. (2007), offenders see no rationale for making the effort to dump the body at a different location. Offenders with stranger victims may perceive the risk of moving the victim's body to be greater than that of being linked to the crime should they simply leave the body at the attack location". Research Gate. The distance traveled by the murderer of Donna Lass to dispose of her body appears to indicate a desire to delay the analysis of her murder, in which family, friends and work colleagues would inevitably become the first port of call for investigators. A complete stranger, with no prior links to Donna Lass, will be less likely to feel the need for concealment. The distance from the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino (now the Golden Nugget) to the area of Camp Spaulding and Yuba Gap is approximately 80 miles. The phone call to Gordon Petrovich at the casino claiming Donna Lass had left town for a family illness is extremely likely to have been placed to diffuse any concern when Donna Lass failed to return to work. This would buy the killer more time to relocate the body and clean up any incriminating evidence. The need to buy time until the police come knocking is far more relevant to somebody known to Donna Lass than a stranger.