Here is an extract from the letter sent by the Riverside City College library staff regarding their favorite 'suspect' Ross Sullivan. The first thing we notice, is that even they admit that police told them Ross Sullivan had an alibi for the time period of Cheri Jo Bates' murder. This clearly wasn't enough for the amateur sleuths of the Riverside City College library (we have to assume the police are just lying) who went on to compile a horrifying list of infractions and suspicious behavior perpetrated by Ross Sullivan. These include:

[1] His "potential for doing harm" - although we have no cited examples of harm inflicted upon any of the library staff. However, what he potentially could have done, is possibly a cause for concern. 
 
[2] Bragged about escaping over the wall from Patton State Mental Hospital, which doesn't equate to being a murderer.

[3] The library staff member stated "I wish I could remember the poem about the cataloging boss he and I both had. I remember that she did not understand the poem he wrote. I didn't either but was frightened by it". Frightened by a poem you neither understand and can't remember, is terrifying enough on its own

[4] "We could see him from the cataloging department. He was like a statue - always there". Clearly he was a menacing statue - not moving - but an ominous presence nevertheless.

5] "When the murder happened, I stated to my fellow workers that when Ross reappeared on campus (because he was not around the day after the murder), and if he had on different clothes, then he would be guilty in my mind, until someone proved him innocent". I really hope this person never sat on a jury. Whatever happened to those good old values of 'innocent until proven guilty'? Whatever happened to 'beyond a reasonable doubt'? I hereby sentence you to 50 years for buying new clothes.

[6] "Sure enough, it was a few weeks before he reappeared at his spot on the pit wall and he had on a totally new set of clothes". Guilty as charged Sir - how dare you wear a different set of clothes after a few weeks.

[7] "One rainy night after he was back in Riverside, I stopped at a liquor store in Market Street. I pulled up alongside a car that was parked just in front of the store doors. I ran inside but left the doors locked as I always do. When I ran back to my car something told me to do a very strange thing. I ran around to the passenger side and in a flash I had the door open and was inside and the door locked behind me. Just at that instant Ross came from a large hedge in front of my car door and walked between the two cars and out of the parking lot. He did not look at me. Needless to say I drove out of there as quickly as possible". This is called historical narrative building - creating a sensationalized and novelistic reconstruction of events that never happened. The person is selling you a story. Using the introduction of "one rainy night" is unnecessary to the story, used for dramatic effect. She just happened to pull up to a liquor store where Ross was hiding behind a bush in the rain, then coincidentally "something told her to do a very strange thing" - get in the wrong door of her vehicle, just before Ross "instantly" emerged from a large bush. What told her to do a very strange thing? - a sixth sense of impending doom, before she raced away fearing for her life. The fact of the matter, is that nothing happened - and if Ross Sullivan was there, he was likely just walking by without even noticing her. Had he glared at her menacingly from his sodden, furrowed brow, with dastardly intent, the story may have been a bit more compelling. Or, if he had he leaped from the bush wielding a dripping axe and mumbling incoherently. 
 
[8] "Ross apparently parked a motorbike close to one of the faculty members car each day during the fall of 1966. That faculty member also put Ross at the top of his list as a suspect in the murder. Didn't apartment residents near the murder site recall hearing a motorbike start up just after the screams". No they didn't, so it is probably advisable to read up on the facts of the murder, before establishing Ross Sullivan at the top of your suspect list - guilty of parking his motorbike close to a car in the parking lot. Was it menacingly close, bordering on threatening? Did it get closer each day, inching to a dramatic conclusion? Was it raining each day?

[9] "There are half dozen or so of us at Riverside City College that agree on a suspect - but it isn't one that the police are interested in". I will probably side with the police on this one, who actually did a proper investigation and stated he had an alibi. On the flip side, the library staff may have a compelling case to bring to court  - Ross Sullivan was smelly, changed his clothes at least once, allegedly hopped from a bush in the rain without an axe, threateningly parked his motorbike in the campus grounds, wrote poems nobody can remember and moved as fast as a statue, apart from when he was vaulting mental hospital walls. In his spare time he murdered five people in the Bay Area, despite the fact nobody can place him within 75 miles of any crime scene. On a rainy night, maybe he rode stealthily into the Bay Area on his old Triumph motorbike four times, placing the executioner's costume in the top box on September 27th 1969 for the return journey to Santa Cruz. Or maybe some evidence would help. 

Still unsolved after nearly fifty years, the murder of Cheri Josephine Bates on October 30th 1966 has long been connected to the Zodiac case, on account of Zodiac's admission in the 'Los Angeles' letter mailed on March 13th 1971, along with the 1966 'Confession' letter and Riverside Desktop Poem, and three Bates letters mailed in 1967. One man has featured heavily in recent years as a Zodiac suspect, particularly in light of him working at the Riverside City College library and having known the victim Cheri Jo Bates at the time of her murder. That man is Ross Sullivan.

As is the reserve of many Zodiac researchers who have aligned towards a particular suspect, the temptation is to cherry pick the Zodiac case details that promote their suspect, while glossing over or ignoring details that clearly threaten the legitimacy of their suspect, and Ross Sullivan is no exception to this rule. One such example is to do with Ross Sullivan's height of 6'2" (not including heel height). With the exception of Bryan Hartnell, who admitted he was not a good judge of height, the eyewitnesses generated a range of 5'8" to 5'10". This is often explained away by proponents of Ross Sullivan, by the fact that the viewing angles of the three teenagers and Donald Fouke somehow skewed their perception of height, while on the other hand wholly endorsing the sketch's accuracy as a near identical likeness to Sullivan, disregarding the fact that eyewitness composites and facial recollection have long been recognized as notoriously unreliable.         

Despite the alleged killer claiming in the 'Confession' letter "Miss Bates was stupid. She went to the slaughter like a lamb", this could not have been further from the truth. The extensive injuries listed in the autopsy report were testimony to a woman who fought her attacker, and the driveway bore scuff marks indicative of a violent struggle, where a man's Timex wristwatch was found torn from the assailant and lay on the ground close to her body. Cheri Jo Bates fingernails contained the skin of her attacker and she had ripped out a few head hairs, found at the base of her right thumb. 

Nearby residents reported screams around 10:30 pm. One woman interviewed stated she heard screaming and yelling "Then I heard a muted scream, and then a loud sound like an old car being started up - this was about two minutes after I heard the first scream". This may be the clearest indication yet, of how much the young girl fought to ward off her attacker, and as the skin under her fingernails and hair in her hand demonstrated, her murderer would likely have received scratches to his face or hands, or both. As in many cases where a knife is used in a prolonged attack, the assailant will invariably suffer wounds to their hand as the soaked knife slips from their grasp. Fingerprints and palm prints (not necessarily from her killer) were also retrieved from grease marks on her Volkswagen Beetle where the murderer had disabled the wiring of her distributor.
 
Riverside City College Library staff in later years detailed how Ross Sullivan was high on their list as the murderer: an unnerving man, who wrote morbid poems. However, the correspondence also stated "A couple of years ago I had called the police to ask about our suspect and was told he had an alibi for that night". The police were rigorous in their investigation tracking down potential suspects, with one magazine reporting "Detective teams have contacted all of Cheri Jo's known friends and people she had worked with during the past six months while working part time at a local bank". Detectives also performed a reenactment on November 13th 1966, recalling 65 people back to the library who were present the night Cheri Jo Bates was murdered, taking fingerprints and hair samples.

When somebody is murdered it is incumbent on police to rule out family, friends, work colleagues and people Cheri Jo Bates knew as their first port of call, before widening their net further afield. Ross Sullivan not only worked in the RCC Library, he knew Cheri Jo Bates, and was a 'strange' character according to RCC Library staff - and additionally police stated he had an alibi. It is these indicators that point to the likelihood he was checked out. This being the case, his fingerprints would almost certainly have been taken as routine practice and cross checked with the fingerprints retrieved from the Volkswagen Beetle, as were the 65 library goers present in the library on October 30th 1966. To believe Ross Sullivan slipped through the cracks is highly improbable. Furthermore, none of the library staff ever mentioned seeing scratches on Ross Sullivan's hands or face in the days or weeks after the murder - and neither did police - who without question would have been looking for tell tale injuries clearly sustained by the murderer. Detective Gren "There is a strong indication that Miss Bates scratched and clawed her murderer in the struggle for her life". It will clearly be pointed out that Ross Sullivan would depart Riverside soon after the Bates letters were mailed, but did he vanish completely after the Bates murder to allow his wounds to heal. Not according to what we have read.   

Riverside detectives were also present the following Saturday during the funeral "About 250 mourners, composed mainly of students who had known Cheri Jo Bates at Ramona High and City College gathered for the services at St Catherine's Catholic Church. Police photographers unobtrusively took photographs as detectives scanned the faces of those attending the services".  Killers have been known to attend their victim's funerals, however, on this occasion, a murderer with scratch marks would obviously have been foolhardy to have done so.

A Timex watch was found 10 feet from Cheri Jo's body, torn off her assailant's wrist. One can see by the photographic link above, that the watch buckle is secured and through its supporting sleeve. The strap has been torn from the watch face, This, when reattached would give us an approximation of the murderer's wrist size, and likely an indication of body type. But without doubt, (assuming of course the watch isn't a plant or ruse) the watch could have been used to eliminate certain suspects on a preliminary basis, that would have included Ross Sullivan, who by all accounts was a large framed man. The Department of Justice Report stated "Heelprints identical to those worn by Air Force personnel and a Timex wristwatch indicating the suspect had a 7" wrist circumference was found at the scene of the crime. The measurement of the heel indicated that it would have been attached to an 8 to 10 size shoe".

Chief of Riverside Police, Thomas Kinkead, wrote: “The person who wrote the confession is aware of facts about the homicide that only the killer would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect". Some people disagree. Zodiac researchers make the point that it is possible Ross Sullivan may not have murdered Cheri Jo Bates, yet still be the Zodiac author of the 'Desktop Poem' and the three Bates letters, which have been confirmed as Zodiac material by Questioned Documents Examiner Sherwood Morrill. Therefore, if Ross Sullivan is Zodiac and the 'Confession' letter was sent by the killer, it had to have been typed by an unknown third party, neither Sullivan or Zodiac. Then we have the dubious position of two separate authors. There is a striking similarity between the misspellings on the 'Confession' letter and the 'Little List' letter mailed by Zodiac on July 26th 1970. The 'Confession' letter states "She squirmed and shook as I choaked her, and her lips twiched", and the 'Little List' letter states "Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream + twich and sqwirm". The problem being, is if you argue this as a connection to Zodiac being the author of the 'Confession' letter, who is also the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates, who isn't Ross Sullivan, then Ross Sullivan cannot be Zodiac. You cannot have it both ways.

One of the last things Cheri Jo Bates did before she ultimately lost her battle for life, was to scratch her killer, which is something that would have pointed police in the right direction and effectively incriminated or excluded Ross Sullivan as her murderer. The police claimed he had an alibi, which also meant they would have seen his face and hands, therefore likely excluding him as the murderer in this case.