DEATH ON A DRIVEWAY - CHERI JO BATES

5/8/2016

Cheri Josephine Bates

"As long as I can remember she wanted to be a stewardess. She had already written to most of the major airlines. It was the only future she would talk about". Poignant words spoken by her father Joseph Bates and one of Cheri's close friends, about a young 18-year-old freshman whose dreams were shattered and her future cruelly snatched away by a cold and cowardly act on Sunday October 30th 1966, on the campus grounds of the Riverside Community College Library.

Cheri Jo Bates was a gregarious, outgoing woman, who easily made friends, apparent by her desire to become an air stewardess, where personality and social skills are key ingredients. This makes it even more strange that such a vivacious young woman, who by all accounts was in a good, humorous and sociable mood that day, could enter the Riverside College library shortly after 6:15 pm, check out three books from stocks, and totally ignore everybody in the library including her close friends who were present in the cramped library from 6:00 to 9:00 pm that evening. In fact, in a reconstruction performed by police two weeks later, none of the 60+ people assembled remember ever seeing Cheri Jo Bates. What makes this crime even more unusual is that nobody set eyes on the young woman from approximately 6:15 pm that evening, until her body was discovered some 12 hours later, the following day on a dirt driveway.

On Halloween morning, groundskeeper Cleophus Martin (48) was traveling along Terracina Drive at 6:30 am, slightly west of the Riverside library annex, when he discovered the lifeless body of Cheri Jo Bates lying face down in the dirt driveway. Her body was discovered on the east side of the driveway between two vacant properties. Cheri Jo Bates had been brutally attacked with a knife. There were signs of a violent struggle with her murderer, with skin and hair present in the young woman's fingernails and hand, that in later years would reveal a mitochondrial DNA fingerprint. A Timex watch with a broken strap was discovered only ten feet from her body, likely wrenched off during the vicious attack.

Cheri Jo Bates Volkswagen Beetle

Her lime green Volkswagen Beetle was found only 200 feet from her body, to the west of the gravel driveway, parked on Terracina Drive. The keys were still in the ignition, the windows were down and her books and reading material were found on the passenger seat of the vehicle. The murderer of Cheri Jo Bates had disabled her Volkswagen Beetle by pulling out the middle wire of her distributor, thought by many to be a ruse, in an attempt to become the Good Samaritan when she left the library.

Riverside police would ultimately distance themselves from any Zodiac connection, initially focusing attention on their own prime suspect, who would eventually be ruled out using DNA analysis some 30 years later. But one overriding question has surrounded this case, on whether the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates was a stranger or somebody she knew?
This typed letter was sent to the Riverside Police and Riverside Enterprise on November 29th 1966 in reference to the stabbing of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966 - but whether it is from the killer/s or not is the center of much debate in the Zodiac community, and not something that will be covered here.
Screams were heard in the campus area by certain local residents at approximately 10:15-10:30 pm, so if Cheri Jo Bates had entered the library at 6:15-6:30 pm and left immediately after checking out her library books, then she could not have simply been led away from her vehicle on the pretext of help and murdered in the driveway. The screams were heard four hours later, not to mention the numerous people entering and exiting the library from 6:00 to 9:00 pm that evening, would surely have noticed the stricken Miss Bates.

Officers examine the crime scene

Remember, Cheri Jo Bates was spotted in the area of the library shortly before and after 6:00 pm by several eyewitnesses. If Cheri Jo Bates had entered the library shortly after it opened and left at 9:00 pm, upon its closing, it is inconceivable she could spend upwards of two and a half hours inside the 'cramped' library annex and remained invisible for the entire duration to everybody inside it, including her close friends. Even had this been possible, we are left with literally 75-90 minutes from her leaving the library to the sound of the screams in the driveway. It certainly doesn't take this long to walk from the library to her Volkswagen Beetle, receive the 'assistance' from her attacker, and then travel back to the driveway where she was ultimately found. Neither scenario makes any sense, so there has to be an alternative sequence of events. The location of Cheri Jo Bates between 6:15 pm and 10:15/10:30 pm therefore has to lie elsewhere.

One scenario is offered by Raymond Grant, the outline of which revolves around Miss Bates being abducted by more than one person shortly after her arrival on Terracina Drive, with her books being checked out of the library by a third party, to ultimately generate the impression she entered the library and focus attention in the wrong direction.

Another possibility is that Cheri Jo Bates was approached by an 'unwanted admirer.' Planning to enter the library to check out her reading material, the admirer insisted on accompanying her, but Cheri not wanting to be seen with this man, asked him to get the library books on her behalf. When he returned, again uncomfortable at being spotted with this man, suggested a second location nearby to talk to him. As the hours passed she eventually makes her excuses to return to her vehicle and go home - the library had shut now and she feels safe that nobody will see her with this man. She rolls down the window, places the key in the ignition and prepares to leave, but her admirer makes unwanted advances that escalate. Fearing the situation has got out of hand, she races from the car towards the parking area to seek help and things turn violent in the driveway. However, the problem here is we would have to assume he was able to check out the books from the library using female identification and not be questioned - and furthermore he would had to have disabled the Volkswagen Beetle after the attack, thereby creating confusion as to how the crime occurred. Not very likely.

Courtesy of Randall Scott Clemons

One has to speculate on the two vacant buildings either side of where Cheri Jo Bates was found, having recently been purchased by the college. Would somebody known to Cheri Jo Bates and other students, or somebody familiar with campus grounds have been aware that these buildings were unoccupied, and at 10:30 pm at night, the risk of detection at this location was limited - something a stranger would be unaware of?

Would a stranger or persons unknown to the area have begun an attack between two buildings - only yards from them - and inflict numerous injuries on a screaming woman, not knowing if occupants resided within them. I suppose this is a question for the Zodiac Killer at Presidio Heights.

The college was supposedly undergoing renovation, and the Timex watch discovered just ten feet from the body of Cheri Jo Bates had paint splashes on it. Was it a crime of opportunity from somebody connected with the college? As my learned friend pointed out, an abduction is not an improbable proposition, especially if we contend the Kathleen Johns incident was perpetrated by the same person or persons, collectively or otherwise known as the Zodiac Killer. With so much time unaccounted for in the timeline of Cheri Jo Bates that evening, speculation will no doubt continue about the brutal murder of a very promising young future........ "As long as I can remember she wanted to be a stewardess. She had already written to most of the major airlines. It was the only future she would talk about". And this should always be remembered.

Zodiac Killer Solved - Raymond Grant.

Greg H.

5/9/2016 09:52:47 pm

A question I have concerns the disabling of the vehicle. I realize that VWs are slightly different to conventional cars in that their engine is in the back; it seems, however, that the car needs to have been breached in order to allow for the hood to be unlocked and the engine accessed. You said that Cheri left her windows down, so the explanation could be that easy. Then again, there's also the chance that, for whatever reason, Cheri permitted someone to look at the engine and in doing so this person disabled the vehicle.

In the article you state Cheri was not seen by "her close friends who were present in the cramped library from 6.00-9.00 pm that evening." It's a minor quibble, but apparently, according to Graysmith, her friends were only in the library between 7:15-8:57. It's certainly possible Cheri was there in the time before her friends arrived, checked out her books and then left the library, accounting for the general lack of awareness of her presence.

Cheri had been engaged to a Dennis Earl Highland for two years; on the night of her murder it's alleged she told her girlfriends she was going to the library to meet her boyfriend; at the time, however, Highland was in San Francisco, so it's been surmised she was planning on meeting on a former suitor.
This may tie into your 'unwanted admirer' theory to some extent. She was murdered presumably betweeen the houses that existed at 3680 and 3692 Terracina Dr. Looking at the map those buildings appear to have been replaced with larger, newer structures associated with the university; the landscape, naturally, is quite different all these years later. But even if those addresses were unoccupied at the time, there are witness reports of hearing a woman's screams at some point between 10:15-10:45. Perhaps then, the killer did not have the area scoped out as much as we'd be tempted to believe.

Based on the hours in which Cheri's presence is not accounted for and the time we believe she was murdered (approx. 10:30), it seems plausible she was in the company of someone she knew. Had she been kidnapped or harrassed during this time I'd expect we'd see evidence indicative of an ongoing struggle.
Instead, the evening is punctuated by screams during the 10 o'clock hour which suggest a sudden assault had taken place.
In fact, the incident reminds me somewhat of Ted Bundy's murder of Georgann Hawkins. In this case, Hawkins, a college student like Bates, wandered outside her domitory for a moment and, and as a trusting young person, was asked by Bundy for help carrying his briefcase. Screams were heard and Hawkins was never seen alive again.

I don't know how much credibililty I place on the Riverside library scene reconstruction; after all, it was 2 weeks later. It's a lot to ask people to recall the mundane details of an ordinary (to that point) night at the library. Granted there is merit in the fact that people don't recall her seeing her there, but the highlighted point about the unaccounted for bearded young man and a woman doesn't mean a lot to me. It's challenging enough asking over 60 people to assemble for a reenactment such as this; it's a wonder there weren't far more no-shows.
Plus, if they (he, she or both) only came in to check out the books and were gone in minutes, how can we honestly expect there to be a strong recollection of their presence. They likely would have had to be in the library for a duration to be remembered, making it probable they were legitimate students who just didn't attend the replay.

Richard

5/10/2016 05:39:02 am

The problem of breaching a Volkswagen Beetle hood, I doubt is that difficult if you are determined. Randall has a piece on it on his website here http://www.zodiackillerenigma.com/2015/06/the-cheri-jo-bates-murder.html
"according to Graysmith, her friends were only in the library between 7:15-8:57."
I cannot comment on this because I don't know it's origin. I cannot find these times quoted in the Chei Jo Bates section of his book. Where is it from Gregory.
The unwanted admirer theory is a bit weak, but it was more to point out that she had likely been 'diverted' to a second location by person or persons unknown. 3-4 hours is a lot of time to be milling around the library without anybody setting eyes on you.
She may have been held under gunpoint at some point in the evening. If you believe the Confession Letter, you believe the idea her car was tampered with while she was in the library, if however she never entered the library, the tampering of her car could not have happened in this fashion. Yet it had to have happened while she was away from the vehicle or while under duress. You said "Cheri permitted someone to look at the engine and in doing so this person disabled the vehicle." However if someone was looking at the engine I would guess it was already disabled.
Like you, the fact certain people may not have turned up for the reconstruction is not surprising, it is certainly not enough to find them suspicious and complicit in the crime itself, based on nothing more than a 'no show'. I am not convinced that Cheri Jo Bates entered the library from what I have read, if she did enter the library very quickly and retreat back to her vehicle, in such a fashion nobody saw her, then not only did the person have to disable her car very quickly, offer her assistance when her car failed to start, but then supposedly as the Confession Letter stated, lure her up the alley like a lamb to the slaughter. A process that took 3 1/2 to 4 hours. It really doesn't add up.

Greg H.

5/10/2016 10:25:35 pm

Well, the engine disabling suggests that she was targeted to some extent beforehand. Whoever did it obviously knew the car belonged to her. Something else that is impossible to escape here is the desk poem found inside the college. This would seem to tie her killer to the college, be it through employment (was he a maintenance worker?) or academics. As such it seems increasingly reasonable to believe that at some point he came into contact with Cheri - he knew the car she drove and was perhaps even friendly with her. But at some stage his intentions toward her turned malicious. (That he also wrote a letter to her father's home - which he did with no other victim - further cements the idea to me of some type of personal relationship.)

The fact that the desk in question was located makes this event different from the haphazard abduction and car gimmick perpetrated against Kathleen Johns. Had he just spied Cheri for the first time that one fateful night, it seems unlikely he'd let her out of his sight and inexplicably wander across corridors before scrawling a cryptic passage on a desk. For this reason I think the evidence suggests a degree of history was established between the killer and the university, as well as with Cheri.

Assume that he made up his mind several days prior that he was going to attempt to murder Cheri on Oct. 30. He may have gone ahead and written that lyric on the desk before setting about his final plans. On the night of her murder perhaps he sees her pull into the library parking lot and enter the building. He could then immediately begin the task of disabling her car (a process which takes only a few minutes) before following her into the library. Perhaps he asks her to go see a movie or have dinner with him and she accepts. In essence, they go on a date for several hours and take his car. As they wrap up the evening, he parks his car a distance away and they walk back to her disabled vehicle. When it won't start he suggests he drive her home. Walking back to his car he murders her...Witness accounts also state that an older sounding vehicle started up a short time after the screams were heard.

Just a hypothesis, of course..But again, I think the key elements here are the desk poem and the letter to Joseph Bates. Two ingredients that to me indicate a better than tenuous connection to the college, and with Cheri.

Chris Fowler link

5/10/2016 07:23:30 am

There is a handle with push button on the rear hood lid that allows entry to the engine compartment on most 1960s VW Bugs.
The coil wire will be in front easy to find and pulling that coil wire from the center of the distributor cap or coil would disable any vehicle by stopping the firing order.
Also Engine compartments on most cars built before the early 1970s could be accessed without getting inside the vehicle.
Those hood levers can be found in the grill, down in the front bumper or under the bumper.

Ray Grant link

6/20/2016 06:51:46 am

I see Greg H. has returned to Richard's comments section, after referring to me as a "lowlife psychopath" and a "sad bastard troll." Okay, Gregory, if I'm so pathetic, let's see how much better I am than you at figuring things out:

"A question I have concerns the disabling of the vehicle. I realize that VWs are slightly different to conventional cars in that their engine is in the back; it seems, however, that the car needs to have been breached in order to allow for the hood to be unlocked and the engine accessed."

I realize that, according to Greg, I'm a "feeble 80 year old man," but one advantage to having been 15 1/2 when Cheri Bates was murdered in 1966 is that I'm aware of the difference between cars in the 1960s and current models. When I rent a ZIpcar, for example, I'm required to gas the car up if the tank is 1/4 full or less. I sometimes have difficulty locating the gas cap release lever, since it's in a different place on different cars, and sometimes there is none—the gas cap cover opens when you just push on it.

In the 1960s, cars weren't designed with security in mind, at least with regard to engine access. The motor compartment was reached by just lifting the hood, though most models did have a "catch" that you had to reach along the edges for to release. In other words, if you wanted to disable someone's car and knew what you were doing, it wasn't that hard and didn't take that long, and you knew the engine would be accessible.

I had to buy a gas cap for my new 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit when someone stole mine; I remember having to special order the lockable version, which had a keyhole in the middle. I also remember the consternation of the guys at the parts counter, that I really wanted to be able to lock my gas cap (once bitten, twice shy).

"In the article you state Cheri was not seen by "her close friends who were present in the cramped library from 6.00-9.00 pm that evening." It's a minor quibble, but apparently, according to Graysmith, her friends were only in the library between 7:15-8:57. It's certainly possible Cheri was there in the time before her friends arrived, checked out her books and then left the library, accounting for the general lack of awareness of her presence."

No, Greg, it's really not possible, because arguing that Cheri could have left prior to the arrival of her friends doesn't solve anything. I cover this argument in a section of ZODIAC KILLER SOLVED entitled, "The 6:00pm Hypothesis," which you don't even have to buy the book to read; it's available in the book's preview on Amazon.

If Cheri leaves the library at, say, 7:10pm, then what? Assuming her killer has already disabled her car, that means she's out trying to get the car started from about 7:15pm until she's murdered circa 10:30pm. Other students would certainly have seen her if that were the case, but no one did. Additionally, it's impossible to believe that Cheri would have kept trying to start her car for more than 3 hours without giving up and calling her dad or one of her friends.

And it's not "a minor quibble." Cheri Bates was outgoing, beautiful, and popular. In the 2 hours and 30 minutes prior to her last sighting (6:15pm), she was spotted or otherwise encountered by at least 7 people, despite her being technically alone during that time:

1. she called Stephanie Guttman at 3:45pm;
2. her car was spotted outside her house by friends at 4:30pm;
3. at 5:20pm, her dad found a note taped by Cheri to the fridge;
4. a male student saw her sitting in front of the library at 5:25pm;
5. her friend Donna received a call from Cheri at 5:30pm;
6. a friend saw her driving TOWARD RCC on Magnolia at 6:10pm;
7. a March AFB man saw a blonde in a VW Beetle at 6:15pm.

How could she be seen or otherwise encountered by 7 people when she was alone for 2 hours and 30 minutes, and then NOT be seen or heard from by ANYONE from 6:15pm until her murder at 10:30pm? Doesn't that sound just a little . . . preposterous?

Ray Grant link

6/20/2016 06:53:16 am

"Cheri had been engaged to a Dennis Earl Highland for two years; on the night of her murder it's alleged she told her girlfriends she was going to the library to meet her boyfriend; at the time, however, Highland was in San Francisco, so it's been surmised she was planning on meeting on a former suitor."

She became engaged to Dennis Highland the previous weekend; do you seriously believe she became his fiancee when she was 16, and a junior in high school? Neither of the girlfriends she spoke with that afternoon (Stephanie and Donna) said anything about Cheri meeting a boyfriend. To the contrary, they say Cheri was focused on going to the RCC Library that night.

One of the amazing things about this case is that hobbyists are constantly coming up with newly-minted folklore to add to the mountain of folklore that's already there.

"But even if those addresses were unoccupied at the time, there are witness reports of hearing a woman's screams at some point between 10:15-10:45. Perhaps then, the killer did not have the area scoped out as much as we'd be tempted to believe."

I spoke with a school administrator in 1990 who had been at the school when Cheri was murdered. He told me that the driveway actually led down to a parking lot, presumably on the street parallel to and south of Terracina Drive (that street would be Fairfax today). In other words, there was pedestrian traffic down that driveway, a fact which is supported by witness accounts that night as late as 9:30pm.

"Based on the hours in which Cheri's presence is not accounted for and the time we believe she was murdered (approx. 10:30), it seems plausible she was in the company of someone she knew. Had she been kidnapped or harrassed during this time I'd expect we'd see evidence indicative of an ongoing struggle. Instead, the evening is punctuated by screams during the 10 o'clock hour which suggest a sudden assault had taken place."

How is it plausible that she was in the company of someone she knew? All she told her two closest friends and her father was that she was going to the RCC Library. So we either have to assume that she kept a planned meeting with this person secret (that's so unlikely that we can eliminate it as a possibility), or that she met this person and then decided, or at least consented, to spend several hours with him. But this is the same man who felt it necessary to disable her car to force himself on her. So should we assume that Cheri Bates was so stupid that she couldn't see through this guy and his transparent motive? That's contrary to what her friends have said about her, which is that she immediately picked up on unwanted attention from males.

Victims of violent crimes are frequently directed to secondary crime scenes by abductors they don't know; I'm guessing that, since that night, it's happened tens of thousands of times, probably hundreds of thousands of times, perhaps millions. You pull out a gun and put it to the temple of the victim, and the victim goes quietly.

"In fact, the incident reminds me somewhat of Ted Bundy's murder of Georgann [sic] Hawkins. In this case, Hawkins, a college student like Bates, wandered outside her domitory for a moment and, and as a trusting young person, was asked by Bundy for help carrying his briefcase. Screams were heard and Hawkins was never seen alive again."

I'm trying to think of an incident less similar to the Bates murder than the Georgeann Hawkins murder; the only similarity I see is that, in each case, a scream (or screams) were heard, and ignored by the earwitness(es). Georgeann left her boyfriend's house at 1am and walked to her sorority house, which was only six houses away; whatever happened to her (assuming Bundy's account is accurate), it happened in a matter of seconds. In contrast, Cheri was last seen circa 6:15pm, but we know she wasn't murdered until circa 10:30pm, which means we have to somehow account for 4 hours and 15 minutes when she wasn't seen or otherwise witnessed by anyone.

"I don't know how much credibililty [sic] I place on the Riverside library scene reconstruction; after all, it was 2 weeks later. It's a lot to ask people to recall the mundane details of an ordinary (to that point) night at the library."

You're kidding, right? The Cheri Bates murder was the most notorious crime committed in Riverside during the 1960s, and it remains the most notorious unsolved murder in the city's history. It's quite probable that, during the two weeks between the murder and the reenactment (on Sunday, November 13, 1966, between 6pm and 9pm), every library patron who was there wracked his brain trying to remember if he saw Cheri Bates.

Ray Grant link

6/20/2016 06:55:13 am

And that's not even considering the fact of the reconstruction itself. That Riverside PD did a full-scale, real time reenactment, with parking charts and seating diagrams and 65 students and staff asked to wear the same clothes and go through the same motions they did two weeks earlier, is testament to the fact that Riverside PD had no idea where Cheri Bates was after 6:15pm that night. And this was after two weeks of Riverside PD pleading, on the front pages of both local papers, for witnesses to come forward.

"Granted there is merit in the fact that people don't recall her seeing her [sic] there, but the highlighted point about the unaccounted for bearded young man and a woman doesn't mean a lot to me. It's challenging enough asking over 60 people to assemble for a reenactment such as this; it's a wonder there weren't far more no-shows."

No, it's not a wonder at all, Greg. In fact, I'm completely confident that everyone who was in the library that night returned for the reenactment (except the bearded man and the woman), because the police specifically asked all the patrons to mention anyone they remembered being there that night who hadn't returned. The 65 people who showed up that night weren't random Riversiders; they were students and staff with friends and classmates. People who sit in a community college library on a Sunday night have the school and the community in common, and perhaps most important, they have the library itself in common.

And, to stress again, there was nothing casual about the exercise; Riverside PD not only took the fingerprints and a lock of hair from each male, they tape-recorded statements and also had each attendee make a written statement.

"Plus, if they (he, she or both) only came in to check out the books and were gone in minutes, how can we honestly expect there to be a strong recollection of their presence. They likely would have had to be in the library for a duration to be remembered, making it probable they were legitimate students who just didn't attend the replay."

Guess again. Cheri's abductors checked out books on her student ID specifically to place her in the library. However, it's a 100% certainty that they didn't imagine there would be a library reconstruction of that night two weeks later. How do I know that's a 100% certainty? Because I know of NO similar reenactment on that scale for a single murder event, and I've been an amateur criminologist for a decade longer than I've been following the Zodiac case, going back into the mid-1970s. The Riverside PD reconstruction is unique among events associated with an individual murder in its scope and depth.

So the bearded man and woman would not have been concerned about people remembering them, because, under normal circumstances, the subject would never have come up. Police would have been asking about Cheri Bates, not about who else was seen in the library that night.

What the bearded man and woman WOULD have been concerned about was not being challenged when they used her student ID. I have suggested, in my book, that they likely waited until an adult staff member was manning the check-out desk, to avoid the possibility that a student staffer who knew Cheri Bates might recognize the name on the student ID. That delay might have resulted in many of the attendees remembering them, especially since they only spoke to each other and not to anyone else.

To assume the pair were legitimate students who just didn't attend the replay assumes several additonal things:

1. they weren't aware of the reenactment (extremely unlikely); or
2. they were aware of it and chose not to attend (even more unlikely).

Greg just got done telling us how challenging it was to ask over 60 people to assemble for the reenactment. Well, the fact is that 65 people DID assemble, parked in the same spaces, sat in the same places, wore the same clothes, and went through the same motions they had two weeks earlier. Again, let me stress that there was absolutely nothing casual about the reconstruction; it was undertaken with full commitment by the police and staff and students. So we have to assume that, had the two rogue individuals been legitimate students, they would have been identified by friends or classmates or staff members and subsequently interviewed by police. That didn't happen because they weren't legitimate students.

What worries me about all this is that Richard and I are mailmen (in my case, retired), and Greg works in a law office. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the legal (or, for that matter, para-legal) system.

Greg H.

7/23/2016 08:22:22 pm

Ray, I was brought back to this thread by your reminder in Richard's more recent post regarding the possibility of a second shooter at Lake Herman Road. I don't have the email notice on, so I didn't know you had replied.

First, let me start off by saying that I do not wish there to be bad blood between us. I know I spouted out off on you around April, but that's only because I perceived your comments to Richard as being extremely rude and patronizing. As I said at the time, I do not like cultivating enemies, most especially within the surreal playing field of the internet, an arena where people arguably tend to treat one another far worse than they would in the so-called real world (although judging by how horrific the 'real world' seems to have become, I'm becoming less and less sure of this belief). But just the same, I'd equate the general behavior online to the way many people are behind the wheel of a car, tailgating, road raging, etc. etc..

I haven't exactly pored over your comments above to give a point by point rebuttal. It's getting rather late now and I'm tired after a long day. I'm unsure where your final statement at the end comes from, re: me working in a law office(?).. I assume you were trying to be snarky, but I don't work in a law office...

Anyhow, Ray..You should know that I was someone who was promoting/championing your e-book Zodiac Killer Solved on social media when I first became aware of it, around Oct. 2015. It seemed to me like a refreshingly new perspective on the case, so I was certainly intrigued.
I don't wish to become confrontational Ray, but I have observed your frequently nasty attitude and demeanor on other message boards & websites and I know I'm certainly not the first (and surely not the last) with whom you've been at odds with, and vice versa. I know it would serve you well and help your arguments if you'd be more civil and tactful in the way you deal with people. You reflexively and incessantly call people "hobbyists" and try to establish your superiority by devaluing the perspectives of others; in doing so, you rub people the wrong way and it leads to these sort of instances again and again.

I listened to your recent interview on Alan Warren's online radio program, in addition to reading some summaries / excerpts of your theories (by you) that I found on a website. I respect your right to your opinions Ray, but I certainly don't agree with them, despite the meticulous research you have apparently engaged in. At about 44:00 of the Warren interview you say some stuff which, to me, really goes off the rails.
You claim that you yourself stopped the 'terminus event' on Aug. 11, 1989 because of "security forces" you put into place in 1981 in the two "target zones"..And then: "If you take Ray Grant out of the equation, the Zodiac murders wouldn't have been unsolved, they would have been solved back in 1989."
The notion that Michael O'Hare and his mother Berta Margoulies murdered Cheri is just not plausible, Ray. There is no one else, most especially the investigators who worked the case, who believes this.
I don't want to stoke the coals of your ire, Ray. It's fine for me to agree to disagree with someone. I don't want conflict in my life; with you or anyone, really. I apologise for my mean words towards you several months ago and I wish you the best.
Thank you,
Greg

Ray Grant link

7/23/2016 11:56:47 pm

"I know I spouted out off on you around April, but that's only because I perceived your comments to Richard as being extremely rude and patronizing."

Richard Grinell and I are like an old married couple. Occasionally we even finish each other's sentences. If you really want to avoid conflict online, my first suggestion would be to wait until you know who and what you're dealing with. I recently joined Zodiac Killer Community on Facebook, then realized about 24 hours in that it was infested with keyboard warriors who think the Ted Cruz Is Zodiac bit is hilarious, so I left.

"I have observed your frequently nasty attitude and demeanor on other message boards & websites. I know it would serve you well and help your arguments if you'd be more civil and tactful."

I have NEVER been anything less than civil and tactful with people online, UNLESS THEY ATTACKED ME FIRST. And even when I retaliated, I believe I have always done so in a manner commensurate with what that person did to me. But, by all means, cite an example of my being nasty with someone, and I'll be more than happy to explain myself.

Richard Grinell himself launched an unprovoked attack on me on ZodiacKillerSite.com about three years ago. Richard and I have since become friends, but since we both spend a great deal of our time working on the Zodiac case, and feel very passionately about it, we're bound to have blow-ups now and again.

"You reflexively and incessantly call people "hobbyists" and try to establish your superiority by devaluing the perspectives of others; in doing so, you rub people the wrong way and it leads to these sort of instances again and again."

The term 'hobbyist' wasn't coined by me; it was coined by a poster on Morford's private board, Zabagliona. She said that it was natural for people like herself to feel hostile toward me, because she and the others on the board were HOBBYISTS, and by even suggesting that I had solved the case, I was thereby threatening her hobby.

Give me an example of my devaluing the perspectives of others, in a situation where I wasn't defending myself in the process. I was thrown off two Zodiac Killer message boards, one of which I contributed $3,000 to before my banning (Voigt's board), and the reason is that I was confronting people who were deleting and editing my posts, and when that didn't work, and they couldn't beat me in an argument, they banned me.

"You claim that you yourself stopped the 'terminus event' on Aug. 11, 1989 because of "security forces" you put into place in 1981 [sic] in the two "target zones"..And then: "If you take Ray Grant out of the equation, the Zodiac murders wouldn't have been unsolved, they would have been solved back in 1989."

Everything I said in the book is true. Liberty Mutual and MIT participated in a lockdown at two buildings in Greater Boston for a 24-hour period on that day. It's also true that I sent copies of my book to all 90 faculty members of the JFK School in November 1990. It's also true that Michael O'Hare's response was to quit his job and move his family to Berkeley, California. I didn't make any of it up.

"The notion that Michael O'Hare and his mother Berta Margoulies murdered Cheri is just not plausible, Ray. There is no one else, most especially the investigators who worked the case, who believes this."

Greg, I don't know how to break this to you, but the truth isn't up for a vote. How many examples of that would you like? Galileo believed the Earth moved around the sun, and not the other way around. But the Catholic Church, which was both the most powerful material force in the world, and also the last authority on science and everything else in the early 17th century, told Galileo he was wrong, and even put him under house arrest. And, unfortunately, he didn't live to see his ideas accepted, even by the Church.

It stands to reason that, if what I'm saying isn't even plausible, there is an argument at hand that will defeat me. That's how cases are tried in court, through argument, and not through lawyers walking in and saying, "That my client committed this crime is just not plausible. I rest my case." If you want to defend Michael and Berta, let's hear your argument.

As to the investigators in the individual jurisdictions that make up the Zodiac serial murder case, I've already explained, in ZODIAC KILLER FOR DUMMIES, why those detectives were fooled, and why every cold case begins by going down the wrong path at a given fork in the road. If you would like free copies of my books, send an email address to raygrant.tzms@gmail.com, and I'll gift them both to you.

"I apologise for my mean words towards you several months ago . . ."

Apology accepted and I apologize for retaliating.

Greg H.

7/24/2016 09:46:15 pm

"If you want to defend Michael and Berta, let's hear your argument."

Ray, I'm interested firstly to know whether you have attained handwriting exemplars from the four principal individuals you are accusing: Michael, Berta, Penn and his father. I realize, as you have stated, you've been investigating the case for over 30 years. It seems reasonable that in such a time samples of handprint from these four could have become attainable, whether through FOIA Soc. Security requests as have come down from various other suspects or just through sheer legwork (Michael is an academic who made his ascent in an era before digital ubiquity, almost assuredly he must have put pen to paper on an almost daily basis).
I am uncertain which of the four you have deemed responsible for the Zodiac letters. Perhaps it was Penn or his father? Any success in getting samples from them. Berta and Penn's father are deceased, of course; it seems there'd be less red-tape in obtaining their old SS forms or tax filings through FOIA due to said status.

I understand you were once in touch with Penn, having communicated with him through letters or even possibly over the phone. What was that experience like? At what point did you become convinced that Penn was in on things, and not just documenting an intricate math-based theory of a serial killer who held a captive public in the grips of terror...?

You mentioned Occam's Razor up above. Please don't take umbrage with this, Ray, as I'm only attempting a critical analysis of your points. But I do indeed feel / think that your exegesis very much flies in the face of this rule of parsimony. Consider it: a two-family, parent-child tag-team of murderers / pyschological terrorists whose agenda is, put roughly, a type of art project facilitated around mathematics and other oblique synchronicities. I'm someone who tries to find historical precedents in my attempts at understanding other historical or contemporary events. As far as I gather, there has never before been anything remotely similar to this in the entire breadth of true crime. Even if such a feat did come to pass, the statistical likelihood that the culprits would remain unapprehended for all these decades--and not rat each other out--is infinitesimal.

Michael, as we know, is now an older man. I recall hearing some scuttlebutt that when he passes you will attempt to get his fingerprints with the intent of matching them to the Zodiac prints on police record to, once and for all, solve the case. Forgive me if I'm taking your words out of context or misremembering them in some way, but is this indeed your goal, Ray?

I just finished reading an excellent book by Chuck Klosterman titled "But What if We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past." The underlying premise is that many of the general casual certitudes living humans accept as final and absolute truths are frequently overturned with time. This has happened again and again, as you mentioned Galileo, in the sciences, but is also rather common to history and the arts. Writers who were considered great and timeless in their era are often forgotten in less than 100 years, whilst those who were under the radar or relative unknowns during their lives become canonical (i.e. Melville, Kafka). When it comes to history, revisionism is often the norm. It seems we still cannot decide what was the most relevant cause for the Civil War. I don't necessarily mean to conflate the hard sciences with more socially constructed subjects like art and history, but the idea is that we're often wrong about things and don't (cannot?) realize it.

The point of this tangent, Ray, is to ask you if you can accept the possibility that your conclusions may be incorrect? Not to make a giant leap and say that they are incorrect (which would, admittedly, be massively self-defeating) but is your mind open merely to the possibility that your conclusions could be amiss?

Finally, thank you for your offer to send me the e-books. Let me ask--how can you send them to me?..I don't own a Kindle. Is there a way I can read them without one?

Respectfully,
Greg

Ray Grant link

7/25/2016 07:27:53 am

Greg, thanks for your questions! But most of them can be answered by just reading ZODIAC KILLER SOLVED. You can Google FREE KINDLE APP and get a Kindle reader for your computer. Last year I bought a Kindle Voyage, which I like very much and is a very convenient little device—much smaller than a laptop—for reading books in coffee shops and on the bus; I will be reading on my Voyage this morning in my local diner while having a Three Cheese Omelet. But for at least a year before I bought my Voyage, I read books on the Kindle app for my MacBook Pro. The only downside of the Kindle app is that you can't purchase books directly to it if you have a Mac, you have to download the book to your computer and then open it in the Kindle app. But that just requires an extra click or two and a few extra seconds for the download, and after that the book is accessed directly through your Kindle app. I was amazed, when I got my Voyage, that I could buy a book and it would appear instantaneously on my device.

I can gift you the two books through any email address you have access to; it doesn't have to be the one connected to your Amazon account. Just send the email address to raygrant.tzms@gmail.com, I will gift the books, and then when you open the email, Amazon will ask where you want to receive the downloads.

"Ray, I'm interested firstly to know whether you have attained handwriting exemplars from the four principal individuals you are accusing: Michael, Berta, Penn and his father."

As Sherwood Morrill stated, the same person wrote all the Zodiac letters, so there's no need for exemplars from Berta, Hugh, and Gareth. My book contains the same handwriting comparisons that are in Gareth Penn's Times 17. Here is that section of the book on Dave Oranchak's ZodiacKillerCiphers.com; the comparisons are presented on pages 248-253.

http://tinyurl.com/guzbszq

In 1989, I did talk to Whit Caldwell, the private investigator who collected the Michael O'Hare samples—which were from his first marriage license—so the comparisons are legitimate. To my eye, when I first saw them, the two hands looked virtually identical, but I've had hobbyists—and I have to use that word in this case—insist that the two look nothing alike. So judge for yourself. Frank Drake, the astronomer, who is mentioned in Gareth's book, and with whom I exchanged letters back in 1989, found the comparisons convincing.

"I understand you were once in touch with Penn, having communicated with him through letters or even possibly over the phone. What was that experience like? At what point did you become convinced that Penn was in on things, and not just documenting an intricate math-based theory of a serial killer who held a captive public in the grips of terror...?"

All of that is in ZODIAC KILLER SOLVED, beginning in Chapter 14. Gareth Penn.

"Consider it: a two-family, parent-child tag-team of murderers / pyschological terrorists whose agenda is, put roughly, a type of art project facilitated around mathematics and other oblique synchronicities. I'm someone who tries to find historical precedents in my attempts at understanding other historical or contemporary events. As far as I gather, there has never before been anything remotely similar to this in the entire breadth of true crime. Even if such a feat did come to pass, the statistical likelihood that the culprits would remain unapprehended for all these decades--and not rat each other out--is infinitesimal."

Well, the one thing I've tried to avoid doing is psychoanalyzing the relationships among those four people, since I just don't know how they originally met and decided to do this. As far as historical precedents, while there aren't any for this specific combination of elements, we have September 11th as a recent example: 19 men decide to hijack four airplanes and fly them into skyscrapers, and they manage to do that without access to firearms or explosives. And those 19 men were not particularly bright, but they still pulled it off. Chapter 13 of my book discusses the history of conspiracies at length.

Conspiracies get a bad rap because of the JFK assassination. Three of the four most momentous events in American history were the result of a conspiracy: LIncoln's assassination, Pearl Harbor (though that was a conspiracy by an entire nation, which launched a sneak attack—unheard-of in the world of 1941), NOT the JFK assassination, and September 11th. And, as I point out in my book, this idea that conspirators can't keep a secret and even take it to their graves is just naive. What are all those symbols representing unnamed agents doing on the wall at CIA headquarters? It's true that criminals often start to sing when confronted with the death penalty or life in prison, but that's because there's no honor among thieves. Dedicated people who believe in what they're doing tend not to "rat each other out."

Ray Grant link

7/25/2016 07:29:33 am

As far as art projects go, there are dozens that confront polite society in one way or another. Marcel Duchamp putting painted urinals in an art gallery, Michael Heizer digging ditches in the desert that can only be appreciated from the perspective of orbiting satellites, Christo attempting to gift wrap the Brooklyn Bridge, Jackson Pollock's "throw paint at the canvas and see what sticks" technique, and even Robert Mapplethorpe's disturbing photos. In the 1960s, this idea of intentionally upsetting the public with your art was all the rage; it was the avant garde. So why couldn't one artist (Berta Margoulies) suddenly decide that the ultimate form of that confrontation was to make serial murder the centerpiece of your happening?

Incidentally—and it's quite a coincidence isn't it?—Michael O'Hare was co-author of a book entitled PATRONS DESPITE THEMSELVES, which is about how people who fund the arts are forced to pay for things they end up not liking, because it's not their idea of "art."

"I recall hearing some scuttlebutt that when he passes you will attempt to get his fingerprints with the intent of matching them to the Zodiac prints on police record to, once and for all, solve the case."

I hadn't heard that, and frankly have never thought of it, because it's my expectation that O'Hare will leave behind a safe deposit box, containing items such as the Lake Berryessa hood and Paul Stine's wallet, cab driver badge, and car keys.

"The point of this tangent, Ray, is to ask you if you can accept the possibility that your conclusions may be incorrect? Not to make a giant leap and say that they are incorrect (which would, admittedly, be massively self-defeating) but is your mind open merely to the possibility that your conclusions could be amiss?"

Let me respond to that by asking YOU a question, Greg: Imagine you'd spent 30-plus years of your life thinking and researching and writing about a subject in meticulous detail. And then dozens of half-assed amateurs, most of whom read maybe one book on that subject, and who made it clear that they hadn't even bothered to familiarize themselves with your argument, showed up online and began attacking you. And they did this not by pointing out flaws in your argument, but by telling you that you were a crazy crackpot for even imagining such a thing. Would you give much thought to how open your own mind was?

But the short answer to your question is: No, I'm absolutely certain I'm correct, or at least as certain as anyone ever is about anything.

Ask yourself this question: Why would Michael O'Hare leave Harvard and Greater Boston, where he admitted he had what amounted to a gift mortgage (on his house in Brookline), and where he'd worked his entire adult life except for the few years spent at Arthur Little in San Francisco during the Zodiac period? He says in his Harvard Class Report in 1989 that he lives and works in the best of all possible worlds. But when Ray Grant confronted him in November 1990, in front of his colleagues at the JFK School, and called out Michael's mother in the process, O'Hare meekly quit his job, uprooted his family, and absconded to Berkeley, The Goldman School is to the JFK School as the Toledo Mud Hens are to the New York Yankees, so don't tell me he was seeking greener pastures; his job description at Cal-Berkeley was exactly the same as that at Harvard: lecturer in public policy. Who causes himself all kinds of financial, professional, and personal grief to make a lateral move to the minor leagues?

Then, in 2009, he writes an article for The Washington Monthly where he complains about all the odd mail Gareth Penn has sent him over the years . . . but doesn't mention Ray Grant, not even in passing. And then Penn, who had insisted that O'Hare was the Zodiac for three decades, doesn't bother to sue O'Hare for his fingerprints.

Could it be, could it possibly be, that O'Hare and Penn are in cahoots? And O'Hare can't mention the person who turned his life upside-down (me), because doing so will result in a civil action that would force him to submit to fingerprinting?

And then, in 2010, when Mike Butterfield mentions that O'Hare brought me up during a phone conversation, O'Hare has Butterfield delete those three sentences. Check out the second paragraph here: http://tinyurl.com/jnnhfx2. Then check the current version of that article on Butterfield's website.

In other words, my suspects are going to a lot of trouble to act as if my theory is correct. What Zodiac hobbyists think might be of interest if they had an explanation for any of that . . . but they don't.

Greg H.

7/25/2016 09:23:13 pm

Thank you Ray for taking the time to reply in response to my questions.
Regarding your statement that Harvard's JFK School of Public Policy is worlds better than the Goldman School at Berkeley--according US News and World Report the Goldman School actually ranks #1 in the nation whereas the JFK School comes in at #3. Perhaps this wasn't exactly the case around 1990, but regardless I'd be reluctant to say the comparison is as stark as the Bronx Bombers analogy you offered.

Why do people make changes in life? Of course we don't always take what outsiders would perceive as a consistent, upward trajectory. To continue with sports analogies, why did Michael Jordan, at the peak of his career, abscond from the NBA to shag fly balls and work on his rusty-gate swing in baseball's minor leagues?
Why did Jim Brown, in an era before we were aware of the damages playing football takes on the human body, walk away from the game at age 29? Movie career? Well, Okay. Maybe...
Why did The Beatles break up at the height of their fame in 1969? Why did Kurt Cobain take his life in 1994 when he was the world's biggest rock star since The Beatles?

My point is just that people do unpredictable things all the time, for all sorts of reasons we, as observers, may not understand.
Perhaps Michael, having lived in the Bay Area in the late '60s preferred it there to Boston. He no longer would have to deal with the frigid Northeast winters and stifling humid summer weather. Furthermore, it seems slightly odd that if indeed he was trying to run from his putative connection to the Zodiac case, that he'd return straight to the hornet's nest (San Fran.) from which the case originated.
A sensible person, it might be argued, would flee to Switzerland, or Slovenia, or Papua, New Guinea. Get as far away from possible prosecution as humanly possible.

Another question I have for you involves Zodiac's 1974 letters--sent in Jan., Feb., May & July, respectively. If Michael had long since left the Bay Area, how was he still sending these missives over the course of six months in '74? What goal or purpose would it serve to their art project to send a one sentence letter, alluding to the Symbionese Liberation Army, on Feb. 14, 1974? Or to mention the film "Badlands" in May?
I suppose an answer to my first question would be that he sent the letter inside an envelope from Boston to a liasion in the Bay Area who then mailed it out from San Fran. It seems, however, the more we fish for the "how's" behind these inconvenient circumstances, the more we distance ourselves from the useful precepts of Occam's Razor.

In addition, you have pointed to unusual conditions (i.e. Michael's move in relation to the dissemination of your book), but in response I'm reminded of a concept that seems to have reached 'meme' status within internet culture. It is the idea that "correlation does not equal causation."
One of many things which makes the Zodiac case so intriguing is the wealth of circumstantial coincidences that collect around many suspects. For example, take Fred Manalli. As I'm sure you know, a day or two after he died in a car wreck, a classified ad appeared in a local periodical stating something along the lines of "Zodiac, your partner is now in deep real estate." Manalli, as we've learned, has handprinting which bears more than a decent resemblance to the Zodiac letters. In addition, upon his demise, there were sadomasochistic drawings of his murdered former student Kim Allen found with his belongings. What's more, she was last seen carrying a soy barrel emblazoned with a symbol that was very similar to the one found in Zodiac's "Exorcist" letter, Jan. 1974.

If we're analyzing the case on the basis of coincidences, this, and many more (Arthur Allen, for instance, basically implicating himself in the Berryessa attacks by claiming his possession of a bloody knife--that he had used to kill chickens that day), make far more compelling arguments of culpability on the part of those involved than a simple case of Michael moving out of state in concert with being confronted by a book.

The issue of conspiracy as related to 9/11/01 is extremely dicey, Ray. This is undoubtedly a conspiracy in the sense that a rogue group got together and planned an attack. But the usual connotations of the word "conspiracy" might suggest: "oh, the U.S. government was involved." I think the U.S. certainly adhered to Churchill's adage about "never letting a good crisis go to waste," but I don't believe they were actively plotting this attack. Perhaps the greater point here is with regard to "shadow ideas" or "secret histories." The internet has provided a heretofore non-existant forum in which these sort of notions, "conspiracies," if you will, can be discussed rather openly. As a result, we no longer have the monolithic knowledge / belief structures that were once the norm when people's information exchange was largely a one-way medium being fed to them through mainstream newspape

Greg H.

7/25/2016 09:30:07 pm

mainstream newspapers and tv / radio.
There are obviously pros and cons to the new way we do things. People are now far more likely to accept out-and-out lies as the truth because they read it on some fringe website. But having a deeper reservoir of ideas at our disposal can certainly be of use--so long as we have the capacity to be judicial and discerning.

Re: your contention that Michael will leave behind a deposit box cache of Zodiac souvenirs. I hope you are correct, but I'm skeptical this will happen. Why would he leave his family with that burden and besmirch his name and hard-won--at times ardently defended-- legacy?

It's rough sledding out there with all the Zodiac material saturating market. With respect to getting fingerprints, I recall reading Lyndon Lafferty's attempts to get the prints of his suspect "George Tucker" / "Andy Walker" by having him touch a fishbowl or something equally convoluted. The suspect slyly wiped his prints after handing it back; this, naturally, only made Lafferty more convinced of his guilt. But, as far I know, fingerprinting is an outdated criminological technique. It's easy to make mistakes. Even the FBI recently made a terrible blunder and charged Brandon Mayfield in the 2004 Madrid train bombing because his prints were a match. They eventually realized their error. Thank goodness.

Greg H.

7/25/2016 09:37:48 pm

"Then, in 2009, he writes an article for The Washington Monthly where he complains about all the odd mail Gareth Penn has sent him over the years . . . but doesn't mention Ray Grant, not even in passing. And then Penn, who had insisted that O'Hare was the Zodiac for three decades, doesn't bother to sue O'Hare for his fingerprints.

Could it be, could it possibly be, that O'Hare and Penn are in cahoots? And O'Hare can't mention the person who turned his life upside-down (me), because doing so will result in a civil action that would force him to submit to fingerprinting?"

Help me to understand this, Ray..Would you, or theoretically Penn, be in position to sue Michael if you reasoned he said something damning about you in an article or interview, and thereby you'd have authority to attain his fingerprints?
You technically do still have the original article from Michael Butterfield's website. Even though he has since deleted the paragraph in question, I'd suspect (according to the rationale you've stated) the first, unredacted piece would be sufficient for you to proceed with the civil action you've speculated about...

Thanks again for the book offer..I'm going to look into the Kindle options..I have your email..Appreciate it once again...
Best regards,
Greg

Greg H.

7/25/2016 11:35:39 pm

One more thing.. Thank you, by the way, for the handprint samples..They are intriguing but there's an inherent issue with taking isolated words and comparing them with same..I'm sure you've seen this template done with Arthur Allen and Zodiac..They look nearly identical..But when one overviews the broad scope of Allen's handwriting in its natural context, there is little to no resemblance...Here is the link to illustrate my point:

http://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly5vlan3At1r61xy5o1_1280.gif

Ray Grant link

7/26/2016 07:27:53 am

1. Don't get me started on US News & World Report. I went to Pitt, and have two brothers who graduated from Penn State, and a third brother who is an avid Penn State fan. In a recent rating of universities, USN&WR ranked Penn State #48, and Pitt #61. Penn State has numerous branch campuses which anyone can get into (they actually advertise on TV in expensively-produced commercials, which Pitt doesn't do), and 60% of all students on the main campus are branch campus transfers. The students at Penn State are often characterized here locally as "Branch Campus Dummies." Whereas Pitt accepts roughly one student for every ten who apply. But if you point any of this out to a Penn Stater, he pulls out his hip pocket copy of USN&WR and points to the rankings.

2. In 1990, there were 90 faculty members at the JFK School, including such luminaries as Marvin Kalb and Richard Neustadt, who wrote the book Presidential Power that Jack Kennedy himself used as a model for his administration. The Goldman School had 16 faculty members. Maybe USN&WR thinks the Goldman School is more prestigious; I don't think anyone else does.

3. Michael O'Hare has several degrees, all of which were issued by Harvard. He had worked at Arthur D. Little (in the 1960s and early 1970s, and whose headquarters is in Cambridge), MIT (1971-1979, in Cambridge), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1979-1981, in Boston), and the JFK School (1981-1990, in Cambridge). He had just written a long piece in the Harvard Class Reports expressing his wonder that he could own such a wonderful house in Brookline on his and his wife's salary (so I assume he was mortgaged up to the gills), and explaining at length why the JFK School was the best place to be for someone in his line of work. His wife worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He had two little daughters in schools locally, and a sculptor mother who lived in the attic of his house and who presumably had contacts with local museums and art galleries. By moving to Berkeley, he wasn't just changing colleagues in midstream, he was also uprooting his entire family.

4. We know why Michael Jordan switched temporarily to baseball: it had been one of his lifelong dreams, and he had nothing left to prove (he thought) in basketball. Jim Brown said he quit football to make movies. John Lennon explained ad nauseum that he had wanted to leave the Beatles long before he actually did. I don't think Kurt Cobain is a good example in this context.

5. If Michael O'Hare preferred the Bay Area, he had every incentive to stay there two decades and two marriages and two fewer offspring earlier, when it would have been infinitely more convenient for him to set up shop on the West Coast, and I think it's reasonable to assume someone with his resume would have been hired by one of the Bay Area community colleges. O'Hare's life had been lived in Greater Boston from the fall of 1960 until the spring of 1991, with the exception of the time spent in San Francisco; if he hated the weather in New England, he had a funny way of showing it, particularly since he also owned a cottage in Vermont.

6. As to the observation that the Bay Area was Zodiac Central, again, that's the argument that was made to me by the person who bought O'Hare's house at 12 Abbottsford Road in Brookline in 1991, which I cover in a section ("The Brookline Pamphlet") of Chapter 17. Michael O'Hare of my book.

7. And I wouldn't exactly characterize the current state of the Zodiac case in San Francisco as a hornet's nest, at least not for O'Hare. I've gotten a lot more grief from SFPD Inspectors like Kelly Carroll, right here in Pittsburgh, than Michael has. I've had nasty messages left on my answering machine (back when people had those) and had my employer contacted about my activities.

8. As to physically fleeing from possible prosecution, your geographical location wouldn't have much to do with that if you were wanted for multiple murder; it certainly didn't help Ted Kaczynski.

9. But why stop there, Greg? When I said I sent my books in November 1990, and Michael O'Hare was gone from Harvard the following spring, why didn't you just say POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC, and leave it at that?

10. Michael O'Hare didn't have to be in the Bay Area to send Zodiac letters, since Gareth Penn was a co-conspirator and lived and worked in Vallejo and San Rafael.

Ray Grant link

7/26/2016 07:30:01 am

11. Just to save us both a lot of time, you don't need to wait to download my free books to give yourself an idea of the true nature of the Zodiac Project. You can go to ZODIAC KILLER SOLVED on Amazon and read the book's preview, which includes the entire Riverside chapter and the first three sections of the Lake Herman Road chapter. The Riverside murder and the Lake Herman Road murders were Black Ops, so saying that sending material through the mail from one coast to the other is a violation of Occam's Razor is a bit much.

12. Ha-ha! I'm responding to your letter as I read it, and you DID get to POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC!

13. Was Fred Manalli accused of being the Zodiac Killer while he was alive? And did he respond by moving to the other end of the country? Even Arthur Leigh Allen wasn't specifically named by Graysmith until he had passed away. Not only was Michael O'Hare accused in the most provocative way possible (short of my interrupting one of his lectures), but his MOTHER was also accused. Would you force your mother to move to the other end of the country after she'd been accused of being the mastermind behind a notorious serial murder case, without challenging her accuser?

14. If I were accused of being the Zodiac, I would go to the FBI (as O'Hare did at least twice, but without offering his fingerprints) and ask them to book me for comparison with the latents on file, and then I would launch a civil action against my accuser. Any such action by O'Hare would not merely result in a paper decision, since I was gainfully employed at the time and had assets to distribute.

15. I didn't say anything about the U. S. government being involved in the September 11th attacks; 19 men CONSPIRED with others to commit the crimes.

16. How has Michael O'Hare ardently defended himself? He's sidestepped the question.

17. So are you now questioning fingerprints as a means of identification? Wouldn't the FBI have to contact the defense lawyers for thousands of incarcerated perpetrators, and advise them that their clients were free to file an appeal?

18. I'm waiting for the paragraph here that questions whether our senses can be trusted—maybe life is just one long hallucination?

19. I don't think anything Butterfield said could necessarily force O'Hare to comply with a civil action, and even if it could, Butterfield would have to be a friendly witness for me, and there's no chance in Hell he'd cooperate. Mike Butterfield still has my picture from 2008 up atop his Crackpot Files, and to this day he won't admit copying it from my Facebook page prior to any of my websites going up. Since I put a new (in 2010) picture on my Facebook page and took down the old one prior to putting up my TZMS website, Butterfield could only have a copy of that 2008 picture if he'd gone to my Facebook page BEFORE I put the website up (in other words, because he'd been secretly snooping on Mike Morford's private board, and that's how he knew who I was).

20. O'Hare knew about that paragraph in September 2010, because he emailed Harold Pollack a link to that article, and then Pollack (accidentally, I assume) copied the message to my email address. And the paragraph was still up on January 6, 2011, when the WayBack Machine scanned it. But apparently O'Hare got nervous about those three sentences after several months went by, and asked Butterfield to delete them.

21. I'm not a handwriting expert, but the letter formations O'Hare shares with "the Zodiac" are all very eccentric. I've demonstrated that some of the Zodiac crimes were committed by multiple people. O'Hare was working in the Bay Area during the Zodiac period. O'Hare refuses to defend himself despite extreme provocation, and despite having much more to lose than someone like Arthur Leigh Allen. Even if I were not convinced that O'Hare was involved in the Zodiac crimes, I would still believe he is a much better suspect than Allen.

Greg, I'm not going to continue this back-and-forth when I've already offered to gift you both my books. If you want to read them, fine; if not, I suspect we should both move on to other things and not waste each other's time any further.

Chris F link

7/26/2016 10:03:43 am

"Pearl Harbor though that was a conspiracy by an entire nation, which launched a sneak attack unheard-of in the world of 1941"
The attack on Pearl Harbor was hardly a great conspiracy unheard of in the world of 1941.
In November of 1940 British naval forces attack Italian fleet at Taranto in much the same way.
On board the British carrier HMS Illustrious were naval observers from both the United States and Japan.

Ray Grant link

7/26/2016 06:50:23 pm

"On board the British carrier HMS Illustrious were naval observers from both the United States and Japan."

And your point is?

In William Manchester's The Glory And The Dream, which covers U. S. history from 1932 to 1972, he points out that the Japanese went to great lengths to prepare their declaration of war to be presented to U. S. diplomats in Washington immediately prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, the attack occurred on a Sunday morning, and the translators quit early on Saturday, and the Japanese discovered, to their horror, that the attack would then precede any declaration of war, since they weren't able to tranlate the document in time. Manchester pointed out that that seemed like a minor quibble after three decades of sneak attacks (1941-1972), but in 1941, major powers didn't launch sneak attacks without declaring war first.

Benito Mussolini declared war on Great Britain and France on June 10, 1940. The Battle of Taranto occurred on the night of November 11-12, 1940. The assault by the British wasn't a sneak attack; it was an engagement between two warring parties. Should the British have sent the Italians a heads-up first?

I had one angry Zodiac hobbyist announce, on Michael Cole's website, that he'd stopped reading me because I mistook one of the beaches Joseph Bates may have traveled to on the day his daughter died, Corona del Mar, a neighborhood of Newport Beach in Orange County, for Marina del Rey in Los Angeles. My bad, but I fail to see the significance of that error in the grand scheme of things. We know Joseph Bates left for the beach circa 10am, must have gotten there circa 11am, must have left the beach circa 4pm, and got back to Riverside circa 5pm. Determining which specific beach he went to probably doesn't change much.

I had another angry Zodiac hobbyist email me when I said the Alvarez Hypothesis about the mass extinction of the dinosaurs was not accepted right away by scientists, and was therefore an example of an initially rejected idea that eventually came to be accepted (like mine might be, for instance). She wrote a 2,000 word dissertation detailing how the scientific community was "electrified" by Alvarez's idea and took it seriously from the very beginning. Well, okay, but if you go to the Wikipedia article on the subject, you will note that the original observations were made in 1980, and an international panel of scientists didn't endorse the hypothesis until March 2010.

Now my theory is wrong because the British attacked the Italians at Taranto.

Any hobbyists out there who would like to talk about the Zodiac case?

Chris F

7/26/2016 09:28:58 pm

The only time I have ever heard of a conspiracy involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't about the plans and strategy of the Japanese.
The conspiracy was always whether the US Navy and the Roosevelt administration knew about the attack before it happen.
The US was already preparing for a conflict with Japan.
The US had already broken the Japanese naval and military codes.
The US knew Japan was about to make a BIG move when the Japanese attack fleet left Japan, but the US didn't know where.
History has proven the United State made the first shot and had the first kill on a Japanese mini sub entering into Pearl Harbor hours before the first air attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese was committed to total radio silence while making their move, and because of that the US could not listen to the Japanese naval radio traffic.
Also the US military was already fighting a proxy war in China(Flying Tigers) and the US Congress had not declared war on Japan.
Just because a diabolical conspiracy between two or four people was successful does not make that conspiracy great and comparable to military or world events.
I thought what You were writing was if great interest until these great conspiracies where added to your subject matter.

Chris F

7/26/2016 08:35:39 pm

Your the one bring so called great "conspiracies" in to support your subject matter.
You wrote "The assault by the British wasn't a sneak attack"
In November of 1940 France and their navy was under the control of Nazi Germany because of the Second Armistice at Compiègne signed on June 22, 1940.
By November 1940 Britain was already heavily out number in the Mediterranean Sea By the German sub forces, French and Italian fleets.
The Italian navy was already one of the top five naval forces in the world in both numbers and sophication. Most of their naval forces were in the Mediterranean.
What now are You saying "sneak attacks" can't occur during war time?
Does plans, strategy and conspiracies have rules to follow? Are you the one that makes those rules?
I am sorry for wasting your time.

Ray Grant link

7/26/2016 11:12:24 pm

Can we nip this in the bud? When I said 'conspiracy,' I meant conspiracy in the sense that it was a planned crime committed by multiple people—that's it. Lincoln's assassination, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 were all crimes committed by multiple people who had planned their actions in advance, whether they were Southern sympathizers, the Japanese military, or Al Qaeda.

Sheesh.

"Just because a diabolical conspiracy between two or four people was successful does not make that conspiracy great and comparable to military or world events."

No one said it did. I merely pointed out that 3 of the 4 most significant crimes in American history were the result of multiple people planning an operation.

Again: sheesh!

"What now are You saying "sneak attacks" can't occur during war time?"

What now are we arguing semantics? Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack in the sense it was planned and executed by a nation that hadn't yet declared war on its target. The British and Italians at Taranto had already declared war on each other. Okay?¬

"I am sorry for wasting your time."

Oh, don't feel bad. When you talk with hobbyists, you have to expect hobbyist logic.

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