The Zodiac Killer gave directions to two of his attacks on July 5th 1969 and September 27th 1969. In many communications he teased us with his name, although he always either failed to follow through on this promise of a name or we failed to understand the communication. The Pines card was a blend of previous Zodiac activity, but on this occasion he coalesced both, to provide us with the name of the victim he was claiming through a set of directions, exactly as he did just four months later with the arrival of the Monticello card on July 13th 1971. Both postcards supplying a cryptic array of pasted text to identify the victim's name. The instructions he pasted onto the Pines card aimed at the police, whose home on March 22nd 1971 was located at Fremont Avenue and Mono Way on the south tip of Lake Tahoe. It was a simple affair of "passing the Lake Tahoe areas" on the west side of the lake to the "Sierra Club" at Clair Tappaan Lodge on Donner Pass Road. Then from the roadside edge *peek through the pines" to discover the Sierra Club lodge. Once we placed the pasted text of "Sierra Club" over the Clair Tappaan Lodge, the punched hole fell nicely over the Donner Memorial State Park. The entire card designed to intimate he was responsible for the disappearance and murder of Donna Lass, who could be found buried "around in the snow". EIther this was the case, or it was extremely fortuitous that the Sierra Club was located on Donner Pass Road, and the punched hole just happened to fall over Donner Memorial State Park.
The Zodiac Killer by reading the September 26th 1970, San Francisco Chronicle article of Nurse Vanishes -- A Tahoe Mystery, knew that Donna Lass was a resident of San Francisco and worked at the Letterman General Hospital as a nurse, before leaving in June for the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino. Therefore, it wasn't that difficult for him to retrospectively claim he sought her as victim number 12, before the arrival of the Button letter on June 26th 1970 with the victim count now standing at 12. He was clearly intimating he had sought her prior to her move to South Lake Tahoe, having now finally caught up with her. The whole purpose of the card designed to coalesce his activity in San Francisco and South Lake Tahoe under the Zodiac umbrella.
The notion of an author spending a considerable amount of time choosing this particular card, methodically finding and pasting particular text from newspaper cuttings onto the card, and then punching a hole into a preselected position, to then get the victim total horribly out of sequence, doesn't hold any water. Anybody prepared to go to these lengths to design a postcard, to then be accused of failing to notice the innumerable newspaper articles featuring the Zodiac Killer claiming 12, 13, 14 and 17 victims, simply doesn't stack up. Not withstanding the fact, that the author wasn't claiming 12 victims, because he used the past participle of seek (in sought), thereby taking us back to an earlier time.
The Zodiac Killer wasn't responsible for the disappearance and murder of Donna Lass, however, this cleverly designed and thought out card was created to give the impression he was, by suggesting he had trailed her from state to state and wasn't to be denied. Just four months later he would use exactly the same technique when designing the pasted Monticello card. He again retrospectively claimed the murder of Kathy Bilek on July 13th 1971 when this card was mailed. Kathy Bilek was murdered three months earlier in the Villa Montalvo woods in Saratoga on April 11th 1971 - and hence why the Zodiac Killer used the past tense of "shought victim 21" one again. He was taking us back to an earlier time and claiming he had trailed Kathy Bilek before murdering her. We know he wasn't responsible for the murder of Kathy Bilek (because Karl Francis Werner was ultimately jailed for the crime), and so he was very likely not responsible for the Donna Lass murder either. In both cases he attempted to bamboozle us with cryptic text, to deflect from the reality that he had nothing to do with either crime.
The notion of an author spending a considerable amount of time choosing this particular card, methodically finding and pasting particular text from newspaper cuttings onto the card, and then punching a hole into a preselected position, to then get the victim total horribly out of sequence, doesn't hold any water. Anybody prepared to go to these lengths to design a postcard, to then be accused of failing to notice the innumerable newspaper articles featuring the Zodiac Killer claiming 12, 13, 14 and 17 victims, simply doesn't stack up. Not withstanding the fact, that the author wasn't claiming 12 victims, because he used the past participle of seek (in sought), thereby taking us back to an earlier time.
The Zodiac Killer wasn't responsible for the disappearance and murder of Donna Lass, however, this cleverly designed and thought out card was created to give the impression he was, by suggesting he had trailed her from state to state and wasn't to be denied. Just four months later he would use exactly the same technique when designing the pasted Monticello card. He again retrospectively claimed the murder of Kathy Bilek on July 13th 1971 when this card was mailed. Kathy Bilek was murdered three months earlier in the Villa Montalvo woods in Saratoga on April 11th 1971 - and hence why the Zodiac Killer used the past tense of "shought victim 21" one again. He was taking us back to an earlier time and claiming he had trailed Kathy Bilek before murdering her. We know he wasn't responsible for the murder of Kathy Bilek (because Karl Francis Werner was ultimately jailed for the crime), and so he was very likely not responsible for the Donna Lass murder either. In both cases he attempted to bamboozle us with cryptic text, to deflect from the reality that he had nothing to do with either crime.
The July 13th 1971 Monticello card was the mirror image of the Pines card. It contained a set of clues to the name of the victim it was referring to, such as "woods", "April" and "near Monticello". April was April 11th 1971, woods was the Villa Montalvo woods, and Monticello was the directional clue to her name. Just as the Pines card directed us to the Donner Pass Road and Donner Memorial State Park, this card directed us to the neighborhood of Monticello in San Jose, where another one of his previously claimed victim's was buried. Donna Lass was claimed to be buried "around in the snow", whereas the clue to the name of Kathy Bilek lay buried in the Oak Hill Memorial Park cemetery. Not only another victim of Karl Francis Werner, but the Zodiac Killer had previously claimed the murder of Kathie Snoozy by the addition of "Aug" in his Dripping Pen card. He chose the resting place of Kathie Snoozy rather than the burial site of Debra Furlong because Kathie Snoozy was the phonetic namesake of Kathy Bilek.
The Monticello card, just like the Pines card, contained a set of directional instructions which revealed a name - and both led to a Memorial Park. This level of ingenuity and thought, not the hallmarks of a casual hoaxer. The Monticello card was the culmination of a deception spanning nearly two years, but as of August 31st 2020 it has never been released into the public domain.
The Monticello card, just like the Pines card, contained a set of directional instructions which revealed a name - and both led to a Memorial Park. This level of ingenuity and thought, not the hallmarks of a casual hoaxer. The Monticello card was the culmination of a deception spanning nearly two years, but as of August 31st 2020 it has never been released into the public domain.
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