There are a number of individuals in the Zodiac community who have long vouched for suspects, confident to degrees of near certainty they have found the elusive Bay Area murderer, while simultaneously claiming that the Zodiac Killer was an extremely clever individual, deliberately misspelling his words to misdirect us into believing he had a lower intellectual capacity. Therefore, these individuals should think twice about using the Zodiac communications with unabashed confidence to proclaim their suspect had theatrical leanings, was proficient in mathematics, had a penchant for comics and the movies, or had artistic leanings. A killer who can misdirect by way of spelling mistakes, can easily misdirect by composing three musical numbers from The Mikado, or reference a comic book. The Zodiac Killer could very easily have painted a picture of himself completely antithetical to the person he actually was. So, when somebody arrives at a suspect based on the Zodiac communications, they may want to re-evaluate and consider a suspect completely opposite to the one they have chosen. It is extremely difficult to support the idea of misdirection, only when it suits the conclusions you have already concluded. In other words, a Zodiac Killer who only misdirects when you say so. But did the Zodiac Killer deliberately misspell in his communications? The evidence doesn't support this claim.
In an article in the San Francisco Examiner on January 30th 1978 entitled Zodiac:4 Years Later, Sherwood Morrill, a respected documents examiner stated "He is an intelligent guy and we know he deliberately misspells some words because he sometimes spells them correctly". If the Zodiac Killer was intelligent and deliberately misspelling words to misdirect investigators into believing he was less intelligent, why would he spell the word "buttons" in the Dragon card on April 28th 1970 incorrectly, and then nine words later spell it correctly. If the Zodiac Killer was deliberately manufacturing his spelling mistakes, did his attention span falter after only nine words. An intentional and wilful deception would be categorically undermined by such a correction. Twenty-four words later, he would again spell the word incorrectly. This doesn't appear to be an individual achieving a grand deception by constantly fluctuating between good grammar and bad.
Three months later, on April 24th 1978, the Zodiac Killer claimed he was now in "control of all things", unlike the Melvin Belli letter when he was afraid he would "loose all controol" and "loose control". Despite the claimed four year hiatus between the January 29th 1974 Exorcist letter and the April 24th 1978 letter, the Zodiac Killer seemingly didn't forget to mail both communications from San Mateo County or Santa Clara County according to the impression given by investigators. Yet he couldn't remember how to incorrectly spell the word "buttons" twice, within a time span of approximately thirty seconds, eight years earlier
Three months later, on April 24th 1978, the Zodiac Killer claimed he was now in "control of all things", unlike the Melvin Belli letter when he was afraid he would "loose all controol" and "loose control". Despite the claimed four year hiatus between the January 29th 1974 Exorcist letter and the April 24th 1978 letter, the Zodiac Killer seemingly didn't forget to mail both communications from San Mateo County or Santa Clara County according to the impression given by investigators. Yet he couldn't remember how to incorrectly spell the word "buttons" twice, within a time span of approximately thirty seconds, eight years earlier
 San Francisco Chronicle, January 31st 1974 regarding the Exorcist letter |  San Francisco Chronicle, April 28th 1978 regarding the April 24th 1978 letter |
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