On May 17th 1974, the last stand of six Symbionese Liberation Army members took place at 1466 East 54th Street in Los Angeles between the police and the left-wing militant group. Under heavy fire and tear gas grenades, Donald DeFreeze, Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Ling Perry, Angela Atwood, Camilla Hall and Willie Wolfe, all died in the burning building. As a response to the Symbionese Liberation Army deaths, another left-wing group, the Weather Underground, set off a powerful bomb in the Old State Building in the early morning hours of May 31st 1974, shattering the reception room of Attorney General, Evelle J. Younger and caused considerable damage to three floors of the building.
A few hours later, the Los Angeles Times and radio station KPFK were told to go to certain telephone booths where they would retrieve letters from the Weather Underground, expressing their condemnation of the killing of six SLA members, stating "To our sisters and brothers in the Symbionese Liberation Army we want to express with you and all free-loving people grief and rage at the deaths". This "grief and range" was reported heavily throughout the June of 1974, alongside a slew of psychological appraisals of the Symbionese Liberation Army by numerous psychiatrists, turning the "grief and rage" of the Weather Underground back onto the Symbionese Liberation Army, claiming their use of psychotic drugs and repressed hostility towards their parents manifested itself as a "rage reaction". Newspapers piggybacked off this psychoanalysis by stating that the six SLA members "perished not as martyrs but as victims of roles they assumed and emotions they summoned from within themselves - their desperate rage, their destructive and self-destructive fantasy world, their paranoid folly. The forces of their inner rage varied with their life situations. But in each case their imaginative leap released their rage, letting it fix on the society as target and the gun as means".
A few hours later, the Los Angeles Times and radio station KPFK were told to go to certain telephone booths where they would retrieve letters from the Weather Underground, expressing their condemnation of the killing of six SLA members, stating "To our sisters and brothers in the Symbionese Liberation Army we want to express with you and all free-loving people grief and rage at the deaths". This "grief and range" was reported heavily throughout the June of 1974, alongside a slew of psychological appraisals of the Symbionese Liberation Army by numerous psychiatrists, turning the "grief and rage" of the Weather Underground back onto the Symbionese Liberation Army, claiming their use of psychotic drugs and repressed hostility towards their parents manifested itself as a "rage reaction". Newspapers piggybacked off this psychoanalysis by stating that the six SLA members "perished not as martyrs but as victims of roles they assumed and emotions they summoned from within themselves - their desperate rage, their destructive and self-destructive fantasy world, their paranoid folly. The forces of their inner rage varied with their life situations. But in each case their imaginative leap released their rage, letting it fix on the society as target and the gun as means".
The Symbionese Liberation Army were heavily made up of strident feminists who wrote numerous letters expressing the empowerment of women and their fight against misogyny within the capitalist stranglehold of society. The embodiment of misogyny and the target for many women during 1974 was Marc Henry Spinelli, better known as Count Marco, who was a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Often accused of belittling and ridiculing women in his popular newspaper column, it really wasn't that surprising he would receive a letter on July 8th 1974 stating "Editor. Put Marco back in the hell-hole whence it came - he has a serious psychological disorder. I suggest you refer him to a shrink. Meanwhile, cancel the Count Marco column. Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I - the Red Phantom (red with rage)".
This is a letter much more likely to have originated from the hand of a female writer, possibly from a remaining Symbionese Liberation Army member, a sympathizer or friend of the group or somebody allied to the Weather Underground, who made special reference to a "psychological disorder", "shrink" and "rage", thereby turning the newspaper column inches throughout June back onto an individual who embodied everything they hated about American society - a misogynistic and capitalist newspaper columnist in the clutches of a newspaper magnate.
Or was it the Zodiac Killer, who didn't use the "Zodiac speaking" introduction, didn't use his crosshairs, didn't use a running victim total, didn't threaten to murder anyone, didn't use handwriting synonymous with previous letters (according to most observers), didn't make any spelling mistakes, and used an address style only previously found on the Symbionese Liberation Army letter/envelope mailed on February 3rd 1974? A letter mailed from Los Angeles, totally devoted to the Symbionese Liberation Army - and again - devoid of all the aforementioned traits of the Zodiac Killer. The handwriting on the Red Phantom envelope is virtually identical to the handwriting on the SLA envelope, despite both of these letters being kept out of the public domain. So why do Zodiac researchers keep insisting that these are Zodiac communications despite the overwhelming evidence against? The answer is pretty straightforward. They have been brainwashed by individuals who peddle misinformation and perpetuate the notion that letters can be authenticated by looking at them. They are continuously bombarded with lazy references to an authenticated list of Zodiac communications, in absence of any critical thinking on behalf of themselves. It's easier for them to follow the pack and abandon the notion of self discovery.
When we throw in the Symbionese Liberation Army letter mailed on February 10th 1974 to the Hearst family beginning with "Dear" and signing off with "A friend", just like the February 3rd 1974 SLA letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, seven days earlier, it becomes apparent that both the February 3rd 1974 and July 8th 1974 communications have one author, who is connected to the February 10th 1974 letter. But will this article make any difference to individuals, who for decades have believed the SLA and Red Phantom letters are from the Zodiac Killer. The answer is an unequivocal no - because these individuals don't follow evidence and lines of logic - they follow the notion of what they have been told to be true in absence of any reasoning. What they have been indoctrinated with for decades is too powerful for any logic to penetrate. Ask them why they believe the Red Phantom letter to be genuine, and they will tell you that handwriting document examiners told them so. The very same document examiners that can't agree with themselves about certain other Zodiac letters - and the many certified document examiners who cannot agree with each other on who authored the JonBenet Ramsey 3-page ransom note. Not to mention the certified document examiners who align themselves to multiple "Zodiac suspects" who can't all be the Zodiac Killer. Yet people will still quote the authorative statement of a document examiner as evidence, despite the very nature of handwriting analysis being subjective. In absence of this argument, I'm still waiting for a logical and coherent answer to why this letter is genuine Zodiac material. They can't give you one, because there isn't one.
What you will be presented with is this: "I would rather believe a document examiner with first-hand knowledge of the letter than somebody analysing the letter 50 years later". This is not an answer, only whataboutery. It attempts to suspend your critical thinking about the flaws of the handwriting argument shown above, by making a comparison between two individuals and arguing one is better than the other. It doesn't address the issue of why we should believe document examiners who can't agree with one another. You will notice that this issue is ignored when boldly claiming a letter has been authenticated. I would like to know which of the many document examiners got the final vote on which communications made the authenticated list. This is another question that won't be answered by esteemed Zodiac researchers, who have a perfunctory attitude towards any kind of analysis regarding the Zodiac Killer communications. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
This is a letter much more likely to have originated from the hand of a female writer, possibly from a remaining Symbionese Liberation Army member, a sympathizer or friend of the group or somebody allied to the Weather Underground, who made special reference to a "psychological disorder", "shrink" and "rage", thereby turning the newspaper column inches throughout June back onto an individual who embodied everything they hated about American society - a misogynistic and capitalist newspaper columnist in the clutches of a newspaper magnate.
Or was it the Zodiac Killer, who didn't use the "Zodiac speaking" introduction, didn't use his crosshairs, didn't use a running victim total, didn't threaten to murder anyone, didn't use handwriting synonymous with previous letters (according to most observers), didn't make any spelling mistakes, and used an address style only previously found on the Symbionese Liberation Army letter/envelope mailed on February 3rd 1974? A letter mailed from Los Angeles, totally devoted to the Symbionese Liberation Army - and again - devoid of all the aforementioned traits of the Zodiac Killer. The handwriting on the Red Phantom envelope is virtually identical to the handwriting on the SLA envelope, despite both of these letters being kept out of the public domain. So why do Zodiac researchers keep insisting that these are Zodiac communications despite the overwhelming evidence against? The answer is pretty straightforward. They have been brainwashed by individuals who peddle misinformation and perpetuate the notion that letters can be authenticated by looking at them. They are continuously bombarded with lazy references to an authenticated list of Zodiac communications, in absence of any critical thinking on behalf of themselves. It's easier for them to follow the pack and abandon the notion of self discovery.
When we throw in the Symbionese Liberation Army letter mailed on February 10th 1974 to the Hearst family beginning with "Dear" and signing off with "A friend", just like the February 3rd 1974 SLA letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, seven days earlier, it becomes apparent that both the February 3rd 1974 and July 8th 1974 communications have one author, who is connected to the February 10th 1974 letter. But will this article make any difference to individuals, who for decades have believed the SLA and Red Phantom letters are from the Zodiac Killer. The answer is an unequivocal no - because these individuals don't follow evidence and lines of logic - they follow the notion of what they have been told to be true in absence of any reasoning. What they have been indoctrinated with for decades is too powerful for any logic to penetrate. Ask them why they believe the Red Phantom letter to be genuine, and they will tell you that handwriting document examiners told them so. The very same document examiners that can't agree with themselves about certain other Zodiac letters - and the many certified document examiners who cannot agree with each other on who authored the JonBenet Ramsey 3-page ransom note. Not to mention the certified document examiners who align themselves to multiple "Zodiac suspects" who can't all be the Zodiac Killer. Yet people will still quote the authorative statement of a document examiner as evidence, despite the very nature of handwriting analysis being subjective. In absence of this argument, I'm still waiting for a logical and coherent answer to why this letter is genuine Zodiac material. They can't give you one, because there isn't one.
What you will be presented with is this: "I would rather believe a document examiner with first-hand knowledge of the letter than somebody analysing the letter 50 years later". This is not an answer, only whataboutery. It attempts to suspend your critical thinking about the flaws of the handwriting argument shown above, by making a comparison between two individuals and arguing one is better than the other. It doesn't address the issue of why we should believe document examiners who can't agree with one another. You will notice that this issue is ignored when boldly claiming a letter has been authenticated. I would like to know which of the many document examiners got the final vote on which communications made the authenticated list. This is another question that won't be answered by esteemed Zodiac researchers, who have a perfunctory attitude towards any kind of analysis regarding the Zodiac Killer communications. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Letter mailed to the Hearst family on February 10th 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army or "A friend" of the group
RSS Feed
