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B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 1

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B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 2

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Holland, B.D. The Skeletons Are Dancing: Cracking the Zodiac Halloween Card Code to reveal the Zodiac Killer’s identity.

Zodiachalloweencard.com. Kindle Edition.

Disclaimer:

In this book, no identification with actual persons (living or deceased) is intended or should be inferred. No person or entity associated with this book is offering the real name of a real person as a suspect in a crime.

This book is speculative and provided solely for entertainment purposes. No warranty whatsoever is made that any of the content of this book is accurate. There is categorically no declaration that any account in this book is real, correct, or precise. Any likeness to actual persons, either living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

While best efforts have been used in preparing this book, the author and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind and assume no liabilities or be held responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information in this book. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 3

THE

SKELETONS

ARE

DANCING

(Cracking the Zodiac Halloween Card Code to reveal the Zodiac Killer’s

identity.)

B.D. HOLLAND

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 4

In the memory of

Cheri Jo Bates

David Arthur Faraday

Betty Lou Jensen

Cecelia Ann Shepard

Paul Lee Stine

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 5

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the last minute anonymous editor who took up the

gauntlet to try and make this manuscript readable for Halloween 2019 under such short notice. My family and friends' encouragement made this

possible. Big thanks to Tahoe27 for revealing the Tim Holt comic book

connection to the Zodiac. A shout out to everyone who believed the

Zodiac codes could still be solved.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the first run of the book so we can

get this out to more people.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 6

NOTICE

As of the date of the first ebook Kindle publication (Halloween 2019), all the relevant decoding information has been sent to the appropriate authorities. No evidence is being withheld. The following entities have the material submitted in emails from May-Oct 2019.

• SFPD Cold Case department through SFPD Media Relations.

• San Francisco FBI.

• Sheriff of Napa County.

• Sonoma-County Sheriff Department.

• Mayor of Vallejo.

• Sheriff of the city of Vallejo.

• A retired ex-LAPD detective supervisor.

I have done my public duty in handing over these findings to official chan- nels. I make no claims as to them having read this material or the status of the content with them. The status of the material is something only they, not I, can answer.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 7

“It may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which

human ingenuity cannot resolve.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 8

Contents

PREFACE 10

CHAPTER 1 - “I CAN’T STOP COPYING.” 20

CHAPTER 2 - “SERIAL MISTAKES.” 29

CHAPTER 3 - “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?” 40

CHAPTER 4 - “A MUG’S GAME.” 76

CHAPTER 5 - “SLAIN ON LOVER’S LANE.” 84

CHAPTER 6 - “THE WHITE SUSPECT WHO BECAME BLACK.” 110

CHAPTER 7 - “WHY THE WORLD’S FIRST COSPLAY?” 128

CHAPTER 8 - “SERIAL STOPPING.” 157

CHAPTER 9 - “HALLOWEEN EVE.” 184

CHAPTER 10 - “THE GEOGRAPHICAL ZODIAC.” 218

CHAPTER 11 - “CHICKEN OR THE EGG?” 232

CHAPTER 12 - “THE ZODIAC HALLOWEEN CARD SOLUTION.” 241

CHAPTER 13 - “APPLIED Z SOLUTIONS” 286

CHAPTER 14 - “POSSIBLE 340 CIPHER MECHANISM SOLUTION.”309

CHAPTER 15 - “POSSIBLE LAKE TAHOE CARD MECHANISM.” 319

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 9

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 10

PREFACE

“Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I”

- the Red Phantom (red with rage)

[Zodiac Killer Letter, July 8th, 1974]

I, too, will write semi-anonymously, but for reasons altogether different for why the Zodiac killer did. The Zodiac killer wrote anonymously because the consequence of not doing so would likely be the Californian death penalty for crimes, which include multiple homicides, terrorist threats, and theft. Anonymously this attention-seeking psychopath aggressively murdered couples and then taunted Californian society by mailing mocking letters to the media informing them to publish codes and ciphers or else he would murder more people. Even though his letters were published, the Zodiac continued to commit murders and send more threatening messages leaving citizens of Northern California in a state of fear that a psychopath was on the loose.

Despite claims that some persons of interest are the Zodiac, this psychopath was never officially captured. The current status at the time of this writing is that the Zodiac is an UNSUB (unidentified/unknown subject of an investigation) and that this serial homicide case remains unsolved.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 11

Even today, half a century later, the Zodiac killer mystery still garners our attention. The Zodiac killer did not carry out a lot of murders compared to many other serial killers (officially there were five homicides, although conceivably many more). What does stand out is the Zodiac changed quite considerably how he committed some of his crimes and then bragged about them in letters. The Zodiac was a communicator who changed his modus operandi (M.O) and was doing this back in 1969 during an era when very little was known about serial killers.

The Zodiac phoned in his murders to local dispatches from public phonebooths in towns. Then later send letters and cards to the newspapers with ‘Rush to Editor’ on the envelope and inside a document claiming responsibility and threatening more mayhem if his codes were not published. Modus operandi changing and a communicator like this are both rare traits of serial murderers. This is a dominant feature that links the Zodiac crimes despite the changing M.O.

In 1969 at the height of the sixties peace movement, that after-summer party wave of love was broken by a series of frightening and violent murders. They were carried out by what the media dubbed a psychopath who wanted people to read about his crimes while challenging them to break his codes. Behavior so diametrically opposed to the times that it gripped the entire city of San Francisco, striking fear into the lives of parents for B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 12 their schoolchildren, taxi drivers, and couples out enjoying their evenings.

There seemed no limits on whom or where this killer would strike next and then boast about it with taunting letters to several high profile Cali- fornian newspapers. The key to his emotional need was the terror he in- stilled upon people living in California, and they felt it, which he also knew because he watched and read everything about this villain persona he had created and forced onto society. All we need to understand the general fantasy of this killer is to add the image of Batman chasing after him in a game of cat and mouse. The Zodiac would have seen himself as this kind of ‘Riddler’ type nemesis. This is the closest we can come to some sort of

“logical” reason for his crimes, which can’t be fully understood by sane people who aren’t also psychopaths themselves.

In the following chapters, we will provide you with more general information about the Zodiac killer, as well as sharing evidence we’ve discovered that reveals the intended name the Zodiac hid in his Halloween Card code.

This book will assume the reader has some familiarity with the Zodiac case. We will not be preprinting all the Zodiac letters, for example, nor photographs of crime scenes and those involved. There are more than enough websites and books out there dedicated to these elements, and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 13 they are easily found. This book will generally cover salient points, but the vast majority of it will be spent on an advanced working through the material and discussing aspects of it. We shall provide you with resources at the end of this book should you need them.

To my knowledge, only two other people have solved a Zodiac hidden message. In 1969, a schoolteacher, Donald Harden, and his wife Bettye learned that a serial killer had ciphers published by three newspapers.

They used a homophonic substitute to solve the 408 cipher in less than a day.

The Hardens simply guessed that the Zodiac would use the word kill. Us- ing the double Ls at the end of kill, they searched through the cipher for two of the same symbols next to each other. Then they had the letters K and I, the two symbols to the left of these doubles. Not only that, but kill has different forms such as tenses. For example, killed and killing could also be used. Since they had already worked out the symbol for the letter

I, they could also work out the symbol for the letter G. This is how they solved the 408 cipher which was later confirmed by the FBI.

Guessing like this is not uncommon in mathematics. Some famous equations are the result of guessing. The trick is to make it an outstanding educational guess. The mathematician has an idea of what the equation should look like from experience. There are many variations B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 14 of how that equation could be, and one way to generate complex formulas is that the mathematician tries to work backward with a proposed solution. Eventually, going through many different iterations of possible equations, the mathematician may strike it lucky and find the one that works. However, this sort of luck coming about was given a higher chance by the mathematician already knowing how the answer should sort of look in the first place. This is discussed in “Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures By Richard P. Feynman”

(1987).

Donald and Bettye Harden did something similar to the 408 cipher without the cipher key. They simply didn’t need one. However, finding the key is something that is possibly generated by some decoding. You can be led to find the key. So working backward from a solve, we can discover the key sometimes.

These mathematical methodologies are how to get out of a code’s catch

22. Like a whirlpool, fighting against the current will only end up with you drowning. There are two ways out. Swim with the direction of the whirlpool and pick up speed, eventually helping to slingshot you out of the vortex as you make a quick burst attempt to swim outside of it. Diving a little at this point can also help. Find the area with the least resistance and keep calm and then go for it. Like maths, there are other ways to deal with the problem. Another is to dive when you hit the center of the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 15 vortex, swimming down and out as the strength of whirlpool is less the deeper you go. The trouble is when you fight against it, which tires you out. Cracking the Zodiac’s full name was no different than this analogy.

Instead of being bogged down by the complexity of it all, I kept it simple, went with the flow of such simplicity, and ended up with results. I used a well-known starting point and eventually even found how many keys there were, what they were, and how to use them. This is what helped me unlock the Halloween card code fully.

While I have a lot of respects for what the Hardens undercovered, I think you will find that what this book uncovers is even better because of its implications. A break like this has not been seen by the public in the

Zodiac case for at least half a century. You are about to see things as the

Zodiac saw them for the first time.

What follows is my hobby journey sleuthing recently through two cases and then how I applied them to the Zodiac case. Areas of each of these cases helped me to understand more about how the Zodiac thought when designing his puzzles and his reasons for doing so.

There is so much to each of the cases I touch upon. This would include all the work done on handwriting analysis, linguistics, potential suspects, persons of interest, investigators, and people involved. I cover a fair amount about these cases along with the core timelines needed to B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 16 understand them somewhat, but I am aware these cases are likely not the primary motivators for why you have this book. You want answers to codes. You will have them, I promise, but I want to explain how I got there, which comprises the first two-thirds of this book.

Each case is still significant in understanding how I worked through the

Zodiac codes, and they have value in themselves. You can skip them if you wish and go directly to the final few chapters of The skeletons are

Dancing, which demonstrates in text and images how I feel I solved the

Zodiac’s Halloween card code. Then you will want to turn back to the beginning to read more about my general thoughts on these cases. No doubt you will want to skip over this and go right to the Halloween card solution. But I promise you that the journey as to how I arrived at my conclusion will provide fascinating insight into the mind of the Zodiac

Killer.

The world is changing, and when it comes to detecting serial killers, their time is indeed coming to an end because of science. They might get away with murder in the short-term, but we are moving into a new era where they will often quickly be discovered. Enough to stop them from trying to carry out more homicides undetected. It’s game over for them, and science is the candle in their darkness leading us to them… as well as a bit of old fashioned sleuthing. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 17

It is old fashioned sleuthing that I think can help break this case, but it will be science that is the final assertion of the facts. This is the direct evidence needed that beats all circumstantial evidence. For this reason, the first chapter of this book is dedicated to DNA. Regardless of cracking codes, no matter how many circumstantial connections it may provide, it will be DNA that gauges if we were right or wrong. If not DNA, we know that it will have to be another science, such as fingerprint identification that will do it.

With our first chapter, we hope to show how essential science is to solving this – and any – case. Sleuthing works the soft circumstantial evidence in some form of data analysis. If applicable to crime, some of these can be brought up and used in a court of law as circumstantial evidence. Some are weak and easily dismissed by the defense, but even if they are soft, they can explain why an analysis went from one point to another. In this sense, circumstantial evidence can form links that took an analysis from here to there, which can help narratives. It all depends on what the sleuthing produces, which can be anything. This book discusses such processing delivering potential Zodiac communication solutions. These can never be the scientific proof of a connection between the evidence and any individuals, though. They can only possibly point in some directions.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 18

The story within these pages will hopefully not just inspire others to help solve crimes, it will discourage others from thinking they can get away them. All the time, you leave yourself behind… or at least a part of you.

That part is called DNA. Using the latest research, genealogy DNA can predict small populations of family groups who could match the DNA.

How I discovered the Zodiac’s identity has nothing to do with DNA, but

DNA will likely be used to point to him in the end.

There is no pause button out there to stop sleuthing. I have no magic button to turn it off for everybody. Will it become another tool in the fight against crime? Will it interfere in the fight against violent crime? I suppose that is a question for the reader to decide.

My own view of it all is like journalism, especially a crime-correspondent, who would learn about cases and write about them. They may even be tasked with investigative reporting and use tools such as inside sources and questioning people to learn more details. Like sleuthing, they may uncover relevant material and bring more facts to light. Investigation companies do their own sleuthing and are paid by clients to do so. Some of those clients are journalists. Risk management can also perform data analysis similar to what sleuthing can do. It is therefore quite understandable that the term sleuthing is broadly stretching itself across many disciplines, covering lots of different sorts of people and used for any number of reasons. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 19

How you deal with the findings of this book is up to you, but please do not use it in any way to single anyone out in real life as the Zodiac. If you have information, then send it to investigators. The author of this book has already done that.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 20

Chapter 1 - “I can’t stop copying.”

“DNA has been aptly described as the first

three-dimensional Xerox machine.” - Kenneth Boulding

[Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978]

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) is the world’s biggest plagiarizer. Most of the time it copies word for word, but does sometimes make mistakes. We have all heard how DNA is like a biological fingerprint that is unique to individuals and how humans leave traces of DNA behind. It can be carried in such secretions as blood, perspiration, urine, semen, saliva, and tears.

Before DNA fingerprinting, forensic scientists could determine blood type and secretion status of an offender who left behind such clues. While these could be used to eliminate a person of interest, they could not be used to directly identify the perpetrator because so many people share the same blood types and secretion status. DNA is different because it is unique to each individual.

This is why DNA found at crime scenes is of paramount forensic importance. If a person of interest in a case has their DNA taken and if it is compared to DNA found at the crime scene and matches, this can be central to the evidence against them. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 21

Genetic fingerprinting has undergone several revolutions since Alec

Jeffreys' 1984 discovery. Jeffreys wasn’t the first person to understand that DNA could be used to identify offenders. Back in 1869, Friedrich

Miescher discovered DNA microscopically. By 1878 Albrecht Kossl has found components to it, such as nucleobases. In 1909 Phoebus Levene discovered more parts such as the phosphate backbone. In 1927 Nikolai

Koltsov suggested it could carry genetic information as two strands that could replicate, which was confirmed in 1928 by Frederick Griffith in his experiments. In 1933 Jean Branchet discovered that DNA is mainly located in the nucleus of the cells of all living things. In 1937 DNA was X- rayed by William Astbury, proposing it had a consistent structure.

Between 1937 and 1943, DNA as the source of hereditary material was established by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, Maclyn McCarty, Alfred

Hershey, and Martha Chase. The big breakthrough in DNA came in 1951 when Francis Crick, James Watson, using the X-ray work of Rosalind

Franklin and Raymond Gosling discovered the double-helix structure of

DNA. In 1953 Linus Pauling and Robert Corey modeled nucleic acids in triplets inside the double-helix structure. In the same year, Maurice

Wilkins published his experiments showing the double-helix structure was correct. In 1958 the Meselson-Stahl experiment showed how DNA replicated. Crick continued to work on DNA to unlock its genetic code by discovering codons that were eventually deciphered by Har Gobind

Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Marshall Warren Nirenberg. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 22

By this stage, scientists had well understood the potential for DNA to be a genetic fingerprint left behind by criminals but were faced with two problems. First was an excellent technique to recover DNA from crime scenes. The second and much more troublesome problem was that the

DNA sequence was too long and complicated to quantify fully. It turned out to be over 3 billion base pairs. No supercomputer in the 1950s, even right through to the start of the 21st century would be able to process a single sequence from a crime scene within any useful time-frame. It seemed while scientists had made significant discoveries on the human genetic blueprint, the ability to use it for criminal identification wasn’t feasible. Through the decades, scientists had found ways to make general claims about the ethnic background of some DNA and if it belonged to a male or female, but this fell well short of the capability of DNA to directly identify individuals. After all, humans share mostly the same DNA. It is what makes us human. We deviate from each other by about 0.1%.

Furthermore, because DNA is conserved among all living species of organisms, we differ from chimpanzees by just 1.2%.

Alec Jeffreys made the superhuman scientific leap in 1984. Described as a

‘Eureka moment’ while experimenting with DNA, Jeffreys produced a technique which discovered minor differences between DNA taken from several human beings. Within the human genome, he found areas of minisatellite DNA called short-tandem repeats (STRs), which does not B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 23 code for anything. It’s a bit like a malfunctioned electronic typewriter that is left on after someone has written an essay and continues to repeat some sequence of letters at the bottom of the page, which goes on and on. Imagine millions of electronic typewriters that came out of the factory, and all have the malfunction, but the malfunctioning sequences they type out when left on are unique to each typewriter. In theory, you can come across a page made by one of these typewriters, and just by comparing the sequences of the malfunction at the end, find the corresponding specific typewriter that did it to the exclusion of all others.

What this means is that instead of each individual's genetic code needing sequencing, only these specific non-coding regions required sequencing, massively cutting down the workload and the time to match an individual’s genetic fingerprint to DNA recovered from a crime. Jeffreys had literally jumped forensic DNA testing several decades ahead in 1984.

By comparison, the human genome project to sequence the human genetic code was only completed in 2003, almost twenty years after

Jeffreys discovery.

In just the following year, Jeffrey’s significant find was put to use in 1985 to determine the parents of a British boy whose family was from Ghana.

This gave him the confidence to use his process of STR analysis to identify B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 24 the serial killer of Lynda Mann (1983) and Dawn Ashworth (1986), teenagers who were raped and murdered in Narborough, Leicestershire, UK.

Not only had the perpetrator’s DNA been matched to both crimes through semen DNA, but the semen meant that this particular DNA had to have come from the same offender. A man called Richard Buckland was a prime suspect in the case. By comparing Buckland’s DNA to the perpetrator's DNA, Jeffreys discovered that Buckland could not have contributed the DNA to the crime scenes as his DNA was different. So instead of a match, DNA analysis used for the first time with a crime cleared a suspect and exonerating him for the wrongdoing. Throughout the next several decades, this type of DNA analysis would be used to get people off death row and out of jail for crimes they didn’t commit. It would also be used to identify the correct perpetrators.

Due to the mismatch between Buckland’s DNA and the murderer of Mann and Ashworth, investigators had to find a way to discover the true offender. The first DNA dragnet took place across Leicestershire in the UK, involving more than 5,500 men. In under half a year, all the men’s DNA had been cross-referenced with the offender’s DNA. Unfortunately, none of them matched.

It took a member of the public to do a little sleuthing after overhearing a conversation between bakers at a pub in Leicester called The Clarendon. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 25

Someone over-heard a chat in which one of the bakers, Ian Kelly, told others there that a fellow worker named Colin Pitchfork had asked him to give blood in his place. Kelly said that Pitchfork asked him to do this because he had already given blood covering for somebody else who wanted to avoid being suspected because of a theft conviction. That overheard conversation was subsequently reported to police who then arrested

Pitchfork the following month. Pitchfork confessed to the murders. This incident caused DNA collections to be done differently to avoid sample swapping.

Recovering DNA from any crime scene was somewhat problematic. The first problem was that DNA was so small that an offender would have to leave a large deposit for scientific equipment to analyze it. Semen and blood fluids were usually good enough, but some crime scenes didn’t involve the perpetrator leaving either type. Another problem was that even if DNA were recovered, the experiment would use up all the evidence in sequencing the DNA for profiling.

The year before Jeffreys had made his breakthrough, Kary Mullis in 1983 had discovered a way to take small samples of DNA and use the biochemical mechanisms of DNA replication that take place inside a cell, inside a test tube instead. This meant that a small sample of DNA could be replicated over and over into larger samples of the same DNA. It was B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 26 called polymerase chain reaction, PCR. Now forensic analysis didn’t need to use up all the evidence and would still have plenty available or even make more through PCR.

Combining Jeffreys STR analysis and Mullis PCR laid the groundwork for solving many criminal cases henceforth. By the early 1990s, the FBI in

America had developed a sophisticated database containing the DNA of offenders, which could then be used to compare with DNA recovered from crimes. It is called the Combined DNA Index System, CODIS.

At the start of the 21st-century, scientists had developed ways to map genetic profiles with the possibility of linking a perpetrator's DNA to a relative who had given DNA for an unrelated offense. In 2003 in the UK, the DNA of the nephew of the murderer of Lynette White was used to close in on the offender. Jeffrey Gafoor was isolated down to a small pool of suspects that were related to the nephew’s DNA. This demonstrated that the scope of DNA being used to detect criminals now encompasses close relatives as well to find them. So even if the perpetrator had not given a DNA sample, someone close to them could be used to identify them if the relative’s DNA was tested.

One of the most significant cases involving this type of family-related DNA analysis was the finding that a man called Christopher Franklin had DNA closely associated with that of the Grim Sleeper serial killer who murdered B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 27

10 to 25+ victims from 1985 and 2007. It turned out that Christopher’s father, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., was a match to the serial killer’s DNA.

While arrested in 2010, his trial did not take place until 2016.

Scientists understood how family-related DNA analysis could be expanded beyond just close relatives but even further relatives much more distant, separated by more time and more locations. The discipline is called bioinformatics and specifically familial DNA analysis. It involves the study of phylogenetics. The process revolved around building a family tree out of the DNA recovered from the crime scene. This family tree uses a combination of criminal databases, public databases and public records.

The tree can include many millions of potential people at the start, but as the DNA analysis gets more specific, the number of potential candidates whittles down. This list, combined with other investigative information, can be used to narrow things down even more to something more manageable by a team of investigators.

One of the most famous cases to date was the identification of the main suspect Joseph James DeAngelo charged with being the notorious Golden

State Killer (a.k.a EARONS, the East Area Rapist, and Original Night

Stalker) of Californian suburbia from 1974-1986.

However, despite familial DNA testing, it was plain old sleuthing that helped me probably identify the Zodiac’s name. DNA testing (if there is a B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 28 full profile in this case) will confirm if the person is the Zodiac or not, but unlike many cases, the Zodiac case is quite heavy on other forensics, such as palmprints, fingerprints, ballistics (slugs and casings), handwriting and other clues.

Familial DNA analysis is capturing these offenders at such a high rate that nearly every week, a cold-case is being solved. Familial DNA analysis is turning the tables on serial killers. If they are alive, they are the ones now living in fear because of it.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 29

Chapter 2 - “Serial mistakes.”

“Everybody Makes a Mistake.” – Otis Redding.

[The Soul Album, 1966]

Like DNA replication, after a while serial killers make some mistakes. Like

DNA the error can be non-coding and negligible. However, sometimes it can be disastrous. So while some of those mistakes will not get them identified, other errors can lead that way.

While familial DNA testing is no doubt the biggest obstacle to a serial killer remaining unidentified, they can and often do make mistakes that also lead to their capture. I believe the Zodiac killer has made a big mistake in revealing his name. It is not the first time serial killers have made booboos. An excellent example of a serial killer’s ego getting the better of them is BTK, short for Bind-Torture-Kill, a communicating sexual sadist who operated in Wichita, KS between the 1970s and early 1990s. He re- sumed communications, which led to his capture at the start of the 21st century. He was unusual for a serial killer because like the Zodiac, it appears he stopped killing and was also a communicator. Let us quickly run down the various crimes and communications of BTK for a general idea of the case before we explain how a mistake led to his capture

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 30

On January 15th, 1974, BTK attacked members of the Otero family in

Wichita. Using a gun, he entered the home and proceeded to have family members tie each other up. He used ropes and plastic bags to suffocate and strangle four of the family. The bodies were found by the eldest son.

On April 4th, 1974, he stabbed Kathryn Bright. She sustained three knife wounds to the abdomen and later died at Wesley Medical Centre.

In October of the same year, he left a detailed letter describing his crimes inside a book in the Wichita Public Library, which appeared to contain details of the homicides that only the killer would know.

On March 17, 1977, BTK strangled Shirley Vian using a rope. Later that same year, on December 8th, he strangled Nancy Fox with a belt.

Then the following year of 1978, BTK contacted the NBC/ABC-affiliated

Witchita KAKE news network in writing, claiming to be the killer of the victims mentioned above. He gave himself the moniker of BTK and signed his letters with a strange sexual symbol.

In 1979 BTK failed to murder a woman he was stalking, Anna Williams, because she wasn’t at home.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 31

It wasn’t until the mid-80s that BTK would strike again. In 1985 he strangled Marine Hedge with his hands. Instead of leaving her body in her home as he had done the others, he moved her body to Christ Lutheran

Church, where he photographed her in various states of bondage and then dumped her body near a road.

In September of 1986, Vicki Wegerle was strangled by BTK with a nylon stocking.

In an unrelated case in 1988, a family called the Fagers was murdered in

Wichita. BTK sent a letter saying he was not responsible for the murders.

Unsurprisingly during the 80s, the person who was BTK had managed to obtain two restraining orders against him from women he had stalked, yet he was still not considered a candidate for the BTK crimes.

In January of 1991, BTK used a pantyhose to strangle Dolores E. Davis.

She was last of the BTK homicides.

In March 2004, BTK embarked on a series of correspondence that would eventually lead to his capture. A letter from Bill Thomas Killman (notice the letters BTK in the initials) was sent to the Wichita Eagle newspaper.

Inside the letter was photographs of Vicki Wegerle along with her driving B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 32

ID. Wichita investigators were not confident that Wegerle was a BTK victim but had recovered DNA from her nails as she defended herself from her attacker. This piece of DNA was a substantial lead in the case. If BTK had left this DNA today, familial DNA analysis would quickly lead to his capture. Back in 2004, investigators decided to use the same DNA dragnet that helped catch Colin Pitchfork in Leicestershire, UK. None of the

1,300 samples that investigators had managed to gather matched the

Wegerle attackers’ DNA.

In May of 2004, KAKE received another letter. This time BTK sent a list of chapter headings relating to his crimes called the BTK Story. He included several fake IDs he had made as well as a word game (word games are also something the Zodiac killer enjoyed making).

Another package was left out in the open to be found. It was discovered on June 9th, and inside was the first chapter of his idea for a book. It also contained sketches of sexual bondage as well as graphic descriptions of his crimes.

In July, he left a package in the book return bin of a library. Here he laid claim to a homicide, which we now know he did not commit and included other assorted material.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 33

In October, he mailed a package via a UPS drop box with images of bondage and additional photographs of a horrific nature. He wrote about his real-life (which we now know was filled with lies).

In December, BTK left a package with a doll and a rope around her neck along with more evidence such a Nancy Fox’s driving ID.

In January of 2005, BTK made his first big mistake only bested by leaving his DNA at a crime scene. In the parking lot of a Home Depot, he placed a package in the back of a stranger’s truck. CCTV at the parking lot captured the grainy image of a man putting the box in the open rear of the truck, walking away and getting into his vehicle before driving off.

Investigators using enhancement techniques and comparative analysis decided that BTK was driving a black Jeep Cherokee. Now they knew what type of Jeep he drove and had his DNA. Between those two pieces of information and the probability that BTK lived in the area, the net was closing through a process of elimination.

BTK, in keeping up with his communication agenda sent more packages, left more boxes to be found and posted more graphic material. In one letter, BTK proposed sending a computer disk with content and asked if it would be safe. The investigators obliged and told him it was safe to do so by leaving a secret message in the ad columns of the Wichita Eagle, a scene right out of a Thomas Harris novel. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 34

BTK then committed the biggest blunder in the history of serial killers if not the biggest mistake by a criminal in true crime history. On February

16th BTK sent KSAS-TV a floppy disk along with victim’s jewelry and a copy of the cover of a serial killer book called Rules of Prey. Within minutes of loading the disk into a computer for forensic analysis, Lt. Ken

Landwehr, a homicide detective in Wichita, investigated the file's properties panel with his forensic associates to find the name Dennis

Rader embedded in the metadata along with the name Christ Church

Lutheran where the author had likely used a computer to create the document. A simple internet search pulled up a picture of Rader as

President of that Church council. Dennis Rader had busted himself.

Investigators took a quick drive to his home and saw he was driving a dark Jeep Cherokee. The evidence against Rader was good, but they had one more weapon in their arsenal, DNA. They used a pap smear sample his daughter gave to a medical center to run a quick familial DNA test. It was a close match. Investigators now had everything they needed to nail

Rader for the crimes.

On February 25th, as Rader was driving his Jeep Cherokee, investigators stopped and arrested him without a struggle. The plump mustached family man, Park City dog catcher and compliance officer, realized the gig was up. During his drive downtown for booking, he told investigators that B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 35 he knew why they had him. In a somewhat approachable and seemingly friendly interrogation, investigators got him to admit to being the serial killer BTK, and he even told investigators he suspected DNA had caught him. He wasn’t quite right. DNA had confirmed that Rader was BTK, but

BTK was found by good old fashioned sleuthing and a bit of computer know-how. Dennis Rader had allowed his ego to catch himself. I suspect the Zodiac has done the same thing.

Dennis Rader didn’t particularly look like any composites. This was because there weren’t any police sketches that were compelling enough to be published on a wide-spread basis. There were two main composites.

One of the suspicious persons in the area looked Latin American or East- ern Indian. Another composite had some general features correct but no detail. It was a chubby head and small face with a short dark mustache.

He was wearing a beanie. The eyes appeared to be almost slanted and squinting. Without any minor features, the composite was more of a rough drawing. The brother of Kathryn Bright may be the origin of this sketch as he fought with Dennis Rader before Radar shot him. This is the composite seen during the commission of a crime. Apart from being very non-specific, it matches Rader better than the Latin/Indian sketch. This is because it is not of someone just seen in the area but someone who witnessed an actual crime. Such composites are of interest to us.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 36

A composite of someone seen in the commission of a crime is going to be of more value to investigators as they sort through potential candidates.

Like the Ted Bundy sketch, it helped move him up the pile. Ted was not apprehended by DNA. He was arrested because he was caught stalking and had rape gear in the boot of his car, along with a serial killer calling himself Ted (yes he gave his real name) being on the loose. Ted made many mistakes. Big ones. He just had the luck to escape custody twice, once in court and then after being recaptured once on a jailbreak. He made mistakes all the time, which is why he continued being caught after his successful escape attempts.

Ted Kaczynski is another serial killer who wasn't caught by DNA. His brother tipped him off to police. The composite wouldn't have thrown them off him. The opposite. It does seem to look like him. So seen in the commission of a crime evidently had value here also. A woman had witnessed a man wearing a hood and sunglasses place a device in front of a car in a parking lot. The police sketch could be of anybody, but when Ted was found, it was another piece of the puzzle that fit.

My BSc. degree is in Life Science. This mainly involves the science of biology but also includes informatics systems, such as those used in genetics and other aspects of molecular and cell biology. I understand the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 37 value of hard science and especially familial DNA analysis. However I disagree with people who think the Zodiac case can only be solved with

DNA. I think it can be solved in many ways and not exclusively DNA. A

DNA match is preferable. However, a DNA match can come about after someone is identified as a possible candidate for DNA screening. Just because DNA is a powerful scientific tool does not mean we stop bothering to look. This is especially true of the Zodiac, which has a pile of evidence to get through. In addition to this, familial DNA is used in conjunction with other investigative techniques needed to screen the results through old skool detective work. What I am saying is that many people like to put things off and just claim that scientists will eventually solve them. Scientists themselves will tell you that while this is the case, you can still help by approaching things in other ways. This goes for all things in life and not just true crime sleuthing.

A composite's reliability requires us to consider its context. Some have much more evidentiary value than others because they were seen during the commission of a crime. The Zodiac made a colossal blunder during the

Stine murder when he allowed several witnesses to see his face. Those witnesses not only included several children who watched the crime, but also a pair of police officers may have stopped and briefly spoke to Zodiac as he fled the crime scene (one of the officers emphatically states he B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 38 didn’t stop; however acknowledges he did see him). That means in all probability, we know what the Zodiac looks like.

If an investigator is doing what they are supposed to do and believes they likely have hard scientific evidence that hasn't matched anyone, then a composite of someone in the commission of a crime that likewise hasn’t matched presents the possibility that the right candidate will still fit both.

The Zodiac case meets these parameters. Some have looked like the composite and some not. None have matched the evidence. Someone can still appear who does both. It seems likely that the Zodiac was never apprehended and was probably not on the police’s radar. Most investigators who worked the case feel this is the most likely situation in jurisdictions where the case is still open.

Many people are drawn to the case because the Zodiac interacted with them through letters printed in newspapers along with boasts of having created puzzles that could be solved to reveal a clue. Many people over the decades, especially since DNA profiling, have decided that the case won’t be solved by decoding puzzles or that the puzzles aren’t clues but meaningless distractions. Even though the Hardens solved the 408 cipher, that solution really didn’t reveal anything of value to solving the case. I think this gave him a reason to be more earnest with his next puzzles, which were never solved. We shall learn later how he may have been B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 39 goaded by some bright thinkers in a challenge to give real details about him in a cipher.

This book will show that working on these communications can reveal new clues never seen before mainly because the offender never predicted how the future of mass information would allow for his secrets to be matched up with something scanned into the cloud of digital storage with search parameters used to pull them up and unravel his codes. It is the position of this book that while DNA will likely be the final say in the matter, the

Zodiac case is solvable by traditional means. Serial killers are humans and therefore like humans, make mistakes. Sleuthers have the potential to utilize these flaws to uncover new clues and ideas that could literally bust this case wide open.

So let us round off this chapter by saying this. Serial killers make mistakes. We can use those mistakes to detect clues about who the serial killer is. So a case can be solved by using their mistakes against them, but the case can only be truly settled scientifically.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 40

Chapter 3 - “Who let the dogs out?”

“The facts and considerations which I have placed before you at the end of my lecture

are one out of numerous attempts to employ a consistent, purely scientific method of

thinking in the study of the mechanism of the highest manifestations of life in the dog,

the representative of the animal kingdom that is man's best friend. - Ivan Petrovich

Pavlov

[Nobel Lecture, 12 Dec 1904]

Internet sleuthing is nothing new, as we have discussed. It’s public sleuthing plus the internet and sleuthing by the civilian population has been going on even before the printing press was invented. Anyone who reads stories about true crime or watches detective shows has an inkling for sleuthing. In Whitechapel, 1888, detectives received a barrage of letters from sleuthers during the Jack the Ripper crimes. There isn’t a single popularized case where the public hasn’t sent in their tips. It goes on all the time. Internet sleuthing is a little bit like people leaving their tips out for the public to see. So we can all see and read other people’s suggestions.

Reading tips is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is a positive way for the general public to contribute towards solving a case. Tradition- ally communication between tipsters has been near zero because tips are B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 41 kept in confidentiality. With internet sleuthing, tipsters can easily read the submissions of others as well as give their own. From a purely academic standpoint having more people access material increases the chances of the right person at the right time in the right place, making progress with it. It is akin to why scientists publish their research in journals and also read journals with articles by other scientists. Science is a system open to review by the public. Internet sleuthing is similar, but instead of publishing in peer-review journals, the results are posted on message boards and subject to scrutiny by whoever may be reading and replying to them. On the other side, if information that could compromise investigations gets out, then internet sleuthing could cause a problem.

Only time will tell how it will all pan out. It can’t be stopped, so we will know for sure in some sort of metareview of internet sleuthing. Internet sleuthing is about retrieving and processing what is already made public.

Ending it would be like asking people not to think. Deductions and infer- ences will be made, and conclusions are drawn. There are possible legal ramifications in saying some things about people if not proven, but the media has gotten around this by changing names or just describing enough about the issue to make it reasonably visible who or what they are talking about without naming names. As we said before, sleuthing is like investigative journalism. This book is not too different from this. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 42

It is unknown how many non-professional people actively do some internet sleuthing every week. It would be interesting to estimate. While low down on the list of popular hobbies, one would expect it to correlate somewhat with the readership figures behind the genre of true crime non- fiction. Like a subbranch of that main one. Viewing data for shows related to true crime would also give us the kind of population pools within which we will find more active sleuthers who are non-professionals.

The most famous phrase heard among internet sleuthers is the term ‘rabbit hole.’ A rabbit hole is basically a metaphor that describes a neverend- ing cascading series of sequences in which the sleuther has found themselves digging into. All because they bothered to start reading a little bit about it. The rabbit hole was just a fascinating story at the start, but quickly it turns into a ‘thought project’ which can go on for days, weeks, months, years, and possibly an entire lifetime depending on how absorb- ing it is for the sleuther.

There are many reasons to sleuth. There are so many that we can’t discuss them all here. You think of any reason, and as long as you can at- tach a feather weighing sensible explanation to it, then you can bet someone went sleuthing for that reason. Some people sleuth because they B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 43 have connections to the crime. Others sleuth because it helps them sleep at night. Others sleuth because it’s their preferred reading time. Others do it because it gives them a sense of purpose. Others do it because they have nerdy friends to impress. Others because they are retired professionals in law enforcement. All ages, all types, all possible people, can also be sleuthers. No qualifications needed other access to information and a desire to think over it.

My first notable brush with internet sleuthing occurred at the end of 2004 when Dennis Rader was making the news as BTK sending packages to

Wichita investigators. Parts of the internet were alive with sleuthing out the identity of this horrendous sexual sadist. I went sleuthing because I thought it would be interesting if someone managed to bust this guy for being so brazen a communicator in the 21st century, especially after the

Patriot Act of October 26th ,2001, which gave law enforcement new pow- ers they had not before, combined with a decade of technology advance- ment in communication monitoring since BTK last struck. Turns out, they didn’t need it so much to identify him. He messed that up himself.

I remember participating in a forum that was proposing a possible job solution to uncovering his identity. I much prefer evidence-driven solutions to suspect driven solutions. This means starting with the evidence and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 44 working forwards as opposed to starting with a suspect and working backward. The former includes considering all the evidence, whereas the latter often omits evidence to shape it around a suspect and a surefire way to get it wrong. Suspect driven sleuthing happens even in professional circles because it has succeeded in small populations. The usual suspects are looked at because they have a history of offending, and sometimes the detective work leads to some evidence supporting a suspect driven theory. The problem with the usual suspects is that as we expand population parameters to include more towns, cities, counties, and countries where the same type of offenses take place, we are including much more potential candidates for the crime and therefore the usual suspects don’t work so well, if at all.

For increased population sizes, the usual suspect driven theory undergoes a more complex metamorphosis becoming what is known as offender profiling where the evidence is considered in terms of describing what type of offender committed the crime to draw up a rough idea of how to whittle potential candidates down to more manageable sizes for investigation.

Profiles are used because investigations have limitations, both financial and logistical. The more you narrow things down, the less money and resources you need. This is just the reality of crime-solving. So anything B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 45 that can contribute to making the case more economical is highly valued.

Think about DNA dragnets, for instance. There is a big difference between a dragnet for a few hundred people compared to a few thousand people in terms of costs, logistics, and time. Anything that can help narrow down the size of the dragnet would be required. However, the jury is still out on whether profiling is helpful or not. There are equally as many cases where profiling got it wrong as there are where profiling got it right. Profiling can be seen as an extension of the usual suspect hypothesis, a suspect driven investigation that deals with large numbers of people. All of this is geared towards finally having someone you can test against the hard evidence (if there is any). DNA is probably the most popular test, but there are also things like fingerprints, CCTV footage, cell phone data, which can be used to compare against potential candidates for the crime. Getting to that point is the most laborious task for solving crimes in general. Homicides committed by strangers, such as serial killers, usually cover wide-ranging areas, meaning they often commute away from their homes to commit their crimes. The number of potential candidates will go up by way of the serial killer traveling through various population densities. Over the decades, a mathematical process called geographical profiling has also been developed by investigators to generate zones of interest – anchor points - in determining where an offender may live according to the distribution of crimes around their home or place of work. It is just a guide, and not an x marks the spot process, according to Kim Rossmo, who developed a B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 46 mathematical formula for geographically profiling serial crimes. Like profiling, it has had some hits but also some misses. It is a tool as opposed to hard evidence for anything.

Profiling may help investigators pay more attention to certain types of personalities than others. If an investigator has a manageable pile of potential candidates, then applying a profile may help bring certain offenders closer to the top of the collection. This would make the investigation more economical as they would not have to spend time and resources going through all the wrong people before landing randomly on the person that matches the evidence. As we said, the jury is still out. However if you are at a dead end and the case going cold, it is an option to try to move things forward.

A suspect driven hypothesis is overshadowed by an evidence drive hypothesis. This latter type of angle of attack for solving cases is not just optional, it is the very one that the prosecutor needs to make a solid case. A suspect driven hypothesis is only as good as the evidence-driven thesis. Evidence pointing to person A is better than having person B who fits some of the evidence. The critical word here is ‘some.’ The term evidence means all the evidence, not just some of it. That is why evidence pointing at someone is different from someone who has some evidence B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 47 attached to them. The latter allows for a fallacy of selection, which means cherry-picking the evidence that fits the suspect driven hypothesis and discarding that evidence which does not. This is something any defense lawyer worth their salt can use in court to diminish a case against their client, and probably rightly so. For example, the defense lawyer can introduce DNA that was recovered as evidence to show how it doesn’t match their client’s DNA. That is why prosecutions need to be careful not to withhold evidence from the trial as defense attorneys can even use the fact it was withheld to have a case dismissed without also considering all the other evidence that wasn’t withheld. It goes without saying that most wrongful convictions are mostly the result of a suspect-driven investigation and suspect-driven prosecutions. Evidence-driven sleuthing is therefore much more desirable than suspect-driven sleuthing as private conjec- tures in such an open setting would see floods of people dragged through the mud as suspects when they are no such thing. For example, all the suspects named as the Zodiac can’t all be the Zodiac. It is conceivable that one of them could be the Zodiac, or in some other cases, more than one offender, but the point is that there is direct evidence of people being wrongfully dragged through the mud of Zodiac suspects. Avoiding a suspect-driven thesis is not an option, it is the right thing to do. An evidence- driven dissertation is where the sleuthing community can make useful progress.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 48

Sleuthers would know that for investigators, the first BTK crime was of interest to them because, in some cases, it is here that they expect an offender to make some mistakes as the offender is still learning how to commit their crimes. For BTK, this meant the Otero murders.

One item that stood out about the Otero murders was the family had a dog that the murderer had to deal with. Witnesses claimed the dog was not friendly, and yet the dog was found out in the rear yard. This suggested that the offender had somehow managed the dog. One job that was mentioned by the sleuthing community was a dog catcher. Now in all fairness, there wasn’t a job description that wasn’t referred to as the employment BTK had chosen, but at least the dog catcher claim was an evidence-driven proposition, as opposed to suspect-driven.

The Otero murders took place on January 15th, 1974. When Rader was arrested, the plump mustached family man was a Park City dog catcher and compliance officer. He didn’t take up this job until May of 1991, some 17 years later. Before 1974, Dennis Rader had attended university earning an associate's degree in electronics and continued his education up until

1979, when he got a degree in justice administration. Around the time of the Otero murders, Rader worked as an assembler for a firm doing outdoor supplies. From 1974 to 1988, Rader worked installing security alarm B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 49 systems. Interestingly enough, he was installing security alarms in the homes of people who were concerned about a possible serial killer breaking in. Little did they know he was the one installing alarms for them.

So what are we to make of this sleuthing about a dog catcher? On the one hand, it is wrong. In 1974 Rader was not a dog catcher. On the other hand, if investigators had a list of those employed in dog catching in

Witchita in the contemporary, they would have had a dog catcher with a

Jeep Cherokee after their discovery following the January 2005 parking lot surveillance video. Is the employment of a dog catcher just a coincidence? Possibly, but a possible coincidence is a reason to look into the matter more. This should go for any possible flukes in any crime. They might be flukes, but such a possibility is not grounds to stop looking at them more. Who knows? They might end up being connected. In fact, connections should also appear as possible coincidences. Real-world investigative constraints such as time and resources are why people stop looking at them. The sleuthing community, therefore, would be an appropriate venue to keep such interest active in the minds of more people.

Dennis Rader was a stalker. In the A&E Documentary TV Special “The BTK

Killer Speaks,” one of the women he stalked, Misty King, claimed that when Dennis Rader worked as a compliance officer, he hounded her and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 50 had her dog destroyed, claiming it had broken out and was loose. It seems, in hindsight, Dennis Rader planned to kill the dog to make it easier to break into her home undetected.

Misty King actually moved because of Rader’s behavior. He had driven her out of her residence and far away from him. He had probably not intended her to do so, but her reaction to change her life because of him possibly saved her life from this vicious homicidal sadist. However, there may be reasons due to his age, and also his forensic awareness of DNA profiling, why Dennis Rader was not going to murder again, and we shall discuss this in a later chapter. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that dogs got in the way of Rader’s plans. When he picked his targets, he had to contend with dogs if they had any. Having a dog was an obstacle to

Dennis Rader’s home invasion plans but not enough to prevent him from doing it.

Dennis Rader seems to have chosen a job at a later time that gave him access to dogs and a reason to get rid of them. So the theory that BTK was a dog catcher was both wrong and right. It was wrong, in that BTK always worked as a dog catcher throughout his early crimes, but it was probably right in that BTK wanted a job like this to make his criminal life easier for himself. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 51

So are we to conclude that dog catchers are potential stalkers and serial killers? No, absolutely not. This would be working backward from a suspect drive theory, whereas we worked forward with the evidence by getting a glimpse into the mind of how this killer operated when it came to the family dog of his first murder. Dog catchers are no more or less likely to be severe offenders than any other profession. Context is everything, and following the evidence is what leads us along, not suspect driven theories.

Dennis Rader and dogs take us to our next subject of this chapter, the serial offender, East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker EARONS, aka, the

Golden State Killer who operated between 1974-1986 committing over 50 rapes and 13 or possibly more murders.

The reason why he is called EARONS is that these are two separate spates of serial offending. EAR was a Californian serial rapist, whereas ONS was a Californian serial killer. The EAR also committed homicides during his attacks, but these were in response to being detected as opposed to pre- meditated, although because of the offender's viciousness we know he was prepared to kill. Many of them were not linked initially to EAR crimes. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 52

The two spates of crimes, EAR and ONS, were not connected until decades later through comparative DNA analysis in 2001. It was one of the reasons more pressure was brought to develop CODIS.

The EAR struck mostly in Sacramento and surrounding areas. The EAR had a specific M.O. that tied EAR crimes together. The EAR was a cluster attacker meaning he hit in the same areas. Usually middle-class working neighborhoods in different parts of Sacramento. He would sometimes attack in homes literally neighbors apart by bouncing back and forth between clusters across Sacramento and creating new clusters. A possible reason for doing this is he had a specific type of area he would do recon- naissance in and would use his findings there to repeat the same offense in the same place, saving him from having to spend more time doing recon work. It was economic. He also did it to terrify the community.

Cluster attacks are one reason why he was able to be so prolific. The one thing he looked for was a neighborhood of bungalows located next to open areas, which included fields, school grounds, wooded areas with creeks and paths sometimes near rivers. This allowed the EAR to park his car, bicycle, or possibly car with a bicycle in it away from the crime scene.

Often the bikes were stolen and sometimes hidden in bushes near crime scenes after attacks and likely well before attacks he planned. Tracking B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 53 dogs had even sniffed some out. The EAR would cross the open areas either by bike or foot and enter the home to jimmy a window or sliding a glass patio door with a stolen screwdriver.

It seems he may have selected empty houses for sale to do recon work in. He would learn how to enter the vacant house and study its layout.

Since most homes in the area were based on the same designs, he had learned about each household in the cluster by entering just one of them.

On multiple occasions, this tactic paid off as he was chased away and escaped into the night back to his bike or car for his planned getaway. In one case, he was on a stolen bicycle being chased by an off-duty FBI agent who heard the commotion at a neighbor’s home. EARONS eventually ditched the bike and escaped into the suburbs.

After the initial crime spree, the EAR started attacking single women or teenagers in homes alone or single mothers or married women whose husbands were out. He would later escalate to attacking families, including husband and wife, in the house. His M.O. was to enter a residence by using a screwdriver to open a route through a window or patio door, or whatever technique was successful in the cluster. He would make his way directly to the bedroom of the occupants where he put on a ski mask (or had it on already) and aimed his flashlight into the opening eyes of the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 54 sleeping targets while brandishing a gun. He would speak through clenched teeth, calmly and menacingly. His targets (we use the term targets because many of his targets today do not want to be called victims) were bound with shoelaces so tight that it cut off circulation, sometimes turning their hands near black. He would take towels from the bathroom and tear them into strips and use these to gag and blindfold them. This was done because the offender’s signature was terror. If it were a couple, he would segregate them to different rooms and then stack dishes on the back of the male, telling him that if he heard the plates move, he would murder them. He often took the female target to the living room where he would turn down the thermostat for silence and cooling, turn on the television to static, or a lamp, and then draped linen over them to create a dimly lit scene. He would then rape the woman, sometimes more than once and take a break to ransack the home, steal items, including photographs of his target and eat their food, which included cooking on their stoves. He would drink beers and even bring beers with him. I speculate he would use empty cans as tin-can alarms and set them up near the front and door doors and around the sides of the house to tip him off if someone was coming.

In one attack, one of his targets had learned about the rapist terrorizing his victims, and she behaved as if she wasn’t afraid because she remembered this. Her bravery appeared to have upset the EAR and threw him B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 55 off a bit. This is not a bad tactic in the face of any sadist. Furthermore, after the attacks, the EAR would often continue to terrorize his targets by phoning them and breathing down the line, calling them names and threatening to do it again. Taunting telephone calls were also an EAR signature and caused investigators to setup up traces on some of his target’s phone lines.

The M.O. was so successful that the EAR was extraordinarily prolific, but there is more to this, which we shall discuss soon. The list of his crimes appearing next should demonstrate how prolific he was. Notice how he re- turns to the same clusters going back and forth. It is quite shocking.

# Date Time Location County

1 Fri, June 18, 1976 4:00 a.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

2 Sat, July 17, 1976 2:00 a.m. Carmichael Sacramento

3 Sun, Aug 29, 1976 3:20 a.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

4 Sat, Sep 4, 1976 11:30 p.m. Citrus Heights Sacramento

5 Tue, Oct 5, 1976 6:45 a.m. Citrus Heights Sacramento

6 Sat, Octr 9, 1976 4:30 a.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

7 Mon, Oct 18, 1976 2:30 a.m. Carmichael Sacramento

8 Mon, Oct 18, 1976 11:00 p.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

9 Wed, Nov 10, 1976 7:30 p.m. Citrus Heights Sacramento B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 56

10 Sat, Dec 18, 1976 7:00 p.m. Carmichael Sacramento

11 Tue, Jan18, 1977 11:00 p.m. Glenbrook/College Greens Sacramento

12 Mon, Jan 24, 1977 12:00 a.m. Citrus Heights Sacramento

13 Mon, Feb 7, 1977 6:45 a.m. Citrus Heights Sacramento

14 Wed, Feb 16, 1977 10:30 p.m. Ripon Court Sacramento

15 Tues, Mar 8, 1977 4:00 a.m. Robertson and Whitney Ave Sacramento

16 Fri, Mar 18, 1977 10:45 p.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

17 Sat, April 2, 1977 3:20 a.m. Orangevale Sacramento

18 Fri, April 15, 1977 2:30 a.m. Crestview Sacramento

19 Tue, May 3, 1977 3:00 a.m. Glenbrook Sacramento

20 Thue, May 5, 1977 2:40 a.m. Orangevale Sacramento

21 Sat, May 14, 1977 3:45 a.m. Citrus Heights Sacramento

22 Tues, May 17, 1977 1:30 a.m. Carmichael Sacramento

23 Sat, May 28, 1977 1:00 a.m. Fourth Parkway Sacramento

24 Tues, Sept 6, 1977 1:30 a.m. Lincoln Village Wes San Joaquin

25 Sat, Oct 1, 1977 1:30 a.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

26 Fri, Oct 21, 1977 3:00 a.m. Foothill Farms Sacramento

27 Sat, Oct 29, 1977 1:45 a.m. Woodson Ave. Sacramento

28 Thur, Nov 10, 1977 3:00 a.m. La Riviera Dr. Sacramento

29 Fri, Dec 2, 1977 11:30 p.m. Foothill Farms Sacramento B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 57

30 Sat, Jan 28, 1978 10:15 p.m. Winding Way, Sacramento

31 Sat, March 18, 1978 1:05 p.m. Parkwoods, Stockton San Joaquin

32 Fri, April 14, 1978 10:00 p.m. Seamas and Riverside Aves. Sacramento

33 Mon, June 5, 1978 2:30 a.m. Northeastern Modestos Stanislaus

34 Wed, June 7, 1978 3:55 a.m. UC Davis Yolo

35 Friday, June 23, 1978 1:30 a.m. Northeastern Modesto Stanislaus

36 Sat, June 24, 1978 3:15 a.m. Rivendell, Davis Yolo

37 Thurs, July 6, 1978 2:50 a.m. Davis Yolo

38 Sat, Oct 7, 1978 2:30 a.m. Concord Contra Costa

39 Fri, Oct 13, 1978 4:30 a.m. Concord Contra Costa

40 Sat, Oct 28, 1978 4:30 a.m. San Ramon Contra Costa

41 Sat, Nov 4, 1978 3:30 a.m. San Jose Santa Clara

42 Sat, Dec 2, 1978 4:30 a.m. San Jose Santa Clara

43 Sat, Dec 9, 1978 2:00 a.m. Danville Contra Costa

44 Mon, Dec 18, 1978 6:30 p.m. San Ramon Contra Costa

45 Tues, March 20, 1979 5:00 a.m. Rancho Cordova Sacramento

46 Wedn, April 4, 1979 1:00 a.m. Fremont Alameda

47 Sat, June 2, 1979 11:30 p.m. Walnut Creek Contra Costa

48 Mon, June 11, 1979 4:00 a.m. Danville Contra Costa

49 Mon, June 25, 1979 4:00 a.m. Walnut Creek Contra Costa B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 58

50 Thurs, July 5, 1979 3:45 a.m. Danville Contra Costa

The primary reason for this deplorable list of crimes has something to do with neighborhood apathy. It can’t be understated that for nearly 50+ attacks no one reported a crime in progress, even though witnesses in these neighborhoods later revealed they had either seen a man prowling in a ski-mask, had disturbed a prowler or saw a prowler hiding somewhere.

Why they never reported anything is a psycho-social study that is too deep for this book to cover, except to say that eventually through police held conferences in neighborhoods enough people became aware that a mass rapist was at large in Sacramento and the newspapers covered the story enough for society to change their attitude.

One of the most critical crimes from an investigative position, in this case, was not linked to the EAR but was suspiciously like him all the same. On

February 2, 1978, Brian and Katie Maggiore were out walking their dog in

Rancho Cordova. What transpired is unknown, but it is likely that the

Maggiore couple, may have stumbled upon the EAR doing some recon. A chase took place through several gardens where the EAR shot Brian and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 59 chased Katie down, shooting her after she tripped on a flower bed. Their dog was found shivering in a pool. Masked, the EAR jumped a fence where he was seen by a young man who provided a description of the attacker's clothes. As the EAR made his escape down the streets, he took off his ski mask at some point and was seen by several people who got a look at his face. Combining the young man’s description of the EAR’s clothing with the clothing seen by the witnesses of the unmasked man helped form a composite called Maggiore-revised. It was published after a prior set of composites, the original Maggiore composites were released to the press.

After this Maggiore-revised composite went out, the EAR seemingly stopped hitting in this cluster again. However, even though shoelaces were found at the crime scene and the offender wore a ski mask, it was not officially classified as an EAR crime.

After the last known EAR crime on July 5, 1979, the EAR appeared to stop. The first crimes of the Original Night Stalker took place on Monday,

October 1st, 1979 in Goleta of Santa Barbara.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 60

# Date Target(s) Location County

1 Mon, Oct 1, 1979 (failed attack) Goleta Santa Barbara

2 Sun, Dec 30, 1979 Offerman/Manning Goleta Santa Barbara

3 Thurs, Mar 13, 1980 Smiths Ventura Ventura

4 Tues, Aug 19, 1980 Harringtons Dana Point Orange

5 Fri, Feb 6, 1981 Witthuhn Irvine Orange

6 Mon, July 27, 1981 Domingo/ Sanchez Goleta Santa Barbara

7 Sun, May 4, 1986 Cruz Irvine Orange

The first ONS attack was a failure as the couple escaped, raising the alarm. This was the attack in which the FBI agent off-duty gave chase.

The other targets were not so fortunate, as ONS was an escalation to murder by either shooting them or bludgeoning while raping some of his targets. In many cases, ONS took away the bindings with him, which showed some forensic awareness. Location and M.O. differences meant that links between ONS and the EAR were speculative. They were not officially classed as the same offender until DNA analysis in 2001.

Like in Dennis Rader's crimes, dogs make an appearance in the EARONS crimes. A dog appeared to be the first victim of the EAR when a prowler entered a home in Rancho Cordova in the Spring of 1974. Like the ONS targets, the dog had been bludgeoned to death. Detective Richard Shelby, who was involved in responding to many of the EAR crimes, was present on the scene. Shelby wrote a book about his experiences with the crimes called Hunting a Psychopath. Often tracking dogs were brought to the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 61 scene of EAR crimes. On more than one occasion, the tracking dogs acted strange when picking up the scent. This led some investigators to believe that there was likely something about the offender involving smells that disturbed the tracking dogs. A longstanding guess by the EARONS sleuthing community was that the offender was ill in some way, and dogs were responding to it.

The first official EAR attack on the 18th of October 1976 involved a family dog barking at an intruder in a garden. The EAR stood watching the dog and decided it wouldn’t bother him and broke into the home, ordering a family member to bring the dog inside or else he would murder the others. When the dog was brought inside, the EAR ordered the dog be put into a bedroom to calm down.

Dogs were often heard barking before EAR attacks as perceived by residents who forwarded the information during canvassing. Small dogs were not an obstacle to the EAR, who judged them a mere nuisance to be contained. He sometimes kicked them and told targets to shut their dog up.

In another crime, the EAR locked a dog in a car boot. The EAR appeared to have attempted to feed some dogs. Meat wrappers were found in one yard, and during the ONS crimes, a dog was fed some turkey leftover alt- B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 62 hough the dog was never recovered (possibly a stray had followed the offender). There is a whole internet legend about a dog print missing a toe, the dog found missing the same toe, the same dog having many owners and being passed through many people with several different POIs developed. The whole thing was a total wild goose chase.

Dog barks in the early hours became a notable event that investigators would use to suspect an EAR crime. The EAR would prowl across several gardens disturbing dogs as he went along. The Maggiore murders involved a couple out walking their dog. One possibility is that their dog chased after the EAR, and the couple chased after their dog, which put them in confrontation with the EAR. In some instances, larger dogs did not challenge the EAR and appeared to be afraid of him.

According to Detective Richard Shelby, they often found the EAR’s tennis- shoe tracks outside some attack cluster homes that had not been in- vaded. They suspected the EAR was doing recon, so Shelby staked out many of these places, but the offender seemed to be one step ahead of them and mysteriously avoided them all. This caused Shelby to suggest maintaining radio silence as he believed the EAR was listening in. The EAR was never apprehended and continued his impossible winning streak of terror. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 63

In January of 2018, Detective Paul Holes managed to find a forensic scientist who had decided to store some EARONS DNA from the original crimes. Since rape is subject to the statute of limitations in California, much of the EAR crime-related material had been tossed out. All that remained was a relatively medium-sized shelf with files and packages. For such a prolific offender, with over 50+ attacks, most rapes, a single short shelf was like retaining less than 1% of the investigative material. Any- way, the scientist had some DNA from an EAR crime to be analyzed.

Detective Paul Holes got a full profile from the forensic expert and up- loaded it onto the public genomics platform GEDmatch and got a familial match. It seems a distant relative of EARONS had used GEDmatch at some stage. Barbara Rae-Venter used her genealogy analysis to locate possible persons of interest. One of them was ex-law enforcement Ser- geant Joseph James DeAngelo, who is currently suspected of being

EARONS. He was a cop during the EAR crimes.

On April 18th, investigators secretly obtained DeAngelo’s DNA and got a match. They arrested the 73-year-old suspect outside his home in Citrus

Heights. According to the arresting officers, DeAngelo, when apprehended, complained he had a roast in the oven and wanted to go back in. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 64

No doubt, if this EAR suspect had been allowed back into his home, he would have tried to go for his guns and things would likely have ended in a blood bath. Instead, it ended with him under 24-hour surveillance in a

Sacramento County Main Jail where he is currently awaiting trial at the time of this writing. He appeared at his arraignment in a wheelchair before TV cameras and a Judge. He acted frail and out of it. According to sources inside, he tried to ram his head against the cell wall. In his mug- shot photo, you make out the stitches and bandage on his balding crown.

For his interrogation, he sat completely still in a shiny blue jumpsuit with a white zipper down the front looking at the floor with his hands (electronic tag band attached to his right wrist) on either side of his head and elbows on his knees where he ignored questions for several hours. No doubt, he had undergone or was to undergo body photographing, swab- bing, and checks for concealed items.

The suspect, DeAngelo, had worked as a burglary unit police officer in Ex- ter between May 1973 and August 1976. During this time he is now suspected of being involved in more than 120 burglaries, which were at- tributed to an offender known as the Visalia Ransacker. That means

DeAngelo is accused of being the same person behind three crime sprees

- the Visalia Ransacker (VR), the East Area Rapist (EAR) and the Original

Night Stalker (ONS) – VR EAR ONS… or VREARONS.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 65

On September 11th, 1975, during the commission of a Visalia Ransacker crime, the perpetrator tried to kidnap the daughter of a journalism profes- sor Claude Snelling, who intervened after he heard the commotion and was shot dead by the Ransacker. The gun used was matched to a gun stolen from a prior Visalia Ransacker burglary.

Detective William McGowen worked the Visalia Ransacker case. Like

Shelby, he had staked out many places, but the offender seemed to have premonitions about where they would be staking out and never showed up. Although this is not fully confirmed with the EARONS case, what is alleged to have happened is that McGowen had figured out that the VR seemed to know where LE was staking out places and was always one step ahead of them. So McGowen kept his next stakeout silent, not even telling many others in his department, and it was during this one that he confronted the VR. This occurred on December 12th, 1975 at 8:30pm.

McGowen was waiting for the offender inside a garage. Sure enough, the ski-mask wearing offender showed up. McGowen quickly challenged him and fired a warning shot. The man took off his mask and put his hands in the air. As McGowen went to arrest the man, the offender pulled a gun from his pocket and fired off a shot. The shot hit McGowen’s flashlight, sending glass into his face and damaging one eye permanently. The offender jumped a fence and fled. The glass that went into McGowen’s eye B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 66 ended his career. McGowan believed he had seen the guy somewhere before. A composite was drawn up and published. The VR stopped.

McGowan gets an A+ for his detective work. He kept the stakeout a secret and had confronted the EAR because of it. Obviously, the offender escaping seems at first to be a bit of a rookie mistake for an experienced detective until we factor in that DeAngelo, who is the prime suspect, was also

LE at the time. This means McGowan had confronted another officer who knew what McGowan was going to do. It was law enforcement vs. law enforcement. In that context, McGowan was lucky to have survived. This incident ended the VR crimes. The VR then went to inner-Sacramento to become the EAR.

An injured McGowan went to Sacramento PD to suggest that VR was

EARONS. Sacramento PD had already identified separate rapists in different non-EAR crimes, and so Sacramento PD thought they were probably not linked. This is a problem with cross-jurisdiction crimes that we shall see cropping again in the Zodiac case.

If we recall, Shelby noticed the exact same thing that McGowan did, that

EARONS seemed to be one step ahead and knew where all the stakeouts B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 67 were. Shelby had radio silence, but this didn't seem to help. They even found a place EARONS had staked out, and they staked it out, but he never showed up. In hindsight, the prime suspect being law enforcement is obviously an explanation, but anyone who thinks they all should have known or detected that back then, needs to understand that there was a tremendous amount of evidence at each scene in over fifty rape cases that could have pointed at literally anyone.

There are many EAR composites of a surfer dude teenager that look nothing like DeAngelo did back in the mid-70s. It now seems like this surfer dude teenager was pretty much how most teenagers looked in Sacra- mento at the time. So any random person seen in any area has a good chance of looking like a surfer dude. This type of composite is of a suspicious person seen in the area and is not the same as a composite of an offender seen during the commission of a crime. These different types of composite carry very different weights.

Sleuthers even suggested there were reasons why EARONS wasn't law enforcement, which turned out to be false. One reason being how could

LE have the time to stalk and do so much recon across an entire city? It’s a good point as LE are supposed to stay within jurisdictions. So how did

DeAngelo do it all as LE? B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 68

After the McGowen encounter, the prime suspect DeAngelo quit Exeter for a fill-in position in Auburn on the other side of Sacramento away from Ex- eter. Part-time reserve officer work can explain why, as law enforcement, he had so much time to do recon and stalk. From August 1976 to July

1979, while employed in law enforcement, DeAngelo is suspected of carrying out the EAR crimes. In July 1979 that employment, as well as the

EAR crimes, came to an end. DeAngelo was caught shoplifting by a hard- ware store clerk who subdued the sobbing DeAngelo, who was arrested and charged with theft. He tried to represent himself in Ted Bundy fashion and got six months probation and was fired in October. Among the items

DeAngelo stole was a hammer… and dog repellent.

With BTK, the dog handler suggestion would have been fruitful. Likewise, with VREARONS, if dog repellent was identified as the substance that was throwing off tracking dogs, we might have found this charge against

DeAngelo. A quick search putting him at Exter and then Auburn would be fascinating, but what would be most compelling is that when fired, the

EAR crimes stopped. Here is an example of a non-DNA approach to connecting possible leads with facts. The DNA analysis could come after.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 69

The firing and EAR crimes stopping looks like the suspect DeAngelo no longer had access to the inside information he needed to carry out these crimes so often. It explains how he dodged stakeouts and, more importantly, was so prolific. Compared to his crimes as ONS, while he had escalated to murdering his targets taking longer breaks between them, the EAR seemed unstoppable. It took an attentive store clerk to end that phase of his crimes.

Personally, I think a whole study of dogs associated serial killer offenses, in particular, the home invasion offender, would be abundant with information and connections that we could use in many more cases. While dogs will have no factor in the majority of crimes, it may factor in some, and that’s what counts.

Some untrained dogs in an area are not enough for security. The EAR exploited a problem with middle-class Sacramento suburbia in the non-reporting of crimes in progress. So much so, that EAR task forces also held community events to let people know about the type of offender they were dealing with, aspects of his M.O. and what to report. This came about because of the EAR’s prolificness and also because the EAR had been seen many times with a ski mask on and sometimes creeping around an area and sometimes hiding in some bush only to cycle off on B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 70 his bike still wearing his ski mask. Other times he had gone up on the roof of a bungalow so he could survey an area. He jumped fences alerting dogs and possibly went up trees given beer cans, cigarette butts, and sneaker prints were found at the base of some trees in creeks, which he navigated to get to and from the homes he targeted. Neighbors had even seen a masked figure going around the side and into the garden of the very homes he attacked but never called the police. They were simply not reporting suspicious-looking people during attacks. It wasn’t until near fifty attacks as the EAR that a neighbor bothered to call the police to alert them to a potential attack taking place as it happened.

Nearly all information about the EAR seen in the area was taken after the event through canvassing and rarely during the commission of a crime.

What caused that apathy is the subject of debate, but there is no doubt the EAR exploited it. Now we know that the prime suspect DeAngelo was charged with the crimes while he was an officer at the time we are left with a new dynamic. Had people living in these middle-class suburbian places somehow subconsciously linked this ski-masked gun belt-wearing flashlight waving criminal with a maniac cop? The facts seem to indicate no, but the speculation is there, just not capitalized upon. For example, as we have covered already, before the prime suspect's capture in 2018, if you were to ask sleuthing communities if EARONS was law enforcement, most people would have said no. There were several beliefs held at the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 71 time, some of which we now know to be untrue. For example, DeAngelo worked part-time as an officer when he moved to Auburn, not full-time.

He was a reserve officer. This meant he filled in for other officers. This would explain why, during some holiday seasons, he seemed to take a break from his attacks. He was likely filling in for other officers on holiday.

It explains how he had time for recon and travel across all of Sacramento and California. Another reason given for why people suspected he couldn’t be law enforcement is that all officers had to supply their prints and DNA to be able to work in LE. This seems not to be the case, and DeAngelo was fired long before the advent of DNA profiling.

Another reason is that statistically, cops don’t make good serial killer candidates. They are quite low on the list of jobs that serial killer’s hold.

There was also the fact that EARONS first attacks appeared to be amateur in nature. He messed up cutting a phone line. Was experimenting tying strips of torn towels from door handle to door handle to create a webbing to stop his targets from escaping if they should manage to break free. We also have him alerting dogs galore. None of that points to a cop. For sleuthers and even professionals on the case, this was a hard one to figure out, and it was obviously made harder by the prime suspect being a cop.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 72

VREARONS likely could have been arrested earlier if more people reported seeing him during the commission of a crime instead of reporting it during law enforcement canvassing. Some of his initial attacks occurred outdoors, almost like attacking in a semi-opportunistic fashion. Not only did this point away from him being law enforcement, but it also pointed away from him being the Visalia Ransacker, who is estimated to have had experience with a hundred break-ins. If VR was EARONS, it was as if he had forgotten everything he learned from his experience as VR. Knowing that the prime suspect is a cop, we can suggest there is a strong possibility that this offender did that deliberately to try and separate the two spates of crimes apart because he was forensically aware.

There are the things pointing at EARONS being a cop. First of all, is

McGowen’s encounter with VR by keeping his stakeout quiet. Next, is

Shelby noticing the same problem that the EAR seemed to always be one step ahead of them like he knew where stakeouts were going to be? We also have the fact that one of the original EAR attacks involved the use of pre-1975 military police training baton, which was described by one of his targets. Another target reported that she felt what appeared to be an officer’s belt the suspect was wearing while he raped her. Another target heard what sounded like a police radio before the police arrived. When

Shelby arrived, she informed him that she could hear his radio static and

Shelby surmised that the offender was listening to police chatter with his B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 73 radio. This is another reason why Shelby wanted to maintain radio silence of EAR related investigation. A special officer’s Californian badge was found in the garden of a neighbors yard after an attack. This badge could not be traced though because it had been mass-produced and mass-distributed, making it virtually impossible to find out who it belonged to. A

‘special officer’ could have been anything from a security guard to someone working with the USDA who needed it for official reasons. Even the

FBI couldn’t trace it and had the badge it featured on their EARONS wanted page.

Before EARONS was captured, the closest I came to the idea of him being an officer was the EAR was observed stalking homes without any pants on and, more importantly, walking away from a crime scene calmly in his un- derwear. After much thought, I asked myself a simple question – when is an offender less identifiable by not wearing clothes than by wearing them? The answer is – when it’s his uniform. I proposed this in sleuthing circles, and after the prime suspect DeAngelo was apprehended, it seemed to make a lot of sense. This also explained why he was calmly walking back to where he came from. To put on the rest of his uniform and continue on his way. I am not suggesting he always went out in uniform, nor I am suggesting he continuously wore his officer’s belt. I am just proposing that he may have done this from time to time. He had sev- B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 74 eral excuses as an officer for being out of his jurisdiction. That is if anybody bothered to question another officer who was there. The first could be that he was helping the public with their EAR patrols and CB groups

(groups who used their ham radios to help patrol for the EAR). The second is he could claim he was going back and forth between Auburn and

Exeter for a work-related reason. The third was that he was on official business and had to be in and around Sacramento. He could even claim to be going to see some relatives in that general direction. If stopped, all of this could be checked out, but the question is if anybody would check them out once they saw his badge. I think there is some indication that the lead investigators would have checked it out, but maybe less, so the officers on patrol just casually doing stop and checks. This is speculative but has explanatory power. Even Shelby, in his book “Hunting a Psycho- path” believed that a rapist copycat, sometimes called the Early Bird Rap- ist, could possibly have been the son of someone who was in his office. So

Shelby was undoubtedly more than willing to entertain a connection to law enforcement should it cross his desk. Heck, even Paul Holes, who ze- roed in on JJD was ready to check out law enforcement also… and it worked.

The reason why I mention these cases about different types of offender to the Zodiac (BTK and VREARONS were sexual sadists whereas the Zodiac was a thrill killer who did not appear to sexually assault his targets) is B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 75 that it shows where a little more sleuthing could have taken us without sitting back and hoping scientists will solve it.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 76

Chapter 4 - “A mug’s game.”

“We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the

scientific use of the imagination.” – Sherlock Holmes.

[The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902].

Before the suspect DeAngelo was arrested, I was closely following the

EARONS case in the years before his capture because of familial DNA analysis news, and I came across something else of interest that is worth mentioning here because it directly relates to the Zodiac case concerning composites and mugshots. On November 14th, 2017, I came up with a hypothesis that there may be a correlation between the appearance of

VR-revised and Maggiore-revised composites in news publication and significant EARONS movements out of key areas as a result.

The composites I am talking about happened to be the Maggiore Revised and VR Revised outliers, which did not look like the majority of the surfer dude composites. These two images are atypical of the young narrow- faced longer haired EAR and are much more closely matching to each other than one may think after seeing each one. You really have to sit with them for a little while to note the resemblance. There also appeared official weight given that Maggiore revised was the EAR as it was one of three composites that the FBI had recently released. When the FBI could B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 77 only display one composite because of room on a poster, the Maggiore-revised is the one they selected for EARONS. I agreed with the FBI that there is a strong case for this composite. However, there was more.

Before this, on September 21st, 2017, I had already discovered a good reason why the improved Maggiore composite was the right EARONS candidate. An accurate composite sometimes doesn't deter criminals, but I would think in some cases that it would. Or at least cause them to change things up a bit. I went with the Maggiore-revised composite doing this. If you look at a portion of the EAR attack list, you can see what happens around this time.

30 Sat, Jan 28, 1978 10:15 p.m. Winding Way, Sacramento

31 Sat, March 18, 1978 1:05 p.m. Parkwoods, Stockton San Joaquin

32 Fri, April 14, 1978 10:00 p.m. Seamas and Riverside Aves. Sacramento

33 Mon, June 5, 1978 2:30 a.m. Northeastern Modestos Stanislaus

2/2/78 is the date of the Maggiore murders during the later Sacramento attacks. 2/16/78 Sacramento Bee article published these composites of suspects. Yet the EAR attacks again on 3/18/78 Stockton and 4/14/78

Sacramento. He had already struck in Stockton before, but still, despite the composites, he is attacking in Sacramento. These composites had no B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 78 effect. 4/16/78, two months later, the Sacramento Bee published a revised composite of one suspect from a better description from a new witness:. This was released two days after the attack on 4/14/78 Sacra- mento.

After that revision was published, the EAR moved to other jurisdictions and never went back to Sacramento except for one more attack on

20/3/79 Rancho Cordova when he felt all was okay again. All of this indicates that the revised composite may have influenced it.

Since there is only one difference between the Maggiore composites, then the FBI selected Maggiore-revised composite seems to be the one to go for. Mainly it appears EAR doesn’t react to the original Maggiore composites, but when the revised comes out, he moves to ‘Outer Sacramento’ from that time onwards and only goes back to Sac once much later in the series. On November 14th, 2017, what I found in addition to this is that this same type of composite appearance and movement has happened before. Not just once, but twice, making a total of three times. The Mag- giore revised was the third time VREARONS appeared to have done this.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 79

The first is VR. For VR, even after murdering Snelling, he was still operating in Visalia. It took McGowen encountering him and a shootout and then subsequently putting VR's face in the papers that appear to be a causal reason why VR quit Visalia. Quit is a loaded term, but VR seems to stop and reduce activity after this incident with McGowen and his face getting exposure in the newspapers. So this is the first retreat.

The second retreat appears when VR first gets associated with the EAR in the press. As far as I know, the first time a VR composite is connected to the EAR is published on May 18th, 1977, by the Visalia Times-Delta.

I went looking to see if there was anything in terms of significant movement for this second appearance. The EAR hits in Sacramento on 5/28/77 ten days after this press release that there is a law enforcement discussion about VR being EAR. The proceeding attack is followed by a four- month pause. The next target is 9/6/77 Stockton, which is a significant change. However, the following month, he is back to Sacramento again

10/1/77 Rancho Cordova when he felt all was okay again.

Not only that, but online maps concerning EAR attacks even subconsciously segregated the crimes into separate categories such as - early B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 80

Sacramento attacks, later-Sacramento attacks, and outer Sacramento attacks. The break between later-Sacramento attacks and outside Sacra- mento attacks occur at the time where I have pointed out the VR and EAR composites were published. It is an accurate composite that explains the sudden retreat out from a more substantial area containing many clusters explaining why the crimes were categorized into different locational groupings.

So to recap, VR composite looks like Maggiore-revised. VR composite was published, VR appeared to quit. When VR and EAR composites were published, that may have caused him to move/leave for a while. When Maggi- ore revised was published, the EAR mostly quit Sacramento for good except for one attack.

The other side to this is that if non-VR/Maggiore type composites aren’t looking like him at all, then chances are there will be no correlation between their publication and his activity in an area. This appears to be the case. If there is no correlation between a composite type and EAR movements, then it should look random. However, with VR type composites, there seem to be non-random movements, which are highlighting a correlation.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 81

When DeAngelo’s arrest warrant was released, we can read in it that investigators may have considered the fact he may have moved after Mag- giore-revised was published. Now that the suspect DeAngelo has been apprehended, we can see he looks like the VR and Maggiore-revised composites. He doesn’t look much like the surfer dude composites.

We know from the previous chapter that composites can be divided into two types, and this possibly applies to every composite that ever existed.

Some composites come about due to a suspicious person in the area or as an offender is seen in the commission of a crime. This latter category is what gave rise to the VR composite and the Maggiore-revised composite. Composite context is everything. There are composites of suspicious people seen in an area. Then there are composites of someone seen in the commission of a crime. The latter is far more likely to be accurate than the former.

A good example is the composites of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

These appeared in the book Wicked Beyond Belief by Michael Bilton.

Some of the composites are suspicious persons. These don't look like him.

Other composites are from victims who survived. They do look like him. If you slowly go through each one and compare them to photos of Peter

Sutcliffe you can see many times he looked like the composites. There are B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 82 lists of composites online to search through by merely typing in the word

‘composite’ after an offender’s name to see what’s out there.

For EARONS, there are 2-4 composites of someone seen in the commission of a crime. The rest, of which there are over a dozen, are suspicious persons. These are nearly always the surfer dude type composite. The composites that look like JJD are the ones in the commission of a crime.

These are the VR composite. Maggiore-revised. Open-mask (the caveat in open-mask is that the target was blindfolded and just looked out from a small gap). Ripon court is another given by the boy who was shot chasing a trespasser over a fence.

Serial killer Ted Bundy was also seen in the commission of crimes. How- ever, Ted Bundy was a chameleon. He changed how he looked like most people change their clothes. Joseph James DeAngelo was also able to do this by weight changes and facial hair. Interestingly enough, Ted Bundy gave his real name to some of his targets. On July 14th, at Lake

Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Ted Bundy had approached various women asking them to help him with his boat. He was wearing a cast on his arm to make himself appear weak and unable to carry things. A ploy

Bundy used many times to get his targets to comply with him. He introduced himself as ‘Ted’. Some of his targets refused to go with him. Others B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 83 did and were never seen alive again. This dispels the myth serial killers don't use their real names from time to time or won’t give their real names.

Seen in the commission of a crime also gave rise to the Presidio Heights

Zodiac composites, the Zodiac’s last known attack before he seems to have stopped, at least Zodiac connected crimes.

Composites alone won’t solve cases. They are a guide. The ones seen in the commission of a crime are the ones that help guide us. There should be a take-home message in all of this. Some composites eventually match mug shots. Other’s don’t. Some composites have helped identify offenders. Others have been completely off. However, composites that appear to cause reactions from serial offenders are likely to be of the most interest to us. The Zodiac falls into this category. So in this collection of mugs, we play this mug's game where matching faces to composites, all depends on the context of the composite.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 84

Chapter 5 - “Slain on lover’s lane.”

“I want to report a double murder. If you will go one mile east on Columous Parkway to the public park you will find the kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9MM luger. I

also killed those kids last year. Gooooodbbbbyeeeee." – The Zodiac.

[Call from a payphone to the Vallejo Police Department 7/5/69—12:40am].

When a couple starts to passionately kiss in front of us in crowded public transport or in a public place, some people tend to get uncomfortable, distracted, feel odd, try to ignore it or maybe put on a happy face that love is air. What we ordinary people don’t do is pull out a gun or knife and murder them on the spot, later writing letters to the newspapers taunting law enforcement about doing it again. Yet this is precisely what the Zodiac killer did. To understand why we need to look at the canonical Zodiac crimes.

Canonical is a term I first came across used by Philip Sugden in his book

“The Complete History of Jack the Ripper” (1994). Canon refers to a group that is considered official. In the case of Jack the Ripper there were officially five homicides, the canonical five – Mary Ann (Polly Ann) Nichols,

Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.

However there are many other possible JtR victim candidates such as

Emma Smith, Martha Tabram, Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles to name a few. These are cataloged under a broader umbrella of crimes called ‘the

Whitechapel murders’. Both are official designations with the canonical B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 85 five being referred to by the police surgeon Thomas Bond and Sir Melville

Macnaghten, Assistant Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police Service and Head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

Likewise with the Zodiac crimes there are the canonical crimes at Lake

Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs, Lake Berryessa and Presidio Heights.

They total seven victims with five dead and two survivors. These form the canonical Zodiac crimes, however there are a number of suspected Zodiac crimes outside of these such as the 1966 Riverside homicide of Cheri Jo

Bates and the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders (SRHM crimes). For now we shall cover the canonical Zodiac crimes.

LAKE HERMAN ROAD

Just within Benicia city limits, Friday, December 20th, 1968 somewhere after 11pm, David Faraday (17) and Betty Lou Jensen (16) on their first date were parked in Faraday’s station wagon in the unlit gravel parking area by the entrance to Benicia water pumping station on Lake Herman

Road, a well-known lover’s lane spot. They were shot dead by an assailant who likely drove up next to them, got out, fired warning shots into the rear of the station wagon possibly just as Faraday was reversing out. They were then forced out of their car at gunpoint. Faraday was shot at close range in the head behind the left ear, probably facing his assailant or as he exited. He held his class ring between his fingers, which was seen during his ambulance ride. Faraday was still breathing but was DOA at the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 86 hospital. A .22 caliber, semi-automatic pistol probably used with the ammo brand Super X. Jensen was shot five times in the back through her purple dress as she ran from the scene. She had made it nearly 30 feet before collapsing.

Their assailant had a tiny window of opportunity as several witnesses had driven by the scene. A couple an hour before the attack had been at the same spot and believed that a blue Valient car with two males chased them from the area. In other accounts, there was only one male occupant, and the car was a Chevy. This is notable because there are car chase accounts concerning other Zodiac attacks. Also, a white Chevrolet

Impala was possibly seen in the same place earlier by a shepherd.

At 11:00 pm, a husband who worked at the pumping station along with his wife drove by the place twice. Once on the way in and once on the way out. They saw Faraday’s car with the couple in it. They also saw a hunter’s truck nearby. These hunters also saw the husband and wife checking on the pump. The hunters left the scene in their truck shortly after the husband and wife did somewhere after 11pm and before

11:15pm.

A man was driving by the scene at approx. 11:20pm and believed he saw

Faraday’s station wagon with another car parked next to it. It is thought by investigators their assailant was in this other car at that time. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 87

A woman who left her home nearby was the first to see the couple lying dead in the gravel area next to the station wagon. It was dark and night, so it was her headlights that caught the brutal images as she rounded the bend on Lake Herman road. She put her foot on the gas and quickly found

Benicia Police Officer Pitta informing him about what she had seen. Pita arrived at the scene at 11:28 pm.

In the investigation that followed, eight bullets were recovered, but ten shell casings were found. Many of the casings were seen gathered close together, and it is believed that their assailant shot both of them from the same position. The question of the missing two bullets is not usual in that out of ten shots, two balls went astray. Another alternative is that the assailant decided to recover just two. Why not only one if they needed a souvenir? Could it be because it was done by two people as witnessed in the car chase accounts? There is nothing wrong with speculating here, but rounds go astray, and this is the most plausible explanation for the bullets unaccounted for.

Leads were followed up by Solano County, not Vallejo, because the crime occurred right on the jurisdiction boundary. Many people were interviewed, but Benicia was as puzzled and perplexed as anyone else was as to why? A drug deal was conjectured as a reason but failed to explain anything. However soon a motive was to be revealed by the killer himself. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 88

BLUE ROCK SPRINGS

Around half a year later, on July 4th, 1969, Independence Day, approximate four miles away from the Lake Herman murder, the same horrific scene would play out again. At around midnight, firework celebrations would mask the sound of the bullets being fired into Michael

Renault Mageau (19) and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin (22) sitting Darlene’s car as they were parked in a lover’s lane at Blue Rock Springs. So much celebrating was going on, that when police first heard reports of gunfire, they simply thought it was just the fireworks. That was until more reports started to come in that made them more concerned and patrolling off to check it out.

Teenagers had already been igniting fireworks that evening before driving off and leaving the spot to the lovers. One such couple, Michael and

Darlene, had been listening to music and talking. Darlene was married, and seeing Michael was a bit of a risky thing to do. As they sat in the darkness inside her car, they took note of a new car that had just come into the area, parked next to them, and turned off its lights. Michael obviously concerned this might be her husband asked who it was, but

Darlene brushed it aside as not relevant. The waiting car then droving off again towards Springs Road in the direction of Vallejo.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 89

Five minutes later, the same car returned, and using what can be described as a patrol cut-off technique drove up behind them a few feet away. Michael observed a man getting out of the Chevrolet Corvair

(possibly a Ford Mustang) with a powerful flashlight carried by a handle.

Thinking it was the police, Michael was preparing his ID for inspection.

Before he could turn to show the man his card, a 9mm Luger fired five rounds through the passenger side into Michael and Darlene. Darlene slumped against the wheel, and Michael, who had a bullet pass through his neck, tongue, and jaw was dripping in blood and likely partially deafened by the blasts.

As the man was walking away, Michael, still able to move and in a bid to protect himself, hurled his body into the back passenger seats and started screaming for help. Michael believes that the man stopped, turned and walked back to Darlene’s car, leaning inside the window he pointed the

Luger at Michael and shot him twice more, ejecting cartridges into the vehicle as he did. Michael still alive waited until the man drove off, opened the door, and fell out onto the gravel. He had been shot a total of four times but miraculously survived them all.

A man lying in bed in a house not far away heard the shots. He had previously listened to firecrackers going off before it and was able to discern the difference. There was a pause, then more gunshots, a break, B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 90 and more shots again. He also heard a car peeling away from the area at high speed.

Eventually, officers checking on what they thought would be fireworks discovered the horrible scene. Richard Hoffman, who arrived first, surveyed the act of the homicidal gunman and went to help Michael, who was still alive. Ed Rust came shortly after and went over to tend to

Darlene, who was barely alive. He tried to ask her some questions, but while she tried to speak, couldn’t vocalize anything. An ambulance arrived to take her away. Sadly Darlene was DOA at the hospital.

It would be hard to imagine that this quiet area near the Blue Spring

Rock’s golf course could be the location of such unheard-of cruelty by the bloody way someone had just unloaded a gun on the couple. The shooting crisis happened before, just four miles away at Lake Herman road around half a year ago. Even if there had been any doubts over any connection, they could only have survived for a few minutes because in the early hours of July 5th, some forty minutes after the midnight attack, a fuel station payphone at Springs Road and Tuolumne was used by the killer to place a call to an operator to put him through to police dispatch. Nancy

Slover received the call, and what she heard on the other side was something that disturbed her and stayed with her for the remainder of her life. In a taunting monotone, Slover listened to the caller say “I want to report a double murder. If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 91 to the public park, you will find the kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9 mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Gooooooooood- byeeeeee.”

Someone claiming to be responsible for two sets of homicides, separated geographically by a few miles and half a year apart, had made his first communication. This person had yet to give any name. It was directed to the police over the phone. It wasn’t until he started to communicate more that he anointed himself with the moniker - the Zodiac.

Michael Mageau, despite being shot several times, had somehow survived as the bullets didn’t go through any vital organs and could describe his attacker. The man who shot him was 5'8'' tall, beefy build, but not blubbery fat, possibly 195-200 pounds, short curly hair, light brown almost blond, no glasses, and a large face.

In discussing this incident in recent times, Mike Mageau has claimed that before arriving at the spot, they had been tailed and even chased by another car that they were able to lose. He seems to think this was the same car that he saw again with its lights off, and this is also the car that returned and was driven by the man that shot them. As we have read, there was a form of ‘car chase’ reported for the Lake Herman crime. It makes one wonder if a minor road rage type incident could have precipitated before both crimes. Something incidental such as cutting the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 92 wrong someone off at a turning. Maybe they were followed/chased for a short period, and this was their assailant. There is no reason to rule it out, except it is unlikely that this serial killer would want to stand out so conspicuously. If so, this would mean that there was some degree of a random altercation that we don’t know about, which was a causal factor in the Zodiac selecting them. So the Zodiac may not have planned to murder anyone and just had a gun with him. It would make him a disorganized murderer. Yet we know from his communications and further murders that he is claiming planning was involved. If a disorganized crime, it would also mean this was the second time in less than a year he had an altercation, which caused him to murder a couple in their car by shooting them to death. Not absurd as many disorganized serial crimes have happened this way, but we must also note this doesn’t fit the planning of the Zodiac killer, who appears to have been an organized offender who had even planned an exit strategy. So while we can’t say these chases didn’t happen, what we can say is it is unlikely such pursuits were caused by randomly upsetting the wrong motorist. It was Independence Day, and car chases could be explained by people out celebrating. Then again, celebratory firecrackers turned out to also be bullets. So the car chase topic is still open to debate.

Nevertheless, due to the phone call and similarities of the crime scenes, investigators had an explanation. The murderer of David Faraday, Betty

Lou Jensen, Darlene Farrin, and the attempted murder of Mike Mageau B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 93 was claiming to be the same person. Investigators had to take his claims very seriously. A different type of criminal had appeared on their radar, and there was very little anyone knew about such a killer of random strangers. Back in 1969, the idea of a serial killer operating by killing young couples was like something out of a horror movie and far from something society was prepared to deal with. It would not be until the early 1980s that academics would begin to compile proper statistics on the matter, and psychologists would probe the minds of serial killer held in prisons. However, this killer was about to let everyone know what he was thinking.

A month later on August 4th, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter from the killer who wrote with lousy spelling, likely done deliberately as the masking of his handwriting which often resembled a readable kid’s scrawl. We can reprint the text of the three versions next.

They are similar with some differences. The Zodiac’s misspellings have been retained. That goes for everything Zodiac. It is one big [sic]. They read:

Dear Editor

This is the murderer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman & the girl on the 4th of July near the golf course in Vallejo

To prove I killed them I shall state some facts which only I & the police know. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 94

Christmass

Brand name of ammo

Super X

10 shots were fired the boy was on his back with his feet to the car the girl was on her right side feet to the west

4th July

girl was wearing paterned slacks

The boy was also shot in the knee.

Brand name of ammo was western

Over

Here is part of a cipher the other 2 parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo Times & SF Examiner.

I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper. In this cipher is my idenity.

***

I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman and the

Girl last 4th of July. To Prove this I shall state some facts which only I & the police know

Christmass B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 95

Brand name of ammo Super X

10 Shots fired

Boy was on back feet to car

Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west

4th of July

Girl was wearing patterned Pants

Boy was also shot in knee

Brand name of ammo was Western

Here is a cyipher or that is part of one. the other 2 parts have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner & the S.F. Chronicle

I want you to print this cipher on your frunt page by Fry Afternoon Aug 1-

69, If you do not do this I will go on a kill ram-page Fry night that will last the whole week end. I will cruse around and pick of all stray people or coupples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people.

If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Fry. 1st of Aug 69, I will go on a kill rampage Fry. night. I will cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, untill I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.

*** B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 96

Dear Editor,

I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman & the girl last 4th of July. To prove this I shall state some facts which only I & the police know.

Christmass brand name of ammo - Super X

10 shots fired

Boy was on his back with feet to car

Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west

4th of July

girl was wearing patterned pants boy was also shot in knee ammo was made by Western

Here is a cipher or that is part of one. The other 2 parts are being mailed to the Vallejo Times & S.F. Chronicle

I want you to print this cipher on the frunt page by Fry afternoon Aug 1-

69. If you do not print this cipher, I will go on a kill rampage Fry night.

This will last the whole weekend, I will cruse around killing people who are alone at night untill Sun Night or untill I kill a dozen people. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 97

***

It is important to note here that the first letter is the only one to mention the golf course nearby. The other two do not. The papers printed similar letters with some variations and the ciphers, nicknaming the culprit the cipher killer. However, this moniker was not to stick for long. The killer decided to give himself a nickname on August 4th, 1969.

On Woolworth’s “Fifth Avenue” brand paper, the San Francisco Examiner received the following.

Dear Editor

This is the Zodiac speaking.

In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I have had in Vallejo, I shall be very happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police haveing a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up; when they do crack it they will have me.

On the 4th of July:

I did not open the car door, The window was rolled down all ready. The boy was origionaly sitting in the front seat when I began fireing. When I fired the first shot at his head, he leaped backwards at the same time B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 98 thus spoiling my aim. He ended up on the back seat then the floor in back thashing out very violently with his legs; thats how I shot him in the knee. I did not leave the cene of the killing with squealling tires & raceing engine as described in the Vallejo paper,. I drove away quite slowly so as not to draw attention to my car.

The man who told the police that my car was brown was a negro about

40–45 rather shabbly dressed. I was at this phone booth haveing some fun with the Vallejo cops when he was walking by. When I hung the phone up the dam thing began to ring & that drew his attention to me & my car.

Last Christmass

In that epasode the police were wondering as to how I could shoot & hit my victoms in the dark. They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well lit night & I could see the silowets on the horizon. Bull

Shit that area is srounded by high hills & trees. What I did was tape a small pencel flash light to the barrel of my gun. If you notice, in the center of the beam of light if you aim it at a wall or celling you will see a black or darck spot in the center of the circle of light about 3 to 6 inches across. When taped to a gun barrel, the bullet will strike exactly in the center of the black dot in the light. All I had to do was spray them as if it B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 99 was a water hose; there was no need to use the gun sights. I was not happy to see that I did not get front page coverage.

Zodiac Killer

NO ADDRESS

***

The communications were something altogether on a different level of criminally disturbing. Not only was this psychopath murdering couples, but he had decided to write about it and boast to the police and society using the press to print his letters. He had even given himself a name - the Zodiac. Whatever interpretation everybody made of this, one thing was for sure, they were dealing with someone who was more than capable of doing it again.

The next written Zodiac message came on September 27th, 1969, and was written on the car door of his next targets that laid tied up and bleeding by a lake shoreline. It read:

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 100

Vallejo

12-20-68

7-4-69

Sept 27-69-6:30

by knife

LAKE BERRYESSA

This lake shoreline dusk attack was very different from the last two crimes. In fact, it was so dissimilar that the Zodiac wrote the message on his target’s car door so that the connection would be made. He didn’t have to do this, though, because, like his previous attack, the male survived to give a description of a hooded man with a large Zodiac symbol carefully embroidered onto the chest piece of this serial killer’s homemade executioner costume. The Zodiac had thought he had killed his male target this time but he was wrong. He had not. This lack of success may have lead later to a precisely calculated attack on a male to make up for the killer’s inadequacy.

Bryan Calvin Hartnell (20) and Cecelia Ann Shepard (22) were having a picnic at Lake Berryessa’s Twin Oak Ridge, where they were spending the late afternoon into the evening. Today the area is known as Zodiac point B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 101 or Zodiac island. Erosion has since changed quite a bit of the landscape since 1969. While the two friends lay side by side (Shepard had a boyfriend), the woman noticed a man upon a hill nearby some trees. She told Bryan who was looking the other way out across the lake that they were being watched. Bryan just thought it was another visitor to the lake, possibly using nature as a toilet and paid no attention. Cecelia then observed the man again some moments later. She described to Bryan that he was going behind a tree. Bryan thought his suspicion was confirmed and believed the man was just urinating because there were no public toilets nearby. Shepard watched as the man with glasses, and brown hair down over his eyes (a comment later obtained by an officer at the scene from Shepard) put a hood over his head, and started heading for them with a pistol in hand. Shepard shouted to Bryan “Oh my God he’s got a gun” which got them both quickly to their feet as this figure came towards them, costumed, with what seems today like the world’s first cosplay.

The black hood was a box shape, had a square top so that the cloth draped straight down at the sides of his head as far as his shoulders, but with a chest-flap baring an embroidered cross-stitched within a circle.

Neither Bryan nor Cecelia connected this with the Zodiac symbol, a symbol that was not widely known at the time. There is still a discussion if the Zodiac symbol had been published previously. If it had, it did not appear to get widespread attention.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 102

Holes for eyes had been covered with clip-on sunglasses at the front.

Bryan later thought this was rather clever because the sun was going down, and the sunglasses would prevent any glare. It also indicated that the Zodiac planned to kill during daylight.

As the hooded man walked closer, he began to speak in what Bryan would later describe as a possible southern sounding accent. Bryan thought he had heard the voice or accent before but couldn’t place it and decided to concentrate on what he was seeing and to control the situation as best he could by asking questions and trying to offer to help the man by giving him his car keys and also mentioned possible legal support.

The hooded man said he was an escaped convict who had broken out of a prison, Deer Lodge, Montana where he had killed a guard and stolen a vehicle. As Bryan, a pre-law graduate tried to promise the man assistance, the hooded man pulled a pre-cut cord from around his belt, which also held a knife in a wooden sheath and a pistol on the other side.

Bryan Hartnell would later state that the attacker had brown hair, and when he was asked to explain how we knew that if the man was wearing a hood over his head, Bryan mentioned “‘Cause I saw it from where the goggles fit. I looked so closely to find out. And when he turned you know they kind of flittered. I could see his hair. It looked kinda greasy.” Bryan also added, “I remember when I was first talked to, I mean, I had the guy being a walrus, you know. He had one of those Sears-type of jackets, you B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 103 know, those can be either lined or unlined, and if it’s lined, a person could be thin, if it’s unlined the person would be heavy. I mean, he’s not obese.”

As the Zodiac was preparing the cord and now standing closer, Bryan quickly indicated to Cecelia that he had a chance to go for the Zodiac’s gun. Cecelia seemed to show she did not want him to do that. The Zodiac then told Cecelia that he wanted her to tie up Bryan and he gave her some cord. She bound his hands behind his back and Bryan continued to talk to the Zodiac, asking him questions, but the Zodiac was next busy tying up Cecelia. When he had finished, he checked Bryan’s bindings and tied them tighter. The Zodiac then pushed them both flat forward to the ground and proceeded to bind their feet, which he then bent upwards so he could hogtie them. Bryan noticed that the hooded man’s hands were shaking as he did this.

Once all their limbs had been tied together, rendering them helpless and immobile, Bryan asked the hooded man if his gun were loaded because he had heard how some criminals would use weapons that were not loaded, so if they got caught, they would not receive so harsh a sentence. The

Zodiac went around to Bryan’s front and popped out the magazine showing Bryan the golden-looking bullets inside. He then reloaded the magazine into the pistol and walked back around behind him.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 104

Bryan noticed that the sun was going down and mentioned to the Zodiac that if he left them out here all night in the middle of nowhere that they could freeze to death. There was no response. All he could hear was the hooded man’s breathing changing, becoming more rapid and deeper, as if panting. As Cecelia lay whimpering beside him, out of the corner of his eye, Bryan saw the flash of the blade as it came out of the wooden holster. The Zodiac’s blade went into Bryan’s back, in and out a total of six times in rapid succession. One penetration barely missing Bryan’s heart and cutting through the outer lining. When the Zodiac was done with

Bryan, he then turned to Cecelia, who was screaming now she knew what was coming. She tried to wiggle around and moved a lot as the Zodiac stabbed her over ten times in various parts of her body. Bryan looked away and closed his eye as her blood splattered on him. Then he remained still and held his breath for what seemed like an eternity in the hope the Zodiac would leave them alone. That is precisely what happened. The Zodiac simply walked away.

Bryan and Cecelia, both suffering from numerous stab wounds, tried to untie each other. As the blood drained out of them, they started to fade in and out consciousness, but they spotted some boats passing by and tried to raise the alarm. Around 6:30 pm, Ronald Fong was fishing that day and saw the pair on the shoreline waving and calling out. He didn’t boat over to them but instead made his way back to the fishing resort he rented the boat from to report what he had seen. After a phone call, law B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 105 enforcement was then on the way to the crime scene, which required a lot of time going through winding roads down to the lake peninsula where the couple was struggling to stay alive. Some people back at the boat resort,

Archie and Elizabeth White, also made their way to the spot by speedboat to give assistance.

By this time, Bryan had managed to get the cords undone with the help of

Cecelia and staggered his way back to the road having to take long pauses to keep whatever energy he had and from blacking out. At around

7:10pm a truck driver passing by saw Bryan in his headlights. Bryan suddenly had the worst feeling in the world come over him that the hooded man had come back for them. However, it was just a passerby called Dennis Land, who loaded Bryan into his truck and drove on only to meet officers on the way.

Officers upon discovering what they were dealing with and hearing from

Bryan called an ambulance. They walked down the trail to find Cecelia.

She was still barely alive but able to communicate some things about what happened, including the detail of seeing the hooded man putting on his costume behind a tree.

Due to the remote location, the ambulance didn’t arrive until nearly 8pm and brought the pair to the hospital by 8:50pm, both still alive, however, unfortunately, Cecelia Shepard died a few days later because her wounds B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 106 were so severe. Bryan Hartnell survived, which is why we have been able to learn exactly what happened that day.

As officers processed the crime scene (one thought he was doing a good deed by bundling everything up in a single package. A lot of the forensics of the crime scene was destroyed in the process), the hooded man had driven towards Napa to find a phone booth on 1231 Main Street. He placed a call to the Napa PD. A voice on the line said, “I want to report a murder, no, a double murder. They are two miles north of Park

Headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. I'm the one that did it.”

Investigators were able to quickly find where the call had been made from, and prints were taken from the phone, especially a palm print. In terms of evidence, the writing on the car was found along with footprints investigators felt confident belonged to the murderer. A 10.5 size military- style wing walker boots. They also recognized that a symbol on the car door along with the writing was the same as symbol Cecelia described, which verifies that she was able to communicate with them when they found her.

Examination of the stab wounds revealed the killer had used a knife that was 9-11 inches long sturdy blade like a dagger, which was sharp on both edges. Tire tracks were also recovered from the scene. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 107

There may have been potential witnesses to this particular attack. Being out in the middle of nowhere, it would be easy to remember the people around at that time if one were to see any. Three young women were able to describe a man driving a Californian registered Chevrolet sedan with long shaped headlights who pulled up behind their car when they were parked outside an A&W restaurant at St. Helena. This is where they saw him the first time. Later, when they went to Lake Berryessa for sunbathing, the same man appeared to have followed them when they spotted him again from a distance away on a hill looking at them. They estimated he stayed around for half to three-quarters of an hour and were able to give a description based on both encounters from which a composite was generated by a sketch artist.

The man was between 28 and 40 years, 200 to 225 pounds, 6 feet tall, black hair with left parting, sort of good-looking and stocky. The girls noticed he had a t-shirt hanging out his back. In retrospect, if this was the Zodiac that t-shirt hanging out his back (which was also described as a white belt) may have been the Zodiac’s cord bunched up that he used to tie up Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard. Another girl felt that he was wearing a short-sleeved sweater shirt that was bunched at the front. Is this where he was hiding his Zodiac costume? When the girls left at

4:30pm, the man and his car were nowhere to be seen.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 108

Possibly the same man was seen again by a doctor and out with his son.

Around 6:50pm Dr. Rayfield and his son saw a man about 5’ 10”, heavy build with dark trousers and what looked like a dark shirt with a red stain on it. Had they witnesses the Zodiac going back to his vehicle after stabbing Hartnell and Shepard?

Both sightings of the man suggest he was on foot at various intervals. If this is the case, then it also means that the tire tracks taken from the scene are likely not the Zodiac’s car. If it is the Zodiac’s car, then we may have to discount the Rayfield sighting or have another explanation for the man on foot.

Alternatively, this man may not be connected to the crimes at all.

However, despite searching for this man and asking for him to come forward, he never did.

At this point, we can say that this attack was undoubtedly planned. This makes the Zodiac killer an organized offender for this crime. We know this because it takes time to make such a costume. He must have had a rope and something to write on the car door with. He knew he was going to make a phone call after. That is all criteria for an organized offender. That means he didn’t expect them to know he was the Zodiac. He had a story prepared to tell them about being an escaped convict. This is a typical ruse story used by some criminals to get their targets to cooperate with B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 109 them. Most robberies do not end up with the robbery victim being murdered unless there is an altercation, usually one instigated by the victim, challenging the robber in some way who responds in fear of being caught and identified by killing their target. They did not plan to kill as it is rare that they do. They planned to rob. It is not the motive nor the desired outcome for the robber to kill. Financial gain is the motive of a robbery. Valuables are what the robber wants to obtain. That is why Bryan did the right thing by cooperating. He had no way of knowing the full extent of the danger they were in.

The Zodiac had made a significant change in his modus operandi. ‘Why’ has been the subject of some debate; however, I think I have found a possible solution to this, which we shall look at shortly. Before we do we need to mention that while this was the last known lover’s lane type murder of a couple by the Zodiac, it was not his last canonical murder.

Two weeks later, in San Francisco, a single male taxi driver was shot dead in what looked like a robbery-homicide. The Zodiac mailed evidence of the crime along with Zodiac letters claiming responsibility. The crime itself bore little resemblance to the previous homicides except for the use of a gun. This will be important when we come to a later chapter to understand why the Zodiac wore a costume. For now let us turn to the senseless murder of a San Francisco taxi driver.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 110

Chapter 6 - “The white suspect who became black.”

“Nobody gets justice — people get good luck or bad luck.” - Orson Wells

[New York Times, 1985].

The Zodiac’s modus operandi was now foiled for a second time we know about. He was likely enraged that not only had his previous two male targets survived, but doubts over the letter writer's authenticity had also impacted his need for public recognition. He would not allow another to share in his notoriety, and he would not be made to look like an amateur.

He had to go back out again with a new plan and do things a bit differently. The Zodiac, seemingly unable to drive around Vallejo countryside looking for targets or wear a hooded mask, decided it was time to take his terror out in a more urban setting. He decided upon San

Fransico and its public service citizens.

PRESIDIO HEIGHTS

On October 11th, 1969, between 9:30pm and 9:45pm, the Zodiac stood with a pistol in a pocket somewhere between Mason and Geary and Union

Square. His target, seemingly any random male taxi cab driver that would take his fare. Paul Stine (29) from Fell Street, had clocked in at work earlier that evening and took a fare to the San Francisco airport. On his return journey, he drove to Mason and Geary. Back at the Yellow Cab

Company LeRoy Sweet dispatched Paul Stine to pick up a fare on 500 9th B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 111

Ave. Between Mason and Geary and Union Square as Paul Stine drove along, a stocky man flagged him down. The man interacted with the cab a little, possibly touching it and then got in. He gave his destination as

Washington and Maple, which Paul Stine jotted down on his taxi fare records, and off he went unknowingly to meet his death at the hands of his passenger, the Zodiac.

As Stine approached Washington and Maple, the Zodiac gave him directions to go an extra block to Washington and Cherry just up along the road. Stine pulled in his cab put his hand back to get the fare only to have it knocked away, bruising his thumb as a pistol was jammed behind his right ear. The Zodiac pulled the trigger shooting Stine in the head and killing him instantly.

The Zodiac proceeded to go through the poor dead taxicab driver’s clothes looking for his wallet, which he took. He also took the cab keys. He then used his hands to forcibly rip a piece of Stine’s bloody soaked shirt off.

Once he had the items he wanted, he then took a cloth and proceeded to wipe down the inside of the front of the taxi before walking around and wiping down the driver’s side door. He then calmly walked off, heading north on Jackson St., towards the Presidio.

Little known to the Zodiac, across the road from where Stine had parked, in a house, some young children had witnessed the Zodiac in the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 112 passenger seat of the taxi cab going through Stine’s clothes and also wiping the cab down. Remembering the direction he walked off in, they had called the police to report what they thought was a taxi driver being robbed.

Dispatch quickly put out an all-points bulletin to be on the lookout for a black male going north on Jackson street. The problem was that the kids had seen a white male and not a black male, and the wrong description had gone out.

This wrong dispatch description disparagingly impacted the work of patrol officers Donald Fouke, and Eric Zelms, who close to the crime scene proceeded in their patrol vehicle along Presidio Ave. In all that time, they only saw one person on this the street walking towards their oncoming patrol vehicle, which would approach and pass him by. Since the man was white and the bulletin was to be on the lookout for a black suspect, they drove on. The man was walking with a slight stoop, who Fouke later described as a white male, a crew-cut with a widow’s peak, with a three quarter length Navy blue jacket with elastic waist, rust-colored or brown pleated trousers and tan engineering style footwear. Fouke also added the man looked of Welsh-ancestry. When we reveal the Zodiac’s name later, it seems this was quite close. Even Hartnell noticed the same pleated trouser style. This will also be important for us to remember.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 113

Arriving at the crime scene, they encountered the first responding patrol officer Armond Pelissetti who was doing his best with officer Frank Peda to contain the crime scene given that kids had gathered around to look at the grisly murder. Their ability to keep people away from the taxi would be crucial for later forensic recovery. Armond Pelissetti had opened the passenger side only to find Stine slumped on his front. Just by looking at him Pelissetti was sure the cab driver was almost certainly dead. He could see the wound and Stine’s blood all over the interior. Pelissetti was worried for the kids in case the killer was still around and tried to usher them back into their homes. He would also take a trip around the block to see if he could find the killer.

After Fouke and Zelms arrived, they talked about the crime scene, and in the conversation, the description of the attacker was mentioned. When

Fouke learned that the kids had seen a white male, his jaw must have dropped. Fouke probably told them he had seen someone heading into the Presidio. This is likely one reason why the manhunt soon to begin focused in on the Presidio grounds. It would not be until a month later when Fouke would officially report his sighting in a memo.

Today Pelissetti feels that Fouke did not see the Zodiac. This is based on the fact that the interior of the cab was covered in blood, and it would be highly unlikely that the Zodiac would not have blood splatter on him from such a close-range shot. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 114

Sleuthers have had some arguments against this observation, but

Pelissetti is correctly making a valid point. That sort of close-range gunshot to the head in a contained space would produce an unavoidable cloud of blood droplets that would get on the person pulling the trigger.

However, the Zodiac may have simply put his jacket on after the murder and used the cloth to wipe himself while walking towards the Presidio to make a quick exit by car. So a coat and quick wipedown may have concealed a lot of it.

We know the Zodiac was carrying shirt pieces with blood on them at this point and so likely also in his plan had accounted for the need to remove the most visible blood-stains from his persons or hide them. If this were true, then as Stine picked him up, the Zodiac would likely have been holding their jacket bundled under their arm. That possibility, if described while looking for witnesses to him, getting into the cab might have yielded something.

Another kid had also witnessed the Zodiac entering the Presidio at the

Julius Khan playground. It was likely this witness was obtained by canvassing the people living nearby. Even though the Presidio had officers patrolling the Presidio grounds, law enforcement went in with sniffer dogs and later a busload of the Army to comb through the area, but the Zodiac B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 115 had escaped into the night. A sleuther hypothesis is that he cut through the Presidio and had his car parked not far away and simply drove off.

This close encounter with law enforcement had likely scared the Zodiac considerably to the point that unlike his previous last two crimes, he did not place a call to any police department or if he did, such a report has never surfaced or been made public.

The Presidio grounds is not a small area. Walking into the Presidio is like walking into the wilderness. You could literally pitch a tent in any of the densely wooded areas, and nobody would find you there without searching for a day or more. There are even warning signs up to watch out for wild animals. Once you are in the middle of a wooden part of the

Presidio, San Francisco looks like a city in the distance. The scrub is almost desert-like during summertime with lots of fallen tree trunks, thickets, boulders, and rocks sitting among tall deep-rooted grasses.

These areas are all broken up by some homes, buildings, and roads interconnecting the complex. In short, once the Zodiac entered the grounds, he was lost for good.

Back at the cab, EMTs arrived and flipped Stine over from his front onto his back, which hid the torn part of his shirt from the forensic photographer's view who would later take pictures. The EMTs put on the electrode pads and checked for a heartbeat and found none. The pads are B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 116 visible in the crime scene photos. It was now officially a murder scene as detectives on homicide detail Dave Toschi, and Bill Armstrong arrived to take control of the investigation.

Even though the Zodiac had cleaned down the cab, it was a procedure to dust it for prints. However, even before dusting, prints were seen in blood on the doorpost between the driver’s side and rear passenger door.

Sleuthers have posited that investigators believed the shooter had gotten blood on his fingers after going through Stine’s clothes and had left the prints while cleaning down the cab as per the witness account.

As the attack at Lake Berryessa, the Zodiac had likely kept his vehicle well away from the crime scene so that it could not be identified. This would give more credibility to our previous observation that at Lake Berryessa the Zodiac car was not seen. This, in turn, may, therefore, give some credence to the various after-sighting of the stocky person of interest at

Lake Berryessa. This would, however, mean the tire-prints recovered from the scene are not his. Still given the Zodiac had walked away from this crime scene as he did at Lake Berryessa, then the man seen walking at

Lake Berryessa is not altogether that different. He had taken up a mode of transport on foot for both these crimes. He had simply carried forward what he did at Lake Berryessa in San Francisco.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 117

The Zodiac had likely used his right hand to shoot Stine from the rear behind his right side. In conjunction with the other crimes and Hartnell’s observation of the Zodiac, we can conclude that the Zodiac is right- handed and not left-handed, as many have claimed. In fact, palm prints recovered from a January 29th, 1974 Zodiac Exorcist letter demonstrate they were written using a right hand. There is simply no reason to posit that a left-handed person is involved in the Zodiac crimes.

In the hours that followed, forensics processed the material, and investigators speculated that they were dealing with a taxicab robber who had turned homicidal (possibly the same guy who was robbing taxi cabs in the preceding months). They interviewed the kids who had seen and reported the ‘robbery’ and got a description of the assailant. They brought in a sketch artist who was able to develop a composite that was added to the poster.

The Zodiac wanted poster describes a suspect as WMA, 25-30 years, 5’8” to 5’9”, reddish brown hair – crew cut, heavy rim glasses, Navy blue or black jacket. Interestingly enough, this first wanted poster claimed that the suspect had gotten into the front seat with the driver and ordered him to drive an extra block at gunpoint before shooting him. This first wanted poster was looking for a man responsible for taxi robberies and homicide.

These details were later removed and changed for an amended poster B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 118 because they were soon to dramatically learn it was, in fact, a crime of the Zodiac serial killer, and he had come to San Francisco.

A few days later, on October 13th, the Zodiac sent a letter to the San

Francisco Chronicle. Aside from the disturbing content of the letter that was about to send San Francisco into a blind panic, was a piece of Paul

Stine’s bloody shirt. The fragment was matched to the shirt in evidence lockup. The Zodiac had provided them with hard scientific evidence that the letter writer and the murderer were one and the same person. He had also successfully murdered his male target this time.

The letter read…

This is the Zodiac speaking.

I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St & Maple St last night, to prove this here is a blood stained piece of his shirt. I am the same man who did in the people in the north bay area.

The S.F. Police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcicles seeing who could make the most noise. The car drivers should have just parked their cars and sat there quietly waiting for me to come out of cover.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 119

School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.

However, all was not successful. Not only had the Zodiac nearly been apprehended by patrolling officers and had to flee a manhunt following him, but his face was likely correctly depicted in the cab robbery and homicide composite.

As investigators worked more with the witnesses, an amended composite was done. The source of it could be from several witnesses, even those who may have witnessed the murderer entering the Presidio’s Julius Khan playground, but we know that Fouke, even though he wrote a memo the month after, seems to agree with the composite looking like the man he had seen while on patrol. This amended poster now contained two composites, the old one and this new one. There are incredibly similar, but the newer one appears a little older. In fact, the revised description states as much. WMA, 35-45 years, approximately 5’ 8”, heavy build, short brown hair, possibly with a red tint, wears glasses, armed with 9mm automatic. The story about him sitting in the front passenger seat was gone along with the claims he was a cab robber. The wanted poster clearly states this is the “Zodiac.” Not only that, but we learn that the investigators have four pieces of evidence that can be used against him.

Slugs, casings, latents, and handwriting. In the letter the Zodiac had B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 120 correctly pointed out that the first stop was Washington & Cherry, which was recorded in Paul Stine’s log sheet and was not public knowledge.

It is speculated the reason why Zodiac turned to threatening children is that it was children who had seen him and gave the composite descriptions. The media had already commented on the kid’s seeing him.

No doubt, this enraged the Zodiac even more. He had messed up again.

Hopefully, this book will reveal his biggest mess-up of all in that he revealed his full name.

In "This is the Zodiac Speaking" documentary bonus material to the 2007

David Fincher movie, retired officer Armond Pelissetti is adamant that

Fouke and Zelms could not have seen the Zodiac because he would have been covered in blood. Pelissetti described the interior of the car as a mess of blood everywhere. The suspect was described as having short brown hair, possibly with a red tint. Well, that red tint might just be what we think it is. However, could he have dyed his hair, knowing he would get some blood on it. Or having naturally red hair, a cover. These are questions sleuthers still ask today.

Which leaves his face. Well, that can be cleaned somewhat quickly and putting on the glasses after some help in looking less conspicuous. He doesn't have to be clean for inspection. He just has to be clean enough not to attract attention on his way to his car. He was only a few minutes B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 121 brisk walk away from the Presidio, which is basically like a dense scrub area and genuinely vast. Zodiac followers have YouTube videos describing and show possible pathways the Zodiac took. They are worth searching to actually see how big the place is.

We are dealing with someone who already shot several people at close range. At Lake Herman Road, Faraday was also shot behind the ear at close range. The Zodiac would likely have gotten blood on himself. At Blue

Rock Springs, the Zodiac actually leaned into the car to shoot Mike

Mageau in the back seat. There was a spent cartridge inside. So now we have him with experience shooting inside a vehicle. This would have produced quite a deafening sound. So what about the noise in Stine’s cab?

One can quickly see how a silencer could explain how to reduce the sound of the gunshot. Even Mike Mageau thought the Zodiac used one because the sound was muffled. However, he may have been deafened by the shots, which were heard by a witness living nearby. This seems to cast doubt on a silencer being used. Yet it would make sense in the Stine attack. Still, there is no evidence the Zodiac used one. Then there is all that blood.

This could be another reason why the Zodiac wore a costume at Lake

Berryessa. Undoubtedly, he got blood on that stabbing two people B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 122 numerous times. We know the Zodiac planned to take a bloody shirt piece with him for the Stine attack. So he must have prepared in some way to contain the literally bloody items, including the firearm. He also had arranged to clean up because he brought a cloth to wipe down the cab with. This indicates that the Zodiac may well have destroyed his costume from Lake Berryessa because it had been identified or washed it, and the blood was gone. If the blood was still on the costume, then he could have sent that piece instead of needing to murder Paul Stine for a bloody shirt piece. Maybe he felt that blood testing could not match the blood to a victim at the time and still has the hood. We can only speculate, but it is important to mention he probably had access to the victim's blood on some material (his costume) before the Stine attack and knows how deafening shots can be inside a vehicle.

Fouke saw a man with his hands in his pockets shuffling along with his head down. I guess that the Zodiac was holding a cloth-wrapped package of Stine’s bloody shirt in one pocket and a firearm at the ready in other the pocket of his windbreaker. If he were stopped, there would be no doubt that he would try to escape in a firefight.

The Zodiac letter of October 13th, which included Stine’s shirt piece, was likely mailed before the release of the first wanted poster, which was done on October 13th. So while the Zodiac could have read that witnesses saw him (and likely did because of his letter), he probably didn’t know how B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 123 good a look they got until he saw this poster. By the time he saw it, his post was away in the mail claiming responsibility for the murder as a

Zodiac crime.

The amended composite is dated October 18th. The Zodiac sent the

“dripping pen” card on November 8th (we shall see this date is significant to the Zodiac in the later chapters) and then another letter dated

November 9th. In that letter, he addresses that officers had seen him. This appears to corroborate what officer Fouke saw, but the Zodiac claims they stopped him and spoke to him. Fouke denies this happened. Anyway, the

Zodiac was obviously very upset that his composite was now out as can be gathered from the following letter on November 9th.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 124

This is the Zodiac speaking

Up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people. I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. So I shall change the way the collecting of slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone. When I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, & a few fake accidents, etc.

The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.

I look like the description passed out only when I do my thing, the rest of the time I look entirle different. I shall not tell you what my descise consists of when I kill

As of yet I have left no fingerprints behind me contrary to what the police say in my killings I wear transparent finger tip guards. All it is is 2 coats of airplane cement coated on my finger tips—quite unnoticible & very efective my killing tools have been boughten through the mail order outfits before the ban went into efect. Except one & it was bought out of the state.

So as you can see the police don't have much to work on. If you wonder why I was wipeing the cab down I was leaving fake clews for the police to run all over town with, as one might say, I gave the cops som bussy work to do to keep them happy. I enjoy needling the blue pigs. Hey blue pig I B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 125 was in the park—you were useing fire trucks to mask the sound of your cruzeing prowl cars. The dogs never came with in 2 blocks of me & they were to the west & there was only 2 groups of parking about 10 min apart then the motor cicles went by about 150 ft away going from south to north west.

Must print in paper ps. 2 cops pulled a goof abot 3 min after I left the cab.

I was walking down the hill to the park when this cop car pulled up & one of them called me over & asked if I saw anyone acting suspicious or strange in the last 5 to 10 min & I said yes there was this man who was runnig by waveing a gun & the cops peeled rubber & went around the corner as I directed them & I disappeared into the park a block & a half away never to be seen again.

Hey pig doesnt it rile you up to have your noze rubed in your booboos?

If you cops think I'm going to take on a bus the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your heads.

Take one bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer & 1 gal of stove oil & dump a few bags of gravel on top & then set the shit off & will positivily ventalate any thing that should be in the way of the blast.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 126

The death machine is all ready made. I would have sent you pictures but you would be nasty enough to trace them back to developer & then to me, so I shall describe my masterpiece to you. The nice part of it is all the parts can be bought on the open market with no questions asked.

1 bat. pow clock—will run for aprox 1 year

1 photoelectric switch

2 copper leaf springs

2 6V car bat

1 flash light bulb & reflector

1 mirror

2 18" cardboard tubes black with shoe polish in side & oute the system checks out from one end to the other in my tests. What you do not know is whether the death machine is at the sight or whether it is being stored in my basement for future use. I think you do not have the manpower to stop this one by continually searching the road sides looking for this thing. & it wont do to re roat & re schedule the busses because the bomb can be adapted to new conditions.

Have fun!! By the way it could be rather messy if you try to bluff me.

PS. Be shure to print the part I marked out on page 3 or I shall do my thing Zodiac Killer symbol.svg

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 127

To prove that I am the Zodiac, Ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my collecting of slaves.

So it seems the composite has strong corroboration for it. Kids (plural) saw the Zodiac in the commission of a crime. Officer Fouke likely saw the

Zodiac, and he is a trained observer. Finally, we have the Zodiac himself admitting to this event in his letter. The way the Zodiac goes to great lengths to claim he was wearing a disguise and using glue on his finger- tips is a hard sell because it makes absolutely no sense for the Zodiac to do those things and then a few weeks later reveal he was leaving false evidence. If he were to generate false leads and evidence, he wouldn’t then claim to have done so. He needs to be seen as in control and not making mistakes and is why he wrote these lies. It is all congruent with an offender who has been seen and left evidence behind by mistake. Also, these are an excellent reason why the Zodiac appeared to stop. The murder of Paul Stine was the last canonical Zodiac murder.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 128

Chapter 7 - “Why the world’s first cosplay?”

“The mask can be a limitation, but you just deal with it. You do get superhuman strength

and pumpkin bombs and all this other stuff to express yourself with.' - Willem Dafoe

[on the Green Goblin/Norman Osborne.]

So why did the Zodiac costume up? There is a response to this, but it will lead us into quite a lot of detail about the mind of the Zodiac. The likely answer is because it's the same killer, and he was learning from his mistakes. The evolution of the Zodiac’s M.O. is a predictable outcome of a single offender learning and avoiding detection. The Zodiac did make mistakes and is why we previously had a chapter on serial killer mistakes.

The Zodiac made mistakes at the Blue Rock Springs attack because his general description and car were witnessed by Mageau. Mageau survived and saw him. This was reported in the media, which the Zodiac paid zealous attention to. As he knew these blunders would have to stop, he would need to make changes.

The Zodiac had to make modifications to his modus operandi for Lake

Berryessa, which included a new type of offroad location. He parked his vehicle away from his victims to reduce the chances of linking it to him.

He made a hood to approach his targets masked. He wore sunglasses B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 129 because he was performing a daylight attack as opposed to his previous night attacks.

However, again, the male survived. Brian Hartnell lived and was able to describe the Zodiac wearing a hood. Hartnell also described the Zodiac’s voice and general build. This is a good reason why the Zodiac was not seen using a hood again. A target would be instantly suspicious that they are going to be murdered by the Zodiac having heard about the hooded man who approached a couple at Lake Berryessa, tied them up, and stabbed them.

Following the Lake Berryessa violence, the Zodiac struck in San Francisco city, which we shall discuss shortly. He had been attacking in lovers lane type locales just off main roads at night between towns in country areas.

Now he would turn off these main roads to walk to find secluded lakeside spots on foot. In his next crime, he would turn to an urban setting because his hooded M.O. was no longer valid, and he seemed to have exhausted possible country spots he could attack in. Patrols in such areas likely increased looking out for him because he had done it three times.

Since all of his modus operandi had been exposed after Lake Berryessa, the Zodiac selected San Fransico as the city he would commit his next crime in and selected a male taxi driver (maybe because he failed to murder the last two males). His primary motivation was to obtain B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 130 evidence from the crime scene to prove he was the letter writer, definitively. He took some of Paul Stine’s bloody shirt and sent these with his letters.

However, he made mistakes, and his face was likely seen in San

Francisco. He left bloody prints there, and he could have been stopped by patrol officers passing him by. A composite is a strong reason why he would need to change things again. So much so, that it appeared that he ceased murdering and over the years the Zodiac communications petered out. His signature was letter writing, so it may not have been so hard for him to stop killing for now as some other serial killers and to keep taunting in letters instead, which is what he did. This timeline of a single offender changing M.O. in reaction to making mistakes works to explain the costume.

The answer to ‘why the costume’ also ends up demonstrating why the idea of multiple independent offenders is likely not correct. The changes in M.O. with costuming up is entirely understandable based on the principle, it is the same killer. These changes, have logical reasons why he did them, but it is essential to mention beforehand that these explanations are only just some of the reasons why it is the same killer.

There is also other evidence this book covers to explain why. It is also this crime at LB that delivers the confirmation that the Zodiac had an B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 131 enormous appetite to communicate. So much so he made the same mistake twice by departing quickly and leaving the male alive.

We could ask if the Zodiac may have written on the door before the attack, but if he had to abandon the crime (say his face was seen or an officer drove by), then that would be a problem as the message would claim to have accomplished something that he didn’t. So it is more likely he did this after walking away from the crime scene, which would also explain the shoeprints leaving the scene and making their way back to

Hartnell’s car. So the view the message was done after the murders lines up with the evidence.

It is not impossible to conceive that had Hartnell not been separated by quite a distance from his own car, then he likely wouldn’t have survived.

This is because the Zodiac would have stayed too close to him, writing a message on a car door not to have noticed he was still alive. The same goes for Mike Mageau. If the Zodiac decided to write on Ferrin’s car door, then Mageau wouldn’t have survived either. In both instances, it would have required the Zodiac to stick around for a while longer near them. He left Mageau because he wanted to quickly communicate his murders in a phone call. He left Hartnell because he had already prepared a pen to entrust his message on a car door for responding LE to see. Such was his craving to connect the crimes by writing about them. So a logical explanation for his writing out the dates on the door and using his chosen B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 132

Zodiac symbol on it is that he knew he was changing M.O. and so much so that he wanted to make the connection for investigators who processed the scene there and then.

We know that Bryan Hartnell was not supposed to survive to report the hooded garment with a Zodiac symbol on it. We know this for several reasons. The first is that Hartnell was stabbed so close to the heart that it pierced it’s lining. He was stabbed randomly. A millimeter more towards his heart and his chances of survival would have been significantly less than it already was. For Bryan to have survived is in itself, something that many have described as unbelievable. It is akin to being left out at sea without a boat and nowhere to swim, yet making it to shore somehow with only a few strokes left in you. It was touch and go with him. He was that close to dying. Then we have the fact that the Zodiac wrote on his car door to indicate that he had murdered them and was responsible for the Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs. He also left the Zodiac symbol on the door. There would be no need for any of this if he intended one of his targets to survive. All they would need to do is describe the symbol on his bib, and that would be enough for investigators to make the connection to the Zodiac. The Zodiac was to also make a call claiming the murder of two people.

A question remains why the symbol on the hood? The most obvious explanation for a hood was that he wanted something to prevent the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 133 possibility of his face being seen again as it had been with Mageau. It seems the Zodiac happens to have been right on hedging his bets here because if he didn’t mask his face, Hartnell would undoubtedly be able to thoroughly describe him. This is a survivor who held a full conversation with the Zodiac. However, the symbol on the hood is superfluous as a message to anyone because he didn’t intend for anybody to live, and only a few people would get its meaning. One of those would be the killer himself. He intended it to be part of his killing kit and in some sort of comic book villain fashion. He probably wanted to have his symbol on his costume because of his fantasy. This seems a reasonable explanation for it, given nobody was supposed to be left alive to report any of it. He had thought long and hard about how to do it all. Also, he knew he would strike during daylight just before dusk (hence the sunglasses), instead of at night to likely allow for an unobstructed vista to see oncoming boats on the lake. There is one other tempting explanation for the hood. For the

Stine murder the Zodiac sent bloody shirt pieces in. Could the Zodiac have planned to send in a bloody bib from the hood with the symbol stitched on it? Given Stine, this seems entirely plausible. If it is the case then why didn’t he send it in? Could something have happened? Some inability to send it? Nearly being caught sending it? We don’t know.

He used a knife instead of a gun for reasons which may lie behind a warped game he was playing taunting investigators with puzzles sent in B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 134 the mail. This book will discuss these in the Halloween Card solution chapter.

These changes may also explain why the Zodiac did not murder the three girls sunbathing at Lake Berryessa if this person of interest they saw who was never found is the Zodiac. He had gotten too close to them in his car, and they saw his car. He must have been tempted because he followed them out to the Lake, but he didn’t attack them. He held back, likely deciding it was too risky because his car and face had been seen.

However, we must be mindful that he may not be the Zodiac, and if he was, there could be dozens of other viable reasons why he didn’t attack them. Details about his car would make relevant evidence.

As mentioned, this was something the Zodiac had spent a considerable degree of time on planning. To park away from his targets, he would need to be able to walk to them without being seen and then put on his hood before confronting them. Roadside turnoffs such as his prior two crime locations would not accommodate it as in each of those crimes, he had a small window of opportunity. He needed a totally different secluded spot, and Lake Berryessa gave him a possible place for his plan.

There is a good reason to believe that to carry out such a crime, the

Zodiac had to have been familiar with the area. The most likely means by which familiarity would have transpired is by spending time fishing there. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 135

Possibly even renting boats on the lake from the very lake boathouse, which called in the emergency to the authorities.

Activities in and around the crime scenes appear to feature in many of his crimes. Here we have lake fishing. In the last two crimes scene, because of their short distance apart, we find a golf course and also game hunting in the area. Could these form the pastimes of the killer.

So the Zodiac had a new modus operandi, and he intended to use this new hooded M.O. for more crimes. However, this M.O. was thrown into disarray by Bryan Hartnell, who survived and revealed the Zodiac was now wearing a costume. The Zodiac had failed again as Hartnell described on camera his encounter with reporters from his hospital bed. It was quickly broadcasted that the Zodiac was wearing an executioner style hood. Artist concepts appeared in newspapers as well as a composite. For the Zodiac, such a spoiler revealed by Hartnell ended any chance he could use that costume again. Bryan had likely heavily impacted the Zodiac’s plans to commit more crimes this way. We know this because the Zodiac didn’t appear to use it again. The Zodiac can't wear a costume or creep up on anyone unmasked anymore. So both his M.O.'s are a bust. He must have been furious upon learning all this.

Hartnell heard the Zodiac speak. Several call dispatchers took a call from the Zodiac and listened to his voice. While it is hard for all of them to B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 136 prove they heard the same person, there is no significant disagreement between the type of voice they claimed they heard.

So, different M.O’s are used to segregate out independent crimes.

Contrary to intuition with this case, the evidence for the same killer is the change of M.O. at lake Berryessa but the context of what the M.O. change was is essential to this conclusion here.

Change means change. If there was a need to change something, then the Zodiac may have changed more things we are not aware of. One of those choices for this commuting serial killer would be his vehicle. Since the Zodiac is now associated with Chevrolet Impala, Chervolet corvair/mercury comet type of car, he may have decided to sell it off and get a new car. If not before the Lake Berryessa attack, then likely after as for the Lake Berryessa attack the Zodiac probably walked down from his vehicle as evidence by his footprints, and tire tracks found away from the crime scene. For the Presidio Heights attack he flees on foot, and no car for this attack has ever been associated with the Zodiac. The Zodiac had made a change. Could that change be a new car model that he didn’t want people to see? I think we can insert the strong possibility he had sold on the vehicle that had been used for his previous Zodiac crimes and wanted to keep his new one away from being identified near crime scenes.

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As we mentioned before, we actually expect M.O. to develop as the offender learns from experience. This means making changes that can alter M.O. This is what we see with the Zodiac change up at Lake

Berryessa. It should be a reminder that where linkage does not seem apparent because of M.O. differences, we need to consider the context.

This brings us closer to the topic of independent copycat killers, and we shall explain why the case facts point away from the crimes being a copycat.

The Zodiac Copycat Hypothesis

Any hypothesis that suggests multiple independent killers or that the letter writer is not the Zodiac killer is a form of a copycat hypothesis. The copycat hypothesis surfaces from time to time despite the Zodiac seeming to go out of their way to prove the crimes were connected by communicating claims of responsibility for them.

Occam's Razor is a tool used by scientists. It is a logical philosophy formally called parsimony that says we should select the less complicated answer to explain all the evidence without adding superfluous, unnecessary components to the explanation. For example, one killer who is also the letter writer is all we need to explain the Zodiac crimes. This is parsimonious. We don’t need to add more than one killer. If we do add more than one killer then using this same reasoning, we can actually add B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 138 as many as we like. Two, three, five, ten, twenty, one hundred. They are all superfluous if one is sufficient to explain all the facts. This doesn’t mean there are not two or more killers or that the letter writer definitely isn’t a different person. It merely means given all the evidence we have, that it is more logical to accept Occam's razor that the single assailant hypothesis works to explain the Zodiac case without adding independent killers or independent letter writers.

The copycat hypothesis also has the problem that none of these independent offenders have been identified with substantial evidence against them. For the copycat hypothesis to work, all of them must have gotten away with it so far. It also means there is still more to solve even if they do find one single person for a crime. The copycat hypothesis tries to survive as long as an individual offender explaining all the crimes isn’t identified. Also, the copycat hypothesis can be applied to all cases where an offender isn’t recognized. Such as with the BTK crimes or the EARONS crimes. As we know from their capture, there was no need to add copycats to explain their crimes. The same should go for the Zodiac case.

Occam's razor is the single offender hypothesis. It is the Zodiac story we have all known to date so far and forms the most plausible and transparent account of the evidence.

Copycats are actually often readily identifiable. A rational way of identifying a copycat is that they only know about what they are copying B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 139 from what they read in the papers. Often the media doesn’t get every detail right or makes some mistake. A copycat can repeat these mistakes in their copying. Their crimes will also omit something only investigators know about and hold back.

In terms of the Zodiac case, the Zodiac writer displays enough knowledge of the phone calls to even reference them in his letters. However, one could argue this wasn’t inside information and that the writer could learn about the phone calls from the media. No doubt many such hoax letters were sent in, but there were other factors to consider in segregating out the fake communications from the real besides inside information, such as postage used and handwriting analysis to name a few. More modern use of linguistic analysis has shown to be very interesting.

It is important here to note that even without in-depth analysis, the

Zodiac had a particular style that investigators became very familiar with.

Enough for communications to be intercepted before they were opened by some newspaper staff. They got to know what his envelopes and mailing habits would look like. If they were able to at least gather a potential pool of mails as Zodiac mailings before they opened them, then they likely were able to learn his style. Also Zodiac envelopes were not printed by the press during the crimes, so how does a copycat know to copy them?

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Another fact that points away from the multiple killer hypothesis is that if he could claim responsibility for homicides through 1968 and 1969 in such explicit detail, why could he no longer do it throughout the 1970s to the degree of accuracy he did with the 1969 Zodiac crimes? Any future claims he made being responsible for other homicides were simple references without the in-depth descriptions he produced in previous correspondence. At one point, he claimed he would not communicate his murders anymore and leave everyone guessing.

Investigators thought it was the same person and were mainly operating on that notion, but that was not enough for the Zodiac. The Zodiac also needed the media to know it because he wanted society to know it. The single-offender hypothesis was held by investigators, which is evident from the Zodiac suspects they had pinned for the Zodiac crimes, not multiple suspects for multiple crimes.

Apparently, writing on the car door at Lake Berryessa was not enough for some people to see the connection to one offender, and this appears to be a reason for the Stine murder. Not only did he mail a piece of his victim’s shirt with his letters, but he was also able to describe the correct location which he gave the cab driver as they started their journey, but changed it at the end before murdering him. The Zodiac killer’s letter of October 13th,

1969 for the Paul Stine murder had this inside information. The letter writer stated that… “This is the Zodiac speaking. I am the murderer of the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 141 taxi driver over by Washington St & Maple St last night…” The Zodiac had actually ordered the cab to go forward another block to Washington &

Cherry, which is the location reporters would have seen the crime scene.

Not only that, but the first wanted poster for this crime only said the

Washington & Laurel area. It is evidence like this that supports it’s the same offender who murdered them if he is commuting information only he could know.

Even if the Zodiac letter writer was not the same as the Zodiac killer, he had suddenly become unable to give any details anymore when the

Zodiac killings stopped. Did newspapers stop printing? Did his police scanner break? Did he forget how to do it? This is an important fact which tells us that the letter writer was likely also the murderer. The letter writer detailing murders ended because the Zodiac killer had stopped, and they are one and the same.

This brings us to something else that the multiple-offender hypothesis can’t explain, which is the offender’s signature. Here we are not talking about signature as in signing your name on a piece of paper. We are talking about what the Zodiac ultimately wants to try to satisfy his most necessary emotional needs. In fact, we have discussed it several times already. His need to communicate his authorship of these crimes in the media to shock society.

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Modius Operandi is fluid but can also be static for periods that helps investigators link crimes. For example, the M.O. of the EAR was to attack in clusters, breaking into bungalow homes by using a screwdriver to open patio doors or windows, approaching his targets sleeping and using a flashlight in their eyes to wake them at gunpoint, while wearing a ski- mask. Once he had his targets held this way, he could then begin his signature of binding them to terrorize them. It was a reasonably static

M.O.

We should note that in that description, we have also covered part of his signature. Without the terror, he would become distraught. This again, is evident from his targets that showed no fear. He didn’t like it when they did this because it ruined his signature, that sadistic emotional streak he needed to be satisfied. This is another reason why the EAR attacked in clusters of a specific middle-class society (serial killers often attack their own class) to terrorize neighborhoods. It is why he called up his victims to taunt them. He enjoyed their terror. This is why one of the first books on

EARONS by investigator Larry Crompton was called Sudden Terror.

Crompton had recognized that the most significant component to EARONS signature was terror. Dennis Rader was another bondage fanatic who had the same emotional need. Not only was bondage and murder vital to him, but he needed to communicate with the media and investigators to the point that it eventually undermined his anonymity and got him caught.

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A serial killer’s M.O. can change somewhat because there has to be the first offense, and it is highly likely going forward that the offender will carry out crimes in a way that produces the best outcome for them through experience. By this optimization, we mean a methodology that avoids unnecessary components and mistakes. It is something that is gradually learned and then thought over. Therefore we can say the first crimes and early crimes are inexperienced ones and ones where we may find the most mistakes and clues.

For example, ONS, a serial lust killer, came about because of experience as the EAR, a serial rapist. It is an escalation. The EAR came about as an escalation of VR crimes. Even though the EAR and VR crimes had homicides, these seem to be in response to the offender avoiding capture.

As ONS, the offender deliberately set out to commit sexual homicide taking everything he had learned as a ransacker and a rapist into account to reach such an escalation. His M.O. may change, but his signature stays somewhat the same. As a serial ransacker, a serial rapist and serial killer, he did it to strike terror into middle-class society. His mistakes can be gleaned from the fact his face was seen and composites made in its likeness.

The Zodiac is no different in terms of signature. The Zodiac's signature was terrorizing society through writing letters. He wanted to be infamous.

We are talking about someone who would get a buzz from going out each B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 144 day, knowing he was responsible for all the anxiety he caused in his own society but also knowing his regular life would never amount to anything, ever.

Unlike VREARONS and BTK, the Zodiac murders are not considered sex crimes of a lust murderer. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a sexual component to them, but he did not appear to sexually assault his victims.

He has a different emotional need. He needs to terrify society. Hence the phone calls. Thus the letters. The demand to be front-page news. While he claimed that hunting down his targets was better than getting his rocks off with a girl, it was actually writing this fact to terrorize people that was his signature. So the signature is not really the hunting down of his targets like in the book and movie The Most Dangerous Game, which the Zodiac was referencing in the 408 ciphers (as a note, in that movie the villain Count Zaroff uses a Luger pistol. This is a weapon the Zodiac used. Also, Count Zaroff, a name beginning with a Z, kept hounds. I am willing to bet the Zodiac did too, and if so, then our chapter on dogs may be even more interesting). The signature is the communications that shock society.

All of this is a good explanation for why he was not a lust murderer but a thrill killer. It is the thrill of writing letters, making ciphers, and having hidden meanings in his works that emotionally satisfied him. In one way, this can be interpreted as meaning the murders were not that important B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 145 to him. They were just a means to an end. Otherwise, his victimology doesn’t make sense as it dramatically changes when he murders a single male, Paul Stine. A means to an end is a way to understand the Zodiac crimes and communications as an expression of his real emotional need.

This is further evidenced by the fact after he stopped, he was still able to remind readers that he could murder more. He could instill terror while possibly not committing any more homicides, despite his claims to have done so. That’s a dominant position for this power-seeking thrill killer.

Somewhat off-topic but worth mention is probably one the most important documentary I have seen concerning these matters, the little known cult documentary called The killing of America (1981) which somewhat, unfortunately, was classed by some reviewers as a type of exploitation mondo genre piece because it contained so much violent imagery. The documentary did not get much of a release in North America and had a somewhat limited release around the world. It is only in more recent times that it has gained more attention, probably because it was thinking decades ahead of its time.

The documentary covers several violent crimes in America and introduces us to the possibility that the assassination of JFK was a turning point for the violence that was to come, in particular, violence that was aimed at getting media attention. For example, many people seeing the Zapruder film footage was possibly the first nearly snuff film ever aired worldwide. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 146

War footage people saw but in the context of conflict. Still, it wasn’t easy to watch some of these newsreels. Seeing such a high profile homicide and then the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, also aired on television, not only deeply shocked people back then, it still does today.

This era coincided with the growing ownership of domestic movie cameras which were beginning to capture images of crimes unfolding randomly before their owners and which could possibly even appear on the news should the film reel owner have survived to find their footage in demand.

Today videos taken on cell phone devices by the general public is throughout mainstream news and press.

For a tiny minority of persons, such footage may have given them ideas of how to attain media attention by carrying out crimes aimed at getting into the public’s mind. They wanted to be the next Lee Harvey Oswald, to basically get on television and be spoken about on the radio. To transform their boring lives into a life that everyone would know about. During the

1970s there was a spate of robberies and homicides where the perpetrators when asked revealed their motive was nothing less than getting on TV. So much so that they even broke into TV stations to take over the airways at gunpoint. Eventually, the media somewhat cooperated in a blackout with law enforcement to help reduce the mass hysteria.

The Zodiac would exploit the media in the same way. Will the mainstream media today stop mentioning the names of the mass murderers? To give B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 147 them as little airtime as possible? It seems that such censorship may only make more people want to find out, but at least little airtime as possible would help. We would even be hypocritical not to notice that this very book you are reading is a form of media discussing such an individual who craves this sort of attention. Yet I have fallen into the same pit. It is a trap. This book can’t solve this conundrum and only add to the problem, but at least we can mention it and acknowledge it. Some offenders have even turned to social media to try and broadcast live their crimes. At this time of writing, social media is in a battle between the freedom of speech and preventing giving these individuals a platform to carry out their aggressive forms of communication. It is a sorry state of affairs. The double-edged sword of the free-flowing of information through mass media and how it can be hijacked by a few for horrible ends.

The Zodiac abused public media this way in 1969, six years after the murder of JFK. There is no doubt this shooting and that of Lee Harvey

Oswald would have impacted him in ways that are quite different from how it shocked us. It would have given him ideas, whereas it is repulsive to us. This brings us back to motive. The Zodiac was likely a peeping-tom.

As a voyeur, he would probably have been sexually aroused by what the couples he spied on were doing. Usually, these psychopaths have some sort of emotional crisis when stimulated because it creates a conflict within them. That which they despise, they also find appealing. It happens with many prostitute murders also. The murderer will usually B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 148 have an alternative reason why they are doing it. Cleaning up the place is one common excuse with serial killers who target prostitutes. The excuse the Zodiac made was hidden in the 408 cipher. He wrote in code:

"I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is that when I die

I will be reborn in paradice and all the (people) I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife."

The phrase “man is the most dangerous animal of all” was determined to have come from the story by Richard Connell “The Most Dangerous

Game” in which Count Zaroff hunts a couple who are stranded on his island. Anyway, this seems consistent with a voyeur who has turned their perversion into something more deadly – thrill killing. So if we ask why did he target couples, then voyeurism appears to be the most likely motivation for victimology selection.

We might take this time to discuss some sort of minimal profile of the

Zodiac based on how little we have covered and insert some possible background to link some things up. Here is what I think so far but will contain a lot of speculative points. It is more about giving us things to B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 149 think about rather than saying this is the exact person who he is. We can stimulate thoughts stemming from these views that might lead somewhere.

The Zodiac planned his attacks well in advance and some of it probably a year before, at least. His fantasy stems from Count Zaroff in The Most

Dangerous Game and has spent time learning about many other villains in his life through books and films. He is a psychopath but understands little about them. Everything he learns about them and therefore himself, he has taken from fiction, especially violent movies and comic books.

He is always near his firearms and has a fondness for Lugers as it was the pistol of choice of Zaroff. He has likely a collection of them and may keep a hound. He was probably a sports jock (even used sports scores in his letters) and his family athletic. They were into outdoor activities, even hunting, and fishing. He golfs because he likes to feel upper-class as per his Count Zaroff fondness, but he is from a middle-class family. As an adult, he would have been extensively outdoors because he works in confinement, which could indicate long spells at sea in the Navy (the evidence leans towards Navy, but nothing is absolute there).

He was brought up in a strict household and repeatedly found himself competing with his family because of peer-pressure criticism. He was a fan of entertainment because it was restricted in his life by a parent. He B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 150 probably did laugh at the movie The Exorcist which he mentioned in The

Exorcist letter, and people in the theatre would have noticed this. Movie villains are his role models. When younger he would have secretly collected things like comics, which he was not allowed to read. He was not allowed to watch movies either, which is why seeing “The Most Dangerous

Game,” his first horror movie, is a pivotal moment in his life that gave him meaning. His parents and their associates were likely connected with law enforcement. He learned about law enforcement methods and the problems they faced. He exploited this knowledge in his crimes.

He likes the part of the villain but acts the opposite in his day to day life while he thinks everything revolves around him like he is in a movie being directed by himself. If he believes in an afterlife, then it is a warped one because he wrote that he expects he will torture his victims who will become his slaves there for all eternity.

If a family man, they would know that during his time onshore, he would plan to be outside extensively. During these outdoor activities, he peeps in on lover’s lanes areas where he broods over fantasies about what a villain could do to them. He may plan to go golfing/fishing but only spend some of the time golfing/fishing and mostly watching. He would have stalked lover lanes areas and has likely been seen by lovers in these areas who noticed him. He may have even have gotten into altercations with members of the public at his recreational venues and showed quick B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 151 flashes of hot anger, which would be unusual for him. He drives a lot between outdoor venues and would attend diners often on the way to and from spots.

He understands the areas he killed in because he hunted near them, fished near them or golfed near them. He knew how to get in and out fast. He knew where to go to make his calls. He was able to describe the areas in daylight in his letters despite being there at night. He likely drove to these places very often many times even many decades later after the crimes.

He understood cut-off techniques. He understood jurisdictional problems.

He murdered on holidays with fireworks because he knew this would delay police responses to gunshots. He understood ballistic reports, and his first

Zodiac letter is practically one of these. He changed his M.O. because he was making mistakes. His face was seen. His car was seen. So he dressed up with a mask and parked away from his Lake Berryessa targets, for example. He wore sunglasses because he planned a daytime attack. All planned well in advance, but he adapted when he makes mistakes.

His mistakes confuse him critically to the point he questions his sanity.

This occurs when he decompensates. It explains why he wrote to Melvin

Belli in a more natural tone and pleading in a way that appears genuine.

It may be a ruse to mock Belli, but many serial killers do have depressive B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 152 phases. When he is out of his depressive phase, he believes himself invincible. No matter how much he toys with the police in his letters, he thinks he can’t be caught. He tests this by leaving clues in his letters and yet still remains at large, which reinforces his belief that the Zodiac is more than just a comic villain but that he is a genius.

Like a peeping tom, he maybe has been caught doing his recon at another lovers lane in Vallejo that he never struck in, and this would have happened in the years before Lake Hermann Road during his recon. His cover is that he is simply a hunter, fisherman or golfer.

It is highly unlikely that the Zodiac was into the hippy scene or involved in the sixties revolution. He would have despised this as would his family because of their values. The Zodiac specifically targeted young liberal females women and attacked what he likely perceived as a nerdy-looking male. He probably did the same thing playing sports, bullying others, and would have a sport’s jock look about him. He may have been intimidated by elders though in the same way.

Throughout his life, he has attempted at times to try to appear as if upper-class or even nobility like Count Zaroff, but ends up being laughed at because he neither looks the part nor sounds the part. He would emphasize his middle name to try to give him more credibility. He has B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 153 settled for an ultra-conservative appearance. When he isn’t working, and in casual clothing, he would look tidy like a golf player.

He likely has spent some time in the Navy as a radioman. He was probably too young for WWII but probably served as a radioman during the Vietnam war and has experience with cryptology, a hobby since childhood, which he used to communicate his thoughts in secret to avoid observation.

He believes his work needs to be recognized on a mass scale because comic book villains shake the whole world and not just remote towns. He communicates his crimes to the mass media, so they become front-page news, which is a way to see his fantasy comic idea of himself in print.

So that’s it for my general profile. I call it my profile because everyone will produce something different. It is more about a thought exercise to see if anything might help other things to line up and point to some evidence. You should certainly try your own and don’t worry, they will change over time as will my own.

The Zodiac’s need for attention and his want for his fantasy villain to be recognized is what stands out most as he seems to have been so desperate for it, that he would literally kill for it. His day to day character B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 154 among people is this golfer-type. There are reasons why we shall go into this later.

His fantasy villain had to be successful and not blunder about. It is possible that because the two males survived his previous attacks and in conjunction with the Zodiac wanting to entirely put to bed any doubts over him being the letter writer, that he was driven to strike again. In fact, his Presidio Heights attack was around two weeks after the attack

Lake Berryessa. He was seemingly under pressure to prove himself.

The Zodiac is working to at least a few schedules. The Zodiac attacked outside of working hours on weekend days and holidays. This means he had regular employment. He was under pressure because there were months when he was likely at sea and so couldn’t stalk, post communications, or murder. However, he could most certainly plan. He probably had all the time in the world to think about it.

There is no doubt that at work, he has time to prepare and plan his communications. He likely would have been working in solitary at a station and could without difficulty draw some codes over the coming days and weeks. It seems to me that the Zodiac took windows of opportunity off work to murder arbitrarily so that he could finally write up the letters he had been preparing. He was so excited by the idea that he couldn’t wait and sometimes called in the murders by payphone after he B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 155 did them, even leaving written messages at the crime scene. The plan to write out codes and puzzles would have been formulated over a long time before he worked the murders into them.

Later as we reveal the Zodiac’s name in his hidden communications, we shall get an idea of how long. The Halloween Card he sent to Paul Avery was not created in a few hours. It was a long, complicated process that likely started years before the canonical Zodiac murders. The cat and mouse game the Zodiac played was designed over a period much longer than previous comprehended even going back to his youth in the late 40s and early 50s as a fantasy he developed.

The Zodiac was an M.O. changing offender. There is a possibility that because he was seen for the Paul Stine murder that he switched to abducting hitchhikers. The non-canonical Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders

(SRHMs). We shall discuss these a little bit later. In his November 9th,

1969, letter the Zodiac he claimed he would change his M.O. and make some homicides look like accidents.

"I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc."

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 156

So series homicides after this in around the San Francisco Bay Area have somewhat subjectively the capacity to be by the same hand as the offender who called himself the Zodiac. We should be open to the possibility that he only stopped being the Zodiac, not that he stopped killing. In the next chapter we shall address ‘stopping’. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 157

Chapter 8 - “Serial stopping.”

“Don’t stop me now.” – Queen

[Jazz, 1978]

In the chapter ‘A mug’s game’ we discussed the impact of composites on

VREARONS changing where he was operating. For the Zodiac killer, the appearance of his composite signaled an end to the canonical Zodiac homicides but did not spell the end to his letter writings. In fact, he would ramp up how many he sent over the coming months and years. The following is a list of confirmed Zodiac letters and cards.

LIST OF ZODIAC COMMUNICATIONS

1. July 31st 1969, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Exam-

iner and Vallejo Times.

2. August 4th 1969, sent to the San Francisco Examiner.

3. September 27th 1969, written on a car door at the Lake Berryessa crime

scene.

***Last canonical murders end between here***

4. October 13th 1969, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle following the kill-

ing of cabdriver Paul Stine. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 158

5. November 8th 1969, the "Dripping Pen" card.

6. November 9th 1969, the "Death machine" or "Bus bomb" letter, sent to the

San Francisco Chronicle.

7. December 20th 1969, sent to celebrity attorney Melvin Belli.

8. April 20th 1970, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

9. April 28th 1970, greeting card sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

10. June 26th 1970, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

11. July 24th 1970, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

12. July 26th 1970, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

13. October 5th 1970, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

14. October 27th 1970, sent to Paul Avery of the San Francisco Chronicle.

15. March 13th 1971, sent to the Los Angeles Times.

16. March 22nd 1971, the "Lake Tahoe" card.

17. January 29th 1974, the "Exorcist" letter, sent to the San Francisco Chroni- cle.

18. Feb 14th 1974, the "SLA" card, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

19. May 8th 1974, the "Badlands" card, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 159

20. July 8th 1974, the "Count Marco Red Phantom" letter, sent to the San

Francisco Chronicle.

Approximately two-thirds of Zodiac communications are after his last canonical murder and between communications 3 and 4. This indicates that the Zodiac killer’s signature was most certainly his letter writing in an attempt to terrify society, and he milked it as much as possible.

The 1971 to 1974 break gives us a possible clue that something happened to cause him to pause for so long. Then in the first half of 1974, there are three communications. As far as the general public can tell, a complete vanishing of the Zodiac after this. Despite possible suspects being touted as the Zodiac, there has never been a match to any of the physical evidence or handwriting by any of these suspects, many of whom were already checked out by investigators. For now, let us look into this interesting pause in the Zodiac communications.

Despite these later letters containing references to the Zodiac having killed more people after Paul Stine, there is officially no evidence of any

Zodiac homicide. The Zodiac did say he was going to change how he murdered people to make them look like accidents and that he would no B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 160 longer announce his murders. So without hard evidence linking homicides to the Zodiac, his claims to have murdered others have not been verified.

We suspect that the Zodiac had likely stopped killing because he had a close call at Presidio Heights and the potential of his resemblance to the police sketch. He now had more to worry about as people could put a face to the Zodiac. He could only hope that in his life and at work that his character would be so alternative to what people thought a serial killer was like, that they would never suspect him or tip anyone off about him.

Therefore we can simply put the 1971 to 1974 pause to him, avoiding capture by staying low. We can suspect by 1974 that he had in some respect both won and lost. He had won as he hadn’t been identified or arrested but the Zodiac failed because he had left a truly catastrophic amount of evidence in his wake from handwriting, clues in puzzles, ballistics, fingerprints, and his face had been seen. He had exhaustingly changed M.O. to compensate for his failures and still he made mistakes.

The writing was on the wall. It was over for him and communications into

1971 nothing more than a failed attempt trying to resuscitate a botched serial killer character while managing to stay undetected.

The Exorcist letter of January 29th 1974 is interesting because its content does reference the Zodiac by using similar linguistics - “Signed, yours B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 161 truly”… “If I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I'm capable of doing.” It appeared to claim 37 victims,

“Me-37, SFPD-0”. However the number 37 seems more like a clue to his date of birth being in 1937. Which is perfectly acceptable with the age of the offender being described by witnesses. In the Exorcist letter, there was no Zodiac symbol nor any mention of the Zodiac. It contains some symbols that have not been decoded to our knowledge. It was a pseudo-

Zodiac letter. The writer had doubts over bringing out the Zodiac again and certainly not like he had before.

In the next three 1974 communications, we see this self-doubt manifest itself. None of them either were signed the Zodiac. In these next three, the writer did not reference the Zodiac. The Zodiac did not directly use linguistics that would stand out as being his, but the handwriting was somewhat similarly masked.

The Feb 14th, 1974, the "SLA" card, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle looks like a Zodiac mailing and doesn’t particularly say anything meaning- ful. May 8th 1974, the "Badlands" card, sent to the San Francisco Chroni- cle is signed ‘a citizen’ and is a complaint about society glorifying violence in films and how the papers should stop running ads for them. July 8th

1974, the "Count Marco Red Phantom" letter, sent to the San Francisco B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 162

Chronicle is called so because it was signed ‘The Red Phantom – Red with

Rage.’

All three were agreed on by handwriting analysts and investigators to have been written by the same person who had called himself the Zodiac and had murdered people in California. We shall learn later that these mailings are significant in solving Zodiac puzzles and is likely why he felt the need to send them. We do not know if he was planning to attack again or not, but we can say that the Zodiac persona was no longer sur- facing and certainly not as he had once done so.

This means I do not necessarily buy into the idea that his 1971 to 1974 pause means he was away from California or imprisoned. However the

Zodiac has often been associated with the Navy. This comes from deductions over nautical references in his communications and location of the crimes near water, the wingwalker boots at Lake Berryessa, and especially the possible connection to murder of Cheri Jo Bates whom we shall visit soon. It could very well be that he did go to sea many times; however his stopping can be entirely explained by the fact he was very nearly caught and had to scupper his plans.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 163

He got out not because he wanted to, but because he had brushed so narrowly with getting caught that to continue would inevitably mean his luck would run out. The Zodiac pause isn’t just 1971 to 1974. It was the end of 1969 when he was nearly captured. This means from October 1969 through to 1971 his Zodiac writings dealt exclusively with whatever game the Zodiac had planned to carry out, condensed into a few essays over an

18-month period. Without going into great detail it amounts to the following. The Zodiac sent in the bloody shirt pieces because he was furious at the mistakes he’d made, and he needed/wanted to regain control. He wanted to bomb a school bus full of children. He then mailed some puzzles and responded to being identified in a possible historical crime in

1966. A few more communications claiming to have killed lots more people and include some puzzles. Then the conversations slow down and eventually appear to end.

It is as if the Zodiac put it all on fast forward and carried out none of it.

The only interpretation that makes sense here is that the Zodiac had failed, and he was tapping whatever leftover publicity he could get from his letters. It is interesting that as the media forgot about him that he too seemed to let go of it all.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 164

It is worth comparing cases for pauses. Let’s look at the timeline of homicides for Dennis Rader who also takes a pause or two.

Dennis Rader, BTK, paused for three years between Bright and Vian. He paused for seven years between Fox and Hedge. He paused for five years between Wegerle and Davis. He had stopped murdering in 1991 and did not murder again. When captured in 2005 he hadn’t committed murder in more than fourteen years.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 165

He took up communications in 2004 and claimed that he planned to murder again. We know he had two stalking convictions before this period and claims to have had designs to kill more people even though he never did. Would he have murdered again if not captured? The answer seems to be that it is a possibility, maybe even likely, but also he may not have done so. Age could be a factor, physical health, modern forensics such as

DNA profiling could have all played a role in why he stopped. It is not a bad proposition to say that he quit in 1986 because of DNA profiling. Alt- hough in its infancy, science was predicting a near-future where such offenders as BTK could be captured. However, Dennis Rader murdered again in 1991. It seems he felt that if DNA hadn’t caught up to him then he was free to continue killing. So DNA could not have been a barrier, or if it was, then it was only temporarily holding back the tide for Dennis

Rader. That means he couldn’t restrain himself any longer. In his arrest interview, Rader did state that it would be DNA that caught him. He was caught because he made mistakes and it was familial DNA that confirmed he was likely the serial killer BTK.

So for BTK, while DNA profiling may have at first stopped him… it would not be forever. It is probably the case that age is what eventually prevented BTK from carrying out more crimes. This would indicate that back in the 90s, DNA profiling was still not penetrating all serial killings as a B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 166 deterrent. That should be obvious because there are still serial killers today, but at least we see them wobbling when DNA profiling came on the scene.

We see the mid-80s stopping point more clearer with our other offender of interest, VREARONS.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 167

In the ONS crimes, we see a pause between 1981 and 1986 of five years.

After 1986 there are no known VREARONS crimes, let alone homicides.

One explanation for why VREARONS stopped is that he was more forensically aware than most other serial killers. For example, the prime suspect

Joseph James DeAngelo, charged with the ONS murders, held two degrees. In 1970 he obtained an honours associate degree in police science and then in 1971 a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. Dennis Rader also had two degrees. In 1973 he earned an associate degree in electronics and then in 1979, a bachelor’s degree in administration of justice.

While DeAngelo was working as a police officer for the VR and EAR crime sprees, Rader worked for security services installing alarms. It is likely a job like a police officer allowed VREAR to be more prolific, as after he was fired and began the ONS crimes, while there was an escalation to serial homicides, there was a massive drop in how high-volume the crimes were. Compared to the EAR, the ONS crimes suddenly drop down in the graph like going off a cliff edge and then just stop in 1986, the same year

Dennis Rader stopped.

The inference we can make here is that DeAngelo’s associate degree in police science gave him enough knowledge to realize that DNA profiling B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 168 would catch up to him if he ever had to provide a DNA sample which could happen for a totally unrelated offense. He obviously knew about

CODIS after the DNA match between EAR and ONS.

Little is known of DeAngelo’s life from 1986 until his capture in 2018. He seems to have gone underground. One could imagine him always looking over his back and carefully avoiding anything that would require him to submit a DNA sample. That would mean his crimes would have to come to an end as he couldn’t afford to even be caught trespassing during recon.

It seems that he did indeed stop entirely, unlike Dennis Rader.

What this means for us is that the Zodiac, if alive in the late 20th and early 21st century, may have followed a very similar course, not unlike

BTK or VREARONS. Maybe he planned a return, but DNA profiling in the

80s made him reconsider. There is some evidence the Zodiac was aware of police procedures and therefore keeping up-to-date on modern forensic methods that they also use. This sides with a DeAngelo type of background rather than Rader’s and consequently I think DeAngelo’s experience of being in the Navy is also viable for the Zodiac. Where DeAngelo was ex-LE, the Zodiac likely had family who was LE and probably involved working in prison systems. So the Zodiac possibly stopped because he was forensically aware of his need to do so or get caught. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 169

We have heard it said that serial killers can’t stop. Some people believe this is not true and this position has gained traction over the years. It seems likely that the origin of this belief stems from the need to stop a serial killer because they will likely do it again. For any crime, repeat offenders exist. However, we can believe that offenders may stop committing crimes. Serial killers are still human beings, and like human beings, they have options in life as much as any of us have. While many serial killers relive their crimes repeatedly in their heads, the fantasy alone is often insufficient to emotionally satisfy and curb their urges. Not only may they be emotionally unsatisfied if they do not carry out their fantasies, but they may also become depressed. The problem with this depression phase is that it impacts their ability to compensate in daily life, which also impacts on their ability to carry out more crimes carefully and not get caught. It is during their depressive episodes that a downward spiral, often fueled by alcohol, increases the chances of mistakes and getting found out. An example of such a serial killer is Jeffrey Dahmer, a sad, twisted story.

Dalmer always had trouble with alcohol and battled alcoholism throughout most of his youth and adult life. He had trouble keeping friends and was upset when people left him. Dahmer’s M.O. was to take men back to his B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 170 apartment, drug them and then strangle them. He attempted to keep the bodies as long as he could because he was lonely. He even tried to keep them in a zombified state by drilling holes through their skull into their brain and injecting them with acid or boiling water. Eventually, he would dismember them and turned to cannibalism, consuming his victims because it made Dahmer feel like they would become part of him forever and, therefore, unable to leave him so he would never be alone again.

Dahmer would continually have the problem that the men he brought back to his apartment would end up leaving him, so the endless task of finding people, bringing them home, and then preventing them from leaving was a struggle for his emotional satisfaction. His signature was cannibalism for companionship.

The murderous capture and consume task Dahmer had set himself up with was so demanding in workload, that coupled with his drinking problem, he was eventually fired from his ice-cream making job from which he had stolen vast quantities of acid to dissolve the remains of corpses in his apartment. Even neighbors down the hall complained about bad smells emanating from behind Dahmer’s door.

On one occasion, during his drunken homicidal conduct, a young drugged victim managed to stagger out from Dahmer’s apartment and was found B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 171 naked sitting on the street in a delirious state by passersby. Dahmer, despite being on probation for child molestation, convinced two responding officers that the youngster was his boyfriend, was drunk after an argument, and showed them semi-naked photos of the two together, which he had just previously taken. He showed them to prove his imaginary rela- tionship with this abducted youngster. Even though the officers noted that there was a smell in his apartment, they didn’t check beyond just looking into rooms and left Dahmer with his victim, who he murdered shortly later by injecting more hot water into his brain.

This was a beginning to Dahmer’s eventual capture. Dahmer was unable to control his situation and was decompensating. He brought one man,

Tracy Edwards, home to his apartment and held him at knifepoint to pose for nude photographs and attempted to cuff him but half-failed as he only got one cuff on and so held onto the other half himself. Edwards noticed that Dahmer went into some sort of hypnotic state, chanting and rocking himself from time to time. Dahmer was playing a video of The Exorcist III while lying next to Edwards. He would place his head on his chest showing signs of affection for Edwards which Edwards used as a way to ap- pease Dahmer from killing him after Dahmer told him he was going to eat his heart. Edwards managed to convince Dahmer that he was not going to run away and that Dahmer was his friend. Dahmer bought into it because B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 172 this was the emotional satisfaction that Dahmer always wanted. Yet Ed- wards intended to lure Dahmer into a false sense of security and flee, which he did on his second get up to go to the bathroom. Realizing that

Dahmer was in a semi-appeased hypnotic state, he punched Dahmer, knocking him back, which gave him time to bolt out the door and raise the alarm.

Officers found Edwards running down the road with a handcuff hanging off one wrist. Going back to the apartment, Dahmer was unable to explain why he had cuffed Edwards but told them where they could find the key.

They began to search the apartment and located the knife he had used to threaten Edwards. They also discovered a drawer full of polaroids of men, some of them dead, half-eaten and decomposing. Dahmer had some questions to answer.

As they arrested and cuffed Dahmer, he tried to resist but was unable to do so. On inspection of Dahmer’s refrigerator, they discovered the first of many body parts that would later be found throughout the apartment with the forensic examination. Dahmer confessed fully to his crimes during interrogation early the next day.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 173

Dahmer’s alcohol-fueled depression provoked an inability to carry out more crimes carefully and not get caught. It was during that downward spiral he made mistakes. Likewise, Dennis Rader, during his pauses, had managed to accumulate two restraining orders against him for stalking.

One in the 80s and another in the 90s.

A likely explanation for Rader’s three-year pause between April of 1974 and March of 1977 is that he lost control of his victims. Kathryn Bright was the only victim that had been stabbed and not strangled because her brother Kevin was there to put up a struggle after Rader entered their home, holding them at gunpoint. Kevin was told to bind his sister, and then Rader bound Kevin. Kevin managed to escape his bindings while

Rader was investigating the home. When Rader came in to strangle him,

Kevin fought with his attacker and eventually gained control of Rader’s gun. Rader got the gun back and shot Kevin once. He returned again shortly after stabbing his sister and shot Kevin a second time. Rader had lost control of the crime and tried to murder both quickly by attacking

Kathryn with a knife and shooting Kevin so as not to leave any witnesses.

Kevin survived, which Rader would have learned about in the media. This would have been sufficient reason for Rader to stop and explains why he didn’t murder for three years. Likewise, we see something similar with B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 174

VREARONS. As VR he was nearly caught by McGowen and paused for six months before moving his crimes from Visalia to Sacramento. We also find during the last period of EAR crimes in the summer of 1979 that he had made mistakes that allowed his targets to raise the alarm, prompting him to beat a retreat. It was also during this period that DeAngelo was caught shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent and was fired from the police force. He even botched the first ONS crime, which he tried to carry out after he was no longer a police officer.

I speculate that as ONS, he may have tried to maintain the role of a police officer, which may explain why the ONS crimes do not appear to have as much forced entry as the EAR crimes. If this is the case, his targets may simply have opened the door to their attacker. He would have to be unmasked, which would also explain why he left no witnesses alive. If this is the case, then being a police officer may have been part of VREARONS signature. He wanted to terrify society as a sexually sadistic police officer.

His emotional satisfaction possibly needing it. We have since learned that as a young boy, while his father was stationed in Germany, his young sister may have been sexually assaulted by military officers at an airbase there. He witnessed the attack. It appears that he was introduced to sex combined with violence at this young age.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 175

Bringing things back to emotional needs, we find that with many of these offenders, if they do not get emotional satisfaction then the result is a depression phase. This phase is partially elevated by the belief that if they offend again, their next offense will not just lift the depression but might even be an end to it. It is a cycle where the offender fantasizes about what they will do next, helping elevate some of the depression in the knowledge that they will be getting what they emotionally need again in the future. As the mental romances with crime develop, this corresponding has a negative influence on an ordinary personality and, therefore, a healthy life. This is why many of these offenders have strong anti-social tendencies. The fantasies are insufficient, so the offender acts on them, usually by stalking. During stalking for the next target, they may cover a vast range of potential candidates and places and yet never attack. This is because the stalking in itself can give them some emotional satisfaction, elevating the depression.

In the case of BTK, while there were pauses in his homicides and outright stopping, he still continued to develop fantasies and stalk. It seemed that this, coupled with forensic awareness of DNA profiling and potentially getting caught, allowed him to maintain some control over what should have become a downward spiral to getting captured. However, eventually, this was insufficient emotionally, and he needed to communicate again with the world and investigators to taunt society. This resulted in him making B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 176 mistakes (his vehicle is seen on CCTV) and eventually getting caught (the computer disc communication with his name embedded in the metadata).

Mistakes are notable because we know the Zodiac made a series of them.

Mistakes can sometimes help us learn about the offender. Anyway, these observations I have covered may give us some insight into why some serial killers may be able to compensate for more extended periods without murdering than previously thought. This can apply to the case of the Zo- diac.

At this point, we do not know what VREARONS was doing to compensate between his pause in the mid-80s and the capture of the prime suspect,

DeAngelo, in 2018. Given the person charged in this case has refused to talk or cooperate, we are unsure of how he managed his depression, though we have some clues. Neighbors noted that he was often outraged, shouting loudly from his yard, would threaten them if their dogs annoyed him and just behaved anti-socially in general. Restaurant staff had negative experiences with him when they gave him something he didn’t order.

He would dump the food he didn’t want on the table to show his displeas- ure. At work, he didn’t appear to cause much of a disturbance, which seems to indicate that he was able to hold down a job as a mechanic and driver in a Home Depot warehouse.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 177

The only time he appears to have been involved in a close encounter with the judicial system was when he tried to sue a Frenchman who allegedly headbutted him over a parking space. This is a type of road rage. We will find that he had more than one encounter as he was an avid fan of motor- cycling and tended to break the rules while on his bike. In fact, before his arrest, he was observed by investigators racing around the streets, breaking the speed limit and running red lights. For a man in his seventies, he was carrying on like a man in his fifties. Maybe these small moments of flirting with the illegal helped him compensate. We also know he visited strip clubs. It would not be a great leap to think he may also have used prostitutes. While none of these is as hedonistic as his EARONS crimes, we may find there is still an element of asserting some power and control over society in the little things that he did similar to BTK. Coupled with forensic awareness, this may have been sufficient for him to stop murdering.

We know from forensic recovery at his home in Citrus Heights that his shed was full of empty beer cans. He had hidden his problem away from his neighbors and society. There is no doubt that he was intoxicated daily and maybe drank himself into oblivion, a way of self-medicating himself into being unable to offend. If you are passed out blind drunk, you are hardly in a position to commit the sort of crimes. I favor this explanation.

That VREARONS used extreme intoxication to curb his deadly needs for B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 178 emotional satisfaction. That by making himself unconscious, he had prevented that part of himself from carrying out more attacks and possibly getting caught. He had found a way to paralyze Mr. Hyde within him through excessive alcohol abuse.

Dennis Rader, unlike the demoted DeAngelo, had actually managed to obtain a job as a compliance officer, which allowed him control and power over others. He was noted as an overzealous worker, often using a tape measure to ensure that lawns weren’t beyond a specific height. They both seemed to have found ways of compensating. If Dahmer would have at- tained a companion, he may also have found ways of compensating. This brings us to the Zodiac. How did he did do it?

We can look at the similarity and differences between the Zodiac, BTK and

VREARONS. While VREARONS communicated with his targets in post-attack phone calls, he didn’t need to communicate with letters to the media or law enforcement to shock society. His emotional satisfaction was fed directly by the outrage caused by his prolificness and ability to repeatedly hit in cluster attacks at different times and avoid police detection while exploiting neighborhood crime reporting apathy. It is likely that the prime suspect DeAngelo had stopped himself from doing more although there remains the possibility he may have called targets in the early 1990s, B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 179

2001 and 2004. A 2001 call is compelling because it happened two days after news reports that DNA had connected the EAR crimes to the ONS crimes. However, for all general purposes, it appears the EAR did not turn to communication much, if at all, after his 1986 homicide.

On the contrary, BTK found that he needed to communicate his crimes to the media and law enforcement. This is why Dennis Rader was in contact with them in 2004 before he had committed any more murders after stopping for fifteen years. It would seem that in keeping with his usual antics that he would murder and then taunt society through letters and packages sent to various outlets or left out for the public to find. However, in this case, after stopping, he decided to taunt in communications first and did not murder. He was caught in 2005, so this may have prevented him from carrying out more homicides. Whether he would or not, we can only speculate that likely his age got in the way. Rader believed that he would, but the question remains that at his age of 60 if he could? If I were to speculate, I would venture that he only believed he would murder again, but would not do so because of his physical limitations. I think Rader continued to cycle fantasies and stalking to compensate for depressive episodes and turned to communication when this cycle was not enough emotional satisfaction for him. He was also on a daily power-trip with his new role as a compliance officer to help fill that emotional void.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 180

Following the murder of Paul Stine, the Zodiac’s canonical homicides come to a stop, but the letters did not. As we have mentioned, he continued to pen taunts to the media and to law enforcement. He sent communications from 1969 through to 1971, up to two years after the last canonical murder. There is then a pause for three years before he sent out more letters in 1974. There are two further communications in 1978, but the authenticity is disputed. These letters are likely not from the Zodiac.

We have speculated that the most straightforward answer to his stopping was that he had already made enough mistakes. I believe that a more complete answer lies in my discovery that he had likely hidden his full name in some communications and wanted to reference them before ending his career as a comic book villain.

So what about the last official communication? What is it? Well, officially it seems that the 1974 July 8th Count Marco Red Phantom letter is it. An

April 24th, 1978 letter is considered a forgery. A Writer Armistead Maupin had worked with Detective Toschi on stories called Tales of City and noticed that there were similarities between fan mail he received about

Toschi and the April 24th letter. Maupin implied that Toschi had sent the fan mail himself and therefore authored the Zodiac letter. The FBI even reported Maupin’s claim in their files. However, it does not say if they B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 181 found evidence against Toschi. Toschi admitted to the fan mail, which he said he and his family did as a joke, but the accusations dogged him over the ‘forged’ Zodiac letter, and eventually, he was removed from the case.

As far as I know there was never any hard evidence that Toschi forged it.

The FBI report on the matter appears to be referencing a news article, not an internal document proving the matter. The news article was basically restating Maupin’s claims. I do not believe a Zodiac sleuth has yet come across the FBI reference showing he forged it. It seems likely none exists.

Therefore the letter may not be a forgery, but more importantly, if it was, may not have been Toschi who forged it. It seems he got a raw deal here which did nothing but help the Zodiac get away with it even more.

There is another disputed letter on May 4th to Channel Nine. There is the

1990 Eureka Card, and after that, there isn’t really anything worth mentioning. This is because it can’t be understated how many ways there are for the Zodiac to easily demonstrate he is a correspondent by providing a solution to the numerous puzzles he put out there. That's all it would take. Or some insider info. A combination of both would be a certainty.

The fact is that nothing remotely like inside information has been put forward by any investigator, informant, letter, phone call, suspect, book, article, film, or any documentary except those that cover the Halloween card connection.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 182

The last official communication came in 1974. The Zodiac simply has no reason to send in a conversation that is dubious or disputed. This is entirely the opposite designs to what the Zodiac did, which was to go out of his way to make sure people knew it was him. He even sent in a bloody shirt piece from a victim to prove it. Communication is his signature and he wants you to know it.

I would like to add that while he stopped killing as the ‘Zodiac,’ it‘s possible that he did change his M.O. yet again to try and distance himself from

Zodiac-type crimes. Given the amount of M.O. changes he went through while the Zodiac, it does constrain what future changes can be, but we know he can, and does, change. We just don’t know if he continued or not, but we know the Zodiac character stopped. A question we can ask here is if he stopped, did he keep trophies, like Dennis Rader did? Rader kept his trophies because he likely believed he wasn’t on the investigative radar. He realized he had gotten away with it enough to keep doing it.

This is not the same for the Zodiac. While the Zodiac was likely not on the investigative radar, the heat had been turned upon him following the Pre- sidio Heights sighting and subsequent composites being issued to the press. So there is an excellent chance the Zodiac dumped everything

(probably at sea) because it appears he is threatening suicide in the Exor- cist letter… but a particular type of fantasy death. He is killing off the Zo- B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 183 diac persona he created with the Exorcist letter. In that letter, he describes himself as being consumed by the sea. It probably wasn't a real suicide note. His Hollywood script had lost the plot. It was a character kill- off. The suicide of the Zodiac... his alter-ego villain.

This kill-off suggests there may be a good chance he did murder outside of the canonical Zodiac crimes in the years after it. To start anew. Maybe we can consider the possibility that he kept non-canonical Zodiac murder trophies. It should, therefore, come as no massive surprise that the Zo- diac may be identified via non-canonical Zodiac crimes. He may have even retained some evidence from these. However while there may be some resemblance to the Zodiac crimes around California over the decades, especially the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders (SRHM case), the lack of communication with these is what stands out. Where is the signature of this rare type of serial killer with the SRHM case? So for now instead of looking for the Zodiac after his last known canonical crime, we should turn to look for the Zodiac before the first known canonical Zodiac crime, as first crimes can often tell us more about the offender. We shall also learn that one of these non-canonical early crimes involved the rare trait of a murderer who communicated like the Zodiac.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 184

Chapter 9 - “Halloween eve.”

“In the town where I was born

Lived a man who sailed to sea

And he told us of his life

In the land of submarines.” – The Beatles.

[Yellow Submarine, Revolver, 1966]

We need to travel further back in time from 1969 to Halloween eve of

1966. This holiday will make for a thought-provoking connection given that the crux of this book is the claim that we have decoded the Zodiac

Halloween card.

Cheri Jo Bates was aged 18 at the time she was murdered on the evening of October 30th, Halloween Eve. She was a student at Riverside Commu- nity College and worked part-time at the Riverside National Bank. She was not originally from California as she was born in 1947, Omaha, Ne- braska, and her parents moved to Riverside in 1957.

The 30th was a Sunday, and that morning, like many other young people her age, she attended Mass. Afterward, she had breakfast with her father, B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 185

Joseph. Later that day, Cheri Jo planned to study at the Riverside Com- munity College library in the afternoon. She contacted a friend to arrange meeting her there, but her friend could not go. Before Bates left, somewhere after 4:30pm, she ate some food and wrote a note on her refrigerator informing her father that she was going to the RCC library. She planned to drive there in her lime-green Volkswagen Beetle. She made some phone calls to friends about the term paper she was working on.

The first few sightings of Cheri Jo on her way to the library was by a friend and then by an air force man who saw her driving along Magnolia

Ave. The friend had waved at Cheri Jo about 6:10pm but claims that Cheri

Jo didn’t see her nor waved back. The air force man saw a blonde girl going down Magnolia Avenue in her lime green VW Beetle. He also reported that she was followed by an Oldsmobile. These sightings were taken seriously as Cheri Jo’s car was found parked on Terracina Drive, which is next to Magnolia Avenue.

Four men had been sitting near the library and had witnessed Cheri Jo

Bates arrive and park her car in the same place where investigators would find it unlocked with the keys in the ignition and checked out library books inside on the passager seat. The men did not see anyone with her or anyone near her car shortly after 6:00pm and before 7:15pm when B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 186 they left. In fact, they all claim to have seen nothing suspicious that evening.

A Mexican-American student was outside the library at 5:30pm, waiting for it to open at 6:00pm. He witnessed Cheri Jo Bates going into the library shortly after it opened. He also noted that she had a blue spiral notebook and was writing in it with a ballpoint pen. The male librarian also believed that he saw Cheri Jo in the library. This would be the last known sighting of Cheri Jo Bates while she was still alive.

After Cheri Jo Bates entered into the library, things get more than a little fuzzy. Sometime after she arrived in the library, did some work and checked out three books, she goes totally missing. Other people who knew Cheri Jo Bates were in the library between 6:30 and 6:40pm and did not see her there. The RCC library was not a large place, so not seeing her indicates she was not active anywhere inside. If she were there, people would have seen her. The men sitting outside near the library near her car did not see her either. More friends of Cheri Jo turned up at the library at 7:15pm and stayed until closing time at 9:00pm, and yet no one saw her in all the hours they were there. A witness passing by saw a young man smoking a cigarette at 9:30pm in an alley between the library and some vacant buildings. Construction work had been going on nearby. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 187

The witness did not report seeing a body in the lane at that time. The smoking man has never been identified.

Witnesses claimed that they may have seen a Tucker Torpedo car parked behind Cheri Jo’s VW Beetle. The owner or car has never been identified.

It was as if Cheri Jo had vanished into thin air.

Joseph Bates waited at home for his daughter to return. She did not arrive back home. Early in on the morning of Halloween, Cheri’s father called her friends only to learn that no one had seen her. He filed a missing report with Riverside police before 6am. Around 6:30am, a groundskeeper discovered the body of Cheri Jo Bates lying face down in the same lane where the smoking man had been seen the evening before.

The murder scene was just around the corner, approximately two hundred feet from where her VW Beetle had been parked and could be observed from the crime scene. She was still wearing the same yellow blouse and red pants she had worn out. Her money and identification card were in her straw bag lying beside her, indicating that this was not a robbery B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 188 turned homicide. She had been stabbed multiple times in her chest, once in the back, and her throat had been slashed to near decapitation. She had been beaten, including around the face, and also choked. Like the Zo- diac victims, she had not been sexually assaulted. The blade used was ½- inch wide and 3 ½ inches long.

Investigators immediately discovered that there had been a massive struggle as Cheri Jo fought her attacker. The ground around her body had been churned up. She had defended herself, and her assailant had lost his watch in the process, a PX Timex watch obtained from an overseas military depot with white paint specks on it and worn on a seven-inch wrist diameter. It lay a few feet away from her body along with some eight to ten sized military-style shoeprints. Forensics also recovered hair from her hand, which suggests her assailant had been scratched by her during the struggle. Blood believed to belong to her murderer was found in splatter going along the lane, suggesting he was actively bleeding as he fled the crime scene.

The complication, in this case, appears to arise from discrepancies between her estimated time of death and witness accounts. A pathology report estimated that she had eaten two to four hours before she was murdered. While an estimate, this is strange in the timeline because Cheri Jo B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 189 ate her supper before she left for RCC. Her father was home at 5pm. This means Cheri Jo Bates was murdered before 8:30pm and yet her body was not seen by anyone leaving the library or the person who saw the smoking man standing in the lane. The crime scene also suggests she was murdered in the spot she was found in.

A possibility is that Cheri Jo Bates ate again later that afternoon, but it seems there is no discrepancy between the food she could have eaten at home and the substances found by the pathologist. Everything points to her eating this food in her home. Another possibility is she ate half the food at home and brought some with her to eat later. However, this type of shoving evidence around to explain things isn’t the best approach to solving anything because, in reality, science is what we should accept first and then witness accounts after. If there are going to be mistakes made, it is unlikely to be the science and more likely to be the witnesses.

Furthermore, body temperature findings are also in agreement that she died before 8:30pm. So one suggestion is to doubt the witness who saw the smoking man. The problem, however, with calling into question this witness is that cigarette butts were also found on the lane. These were gathered and analyzed by forensics. Also, if we want to call into question B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 190 this witness, we have to question another later witness. This other witness is believed to have heard a scream somewhere between 10:15pm and 10:45pm. Shortly after, the witness heard a car start and drive away.

This is another confusing element that clashes with science. It seems it would make more sense in terms of the witnesses to put her death sometimes between the smoking man sighting and the screams. It seems this would add up, but science says we should be skeptical of this being her time of death, which should be some hours before.

The state of her VW Beetle also threw a whole new dynamic into the picture. It was unlocked with the key still in the ignition. The library books she had checked out were inside sitting on the passenger seat. The distributor cap of the VW engine had the middle wire removed. This is important because there are several wires in the cap, but only the middle one will completely disconnect the battery from firing all the spark plugs.

Pulling any of the other cables simply stops one of the four spark plugs from firing, but the VW will start and likely run in a reduced capacity. This type of VW Beetle did not require a key to open the engine hood as it was just a latch that a screwdriver could quickly turn and unlock. However, someone had gone under her hood and removed the middle wire. It seemed as if someone didn’t want Cherry Jo to drive off. The car was dusted for prints and prints obtained. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 191

The investigation was vast. A college student murdered so sadistically on college grounds shocked everyone. Some would say Riverside lost its in- nocence that day. All witnesses were interviewed. The four men sitting near her vehicle and the library were thoroughly interrogated but their stories did not lead investigators any closer to finding her assailant.

Due to the military nature of the Timex watch and the military-style shoes, the local March Air Force base was investigated. Her brother had also recently joined the Navy. She had some male friends, and an ex-boyfriend, in particular, was singled out by investigators who felt he was responsible. The pseudonym ‘Bob Barnett’ is often used to reference him, and we shall discuss him more in a moment but not before the case was about to take a dramatic turn and one we have seen previously with the

Zodiac killer.

On November 29th, 1966, the Riverside’s Press-Enterprise received a letter on a torn off teletype paper and likely done on a teletype. A copy of the letter was also sent to Riverside PD by the writer. In it was the following message from someone claiming to be her murderer. Notice the errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation. It read:

By ______B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 192

She was young and beautiful. But now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last. I lay awake nights thinking about my next victon. May'be she will be the beautiful blond that babysits near the little store and walks down the dark alley each evening about seven.

Maybe she will be the shapely blue eyed brunett that said xxx no when I asked her for a date in high school. But maybe it will not be either. But I shall cut off her female parts and deposit them for the whole city to see.

So dont make it to easy for me. Keep your sisters, daughters and wives off the streets and alleys. Miss Bates was stupid. She went to the slaghter like a lamb. She did not put up a struggle. But I did. It was a ball. I first pulled the middle wire from the distributor. Then I waited for her in the library and followed her out after about two minutes. The battery must have been about dead by then. I then offered to help. She was then very willing to talk to me. I told her that my car was down the street and that I would give her a lift home. When we were away from the library walking,

I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die. I grabbed her around the neck with my hand over her mouth and my other hand with a small knife at her throat.

She went very willingly. Her breast felt very warm and firm under my hands. But only one thing was on my mind. Making her pay for all the brush offs that she had given me during the years prior. She died hard.

She squirmed and shook as I chocked her. And her lips twiched. She let out a scream once and I kicked her in the head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her and it broke. I then finished the job out cutting her B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 193 throat. I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read it. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that's up to you. It will be on your conscience. Not mine.

Yes I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware....I am stalking your girls now.

CC.

Chief of Police Enterprise.

While some people may think the inside information was the disconnection of the distributor cap, this likely isn’t the case. In the 1960s, many car owners were also acquainted with some mechanical knowledge. The distributor cap disconnection by pulling the middle wire to stop the car from starting is, therefore, somewhat common knowledge. However, it doesn’t drain the battery as the writer had claimed. Also, this piece of information had appeared in the media. The inside information has to be something else, and therefore, as a matter of deduction we find that the part of information not published and known only to investigators from the pathology report was that Cheri Jo Bates had her head kicked several times during the struggle. The confession letter writer wrote - She let out a scream once, and I kicked her in the head to shut her up. This is one reason why we know the letter writer is likely her murderer, but we also know he is a liar. He claimed she did not put up a struggle. She did and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 194 hurt him badly, even causing him to give up biological forensic evidence, not to mention losing his watch in the process.

It is interesting to note at this point that this is not the last time we shall hear about car batteries. The Zodiac killer’s November 9th, 1969 letter references “2 6V car bat” in the death machine design.

On April 30th, 1967, three letters were sent, one to Cheri Jo’s father, to

Riverside PD and the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper. All of these letters were handwritten and said the same thing.

BATES HAD

TO DIE

THERE WILL

BE MORE

Two of the letters had a symbol at the bottom that looked like the letter Z or the number 2. There is still debate if the symbol at the end is a Z or not. If the symbol is a signing off, then this is extremely rare and points to the writer also being the Zodiac. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 195

Bob Barnett, the pseudonym given to Riverside PD’s prime suspect in the

Cheri Jo Bates case was considered a suspect in 1968 for various reasons.

One is that the confession letter writer was incriminating himself as someone who had been spurned by Cheri Jo, as Bob Barnett was alleged to have been. However, sleuthers have noted that the letter itself contains a contradiction in that the writer in the beginning and at the end describes himself as a killer of random strangers he is stalking and promises to kill more. This should be pointing away from someone who knew Cheri Jo

Bates intimately and not someone who knew her well. This is also in a

John Douglas/Mark Olshaker book The Cases That Still Haunt Us (2000), which has a chapter on the Zodiac. He also gives a unique Zodiac profile in that chapter. People interested in the Zodiac should read it.

Jailed informants also claimed that they knew Bob was responsible for killing her. Cheri Jo Bates had a diary in which she talked about Bob. Such things like this over the years have made Riverside PD investigators think firmly about Barnett being responsible for her murder.

During the 90s, some people associated with Bob Barnett made claims twenty years after the event that Bob Barnett had revealed to them he was the killer. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 196

Eventually, forensic science had progressed enough to compare the hair sample found on Cheri Jo Bates with Bob Barnett. An mtDNA analysis was performed. They did not match. Scientifically Bob Barnett seems cleared, but Riverside PD continues to believe he is the prime suspect in this case.

The witness who saw the smoking man said the person she saw was not

Bob Barnett.

There is another interesting piece of evidence surrounding this case, but the FBI shares a different view to that of Sherwood Morrill, who was Cali- fornia's preferred document examiner and the one who confirmed the authorship of the Zodiac letters. The FBI feels the following writing is not the

Zodiac, but we shall include it here anyway.

In December of 1966, the groundskeeper who found Cheri Jo Bates body also found a morbid poem written on the underside of the desktop that could be lifted up. It read:

Sick of living/unwilling to die cut. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 197 clean. if red / clean. blood spurting, dripping spilling all over her new dress. oh well. it was red anyway. life draining into an uncertain death. she won't die. this time B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 198 someone ll find her. just wait till next time. rh

The authenticity of this poem is questioned, but we include it anyway because of Sherwood Morrill adding it to his list of Zodiac communications.

However, as we discuss possible Zodiac connections to the Bates case, we don’t actually need this desktop poem to make a connection. There are much stronger reasons to do so.

The first person to consider a possible link to the Bates case was Phil Sins.

For all intents and purposes, Phil Sins was a civilian sleuth, just like the

Hardens and possibly even like you or I. Having learned about the Zodiac murders and letter communications, Sins remembered the case of Cheri

Jo Bates involved letters being sent by someone claiming to have murdered her. Sins decided to try and contact several officials and at least one journalist about this possible Zodiac connection because we know both parties followed up on it.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 199

Now might be the right time to address something about this. Today the hard part is not solving Zodiac ciphers or finding new evidence like you will read at the end of this book. The hard part is finding someone who will listen to and examine your evidence. This goes for all historical cases that are inactive or closed and are cold. Usually, fewer people are working the older cases than when they were open and fresh. It doesn’t mean they aren’t working on it, it just means they are not as active as when they were back when the crimes were happening. For example, the Hard- ens were lucky in that the early stages of the case task forces would have been working twenty-four-seven to crack the code and under pressure to solve it. So they would be considering everything and anything coming their way. Today that would be different.

The Zodiac case remains open in some jurisdictions. Others have closed and reopened it again. A closed case is officially shelved, and no one is assigned to it. A cold case usually means that fewer detectives are working the case because they have exhausted all possible evidence and leads, but they can become active with new technologies or when new evidence is obtained. Some investigators may even work closed cases in their spare time and even on their own dime. Unless active, they won’t have a task force working on it, although they may have one ready to be formed and prepared to respond quickly. So there is the catch 22. You need a task force to look at the new evidence properly, but if the case is B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 200 cold, there won’t be a task force, and they need further evidence to form one. That’s the value of new evidence or learning about technology devel- opments that can obtain new evidence.

Then there is a problem that new evidence can point away from suspects who are officially favored for a crime. For example, connecting Bates to the Zodiac leads away from Bob Barnett because Barnett likely isn’t the

Zodiac. My Halloween card solution also points away from the primary suspects in this case. Connecting Zodiac POIs to Bates is not going to sit well with many people, including some investigators, many since retired who believe it has been solved (although not officially). This is the reality of the matter. They think they have the person responsible but not enough evidence to charge them.

Even today, it is likely the prosecutor wouldn’t be able to build an airtight case beyond a reasonable doubt with the Bates evidence against Barnett.

The prosecutor knows these circumstantial-only cases are notorious for wrongful convictions. After DNA profiling, wrongful convictions based on circumstantial evidence and or questionable science, such as hair analysis and bite analysis, were repeatedly discovered to have failed the justice system. This is why DNA evidence has been such a game-changer for the judiciary. Modern science here has shined a big light on some obviously B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 201 needed places. The point I wish to make here is that even though the Hal- loween Card solution in this book has been lodged with officials, it may be years before enough pressure from the community eventually gets them to take it seriously. EARONS was a cold-case. One officer was assigned full-time, and another did it in his spare time. In 2016, a measly $50,000 reward for the perps capture was put out after years of documentaries and books put pressure on officials to do something about it. It was two more years before Paul Holes used EARONS DNA with GEDmatch. The Zo- diac case is a dead case. Many of the principle investigators have passed away. The case likely relegated to the backroom storage closet of the cold-case department. Even solutions to puzzles with names may not be enough to have those files pulled out again. What it will take is anyone’s guess.

Phil Sins reporting a connection between Bates and the Zodiac was picked up on somewhat quickly by both Riverside PD and Paul Avery of the San

Francisco Chronicle. People were working on it. Phil Sins may not have been so lucky. An excellent example of being unlucky reporting a connection is the 1980s case of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, who was suspected by his friend Trevor Birdsall of being the Ripper. Not only did

Birdsall witness Peter Sutcliffe in the aftermath of attacking a prostitute, but Birdsall also recognized that Sutcliffe looked like the composites. De- spite the Yorkshire police having lots of evidence on Sutcliffe already (he B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 202 was interviewed at home a total of nine times), Birdsall’s information got lost in with the mountain of other reports handed to police over the York- shire Ripper.

At the time, it was one of the most extensive investigations conducted by the UK police, and the filing system took up so much floor space that the floor itself had to be reinforced from below. After an inquiry into the han- dling of the case, it was basically discovered that the overall card filing system they had used to find the Yorkshire Ripper was so complicated that much evidence was getting lost within it.

So while we all want investigations to be like the TV shows where tips come in, and there are officers free and waiting to take the advice and work on it, the reality may not be remotely like that at all.

Phil Sins was obviously concerned. Was he the only one to notice the possible connection? This took place back in the era when very little was known about serial killers and especially their ability to escalate. Yet here, decades ahead of his time, was somebody putting together precisely that kind of logical thinking. It was the similarity in the letters that initially struck Sins. He had two options for his predicament. Contact Paul Avery B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 203 at the SF Chronicle and tell him about Bates or go to the Riverside PD and tell them about the Zodiac. He ended up doing both. Later on, he would also note a possible connection between the Zodiac Halloween card and

Bates being killed on Halloween’s eve.

A reasonable hypothesis is that this is a Zodiac crime because of the similarities, and Barnett is not responsible for the homicide of Cheri Jo Bates.

We can also hypothesize about the missing time. There is a good chance she was followed, two cars were seen at different times, which may have been the same one that witnesses saw follow her down Magnolia Ave.

This person likely sat in their car and waited for any witnesses to leave.

When all was clear, he disabled her car and sat back in his car again or waited nearby.

She left her keys in the ignition. This suggests that at one point, she had left the library and sat in her car, put her books on the passenger seat, and it failed to start. However, there is nothing to prevent this scene from being staged, either. Her killer could have put her books in her car and left it unlocked with her keys in the ignition and disconnected the distributor afterwards. It is a possible scenario we can entertain because her missing time is still unresolved.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 204

Since there were enough witnesses to account for the movement of Cheri

Jo Bates, a likely explanation is a sudden abduction. Whether she went with her abductor against her will or not is the subject of some debate.

This is because the distributor was disconnected, which suggests someone didn’t want her to leave. A possible ruse to approach the young lady with the offer of help. Whether she took the offer or if she was forced out of the car at gunpoint, she would eventually struggle in the laneway spot where her body was found. This also somewhat lines up with the confession letter.

If we accept the scientific evidence from pathology, then he murdered her between 6:30pm and 8:30pm. We can’t explain why none of the witnesses leaving the library saw her body. Nor other witnesses who used the same lane later that evening. One needs to stretch the scientific evidence to after 9:00pm, which would then suggest Cheri Jo Bates was being held for some time against her will. It is tempting to want to stretch the scientific evidence, but we are actually somewhat bound by the scientific evidence, and so we shouldn’t. The screams were heard nearer

10pm, so we need to stretch it considerably if we accept all the witness reports. Science seems to suggest we discount this witness claims as to the time of 10pm. It would be far too late. However, those leaving the li- B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 205 brary after 9pm should have seen Cheri Jo Bates body. It is highly unlikely the witnesses walked by her body, but it seems the evidence says we should not discount this.

There was some shrubbery around, and there are newspaper photographs of detectives using metal detectors in them. So places to hide a body seem available even though the crime scene seems to suggest that her body had not been moved. If the investigators ruled out her body being moved, then she must have been lying there between 18:30 and 20:30.

However, is there the possibility she was moved off to the side so her assailant looking on could wait for the coast to clear before going back to search for his watch? The crime scene situation suggests Cheri Jo Bates was murdered in the spot she was found. The blood pooling had occurred under her. So it is unlikely she was moved. Was she covered by something which the witnesses didn’t notice? Even though there was construction going on nearby and a tarp might work, the whole scenario is really stretching it.

Could Cheri Jo Bates have left her keys in the car and was walking back to the library for help? At that point, did her killer violently attack her and then drag her into the lane where they fought before he killed her? This B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 206 scenario is tempting, but it means Cheri Jo Bates was in the habit of thinking that leaving keys in the ignition was a safe thing to do.

Could her attacker have rendered her unconscious in his initial attack?

Could we put the altercation before the junction of the lane onto the road? Possibly. We could even have her assailant parked in his car near the area. Could he have abducted her, bundled her into the boot of his car, or taken her into the vacant structure while thinking about what to do next? It would mean she would have to be unconscious, which doesn’t explain the evidence of a struggle. Also it seems to suggest he knew the buildings along the lane were vacant. Did he wait, and then as the library was emptying have to deal with Cheri Jo Bates gaining consciousness? Or

Did he keep her conscious the entire time? A sudden abduction and sudden murder are what we want to think, but the witnesses walking the path say no. If the witnesses walking the path didn’t see the body, then they didn’t see the watch either.

We must also remember there was a blood trail leading back to the road that investigators thought belonged to her assailant. If that was not scientifically confirmed, then there is the possibility it was hers and not his.

This would put the altercation before the junction of the lane onto the road. It is all a mystery. Too many questions and not enough evidence. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 207

This is the puzzle surrounding the disappearance and murder of Cheri Jo

Bates. If you are confused at this point then join the club. We are all in the same boat. Maybe you can be the one to find the explanation we are missing.

I think what this does tell us is that her attacker was operating within tiny windows of opportunity. He took the opportunity to follow her to the library and park nearby to watch her. He waited for a window of opportunity to disconnect the distributor. He was watching the movement of everybody there and was not noticed. He abducted Cheri Jo Bates as people were still coming and going from the library. This small window of opportunity tells us that the attack is at least partially opportunistic and almost like a hit and run. In this respect, we are looking at the sort of narrow windows of opportunity that we find with many of the Zodiac crimes.

Chronologically the first Zodiac crimes are similar hit and run small windows of opportunity that fit. The Zodiac crime where he spent the most time with his targets at Lake Berryessa is a stabbing. A knife was also used on Cheri Jo Bates. We should also note at this point that like the canonical Zodiac attacks, that the Bates murder also occurred outside of regular nine to five working hours and days. This is another small com- monality the Bates murder shared with a Zodiac crime. We shall list all the commonalities later in this book in more detail. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 208

Someone at Riverside PD had listened to Phil Sins. On October 10th 1969, they phoned Napa County and then sent their evidence to Napa County to see if there was a connection. Riverside then wrote them a letter on Octo- ber 20th sharing more details. The letter also included the fact that investigators believed the confession letter was written by her murderer as it contained information only the killer knew. They also wrote that, similar to the Zodiac letters, there were numerous errors in spelling and punctuation. They indicated they had prints that could be compared with the ones

Napa had found. These prints were held by the FBI. What appears to have followed from this is that the evidence was examined and didn’t match.

For Riverside PD, this seemed like sufficient reason to discount the connection. However, Paul Avery was not so convinced. He had also been contacted by Phil Sins and conducted his own investigation. Little did he know that something startling was about to happen during his research into Bates. It is also where the story of this book really begins.

The Zodiac Halloween Card

On October 27th, 1970, the Zodiac mailed a Halloween Card to Paul

Avery, claiming that there were clues in it to his name. This is the card I fully cracked, which you will read about later on (see table of contents). B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 209

When Phil Sins eventually heard about the Halloween card he saw a possible connection to Halloween Eve with the murder of Cheri Jo Bates. Al- most certainly Paul Avery could not have missed that connection either.

In fact, Avery ended up accepting there was a connection between the

Bates murder and the Zodiac, so he had the San Francisco Chronicle publish an article titled 'New Evidence in Zodiac Killings' on November 16th

1970.

After this article appeared, the Zodiac’s communications seem to stop, or at least slow down. The Zodiac would wait four months to reply to what was a perfect opportunity to mislead investigators. Why?

I believe the answer to this is that the Zodiac had realized he’d made another major blunder. He likely didn’t know that Phil Sins, Riverside PD,

Napa, and Paul Avery were all looking into a possible Bates connection until he read about it in Paul Avery’s article. This could have posed a hitch for the Zodiac. If he was responsible for the Bates homicide and the letters, then there was a possibility that connecting Riverside to the Zodiac could expose him.

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This would mean he never intended anyone to make this connection. The

Halloween card was supposed to be something that he thought made him look superior in his ability to create unbreakable codes and mock Paul

Avery and investigators' inability to catch him, even though he had given them clues.

If the Halloween card was a bluff, then why did he need to wait four months? If he had managed to avoid the Bates investigators the first time, then there was a chance he would avoid them again. Only this time, things were a little different. More investigators and departments were after him, including the involvement of the FBI. There was also the potential to compare Zodiac evidence with Bates crime evidence. Things could stack and point at someone… and that someone could be him.

The Zodiac did enjoy the game he was playing. It was central to his whole

Zodiac persona. His Bates connection investigation was something a little closer than he had anticipated. He likely spent months mulling this over, but if Paul Avery or a Harden type character could break his code, then he may have given them everything they needed to bust him.

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I speculate he was mainly concerned about two things. The first was that his Halloween code would get cracked. The second was that this name would then be connected with Riverside. A navy connection seems to have been a focus here before Bob Barnett was selected as the prime suspect. So it could just be a matter of looking for so-and-so in the navy who would have been in the area at the time, and he would be caught. I speculate the Zodiac waited those four months looking for signs that LE were onto him. When nothing happened, he decided to respond with his first letter since his break.

In a letter to the Los Angeles Times dated March 13th, 1971, the Zodiac claimed he was crack-proof and admitted to the Riverside activity. He was confident the Halloween card code had not been broken. He had lived through exposure to the Riverside connection, and his name was still a coded secret.

Los Angeles Times dated March 13th 1971

This is the Zodiac speaking

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Like I have allways said, I am crack proof. If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses & do something.

Because the longer they fiddle & fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my after life. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason I'm writing to the Times is this,

They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others.

SFPD-0 (Zodiac Killer symbol)-17+

Today Zodiac sleuths, following in the steps of Phil Sins, have uncovered multiple connections between Cheri Jo Bates and the Zodiac. The Bates letters, as well as many of the Zodiac letters, feature double postage. The

Bates Confession letter envelope has ‘ATTN: Editor’ on it, and the Zodiac letter envelopes usually contain ‘Please Rush to Editor’ on them. Zodiac’s

Lake Tahoe card has ‘att:’ on it. Both the Bates letter writer and the Zo- diac have the same criminal signature - they murder and write letters for media publicity, promising more murders to terrorize society. The Bates letters appear to have a Z symbol at the bottom. The Zodiac also used symbols in his letters, as well as a similar Z. They send their communications to the newspapers and to investigators. The Bates murder and the

Zodiac crimes are only a few years apart. The crimes are located along B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 213 the Californian coast. The Zodiac crimes match an escalation of a serial killer’s crimes starting with Bates (or at least Bates being before the Zo- diac crimes) as opposed to occurring during the Zodiac crimes or after the

Zodiac crimes. The Zodiac tied up both his targets at Lake Berryessa before stabbing them as if he learned the advantage of having them entirely under his control. A possible lesson learned from the Bates attack.

Both 'The Confession’ letter writer and the Zodiac letter writer spelled the word ‘twitch’ incorrectly as ‘twich’. The military-style shoe prints at the

Bates crime scene and Lake Berryessa military-style boot prints only differ by a size ½. The Confession letter envelope’s colon punctuations have two circles instead of two dots. The Lake Berryessa car door colon punctuation has two circles instead of two dots. Neither the murderer of Cheri Jo

Bates nor the Zodiac, have been officially identified. Bates was murdered outside of regular working hours and days, just like the other Zodiac crimes. The Zodiac claimed responsibility for the Bates crime, although we accept the Zodiac may also have claimed responsibility for crimes he did not commit. Many of these points already well established by members of the Zodiac sleuthing community.

If we put these down to coincidence, then okay. There is nothing wrong with that argument, even though it now appears less likely. But then we B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 214 have to admit that we can’t just make connections with other things in this case, such as suspects or persons of interest, who are coincidentally connected in some way, like ‘Bob Barnett’ or ‘Arthur Leigh Allen’. Once we play the coincidence card, we need to stick with that criterion, which is essentially saying we need stronger evidence than just connections to link things up. If we do this, fine, but then that means we must also rule out a lot of things we have believed about Zodiac suspects under the same criteria. We can’t have our cake and not eat it, so to speak. So how do we overcome this dilemma? We can use probabilities. This book has used a lot of them so far.

Personally, I look at things in a probabilistic manner of likely or unlikely and also like to use parsimony/Occam's razor. I think there is a reasonable probability that all these connections are not just coincidences. I also think one offender for both crimes is the least complicated explanation for them both.

I believe with nearly all forensic recovery back in the 1960s that there is, of course, a chance of unrelated DNA and prints being gathered and filed away, which won’t match because they are genuinely contamination. I tend to also believe that the Zodiac has left some hard evidence behind, and it has the potential to be matched to him. In this sort of scenario, B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 215

DNA evidence and fingerprint evidence can’t be used to exclude anybody, but I do believe they can be used to support the case for a suspect if they match. The Zodiac’s Exorcist letter has palm prints on it, and there are bloody fingerprints from Stine’s cab door panel. There seems to be a good chance they both belong to the Zodiac.

You might still be asking why then doesn’t DNA from Bates match DNA from the Zodiac crimes, or why hasn’t it been used to match anyone in

CODIS? The problem here is that only mtDNA could be used in the Bates crime from the hair sample they had, not nuclear DNA. Basically, mtDNA can only tell us a limited amount of genetic information, in particular, a mother and her decedents, including her sons, will share this mtDNA for many generations and this also means it can be shared with many other mothers and her decedents including sons. We all share common ancestry. An important point used in familial DNA analysis also.

Everyone on earth today can even be traced back to a single mother. In science, she is called mitochondrial Eve. Some mtDNA variations can rule some decedents out, such as with ‘Bob Barnett’, but it also rules a lot of people in. Nuclear DNA using STRs is much more exact. It is this type of

DNA we should be looking for to link a perpetrator to a piece of biological evidence and is what CODIS uses. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 216

So far as sleuthers know today, this is still the case with this aspect of the

Bates homicide, They don’t have the killer's nuclear DNA for the Bates crime. However, DNA tests can still continue where advances in technology appear and every few years or so a Zodiac documentary attempts some.

Whether you accept the Bates connection or not, I think you can agree the case is compelling and deserves the attention of anyone reading about the crimes of the Zodiac.

Since we are on the topic of non-canonical Zodiac homicides, there is another group of killings we should consider, and the Zodiac has been suggested as a possible candidate for the murders. We shall find towards the end of this book that these murders require a closer look mainly because of their location and the period in which they took place.

The Zodiac was an M.O. changing offender. There is a possibility that because his face was observed during the Paul Stine murder that he switched to abducting hitchhikers. In his November 9th, 1969, letter the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 217

Zodiac claimed he would change his M.O. and make his homicides look like accidents.

"I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc."

So series homicides after this in around the Santa Rosa Area (SRHMs) have somewhat subjectively the capacity to be by the same hand as the offender who called himself the Zodiac. We should be open to the possibility that he only stopped being the Zodiac, not that he stopped killing.

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Chapter 10 - “The Geographical Zodiac.”

“Why are we building golf courses? Because we enjoy being

outside, bringing man and nature together.” - Jack Nicklaus

It is often postulated that the Zodiac lived near the scene of the crime in

San Francisco, meaning he walked home either because he lived in the direction of the Presidio or nearby.

The hypothesis isn’t irrational. There have been cases where serial killers have killed near where they live. However, it is unlikely that a crime committed nearby would be into the series, but rather at the start of the series. In recent times, however, this may need some revision because we find that some serial killers may become so confident they start attacking nearer to their home.

Dennis Rader, BTK, did this with his one of his targets, Marine Hedge, who lived down the road from him on North Independence Street, Park City,

Wichita. So the idea the Zodiac hit close to him can’t be discounted. Santa

Rosa, therefore, stands out because these hitchhiker murders are the ones that may have a Zodiac killer connection. As we said before however, the SRHMs do not appear to contain communication efforts by the offender to our knowledge. That means the Zodiac would also have to B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 219 change his signature, or we have been wrong about the signature all along.

BTK picked his targets in an organized way, and like VREARONS, this allowed these offenders the chance to perform home invasions where they could spend time with their targets. The Zodiac is unlike either because he probably picked his targets at random in a semi-opportunistic fashion.

This meant there would be several factors outside of his control, such as the possibility of being observed. BTK and VREARONS would have reduced that possibility considerably by doing recon and gauging their chances of not being seen. BTK seemed to be satisfied that striking down the road from him on North Independence Street in Park City, Wichita would not expose him. He was right and was not identified (with today’s

DNA forensic analysis he would be well wrong). If the Zodiac were to live near Presidio Heights, then he would have to have the same degree of certainty, which would make Stine a planned and organized attack. That doesn’t really fit well with the evidence. Stine’s murder is held as an organized homicide, but the victimology was a random taxi driver. For example, Stine was hailed by the Zodiac. While dispatch had given Stine a cus- tomer to pick up, Stine was flagged down and took this fare on the way.

This random choice seems to have fatefully meant his demise. If random, then the Zodiac did not plan on specifically killing Stine.

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A way around this would be to suggest that Stine saw someone he knew and gave them a lift. While not impossible, it seems this is unlikely because it would provide investigators with two significant clues. Namely, the Zodiac would be someone who knew Stine and lived near the Presidio.

Given there was also a composite, it is highly unlikely that the ensuing

SFPD investigation would not have combed through any possible connections by interviewing family and friends of Paul Stine. It seems improbable that the Zodiac knew Stine if he lived in Presidio Heights. This still allows, however, for the possibility the Zodiac lived near the Presidio but didn’t know Stine. Could the Zodiac on his way home have suddenly killed his taxi driver? We can’t discount the possibility, as the Zodiac was making mistakes, and a downward spiral is recognized in his communications, such as his desperation to try and explain away his errors as planned all along. Yet this sudden killing of one’s taxi driver doesn’t really fit the picture. Something’s up.

The evidence suggests this homicide was mission orientated and not a random reaction but likely random selection. The Zodiac wanted a shirt piece from his next victim, and a male target seems to psychologically compensate for his errors in leaving his last two male victims alive. He likely did not come up with this idea at the spur of the moment during a taxi ride home. He was also seen wiping the cab down after the attack. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 221

This advocates some degree of planning, and not a spur of the moment attempt at a forensic cleanup, although he likely made mistakes and left prints behind. In a way, that omission can work in the favor of him suddenly killing his taxi driver on the way home, but criminals leaving fingerprints can happen to them all, regardless of their experience, eventually they slip up.

BTK likely had to hit on his street not because he wanted to hit on his road, but because his choice of target happened to also live nearby. For the Zodiac, there was no need to select a taxi driver on the way home when any taxi driver going anywhere would have sufficed. The Zodiac would have no reason to hit a taxi driver near his home. Therefore the alternative, that any taxi driver going anywhere would have done seems more likely. However, the Zodiac would have some control over where they would go. So any taxi driver sent to where the Zodiac wanted to go and somewhere that wasn’t his home seems to be the more plausible explanation for the evidence. So if not his home, why the Presidio?

There is actually no solid reason why Presidio Heights should be considered the Zodiac’s home any more than Lake Berryessa, Lake Herman

Road, or Blue Rock Springs should be. The argument applies just as good to all those locations. However if the Zodiac no longer had his own car, B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 222 then the taxi service is one way to go. So the other crime scenes are different in that based on evidence, the Zodiac likely owned a vehicle. How- ever an argument here is that maybe his home was close by one of those crime scenes. After all, some sleuths think he lived in Vallejo. Presidio

Heights is a more densely populated area, so it allows for the possibility of someone living and slipping through the cracks. Again to claim the Zodiac lived nearby any crime scene would be second-guessing the investigators, not to mention the residents of Presidio Heights growing up knowing about this murder like it was local lore and yet not fingering out it was Mr.

Smith down the road who did it. The odds are against a local Zodiac.

What seems to explain this location is that the Zodiac was parked nearby, just like at Lake Berryessa, and did not want his car to be seen so he kept a walking distance between his vehicle and his victim. The Zodiac was seen walking calmly away in the direction of the Presidio. Again we have the possible military connection appearing in these crimes. He had deliberately decided to set his sights on San Francisco city, and it is likely the Presidio landmark is what stood out to the Zodiac because of his military background. He had been there many times before and knew the area as he had walked it. However, we need to keep an open mind that there is more to the location than just that.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 223

There is a chance that the Zodiac was seen going into the Jules Khan playground by another witness. If this is the case, then the Zodiac was likely going to cut through part of the Presidio grounds and come out the eastern side as early as possible, which brings him back into the northern part of the city housing estates, where he likely had left his car parked waiting so he could drive away. A variation on the theme he used at Lake

Berryessa. So this walking away murderer seems present at both these crime scenes, and it isn’t a bad guess to think both times the man is walking to a car to get out of there.

The Zodiac fits the pattern of a commuter but someone who is commuting to places they know well enough to feel confident to murder in. This suggests that these areas did provide regular activity spaces for the offender, but they were also potentially far away from his home.

Two attack locations were near golf courses/hunting areas. One attack by a lake for fishing. The Presidio Heights attack appears to be a change from this pattern. Where is the prominent sporting activity around? The

Presidio is quite open grounds. We have already described it as being like remote woodlands with vast tracks of terrain like you find in the wild. It seems this was the lure of the area, not his home. So if terrain is the allure, then why this terrain?

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 224

It is more than likely that the Zodiac is a peeping-tom and Lake Berryessa seems to tell us how he operates. This means he would head out for the day telling people he had planned to go... fishing or golfing. The Zodiac would probably do a spot of whatever he told people he was doing, but he would also take that opportunity to peep on others. There is a good chance the Zodiac would drive around and follow one couple, peep, another couple would come along, and he would then transfer his focus onto them or go off to find more. This is why the Lake Berryessa sighting of a man following young women in his car is so thought-provoking. It seems he had his sights on three young women and then decided on the couple lying down by a peninsula instead.

I think it likely possible he also used the public payphones he called in his crimes with before. He knew where they were and how to get in and out of the area undetected. He likely used these points before to call home or friends to update them on where he was and when he was coming back.

So we are looking at someone who goes out for an activity in the late afternoon, drives away from where they live, and then at these places stays out well into the late evening. During their return, they take the opportunity to carry out at an attack.

I would guess that the Zodiac had probably spent the later afternoon peeping around the Presidio area. It would have been an active base at the time with security checking things out, but there would be areas like B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 225

Jules Kahn park, which were more public, as well as others. Maybe after deciding the area lacked targets, the Zodiac took a possible tram trip to the city center, planning to lure a taxi driver back out again with him.

How the Zodiac got to the center or came to be there is a mystery. The idea he killed Stine near his home would suggest he was on his way home from work, and therefore the Zodiac likely worked in the city center area of San Francisco. He probably wasn’t dropped into the city by someone else as he likely brought his car with him to escape with. There is, of course, the possibility that the Zodiac was staying at the Presidio that evening. That he was dropped off in the center of the city (or lived there) and took a cab to the Presidio, murdering his driver near his destination.

What stands in contrast to this is the planning. It seems more likely the

Zodiac planted his car near the Presidio, went into the city, and brought his random male taxi driver target back out with him. We have Lake

Berryessa, which suggests he was deliberately now keeping vehicle separation from his targets and going by foot to and from the crime scene. Yet there is something about the Presidio which may have given the Zodiac knowledge of the area, and so we need to look more at the terrain and possible activities. There is actually one activity spot there that stands out - a golf course and this is the link (pun intended) we have all been looking for all along. The Presidio isn’t just a military base, but B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 226 has a golf course on it right next to the Jules Kahn playground. The

Presidio golf course.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 227

The Presidio golf club to the scene of the crime is a few minute's walk.

Two Zodiac crime scenes occur near Blue Rock Springs golf club a few minutes drive away from each other. 3 out of 4 crime scenes are incredibly close to golf clubs for our pleated-pants-wearing Zodiac.

What this means is that out of four Zodiac crime scenes, we can link three of them near golf courses for our pleated-pants-wearing Zodiac.

We also have a Lake at Lake Herman Road and Lake Berryessa. So we seem to know that the Zodiac also uses these as recreational spots, likely for fishing activity. So the Zodiac is someone who goes out with both golf and fishing utilities and switches between each activity, depending on what he wants to do that day. We know, however, that both of these activities, golf and fishing, are cover for his peeping-tom behavior. What is also interesting is that the Zodiac kept scores in his communications, and they don’t look too far off the sort of scorekeeping you see in sports.

Night fishing can explain why he would spend more time out after dusk. It would be easy to switch from an evening of golf to a spot of night fly fishing for salmon. His car would most certainly have contained a golf bag and a fishing kit as he drove away from crime scenes.

We now know something really new. There is an excellent chance we have figured out that the Zodiac is a golfer, and golfing is the connection between three out of the four crime scenes. So we are looking at B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 228 someone who likely spends time at sea, is in the Navy, and when they are back on solid ground, they take the opportunity to go outdoors to enjoy the land. They do this through sports, namely golfing, and likely switch to fishing.

The Lake Herman Road and Blue Springs Rock attack offer us an insight into this going back and forth between sports. We should also point out that Lake Herman Road leads eastwards, a six-minute drive to Suisun Bay for more fishing. The Zodiac could have spent the afternoon golfing and then had a choice of fishing spots for the evening. When it became late at night, he returned to his car and drove back along Lake Herman Road, seeing Jensen and Faraday in their vehicle and took his opportunity to murder them. Just over half a year later the Zodiac, on the way back from the same type of activities, did it again. This time closer to Blue Spring

Rock golf course before driving into Vallejo to stop to call in his murders on the way home. The Zodiac then switched his activity grounds, this time heading northward to Lake Berryessa. Likely he was fishing, but there are several golf courses about half an hour’s drive away from the lake. Most of the time is spent driving winding roads to and from the lake. It is not too hard to see him starting his late afternoon at a golf course and then making his way to Lake Berryessa for dusk and night fishing. Napa, which is south of Lake Berryessa, where the Zodiac made a call from, also offers B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 229 potential golf links. It could also be the reverse. That he started his late afternoon fishing at Lake Berryessa and then went golfing for the evening.

The directions seem to indicate we are dealing with someone radiating out from the Napa/Vallejo area. However, I would caution against the view this area is home. These were places he made phone calls from. These were planned. Would it be smart for him to call from the places where he lives? It seems this murderer is keeping all these activities away from his home. Therefore it is deliberate on the part of the Zodiac to draw attention to these places which are far away from his home.

We see this mostly with the Presidio Heights murder. A totally new type of environment, except now we have spotted the connection to golf links. So it would be a new environment from the perspective of an outsider looking at the crime locations, but investigating these connections, tells us that the environment was actually familiar to him through his golfing and fishing activities. A San Francisco Zodiac homicide points away from this city being his home also. There was no phone call reported for this crime. The most obvious reason why is that he was nearly caught and made a rapid journey home with his blood-stained prize instead.

So what this does is give us a straight line between Presidio Heights and

Lake Berryessa with a bit of curvature to allow for Lake Herman Road and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 230

Blue Springs Rocks to be incorporated. This curved line is the area he communicated to and then away from. He could have come from the west or the east, but the western side of Lake Berryessa suggests west of this curved line. This means he was hitting inland from the west coastline, which is the direction we would expect someone who has spent time at sea to want to go to enjoy the land.

Therefore the set of Zodiac crimes would not work particularly well with most well known geographic profiling algorithms as any ‘radial’ type pattern outwards from their home is constrained by the coastline. There was simply no reason for this offender to go west except out to sea. That would put pressure more on an easterly direction to commute for crimes.

In short, the curvature is the eastern side of a radial pattern. Part of a circle. An arc. This is still informative. A continuous curve is drawn from a central point, somewhere west of the curve. So somewhere near North-

Western California coast, it seems a Navy man on his time off on land has turned his venturing outdoors golf and fishing activities deadly because of a fantasy to become a comic book villain, out to taunt and shock society.

It seems this dominated their mind as they drove balls down the fairway and cast their bait into lake waters.

SANTA ROSA HITCH-HIKER MURDERS (SRHM)

These are non-canonical Zodiac crimes, but it is interesting how many golf courses seem to be nearby. For example, for Maureen Sterling and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 231

Yvonne Weber the distance from Guerneville Road to Santa Rosa Golf &

Country Club is 2.1 miles. Distance from Franz Valley Road to Mayacama

Golf club or Mount St. Helena Golf Course is approx 10 miles. For Kim

Wendy Allen San Quentin State Prison to Belle Avenue 101 entrance is 3.9 miles away. We introduce the prison connection because of the conversation with the Zodiac at Lake Berryessa. For Lori Lee Kursa,

Calistoga Road to Oakmount golf club is 5.6 miles away. Carolyn Davis is the same location for Sterling & Weber. For Theresa Walsh her body found in water at Mark West Creek river. River runs alongside Mayacama Golf

Club. It was proposed that Walsh had drifted several miles. If the golf club was a dumping location, then the discovery of her body should be downstream from the club. The FBI reported additional victims in 1975.

Rosa Vasquez, 20, her body near the Arguello boulevard entrance at

Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Vasquez had been a keypunch operator at Letterman General Hospital on the Presidio. Letterman is an

Army hospital. Since there may be a military connection to the Zodiac, this could be related. Angela Thomas 16 last been at the Presidio. Nancy

Patricia Gidley 24, found dead behind George Washington High School gymnasium. Served four years in the Air Force. The George Washington

High School is 2.5 miles from the Presidio Golf Course. Laura A. O'Dell 21, body found in bushes behind the boathouse at Stow Lake in Golden Gate

Park. 3.9 miles away from the Presidio Golf course.

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Chapter 11 - “Chicken or the egg?”

“I’m drifting back.” – Neil Young with Crazy Horse.

[Psychedelic Pill, 2012]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The saying basically suggests a dilemma that chickens lay eggs, but chickens hatch from eggs, so which came first? In science, since all birds are evolved from dinosaurs, and dinosaurs laid eggs, we can answer the question by saying the egg… plus millions of years of evolution (not to mention human breeding) for the modern chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, to arrive. It’s the best answer I have heard yet, and I didn’t even think the question had an answer. It seems plenty of puzzles can have solutions.

In the same way, we can ask the question of the Zodiac. Which came first, the communications or the homicides? It seems that canonically, the

Zodiac committed murders before he started to communicate. For example, the Lake Herman Road attack did not involve a phone call or letter that we know about. The first communication is in the following

Blue Rock Spring attack phone call, where the offender grouped both crimes together. Even if we include the non-canonical Cheri Jo Bates crime, we find the homicide before the communication. However, such a view that this offender only wrote disturbing messages after homicides is likely not a complete picture. For example, the Zodiac also wrote letters B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 233 after his last canonical crime, which did not appear to have any corresponding confirmed Zodiac murders associated with them.

The Zodiac made promises to murder more and once wrote that his threats to kill schoolchildren in the way he described were a ruse, and he thought it stupid that anyone should take it seriously. Probably the most convincing interpretation of this reversal is that he didn’t carry out the attack for whatever reasons and then had to justify why not without damaging his ego. So why didn’t he carry out the attack?

In hindsight, the answer probably resides in that he remained undetected despite making so many mistakes. The Zodiac apparently believed that he would be caught soon with all the possible avenues open to identifying him, from his Halloween card code with a name, to his face accurately portrayed across all Californian news feeds and what with the new Bates connection. Likely he would have considered alternatives to being arrested, and this is likely why he wrote about the school bus bombing.

He probably planned to blow himself up during some sort of standoff with possible hostages taken. That is why he told investigators they shouldn’t go looking to dig up the bomb. He likely was intending to be the bomb. A radical M.O. change for an M.O. changing serial killer, but it fits none the less.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 234

So I would think he had everything prepared to go out and do it but then hesitated. He probably waited and when not detected over the months decided he had survived the composite and his puzzle’s solutions.

Therefore no bombing incident related to the Zodiac took place and the

Zodiac decided he needed to explain why his bombing threat didn’t happen. He wrote it off as one of his twisted jokes on anybody who believed he would do it.

This interpretation would lend weight to the view that his letters following the murder of Stine are written in a state of panic. He had likely gone well beyond whatever games he liked to play on the edge by threatening society with letters. His face had been accurately portrayed in composites, for example. Not something he planned on happening. Something he tried to deliberately avoid at Lake Berryessa by being masked and then risked it in San Francisco but was seen and so his luck ran out here.

The critical point for us is that he found himself needing to write about it.

Wanting or needing to explain himself. Like the world was expecting his response. This is precisely what he did in his follow-up communications after the composites were published. His craving for notoriety demanded it, and he would be the one to write his own narrative just like he gave himself the moniker of the Zodiac.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 235

What this tells us is that the person behind the Zodiac may potentially have spent most of his life working in communications. This is someone who would leave notes around for others in daily life. For Zodiac sleuthers, that means also speculating that in his job, he was likely a

Navy radioman, and this is a combination of a military connection plus a communication background. At least it’s the best interpretation I have heard yet and explains the use of teletype paper in the Bates confession letter as well as military-style shoe prints and PX watch.

I wonder if it is possible that before being in the Navy that he had found some way to fill that emotional need to communicate through some media. If we were to select what media he would go for, the answer seems straight forward enough – letter writing.

We don’t really need to speculate he wrote screenplays in high school, acted, or was a school newspaper editor. He likely was more a sports jock who bullied others in such artful circles. Family pressures for him to stay away from these activities with flair could be why he vented on this type of community despite secretly wanting to have their careers and futures.

Instead, he was probably feeling stuck with a family tradition and with high expectations for him. So when we say letter writing, we mean traditional letter writing. However, we know that the Zodiac understood little about how newspapers worked internally as he expected turnaround B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 236 times for print to be too early in his initial communications. This would point to a more menial, less extravagant job doing some writing work in his youth. I would hesitate to guess, but I think he was maybe given some filing and documenting tasks for a summer job or something that allowed him to observe how professionals work. He may even have done stuff that was office-related law enforcement work. However, this is not really the point but a mere speculative approach to showing how the Zo- diac was likely well familiar with writings and communications in a professional context in the workplace at a young age. Therefore we should not be surprised to learn that the Zodiac had tested his communications well in advance of even Cheri Jo Bates. It means that there could be the easter-eggs of the Zodiac’s past to be found. It is likely the Zodiac had already mailed threatening letters before and probably made crank calls.

This before he ever considered his diabolical murder scheme and letter writing combined plans.

How did he know his mailings wouldn’t be traced back to him? The letter writing would have come first for reasons of gradualism, and this would also answer how he knew mailing would be anonymous. Even if he posted manually in a box somewhere, how could he know for sure with all the materials he used or where they were posted from, that it somehow couldn’t get back to him? Risk is a plausible explanation, but would it not make more sense that for such a confident and unique criminal for their B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 237 time, they would have known it wouldn’t get back to them for a good reason. He likely knew because he had done it many times before. This serial killer was probably steeped deep in the ritual of shock communications and there is every chance as a young person he was engaged in this. Education seems a likely backdrop to such beginnings and school a possible target for such hate mail as well as aimed at other pupils. We might never find such things, and maybe everything is lost, and just memories which aren’t as reliable as hard evidence, but the point here is the idea itself. It gives us a moment to consider possibilities in the search for Zodiac evidence. If the Zodiac is identified, this would be something to check out. It would be within the realm of acceptability that the Zodiac left traces of the evolution of his crimes, and these might be gathered somehow.

So maybe it’s time to say a bit about the popular suspects we have heard about over the decades. With nearly all these ‘suspects’ there is a lot of fudging of the evidence to fit them. Such as denouncing the Presidio

Heights composite, omitting a Zodiac communication so a suspect’s timeline matches, rejecting handwriting analysis, rejecting finger and palm print evidence, rejecting DNA evidence and running almost entirely on the fumes of circumstantial evidence, led me to understand that all these suspects would meet the criteria for wrongful convictions. Which meant it was likely that the Zodiac was not among these pool of candidates. What B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 238 we were seeing was the result of the best that the masses phoning in with their tips had produced. In such a high profile case, you will have coincidences. When you are given a large volume of individuals, then naturally through such coincidences, you will filter those with the most to the top and those with the least to the bottom. The suspects we hear and read about are basically mostly those top tier tips that investigators looked into at the time. In all probability they were all already investigated. Yet it persists that some of these LE-vetted individuals somehow can still be the

Zodiac. To believe this would entail essentially saying investigators either did a poor job or the Zodiac was just able to ultimately make every possible hard piece of evidence, and strong circumstantial against him, evapo- rate into thin air before he was checked out. Is that a real-world possibility when dealing with serial offenders like this? Possibly… but highly unlikely. When we catch serial killers their lives must match up with evidence. This is because they are one and the same and so must match it.

Hence why hard scientific evidence matches. However, not only will the hard scientific evidence match, but also all the circumstantial evidence.

That is why prosecutors build cases where the hard scientific evidence is central to the case, but usually isn’t the only type of evidence they will present. The prosecutor will also likely bring to trial whatever circumstantial evidence works. Location, timing, witnesses, handwriting, cell phone records, fiber evidence, there can be a lot there to present. The defense will do the same if it can. In the case of the Zodiac, we are looking at a situation that is evidence heavy. Therefore not only should we expect B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 239

DNA, finger, and palm print matches, but a heavy circumstantial case with strong circumstantial evidence against them also. None of the suspects have shown to have had any form of strong circumstantial like this.

All the circumstantial against them is weak. That’s why none of them were ever formally arrested, let alone charged with the murders. All this is consistent with them not being the Zodiac.

In defense of those who reject DNA evidence, I would probably concur that due to factors such as the age of the evidence involved, it is unlikely

DNA contamination hasn’t occurred. Many people handled communications, although later in the investigation, unopened envelopes were intercepted. Attempts have been made to remove DNA from the back of stamps, and other possible efforts to recover the elusive Zodiac

DNA have been made in more recent times. However, this still leaves fingerprints, especially the bloody fingerprints on Stine’s cab and the exorcist letter palm print. None of the suspects matched these either.

What this tells us scientifically, is that the Zodiac is probably not among the pool of suspects who have been checked out. This means the Zodiac was likely totally off their radar. The lucky break they needed never came.

Since we have covered the Halloween card, it is now time to turn to the core feature of this book, namely the complete code in the Zodiac

Halloween card being broken, which reveals his full name. I think you will B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 240 find it unlike any other claim to breaking a Zodiac code you have seen before and maybe even more powerful than the result of Harden's solution because this time… he probably gave his name.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 241

Chapter 12 - “The Zodiac Halloween card solution.”

“The formulation of the problem is often

more essential than its solution,

which may be merely a matter of mathematical

or experimental skill.” – Albert Einstein

“Huh?” – The most common disfluent interjection utterance of surprise at something which at first boggles the mind. That was my response to what

I saw as I unraveled the puzzle before my eyes. It will likely be yours also, at first, but eventually, you will come around like I did. You will be seeing things through the eyes of the Zodiac that haven’t been revealed in over 50 years.

The Zodiac Halloween Card solution is not a cipher. In fact, the Zodiac wrote on the envelope “sorry no cipher.” Not only had the Zodiac changed up the M.O. of his homicides, but the Zodiac had changed how he was to do his puzzles. This is an area where things we know about offender profiling may help us understand something about a case. The offender profile includes changing M.O. and therefore, should this not indicate that the solutions to his future puzzles would be anything but traditional cryptography?

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 242

Instead, the Zodiac had gone for a different kind of puzzle which involved finding a key and applying it, but the key could be literally anything.

Without the key, the Halloween card is unsolvable. There is simply no way to solve the hidden message without it. There is no way to brute force a solution. You can’t work backward from a name, either. If you are not familiar with the key in the first place, then you stand little to no chance of solving the Halloween card. This was a puzzle in lockdown that was never meant to be revealed. Let me put this to you another way - even with the key found and made public, it took six more years before I likely solved it. So it is a complex puzzle in that respect but was solvable.

In some cases, such a non-traditional (non-mathematically based) key could involve a book, some other reading material like newspapers or a film, music or a painting or some media like that. By finding the right medium with the right content, you can then explore the media to discover how it connects up with the puzzle and explains it. This means the Zodiac puzzles and ciphers won’t be solved with math, and the Zodiac knew this. They can only be solved by thinking outside of that box, and the Zodiac never thought that such a possibility could occur with the key they choose, which is why they selected the key they did.

What brought the possibilities down so that the odds increased in solving his puzzles was the age of mass information analysis. Like DNA profiling, it was not something the Zodiac could have predicted. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 243

Puzzles have rules, and all human-made puzzles have constraints if they are solvable. One restriction is the key, and in a well-designed puzzle where the key solves it, then the key itself is a constraining factor. The puzzle’s components are shaped by it. So in a way we know, a non- random casual factor contributed to what we see at some point, even if random variables sorted through it at a later point. There is no good reason to assume such random variables were added later, for now, so we go with the more straightforward idea that the puzzle is shaped around the key. As a rule, they have to qualify as being solvable by another human otherwise there is no legit challenge. Problems involving ludicrous probabilities from multiplying random variables are still solvable with heavy computation, but this likely isn’t the type of puzzle the Zodiac was playing with. A well-designed key that was obscure is what he went with.

As a rule, the key must explain everything about the puzzle and not just some of it. The solution must be logical, follow a specific pattern or flow, and fit with the context of the problem. For example, a book written in the 21st century can’t be the solution to a puzzle made in the 20th century.

In a non-traditional solution, you shouldn’t really need to jump between several completely different types of media, such as a painting from the

6th century and an unrelated math equation from the 17th century to explain the puzzle. Find just a single key that overarchingly explains B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 244 everything. In a general way, a problem designed positing more than one key would defeat the idea that a puzzle design such as this is solvable by people. We shouldn’t overthink the solutions needed.

Occalms razor still applies. If a solution more parsimonious appears, then we go for the more straightforward and less complicated answer. The more restricted the parameters used to get the solution, the better the chances it is the right solution. The lesser the complexity of the explanation, the better the chances it is the correct key.

I believe the solution I will forward next, likely breaks the Zodiac

Halloween Code and involves these factors I have discussed. The rules are not cast in stone. They just help with what could be a solution and turned out to be so.

There are only a few pages needed to break the Zodiac Halloween Card

Code, and all the pages are associated with the exact same subject matter and come from the same source material. The complexity that the

Zodiac added that would make it unlikely to be cracked (in his opinion) is that the subject matter was an obscure collection that only some hobbyists would know about. The obscurity of the key to us is really just how we don’t see initially how deeply personal this key was to him. It is highly likely he collected these pages in his earlier years, and they B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 245 inspired him as the Zodiac, which is why he used them in the Halloween card’s code and referenced them in some of his other communications.

This personal context is also a compelling reason why it is the correct key.

This key and its background have substantial explanatory power. It is highly unlikely that this particular key wasn’t just randomly selected by the Zodiac, but the Zodiac used something that played a pivotal role in shaping his life in some way, possibly even the villain character of the

Zodiac.

What the Zodiac did was to select a comic book series that appeared between July 1948 and finished in May of 1954. There were 41 issues in total, and the Zodiac used four of these issues. He likely collected them all, but we know he had these issues, and we know he identified with them. He had simply seen a way to derive his name from them because he remembered reading them and probably read the series many times over. His first name had appeared in them at some stage, and his last name also at some stage. So he put a puzzle together that he had already some inkling how to do already. For example, imagine you have some comics. In one comic a character maybe shares the same first name as you. In another comic book of the same series, a character shares the same surname as you. So by creating a puzzle, you can link parts of these two comics, which when put together, result in your name. This was B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 246 the exact thinking process the Zodiac used when designing the Halloween

Card puzzle.

The comic book series the Zodiac referenced is the Western comic book series, Tim Holt, published by Magazine Enterprises in the late forties and early fifties. It was quite a violent comic for its time featuring lots of ferocity, usually involving guns and people getting shot.

Tim Holt was an actor who played a cowboy in many films and TV shows during the 1940s. Tim Holt endorsed these comics, and the writers and artists would basically illustrate stories about cowboys with similar themes to Tim Holt’s live-action work. They usually featured Tim Holt and his sidekick Chito. They also included a character called Red Ryder, who was really a masked Tim Holt. Basically, Tim Holt/Red Ryder rides through the

Wild West and does battle against outlaws with his sidekick. It is not, unlike Zorro. He has enemies like Lady Doom and Iron Mask. The comics were quite successful for their time and featured artists well known as industry established artists and writers such as Ray Krank and Frank

Bolle. We shall now discover how the Zodiac used them to hide a real name in the Halloween card code.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 247

The Rear and Front of the Zodiac Halloween Card.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 248

The inside of the Zodiac Halloween Card.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 249

The following pages appear as I sent

them to investigators.

THE ZODIAC HALLOWEEN

CARD SOLUTION

B.D. Holland

([email protected])

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 250

Tim Holt comics issue #30

First discovered by user Tahoe27 on Dec 30th, 2013 http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1275

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 251

Red Ryder branding symbol connection

The symbol used by the Zodiac is very similar to the one found in Red

Ryder comics.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 252

Tim Holt comics issue #14. #14 was written on the skeleton's hand. The

Zodiac was referencing issue #14.

Notice the same okay hand signal in the story.

This and all of the following images are my discoveries not published

before in full.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 253

Tim Holt comics issue #14 story about slaves.

SLAVES appears in the second story as do all these other images from

#14.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 254

Tim Holt comics issue #14.

Hole in wood in card with eyes to peak.

Same location of the hole at the top of the wooden pole in the same story

involving peaking in a window.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 255

Tim Holt comics issue #14.

Surnames appear in the dialogue.

The Zodiac clue here was FARLEY. We know this because the Zodiac

reconfirms it later on.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 256

Tim Holt comics issue #14.

BY ROPE.

Here the Zodiac references BY ROPE next to the name FARLEY. FARLEY is

the character lying down next to the rope. The Zodiac will reconfirm this

surname name again later on.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 257

Tim Holt comics issue #22 is also referenced in the Halloween card.

This one was a bit harder to crack. Dice is the key to issue #22. We

already have F for FARLEY in the 'cattle brand symbol.'

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 258

Tim Holt comics issue #22.

Skeletons on the cover.

We are getting closer to more about the name the Zodiac has given.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 259

Tim Holt comics issue #22.

All is revealed.

THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING!

Two of them.

The other part of the name is on the same page in the unmasking. Look

at the mask on the skeleton's eyes in the Halloween card. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 260

We can now reveal the name DON FARLEY.

We can be reasonably confident because the Zodiac has used a postage stamp with the number 8 on it. Page 8 is where the final unmasking scene

appears.

In the Paul Avery (misspelled Averly) address on the envelope, the L and

AV are underlined. The V looks like a Y. Could these be referencing Farley laying by the rope?

There is also more about the number 8 we shall cover shortly.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 261

We can be sure it is the name DON he wanted us to know.

The Zodiac's Don Quixote card was mailed on April 28th, 1970. Six months before the Halloween card, the Zodiac had already given us a clue

to his first name.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 262

We can find a pattern with the communications sent by the Zodiac and

also the communications sent for the Cheri Jo Bates case. The dates

appear in the solution keys, which are the issue numbers!

For issue #30, could Lady Doom dressed in green have reminded the Zo-

diac of Cheri Jo Bates, driving her lime green Volkswagen Beetle car?

Anyway let us continue. Notice that many of these dates are involved in

card mailing.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 263

It is the card dates that literally hold the keys. Here we see two cards

indicating the number 8 is significant.

The number 8 also appears on the stamp of the envelope containing the

Halloween card as well as the unmasking page number of issue #14 which reveals the name, Don. However, it may be that issue #8 could also reveal something the Zodiac was referencing when creating his puzzles.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 264

Another confirmation by the Zodiac that the surname he is referencing is

FARLEY.

“In the beginning” of issue #8 is the name Farley and this explains another use of the Apollo 8 stamp as well as card mailing dates going out

on the 8th.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 265

Zodiac’s Halloween Card keys are also in his card communication dates as

well as some letters.

Dates are underlined in red. Notice that frequently cards are used instead of letters is the special significance concerning the Zodiac’s key – Tim Holt issues #8, #14, #22, #30. Also, note the majority of these (4 out of 6) occur after the October 27th, 1970 Halloween Card to Paul Avery.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 266

The Zodiac has also used mailing dates to correspond to the dates of

some of his crimes.

Dates are underlined in green. Some of the dates also appear to correspond to the days the Zodiac committed some of his canonical- crimes. Dates are underlined in green. Faraday and Jensen, Dec 20th.

Mageau and Ferrin, July 4th. Hartnell and Shepard, Sep 27th. Stine Oct

11th is not appearing in the communications as the 11th. If a possible communication held back is on an 11th, then it seems this hypothesis may have some predictive power.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 267

This date also suggests a connection to Cheri Jo Bates.

Dates underlined in purple. The Confession Letter to Bates was an anniversary letter one month after her murder of October 29th, 1966. The

Zodiac also appears to use anniversary dates in his communications as per the previous image. The date of the Exorcist letter may be correlated to the Bates Confession letter. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 268

So as you can see, without the correct key, it would be impossible to solve the Halloween Card. Either someone who had some experience with Tim

Holt/Red Ryder comics and paid attention to the detail would be necessary, or supercomputers scanning the internet for symbols like the

Zodiac used. Even then, this would require at least one of the comic pages with this symbol being scanned. Not only that, but the Death Wheel connection was made in 2013, yet it would be another six years until this complete solution was found.

How about this next link to the name Don… American film and TV actor

Donald Barry de Acosta (January 11, 1912 – July 17, 1980), known as

Red Barry, nicknamed "Red" because he played Red Ryder the film

Adventures of Red Ryder (1940).

It seems Donald Farley was red with rage.

So let’s look at some factors going for this solution.

• Parsimony. It is a solution that is constrained to just four comics

from the same series, and only a few pages are needed.

• Context. The period and content fit with the Zodiac case. The

solution leads to an illustrated unmasking of the villain. This is what

the Zodiac promised the code would do.

• Additional Zodiac communications are solved with it. The Don

Quixote Dragon card. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 269

• It explains all the code in the card and even the envelope. It

explains all of it. Not just some of it.

• A single solution explains several elements of the code, and maybe

more, in one go. For example, Farley is derived from following the

clues and F for Farley is also found in the brand symbol.

• Numerical clues are constrained to just comic issues and page

numbers in those issues.

• It is not a cipher solution, and the Zodiac hinted that it wouldn’t be

on the envelope.

So hopefully, all the above have now convinced you that you are, in fact, reading the solution to the Zodiac Halloween card and the Zodiac dragon card, which will become known as the Don Quixote card.

I am also going to include an essay I also sent to the FBI and investigators. This has content that explained how it all unfolded and is worth reading to understand what was going on at the time I made the discovery. It will also explain, step by step, how to find the solution. So you can also use it to follow the images you have just seen.

I have made a few changes, but not many as I performed some revisions while sending them this information. It reads:

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 270

“The Skeletons are Dancing”

B.D Holland

Link to Tim Holt comics 1 – 41 for reference.

https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1076

“The Tim Holt Connection”

I couldn’t have done anything by myself. That would simply be impossible. The Internet is like artificial intelligence in itself. All these nodes with people behind computers, their brainpower in a union can be as significant as any supercomputer. I am just one of those nodes. There is nothing special about me. If you met me, I would be just any regular person that you have encountered. Even you could have done what I did, and that’s because professionals who did the work before us, released a lot of that information into our hands.

I have been following the Zodiac case on and off since the mid-90s. The most effort I ever put into learning about the Zodiac case was in the spring of 2019, but I had read several books before that on the Zodiac.

The Paul Avery Zodiac Halloween card of October 1970, has always been B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 271 of interest. Within this card which was customized by the Zodiac, adding extra words and artwork to it, glueing in cut-out paper skeletons, was the claim of a clue to the Zodiac’s name. This turned out to be a real clue.

There really is a name in there… and not just a surname or initials, but a full name. I don’t know at this time of writing if it is the Zodiac’s real name, but I suspect it is and will give reasons for my suspicion in a moment.

The breakthrough came on Dec 30, 2013, when an internet user named

Tahoe27 found a copy of a Tim Holt comic #30 with a Death Wheel illustrated on the cover. It contains two elements found in the Halloween card. The Zodiac had written the words – ‘By Fire, By Gun, By Knife, By

Rope’ in a cross formation. The word ‘Paradice’ (sic) divided them down the middle and the word ‘Slaves’ divided across the middle. ‘By Fire, By

Gun, By Knife, By Rope’ featured on the Death Wheel. Beside the wheel was a woman in a green dress spinning the wheel, her name Lady Doom.

The word Doom also featured in the Halloween Card with “You are

Doomed” written inside the card on an illustration of what looked like a tree trunk with an eye looking out from a hole and decorated in more eyes. Eventually, it was discovered that a strange cattle brand symbol in the Halloween card was also a symbol found in Tim Holt’s/Red Ryder comics. There was also a Zodiac letter signed The Red Phantom (Red with

Rage). So it all added up.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 272

Now some people might think this is a big coincidence. Like seeing Elvis in a cloud or Abraham Lincoln’s face in a tree trunk. It’s a human psychological phenomenon called pareidolia. It may have been pareidolia, except for one thing - the Halloween card was made by a human being

(albeit a monster of one) and was indicating that there was something to find in there and go look for it. Clouds don’t directly do that. Tree trunks don’t directly do that. People setting up puzzles do that.

On Friday 10th May 2019, a half-century after the Zodiac committed his crimes, I discovered the potential lead the case needed. The cover of the card was a dancing skeleton with his right hand up in the air, making an okay symbol. The number 14 was written by the Zodiac into his skeleton’s hand. So since Tim Holt, comic #30 was of interest, and since 14 had appeared in the hand, it was off to page 14 everyone went.

The Zodiac could have gotten the page numbers wrong (they weren’t enumerated in this issue), such as counting the cover, and so on page 15, there were some names and even a skeleton. Seems like the Zodiac’s name should be in there. No, Arthur Leigh Allen. No, Ross Sullivan. No,

Richard Gaikowski. No, Earl Van Best. No, Richard Marshall. No, Jack

Tarrance. No, Donald Lee Bujok. No, Lawrence Kane. No, Ted Kacynski.

There were Carl Pasdach, Eli Welles, Frank Hoover, Tom Tisdale and the skeleton who was a dead man called Will Martin. That last name seemed like the best Zodiac candidate for his name. No explanation for the other B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 273 stuff the Zodiac had included in the Halloween card appeared. This is where the trail went cold despite best efforts like tying the cattle branding symbol in with a real ranch somewhere in California.

In May 2019, I decided to revisit the Tim Holt connection. I felt there was something more. Why would the Zodiac go to all this trouble? Maybe it was just to waste investigator time, but perhaps not and is why I looked more. I decided that the 14 was probably not a page number. So what could it be? I decided to try another edition of a Tim Holt comic, and so off I went looking at issue #14.

“The Zodiac on the Ropes”

The second story “The Bridge at San Gila Gully!” starts on page 11 of the issue #14. Each story was numbered beginning with 1. So a new narrative begins on 1. This will be important towards the end of this essay.

On page 12 (page 2 of the story) the sheriff sitting in the chair has his left hand up in an okay-gesture. He is seen from the rear. So it was precisely the same as the skeleton’s right-hand okay-gesture in the Halloween card. The similarity was remarkable, but not enough for any confirmation of anything or a name.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 274

On the following page, 13 (3 of the story) we find out the story is about slave labor. The Halloween card had talked about slaves. Now we are getting somewhere. It was already becoming apparent that the Zodiac didn’t want us to just look at Tim Holt #30 (if he ever thought someone would find this Tim Holt comic connection at all!) but other issues of Tim

Holt comics. Now back in the 1960s, that would have been an effort to go find these comics from the late 40s and early 50s, buy them and have them sent to investigators, but in the 21st century, the internet scanning of these comics made things a lot easier.

On the same page, 13 at the bottom was Tim Holt’s sidekick Chito, with his hand on a pole drinking some water beside a cabin office. A large iron ring was inserted through a hole in the pole. In the Zodiac Halloween card was a drawing of a wooden pole, looking like a tree trunk with a hole in the same top portion and an eye looking out. The whole trunk was covered in these illustrated eyes the Zodiac had made. He has 13 eyes in total and then wrote 4-TEEN. In hindsight, this was referencing to see issue #14.

In this part of the story, Chito is watching a bad sheriff arrive for a meeting in the cabin. Chito plans to sneak up on an open window to peek in and see and hear what he can during the meeting inside.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 275

On page, 14 (4 of the story) it is revealed that the Sheriff’s name is

Kildane. He is talking to a bad construction owner who owns the cabin and runs the slaves. For the first time, we get the name Wendell FARLEY, a good construction worker, in their conversation. The name FARLEY, as well as many other names, appear in this section of the comic’s story, but we can fast forward to page 19 (9 of the story). Here we have the words

‘by rope’ appearing, which are also in the Halloween card. Beside the words ‘by rope’ is the name Farley. Farley also holds the rope in this section. So it seemed to me the Zodiac was indicating Farley was his name. Also, the cattle brand symbol in the Halloween card ended in an F.

Seemed pretty solid.

A quick internet search revealed a serial killer (mass shooter, 1988) from

California who is on death row. His name is Richard Wade Farley. He has a background in cryptography and the Navy (two things possibly associated with the Zodiac). He looks like the Lake Berryessa Napa Composite. So I decided why not put my findings on Reddit. After all, if he is in jail, what harm could it do? I didn’t mention RWF to anyone, and sure enough, a few Redditors brought him up after reading about this first part of my find. How could they not? All one had to do was type into a search engine

“Serial Killer Farley” and up he would pop in search results. I felt it was fair to mention to him since he was a felon and a real piece of work. So the Internet got chatty about him. I left feeling the Zodiac had been found. Nothing more to do but send a message to Napa Sheriffs who still B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 276 had the Zodiac case opened because of Cecilia Shepard, the victim who died at Lake Berryessa. I also sent one to the SF Chronicle.

“The Skeletons are Dancing”

It wasn’t until the next day that I felt I had made a big mistake. What if it wasn’t RWF? What if I had alerted the Zodiac to the fact we were onto him? I sort of thought about this a bit more and then realised that the

Tim Holt connection had already been made in 2013. If there were a time the Zodiac would have gotten really worried (as if his encounter with the officers on patrol at Presidio Heights and his composite going out all over the media wasn’t enough) then that would have been it. I sort of justified posting the solution that way… but it wasn’t the only solution. There was more.

I realized that the Halloween card still had stuff in it that needed to be explained. The cattle brand symbol for example. I turned it upside down, and there was what looked like a W for Wade. Okay, not bad. However what about the R for Richard? Where could that be? Was there a Richard somewhere else?

Paradice was spelt wrong. This was always known as a possible reason for pointing at playing dice (paraDICE). The cattle brand symbol had four dots on it. Could it be something to do with four? I noticed the angle of the dots made it look like two dice, side by side. The skeleton had a red B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 277 marker drawn over his eyes which looked like two. I suddenly got it. Two dice side by side with the numbers 2+2 makes four dots. 22… could this be Issue #22? Could it be his first name?

The cover of issue #22 had skeletons on it. I really hoped it would be

Richard, because if not, then what have I gone and done by putting this online? I really wished I possibly hadn’t caught the Zodiac’s attention if alive and spooked him. I really thought terrible about this all because we are talking about a very dangerous psychopath, and his age wouldn’t put me off still being fearful of what he might do after I heard stories about

EARONS (the prime suspect is Joseph James DeAngelo) zipping about on his motorbike at the age of seventy-two and behaving like he was fifty. I don’t want this person to go out hurting more people. Everything I have done here is about getting justice for the people he hurt. Nothing more.

Nothing less. Thinking this could result in him hurting someone else just makes me terribly worried.

The story “Cave of the Three Skeletons” starts on page, 3 and is, therefore, page 1 of the story. So we turn to page 10 (8 in the story), and we find two dancing skeletons. One of the characters even says “The

Skeletons are Dancing”. Sure enough, the Halloween card has two dancing skeletons. One on the front cover and one inside.

All of this is no longer just coincidence. That probability is long gone. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 278

The hero Redmask unmasks the villain on the bottom of this page. When unmasked he says his name – “Don Esteban”. The End. I figured the name Don is what the Zodiac wants us to know (or should I say, just him to know and laugh at us not getting).

If we look at the Zodiac envelope, there is a stamp of Apollo 8. This unmasking is on page 8. The number 8 even appears in this unmasking panel of the comic.

So it seems the Zodiac has given us his name. DON FARLEY

The word ‘Esteban’ is also there on page 8. It means Steven/Stephen, so this is also a possibility, but I think Don (Donald) works better. So is it

Don for Donald? Or Don as in mafia Don? If the former, then it’s a regular name. If the latter, then that’s quite something else and possibly just the

Zodiac playing more games. I think not, as we have another card sent by the Zodiac that confirms it is Don. The Zodiac's Don Quixote card was mailed on April 28th 1970. Six months before the Halloween card, the

Zodiac had already given us a clue to his first name.

So the problem is apparent. It’s not Richard. Isn’t even Wade. It could be someone totally off the radar and still alive. Not good. Not cool. I proceeded to edit and delete what I posted online. I was anxious. The B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 279 next thing I did was to put together a piece explaining all of this and sent it to the FBI in San Francisco via their web portal. Then I sent another to

Napa Sheriff’s office.

At least 3,500 people had liked my original post (so I have no idea how many saw it that didn’t hit the like button), but they only saw the surname Farley, and it was all about Richard Wade Farley. I did start a post on the idea of dice but quickly got rid of it. I don’t know how many saw that, but I suspect maybe only a handful. If the Zodiac is alive and reading it, maybe he would think he bought himself some time as we went off looking at Richard Wade Farley, but if his real name is Don Farley, and he read the posts I made as the dice connection, then as I write this, he must be more worried than I am.

There is a reason why I think it is his real name. BTK, Dennis Rader, made mistakes. He sent investigators letters and packages and eventually a disk which had his real name embedded in the disk’s metadata. A significant error on his part… especially the part of his ego. I think the

Zodiac had done the same thing. The Zodiac likely enjoyed knowing they had his name, a rush every time he thought about it as he walked freely about the places he terrorised in his letters, which was his signature. He got off on it. I don’t think he ever expected anyone to make the big leap to Tim Holt comics and even then, they would have to go find a collection of them. We know the Zodiac has such a collection, or maybe just those B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 280 issues. It was Tahoe27 who made the big leap. It was people on the internet encouraging me on and a few suggestions that made me think a bit more. It was the books I had read about the Zodiac. It was people helping keep the case alive that made me want to go look for more.

I hope I didn’t spook him. I hope it’s his real name. I hope he is still alive.

I hope he is captured alive. I hope there is some justice for his victims and their families and friends.

I believe in the Bates connection.

All I know is this. There is an inner Batman within us all. Let’s hope its in

Napa and SF FBI department too. I am sure it is.

(End)

I have made some revisions to this letter, but it is 95% what I sent out along with the gallery montage of the solution. The Don Quixote find came a few days after the Don find which came a few days after the

Farley find. Issue #8 find came a few days after the Don Quixote find. At the same time the connection between the dates and Tim Holt comics keys emerged.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 281

I am not to blame if it doesn’t point at a preferred suspect. That is not my fault. I did not make the Halloween card puzzle. I did not force any key to fit. The solution is what it is. So what if it is someone we have never heard of before? So what if that means all the time and resources invested into someone else has turned out to be wrong? We now have plenty of Zodiac sleuthing who thought it was someone else, having to acknowledge their candidate probably isn’t the Zodiac. There have always been doubts over the Zodiac community's list of suspects anyway. If you run polls on websites and include at the end of the list the possibility the

Zodiac has never been identified, you will find a lot of votes for this one.

That is because none of the solutions to date are ever wholly satisfying, hence why they are still debated.

Considering why the Zodiac would give his real name.

Serial Killers mostly do not reveal their names on purpose, although there have been cases where serial killers have handed themselves in. Edmund

Emil Kemper is one such case. Serial Killers who have given their names have also done so mistakenly. The Kansas serial killer B.T.K., identified as

Dennis Rader, made mistakes. He sent Wichita investigators and media, letters and packages, and eventually a 3.5” computer disk with his real name inadvertently embedded in the disk’s metadata. Ted Bundy also gave his real name. So it is very possible the Zodiac has given a clue to his real name, never expecting anyone to break the Halloween code because of its obscurity. I doubt very many cryptology cases have B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 282 depended on teenage comics. However, we need to keep in mind that serial killers mostly don’t reveal their real names. So the probability of it being the Zodiac’s real name is slim, but there may be good reasons why it is his real name.

A Zodiac communication containing the 408 cipher found in his July 31st,

1969 letters, was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco

Examiner and Vallejo Times. In these letters, he claimed that “In this cipher is my identity.”

The three-part 408 cipher solution cracked by Donald and Bettye Harden of Salina, California revealed that the Zodiac had not given his real name.

Part of the solution reads, “I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.”

Dr. D.C.B. Marsh, president of the American Cryptogram Association, laid down a challenge to the Zodiac which appeared in the article “Cipher

Expert Dares Zodiac To ‘Tell’ Name.” by Will Stevens and published by the

San Francisco Examiner in October 22nd, 1969. It reads:

Dr. Marsh told the Examiner today: "The killer wouldn't dare, as he claimed in letters to the newspapers, to reveal his name in the cipher to established cryptogram experts. He knows, to quote Edgar Allen Poe, that any cipher created by man can be solved by man. Zodiac has not told the B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 283 truth in his cipher messages to the Examiner, the Chronicle and the

Vallejo Times-Herald. Zodiac has not done this, because to tell the complete truth about his name -in cipher code - would lead to his capture.

I invite Zodiac to send The American Cryptogram Association a cipher code - however complicated - which will truly and honestly include his name".

Due to the 408 solution revealing that the Zodiac is a liar and a challenge from Dr. D.C.B. Marsh, the Zodiac may have used his real name, meaning his real name is Don Farley (or Donald Farley).

It is likely the Zodiac Halloween card was not created on the spot but took a long time to make with deep consideration. If the Zodiac Halloween

Card was motivated by Marsh, then this is the case for it containing his real name. It could not be a cipher code like any other. The key would have been so ambiguous that he stood an extremely high probability of it never been broken, but also had the capability of being cracked to make it a legit win on his part. It seems, in this case, the key may have been something that had personal meaning to the Zodiac alone, and these violent comics read at a younger age would fit such a personality and choice of key. Hence Tim Holt comics are the key, and he may have actually given his real name.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 284

The fact the Zodiac exclaimed he was crack-proof in his March 13th, 1971 letter to the Los Angeles Times, indicates he believed he had succeeded in this challenge and probably continued to think this for the rest of his life.

This also appears to fit with the timeline of events. It seems, that to be crack-proof and therefore unidentified while terrorizing society with his letters, has been his central emotional need all along. His criminal signature may explain why the homicides stopped, and consequently, he seemed satisfied with just writing unbreakable codes.

To recap this part - Due to the 408 solution revealing that the Zodiac is a liar and a challenge from Dr. D.C.B. Marsh, the Zodiac may have used his real name, meaning his real name is Don Farley (or Donald Farley). This is why we can have confidence; this is likely his real name. Even though serial killers, in general, don’t reveal their names, we have a particular reason for why the Zodiac would give his name for this specific case. It would have been part of his thrill and his need to take up challenges. We know he takes them up because he murdered Paul Stine, just for a shirt piece to send in to prove he was the letter writer. The Zodiac has simply given his real name to prove to himself that he is a better cryptologist than the head of the American Cryptogram Association, who challenged him to do so. Since it has been half a century of his name in secrecy, he probably thought himself better. Well not anymore he isn’t. Marsh, quoting Edgar Allen Poe, said that any cipher created by man can be B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 285 solved by man. Marsh was right… and so was Poe. It was solvable and has now been solved.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 286

Chapter 13 - “Applied Z Solutions”

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.

Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted

as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer.

Let us recap what we know so far from the solution and expand upon it by integrating it with our speculative views from the previous chapters on what kind of person the Zodiac might be.

Since we have found that the Halloween Card communication has something in common with the Don Quixote card, then this indicates that we may discover more clues even further outside of the Halloween Card with other Zodiac material. His name likely does not just end with Farley and Don. Likewise, this isn’t the only information he is hiding. There is probably more.

At the start of May 2019, a few weeks before solving the Halloween card,

I had also identified the strong possibility that he had given the name

William.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 287

The ‘William’ Connection

For example, the Zodiac had referenced the film The Exorcist in his

Exorcist letter. He had also used the phrase Good Times in several instances in his letters. I had figured out before my Halloween card code- cracking that Good times (1967), and The Exorcist (1973) were both directed by William Friedkin. The Exorcist book was also by William Peter

Blatty.

The Zodiac would have seen the posters all around towns at the time.

Given he was into movies and comics, this seems to explain many of his references. The catchline for “Good Times” even reads, “Look Who’s

Making the Movie Scene.” B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 288

The reference to “Good Times” was likely a subtle hint at the word

William.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 289

William is mentioned four times in The Exorcist poster.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 290

William shortened to Will, is also a verb. I had wondered if the Zodiac played with this in his letters? The Zodiac uses the phrase "I will" more than usual. It even appears in the Bates letters.

Here are some examples.

"Will be more."

"I will cruse." (misspelled)

"When they do crack it they will have me." (in reference to cracking his name).

“will positivily ventalate any thing” (more misspelling near will)

“1 bat. pow clock—will run for aprox 1 year”

“I will loose complet (near crossed out word)”

“Others will hang by their thumbs & burn in the sun then I will rub”

“I will collect for my after life.”

The Exorcist Letter contains the most obvious references to this use of

‘will’.

I saw and think "The Exorcist" was the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen.

Signed, yours truley:

He plunged himself into the billowy wave B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 291 and an echo arose from the suicide's grave titwillo titwillo titwillo

PS.If I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I'm capable of doing.

Note the use of billowy and titwillo. There is the Mikado reference again, and from this, we can surmise he is telling us that it was ‘Will’ he was suggesting here. In short, the Exorcist letter explains the Mikado reference. It was a puzzle reveal on his part in one of his last known communications.

While at first, it seems that in all these communications the word ‘will’ is simply used as one would in the English language, the Exorcist letter is proposing this is not so. In retrospect, therefore, we should be considering the use of the word ‘will’ as denoting something special and that something special is likely a candidate for part of his name.

For example, we should also keep in mind the 408 cipher decoded, which he said would contain his name, but then in the decoded cipher said he would not. The word ‘will’ appears here again quite a bit.

I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience it is even better B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 292 than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is that when I die

I will be reborn in paradise and all the (people) I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.

At this time of publishing other readers have pointed out the Bates confession letter uses will many times and especially the phrase ‘willingly!’

Now we have another name. Where could it go? To answer this, we need to look at the chronology. If the Zodiac were to give his name, it would be a step by step process, testing the waters. Therefore it seems that putting his middle name first seems safest. Since “Will” appears first in the testing waters of Zodiac communications, then we can propose that

William is his middle name.

The W shape in the Halloween card’s cattle brand maybe suggests this was his middle name. It may be related. It may not. However, we do know he is likely referencing ‘Will’ in the others.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 293

I think we can sit William in as his middle name for a placeholder for now.

So in a way, we can see the first name and a middle name come about from these in various combinations with Farley. We can easily swap them around, but we probably aren’t going to do that if he was giving his middle name first.

William has also come up a few times in Zodiac research. One example is that issue #30 of Tim Holt page 15 has a skeleton in the bottom right- hand panel. This skeleton is the body of Will Martin discussed on page 14.

Remember 14 in the skeleton’s hand on the Halloween card cover? Could this #30 pages 14-15 also have been another possible name reference? I think likely as the Zodiac seemed to enjoy double-meanings and keys used in more than one way. Such as the postage stamps number 8 and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 294 page 8 on the unmasking. Then we have issue #8 with the name Farley in the beginning. The 8th used in mailing dates. Will seems to me to be no different. By the way, this is not the last time we find the number 8 appearing in Zodiac communications. He also included them in his my name is____ cipher.

There are three 8s encircled in this code. I do not know this cipher’s solution. Maybe with everything you have learned so far you can figure it out?

I would also like the reader to consider that this Don W. Farley persona also had a nickname, and the Zodiac had given it from time to time.

We could propose that the nickname is Red, such as Red Phantom, or

Holt, from the Tim Holt comics, but the Halloween card itself may be revealing what that nickname is. This could be the place to look, especially given the Halloween Card has delivered some names so far.

Here somewhere may be the answer to the Zodiac’s real nickname. So we B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 295 have the potential for a nickname appearance to keep in mind. It is the sort of thing we are expecting the Zodiac to have and give.

So why so much detail? Why not just a first name and surname? The

Zodiac gave us a lot because he wanted to play with puzzles a lot. He sent dozens of communications. The repeats are evidence of this. Don repeated. Farley repeated. Will repeated. In fact, the repeated use of words, phrases, and styles has always been apparent in his communications and always has been something of interest to sleuthers. I think we are answering what these are, and it all stems from the solution to the Halloween Card. It’s all coming together.

Remember how brazen the Zodiac was in declaring himself crack-proof? It was a big deal because he had done something dicey. Once he had given the name Don Farley, he was all in. All or nothing. New Orleans or bust.

So middle names and nickname references are even more so the type of thrill the Zodiac would seek in his game of being the master cryptologist villain. The Exorcist letter cements this. The cracking of the Halloween

Card pointed the way.

Geographically it is highly unlikely that the Zodiac committed Zodiac crimes where he lived. However, he would have had a good reason for being in these places. So he could have been a visitor, and we have already covered the golf explanation for three out of four crime scenes. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 296

Bryan Hartnell described his attacker as wearing a dark blue windbreaker and dark blue or black pleated pants. Officer Fouke noticed the same pants. Those clothing types are close to golf apparel for autumn. Even though Lake Berryessa isn’t the most obvious choice of golfing attire, there is nothing preventing someone from doing a spot of both salmon fishing and golfing in the same clothes, or at least dressed as if they are doing those things.

I think given all the possible Navy related evidence and fishing connections we have come across, the knots he used in Lake Berryessa stem from naval training and more than likely fishing. At this time of writing the amount of recent cold-case serial killers that fished as a hobby seems as high as the amount of dog-related incidence. Dennis Rader fished as did Joseph James DeAngelo, two profiles we examined. The

Zodiac almost certainly fished as a hobby. Again this doesn’t make fishers serial killers! Most anglers just want to feed you the fish they catch. It only shows how it is something notable for application with any Zodiac candidate.

Given the Zodiac made phone calls, we can suggest he also did these from places he knew but did not live in. This seems to suggest he was on the Western side of Lake Berryessa and less on the Eastern side towards

Sacramento. Therefore we should consider the North-Western side of B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 297

California above San Francisco. This North-Western side has lots of golf courses that seem to form a pathway across to our crime scenes. If the

Zodiac did not live in these areas we know he committed Zodiac crimes in, then we can say that a zone North-West of the general crime area involving an hour to two-hours drive can probably give us the region he lives in. The caveat here is that California has a lot of golf courses, but given the crime scenes, we can’t and shouldn’t dismiss them.

From the evidence, we know the Zodiac had a possible military connection. Size 10 ½ wingwalker boots at Lake Berryessa. Possible link to cryptography. The Navy connection is there, and we can even get more specific about it as we know his communications are clues.

Letter to the San Francisco Chronicle (April 20th, 1970). The 'blue meannies' references the Beatles' animated theatrical film “Yellow

Submarine” (13th January 1969).

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 298

“Yellow Submarine” Poster (13th January 1969). Blue meanies in the

bottom right of poster pointing at a submarine. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 299

He references blue meanies again in his March 13th, 1971 letter.

Zodiac made reference to ‘drowning’ in his letter to Melvin Belli, Dec 20th,

1969. “Please help me I am drownding.” He talks about going underwater again in the exorcist letter of Jan 29th, 1974. “He plunged himself into the billowy wave.”

The Zodiac’s ‘dripping pen’ card turned sideways resembles a submarine.

The Zodiac has probably been making many hidden references to submarines. He likely has been telling us what his connection to the Navy is. The Zodiac symbol is like a periscope crosshair.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 300

For a submariner, this introduces the possibility of in-depth research into a timeline between the Zodiac’s service on submarines and the case timeline, including letter sending dates, should he be identified.

We also have a rough idea of what age the Zodiac could have been in late

1969. More importantly, you can rule out a lot of people who would have been too young, given the descriptions we had. The Exorcist letter contained the line “me–37 SFPD-0”. It has often been speculated that this is the Zodiac’s age. While it is certainly possible the Zodiac was 37, what we should maybe consider here is that it is the year of his birth that was the clue. 1937 would make him approximately 32 years old in 1969 and

29 in 1966. 32 in 1969 would fit a bit better than 37 in terms of general profile ages for these types of serial killers, which is late 20s to early 30s.

So that is why 32 works better than 37 being an age. So he was likely referencing his year of birth as 1937. The caveat here though is that the amended Presidio Heights composite does suggest 35-45.

Did this Donald W. Farley character own the PX Timex watch with white paint splashes on it found at the Bates crime scene? If so, this means he owns military-type shoes size 8 – 10 that left the prints there. There is a possibility he is a smoker and therefore owns the cigarette butts found near Cheri Jo Bates body. The witness who saw the smoking man may be able to identify him. He would have scratches on him that were noticeable B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 301 on Halloween day 1966. He used a teletype machine to write The

Confession letter. This all suggests a radioman submariner with access to teletype and privacy. His handwriting is on the Confession letter envelopes. His mtDNA will likely match the mtDNA recovered from the hair at the crime scene. His prints may match those found on Cheri Jo

Bates car. He probably owned a bronze Oldsmobile. It seems to me likely this is a good way to see how the evidence lines up with someone meeting the parameters we have discussed so far.

The Zodiac would have followed everything about himself in the news.

Tahoe27 had made the Tim Holt #30 connection to the Zodiac and had posted their findings on Mon Dec 30, 2013. If alive in 2013, then I would think that shortly after this period he would have hit a crisis point and possibly reacted to it in some way which would be notable in his life.

When Bryan Hartnell was attacked by the Zodiac, Bryan said that the hooded man claimed to be an escaped convict from a jail with a two- word name, in either Colorado or Montana (a police officer later inferred he had been referring to a prison in Deer Lodge, Montana), where he had killed a guard. If the Zodiac hadn’t worked in prisons as a guard himself, then we can propose that this was possibly a family career. A reason why we suggest such closeness is because the Zodiac himself demonstrated some knowledge of police procedures that we discussed in earlier chapters. A family tradition we could say. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 302

I would like to take a moment to talk about victims of the Zodiac. So far, this book has covered his direct victims. However, we have a lot of indirect victims. The people in his life, who did not really know who he was, are also his victims. His family is his victim. He deceived them. I can’t even begin to comprehend the impact something like this has on families. It is beyond our comprehension. This is another negative outcome of serial killers. They don’t just turn the lives of victims and their families upside down, they whirl the lives of their family, friends, and colleagues upside down.

Here are some possible things that might link someone to the Zodiac.

They need to check most of these boxes and not just a few.

• Familial DNA. If there is valid DNA. Why not try from the tape with the bloody fingerprint? You could eliminate Stine’s and the forensic techs

DNA from it.

• Handwriting.

• Fingerprints from Paul Stines cab.

• Palm print from Exorcist letter.

• Tim Holt comics issues #8, #14, #22, #30 in the solution.

• Paul Stine’s driving license and taxi cab keys.

• Fragments of Paul Stine’s shirt.

• Ballistics. Use of a Luger, 9mm. Slugs, casings. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 303

• Size 10 ½ wingwalker boots.

• Composites. Presidio Heights. Lake Berryessa.

• Timeline

• Witnesses (including hearing his voice, Bryan Hartnell, Nancy

Slover, Deputy David Straight). Lake Berryessa witnesses. Riverside witness.

• Mikado material, especially Grouch Marx version, season 2, episode

13 of the “Bell Telephone Hour” that aired 29th April 1960 and was further released on vinyl.

• Movie fan. Films – The Most Dangerous Game, The Exorcist, Yellow

Submarine, Good Times, Badlands.

• Books – The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell.

• Fan of Tim Holt/Red Ryder.

• Connections to locations Lake Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs,

Lake Berryessa, Presidio Heights.

• Melvin Belli connection.

• Vehicles – Chevrolet Impala, Chervolet corvair/mercury comet.

• Possible connection to Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, 1966.

What we can say is this. The cracking of the Zodiac Halloween card leads us to the name Don Farley. This is the certainty you can take away from this book. Why Don Farley? The explanation I put forth is that it is his real name. I then indicate how he also included the name William in other B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 304 communications. The Exorcist letter practically tells us it is a clue. This letter appears after the Halloween card had been tried and tested by him.

There is nothing I can do about these results. Anybody who solves the

Halloween card entirely will produce the name FARLEY several times. If I didn’t do it, then eventually someone would have. It could have happened years ago if more people thought the Zodiac puzzles were real. Once you realize the Zodiac has indeed been doing solvable puzzles (even though the Harden’s solved the 408, some people think all his other puzzles are just nonsense) then you get we can dismiss the idea the Zodiac was just time-wasting. They are real puzzles. Meaning they are possibly solvable.

This is important. In science, we often find competing theories.

Eventually, a competing theory can win out, meaning the others are no longer valid. That’s a huge leap in science because it means we don’t have to sink brainpower and resources into the wrong path of the other competing theories that failed. For the Zodiac case, the competing theories were either the puzzles meant something or the puzzles didn’t

(despite the Harden’s seeming to settle the issue). One road means hard work. The other path means doing nothing with them. We now know the latter is wrong. Combined with Harden’s work, this Halloween Card solution tells us to labor on more.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 305

The working out of the name Farley is that sudden snap-around in orientation to look back upon possible puzzles, words, and hidden meanings the Zodiac had communicated. Good Times, The Exorcist, Will,

Blue Meanies, these are not just coincidences, ravings, timewasters or red-herrings. Someone who wants to play the Riddler character obviously realizes than in addition to a costume, they probably actually should come up with some riddles so that people take them seriously. This is what the

Zodiac did. It is how we teased out the name Don from it all. It is how we derive the name William. It is why we think he was a submariner. This was the risk the Zodiac took. This was how his thrill was to fully evolve. If we are talking about someone willing to risk multiple-murders within small windows of opportunities, then how much more so possible is it that this thrill-seeker would create what they thought were uncrackable puzzles to their true identity? A life gambled on the excitement of possibly being caught.

Can we say there is a reasonable probability that the Zodiac designed these puzzles so that the ultimate Zodiac solution to the Zodiac killer mystery is that Donald William Farley is a submariner and the

Zodiac? That is a big question.

In closing comments, I would like to say this. From the moment Tahoe27 made the Tim Holt connection in late 2013, the Halloween Card was B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 306 solvable. At any stage, the Donald William Farley solution could have emerged from it all. So now that it has what next?

I suppose skepticism and caution are still valid positions to take. We should question it. We need to be extra careful pointing fingers. Even the

Preisido Heights composite may match, which will seem impossible to do if they aren’t the Zodiac, but sometimes relatives can look a lot alike.

Even those who still believe Arthur Leigh Allen is the Zodiac need him wearing a wig, losing the obese weight, masking his fingerprints and wearing glasses. What this all tells us is how vital science will be in determining how to separate out all these possibilities so we can select the right one. You can be sure there are many people with the name

Donald W. Farley out there, both passed away and still alive, Navy, submariners, born around the right time, look like the composite, golfed and fished. We may even think we have found the Zodiac by applying all these things to our sleuthing. Here we should be most careful. Who can really say they have the right Donald William Farley submariner? Only science combined with investigative analysis can do that.

This book isn’t about doing that anyway. It is a book about how to use our heads when thinking about cases. How open-mindedness is essential, with some imagination and just seeing how the pieces can fit. Going through the permutations and finding what might unlock something. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 307

When you find something that clicks, it usually all starts to snowball very quickly from then on in. Tahoe27’s Tim Holt connection can’t be understated in that respect. All we can say for sure is that the Zodiac killer probably incorporated this name and background into the Halloween

Card puzzle and a few more communications. The results are still circumstantial… but at least now we have them.

There is still much to learn. If you ask me why I wrote The Skeletons are

Dancing, the answer is straightforward. I asked myself, ‘what would the victims and their families have us do?’ I think they would want to know if there are solutions to the Zodiac puzzles. That is my moral compass on the matter and why I tried to solve them in the first place. I hope it is yours also.

Thank you for reading.

B.D.Holland. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 308

Addendum

The following chapters contain my research on the 340 cipher and Lake

Tahoe card. I am proposing a mechanism that offers a solution to both. I suspect the public does not have all the components needed to solve them but maybe I am wrong and the reader can apply everything they have learned to solving them.

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Chapter 14 - “Possible 340 Cipher mechanism solution.”

“I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle

that was known to man must have come to me.

Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented,

I knew.” - Richard P. Feynman

["Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", 1985]

So there is a possibility that I have found a solution to the 340 Cipher.

The bad news is that this solution means that all attempts to crack the cipher by the public after its publication has been in vain. This is because this proposed solution requires that we have the three mailed out bloody shirt pieces as they form part of the solution. No such clear images have been provided to the public. That means only investigators with the evidence can solve it.

Here is a copy of the PDF file I sent to SFPD about a proposed solution involving the bloody shirt pieces.

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ZODIAC 340 CIPHER

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

MECHANISM

B.D. Holland

([email protected])

20TH July 2019

Background

Taxi driver Paul Stine was murdered by the Zodiac killer on October 11th,

1969. The Zodiac took a bloody shirt piece from Paul Stine. Three pieces were mailed with Zodiac communications. In between these mailings was also the mailing of the 340 Cipher.

Possible Solution Content

The following mailing content is possibly significant to solving the Zodiac’s

340 cipher.

• 13th October 1969 – Zodiac letter to SF Chronicle containing bloody

shirt piece. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 311

• 8th November 1969 – Zodiac “Dripping Pen” card sent to SF

Chronicle containing the 340 Cipher.

• 9th November 1969 – Zodiac letter to SF Chronicle containing bloody

shirt piece.

• 20th December 1969 – Zodiac letter to Melvin Belli containing bloody

shirt piece.

• 20th April 1970 – Zodiac letter to SF Chronicle with ‘My name is- ’

cipher.

It is a possibility that the Zodiac planned to send a series of content needed to decipher the cipher along with the cipher itself between 13th

October 1969 and then the final piece mailed on the 20th December 1969.

The 20th April letter asks if the cipher has been decoded yet which indicates all the pieces needed had been sent out.

Possible Solution Mechanism

The 340 cipher is possibly decoded using the bloody shirt pieces.

The bloody shirt pieces appear to contain rectangular-shaped holes cut out of them. When the bloody shirt pieces are placed over the 340 cipher

(possible even collectively), these cutouts will likely decode the cipher or reveal what the Zodiac intended to be decoded.

The 340 cipher appears to have marks on the corners on the pages that look like pinholes. These pinholes may be reference points that the Zodiac used to hold sheets and the shirt pieces together. As the 340 cipher sheet B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 312 lacks visible bloodstains, then this sheet is likely a copy of the original done after the puzzle had been generated.

Some of the bloody shirt pieces look to contain writing (see image below).

If these were not done by investigators, then they are likely part of the solution mechanism and include the start/end of sequences needed for decoding.

At least two rectangular sections have been cut out in this piece. There

appears to be writing at the end of one of them.

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Internet images show holes cutout in the material (numbers already on

internet image).

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 314

The 340 cipher. Notice pinhole marks in the corners.

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An example of how a piece may line up with the code revealed through

the cutouts. Many possible orientations to consider here.

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It is also possible the main card’s letter has elements needed. Notice the four black dots in the black handwriting. Also, notice the word ‘Thing’ has a dot above the i. These may be connected with lining up things. The dots

may even be in line with bloody shirt spots.

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Basically, this all means the 340 cipher can’t be solved without the bloody shirt pieces. Only those who have these parts of the cipher are in a position to combine what is needed to get a result.

So this is one solution that I think may work, but only time will tell if the

SFPD or other investigators will be able to solve it this way. I believe this combination of shirt pieces and the 340 cipher will likely be right because for the past number years the internet has even had dedicated 340 cipher websites running algorithms and allowing every member of the public to try out combinations that can solve the cipher. To date, nothing has come about which makes sense if he was not using a known cipher method.

The method I have described means that large sections of the cipher are meaningless filler. It also necessitates only recipients of the shirt pieces can solve it. It also requires they have to cooperate. We know the Zodiac exploited cross-jurisdictional issues and there is no reason to not continue this train of thought when it comes to his mailings of separate pieces of a puzzle to multiple individuals. We know for the 408 cipher that this is precisely what he did and you need all the parts collectively to complete the solution. In short, there is nothing really new about the idea you need all the shirt pieces to solve the 340 cipher. The Zodiac has gone for this approach before. If we apply this type of thinking to solve Zodiac puzzles, then it may also help us to understand possible solution mechanism to his B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 318 other codes and puzzles. If the Zodiac is dead and didn’t leave behind the solutions, then it’s up to us to solve them.

A problem, however, is to consider why the Zodiac wanted the 408 cipher published if only investigators had all the materials to solve it? I think there are two reasons. The first reason is that they wouldn’t have to copy their work as a trophy keepsake to remind them of their own bravado.

They could simply retain the newspaper article that reprinted it as per their demands. The second is that they wanted the public to see their work. The Zodiac’s ego made him want people to fawn over his cryptology skills.

The idea the Zodiac would keep copies has always interested me. Did the

Zodiac write drafts before preparing the final document he would send? I think almost certainly so for the ciphers and puzzles at least. This would indicate that there is the potential for source documents which the Zodiac may have held onto. It also leads me to another idea. The idea is that the

Zodiac worked with duplicates in some instances. This may give us a possible mechanism for his other puzzles. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 319

Chapter 15 - “Possible Lake Tahoe Card Mechanism.”

“Our whole life is solving puzzles.” – Erno Rubik.

[Inventor of the Rubik’s cube]

Background

The Lake Tahoe Card is a Zodiac communication sent to the San Francisco

Chronicle on March 22nd 1971. Even though the postcard says ‘sought victim 12’, the Zodiac had previously claimed 17+ just the week before in his March 13th letter to the Los Angeles Times. However there is no reason not to accept that both communications are from the Zodiac. The

Lake Tahoe Card was addressed to the attention of Paul Avery, but Avery was spelled Averly. This misspelling is also present in the Halloween card communication on the envelope cover. So in conjunction with handwriting and other factors, it seems these are all the work of the same person.

Possible Solution Content

This means we should try to explain the discrepancy between the 17+ and sought victim 12. On the one hand, there is no discrepancy if the writer was referencing a previous victim. Yet we know the Zodiac plays games and that there doesn’t appear to be any Zodiac victims after the canonical ones, which total five. What is likely happening here is that these numbers are much like the numbers found in the Halloween card.

While they may be a victim count, they are chosen by the Zodiac likely B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 320 because they form part of a puzzle. Therefore the number 12 is likely involved in part of the problem. Could it be that there are 12 characters in the solution? That 12 has something to do with the number of letters in a hidden message?

Apparently, another card, the Monticello card, never released to the public, of similar design to the Lake Tahoe card, was also sent on July 13th

1971. All we know from records is that it says “Near Monticello Shought

Victims 21 …. In the Woods Dies April.”

This means if the Lake Tahoe card is a puzzle, then the Monticello card may also be one and there is the possibility both are needed to solve the problem. Since the Monticello card hasn’t been published, then we need to consider that this mechanism proposed next for the Lake Tahoe card may combine with the Monticello in some way.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 321

Possible Solution Mechanism

The card is significant in that the Zodiac went to great lengths to obtain it.

The postcard is indexed as a US 1962 Lincoln 4 cent postcard Scott's

UX48. The reason why the Zodiac sought out this card was that he wanted to reference an assassinated US President. He selected Lincoln, and the UX48 post-card offered him a template for his puzzle design because these postcards were prepaid and the stamp imprinted as an indicium.

The first thing that stands out about the Zodiac’s Lake Tahoe card is that it has undergone substantial modification from its original appearance. An B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 322 image has been cut out and glued to the card. We saw such behavior before with the fixing of the skeleton to the Halloween card. The image is of a new condominium complex at Lake Tahoe called Forest Pines at

Incline Village and has been cut out from a realty advert.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 323

Just like in a movie ransom note, the Zodiac has used newspaper lettering cut out and glued onto the card to convey messages. They read “Sierra

Club”, “around in the snow” (upside down), “Peek through the pines,”

“Sought victim 12” and “pass Lake Tahoe areas”.

Once everything was glued in place, the Zodiac then used a hole puncher to bore out a single hole in one corner of the postcard. The same hole puncher was then used almost entirely around the outside edges of the card to cut away the border. The way it has been cut out gives the card the appearance of sawtooth sides. There is a Zodiac symbol drawn onto the bottom right-hand corner of this image side of the card.

The hole punched through also modifies the address side of the car. Now opposite President Lincoln’s stamp on the upper left-hand corner is a hole.

The Zodiac has written his moniker in his handwriting above the hole and then designed a new type of symbol not unlike the Zodiac crosshair but missing the center part. If you look closely, you will notice that circle B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 324 appears to have a pronounced arrow shape in the top right side and again a less noticeable arrow shape in the bottom left-hand side of the symbol.

The card is addressed to “The Times”, “S.F. Examiner” and the “San

Francisco Chronicle.” At the bottom are the handwriting words, “att.paul averly = chronicle.”

This particular stamp printing has several lines drawn across President

Lincoln’s image. These are part of the original cards design and not the

Zodiac’s input.

He likely selected this single spot for the full hole punch because he was using it in a puzzle he created with the card. The reason why he cut around the card with the puncher was to hide traces of markings he had made while creating alignments on the card for his puzzle. If so, there would be pen marks, pinholes and possibly tape on this cutaway area B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 325 used to hold the card in place as the Zodiac created references points to align his puzzle with.

The original card may be part of a two-card piece. A protective card back would be attached to this postcard and simply torn away along a readymade broken line, just like parting a full card down the middle. This would leave you with a postcard with fixed prepaid postage in one hand and a blank card in the other.

I think the Zodiac either used such a backcard for reference or may have actually acquired duplicate cards. Meaning they had more than one copy of this card when doing the puzzle. Whatever he used, it seems to me that a solution to the problem requires a duplicate of the card for overlapping.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 326

Notice the lines inherent in the stamp’s image of the president appear to match the width of some of the text in the postcard?

This is because it appears the hole is supposed to be a viewing port. As something is moved behind the card, rotated or shift laterally and horizontally between points, a letter will be revealed through the hole. It’s no more puzzling than a kid’s decoder type toy if you think about it. The question is, what can be placed behind the card? I think the answer is either a duplicate of this card or another card not made public. Like the possible 340 cipher mechanism, we may be missing portions to solve it, namely the Monticello card that hasn’t been published. So for now we can only proceed with the one we have. The idea of how it works should be the same, though.

The first matchup we can do is with the hole and the zodiac symbol. We can freely rotate a duplicate of the card beneath in various orientations to see what letters appear through the hole using the zodiac symbol as the point of origin for rotation. This seems to make some sense for two reasons. The first is that as you rotate, letters indeed are revealed through the hole which happens to be through some pines in the image.

Could this be what “Peek through the pines,” means? To peek through the hole? I think, yes. Secondly, the Zodiac’s new symbol with the possible arrows suggests rotation. This likely mechanism would explain why the

Zodiac needed to space out the words and letters in the card the way he B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 327 did. The number 12 may suggest that there are 12 possible letters revealed through the keyhole.

It also seems apparent that the reason why he selected President

Abraham Lincoln was that he was assassinated by gunshot from a handgun. Could they be pivot points for the solution? Some of them reveal letters through the hole. Here are some I was able to find.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 328

Appears to give the letter ‘d’ through the hole.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 329

Look at n in the top right hole.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 330

The letter a appears in Sierra Club through the hole.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 331

Could this be another lineup? The biggest problem the public has in

solving this is the low quality of the Lake Tahoe postcard images.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 332

More examples of possible lineups.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 333

The letter t in victim.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 334

Letter ‘a’ in the top right.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 335

The top right has the letter L.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 336

A pivot to the letter H.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 337

We can also shift the card along lines in the postage mark to line up with

the width of text.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 338

It seems to be the Zodiac has underlined some text. It is tough to see in the quality of the images online though.

Anyway I think you understand how many possibilities are here but I suspect you get the point. This mechanism might be explored more by you the reader. I’ll keep at it if you do.

As a note, the Sierra Club could be a reference to Tim Holt in the movie

“The Treasure of Sierra Madre” (1948). Given everything we have learned about the Halloween card it seems to be the case.

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 339

THE END?

This is far as I have taken everything. At this time of writing it is now coming close to Halloween 2019, the 50th Anniversary of the Zodiac killer mystery, and so constrained by time, I am releasing everything as is.

Someone else would have done the same solution eventually if I am correct.

I am also more than willing to accept I am wrong. One challenge for those who think it incorrect is to come up with a solution that explains all the

Halloween card (not just some of it) and is more parsimonious than the one in this book. Not only does this solution do these things, but I believe it also has the power to solve many other communications. You have an opportunity. Maybe you will be the one to solve more about them!

As for now, if this solution withstands whatever tests it undergoes or whatever attempts to critic it fail, then this is something we would expect if it was the correct one. I look forward to seeing how it survives out there in the wilds of Zodiac sleuthing.

Happy sleuthing,

B.D.Holland B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 340

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is still a work in progress. If there should be a reference here, let me know.

Tim Holt Comics https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1076

Some Wikipedia references worth checking out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Jeffreys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Sleeper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Killer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Cheri_Jo_Bates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutcliffe

Useful threads http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=89 http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1275

ZODIAC LETTERS https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Zodiac_Killer

Useful books John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker (2001). The Cases That Haunt Us. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Shelby, Richard (2016). Hunting a Psychopath: The East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker Investigation-The Original Investigator Speaks Out. Kelleher, Michael D. and Van Nuys, David (2001). This is the Zodiac Speaking": Into the Mind of a Serial Killer. Greenwood Publishing Group;

Zodiac sites with stuff https://www.zodiacciphers.com/ http://www.zodiackiller.com/

Documentary to watch This Is the Zodiac Speaking (2008), directed by David Prior,

B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 341

AUTHOR

B.D. Holland holds a BSc in Life Science. He works in the field of botany and currently narrates documentaries on biology and other scientific and historical programs. His hobbies include reading non-fiction, drawing, and playing the electric guitar. He is a big fan of Batman.

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