Fred Manalli

Seagull, can you post more writing samples here? This is certainly interesting. Can this guy be placed in Riverside at all from October 1966, to April 1967?

Morf I sent Trav 14 pages of handwriting, I think he has plenty to work with.

Wow...I'm not seeing similarites at all! Lol Awesome you got a lot of samples though Seagull!

FYI--Zodiac never made the U-ish "y" as was written on the desktop. Zodiac always wrote his "y's" with straight lines.

I will bow out of this thread.

tahoe27 wrote:

Wow...I'm not seeing similarites at all! Lol Awesome you got a lot of samples though Seagull!

FYI--Zodiac never made the U-ish "y" as was written on the desktop. Zodiac always wrote his "y's" with straight lines.

I will bow out of this thread.

A valid point Tahoe and usually a deal breaker except manalli does do the zodiac y's - I thought I might have put them up already but I hadn't - they are part of the 'lot's more to come' section. That's what's interesting about this, I think about the little tells that we think of as zodiac's in his writing and you think there aren't any in manalli's writing cause it's mostly cursive then some turn up.

Some of Manalli's handwriting.

EDIT: coming soon

I am either dense or need new glasses or both but I don't see any similarities either.

Writing comparisons will always be a matter of opinion here for all of our untrained eyes. But I think once Trav posts all of his comparisons, there similarities will be apparent. The letter formations and many lower case letters and stylings are pretty similar. The letters g,y,and many others. (I dont think the lower case Z of Manalli looks much like Zodiac's). One problem is, how many printed samples do we have from Manalli? I think most of his samples are cursive,but like Zodiac, he has a hybrid style writing that mixes cursive & printing. Also, some of the spacing looks similar.

I am certainly not saying that Manalli was Zodiac,but I for one want to leave no stones unturned. I would love to find photos of him circa 1969,and also,I would like to know what details Seagull will find in the book PARADISE that Manalli wrote. Maybe yet another coincidence,but for him to choose that title is of interest.

morf13 wrote:

...but like Zodiac, he has a hybrid style writing that mixes cursive & printing.

....

Both Manalli and Z using the same word, and obviously,one of them spells it wrong. Again, notice that Manalli has a mix of printing & cursive, even within the same word. The top one is from Z, and the bottom one from Manalli.

This was written by Manalli (sort of reminded me of Zodiac's 'little list' )


Below are more comparisons of Manalli to Zodiac-

The first letter K is from Z, and the second is from Manalli:

It gets better. See you picked on the 'satirical' bit too Morf.

Its very good work Trav and it is some of the closest writing I have seen to Zodiac's (along with the Riverside student that had similar writing to the desktop). I applaud your efforts. That was my one small stab at a comparison (its not easy work), so I will leave the major high tech stuff like this to you

Something I just noticed in the Citizen card regarding the word WERE. Both times, there is an odd spacing after the W. We should look for that in Manalli's letters too.

Will do there's more to go yet but that's my lot for tonight.

It's like this guy's writing is inbetween the citizen letter/desk and zodiacs letters. It's closer to the citizen letter and the desk overall then you hit something like the l/c g's. Interesting stuff. Have you read the last paragraph on the first page of the typed stuff?

Some of his typed words....are these jokes???





"Have you read the last paragraph on the first page of the typed stuff?"

We are on the same page

I know. There's the last page of the typed stuff as well and the last page of the handwriting signed Anon & Fred, on it he writes comparing a pen to a gun being oiled and a knife being sharpened. The Last page of the typed stuff is a quote talking about victims being burned at the stake.

morf13 wrote:

Both Manalli and Z using the same word, and obviously,one of them spells it wrong. Again, notice that Manalli has a mix of printing & cursive, even within the same word. The top one is from Z, and the bottom one from Manalli.

Where does Zodiac, in authenticated letters, combine cursive and writing? Am I forgetting?

tahoe27 wrote:

morf13 wrote:

Both Manalli and Z using the same word, and obviously,one of them spells it wrong. Again, notice that Manalli has a mix of printing & cursive, even within the same word. The top one is from Z, and the bottom one from Manalli.

Where does Zodiac, in authenticated letters, combine cursive and writing? Am I forgetting?

Writing experts mentioned that his lower case d(laying on its side practiacally) is a cursive d.

Comparing against the desk.

Similarities in lower case g's, double ll's (slight curve), lower case e with follow-through stroke. Manalli's writing when compared to something else similar seems to be a mirror image, due to the zodiac sources are mostly italicised.

The closest thing I see between Manalli & the Desktop writing,is the way that they both bend their lower case l's.

Placing Manalli in Riverside 66-67 would be huge in my opinion. Graysmith,using whatever sources he had, stated that Manalli was there at some point. Unfortunately, we all know that Graysmith made some mistakes.

In all the pages of letters I have I did not see that Manalli was in the Riverside area. It doesn't mean he didn't visit there at some point, of course. I believe that Graysmith said he taught down there but the letters pretty well say where Manalli worked and no place in southern California was mentioned.

Manalli taught at San Quentin Prison, I think that if Graysmith knew that he would have said so. That's one of the things that intrigues me about him. You couldn't ask for a better place to learn some of the tricks of the murder trade from the professionals.

Some more. One of the Riverside envelopes compared to both Manalli's writing and the desktop poem. Red M= Manalli, DT= desktop.

Note the S's from the desk - very, very close. I would say that a serious link between those letters and the poem.

Manalli's 2 here is looped as is the 2 on the envelope. Manalli also does the Zodiac style 2.

Umm Guys...... I'm sorry I haven't marked very clearly on this what happening but lets play a game. See if you can spot manalli's handwriting in there. I just wanted you all to see this first. Also, to be honest I was starting to get confused and thought right- that's enough for now lets post this so far.

EDIT: I'm starting to think this letter produced in a mirror or a few mirrors.

EDIT: there's lots more as well, the s's, the k's, the y's. I could fill the page again with all of these but I couldn't fit then on.



EDIT: ADDED the date and a few more words



EDIT: Sorry - Here's a close up look at the symmetry and mirror of those two letters compared to their counterparts.

Interesting that he was a member of the men's glee club at college.

Trav, I am sold. Its very close in my opinion, alot of similarities.

One more thing, you may want to take a lok at. On the Bates had to die letters, everybody says the little symbol at the bottom looks like a Z. Compare it to Manalli's lower case Z, I think its pretty close