Troy Houghton: The Minuteman

This unconfirmed Z letter interests me because, from the little that can be seen, it seems (or might be) more political than the others: http://zodiackillertruth.com/bknife.htm

Bleeding Knife
Below is a transcription of a letter written by the Zodiac killer. Grammatical and spelling errors are included as written.

Date: Postmarked December 16, 1969

Comments: Sent to San Francisco Examiner. Postmarked Fairfield, CA.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A copy or transcription of this letter in its entirety is unavailable to the public. Here is what we do know about this missive:

The letter had two pages. The first page began:

"This is the Zodiac speaking I just want to tell you this state is in trouble"
The letter contained the following phrases (spelling):

for the goverment
and

don't foreget
The second page contained a drawing of a knife and the words:

"The Bleeding Knife of Zodiac"
Investigators from the F.B.I. concluded in a memo that this letter "may contain some distortion" and was "not written as freely" as other "threatening letters." The memo goes on to say that characteristics indicate this letter "may have been prepared by writer other threatening letters this matter."

I have a strong interest in reading that letter for the exact same reason!

Zodiac seems to be making a political/social statement of some kind, but we need the whole text to see what it is.

I sent a letter to the SF Examiner (they were sent the letter) but so far no response.

Sandy and Ricardo expressed some interest in trying to track this down, don't know if they have had a chance yet, and it may be difficult or even impossible.

I may consider filing a FOIA request to get this next month.

Good luck with the efforts. Do you know of any reason for them not to release it? If it's a fake, what's to lose? If not, all the better. If they have no interest in solving this crime, lots of us do.

"Slavery" and "Letters to the Editor" campaigns.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=136041&relPageId=17

8th paragraph about guerrilla soldiers being invisible, everywhere and nowhere. This is just like Marco Polo's description of the Karaunas in Tibet. See my Red Phantom post above.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=136041&relPageId=21

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=99851&relPageId=209



IN TERMS OF CONSTRUCTION, COMPARE THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST CHRISTIAN SYMBOL IN UPPER LEFT OF THIS LETTER FROM RICHARD BUTLER, FRIEND OF DENNIS MOWER AND TROY HOUGHTON WITH THIS:



Here we see that Keith Gilbert, a very dangerous MM and follower of Wesley Swift and the Church of JC Christian, gave Dennis Mower power of attorney; moreover you see that Troy Haughton is mentioned as a witness for the State of California in its case against Gilbert:

The Spencer --> Howard in this letter refers most likely to Lawrence Howard and William Seymour, thought to be anti-Castro operatives working with the CIA to kill JFK. Haughton claimed to have worked with the CIA for anti-Cuban purposes. (I'll outline the evidence for this, of which there is much, later). Howard and Seymour resided in El Monte CA and were thought to be living in LA in 1969. Here are two FBI documents about them.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=91588&relPageId=2

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=91589&relPageId=7

Interesting, too, that William Seymour reside in San Diego, and his father, deceased, was named Howard Seymour.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=91595&relPageId=6

I just got about 40 pages of material from the Mark Monday/Ed Baumgardner files at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. I'll start posting it. The first document is handwritten (I believe it is Mark Monday taking notes from a conversation with Baumgardner in late 1967 or early 1968). Here is the full translation with the document below in two pages):

Target- Calif MM of Hougton address
American Publications, Box 24, Pine Valley, Calif
"Good security." "You will be investigated from Betty's Group"
"They (Miss[ouri]) don't investigate anybody"
"You wouldn't have too much contact." It's set up this way
You will get material from her. material + stuff you pay for. No dues"
She feels this way that in a time of emergency there is a way to draw them all together."
"It (the blast) didn't even hurt the building."
"It wouldn't mean a great deal to you. Sending money.
Minutemen handbook - very few of them printed. It would have been ideal - Everett [Moore?] never even saw a complete copy.
Goes back to 60-62, never learned. This is one thing of many things. Bob's son was going to get married -- left him in Calif-- didn't bother to attend wedding or anything
left Betty + Troy to take care of him"
"He decided to take off on an extended vacation."
Didn't get any of own people out. We like to know what's going on.
Don't ever accept anything on face value"
He was in Missouri. He went back because of lawyer
last seen leaving independence headquarters,
No trace has ever been found
"If you don't know, you can't ever expose anybody."
resigned before
Del Myers - Bob gave name to well-liked reporter
authored Traitors Beware - Coordinator wrote back in 61
Oren Wilson - good friend of Del
Another group still active
Did good articles on Bob - Jones
Art Westerman - someone named Bob stopped by to see him. Trying to plant false lead.
A close friend of Bob DePugh is in town.

Here is an interesting 1965 MM Bulletin. Does it appear that there is a flashlight above the rifle on page 2?

This doc is very interesting. It is written by Ed Baumgardner in the Idaho wilderness near the Canadian border. It states that "Bob and Troy had car registered in Canada." This is why Troy went to Cheyenne, WY from Missouri in January 1966, and was then arrested for flashing two young girls at a mall, who said that Troy was driving a car with Canadian plates. The police found TH in a hotel with a car with Canadian license plates. I spoke with Kenneth Patrick, who drove Troy to the bus depot after his trial date on January 5, 1967, and he said that Troy had told him that he was picking up the car in Wyoming and driving it back to San Diego as a delivery that would pay for his trip home. But that was a lie. Instead, Troy was registering the car for the MM as a getaway vehicle when they went up to Idaho. I believe that this also explains why Bettie said that Troy's last phone call was about a new car he'd bought. When I asked her she said that it wasn't a new car but a different car or something -- she couldn't remember. I think his actual car may have been found on the side of the road. But that's not the one he left Independence, MO in. He left in the car with Canadian license plates, I bet.

The first of the Baumgardner posts above lists Pine Valley, CA, as the address for Bettie Houghton's version of the MM publication, "TARGET." DePugh lived at 408 South Pine Street, Norborne, MO. Is this the significance of Peek through the Pines?

"Peek through the Pines" was used in the ad for the condos Zodiac cut out for the card he sent.

What about the statement that TH was tied up? The implication was he was killed?

Is there any evidence he was alive after 1968?

He disappeared. Some say DePugh murdered him. I don't believe that for a second. I've investigated his death for months now. I even spoke with Bettie Houghton, Troy's wife. There are so many holes in the story that DePugh murdered Troy. First of all, no one really knows where the story originated. I believe that Harry Jones, whom I know very well, heard it from Eddie Baumgardner. But who told him? I believe it was Nedra and Lester. Harry didn't know until I told him a month or so ago that Nedra is Troy's half sister (they share the same father), which makes Lester Molyneaux Troy's half brother-in-law.
What I believe happened is that Troy went underground to head a wing of the Secret Army Organization, which DePugh began in 1967. Troy got the car with Canadian license plates in January 1967. He disappeared in May 1967. I think he took the car with him and went to Idaho. IMO this is what happened:

Troy is the "mystery man" up in the Montana hills when the convicts from Deer Lodge Prison escaped in the summer of 1968. He clubbed a woman in Butte, MT and stole three rifles and ammo from her (the car got a flat tire and so he ditched it with her in it). Then he heads south, probably to Vallejo or San Bruno, where Raithby Husted lived. Raithby was the guy who sent DePugh, Peyson, and Houghton up the river with his testimony but later claimed that he had been brainwashed. Interestingly, Husted is almost certainly related to LT. James Husted,Vallejo PD, who investigated the Zodiac case and put LE on the track of ALA, even though his partner thought ALA was a terrible suspect. Misdirection on Husted's part? Is LT Husted the cop Z refers to when he says: "Ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gunsight"? I don't know; it's just my theory.
Here's an article about Husted's testimony and why he "owed" Troy Houghton and the MM bigtime!



What I do know is that there are 4 contradictory stories about Houghton's death. None makes any sense. As the letters above say: "Don't ever take anything at face value" when it comes to the MM. It's all deception. Also note the mention of false IDs that DePugh had made for all to use. All MM had many fake IDs. Houghton had 7 aliases that I'm aware of. He knew how to disappear and thrive underground. He was a guerrilla soldier and a survivalist. He had emergency camps that he created where he could live not just for months but years at a time (see Baumgardner's claim about the camp at Idaho above).

What about the document you just posted saying someone saw TH tied up?

Mary Tollerton said that he was tied up in the basement. But this was part of the ruse. They needed someone to spread the story that TH was possibly murdered. Mary was in on it. And if she wasn't, all the better. You see, DePugh was paranoid about both infiltrators and assassins. This reached a peak when George Rockwell, the KKK leader, was assassinated. So he needed a story about how he was willing to murder infiltrators and informants. By the same token, TH needed to go underground. He was gung-ho about the guerrilla war that DePugh had set in motion in 1966, and he had all kinds of legal problems and debts. It was time for TH to go underground. Especially given that the Patriotic Party, the newly created political wing of the MM, was planning on making big gains in the 1968 elections. TH was bad publicity for the MM, esp. after the Cheyenne "flasher" conviction months earlier (Feb. 1967). So it was a win-win: DePugh gets to spread the rumor that he murders informants, and TH gets an air-tight alibi to go underground and start the mayhem. And mayhem, IMO, is precisely what he started.

Well you don't know that it was a ruse. It could have been a ruse or it could have been real.

It is amazing that in 40 years not a hint of this guy anywhere. Nothing. Not even Reagan being elected draws him out. He doesn't visit his wife. I don't know.

If TH was the Z, why didn't Z kill radicals, communists, UN officials, liberals, hippies - the kind of people the Minutemen hated? Why does Z kill relatively clean cut short haired college boys and suburban girls? The crimes of Zodiac do not match up with the passions of TH. You do show the evidence for TH being a sex pervert, and that could lead to lovers lane killings, but he is a sex pervert of the lowest order - a flasher. A non-violent crime.

You have done a lot of great research, I am just asking questions to try to help you and stimulate discussion.

Sure. I can't say what happened to him for certain. I've done lots of research on his "alleged" death. I've come up with many contradictory stories. Bettie told several stories. Her stories contradicted each other at the time. When I spoke with her, it was as if she couldn't remember the stories she had told over the years. Sure, it was over 40 years ago, but... I still can't understand how she could tell me that she doesn't remember if Troy's car was found on the side of the road. I can remember the SF Giants starting lineup in 1967, but she can't remember what happened to her husband? She told the newspapers that his car was found on the side of the road but she wouldn't say in which midwestern state. Why? If you want your husband found, isn't that a helpful detail to inform the public about? Was it Nebraska as she claims now after I jotted her memory?
How about this inconsistency? She says that she thinks DePugh bumped off her husband but she takes over the reigns of Troy's West Coast MM region. Makes no sense to me. As I just learned today, she even put out her own publication, Target. Why would she be loyal to DePugh's organization if she believed that he killed her husband?
As for Z being someone underground, there are several references to this. First, there is the NO ADDRESS in Z's first, "This is the Zodiac Speaking" letter:





Then there's Zodiac's madeup line about "society's offenders who might well be underground will never be missed"
And there's the Red Phantom letter.

As for Z's choice of victims, well TH said that the MM were beyond politics, they were "violently anti-political."

"Anti-political" in the sense that they saw no real difference between mainstream Democrats and Republicans. They saw both as selling out to the communists.

But they were driven by politics in the larger sense in that they were violently anti-communist, anti-liberal, anti-hippie, anti-federal government.

I don't see why a Minuteman would kill clean cut suburban kids in lovers lanes or a cab driver, or threaten to blow up a school bus. None of that fits with their obsessions about communists, liberals, the federal government, blacks, radicals, etc.

True. But TH was convicted twice for indecent exposure, he shot out a woman's tires for getting hooked on his jeep's bumper, and he was convicted for attempted rape. So the man had lots of problems. I think he went over the deep end when he went underground. It was a primal thing, like Kurtz in Conrad's, The Heart of Darkness. Why would he have killed couples and a cab driver? Why did he flash young girls and shoot out a woman's tires and hold her at gunpoint until the cops arrived? Only TH knows.

There is also Z's insistence on wearing buttons, which would have been MM buttons if people had worn his. The emphasis on button is very much a political emphasis, IMO. Buttons were the way political campaigns did cheap advertising.

Supposedly, there is a a list of all Zodiac missives extant in the SFPD files. One such listing is a letter dated 7/13/71 that was sent to the SF Chronicle and is described in the document as "LETTERS PASTED ON PICTURE 'NEAR MONTICELLO SHOUGHT VICTIMS 21 .... IN THE WOODS DIES APRIL.'" It might be a follow-up to the Pines card.

What interests me is the construction of the word SHOT as SHOUGHT. HOUGHT-ON.

Regarding the Revolutionary War figures and the MM, Sean wrote a very interesting thread years ago on z.com. Here's a portion of it with a link:

In looking at the Zodiac envelopes I believe it's fair to say that Zodiac's "stamp of choice"
was the FDR stamp. With one exception, he uses this on 12 of the first 13 envelopes, changing only once.In other words for the first 15 months of the zodiac campaign ,he uses it consistently with only one exception.
In looking at FDR, it's was interesting to note that FDR himself was a famous and lifelong Stamp collector and I quote "even using his office to oversee new design and issues". Of course it can't be said for sure that this formed part of Z's choice, however it is worth considering.
The real point/question here is why did he change or was there a reason for it?
On that score it's interesting to note "when" he changed. Zodiac first changes stamp on the Belli letter, sent on the one true anniversary in this case. That being one year to the day after his first murders out on lake Herman road.
Was there some reason he wanted to mark this anniversary?
Well, not only did he change for the first time but the manner in which he uses these stamps is suspicious. He plasters the envelope with 6 penny stamps, when one alternative (6 or 8 cent stamp would) have sufficed.
His stamp of choice on this occasion was one depicting Thomas jefferson another American president and one which appears to tie into this case in a curious way.
1.Thomas jefferson was well known for his code work and invented many systems.
2.As we have already discovered Zodiac used a copying device on two of the first three envelopes (containing his first major code).
The device used would have been very similar to what's known as a "polygraph", which jefferson was famous for using, even calling it " the best invention ever".
3.Jefferson's home (which he built himself) is known as Monticello. As we know Zodiac's third murder site was right near or at Rancho Monticello. Of course there was also the "Monticello card", albeit unconfirmed as authentic at this point.
4. The first fountain pen can also be traced back to jefferson, in fact the guy who invented the polygraph for jefferson (John Issac Hawkins) also worked on the pen for him.
Zodiac's second major cipher came with the "Pen card", depicting a fountain pen.
5.Probably the greatest coincidence here is that july fourth, is also the day on which jefferson died, same as the day this letter was sent and also the date of Zodiac's second murder at Blue Rock Springs.

So, to re-cap... on the one and only true anniversary in this case, one year to the day after the first murders, Zodiac writes to his attorney, changing stamp for the first time.
He "introduces" us to a person who's anniversary it also happens to be.Well known for his code work, well known for using a device very similar if not identical to a device Zodiac himself used on the first envelopes, who's home just happens to have the same name as Zodiac's third murder scene, all on the date of Zodiac's second murder.
Beyond coincidence?

http://www.zodiackiller.com/discus/messages/30/135.html?1147897990

Any comments on this? I think it's very similar:

Concerning the above post:

Rand who´s hadwriting is it that you compare to the "Bates had to die" letter?

And which letters in the nr 2 comparation letter is from the original "Bates had to die" letter and which is from the other source?

IMO you should make som kind of markings to clarify.