Possible Z Victims in other states.

One of the possibilities in the Zodiac case, is that he moved out of state, but continued killing without using his trademark name. I spent a long period of time searching for cases in other states after the last confirmed Zodiac letter of 1974, that had MO similar to Zodiac. Mo such as lovers lane killings, anonymous letters to newspapers, police, and victims families. Victims being tied up and stabbed, attacked near college campuses, crimes with no motive of sex & robbery, etc.

I found only a few "clusters" of crimes matching this MO. These were in only two states,Pennsylvania & Texas.

The Pennsylvania cases were of Lindy Sue Biechler, Dana Bailey, and Alicia Markovich.

The Texas cases were of Andy Atkinson & Cheryl Henry in Houston, and Laura Lynn Miller in League City.

I am reluctant to place these in the POSSIBLE ZODIAC VICTIMS category, simply because I have no proof connecting them to Zodiac. But I see some serious similarities in the cases to Zodiac. I am starting threads on these cases in the NON-ZODIAC Case victims section until it can be proven there may be a connection. Some of you have seen these posted on other forums. If you have not, I URGE YOU to go over to the thread and take a look. For now, here is a sneak peak at some of the material from the cases:

LINDY SUE BIECHLER - Killed in 1975 in PA. She was stabbed repeatedly after being stalked. On the one year anniversary of her murder, her gravestone was vandalyzed. Soon after, police received the following letter from someone claiming to be her killer. The writer asked for the letter to be published in the paper.
on Jan. 5, 1977, a letter marked "Urgent" arrived at the Manor Township Police Department
Addressed to Chief Donald Sheeler, the two-page letter is written as if it was penned by the man who brutally stabbed Lindy and later vandalized her tombstone.
Sometimes taunting, sometimes pleading, the writer gives a description of himself and tells police he might confess if they publish his letter in a local newspaper
At the time, police decided not to release the letter because they had narrowed their focus on several suspects who seemed unlikely to write such a document. Investigators thought the letter probably was a hoax.
But a new task force of law enforcement officials reviving Lindy's murder investigation has decided that the letter may be somehow connected to the killing and has decided to make the cryptic document public for the first time this week, on the 25th anniversary of her death.
Written in a stream-of-consciousness tone, filled with misspellings and odd capitalizations, the letter begins with a taunt to Chief Sheeler: "Just Eats up your heart knowing you havn't caught me yet."
In looping, loose handwriting, the writer then describes how he vandalized Lindy's tombstone in the same way that he stabbed her, saying, "The scratch and nick marks represent the knife stabs. Count them."
The letter-writer makes reference to another murder that happened at the time in Mountville, telling police there is no connection. Indeed, police later arrested someone else for the crime and do not think the man was connected to Lindy's killing.
The writer then continues to mock Sheeler, calling him "Chief Pig."

HERE IS THE TEXT OF THE LETTER:
hi sheeler

Just Eats up your heart knowing you havn't caught me yet, still around, Lindy's marker on her grave just turned me on like she did, and the way she looked all bloody, like the paint on her Marker, the scratch and nick marks represent the knife stabes.

Count them.

you wondered if the guy at the gas station in Mountville were related to Biechlers murder. forget it man, no way.

I'll tell you what Chief Pig, you print this Letter in the paper along with a Picture in Friday nights Lancaster Paper and saturday mornings paper, and I might confesss When I get off my trip. You see the world owes me a living, maybe I give you a few hints who I am.

got busted once for Drugs a few years back

Live in West end of Lancaster Suburbs

I am 5'10" tall 205 LBS fat and Beautiful

and capable of killing again without knowing it

Dec. 5, 1975 was under the stupor of amfetamines Like right know.

Well educated man in the Community, single, good job but god please chief help me I am loosing my mind help me before I kill again, the headaches kill me Every time it aches, the Drugs only Calm it temporarily.

Will god forgive me ---------

Please print this Chief in the paper so I know you got it.

then I write you again, god I need a priest what have I done.

Help me please

P.S. chief sheeler

my friend has confess to the killing of Lindy Sue biechler, as god is my withness Do as he asks, print this letter on the front page, I am not aware of his intentions right now but contemplating murder is not his intentions, he is mentally sick. When the letter appears, then he will turn himself in, he described the relationship he and Lindy had before he killed her. He only realizes it now when your on Drugs your not responsible for your actions. Please he is asleep now. That's why I finished the letter. All I can tell you my friend frequents manor shopping center in the Evenings and the fields around it. Mostly weeknights. He will contact you very soon and oh when he Does please bring a Catholic priest to the police station.

Janice Crum

The letter is filled with many clues that sound alot like Zodiac. In addition, the letter signs off with the name JANICE CRUM. Police looked all over for a person named Janice Crum, and did not find one. (this was very much like the Bates Patricia Hautz letter). I found a woman named Janice Crum.....living minutes from the Paul Stine murder scene. Did Z know her in San Fran, and use her name in his later PA crime?
___________________________________________________________

Andy Atkinson & Cheryl Henry killed in Houston in 1990. They were parked on a lovers lane at night. They were surprised by their attacker. He forced them both out of the car, and led them to a field. He tied them both up. Once they were tied, he slashed their throats. This seems alot like the Berryessa attack and its possible that the killer used a gun to control them, and a knife to kill them, just like Zodiac. But here is where it gets interesting. An anonymous taunting letter was sent to Houston PD. The writer wanted them to respond in the HOUSTON CHRONICLE. Here is the letter:


Note the odd spacing after the C in Chronicle....just like Zodiac did! Here is a writing comparison I did between Zodiac's confirmed writing and this anonymous letter writer in Houston, look at the similarities:

_________________________________________________________

Laura Lynn Miller was murdered in League City, not far from Houston in 1984 (as were several other young victims in the mid 80's). No sign of rape. She was shot in the head. Some time later, her father received an anonymous letter from someone claiming to be her killer (like Cheri Jo Bates' father). The letter was a "paste-up" style letter, a project so to speak, like some of the Zodiac "projects" over the years. Take a look a tthe images of the letter (two sided letter) and look at the names, words, and symbols. Do they remind you of Zodiac?




________________________

Once again, I will be posting alot more about these crimes, and other similar crimes, over in the NON-ZODIAC section if you are interested. If you like me have an open mind, and think Zodiac may have moved from CA, and continued his crimes elsewhere after dropping his Zodiac name, you may want to learn more about these cases. I hope you will check the posts out and chime in.

Morf - when you get the chance, maybe you can post your excellent analysis of the shared words and ideas between Zodiac and the writer of the Lindy letter. When you do, I will have a couple to add to it.

Nice work, morf. I am especially interested in the Laura Lynn Miller case, if you have any more info.

Thanks,Nin

Nin wrote:

Nice work, morf. I am especially interested in the Laura Lynn Miller case, if you have any more info.

Thanks,Nin

Here are a couple links. Several girls killed in and around League City near Galveston/Houston TX. Many shot and dumped near bodies of water. A Humble oil refinery closeby...of course. Some of the victims sexually assaulted, many were not.

http://www.crimesearch.net/missing_girls.html

http://psu-sk.tripod.com/frames/i45-calder.html

Here's a snipet from one of the sites:

"On December 22, 2005 Houston's local news reported that a letter had been mailed to Tim Miller by someone claiming to be the man who killed his daughter and others"
(I have heard, but cant verify, that the date of the letter was 12/20, which obviously makes you think of the LHR attacks)

By the way, a movie starring Bradley Cooper (THE HANGOVER) is in the works about these crimes.



Another snipet about the cases, tell me if this sounds familiar:

"Plus the fact that these case have crossed different jurisdictions, counties, cities and towns. It seems all these different police departments were only investigating their own individual cases, unaware of the connections to other jurisdictions cases along the highway"

One more piece on the League City crimes:
http://www.familybadge.org/html/gcpnmar06final.pdf
Three people shot and stabbed in Corvette Concepts, a League City business that was a place that did custom corvette work. No robbery, no drugs. The letter sent to Laura Lynn Miller's father had some clues indicating that the writer may have been the killer at Corvette Concepts too, and the return address on the envelope said CORVETTE CONCEPTS. One of the images on the letter was a Corvette-like logo. Look further at the letter in the Laura Lynn Miller case. You will see the writer calls himseld the PHANTOM (like Zodiac's red phantom), uses the word BOO (like the Avery Halloween card). The letter also says, "THE POLICE WONT GET ME FOR I AM TOO SMART AND TAMPERED WITH THE EVIDENCE". Kind of sounds like the Z letter.
There is a cross on the letter that resembles a Zodiac crosshair. The writer uses the word "BLUE FUZZ" (like blue meannies). The letter is constructed in a playing card style. By this, I mean you could turn either end up, and read a message from either end, liek a playing card. Zodiac made a similar Lass card(if it was really from Zodiac).

This letter has alot of Zodiac overtones in it. Of course this may be intentional by the writer if he wanted to sound like Zodiac. But if he wanted to be a copycat, why not call himself Zodiac? And of course, you have him operating right near a oil refinfing town like Benicia/Vallejo....and there was a Humble Oil in that area. Take a close look at the writing in the Atkinson/Henry case, and you wil lsee some similarities there as well to Z.

You can clearly see the written part was written and then traced over, perhaps to alter the writing.

As many of you know, I have looked extensively at some other Zodiac murders in other states (most notably PA & TX),after the last confirmed 1974 Zodiac letter.Today I stumbled across an interesting set of Z murders, with similarities to Zodiac. The following story is pretty interesting, and mentions our own member Chris Y:
http://www.aolnews.com/crime/article/unsolved-murders-of-young-lovers-along-colonial-parkway-get-new-focus-in-va/19419929?icid=main&

Here is a link to Chris' great site(maybe he can chime in here):
http://parkway.crimeshadows.com/main.htm

Here is another good site link to LABYRINTH13, maintained by Curt Rowlett, who has quite a number of interesting stories, including a report on Zodiac:
http://labyrinth13.com/mirror/VirginiaMurders/index.htm

Here is the link to the Zodiac crimes:
http://labyrinth13.com/ZFiles_Video.htm

And also of interest to some is his story about murder victim Betsy Aardsma, who many have compared to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates:
http://labyrinth13.com/OtherWorks_BetsyAardsma.htm

In my opinion, and I consider myself rather knowledgeable about this case, the Parkway murders are in no way connected to the Zodiac killer. All eight murders may not have been committed by the same person. There is reason to believe that two or more persons may have worked together in some of the crimes. There is a suspect directly connected to one set of victims and two more separate murder victims not officially under the umbrella of the Parkway crimes. There are other identified suspects that are good candidates, as well. Some of these suspects have been named publicly. One has not, however his identity is known to those involved in the investigation.

The crimes, while similar, do not seem to bear any of the Zodiac hallmarks. There were no taunts to press or police. The killer appeared to try to hide his crimes --something the Zodiac was not known to do. I believe that some of the victims may have even known their killer.

Now that the press has put the spotlight back back on these cases and the FBI is on the spot, I am hoping to see results sometime in the future. Their families have waited much too long.

For the latest, check out Mike Mather's coverage at http://www.wtkr.com and my site at http://CrimeShadowsNews.com

For those on Facebook, there is a group dedicated to this case: https://www.facebook.com/pages/What-happened-to-Richard-Keith-Call-Cassandra-Hailey/48312425938

--Chris

Chris, thanks for the post. I will read more about this case for sure, and I hope others here will check out your site and some of the other sites too.

The murders in the Houston Area have a certain ring back to the Texarkana Murders of the 40's. It also obviously has similarities to the Z murders. I don't think the handwriting is very strong in caparision to Z. I'm no handwriting expert so I'll leave it at that.
I think we're in a wave today of serial's operating in the US, some for maybe a very long time. You gotta be better than Z was in his day, if his day has ever ended, but today much better forensics so to get away with a serial of murders I would think is very hard to do and done by someone with some brains.

In these I-45 killings, specifically in League City, a retired NASA Engineer named Robert Abel, was a strong suspect to police, but they didnt have anything solid.

Of interest to some may be his connection to NASA and the APOLLO mission. As we know, Zodiac used a APOLLO STAMP, and CIRCLED 8's (maybe Apollo 8 ??) Anyhow, here is what is interesting about this suspect:

"It is known as the “killing fields,” and it is a lonely, spooky patch of land: In the stillness of the day you can hear the yips of small wild animals and the distant rumble of traffic along Interstate 45 about a mile away. Many people who live in the surrounding towns and bedroom communities won’t come near the place. Since 1984, the remains of four young women have been found here—each one nude, on her back, under a tree, with her arms folded. Because they were placed within a thousand feet of each other, a private investigator who has studied the scene many times thinks the killer created a “walking path” for himself to “visually inspect his trophies one by one.” Indeed, many police detectives and FBI agents are convinced that this is the personal graveyard of a vicious serial killer.
And they think they know his identity: Robert Abel. In the sixties Abel was one of NASA’s great young engineers, part of the team that was instrumental in designing the rocket that would put the Apollo astronauts into Earth’s orbit. “If we had any hope of getting man to the moon, we had to get the maximum Saturn payload into orbit,” says Robert Gottlieb, a veteran aerospace engineer who now works at Boeing. “And Robert Abel was part of the little band of very bright men who figured out how do it.” Today, however, a police detective suggests in a sworn affidavit that Abel is a “serial sexual offender” who displays the kind of rage and violent behavior that’s often seen in serial killers. He is the prime suspect in the murders of the four women found in the oil field, which is next to property he owns, and his name quickly surfaces whenever a teenager or a young woman disappears or is found dead in the area.
In League City, where Abel has lived for sixteen years,(since 1983) officers have searched his home and questioned his friends and family. He has been interviewed by detectives from neighboring towns. Investigators have flown over his land in helicopters and brought in cadaver dogs to look for bodies. Mark Young, a highly respected FBI criminal profiler from the agency’s Houston office, has talked with Abel, and a profiler from the behavioral sciences unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, has analyzed his relationships with women.
A slightly built sixty-year-old with thinning brown hair and a mustache, Abel walks stiffly because of a bad back, wears reading glasses, and takes pills for his high blood pressure"


Not sure if Abel was ever in CA during the Z crimes, or where he lived prior to 1983, but some of these I-45 & League City crimes involve women shot with a .22 pistol, so it at least interesting. Abel was born in 1939 I think, which would have made him about 30 years old during the Z crimes. It said he has a slight build, and that doesnt seem to match Zodiac.

I personally dont think this guy would kill these women and throw their bodies on or around his own property, but who knows?

They are making a movie about these unsolved murders that happened during the 70's and 80's and it sounds like it will be pretty good:


http://www.khou.com/entertainment/New-movie-to-focus-on-unsolved-Calder-Road-I-45-corridor-murders-85042142.html


http://www.ultimateclearlake.com/2010/02/league-city-movie

http://psu-sk.tripod.com/frames/contents.html

Incredible stuff, Morf. Great work! I'll have to digest this over the weekend. Let me just say that the M in Mon and capital O in Only in the H Anon letter jump out at me.
Compare the M in the H Anon letter (in Mon) with the M that Z makes in Mail in the LA Time envelope:
http://zodiackiller.com/LATimesEnvelope.html

Now look at the M and the O in More in this one:


Check out the O in More in this one:



[

Yes Rand some interesting stuff for sure!

what's with the Z in the upper right of the letter? I'm wondering why no one has commented on that. I think the handwriting on the H Anon letter looks very Z-like. But maybe it's just me. It's also interesting to me that the H Anon letter author uses U for You. This is consistent with my solution(?) the 340: Z uses abbreviations for words like bc for because and U for you because he only has roughly 34 characters to work with for 2 sentences -- it's the constraint. I'll have to post my "solution" soon.

rand wrote:

what's with the Z in the upper right of the letter? I'm wondering why no one has commented on that. I think the handwriting on the H Anon letter looks very Z-like. But maybe it's just me. It's also interesting to me that the H Anon letter author uses U for You. This is consistent with my solution(?) the 340: Z uses abbreviations for words like bc for because and U for you because he only has roughly 34 characters to work with for 2 sentences -- it's the constraint. I'll have to post my "solution" soon.

The Z, may have been part of a logo for a corvette shop in which three persons were killed. Two were stabbed, and one was shot as he walked in on the killer. (both stabbing & shooting used in same crime). The return address used by the letter writer was the address of the corvette shop where the triple murders occurred. Pretty sick sense of humor.

Heres more:
http://wikimapia.org/8061552/Location-of-unsolved-triple-homicide-at-Corvette-Concepts

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=4430654

http://thepolicenews.net/html/gcpnmar06final.pdf

rand wrote:

Incredible stuff, Morf. Great work! I'll have to digest this over the weekend. Let me just say that the M in Mon and capital O in Only in the H Anon letter jump out at me.
Compare the M in the H Anon letter (in Mon) with the M that Z makes in Mail in the LA Time envelope:
http://zodiackiller.com/LATimesEnvelope.html

Now look at the M and the O in More in this one:


Check out the O in More in this one:



[

Looking back thru old posts, and discussing handwriting with Rand today, I decided to post about this again.

In this letter from the Atkinson/Henry case in TX, I think there is GREAT similarities in the writing, spacing, etc, when compared to Zodiac's writing. To me, the one thing that looks different for sure is the letter K:


Below is the closeup side by side comparison to Zodiac:

As much as the K doesnt match, there are some letters and spacing that match up very closely in my opinion to Zodiac.


Next, is the anonymous League City TX murder letter:



The letter is two sided.

Side 1 is made from Magazine cutouts. (There is mention of a Zodiac letter in the FBI files that was made from Magazine cut outs).
This side clearly shows many words and clues that seem to match Zodiac words & phrases:

The writer wrote BOO, like the Avery Halloween card

The writer wrote THE POLICE WONT GET ME FOR I AM TOO SMART, like the Zodiac Bus Bomb letter

The writer included a crossed circle that resembles Zoidiac's crosshair.

The writer called himself PHANTOM, as did Zodiac in his last letter in 1974.

On the other side of the letter, is a handwritten page. If you look very closely, it appears that it was originally traced in pencil, and then written over.

Something that just jumped out at me was how the writer said "MORE PROJECTS TO COME", which sounds alot like the Bates letter "THERE WILL BE MORE".

Also, the letter can be turned upside down, and you can read from either end. That is a very unusual way to create a letter, yet we find the exact same kind of letter in the Donna Lass case:



I would like to hear some opinions and ideas about these letters, the writing styles, spacing, etc, as compared to the Zodiac. What in your opinion matches Z, and what does not? Thanks

On the Joe Bates letter pg. 1...The signoff is interesting. I always looked at it as a sloppy 'E' at the end, but when I looked closer it seems that the writer mis-spelled More, put his signoff in after writing MOR, then wrote in his Z squiggle or whatever that signoff is, then wrote in basically an 'F' to make it look like a E at the end. Lot's of interesting stuff here, for me the 7/14/71 murders at Dog Bar Campground is very interesting.

bayarea60s wrote:

Lot's of interesting stuff here, for me the 7/14/71 murders at Dog Bar Campground is very interesting.

According to this link, that case was solved:
http://www.lawlink.com/research/CaseLevel3/50449

"One of the biggest crime stories was the 1971 slayings at the Bear River Campground east of Auburn near Colfax in 1971.
“Turns out the guy that did it was Clarence Otis Smith, my garbage man,” said Carroll. Smith killed two people and seriously injured three with a homemade sickle as they slept at the campground.
He took flight to Mexico after the crimes. Carroll reported the story from beginning to end. Smith was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes and died behind bars."


"Here's a similar event: a campground "sickle slaying" in Nevada City, CA, in 1971, about 100 miles east of me, which was very "Jason-ish"...
Two persons were hacked to death and three others wounded by a balding man shouting guttural sounds, who attacked several campers on Bear River at the Dog Bar Bridge on July 13, 1971. According to witnesses, the assailant ran amuck through three camp sites, then disappeared.
They also reported that the man smiled constantly and made strange sounds as he chased and hacked at the people in the camps.
According to later articles in the local paper, Auburn, CA resident Clarence Otis Smith believed “he was instructed by God to root out marijuana users and other evil-doers."
He quit his job and fled to Mexico, where he was arrested by the FBI several weeks later. "

Morf...

Thanks for the info. It didn't sound like Z, but who knows. It sparked my interest cause I now live about 15 minutes from that site, and our youngest daughter goes camping all the time. Interesting that this guy was weeding out weed smokers. As I read the story I was wondering if the guy was on bad drugs, but I guess not, just crazy. Thanks Morf for posting that....

Here is an interesting case...raise your hands if any of this sounds familiar
From the 5/6/67 Manitowoc Herald Times in Manitowoc, WI.



By the way, a man was arrested, tried, and found NOT GUILTY of this crime!

*Disable a car, and then offer help..CHECK (Bates & Johns)

*Tie up and then stab the victims...CHECK (Berryessa)

*No sign of rape or robbery....CHECK(as with all of the Z cases)

No offense Morf, but I see no similarities in the writing at all.

The "cadence" or "fluidity", i.e., how the person writes/their writing "rhythm" as it were, is completely different than Z, as are the more "rounded" letters.

http://scaredmonkeys.com/2005/12/26/letter-sent-to-tim-miller-of-texas-equusearch-regarding-his-daughter-laura/
Does anyone know what part is real or not. Since Morf posted a picture with first part cut out letters and the other in writing.

From the Texas letter:

"My MO changes"

Interesting.

I believe the writing in the first letter is a very good match but as for the second letter (the one with the "MO CHANGES" bit) seems kind of like a bad fake, if you ask me. But, maybe someone made it that way intentionally. Perhaps more people can comment on it. Well, thanks for posting these very interesting letters, Morf. There was a double homicide down in Texas in the 1980s which was identical to the Goleta murders committed by the Original Night Stalker in 1979. The male victim of the household was a big oil executive. The victims were bludgeoned in the head - severely, The home was ransacked but nothing of value was taken. In Zodiac fashion the killer called the police after the murder occurred and informed them that the couple had been killed. The case was never solved. Police have the call on tape so someone should try to obtain it.

I thought it remined me of this at first.

The first part of an 13 page letter. Could only find the first part.
"Little about Kelsey Patterson's disturbing life made sense. He was repeatedly arrested for a series of increasingly violent assaults and shootings, repeatedly diagnosed as mentally ill, repeatedly admitted to mental institutions and repeatedly released-only to be arrested yet again for another act of senseless violence.
He was arrested for the final time on a warm September afternoon in east Texas in 1992. Police found Patterson walking naked down the street near his home, mumbling and gesturing to people along the way. No clear motive for his crime-a double murder-was ever established. A jury subsequently sentenced him to death."
http://www.amnestyusa.org/magazine/cruel_and_inhumane_executing_the_mentally_ill.html

http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/patterson910.htm

https://2img.net/h/oi51.tinypic.com/15doshv.jpg (bigger, better pic of the letter.)

Interesting that the crosshair symbol/celtic cross, was written immediately in front of the word PHANTOM, in the letter to Tim Miller