Troy Houghton: The Minuteman

[quote="rand"]







The letters I used came from these documents (I posted this earlier but I can understand how it got buried).
The only letters from the original are the capital H in HAD and the last E in MORE. There was no capital E or H in these letters. Moreover, I blew up a small "m" to make it look like a large "M" -- that's why the thickness is so great in the M for MORE.

Thanks Rand:)

AK Wilks wrote:

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.

This is the crowd that TH ran with: the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian. Look at the "victims" they target:

Well that is consistent with my point.

They mention beatniks, perverts, white trash and Nergoes.

The Zodiac did not kill beatniks at San Francisco coffee shops, or poor white trash or black people.

The Zodiac killed clean cut college guys and girls in lovers lanes.

Also, I have studied the Minutemen and the Birchers, and the bulk of their literature is directed at the threat from communists, socialists, liberals, pinkos, hippies and the counter culture, the UN, the federal government and some against blacks and jews.

If the Zodiac was TH or another Minuteman, I would expect to see some of these groups be targted.

I just don't think it's that simple. Now, the MM might have had a hand in the MLK and RFK assassinations. There are connections between James Earl Ray and the MM (see post above and others on this thread) and their are alleged connections between Sirhan Sirhan and the MM down in LA. I haven't posted these but perhaps I should. IMO, Z's murders were something TH did on the side; he went primal and got hooked on the thrill of hunting and killing human beings (as was his professed motive). He had "no address" and he was presumed dead by most who knew him or of him. This was why he felt "crackproof," in my view. It was as if he had free reign to do whatever got him off, and all the while those who cared about him only knew that he vanished mysteriously into thin air. I imagine he felt intoxicated with freedom.

In some posts to come, I'll fill in TH's connections to this story about Erquiaga Arms Company, an anti-Castro arms manufacturer in the City of Industry (a suburb of LA), which made and sold guns to the MM.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=109482&relPageId=2

I found this driver's license for Lewis Everett Devorss in the FBI files about the MM. The picture was taken in 1970. There is no explanation for why it is included in the file, but it is contained in documents that concern, among other things, the West Coast Regional MM organization. The features look like TH to me. The small nose, round face, pronounced jaw. It appears that he's wearing wireless square glasses to me and he might have a goatee. The one thing that doesn't look like TH is the hairline. But it's hard to tell from the picture. I've done a search of the thousands and thousands of FBI documents, many of which contain lists of MM 90 pages long, and there is no other mention of anyone named Devorss.

This is my take on the Mark Monday/Baumgardner documents that I received a couple of days ago and posted. Troy Houghton and DePugh were planning for the undercover Idaho operation in the Winter and Spring of 1967. In the first week of January 1967, TH went to Cheyenne (where he got caught flashing and gets convicted a month later) to get the getaway car registered in Canada. Then he disappears a few months later, probably with the car (given all the talk of him driving a different vehicle). There was a big underground operation commencing in the summer of 1967, in the wilderness of Idaho near the Canadian border, and TH was very much a part of the planning. The Seattle bank robberies of late 1967, were planned in Idaho. It appears that Mary Tollerton or Lester or Nedra Molyneaux told the story of TH's alleged murder to Eddie Baumgardner, who then told Harry Jones. Eddie seems to believe that TH is still alive, or at least he hopes that he is. He states that TH was convincing the Moores (who headed the Arizona wing of the MM) to stay with the MM. With all the planning going on and TH's obvious loyalty to DePugh and the MM -- remember, Troy tells Jones in his last interview that, if DePugh goes to jail, he is set to go underground with a medium-sized list (3 digits) of victims that he will murder -- I see no reason at all why DePugh would murder TH. Rather, it seems like TH had to go underground and that this was in the works for months. All the talk of fake ID's that DePugh had lying around and was freely disseminating to MM members tells me that he knew something was going down. I'm not sure that Bettie was in on this plan initially. But the docs clearly indicate that she took over the West Coast operations from Troy and even took the initiative to start her own MM bulletin/newsletter, Target, which she had printed locally in Pine Valley, CA. Not the thing that a grieving widow (who lost her husband and father in the Spring of 1967) with three kids and a recent miscarriage undertakes if she believes the organization murdered her husband. Any thoughts?

I have a theory that Z was not alone at LB. Unlike the other murders, this was a ritual-type crime that smacked of the KKK. Troy's confidant, Dennis Mower, looks very much like the composite from LB. It would make sense that Z would take someone with him to LB because this would be his first murder in broad daylight and it would take time. Dennis could have been the driver and/or the lookout person. He was tall with a very round face. Here is a picture of him at age 15 in 1961:

Something just occurred to me: having looked at the handwriting from the Mark Monday papers and compared it to the "Troy Houghton" at the bottom of the picture below, I'm starting to think that this may be Troy Houghton's signature. The handwriting is different from Monday's and Baumgardner's handwriting. So whose handwriting is it? And why was this in a separate box titled: Troy Houghton? Monday's handwriting is at the upper right corner.



I've compared this handwriting to the cursive writing on the letter (thought to be Z's) sent to Lass's sister and, IMO, it seems consistent (e.g., the high crossed "t" in "South" and "the Pines"; the "ou" in "South" and "Sioux"; the "on" in "Donna"; and the "r" and "y" in "Mary" all appear consistent with the "Troy Houghton" at the bottom of the picture above):



Compare the "r" in Troy with this Riverside envelope (it's the only common letter):

I think this paragraph from a 1964 ON TARGET (the MM newsletter) is very important. It shows that TH was identified with being a sex offender, and therefore the flasher image on the HC would be a nice clue as to his identity. I can say from reading newspaper articles about TH that it is quite true that the label "sex offender" was always used when they discussed anything he did.



ONE OF Z's MOTIVES WAS TO TAKE OVER THE PRESS, TO CONTROL WHAT THEY PUT ON THE FRONT PAGES. THIS SEEMS CONSISTENT WITH THE ABOVE GRIEVANCE REGARDING HOUGHTON BEING CALLED A SEX OFFENDER BY THE S.F. NEWSPAPERS, AND THIS BEING EMBLAZENED ACROSS THE FRONT PAGE. HERE'S MORE ON HOUGHTON'S VIEWS ABOUT THE PRESS:

Minutemen Trust Few in Fighting 'Red Takeover': Leader Addresses 150 at Van Nuys Meeting of Southern Freedom Councils
PAUL WEEKS
Los Angeles Times; Aug 23, 1964;

[skipping down to the important stuff]

[From a Minutemen pamphlet passed out at the meeting]
"The Communists realize that their control over the American news media is a weapon more powerful than their mechanized troops...all the media of mass communication are effectively controlled by the enemy so they can make people think whatever they want them to think." Haughton stressed the Minutemen contention that government, authority, power is corrupted by Communist infiltration.

[A movie of General Edwin Walker on Communist atrocities plays]

When the lights went on, Haughton wearing horn-rimmed spectacles leaned heavily on the lectern and read haltingly from his notes. He apologized for having a poor memory and having to read his remarks [reminds me of the BRS phone call]. Sometimes he couldn't read his notes and shrugged his shoulders.

[skip down]

(The [Minutemen] pamphlet says "...we must use our enemies' own tactics against them. Today's wars are not being won by massed armies or atomic bombs. They are being won by psychopolitical weapons, by infiltration, subversion, and espionage.")

Haughton urged infiltration into politics. One way to help a candidate, he said, would be to infiltrate the opposition party, and say, volunteer to distribute leaflets -- then throw them all down a storm drain.
Haughton laughed. The crowd laughed.

Or, he said, one could do wonders to sabatoge an organization by infiltrating it with a switchboard operator or a secretary who could cause no end of damage.

Two women, he said, infiltrated the organization of a long-established political machine in a Midwestern city two years ago and caused so much trouble and consternation the machine lost an election.

[skipping down]

Haughton went on to tell how the general public doesn't know it but all kinds of effective weapons, including military surplus, are available for purchase.

He also said with broad innuendo that rifle clubs are booming in California. You wouldn't find out from any rifle club member that he belonged to the Minutemen, said Haughton.

There were ways, he said, to get weapons and ammunition economically from the government for target practice and training.

"When our constitutional government is threatened," the pamphlet says, "we are morally justified in resorting to violence to discourage Communists and their fellow travelors."

Haughton followed the Minutemen line, as set down in the pamphlet, with remarkable accuracy.

The Minutemen pamphlet says, "the objectives of the Minutemen are to abandon wasteful, useless efforts and begin immediately to prepare for the day when Americans will once again fight in the streets for their lives and their liberty."

rand wrote:

Something just occurred to me: having looked at the handwriting from the Mark Monday papers and compared it to the "Troy Houghton" at the bottom of the picture below, I'm starting to think that this may be Troy Houghton's signature. The handwriting is different from Monday's and Baumgardner's handwriting. So whose handwriting is it? And why was this in a separate box titled: Troy Houghton? Monday's handwriting is at the upper right corner.



I've compared this handwriting to the cursive writing on the letter (thought to be Z's) sent to Lass's sister and, IMO, it seems consistent (e.g., the high crossed "t" in "South" and "the Pines"; the "ou" in "South" and "Sioux"; the "on" in "Donna"; and the "r" and "y" in "Mary" all appear consistent with the "Troy Houghton" at the bottom of the picture above):



Compare the "r" in Troy with this Riverside envelope (it's the only common letter):

Congrats on finding writing samples on your POI. I know what you must have went thru as I recently did the same thing, its tough. I think the lower case n & h from your POI dont match the Lass xmas card. Also, the ON written by your POI is different then the ON in the word DONNA. Your pOI forms it and connects it at the top, and the Lass writer, in the middle. Not a match in my opinion, but I am no writing expert. Also, maybe your POI didnt write his signature?

This is a photo of TH when he was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender in San Diego, 1961.

Troy Houghton tH





BY FIRE:


BY POISON PEN
"That extra fountain pen in the pocket of the insurance salesman who calls on you might be a cyanide gas gun"



BY GUN

"The target rifle that hits sparrows 200 yards away." LHR, BRS, SF

BY ROPE

"The strangler's cord."

BY KNIFE

"They have learned the silent knife..." LB

The name Troy Houghton led me to think that maybe the My Name Is cipher has something to do with the ancient city of Troy. So I looked it up. Check out this coin from Troy:



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tetradrachm_from_Troy.jpg

Compare it with the characters in the My Name Is cipher:

Just posting this for reactions.



Don't let the "d" bother you. Look at how Z made them in 1966, when this letter was written (see the "d" in "Editor"):

This newspaper article is interesting as far as the Z connection goes because:

1) it mentions that TH shot out the tires of the woman whose bumper got hooked onto his by accident (see the bottom column of the second page).

2) it mentions (at the top of column 2, page 2) that TH was arrested for malicious destruction of property for tearing out a couple of pages of a Library book in 1966. Cheri Jo Bates was murdered outside RCC library on Oct. 30, 1966.

3) it claims that DePugh and Peyson were thought to be in Canada. They were in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I believe that Houghton took the getaway car with Canadian license plates and went to Canada. Then came down to the hills of Montana, and then Vallejo, CA, where he hooked up with Raithby Ray Husted.

Morf wrote: "I think the lower case n & h from your POI dont match the Lass xmas card. Also, the ON written by your POI is different then the ON in the word DONNA. Your pOI forms it and connects it at the top, and the Lass writer, in the middle."

I honestly don't see the difference, Morf. Here's the comparison:



FROM LETTER TO LASS'S SISTER:



And the "t" and the "ou" look spot on to me as well:

Again, I am no writing expert, but I dont see it. The "n" at the end of his name does not look like the "n" in the Lass card, imo. And the "u" in Troy's name doesnt match either. Troy uses a loop in his "u". Again, I am no writing expert so I could be wrong, and of course I believe the Lass writer attempted to change his writing a bit.

The Riverside Desktop Poem is signed rh. Obviously, h could be for Houghton. What's the r? Z signed a letter Red Phantom (red with rage). Could the r be red with rage? Could it mean red with rage Houghton?

I would love to know which library he tore the pages of the book from in 1966 (I know there are some terrific and crafty researchers out there; help?).
I assume that writing on the underside of a library desktop would also qualify as malicious destruction of property.

The journalist who wrote that 1965 newsreport in the previous post, had a "massive stroke" the year after in 1966, and he died two years later in 1968. He was 47 years old when he died in 1968.

Wonder if any of that poision stuff Houghton was using, could cause a stroke?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Coates
Paul Coates
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Paul V. Coates (March 10, 1921–November 16, 1968) was an American print and television journalist. He was known for his popular daily newspaper column and as the host of the syndicated tabloid-style television series Confidential File.

Coates suffered a massive stroke in 1966 which left the right side of his body paralyzed and his speech severely impaired. Initially given a 50% chance of survival, Coates made a recovery in less than a year, regaining his speech and returning to work in April, 1967

Fascinating stuff, TF! I would think that Coates would be #1 on Houghton's list of enemies. Coates wrote at least one article a year that denigrated the MM and Houghton, and he always referred to TH as a sex pervert. The dripping pen card, which can be interpreted as a poison pen letter, was sent on November 8, 1969. That's almost a year after Coates died, on November 16, 1968. Remember, there was no internet back then to easily look things up, so I doubt that TH knew the exact date that Coates died (though he would have known the month). The pen could stand for "journalist." And, of course, we know that Coates was on Houghton's Little List.

Note that again, just as in the Look Mag. article in June 1966, Houghton mentioned that he went underground when Kennedy was assassinated during his talk to the MM audience.



Obviously this event was quite salient to him. Now look at the busbomb cipher. Note that the backward letters are JFK, and there's an Omega sign, perhaps a clue to another watch (MINUTEmen).