"ZODE" from Pacific High School in San Bernardino

I found this information on the net som time ago, it was originally posted in December 1994:
Alledged based on a note from 1985 which the poster alledged had provided to different police departments and Graysmith.

I belive that the person called "ZODE" in this post below, might be the Zodiac POI with the initials "MZ", and maybe the poster was "Patricia Hautz"?



Posted by an173085@anon.penet.fi

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.true-crime/browse_thread/thread/575cc4b6e04f2f6/8d4f689f0ac4baea?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=zodiac+killer


The Identity of the Real Zodiac


an173085 View profile
More options Dec 28 1994, 10:35 pm

Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
From: an173...@anon.penet.fi
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 15:32:56 UTC
Local: Wed, Dec 28 1994 4:32 pm
Subject: The Identity of the Real Zodiac
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It is with great reluctance that I post this article, re-written
from a note I wrote in 1985 and sent to several police
departments and to the author of "Zodiac", all of whom ignored
it. I am still concerned for my personal safety, and for
the possibility that this may not be taken seriously, hence
I must remain anonymous.


A series of random murders in both Los Angeles and San Francisco,
and the television broadcast of a composite sketch of the killer,
strongly suggested in 1985 that the Zodiac killer, who was
never caught, may have been involved. Zodiac committed his
initial crimes in San Francisco, and later was traced to the LA
area. The San Francisco night stalker, some ten years later,
followed a similar pattern.


I attended Pacific High School in San Bernardino, California and
graduated there in 1964. Among the students at that time was one
the other kids called "Big Bad Zode". They called him that
because he was puny, wierd, and called himself ZODIAC. "Zode" was
an extremely odd person. He was seriously disturbed, angry and
violent. He was teased mercilessly, and often
threatened the students that someday he would kill them
all, and that someday he would be a famous person.


A typical scene:


"Hey, Zode, are you going to kill us all?"
"You are so stupid. Someday I will be very famous and you will
all be dead."
"Oh yeah? How are you going to do it?"
"You'll find out, and they'll never catch me. And then when I
finally die you'll all be my slaves".


Details


"Zode" referred to himself as Zodiac, wrote "Zodiac" on classroom
chalkboards and told
everyone to remember that name. He said that his victims would
become his slaves in the afterlife. He resembled
the televised police composite sketch of the San Francisco
night stalker. He was highly intelligent, made a point of
telling everyone how stupid they were, and achieved high
scores on the SAT, a fact that one would not have suspected given
his odd behavior, dress, and handwriting. He flapped his arms
around the schoolyard and cawed like a crow, and masturbated in
the urinals. He preferred to use wide soft pencils, and printed,
rather than wrote, in a childish scrawl. The handwriting
found on a desk at San Bernardino Valley College, closely
resembled that of "Zode", which I saw once in a paper he
wrote about one of the girls in the class, and which outraged the
instructor to the point of threatening him that "if he ever wrote
anything like that again, he was going to call the police".
Several other teachers were similarly outraged at the content of
his manuscripts, though they never revealed them to the classes.
Given his disturbed personality, "Zode" probably should not have
attended public school. In fact, there was speculation that his
parents held some sort of powerful political influence and thus
were able to keep him in the school.


The investigators in charge of the Zodiac investigation in San
Francisco at the time received this information, and within a few
weeks the Zodiac crimes ceased.


"Zode" was of short stature, and may have had a
hunchback. He wore thick glasses, dressed in dark clothing, had
dark curly or wavy hair, and may have been from the middle
east. His picture may not have been included in the High
School annual, at his request. However, "Zode"
was well known to the students, particularly members of
the Key Club and student council. It is certain that his
instructors would not have forgotten him.


In 1964 Pacific High School graduated over 1200 Seniors, the
largest class in California History. Given "Zode"'s blatant
nature, it is surprising that his connection to Zodiac was never
made public. It seems that he was right in his assessment of our
stupidity. Certainly, "Zode" struck a blow against the society
that persecuted him.


By the way, if you care to identify yourself and can prove that
you have the means at your disposal to use this information
to eliminate Zodiac, send me a response via this anonymous
mail server and I'll contact you with "Zode"'s real name.
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Yep, that's him alright. I have researched the guy quite a bit, have handwriting and a photo from year 2000 or so, which is still scary! I'll post them and whatever else I have if there is any interest.

bentley wrote:

Yep, that's him alright. I have researched the guy quite a bit, have handwriting and a photo from year 2000 or so, which is still scary! I'll post them and whatever else I have if there is any interest.

Bentley, PLEASE DO!!!!

Foreigner and Bently there is interest . He sounds nutso, and interesting from the standpoint that he used the name and that there is some form of verification, there are certainly enough details there that are intruiging.

I have PMed his recent handwriting and photo to Morf to post if he wants to, the guy is still around.

Here is where he lived (and still does I believe) in relation to some Z victims. His location is marked PHSZ for Pacific High School Zodiac. The HAUTZ marker is for the Mary Patricia Hautz (CJB follow up letter), which is about a block away from him.

bentley wrote:

I have PMed his recent handwriting and photo to Morf to post if he wants to, the guy is still around.

Here is where he lived (and still does I believe) in relation to some Z victims. His location is marked PHSZ for Pacific High School Zodiac. The HAUTZ marker is for the Mary Patricia Hautz (CJB follow up letter), which is about a block away from him.

I will post his photo later on after I edit it so that his appearance cant ID him(black bar across the eyes,etc), or if Bentley wants to, I give him permission to in the meantime. The writing is okay to post also since his name, phone#, or any other identifiers do NOT appear on it.

As TF noted, his initials are MZ. Here is one of the signatures from the Bates Had To Die letters

bentley wrote:

Yep, that's him alright. I have researched the guy quite a bit, have handwriting and a photo from year 2000 or so, which is still scary! I'll post them and whatever else I have if there is any interest.

Bentley: Do you think he was Z and, if not, why not? Why has this person gone under the radar? Also, the original poster said that the handwriting was found on a San Bernadino Community College desktop. But it was on a RCC desktop. Why this discrepancy?

bentley wrote:

As TF noted, his initials are MZ. Here is one of the signatures from the Bates Had To Die letters

His initials are MLZ, and this looks like ML, pretty interesting

I am interested and look forward to seeing the picture, handwriting, etc.

Do we know the identity of the original poster?

This passage:

Among the students at that time was one
the other kids called "Big Bad Zode". They called him that
because he was puny, wierd, and called himself ZODIAC. "Zode" was
an extremely odd person. He was seriously disturbed, angry and
violent. He was teased mercilessly, and often
threatened the students that someday he would kill them
all, and that someday he would be a famous person.


Strikes me as very hard to believe. The Zodiac case got huge publicity in CA, even more in LA when the Riverside connection was made and the LA Times letter was sent. If ANYTHING like this really happened, dozens of students would have remembered this guy! It sounds way too pat, it seems either fabriccated or exagerated. Do we have multiple credible witnesses that can confirm any of this?

rand wrote:

bentley wrote:

Yep, that's him alright. I have researched the guy quite a bit, have handwriting and a photo from year 2000 or so, which is still scary! I'll post them and whatever else I have if there is any interest.

Bentley: Do you think he was Z and, if not, why not? Why has this person gone under the radar? Also, the original poster said that the handwriting was found on a San Bernadino Community College desktop. But it was on a RCC desktop. Why this discrepancy?

Hi Rand, long time...

Don't know enough to say one way or the other. His yearbook photo shows a small looking kid as suggested, though in his recent photo he's pretty husky. Handwriting below, 3 stroke K, that's about it. Don't know the original poster or why the mistake. He's mentioned in Zodiac Unmasked, page 74
.

morf13 wrote:

bentley wrote:

As TF noted, his initials are MZ. Here is one of the signatures from the Bates Had To Die letters

His initials are MLZ, and this looks like ML, pretty interesting

And the L is for Lee...

Hmm. Aside from the "K", none of those letters have the look or feel of Z writing IMO.

An anonymous poster on the internet making these claims...can't put much stock in it.

If this is true, there should be multiple students from that time who remembered this odd fellow calling himself the Zodiac and saying he would kill people and they would be his slaves!

99% of the time, if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

Any actual people who can confirm this behavior? If not, IMO it is likely a hoax or wild exxageration.

AK Wilks wrote:

Hmm. Aside from the "K", none of those letters have the look or feel of Z writing IMO.

An anonymous poster on the internet making these claims...can't put much stock in it.

If this is true, there should be multiple students from that time who remembered this odd fellow calling himself the Zodiac and saying he would kill people and they would be his slaves!

99% of the time, if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

Any actual people who can confirm this behavior? If not, IMO it is likely a hoax or wild exxageration.

I have read about this for a couple years now, but I dont know how accurate it is. As a matter of fact, on some site(forget which one),I saw a cartoon or illustration of this guy that called himself Zodiac standing at the chalkboard drawing. Does anyone remember seeing what I am referring to?

By my memory, in the RIVERSIDE City College yearbook, there was a picture of a black board with a unit circle on it, which looks exactly like the crosshair Zodiac symbol. That is where Cheri Jo Bates went to school.

But I have not yet seen anything to back up that this Pacific High student really called himself Zodiac and said he was going to kill people, etc.

AK Wilks wrote:

If this is true, there should be multiple students from that time who remembered this odd fellow calling himself the Zodiac and saying he would kill people and they would be his slaves!

There are. I was alerted to MZ from a poster on Voigt's sight who also went to PHS and related a similar, but not the same story. Then there is the info in Zodiac Unmasked, source unknown.

A much bigger question in my mind is why someone who publicly referred to himself as Zodiac would go on a killing rampage using the same name.

MZ may have been investigated and cleared for all we know.

Here ya go

http://books.google.com/books?id=8Wm6fvRvEqIC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=%22pacific+high+school%22+%22zodiac%22&source=bl&ots=20JQVxz_xb&sig=HVsCnFG5-nGwH0n8sUVFGbPXRSk&hl=en&ei=vvHVS_-6EY6KNvWW5dID&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22pacific%20high%20school%22%20%22zodiac%22&f=false

Graysmith relates a story of a student writing Zodiac on the board. So what? A lot of people were into astrology and signs of the Zodiac. An unsourced story from Graysmith about someone writing Zodiac on a board doesn't do much for me.

My take is if there were any truth to the story from the anonymous internet poster, dozens and dozens of students would have remembered this guy and reported it to police and media at the time of the Z killings. Yet I see nothing in the newpaper archives or FBI files on this. I guess I just don't buy it.

That page comes up off limits for me Morf, I may have used up all my free Google ZU peeks.

Referring to my previous post, and after rereading TF's, the poster sent the MZ info to Graysmith so that's probably where he got it. May even be the same guy that was was on zk.com, dunno for sure.

Again, I dont know how accurate this story is. But the point is, the person the story is suppoedly about did exist, and is the man that Bentley & Foreigner posted about. They would be the ones to fill in the holes here.

Here's the photo of this guy.

That's about all I know on MZ Morf. If he could be placed in Norcal in '69-'70 that would certainly light a fire under me and a few others I know.

Again, before AK tells us he looks nothing like Z, that photo is from appx. 2000. I had his entire body but cropped it off, he looks to be about 200lbs., stocky.

bentley wrote:

That's about all I know on MZ Morf. If he could be placed in Norcal in '69-'70 that would certainly light a fire under me and a few others I know.

That was the problem with my old POI. He fit the Z bill in alot of ways, including looks, but I could only place him in southern CA, not in northern CA

Yes, there was a drawing of a Zodiac symbol on a blackboard in Cheri Jo Bates's High School Yearbook. The symbol was meant to be a math figure of some sort. But it is interesting. I posted a thread about it under CJB on Voigt's website a while back.

The picture and stories about this guy make him appear to be a credible suspect. I wonder why there has been so little interest in him. This seems to be the person about whom there was a thread on Voigt's website. I think the problem with him is that he was too young to have been Z. The Stine witness descriptions don't match. He's an Arab, I believe, which doesn't seem to match either. I'd like to hear more though.