Gareth Penn

Ok, to keep you updated. I sent all our questions off to Gareth Penn. The Z Ball is in his court. We will see where it takes us next. We had some really good questions, and now for some answers !?


& Thebes, I do agree Z could be more then one person. A game between two ??

Questions for Penn:

1. Does he know what was written on a bathroom wall as a message from "Zodiac" concerning the murder of Joan Webster? Was it words, a code, both and what did it say?

2. Is he aware that Joan Webster's father was a former CIA agent and a then VP of Defense Technologies at AT&T, and does he think Zodiac selected Webster to kill for that reason? Could that be tied to the father of Cheri Jo Bates working at a Naval Weapons facility?

3. His favored suspect for Zodiac went to school at Harvard, taught at Berkeley and was genius - is he aware that all of those things are also true of Ted Kaczynski?

Hi Tahoe-

For the record, I am not arguing shoe size because it has anything to do with Mr. X. I just know that shoe size is not an absolute and with some brands I take a 9 and with others a 9 1/2. So I am not personally willing to exclude anyone as literally as with the number on a shoe. If your position is that it is an absolute, that is what makes the Z world go around.

And as for DNA, I think I've made a comprehensive, highly researched, logical and understandable scientific argument against its validity in excluding suspects. I am waiting for some researcher to trump me by making an equally compelling scientific argument as to why it is definitely from Z, despite the fact that SFPD's lab reportedly concluded in 2002 that Z did not lick his stamps and envelopes. So far, no takers.

SFPD even distanced itself from the DNA and its ability to rule people out in a statement to the Chron a year ago April. Based on my research, it was the appropriate and fair thing to do. The fact that they held back these issues on the 2002 ABC show, quite frankly, sucked BIG TIME.

I am the one who did the research because I had the most to lose from it. Call me biased or say I "have an agenda" but no matter what I personally felt, I would not be able to undo or alter the facts. They are what they are and they were out there for anyone to discover if someone else had worked at it hard enough.

Mike

I agree. The DNA may not be Zodiac's, the prints may not be his. The physical description from the victims & witnesses (the best they could give) is really the best there is and there are certain suspects who just don't fit that bill, imo.

Thebes--I admire your hardwork and would never want to dismiss it because truth of the matter is, I don't know. I'm certainly no expert, but I just don't see how the author of that card would think anyone would ever figure out "t/fhing!!!!" was ALA's ss#. What would be the point if it was so hard to figure out? Zodiac thought he was dealing with dumb cops (for the most part), so why would he think anyone would ever get that? Not saying that some of your other stuff about radians and bomb local might be accurate, but some of the math stuff (I think) is way too extreme. And since we don't know this as fact, to say he was "into numerology" is questionable. imo That said, it's people like you who keep looking and trying to figure out what this all means so thanks for your work. I'm very grateful to not have to read Times 17--my brain can't handle it, so I'll take your word for some of it.

Theforeigner wrote:

SFPD officer Donald Fouke in his November Memo described Zodiac as follows:

"White, Male, American, 35-45 years, 5-10, 180-200, medium heavy build, Barrel-chested, medium complexion, light colored hair, possibly graying in rear, may have been lighting that caused this effect. Navy blue jacket, brown pleated pants, baggy in rear. (Rust brown) Possibly wearing low cut shoes."



And in a newsarticle Oct 12, 1969 Zodiac is described as 170 p (found at PROJECT MK-ULTRA website )


In the article in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 12, 1969, about the murder of Paul Stine by someone who was later established to be the Zodiac, the suspect was about 40 years old, 170 pounds, with a blond crewcut, and wearing glasses.

http://www.sfgate.com/g/graphics/2008/12/10/Zodiac_Cabbie_Slain.pdf

SO altogether IMO It seems that the Zodiac suspect at the Paul Stine murder was considered NOT that heavy.
But due to that he might have carried the gun, pieces of Stines shirt, etc on the front/ under his jacket & possibly somthing else to illude a "punchy stomach" as disquise, they got a partly impression of a "heavy build".
Remember, Fouke in his memo, described the suspect as "Barrel-chested" which IMO could suport my theorie that Zodiac was carrying different items in the front/under his jacket.

And when you look at the face in the Zodiac composite it sure don´t picture a person of "heavy bulid", much closer to a "medium build" /170/180 pound.


I think it is important to give merit to what was given as description from the start, which ideed was in the lower end of the weight scale.

Here are different descriptions on Zodiac by Bryan Hartnell and Mike Mageau:



From an interview of Bryan Hartnell Sep 28, 1969, by John Robertson (Napa County Sheriff´s Department)

http://www.zodiackiller.com/HartnellInterview4.html
(BH is asked about what the suspect looked like, and what he was wearing and he explain about the suspects cotton jacket)

BH: That was dark blue. And I don´t know. Maybe he had somthing in his pouch.
I just took it as beeing a ... as beeing a... you know, he was stout cause he looked kind of heavy. I think weighing two and a quarter, two fifty, somwere in there.


http://www.zodiackiller.com/HartnellInterview5.html
BH: And I don´t know how tall he was, maybe 5-8 or maybe 5-10, 6 feet, somwere in there


http://www.zodiackiller.com/HartnellInterview7.html

JR: Now was he as heavy as I am?

BH: Well I can´t say cause he wasn´t wearing those type of clothes.

BH: They were sloppy clothes, you know. And he just had on this old pair of pleated pants.
I don´t know... how tall are you?

JR: I´m about five eleven

http://www.zodiackiller.com/HartnellInterview8.html

BH: Well, like I said he was dressed kind of sloppily, you know. His pants real tight up here and his stomach kind of pounched a
bit, you know. I don´t know... it´s hard to say cause I can´t judge you with being in a suit and all, you know and him not beeing
proffesional-looking at all. He could be about the same. It´s hard to say. he was so sloppily dressed.




And here, in quotes from " The Unabomber and the Zodiac" Bryan Hartnell gives a revised and pretty different description of the Zodiac:

http://books.google.com/books?id=x3SUw_Jm5TUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=%22+he+had+something+in+his+pouch%22&source=bl&ots=SMDhP2srGy&sig=uWhq5XHpjDMRP5rqnRSpPXRK77o&hl=en&ei=WRgMTNCgNYr3OanJ9PcP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22%20he%20had%20something%20in%20his%20pouch%22&f=false

In a later interview, reported by author Robert Graysmith, in an obscure appendix to his "Zodiac", Hartnell offered a somwhat different account:

He had to be fairly lightweight (without puffed-up jacket). All the guys the police had me look at were fairly husky guys. This guy I think was in his thirties and fairly unremarkable.


Hartnell also gave information to the producers of the television series "Crimes of the Century"
in or around the year 1989. Among other things he declared that he had "grossly misjudged"
his assailant´s height and weight; that the perpetrator´s jacket "was loose" and that he could have been "big or small"





And here, in quotes from " The Unabomber and the Zodiac", 2 different Mike Mageau descriptions of the suspect:

http://books.google.com/books?id=x3SUw_Jm5TUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=%22+he+had+something+in+his+pouch%22&source=bl&ots=SMDhP2srGy&sig=uWhq5XHpjDMRP5rqnRSpPXRK77o&hl=en&ei=WRgMTNCgNYr3OanJ9PcP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22%20he%20had%20something%20in%20his%20pouch%22&f=false

In this book, they describe TWO different descriptions of the suspect given by Mike Mageau.

1st description given right after the attack: ca. 5.-8 feet, heavy built, beeffy, not blubberly fat, ca 195- 200 pound

2nd description given ca 3-4 wees later: ca 5-8 5-9 feet, stocky build and short, ca 160 ponds.

Hi-

With all the varying descriptions of Z you have to ask yourself who saw him under the best conditions and under the least stress. The kids felt, rightly or wrongly, that Z never looked up at them. One of them was convinced that Z had used a knife for some reason and almost went outside to confront him, so he clearly was not afraid of being shot through the window where he was making his observations. They also never moved once they got in their respective positions, and they felt that they had nailed it when both sketches approximated each other with minor variations (variations which may or may not have any significance with respect to specific features on Z's face, but that is another story). They also had the cab against which to estimate how tall Z was.

Mageau was clearly under tremendous duress and Hartnell was a self-admitted poor judge of height.

Mike

I'm reading some misinformation here about Gareth Penn and would caution that it's best not to post what you can't reference.

A few for instances:

I've probably researched Mr. Penn and Dr. O'Hare more exhaustively than anyone on the planet. To date, I've seen no physical descriptions of Mr. Penn that would allow anyone to characterize him as stocky, light, barrel chested, bird chested, etc. 42 years ago. Trying to rule him in or out as a Zodiac candidate from a physical description simply makes no sense based on the available information. (If you look at the photo of him here, taken ca 1981, he is not a slight man, nor is he a heavy man. But trying to actually determine his actual weight would be difficult).

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hOmtjKEUGJA/SpBdLBEiTdI/AAAAAAAAAW0/OeYBrhbV1RU/s1600-h/Gareth_MaryAnn.jpg

I've seen no descriptions of Dr. O'Hare that refer to him as a "genius." No IQ tests; no self descriptions; nothing. His fellow classmates described him as very bright, but I've interviewed no one who described him as a genius.

I'm also seeing people -- once again -- almost bragging that they haven't read Times 17, or don't know much about Mr. Penn, etc. -- then surprisingly, making statements about him with some sort of certainty!

Reference, verify, read -- do your homework. If you're pushing a POI and you want to dispel another, then you have a two-part task: you have to confirm facts about your own POI, but you also have to dispel facts about competing POIs. If you look on Penn as a competing POI, check your facts against independent references.

It's best for everyone that way -- especially the people whose names get bandied about as POIs.

Actually, a lot of Times 17 was provided online for us to read, and I read enough to know I will not change my mind, but am certainly not trying to pursuade others to believe what I do.

Hopefully through Zamantha, many of you will have some answers to your questions.

Just wanted to add this to the weight issue.


Due to that Zodiac´s weight seems to be "very unstable" I belive that his correct/natrual weight was in the lower end,
and that those witnesses who had an impression that he was of heavy build, was beefy and/or had a paunchy stomach
was due to that Zodiac used clothing that made him appear bigger than he really was, because:

A slim person can easily do different things that make him look heavy, beefy, paounchy stomach.

A heavy, beefy, or person with a pauchy stomch can NOT do anything to look slim




Reminds me of my views on Zodiac and his handwriting:


Due to that Zodiac´s handwriting seems to be "very unstable" I belive that his correct/natrual handwriting was in the high skill end, because.

A person who can write a mature and sophistcated handwriting, (as Zodiac did in the Red Phantom letter, and on one Enterprise envelope)
CAN also write a unmature sloppy hadwriting if he choose to.

But, A person whos natrual handwriting is unmature and sloppy can NOT write a mature and sophistcated handwriting.






To me it seems to be a general trait in Zodiac, that he operate with this "reverse things, confusuion strategy"


Here is a post I posted back in Aug 16th 2009 on Zodiackiller.com:, on a thread, called;
Name one Thing... "what is the one thing about Zodiac that you feel most confident about,
or what belief would be hardest to shake, what would it be and why?" :


http://zodiackiller.21.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=3184&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50

I am convinced that Zodiac had a ruel nr 1.

To be a big time PARADOX.
To mix and change in every move he made as the Zodiac Killer, in order to confuse people and of
course LE and their investigation
(added today: AND because it, to som extend, might have been part of his personality/caracter):


Here are som examples I have noticed:


Changed modus operandi

Changed type of victims

Changed weapons (even change his guns/calibers)

Changed murder locations , LE Counties

Bad spellig/good spelling

Bad gramma/good gramma

Sloppy unmature handwriting/organized mature handwriting

On one hand give impression of low education/ on other hand indicate/refere to probable
extensive knowledge in arts/intellectual/religious issues

Refere to several contradicting religious belifs like Christianity/ hedonistic belifs

Evil & scarry attitude/polite, cheerful & nice attitude

Powerfull and coldhearted attitude/ express weekness like lonellyness & unhappyness

Very informative & communicative about his actions / succeded in beeing exstreamly enigmatic

Name himself Zodiac and sign with crosshair symbol/ add new symbol (HC card) as his signature,
and at other letters sign himself as "A Citizen" and "The Red Phantom"

Victims and murder location ect. are not connected to celebritie community
(not himself connected to celeb commutity) / refere to (even directly adress)
several celebreties in his communications (indicating possible connection to celeb communtiy)

Ect....


By the way Gareth Penn is not my suspect, even though I do concider him a pretty good suspect, however that is NOT because of Chris Farmers report Etc. which I belive is, for the most part, delusional work.

Not sure Z would have felt the need to add bulk when getting out of his car for a few seconds to shoot people dead in an empty parking lot, but I do agree the SFPD sketch looks to be of someone not overweight.

Also agree on Farmer, he's done more to dissuade me from checking out Penn than encourage it. Same with Times 17, with it's complicated alpha/numeric code solutions that seem to fly in the face of Z's simplistic 408 cipher, which he even managed to screw up.

I'm familiar with the argument that a Menza level Z created the 408 to throw us off the trail of his intelligence. Maybe so, I certainly plan to read all Penn has to say.

Looking at the photo link MM provided above, I don't think Penn is exaggeration on the size 12s. And I think it's this photo that probably gives folks the impression he was thin. Both fwiw.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hOmtjKEUGJA/SsvmiDvabpI/AAAAAAAAAiE/ZnR20sBT3gE/s320/Gareth+Penn.jpg

bentley wrote:

Not sure Z would have felt the need to add bulk when getting out of his car for a few seconds to shoot people dead in an empty parking lot, but I do agree the SFPD sketch looks to be of someone not overweight.

Also agree on Farmer, he's done more to dissuade me from checking out Penn than encourage it. Same with Times 17, with it's complicated alpha/numeric code solutions that seem to fly in the face of Z's simplistic 408 cipher, which he even managed to screw up.

I'm familiar with the argument that a Menza level Z created the 408 to throw us off the trail of his intelligence. Maybe so, I certainly plan to read all Penn has to say.

Bentley I have to disagree with your argument highlighted in red.

Put yourself in his possition.

He is an highly organized, highly intelligent serial killer.

He planed every single of his attacks into smalles detail IMO.

When he plan the murder attck, he no doubt took precautions.

One precaution would IMO be to use som kind of diguise so that possible witnesses descriptions would be misleading.

Extra and/or loose/fluffy clothing would be an easy way to do that.

IMO it doesnt matter how short the attack was /was planed to be, a witness could pop up no matter how rual an location you choose for the deed, and/or how quick the attack was planed to be.

Add to that, possible witnesses who could see him in locations on his way to the deed etc.

Setting aside whether or not he was Z, and just using him as an example of how a killer used disguises - when Ted Kaczynski would go to the hardware store to buy plumbing pipe (to make a bomb) he wore multiple shirts and put a towel under them to make him look heavier, put wax in his nostrils, gum under his lip, cut and dyed his hair and beard and sometimes used fake accents!

Hi TF,

Could be, though there are those who feel Z was sloppy in his attacks and it was sheer luck that he avoided capture. I certainly wouldn't rule out a Z at the lighter end of the weight descriptions. As I mentioned I'd like to know more about how they went about determining the weight on the LB footprints. Did they take a boot out there and make prints with various weight individuals for comparison? I doubt Z lugged 30lbs. of weight down to the lake and back just to make heavier footprints.

All this discussion of weight, shoe size etc. is really just ancillary information, no POI is going to get arraigned for murder based on it. Heck, if Pee Wee Herman came up with the solution to the 340 I'd be the first one in line to investigate him.

For the record, I'm not saying the killer was heavy (fat) and I don't think the witnesses were either. Even though the face in the SF composite doesn't look heavy, I wonder why he was drawn that way. Did anyone ever say he had a slim face? I think that was probably just the artist's rendition. I certainly don't imagine an ALA type, but I do trust in the fact that he was on the stocky side rather than thin. And if Fouke did see Zodiac, I do give him credit for being able to tell the difference.

If my father was in search for the East Area Rapist and was making a profile on him,
I surely would know the answers to why it was so hard to get that guy.

http://www.jjmcgr.org/BK/PM%20Dec%208%2077.pdf

The blacked out part in the beginning is Hugh (Scott) Penn, consultant

I couldn't agree more with that assessment. The composite or physical description sure won't be what solves this case.

But how much does all that change when it is a police officer providing the description?

Azazel wrote:

The blacked out part in the beginning is Hugh (Scott) Penn, consultant

For those who dont know: Hugh Scott Penn is Gareth Penn´s father

My answers to the questions Zam sent are at gz4216.blogspot.com,
Monday, June 7, 2010
GZ 4216
Can you verify your address at 1708 Lincoln Street in Berkeley between roughly July 1969 to late August 1970? I have information indicating that a Joel Jaffe lived there in that year. What a coincidence that you lived on Webster Street in 1968-1969 and then wrote about the murder of Joan Webster in 1981!

I am sending copies of Mary Ann’s W-2 form for 1970, my W-2s for 1970 and 1971 and a U.S. Army Reserve Letter Order from October 1970, all addressed to one or the other of us at 1708 Lincoln Street, as well as a page from the 1970 Polk city directory for Vallejo, which shows Mary Ann as an employee of Vallejo Union School District and a resident of Berkeley (“rBerkeley”). The Polk directory was issued in 1970 reflecting information from questionnaires received at some time prior to publication. As to 1969, Mary Ann and I came home from a short excursion on 15 November 1969 to find a burglar walking out of our home with our stereo. I got the license number of the car in which he and his girlfriend fled, and they were arrested. I testified at his arraignment in Berkeley Municipal Court in December 1969 and appeared in response to a summons to testify against him in Alameda Superior Court (I don’t recall the date). He decided to plead guilty at the last minute, as the jury was filing in, in exchange for his choice of prisons. The house in which we were living at the time of that burglary was 1708 Lincoln Street. You seem to enjoy digging around in public records. There’s a lead for you to follow. We lived at 1708 Lincoln Street for three and a half years, during the whole of which we received junk mail addressed to Joel Jaffe, who had apparently lived there at some time in the past. I think everybody has had this same experience, getting junk mail addressed to former residents. I currently receive junk mail for two or three people who, if they ever lived at this address, did so long ago. Obviously, there are databases out there according to which they live here when in fact they don’t. I don’t think the “Webster” coincidence is very exciting. Here are some better ones. My upstairs neighbor at 2804 Webster Street was a high school classmate of Michael O’Hare, and O’Hare currently lives a few blocks from there, in the same block as the Magnes Museum, which exhibits the work of his mother. In Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood blows away Scorpio, a character modeled on the Zodiac murderer, and Eastwood was later elected mayor of Carmel, where I was born. You name a coincidence, and I can top it.

When did you first meet the niece of woman who discovered Zodiac victims’ corpses at Lake Herman Road? And didn’t you introduce her to her husband?

We met in the fall of 1972, when I started working at Vallejo City Library. I was in the reference department and she in the circulation department. The only reason I knew her at all was that we were co-workers. At the time I met her, she had been living for a couple of years already with her future husband. I didn’t introduce them; I married them, i.e. I officiated at their wedding in my capacity as minister of the Universal Life Church. By that time, they had been living together for six or seven years. If you check her marriage certificate (another public record for you to dig up), you will find my signature on it as the person who solemnized their union, which would have taken place in, I believe, 1976 or 1977.

You seem both surprised and dismayed that you have been cast in the POI spotlight. If so, why? You yourself — numerous times — put yourself there, esp. with your vivid description of how you could have murdered Cheri Jo Bates in Times 17?

I wouldn’t say that I am “surprised and dismayed.” “Bemused” would be closer to the mark. I think it would be fair to say that I would not now be the recipient of all this (to my mind, misplaced) attention if I hadn’t written a book about the Zodiac. The notion that because I have written a book about the Zodiac I must be the Zodiac seems to me to be logically akin to “Columbus discovered America; therefore he must have put it there.” In other words, loony. Or to use another example: “Antonia Fraser wrote a book about Marie Antoinette; therefore Fraser must be the queen of France.” Writing a book about one’s crimes appears to me to conflict with a criminal’s natural inclination not to draw attention to himself. Of course, it would make things easier for the police if criminals did that. They wouldn’t have to investigate crimes; all they would have to do is subscribe to Publishers Weekly and then, whenever a book on a crime was published, arrest the author. I would also take issue with the adjective “vivid.” I think that what I wrote was rather dry. If you will go back and read what I wrote, you will find that I didn’t describe how I could have murdered Cheri Jo Bates. What I described was how I could have traveled to California without creating a record. It appears to me that the police never went much past the most basic requirements of the police manual, and Ken Narlow’s ruling me out simply because I had been stationed at Fort Sill in 1966 seemed to me to exemplify the superficiality of his treatment of the case. Being stationed at Fort Sill does not mean that you are there every single minute. I had actually traveled to California twice during my tenure at Fort Sill, on ordinary leave. These trips created records that were maintained for the short term but were eventually destroyed in accordance with Army records maintenance standards. By 1981, when Narlow conducted his inquiry, those leave periods were no longer in the record, since information of that sort falls into a category calling for records destruction after a few years (probably five, in this case).

Your recall about your many Vallejo connections is at odds with the written record and eyewitness accounts. As an example of how off-kilter your recall has become, your story about Grant Mahony, as you recount it in your letter posted on this forum, is at extreme odds with the story you wrote for The Ecphorizer about the same topic:

“Some time in the late 1970s, when I was working as a reference librarian at Solano County Library, we received a reference referral from a library in Fresno, California. The requestor was the editor of an aviation magazine, and his request was for information on the life of Grant Mahony, a decorated military aviator whose home town was Vallejo.”

But here's what you wrote for the May 1982 Ecphorizer — a completely different story!

“One day last winter (1981) I was in a quiet neighborhood of Vallejo near Interstate 80…”

For The Ecphorizer, you said you learned about Grant Mahony in 1981, during a happenstance trip to a Vallejo park!

I didn’t write that I learned about Grant Mahony in 1981. You inserted “(1981)” into my text, quoting me as having written it when I didn’t. You infer that because I used the phrase “last winter” and because the story was published in 1982 that I must be referring to an event of the previous year. In fact, this story had been sitting idle in my desk drawer for several years when I submitted it to The Ecphorizer (like most of my other submissions, which I took out of my desk drawer and sent to The Ecphorizer because I hadn’t been able to peddle them elsewhere; the Grant Mahony story had been rejected by New West about five years before I sent it to The Ecphorizer.) I didn’t change “last winter” because I felt that doing so was unnecessary. If I had been writing a story for a newspaper about a current event, the relationship between the date of publication and adverbs such as “yesterday” would have been important. But this wasn’t a newspaper story about a recent event. It had to do with events that had taken place over thirty years earlier, and the time at which I researched and wrote about them had no bearing on the events themselves. “Last winter” was close enough for government work, especially considering that I would have had to retype the first page to make the correction. Some of us forget that there was once a time when there were no desktop computers, and editing documents was much more laborious and time-consuming than is now the case. For the purpose of comparison, here’s the opening of another article of mine that appeared in The Ecphorizer (“The savage breast,” February 1983):

“Tahiti, 23 August 1773: The King of Tahiti refuses to deliver two hogs he had promised to Captain Cook. A wrangle ensues, and it may take an ugly turn. Cook solves the problem by putting on a concert.”

This introduction is written as if it were a newspaper story. It has a dateline (“Tahiti, 23 August 1773”) and is couched in the present tense, even though the event it recounts took place 210 years before this article was published. Now, I am not employed by a newspaper, I have never been in Tahiti, and I am not three hundred years old. Writers often take liberties with the facts to introduce their subjects (this is called the “rhetorical lead”) in order to get the reader’s attention. I might have written, “It was just another humdrum day at work in a windowless room illuminated by ghastly fluorescent lighting in 1977 when my supervisor handed me a reference referral from a public library in Fresno and said, ‘Here. Work on this.’” But that would have been boring. I actually went to the Grant Mahony park and knocked on doors in the neighborhood, but after I had done the research, not before. Documentaries frequently include reenactments (Touching the void is an excellent example), and fact-based movies usually include characters synthesized out of several different real people in order to make the narrative flow more smoothly. These shortcuts don’t make the product any less truthful; and as the character played by Sally Field discovers in Absence of malice (1981), “accurate” and “true” are not necessarily the same thing. As a general comment, I would urge you, if you think that you have information that incriminates me, to share it with the appropriate law enforcement agencies; if you haven’t done so, I think you are shirking your civic duty. Inspector Kevin Jones is responsible for the Zodiac case at SFPD. Why don’t you get in touch and fill him in? He‘s a nice guy; he won’t bite your head off.

Thanks for taking questions.

You’re quite welcome.

I´ve been wondering about the part “The case against Hugh Penn” mostly.

and

What made Raymond consider making a chapter about the East Area Rapist profiler Hugh Penn?

I don’t know who Raymond is, and I have no idea what these references to my father pertain to. I gather from these questions that the Internet true-crime community is now trying to make him out to be a criminal. His first job after the war was with San Jose PD, and after several years at the Division of Highways, he worked for the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Justice, from which he retired in 1976. He worked on the East Area Rapist case as a freelance consultant to the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department. Dad worked for about two thirds of his professional career for law enforcement agencies.

Why didn’t you ever sue your friend Ray, who has publicly accused you of being involved in the case? (You’ll know what I mean.)

I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t have a friend named Ray, nor do I know anyone, even casually, with that name. The last Ray I can remember having known in the past was the audio-visual technician at the Vallejo library. The one before that lived across the street from us at 1708 Lincoln.

What would cause you to write a very comprehensive book under a pseudonym?

I have never written a book under a pseudonym. The only published book I have written appeared under my real name. I wrote three articles that were published in New West under a pseudonym (George Oakes, a name that I borrowed from a novel by Gerald Kersh). I had been striking out using my own name, and, although I am not ordinarily superstitious, considered that I might have better luck using a pen name. The very first time I used it (with a tongue-in-cheek prediction of what would happen to the San Francisco real estate market if global warming caused sea level to rise 160 feet), I made a sale, so I stuck with it.

I feel you were privy to some good Zodiac information. Where and how?

There is quite a bit of commentary out there about all the things I got wrong in TIMES 17; a number of people would take issue with your use of “good.” My father told me that the Zodiac had used the word “radian” in an unpublished letter; the rest of my information or misinformation, as the case may be, came from contemporary newspaper accounts and conversations with Captain Ken Narlow of the Napa Sheriff’s Department and Robert Graysmith, with whom I had one lengthy telephone conversation.

Was your contact within SFPD a relative?

I didn’t have a contact in SFPD. My father (see above) worked for the California Department of Justice in Sacramento and had access to their file of photographic copies of Zodiac letters. He was a would-be sleuth and had been employed by the Army during the Second World War as a cryptographer, so he tried his hand at solving the three unsolved Zodiac ciphers — with no success.

Did your contact alert you that an 8 year old witness picked someone out (FBI files, File 2, page 15), were you privy to that person’s name?

I’m not sure that I understand what this question refers to. In any case, no. I don’t know anything about an eight-year-old witness.

Re your letter to Harry Martin, are there two prints from the dash which indicate that the killer did try and mask his fingerprints? Did your source indicate there was a general belief amongst SFPD that the fingerprints were faked that they do not convey to the public?

Are you asking me whether the Zodiac covered up his fingerprints, or are you asking me whether he faked them? I’m not clear as to where this question is going. In any case, I have no idea what SFPD believes about anything. My understanding is that SFPD recovered two partial fingerprints from the dashboard of the Yellow cab and that they were bloody, which means that they were left there by the Zodiac. It is also my understanding that when the FBI’s digitized fingerprint-comparison system went on line in 1985, the Zodiac fingerprints were among the first into the hopper. The fact that no match was made appears to indicate that the Zodiac is someone who has never been fingerprinted.

After all these years are you still convinced Michael Henry O'Hare is the Zodiac?

Yes.

I have seen your mention of blood traced prints on the dashboard of Paul Stine's cab, information you stated came from a friend inside the SFPD. Do you recall if these prints were partially masked, or any other details? Do you have any other case information not common to the public you can share?

My “friend in SFPD” was actually my father, who had worked at DOJ. In 1982, I got the same information from a private investigator in Massachusetts who had inquired through his network of law-enforcement acquaintances. I don’t believe I have any information concerning physical or eyewitness evidence that isn’t abundantly available elsewhere.

It has been stated that your Zodiac radian theory is bunk because the angle between the Pacific Heights crime and both of the Vallejo crimes is closer to 60 degrees than one radian. Do you feel that Zodiac figured this was close enough?

The accuracy of measurement depends in large measure on which map you use. I used the 1970 Bay Area map sheets published by the U.S. Geological Survey. Here are a couple of observations I wish I had had in time to include in the book, because I find them very interesting. The degree-value of the radian is 57.29…, and the Bay Area chapter of the Zodiac’s career began in Hebrew calendar year 5729 (December 1968). He uses the word “radian” in a letter postmarked in July. The word JULY written in Morse Code and read in base two, with a decimal point between U and L (0111 001.0100 1011) is 57.29…, replicating the degree-value of the rad to eight decimal places. Every date in July expresses the same number accurately to at least nine decimal places. The closest possible match in July is JULY 23 (0111 001.0100 1011 10111), which is accurate to thirteen decimal places.

Have you ever posted on a Zodiac forum under a pseudonym?

No.

Why the 12 year gap between the actual Zodiac murders and your writing about it?

At the time of the Zodiac murders, I was a graduate student. I was writing seminar papers on everything from the Grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s thirteenth-century Parzival romance to Bertolt Brecht’s treatment of the Paris Commune in his play on that subject. I had a lower division class to teach. I had to fulfill a Latin requirement, which I did by taking the Virgil course in the Classics Department, where I read the Georgics and finally got the scansion of Latin hexameter straight. Then I went on to read, on my own time, the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, Historia regum Britanniae, and the Gesta Romanorum. I took three courses in Old Norse literature and one in Old Provençal. I was an active member of the Old Norse Saga Club, which met once a month to read Icelandic sagas. I was absorbed in my studies. I was neither a newspaper reporter nor a true-crime enthusiast. I had a wife and, as of April 1971, a son to raise. Mary Ann and I had season tickets to the opera and American Conservatory Theater. We had friends with whom we socialized, in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Marin and Contra Costa Counties. There were plenty of claims on my time and interest. And the Zodiac murders were not a very prominent subject. People who immerse themselves in true-crime websites get an exaggerated picture of the Zodiac’s relative importance at the time. In May 1969, Berkeley, where I lived, was occupied for two weeks by the National Guard. We had to go through military checkpoints to get to the supermarket. Helicopters were flying overhead dumping tear gas right and left. There was an antiwar demonstration in November 1969 in which 250,000 people marched down Market Street in San Francisco. Thousands of people went to the Oakland Army Terminal and lay down on the railroad tracks to keep troop trains from going in and out (my sister among them). Larger events eclipsed the Zodiac episode. The big continuing news stories had to do with the war, the antiwar movement, the uproar at the Democratic convention in 1968, the Chicago Eight trial, and the like more. No national news magazine ever published an article on the Zodiac murders, which got only cursory and infrequent mention in big-city newspapers outside of California (look it up in the New York Times index to see what I mean). There was only one mention of the Zodiac on national television news shows, after he threatened to attack a school bus. Until January 1986, when Graysmith’s first book came out, virtually nobody east of the Sierra Nevada knew anything about the case, and most of us west of the Sierra had forgotten about it. In the seventies, there was a sensational serial murder case in San Francisco which got the moniker “Zebra.” It didn’t take long for Zodiac and Zebra to get confused with one another, because nobody could remember anything about either in detail and they both began with Z. In late 1980, I mentioned to my father that I was looking for material to write about, for the purpose of marketing to magazines. He brought up the Zodiac’s use of “radian” in a 1970 letter; nobody outside of law enforcement circles knew about it, because that part of the letter had never been published. Since it was not publicly known, I would have the advantage of exclusive knowledge in marketing an article to magazine editors. I found it was even more interesting than Dad thought it was.

It has been theorized that the Santa Rosa Murders were committed by the Zodiac killer; what are your thoughts on the Santa Rosa murders in regard to the Zodiac case?

I don’t believe the Zodiac committed any murders other than the ones he has taken credit for and that have been officially attributed to him. In other words, he didn’t kill anybody in Santa Rosa.

Have you ever met James Douglas Phillips aka James Douglas Crabtree?

No. Who is he?

I'm curious as to how this will end; are you peeved or amused or will you make the connection to karma, as you rightly should?

I’m bemused (see above). As to connecting with my karma, I’d rather not. And if I understand Buddhism correctly, I don’t have to until the next turn of the wheel of existence.

Would you deconstruct Chris Farmer's report?

I don’t have five years’ time. I think that people who put up websites and blogs feel that they are the cynosure of all eyes, when they more closely resemble spit in the ocean. There’s some truth in T-shirts, and I have seen one that says “More people have read my T-shirt than have read your blog.” I knew nothing of Farmer’s website until about two years ago, when I got an e-mail from a cousin who had come across Farmer’s work product after he had raided her genealogy website and downloaded photos of everybody I am even remotely related to, most of whom I have never met or corresponded with. She described her Farmer-experience as “like watching a train wreck in progress.” I gave it a look-see myself and then contacted Farmer, informing him of a couple of his most glaring chronological paradoxes, such as having me working in Tiburon in 1970 (I didn’t start working there until 1991). I offered to answer questions, as I am doing now, but since he has a tendency to alter information to make it fit his thesis, I proposed sending him hard copy, keeping a copy for myself which I would have notarized so that I could prove what I had written before he PhotoShopped it. He said that arrangement would be inconvenient and lost interest in hearing what I had to say.

Can you please provide photo(s) of yourself from 1969, in which you are clean-shaven?

I can’t do that because I was never clean-shaven in 1969. I started growing a beard in the fall of 1968, after I returned from Europe, and I kept it until mid-1970. I started the current one in 1977. I am sending a photo of me taken in the fall of 1968, not long after I stopped shaving. The other gent in the picture is my old friend Dana Buchanan, who works for the FBI. I will also send a photo of me taken in February 1967, when I had to shave every day because I was in the Army.

Did you happen to encounter Arthur Leigh Allen, George “Buzz” Gordon (VPD), or any of the surviving Ferrin family members? Did you have the opportunity to visit the U.S. Navy facility at Mare Island? Did you know Richard “Gyke” Gaikowski? Do you have any new information at all concerning the case? Your book is hard to find and expensive. What about an Internet posting?

I have never met Arthur Leigh Allen, George Gordon, or any member of the Ferrin family. I used to work at the library in Vallejo, which is right across Mare Island Strait from Mare Island Naval Shipyard, so I saw it on the other side of the water every working day from October 1972 to August 1979. I never met Richard Gaikowski and don’t have any idea who he is or was. I don’t have any new information about the Zodiac case. I think TIMES 17 is out of date; after publishing it, I figured out how to use the computer as an analytical tool and now have what I think is far more interesting material; I am working on a second book whose working title is The third knife, but I can’t predict when it will appear. If you still want to read what I have to say, I would recommend the next book. It will be a lot cheaper and a whole lot more interesting.

Isn’t it odd that you and the Zodiac both like numerology and ambiguous puzzles?

As I understand it, “numerology” means a belief in the supernatural powers of numbers. The only powers of numbers I believe in are squares and cubes. I am interested in the use of number as a medium of communication because there is voluminous evidence in the Zodiac letters that their author uses number to communicate (using Morse Code and base-two notation, which are interchangeable). Since he is the subject of my book, I am naturally interested in what he is interested in. If I had written a biography of Abraham Lincoln, would you be asking, “Isn’t it odd that you are interested in the issue of slavery?” And I think that what you mean by “ambiguous puzzles” is what I call nonverbal communication.

Coke or Pepsi?

Neither. And as to the unasked question, whether I think the glass is half-full or half-empty, my answer is that the glass is twice as large as it needs to be.

Do you know what was written on a bathroom wall as a message from “Zodiac” concerning the murder of Joan Webster? Was it words, a code, both and what did it say?

In general, I believe that bathroom-wall inscriptions are an unreliable source of information. My guess is that if you follow up on inscriptions such as “Call Suzy Jones for a good time,” you will usually discover that Suzy is not receptive. I have no information about the inscription you refer to.

Are you aware that Joan Webster's father was a former CIA agent and a then VP of Defense Technologies at AT&T, and do you think the Zodiac selected Webster to kill for that reason? Could that be tied to the father of Cheri Jo Bates working at a Naval Weapons facility?

George Webster was an administrator at the CIA, not an agent. He had no operational connection with either intelligence acquisition or intelligence analysis. I believe Joan Webster and Cheri Jo Bates had the bad luck to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and that their father’s occupations were irrelevant to their fates. In the 1960s, California was practically sliding into the Pacific Ocean under the weight of military installations, and the military constituted a significant fraction of the state’s economy, both directly and indirectly (via the aerospace and other defense industries). That Cheri Jo Bates had some kind of connection to someone with a military paycheck is statistically unremarkable.

Your favored suspect went to school at Harvard, taught at Berkeley and is a genius. Are you aware that all of those things are also true of Ted Kaczynski?

You might also have mentioned that they are both of Polish ancestry.
Posted by D550 at 9:34 AM
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It's incredible to me that people are still interested in G. Penn with respect to the Zodiac case. He doesn't even know the name of Ferrin's husband. And this answer (below) is all you should need to see to say: "Okay, thanks, bye-bye Mr. Penn; your 15 minutes should have been up sometime in the 1980s. I'm not interested in anything you have to say about this case; and never was."

After all these years are you still convinced Michael Henry O'Hare is the Zodiac?

Yes

Update from Raymond Grant's The Zodiac Murders: Solved, or why the author suspected Gareth Sewell Penn of being involved in the Zodiac murders after their 4-year collaboration

Click here:

The Murder of Robert Salem; The Tamalpais Valley Incident; and the Oklahoma City Phone Call

Please see the previous post I made from Penn on the Questions and Answers. It did not post the way I wanted it to. But it is there, the answers to the questions submitted by the posters to Penn. He also sent some pictures an documents that we will get downloaded. Enclosed is his reply to the questions. I did send him the just for fun question on coke vs pepsi....to ck out his sense of humor.




My answers to the questions Zam sent are at gz4216.blogspot.com, and she can download them from there. I attach the jpg files that go with it, and you would oblige me by forwarding this e-mail with attachments to her.

I feel that a lot of these questions were wasted (e.g. “Coke or Pepsi?”). I set a limit of 50; if these answers prompt relevant and reasonably intelligent followup questions, I will entertain an equal number of those, if Zam wants to field them.

Thanks,

Gareth

Zamantha:

These answers aren't a hoax -- they are for real?

MikeM wrote:

Zamantha:

PLEASE tell me Gareth actually sent you this! These answers aren't a hoax -- they are for real?

Hi MIKE, yes... 2 posts back are the answers Penn sent to the questions we had for him. I am not dealing
with Penn directly, but I am going thur another contact that I know has had dealings with him for the last
year. He also sent me pictures to post ( I emailed them to you) I just sent them on to AK or Morf to download
and post for me. I am 100% positive this is Penn we can dealing with. So YES FROM Penn.



I'm just the messenger. Zam*

Thanks to Gareth Penn for answering the questions

Thanks to Zamatha and others that made this possible:)

Great work:)