Gareth Penn

Ray,

You previously posted:

"4, Hugh Penn, who died June 18, 1995, Gareth's father, whose background was crucial to the logistics of The Project."

I look forward to hearing about his background.

Auth

Dr. Drew Pinsky - another Zodiac composite look-alike.

This is really scary - LOL Anderson Cooper with glasses looks totally like the Z...

First of all, I’m issuing a general apology to the board for losing my cool last night. I reread my own posts and they strike me as both unfair and mean-spirited, particularly toward Tahoe27. I’ve already apologized to him, but I’m repeating the apology—I’m sorry, Tahoe27. I’ve reread your posts and think you are quite knowledgable about the case. As I said earlier, both you and tracers made some interesting points which I hope to address when (and if) I have the time.

In my own defense, I’ve spent the last couple evenings going back and forth with Hewlitt-Packard and Apple tech support trying to get my scanner to work, with HP telling me I had a “registry” problem, and Apple telling me “registry” is a Windows term (though it shows up in dialogue boxes on my iBook), and HP telling me my software is obsolete, and Apple telling me my computer probably is, too. I discussed several possible options with the local Radio Shack, none of which sounded good to me. Plus, the later into the week I get, the further into sleep debt I am.

I am my Zodiac theory. If you make the same assumptions I make, everything he did makes sense; if you take any other general approach to the case, you run into a wall somewhere where his actions are nonsensical. As I said, I hope to be able to put together a tutorial in the next couple weeks which will walk people through my scenario without getting them bogged down in cryptography (which is what I think my books ended up doing).

Unfortunately, identifying so closely with my theory has one obvious drawback: I’m not used to being challenged on it, and I tend to take criticism of it as a personal attack. Again, I think the real problem is that the theory has to be learned in its proper sequence. Hearing isolated details is like walking in on a language class in the middle of a term; it’s hard to hear structure in what sounds like gibberish.

In the meantime, I’ll respond to some of the more recent posts:

Mike Martin: I have absolutely no idea how the four people met, how the planning was done, or anything along those lines. I have no idea about it because it’s not present in the Zodiac events, and I didn’t get to the point where I am now by trying to figure out how it all started. I looked at what was there, and I worked backward from it. I’m amazed at the information you’ve been able to gather about the Penns and O’Hares having been in close proximity that long ago. I’m as curious as you are about the origins of The Project, for the obvious reason that it runs counter to what most of us take for granted about normal behavior. How could four human beings agree to plan and execute something like this?

Let me cite a quick example: in The Halloween Card, the Zodiac cites four ways of collecting SLAVES for his future PARADICE: by GUN, by KNIFE, by FIRE, and by ROPE. We know he shot people. We know he stabbed them. Both Gareth and I say he also set fires, including Napa’s famous Atlas Peak Fire in the summer of 1981. But when did the Zodiac use a ROPE? At Lake Berryessa, he actually used a clothesline cord.

I believe ROPE refers to the Alfred Hitchcock film, where two young men plan a “Leopold and Loeb”-style perfect murder, in the hopes of pleasing their mentor (played in the movie by Jimmy Stewart). It’s a suggestion, at least, that the Zodiac murders were actually staged events, and not the random occurrences they seemed to be. In the film, the two young men actually place the body inside a compartment which serves as a buffet table, off of which guests in their penthouse suite serve themselves dinner, without realizing the body of a missing guest is right in their midst. The movie is unusual in consisting of a handful of long takes rather than being edited conventionally; in that respect, the film is virtually a photographed stage play, all “medium” shots, which has the effect of emphasizing even more the “staging” theme in the story itself.

Zabagliona: I don’t mean to be condescending, but you do realize this is a Gareth Penn thread, right? Gareth Penn wrote a book called Times 17 in 1987, and it includes the accusation/revelation of Berta Margoulies’s involvement; that didn’t originate with me. By the way, are you going to accuse Gareth of anti-semitism, too? If I say Bernie Madoff is a swindler, does that mean I hate Jews?

AK Wilks: I don’t think Berta Margoulies is a holocaust survivor; she graduated from Hunter College in 1928, and I think she did art work for the WPA or some other New Deal project during the 1930s and early 1940s. I’m not absolutely sure about her whereabouts during the war but I don’t think she was in Europe.

bentley: I came up with 3.1415926 = 3 1 4 15 9 26 = CADOIZ = ZODIAC; it’s in the first editions of TZMS. Chris Farmer has said that insight brings tears to his eyes, so it’s hard for me to feel too critically about OPORD. Again, as I said elsewhere on this forum, pi in Morse/binary converts to M.ERAHO (that’s in Times 17), and the supplement of the radian is 122° 43’ (Michael O’Hare’s birth date is 1-22-43--again, that’s in Times 17). Whoever the Zodiac was, he chose a name that’s an anagram for pi, and Michael O’Hare has two personal identifiers that are pi-derivatives. So I don’t think the pi stuff that Gareth talks about is a stretch at all.

By the way, at the foot of The Exorcist Letter, the Zodiac says ‘Me – 37’. He could be claiming 37 victims. Or he could be saying that he’s 37 years old. Or he could be saying that he’s 3, followed by 7 decimal digits of pi:

3. 1415926 = ZODIAC

That would give us a correct equation, wouldn’t it?

Bblanco: I don’t think I look that much like Drew Pinsky—he’s a lot more Jewish-looking than I am, don’t you think? Oops!

Yes, in fact, I could accuse Gareth of that, but in his case, I rather think he was jealous of the O'Hare family because, while it shared some similarities with his own, theirs was relatively "whole" and healthy and his was not...

Bernard Madoff is disgusting and deserves to be maligned as much as possible; Berta Margoulies is not and does not deserve to be so...

Here is her biography:

http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/biography.aspx?artist=89947

She was a war refugee who escaped to Holland; her father was imprisoned...

Oh, and I don't mean to be condescending at all Mr. Grant, but you do realize, right, that there were, in fact, two World Wars, WWI and WWII right??

morf13 wrote:

Not sure if Zam ever asked Penn here or not.

I have a general question regarding Penn...and maybe a couple people that think he may have been Zodiac can fill me in.
I should also warn you that, a few years back, I read some stuff on Penn(not sure how accurate it was), and I was interested in Penn for a hot minute. I looked at alot of things about him (all circumstantial), and decided he wasnt a good candidate for Zodiac in my opinion.

* His writing didnt look even CLOSE to Zodiac

*He looked like a guy that would weigh around 160-170 lbs, not the stocky, barrel chested type as described by people, or the 200+ lbs that NAPA thought Z weighed based on his Wingwalher tracks.

* Ken Narlow told me that he directly looked at Penn briefly, and that Penn came into Ken's office spouting off and talking gibberish, and they finally asked him to leave...not a very promisong POI in my opinion.

Anyhow, these were my own personal opinions on why I didnt like Penn as Z.

Somehow, I think I missed something here. For the people that think Penn could be Z, what exactly is that based on? Not theories, or formulas, but what hard facts and details are there to make you think he could be Z?

Do you have writing samples that look like Z? Can he be placed at a crime scene at the time of a Z murder? Did he own the same model guns used by Zodiac? Etc

I will sit back, and see what you guys have to say. Thanks

Mr. Grant, I saw you replied to a couple people in your last post, and I was curious if you could reply to my quoted post from earlier, as seen above? Thanks

Berta Margoulies was born in 1907; if she "escaped to Holland" during WWI, it wasn't on her own, since she'd have been a little kid.

If she was a refugee from WWI, then she wasn't a Holocaust survivor, right? Why weren't you all over AK Wilks for that? Instead of saying, "Thank you, AK . . . exactly!!!!"

morf13: I think I'm being pestered here for the sake of the pestering. Would you please remove this woman's accusation of anti-semitism, and if possible, all her posts directed at me? If it's possible to ban communication (if you can call it that) between individual posters, I'd like that to be done here. I'll respond to your questions in my next post (probably in a few hours).

Ray Grant wrote:

Berta Margoulies was born in 1907; if she "escaped to Holland" during WWI, it wasn't on her own, since she'd have been a little kid.

If she was a refugee from WWI, then she wasn't a Holocaust survivor, right? Why weren't you all over AK Wilks for that? Instead of saying, "Thank you, AK . . . exactly!!!!"

morf13: I think I'm being pestered here for the sake of the pestering. Would you please remove this woman's accusation of anti-semitism, and if possible, all her posts directed at me? If it's possible to ban communication (if you can call it that) between individual posters, I'd like that to be done here. I'll respond to your questions in my next post (probably in a few hours).

OKAY- please dont accuse people of being anti-semetic... Ray, I think you can go into your controls and put people on IGNORE. I will remove anti-semite remarks

I have yet to hear any type of substantive reason to accuse this woman of anything...

*still waiting*

Since none of us can be "perfectly factual" on anything, I wasn't going to nitpick with AP about the Holocaust survivor thing, suffice it to say her family was persecuted, her father imprisoned and they fled to Belgium and to Holland because they were Jewish.

I find it fascinating that Mr. Grant feels the need to focus on the exact working about this, without having a shred of understanding that what AK and I were responding to is a "tone" taken here regarding this woman and her family, and that a grown man (Mr. Grant) is running to moderators like a toddler running to mommy instead of explaining his belief system and why he believes this woman to be the "mastermind" behind the Zodiac murders.

Rather than running to hide behind someone's aprons, I choose to deal with things myself, like Mr. grant's insulting and condescending attitude towards me, unless I feel I am being personally and seriously threatened in some way.

I will say it again: I am still waiting for a clear and cogent explanation of how Bertha Margoulies O'Hare could possibly in any way be involved inthe Zodiac murders...

Thank you for the warning, Morf, I will end it, but I am still quite interested in a cogent explanation of how one Berta Margoulies is even connected to the Zodiac case, let alone characterized as a "Zodiac mastermind". My request is a quite reasonable one, actually.

I have researched Mrs. Margoulies O'Hare on the web myself, and can find absolutely nothing that would connect her with these crimes.

Zabagliona wrote:

Thank you for the warning, Morf, I will end it, but I am still quite interested in a cogent explanation of how one Berta Margoulies is even connected to the Zodiac case, let alone characterized as a "Zodiac mastermind". My request is a quite reasonable one, actually.

I have researched Mrs. Margoulies O'Hare on the web myself, and can find absolutely nothing that would connect her with these crimes.

I understand that, so maybe Mr Grant will kindly explain how she fits into the case, or into the Penn theory.

I'm at work right now. I will press the IGNORE button as soon as I can figure out where it is.

As I've already pointed out, Berta Margoulies is accused in Times 17, and that's the basis for what I myself think, though I can add some things to it.

morf13, I will respond to your question in a few hours. Thanks for your understanding.

Morf wrote:
Ray, I think you can go into your controls and put people on IGNORE


Thank god. Sweeeet!!!

Thank you Mr. Grant, I would like to hear what you have added to the Times17 materials.

Hmmm, Ok gang.... I say we all take a deep breathe and stay calm. All POI's are conversational. especially if someone has their own POI. Gareth Penn has always
been conversational. Ray Grant was kind enough to come in and try to tell us his thoughts on this and why he wrote the book on Penn. I'm not saying you have to agree
with him or his theory, but I'm thinking we all do our best to hear him. Not often we get this opportunity. Myself, I do understand most but all of what is being explained to us.
I did spent alot of time last year on The Opord back when is was going good and there was alot of great research and information. I can totally understand the curiosity a lot of
people have in Penn, as he did put himself right in the middle of the picture. In fact he but himself back in it now. I know we all make jokes about Farmer and The Opord, but maybe go there and read in
the forum all the scanned pages from The Times 17, not easy to understand... but it will give you a clearer picture of what Penn wrote. You will also read information on
Berta Margoulies in there...and how Penn puts some of these people in his story line. Maybe we need to active listen to this thread in the very beginning, let Ray tell his
story... and after that is all done ask our questions. And there is nothing wrong with good solid questions. Let's not act like all the Police Dept's did back then and work
against each other. Let's pull together and learn as much about the whole Z case as possible, and that includes a lot of of different info coming from different people.
I kinda understand all the posters here, their Z theories, beliefs and agendas.... why..because I active listen to them. Do I think they are all right, well I do know they
all can not be right. But I let them make there case. Am I saying Penn is the Z, NO....but I'm saying lets listen as see IF he could be, or IF he knows something more then the
rest of us. Let's let Ray Grant make us case, and then after we hear it all.....start your questions.

Peace out, Zam*

There is definitely some interesting things here, and people want to discuss it, thats the reasons we have 20 pages in this thread. As long as it stays civil all around

Hi morf13,

Thanks for the heads-up about the IGNORE button. What you actually do is click on the person's name, and that takes you to their profile. On the right side, you're given the options to ADD TO FRIENDS LIST or ADD TO FOES LIST. If you click on the latter, it reduces the foe's posts to a line between the other posts, mentioning that that person posted something at that point, but not actually showing the post (unless you click on an option to read it).

In answer to your own post, I'm going to suggest the same exercise I've now given several other people, which is to look at page 31 of Times 17 and tell me what doesn't make sense there.

But I'll add a quick anecdote to that. Around the time Gareth Penn put out Times 17 (1987), I happened to be talking to Gareth on the phone one night. Keep in mind, Gareth and I lived on opposite coasts, but we knew the same people in Mensa, and to a large extent can be said to have belonged to the same social group. The Regional Vice-Chairman for the San Francisco Bay Area at that time was a man named John Cumming. John was a good guy, and though he wasn't a reformer like Gareth and myself, he'd listen to you and even speak up from his chair on the American Mensa Committee on your behalf, if he thought you were in the right. Anyway, Gareth and I were bullshitting this one evening, and I told Gareth that I'd just spoken with John. "John told me he no longer thinks you're the Zodiac," I quipped. John had told me that as a joke, and I had repeated what he said as a joke. I expected Gareth to chuckle. He didn't. What I heard on the other end of the line can best be described as a gagging sound. For several uncomfortable moments, there was utter silence. You could have heard a pin drop on the other end of the line. Then I said, "He meant that as a joke," and you could hear the slow, relieved sigh from the other end; Gareth had started breathing again. I didn't think much of the incident at the time, I just thought it was an odd reaction for him to have. In retrospect, as other odd notes sounded during our five year acquaintance, that sudden choking sound on the other ond of the line became more and more ominous.

Anyway, that was the first time I noticed that something wasn't completely right with Gareth Penn.

"PENZANCE"

...accident when used by Penn in his "metaphor by example" in Times17 of the last woman to allegedly speak Cornish....or

....somehow a conenction to "The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty"...another work by Gilbert & Sullivan....

...as there were other examples he could have used to make his point...

Also, in an early page of Times17, Penn makes the statement that Paul Stine was a 29-year-old cab driver with a wife and child to support. That is not correct; he did have a wife, but no children. I do have firsthand knowedge of this. Sadly, according to his widow; they did want children; she never remarried or had any kids, but instead was an adopted "aunt" and godmother to others' kids.

(She gave my son his most favorite stuffed animal; the only one he still has out...LOL )

Police profilers considered the Zodiac killer an "extremely shrewd, methodical planner" who would have had knowledge of cryptography, guns, map reading, meteorology, astronomy, drafting, and a probable military background. -- Robert Graysmith

This Gareth Penn profile -- for lack of a better term -- has been floating around for about 10 years, added to and subtracted from as new information comes in. When I knew nothing about Gareth, it helped explain to me why so many people were so fascinated by him and why many of them thought he made a great Zodiac candidate himself. It's based on facts, not cryptography, ciphers, and other hard-to-verify information. It was really the first comprehensive style profile I had seen on anyone connected with this case, and I think originated with Glen Claston, Alan Cabal, Jake Wark, and a few others of that era.


1) Age and Ethnicity

Gareth Penn is a Caucasian male with light features. He was born in 1941, which makes him the right age (27-29) and right ethnicity.


2) Has inserted himself into the Zodiac case for over 30 years

A common feature of serial criminals is inserting or injecting themselves into the investigation of their crimes.

Like an arsonist revisiting his fires, Penn has obsessively inserted himself into the Zodiac case for 30 years:

a) He publicly accused U.C. Berkeley public policy professor Mike O'Hare of the crimes, launching a Zodiac-style harassment campaign against O'Hare with cards, letters, and cryptic notes just as the Zodiac killer himself had done 10 years before.

b) He authored two books about the Zodiac case, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, and The Second Power: A Mathematical Analysis of the Letters Attributed to the Zodiac Murderer. The latter book gets down and dirty, accusing O'Hare's mother of incest.

c) He has written dozens of magazine and newsletter articles about his Zodiac case theories.

d) He carried on a cross country marketing style campaign to push his theories about the Zodiac case


3) Affair with Madeleine Borges in Vallejo

Penn has admitted to a long-time love affair with Madeleine Borges, the niece of Stella Borges, the woman who found Zodiac murder victims
David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Coincidentally, Madeleine Borges was also high school classmate of David Faraday.


4) Longtime employment/residence in Vallejo/North Bay/Zodiac territory

Penn lived in Vallejo, Napa, Berkeley, San Rafael, and in several other locations in the North Bay area. He was also intimately familiar with San Francisco, where he met his second wife, and where they visited often to attend theater performances. His mother Jean also lived in San Francisco during the mid-70s after she split with husband Miles.

Penn's second wife, Mary Ann Winterrowd, taught for nearly 20 years in the Vallejo Unified School District (1968-1988), spending most of that time at Solano Junior High School, but starting her career at Continuation (People's) High School in Vallejo (1968-70), a school for troubled teens. Gareth and Mary Ann lived in Vallejo, and Penn worked at the Vallejo Public Library, he says from 1972-79.


5) Language skills -- Old Norse, etc.

Penn graduated from UC Berkeley in 1962 with Honors in Medieval German and later, a Master's Degree in Medieval German. Like the Zodiac, he has a command of linguistics. In a Mensa Ecphorizer article entitled Lima Riki, Penn notes that "in a previous incarnation," he used to write limericks "in Old Norse." Penn also made several contributions to Tom Burnam's 1980 book, More Misinformation, including an at-length discussion of the ancient Norse poem Edda and its author, 12th century Norse historian Snorri Sturluson.

A Zodiac letter Penn later commented on mentions Old Norse writing, used in the word "sla." He recently admitted taking "every course in Old Norse offered at UC Berkeley," just a few years prior to the Zodiac murders.


6) Surveying/radian/map-making/military experience

Penn became an Artillery Survey Instructor for the US Army in 1965-67. A U.S. Army artillery surveyor performs astronomical observations; measures azimuths, grid coordinates, and angles on maps; and operates/maintains vehicles, radios, weapons, and other survey equipment in support of artillery operations. Penn remained in the Army reserves from 1967-71 while living in Berkeley and Vallejo.


7) Expert Marksmanship

In the Army, Penn received the highest rifle marksmanship designation available: Expert.


8. Cryptography knowledge

Penn was very close to his father Hugh Scott Penn, a U.S. Army cryptographer during World War II. Gareth Penn has also written at least one serious academic paper about cryptography, which he presented at a conference during the 1990s.


9) Criminology knowledge

Hugh Penn also worked for the California Department of Justice was an early criminal "profiler." He wrote a report about the so-called "East Area Rapist" who tormented Sacramento and Northern California in the 1970s. As "Hugh S. Penn," he also authored several studies of both juvenile criminal behavior, and -- as an associate researcher for the California Highway Patrol -- several auto accident studies. Penn writes that his father collaborated with him on the Zodiac case.


10) Knowledge of poetry and the arts

Penn's mother Jean Sewell Standish was a noted poet who regularly published her works in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic Monthly.


11) Interest in and knowledge of opera

Penn and his wife Mary Ann -- to whom he was married during the murders -- were ardent, long-time fans and supporters of the opera. They held season tickets to the San Francisco Opera they later fought over during their divorce. They also donated money and time to that organization.


12) Knowledge of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera The Mikado

As the Zodiac killer did in his letters to the press, Penn frequently cites Gilbert and Sullivan in his own writing.

a) In Lima Riki from the Ecphorizer, Penn notes that, "While some purists insist on pure rhyme, a contrived or near rhyme, especially in the pointe, heightens the humorous effect, a technique well known to fans of Ogden Nash, Sir William S. Gilbert, and the shaggy-dog story."

b) In a Time Magazine letter to the editor regarding a review of The Mikado in which the reviewer mistakenly attributed the lyrics to Sullivan and the music to Gilbert, Penn wrote: Let's see, now. Sullivan wrote the words, and Gilbert wrote the music. Holmes is the doctor, and Watson the detective. Harpo had the cigar, and Groucho tooted the auto horn. Thanks for setting the record straight.

c) Penn has also signed his emails with a quote from a British duo known for their Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, Flanders and Swann: But people have always eaten people! What else is there to eat? If the Juju had meant us not to eat people, he wouldn't have made them of meat!


13) Knowledge of The Most Dangerous Game

A former student of Mary Ann Penn wrote on RateMyTeachers.com that The Most Dangerous Game was a classroom favorite Mary Ann often taught her English classes. Zodiac frequently referenced this short novel in his taunting letters.


14) Stated admiration of the Zodiac Killer

In Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer, a 1981 story he wrote for New West Magazine, Penn called the Zodiac an artistic genius engaged in a "murderous art project. Other artists had sought to remove their work from the ordinary human perspective. Zodiac trumped them all," Penn wrote. He also expressed great admiration for the "wonderful mind" of Michael O'Hare, the man he accused of the crimes.

15) Placing himself in the Zodiac Crimes

In Times 17, Penn audaciously laid out a scenario whereby, as duty person in charge of daily roll call, he could have falsified an entry and left Fort Sill in October, 1966, taken a military hop to March AFB, and killed Cheri Jo Bates in nearby Riverside. SEE BELOW, PAGE 29 from Times 17

Oddly enough, he was actually in San Francisco that exact month. On leave from Fort Sill, he attended a going away party for a friend and met his second wife Mary Ann.




16) Grew beard after homicides

In an appearance on a WE Television's Case Reopened: The Zodiac, Gareth Penn wore glasses and a beard. The Zodiac made reference to a disguise that could have been a beard in his "bomb letter, i.e., where he was clean-shaven "like the description" on the wanted posters when he did his "thing," but having disguise -- perhaps a full beard -- otherwise.

On the night of her murder, Riverside police connected Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates to a young man, about 25 years of age, wearing a brown beard. Penn says he grew a beard full time during the Zodiac era.




17) Letters-to-the-editor

Gareth Penn's astute, officious, and often biting letters to the editors of Scientific American, Nature, The Economist, at least 15 letters over the years to National Public Radio and even the San Francisco Chronicle have tantalized amateur sleuths as another similarity between Penn and Zodiac.


18) Berkeley's Blue Meanies

In one of his letters, the Zodiac killer referenced the Blue Meanies: Alameda County sheriff deputies responsible for Berkeley's Bloody Thursday People's Park riot. Penn was also familiar with the Blue Meanies.

"In May of 1969, I was standing on the front steps of the duplex in Berkeley which I shared with a person named Gerard," Penn wrote in a Mensa Ecphorizer article entitled Where Were You?. "Gerard and I were both watching a National Guard helicopter circling over the campus of the University of California, which had been the center, over the previous week, of the so-called People's Park disturbances."


19) Long time librarian

Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates was killed outside the Riverside City College library just after studying there. Penn was a long-time librarian who could have had access to school-aged young people in a variety of library settings.


20) Over the top obsessive behavior

Penn has actually registered the following documents -- all about the Zodiac case and Michael O'Hare -- with the US Trademark Office.

Registration Number: TXu-126-336 A Secret kept from all the rest Registered: 16May83
Registration Number: TXu-176-361 Zodiac problems Registered: 29Oct84
Registration Number: TXu-234-140 The Red king's dream Registered: 31Mar86
Registration Number: TXu-238-116 New documents Registered: 7May86
Registration Number: TXu-240-019 Three more documents Registered: 23May86
Registration Number: TXu-254-364 The 13-character cipher Registered: 22Sep86
Registration Number: TXu-354-164 Papers relating to the impending suicide of Michael Henry O'Hare on 17 May 1989 Registered: 15Dec88
Registration Number: TXu-383-923 The Geometry of life and death Registered: 5Sep89
Title on Application: Resolution of the Zodiac mystery on 19 September 1989. Author on Application: Gareth Penn.
Registration Number: TXu-385-039 Language as geometry Registered: 10Aug89
Registration Number: TXu-406-808 Zodiac calendars Registered: 13Feb90
Title on Application: Papers relating to the resolution of the zodiac matter on or about 19 February 1990. Special Codes: 1/B/D//A
Registration Number: TXu-430-480 8790 Registered: 1Aug90
Registration Number: TXu-927-707 The second power: a mathematical analysis of the letters attributed to the Zodiac murderer
Registered: 13Dec99
Registration Number: TXu-937-814 The end : a prediction of the future in six pages Registered: 22Feb2000
Registration Number: TXu-1-044-778 Digital, two-dimensional, private language: The letters of the zodiac murderer Registered: 18Mar02


21) SCA-style Hood

Penn was a long-time member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA, a medieval re-enactment society founded in Berkeley by the author Diana Paxson in 1966. The Zodiac wore a costume/hood reminiscent of an SCA executioner during one of his murders.


22) Abusive, dysfunctional family life

Penn reports that his stepfather, Miles Archibald Standish, was extremely abusive. He reports that his mother, Jean Sewell Penn, went insane and died impoverished.


REFERENCES

1. ^ Magnificent obsession: "Zodiac" finds glory in investigative details
2. ^ Napa County Courts
3. ^ OPORD Analytical
4. ^ Various books and articles by Hugh S. Penn
5. ^ Mensa Ecphorizer
6. ^ Penn, Gareth, The Second Power: A Mathematical Analysis of the Letters Attributed to the Zodiac Murderer and Supplement to Times 17 (self-published booklet 1999).
7. ^ Mt. Diablo and the Radian Theory
8. ^ Zodiac Message Board Archive: Zodiac Fingerprints?
9. ^ George and Corrine Oakes Real Estate.
10. ^ Rowlett, Curt, Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy, Chapter 9, The Z Files: Labyrinth13 Examines the Zodiac Murders, The Rhyme of the Radian, pp. 64-68. (Lulu Press, 2006).
11. ^ Penn, Gareth (writing as "George Oakes") Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer, California Magazine November 1981
12. ^ Book review of Robert Graysmith's Zodiac Unmasked.
13. ^ Penn, Gareth. Not Solved Yet, NY Press, April 23, 2002
14. ^ O'Hare biographical statement
13. ^ Fehrnstrom, Eric. "Author Targets Harvard Lecturer in Zodiac Case" Boston Herald, 29 October 1987
16. ^ One Zero Zero
17. ^ The Geometry of Jane Brewster
18. ^ Bones Are Identified as Those Of Missing Harvard Student, May 2, 1990
19. ^ Wesley, Kevin. "Author links Harvard professor to Webster case" Beverly, Mass. Times, 12 June 1990
20. ^ The Zodiac Machine, Michael P. Butterfield, 1998
21. ^ Times 17: The World According to Gareth
22. ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation: Zodiac Killer Files
23. ^ Letters of Kate Richards O'Hare
24. ^ Rebel Against Injustice: The Life of Frank P. O'Hare
25. ^ Letters of Kate Richards O'Hare
26. ^ Speeches of Kate Richard's O'Hare
27. ^ Works of Berta O'Hare Margoulies
28. ^ Penn notation in Michael O'Hare profile
29. ^ Zodiac expert Ed Neil suggests Gareth Penn DNA Test October 20, 2002
30. ^ Graysmith, Robert, Zodiac (Berkley; reissue edition, January 2007).
31. ^ Zodiac killer message board archive entry
32. ^ Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, p. 29, (The Foxglove Press, 1987)
33. ^ Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, p. 29, (The Foxglove Press, 1987)
34. ^ WE Photograph of Gareth Penn
35. ^ Zodiac bomb letter
36. ^ Oct. 30, 1966 Cheri Jo Bates
37. ^ Cheri Josephine Bates: Possible Zodiac Victim
38. ^ Zodiac Killer Message Board: Penn's Non-Zodiac Writings.
39. ^ "Lima Riki"
40. ^ This Is The Zodiac Speaking; SLA letter
41. ^ Crime Library Zodiac article, SLA letter
42. ^ Time Magazine, July 20, 1994
43. ^ Email about "journal quality," 23 Jul 1997, NMFS Tiburon Laboratory
44. ^ Zodiac Killer Message Board: Penn's Non-Zodiac Writings
45. ^ Cruising the Baja Triangle
46. ^ Where Were You?
47. ^ The Cheri Jo Bates Murder
48. ^ Penn. Gareth S. Gottfried von Strassburg and the Invisible Art Colloquia Germanica 1972
49. ^ The New Republic, April 25, 1970
50. ^ Zodiac Mikado letter
51. ^ Brustein, Robert, Revolution as Theatre: Notes on the New Radical Style (Liveright Publishing Corporation, September 1970).
52. ^ Oakes, George: Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer, California Magazine, November 1981
53. ^ With Malice Aforethought, Weekly Scientist, October 2009
54. ^ Zodiac Killer message board archive: The Gareth Penn Show
55. ^ U.S. Copyright Office Search
56. ^ VALLEJO TIMES HERALD, Wed., 23 Oct 1991
57. ^ Diane Merrill Fine Arts and Crafts
58. ^ Mensa Ecphorizer

...very interesting...and i appreciate the amount, detail, and organization of this information, Mike M...

I have some questions, then...

All of this information would be waayyyy more than enough, where I live anyway, to get a "probable cause" type of warrant to search Penn's home, cars, a summer home or motor home if he had one, any lockers, storage areas he has/had, his work area, etc.

What is the speculation as to why LE (any level, local, State, FBI or whatever) never did this, or if they did, why they did not search him/his property, etc. comprehensively and repeatedly??

The man has had, according to HIS OWN recollections, numerous run-ins with neighbors, coworkers, law enforcement and people he doesn't even know, really...His reaction to one such incident was to load some type of shotgun and start shooting randomly on his property, apparently...

I think any time he was/is "heard from" whether it be a new Z "publication" or an incident, LE should have gotten/get a warrant and gone/go back in there, just as they did with ALA...

The other question I have is this - wan't Penn's mother diagnosed with schizophrenia (genetic issues), because if she was, this could possibly be within the realm of possibilities for explaining a lot of the "thought patterns" and "attributions" that are going on here (think of the mathematician Nash, for example)....Schizophrenia, while it is a severe mental illness is on a spectrum, like anything else, so it is possible to have a relatively high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic person, or a person "functioning" (e.g., holding down a job, and having a partner and/or children) with schizoaffective disorder, for example...

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.

Also: http://www.paranoidschizophrenia.co.uk/index2.php

(This gentleman gives us a very candid and detailed account of himself and his illness...)

Also character-illogical traits such as NPD or borderline personality disorder can occur concomitantly with schizophrenia, as well...

Any degreed mental health professionals want to take a gander at this??

I have to post this....

This is a sample from the schizophrenic gentleman's website (I posted above) of what his writing becomes like when he is ill; when he is not ill, his writing is quite good, lucid, and shows a man of intelligence and thoughtfulness...

Maybe it is just me....but I think you can see elements of this type of thing in the Z letters and the one decrypted code...

http://www.paranoidschizophrenia.co.uk/writingwhenill.php

Sorry for the small digression, now back to Mr. Penn...

Zam—

Here are my farewell remarks, if you want to post them on your website.

Thanks again.

Gareth

I originally set a limit of fifty questions, and I think we have gone over the limit, so I will take my leave of you now. I am grateful to Zam for her time and effort in acting as middleman, and I would also like to say a general thank-you to those who put forward questions. I hope we have all learned something from this dialogue. I’m not sure I am grateful for having been reminded of Ray Grant, but I was interested to learn that he has been slandering me — and, as I infer from a couple of questions, my father as well; that was news to me. At all events, if you want to review this exchange, I have posted it at gz4216.blogspot.com.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

And here you go, I decided to copy and paste for easy reading. Zincerely, Zam*


Do you have any handwriting samples of O’Hare’s, and if so, will you share them?

I published a book titled TIMES 17 twenty-three years ago. It contains several pages of handwriting comparisons, the Zodiac’s handwriting on one side of the page and Michael O’Hare’s on the other. The O’Hare samples were obtained by private investigator Whit Caldwell (Dow Services Group, Boston), drawing on sources ranging from public documents to O’Hare’s trash can.

Is it possible that in addition to what appears to be a full blown case of narcissistic personality disorder, Z. may also have had Asperger’s syndrome, evidenced by, among other things, his obsession with esoteric topics such as the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado?

We have over two dozen texts from the Zodiac, of which only two quote the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I wouldn’t call that evidence of obsession. Speculation about psychiatric issues puts us in very nebulous territory and doesn’t seem to have much practical value; forty years’ worth of it in this case has led nowhere. I think it is much more to the point to examine how the Zodiac uses the quotes from The Mikado. In a lengthy letter postmarked in July 1970, he writes about the torments he intends to inflict on thirteen slaves that he has “wateing” [sic] for him in “Paradice” [ditto]. The next section is a lengthy and garbled quote from The Mikado. That is followed in turn by a postscript labeled as such with a “PS.” This is a letter, and letters have parts, each of which has a name and a function. I suggest that the torture-part of the text is the body of the letter and that the Mikado-quote is the signature following the body. Signatures ordinarily precede postscripts, so the quote is in the right place to qualify as one.

A skeptic might reply, “But the author is a person who goes around shooting people in the head. If he isn’t constrained in his actions by social niceties such as not shooting people in the head, why should he feel himself constrained by the rules of letter-writing? Why don’t we just read this as Body Part One, Body Part Two, skip the signature and go straight to the postscript?” I would be hard put to refute this argument; in fact, on the basis of the evidence on hand, I would have to call it a draw. Fortunately, the author provides a second opportunity to examine the problem. In a letter postmarked in January 1974, he writes a brief comment on a movie he has seen, then writes a closing line (“Signed, yours truley [sic]”), which is followed first by another quote from The Mikado and then by a postscript (also labeled “PS”). This time, there can’t be any doubt: the Mikado-quote falls between “Signed, yours truley” and “PS,” and the only thing that can do that is a signature. I suggest that the reason for the second Mikado-quote is that in retrospect, the author did not think the first letter made clear enough that the quote was a signature, and that this second effort was intended to make it very clear.

Without offering an explanation (I have one, but I want to discuss it at another time and place), I would suggest that the useful question to ask is, “How does it serve the author’s purposes to use a quote from The Mikado as a signature?” In a report titled “On being sane in insane places” (Science 179:250-258), David L. Rosenhan observes that mental health professionals pathologize normal behavior because it takes place in a particular setting. The way most have treated the Zodiac is to see his work as the product of psychopathology because of the setting it occurs in — a homicide case; as already noted, this approach has never yielded anything of practical value. I suggest that what the Zodiac is doing is actually normal behavior, in this case letter-writing, with window dressing designed to make the reader look in the wrong place for answers, such as a psychiatric manual. If he is using homicide as a medium of communication, the homicide itself may be that window dressing, and we might profit from setting the murder to one side in order to examine what he is communicating by committing it.

Have you ever thought about shutting down Chris Farmer’s website or suing for defamation? If not, why?

I have thought about it but obviously haven’t done so. Lawyers spend a lot of time researching precedents, so before answering this question directly, I’d like to write a few words about the precedent set by Michael O’Hare when confronted with the same situation.

On 29 May 1987, Michael O’Hare and I were the joint guests of talk-show host Anthony Hilder on radio station KCZN in Ventura, California. Hilder asked O’Hare why he wasn’t suing me. O’Hare responded that he had consulted counsel and had been informed that he couldn’t prove that he had been damaged by allegations of homicide and therefore could not file a lawsuit. In fact, as any first-year law student will be happy to tell you after completing the mandatory torts course, common law provides that a plaintiff seeking damages for an allegation of the commission of a felony does not have to prove that he has been damaged. If I were to allege that you pick your nose in public and you wanted to sue me for saying it, you would have to demonstrate that you had suffered some kind of harm: you had been passed over for a promotion, your girlfriend had left you, your tires had been slashed, your neighbors were dumping trash on your lawn — as a result of my having published the statement about you picking your nose in public. But if I alleged that you had held up a 7-Eleven with a sawed-off shotgun, that layer of proof would be removed; the court would assume that you had been damaged, and your attorney could go straight to the next item, proving that the allegation was not true. O’Hare’s answer had no legal basis whatsoever; it is inconceivable that any attorney could have given him such advice. A few months later, the news media in the Boston area became interested in this subject, and several of them approached O’Hare to request an interview. He referred inquirers to his attorney, Jeffrey Rudman (Hale & Dorr). But when the media tried to contact Rudman, he dodged them by having his receptionist tell them that he was not in, on another line, or in a meeting. Cornered by Boston Herald reporter Eric Fehrnstrom, Rudman would say only that he had advised his client to keep his mouth shut. Not long afterward, the Herald devoted two pages to TIMES 17, in a story illustrated by a photograph of Michael O’Hare set side-by-side with the SFPD police artist sketch of the Zodiac. Rudman uttered not a peep of protest; he said nothing in defense of his client, let alone blustering about a lawsuit. Rudman was a peculiar choice of attorney. My allegations, if proven false, would constitute a tort, and to prosecute a tort, you need a litigator, a lawyer who earns his fee by suing people in a courtroom. Rudman was a mergers and acquisitions specialist; his job consisted of brokering business deals. Unless he had been divorced, ticketed for speeding, or summoned for jury duty, he had probably never set foot in a court of law.

Years later, after I had been interviewed for a Zodiac segment on America’s most wanted, the producer of the segment notified O’Hare by certified delivery mail that he was going to be named on the air. The program got a frightening letter written on letterhead from a San Francisco attorney named Jeffrey Nussbaum (“Jeffrey” is a running theme in the legal aspect of this story). Nussbaum did not threaten a lawsuit but couched his observations in the subjunctive mood (“If x were to happen, then y might result”), never committing to a promise to sue but suggesting what might happen if there were to be a lawsuit (a parallel is provided by O. J. Simpson’s book If I did it [2006], in which the author writes not about what he did but what might have happened if he had). Nussbaum is another odd choice of attorney in a case like this, since he is a real estate specialist. Like Rudman, he earns his living by making deals and writing contracts.

O’Hare’s odd choices in legal counsel appear to be explained by inferences drawn from biography. After his first wife passed the bar exam, she was hired by Hale & Dorr, Rudman’s firm, and worked there for several years. Nussbaum had gone to Harvard and his time there overlapped with O’Hare’s tenure. The inference I draw from these facts is that O’Hare had social ties with the two Jeffreys and had prevailed on them to put up at least a show of representing him as a personal favor. They may yet contradict me, but I suspect that he did not pay either of them a nickel. On three other occasions, O’Hare actually threatened a lawsuit, but his attorneys in these cases were the FBI (twice) and the California Department of Justice (once). Neither of these law enforcement agencies represents private citizens in tort cases, and they also do not charge a fee for threatening people with lawsuits. Since O’Hare was not willing to pay out money to prosecute such a suit or even to threaten one on law-firm letterhead, I dismissed these threats as bluster.

I don’t believe that O’Hare has any experience of litigation (other than his divorce from his first wife, in which he represented himself). I do. Because Mike Martin has made an issue of a lawsuit in which I was involved in the mid-1990s, I have devoted some space to it at another location (d550.blogspot.com, Appendix 2). There, you can read about Penn v. Winterrowd and the kind of case my side had against the defendant. It was, to put it mildly, a slam-dunk. Nonetheless, it dragged on for three years and consumed tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs. I was exposed to high-quality, professionally written slander, compared to which the slander Farmer puts out on his website is pathetically sophomoric. Our legal consultants in Santa Ana, a firm with much experience in cases like ours, told us that we had an unbeatable case and that victory was guaranteed, but we could realistically expect to have to wait another three to five years to get into court and to have to expend an additional $50,000 in costs. And even though there was no doubt that we would be awarded damages, there was no assurance that we would ever be able to collect a penny from the defendant. (If you need confirmation of the financially Pyrrhic nature of legal victories, ask the Goldman family about their litigation against O. J. Simpson.) Fortunately, the defendant was more daunted by the prospect than we were, and she folded first. Our attorney at this stage was a daughter of mine, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank her again for her successful management of our case. I had originally retained another attorney, who filed the lawsuit in the wrong county and was sanctioned $1500 by the judge for doing so. She billed me for the $1500, I refused to pay, and she sued me in Small Claims Court, creating a lawsuit within a lawsuit. She lost her own case, by the way. The whole episode was straight out of Bleak house. File a lawsuit, and you can count on many nights of lying awake stewing about it — and that can go on for years. Litigation doesn’t just consume your bank account; it also consumes your life.

Over the three years that it took to get a measure of justice, I went to sea on three research cruises. Babbling like the Ancient Mariner, I gave the crew an earful every time I boarded ship (the only thing missing was the albatross). In between CTD casts, I filled in the starboard winch operator on the progress of my lawsuit. After having listened to my jeremiad for three years and having been appalled and outraged by the defendant’s behavior, Anthony offered me some cogent if impractical advice. “Next time you want to sue somebody,” he said, “don’t hire a lawyer. Go to a sporting goods store and buy a baseball bat. Then go to the ATM and get fifty dollars. Then go to the bus station and find a wino. Give the baseball bat to the wino. Then show the wino the fifty dollars and tell him you will give it to him after he uses the baseball bat to kneecap your opponent. It’s quick, cheap, and painful.” I had to admit that his advice had merit, and if I had been President, Anthony would have been on my short list for appointment to the next vacancy on the Supreme Court; his counsel had the qualities that Johann Winckelmann had found in classical Greek sculpture, noble simplicity and quiet greatness. But it had practical drawbacks, such as being prosecuted for aggravated assault.

In considering what to do about the Farmer situation, I had to bear in mind my own experience with litigation as well as the vicarious kind (I used to work for a company called Litigation Support Corporation, where I got to participate in other people’s lawsuits, the legal equivalent of second-hand smoke). It appeared to me that the course that would result in the least aggravation and cost to me had two components: 1) letting Farmer make a spectacle of himself, which costs me nothing; and 2) countering his bullshit with parody, which would take me only a few hours and would be a source of entertainment for me and, I hoped, anybody who read it, which you can do, if you haven’t already, at d550.blogspot.com. I had fun writing it, and I hope you get nearly as much fun out of reading it.

I confess to being disappointed that, given the opportunity to ask me any and all questions, no one has asked why the other blog is titled D550. I think that answering that unasked question will wrap up this topic. Austrian musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch catalogued the work of Franz Schubert, assigning a number to each. Schubert’s works have since gone both by a verbal title and a catalogue number prefixed with the letter D for the name of the cataloguer. D550 is the Lied (art song) “The trout,” Schubert’s best known work in that genre. I intend it to be read as a commentary on Farmer and his ilk, and I think the text speaks for itself (my translation):

“In a limpid brook, a skittish trout shot gaily past like a speeding arrow. I stood upon the shore and watched, with sweet peace of mind, as the fish merrily bathed in the clear water of the brook. A fisherman with rod in hand stood on the bank and looked on coldly as the fish disported itself. As long as the water stayed clear — so I thought — he would never catch the trout on his hook. But in the end, the thief grew tired of waiting; he maliciously muddied the brook, and before I could even think about it, his rod jerked, and the fish was flapping on the his line. And I, my blood boiling, saw the deceived fish reeled in.”

Posted by D550 at 9:34 AM
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All of that "evidence" deals with profile information, charcater and propemsity. NONE of it is solid evidence, physical evidence or even compelling circumstantial evidence.

You would not be able to get a search warrant based on that.