Gareth Penn

I may have made a mistake when I said Berta O'Hare was a Holocaust surivivor. The entry is not clear if they are talking about WW I or WWII:

Expressionist sculptor Berta O'Hare Margoulies was born in 1907 in Lovitz, Poland to a Polish-Jewish family that migrated to Belgium during World War I. Her wartime experiences shaped much of her humanistic themes of her artwork. Her father was imprisoned, and she and the others, including three siblings, escaped to Holland and then England where for seven years, she attended the Howard School in Simsbury Park. The family moved to New York City.

AK - In any event it can be said that she was a "SURVIVOR OF GERMAN AGRESSION AND ANTI-SEMITISM">

The point still stands. A Jewish refuge from German Imperialism (be it WW I or WWII) and/or her son is NOT going to have a fetish for LUGER pistols, Norse symbolism and langauge.

And her newspaper obit says she lived in NY, NJ and MA - didn't move to CA until 1991.

Her work was humanistic and quite lovely. There is much a chance that she was the Zodiac as my grandmother.

If anyone has evidence to the contrary they may post it...but you have a long mountain to climb here.

Post from Back2Good
I thought our discussions on the topic "Gottfried von Strassburg and The Invisible Art" and how it relates - or not - to the Zodiac Killer, could best be served in its own little corner.

Gareth Penn attempts to demonstrate in his 1972 essay that there is something in the structure of Gottfried von Strassburg’s “Minnegrotte,” (an episode of "Tristan") which is suggestive of a genre or archetype which underlies many different sorts of allegory, and such a structure is provided by the memory-theater.

Yes, Penn's article has well been described as dense. But as I read through it there were certain themes that seemed to jump out at me. The reason these themes seemed familiar is that they are also present in another body of literature by Gareth Penn - Times 17 - written a little over a decade later.

Times 17 refers back to the Zodiac Killer murders of the 60's and 70's (GVSATIA was completed by 1972). Times 17 was actually written in the 80's, and in it Gareth Penn attempted to demonstrate that the Zodiac Killer had already planned back in the late 60's to murder his final victim - which turned out to be (according to Penn) Harvard college student Joan Webster - during the 1980 Thanksgiving weekend, in Boston, Massachusetts.

These themes that Penn writes about - invisible geometry, ancient language, Dante's "Infierno," "Paradise," architecture, binary arithmetic, Morse code, Kabbalah, ciphers, symbolisms of colors such as red and white, etc, etc, can be found in, or are closely related to - as evidenced in the footnotes on pages 124 & 125 - his essay GVSATIA, and also throughout Times 17.

It is strange that Gareth Penn attempts to utilize these concepts in Times 17 to prove that Michael O'Hare is the Zodiac, when, as far as I am aware of, they are not present in the any of O'Hare's published literature, at least that which has been made public by Gareth Penn.

Our challenge, I believe, would be to prove instead that these themes are present only in Gareth Penn's literature, and in the Zodiac literature, and/or displayed in what is known of the Zodiac's behavior & M.O.

One subject which particularly interests me is to what degree Frances Amelia Yates influenced Gareth Penn, with her books "The Art of Memory" (1966), and "The World Theater" (1969). Another topic which Yates wrote about is "Renaissance astral mnemonics," which is a fascinating topic in and of itself, and may be perhaps deeply significant in understanding the Zodiac's behavior.

Picture this, the world (or the world in the mind of the Zodiac) as an open theater, where he is the producer, the audience, the stage set-up crew, the costume designer...and the main protagonist. Now, look up at the theater's ceiling, the sky, and what do you see? The constellations of the Zodiac. Where does this production take place? Wherever he wants. He just maps out the coordinates (radians, BM's, etc) and the function is on. Where does he find the cast of actors for his love-allegories? All over the place. Lovers Lanes, picnics, beaches. And the best part is that he can replay a show, over and over, in his mind. All he has to do is open up that little box, or that can, and peek in at the blood stained piece of shirt, the earring, the necklace, and he relives the entire scene all over again.

http://www.opordanalytical.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=301&start=0


Since were talking about Penn and the possible motives he might have to accuse O`Hare.

Ray Grant wrote:

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.

Hi Ray,

That's right, I think I even posted the page of your book that eventually found it's way to Opord. Nice discovery there, sorry I had forgotten.

So now one has to wonder, with all the names in the world available to him, why Zodiac would choose to name himself after an alphabetic conversion of Pi, and then how he arrived at the particular name he chose. Did he choose the name first and then see if it fit Pi? Doubtfull, not that many words fit Pi, CAD, ACNE, CANE, ICON, COIN. So, assuming he had no prior knowledge that ZODIAC fit, he would have had to have sat down and listed all the alphabetic posiblilites of Pi. Using 7 decimal places, this is what I come up with.

3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6

C A D A E I B F
C A D A E I Z
C A D O I B F
C A D O I Z
C N A E I B F
C N A E I Z
C N O I B F
C N O I Z

He would then have played around with the available combinations until he stumbled upon Zodiac.

So that's my guess how it would have happened.

Hi AK....As you know, they have served warrants on folks with much less...

I'm still with you on Bertha M-O'Hare....she comes across as a very loving, humanistic type of person....I completely agree with you...

Zamantha....you should work for the United Nations....you can bring everyone together and get a yeoman's work done; thank you for all of your efforts and the tremendous amount of work with all of this!

Bentley, thank you for making inforamtion that would otherwise be very difficult to access available to us...with grace...

Azazel....see my previous post on high-functioning paranoid schizophrenics; if his mother was diagnosed with this, changces are rather high that....(well yo ucan fill in the blank here...)...

Hi Ray-

Quick question: IF Penn and O'Hare are mixed up in this together, why the book T17? What if the police took Penn seriously and made O'Hare's life miserable? What if the only people who could see the truth was a militant army of other, outraged Mensans (like you), and O'Hare were sentenced to a life of being harrassed and accused year after year by this "mob." Was he willing possibly to risk losing a series of jobs in his chosen field due to this type of harrassment? Maybe he'd even find himself unemployable in in the stuffy world of academia because of his "baggage," depending on how loud the uproar became.

Was this what Penn and O'Hare wanted to risk in exchange for revealing their nefarious partnership to the world?

Just curious as to the risk/benefit ratio here. For the most part, it didn't turn out the way I described above (except for some things that you, as the sole member of the "Mensan mob," apparently did) but could they have predicted the future back then?

Mike

"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." Gareth Penn today

Again,remember, Gareth wrote to me a full year after I had stopped writing to him. The last time I contacted him was in the wee hours of May 18, 1989, on the phone, to tell him that Michael O'Hare had NOT committed suicide that night at The MIT Tower. Gareth wrote to me on May 23, 1989 to admit his prediction was wrong (the letter was presented as a general mailing to those following his work), and then again, finally, on May 22, 1989, to tell me that Joan Webster's body had been found in Essex County, Massachusetts. If he had negative feelings about me that would make him loath to even be reminded of me, he must have acquired them in the last two decades, and not as a result of any contact with me.

Needless to say, I'm sure Gareth has been aware of my accusations for the past 20 years, since Michael O'Hare would have told him about them.

I've been notified by the site that my friend Mike Rodelli has posted while I was composing this, and his post is addressed to me. There's no one associated with the Zodiac case that I have more respect for than Mike R (there are maybe a handful of people that I have AS MUCH respect for), but I have to go do a couple things here at the house. Mike, I'll get back to you shortly. I will also get back to Tahoe27 on my Intro thread shortly; I've gotten a bit bogged down here on the Gareth Penn thread, so much so that I haven't even clicked on the Michael O'Hare thread yet, and he's my chief suspect! Mike R and Tahoe27 and Bentley also, I will talk to you soon.

Zabagliona wrote:

...very interesting...and i appreciate the amount, detail, and organization of this information, Mike M... 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 other question I have is this - wasn't Penn's mother diagnosed with schizophrenia...?

On the first question, you've all been treated to what Gareth is like in an interview situation. How many of you got lost in all the verbiage? How hard was it to keep track of what he was saying? The average impatient police officer, especially from that era, would get desperately impatient with Gareth, failing to pay attention to the real point: That here was a man repeatedly and obsessively inserting himself into the investigation, the biggest red flag of all among serial criminal profilers.

But then, criminal profiling wasn't a science back then. It is now, and a qualified criminal profiler would almost certainly look a bit more closely. I'm not saying that as any kind of expert, merely as someone looking at the common-sense, factual material contained in that 22-part "Penn profile."

On the second question, Gareth says his mother was a diagnosed schizophrenic. He provided me with some hair-raising accounts of life with her (and her husband, Penn's stepfather Miles) that I will share here at some point, given Gareth's forthcoming-ness (is that a word?) about everything else and the family's reluctance to talk about or refute any of it.

He sent it to me in a series of long memoirs over two months last summer. The memoirs have everything: mother, madness, mayhem, murder. It's very clear, too. Very well written. None of that excess verbiage. For once, Mr. Penn is being entirely candid.

Here's a sample. Gareth is talking about his mother Jean and her 2nd husband, Miles.


Miles was intellectually very circumscribed and didn’t offer her the kind of company she had enjoyed with my father, who had his faults but was a witty guy and a voracious reader. Miles was also annoyingly idiosyncratic, vulgar, and manifested a lack of interest in personal hygiene. These qualities didn’t really impress themselves on a six-year-old, but one thing did.

One day, I was playing with the cocker spaniel, and I guess he thought I was being too rough with the dog. Suddenly, I was on my back, and he was pounding me in the face with his fists, yelling “See how you like it!”

I got a bloody nose, a split lip, and the inside of my mouth was bleeding where it had been pounded into a tooth. I ran crying to my mommy, who had words with Miles, who from then on never laid a finger on me, confining himself to aspersing me, in the third person, in my presence, every opportunity he could get. He had a passive-aggressive streak in addition to his other great qualities, and starting with the cocker spaniel incident, I lost whatever respect and affection I might have felt for him.

For the next eleven years, he and I were at swords’ point every waking minute. It wore down my poor mother, who had to act as the middleman between two antagonists who refused to talk to one another....

...In my senior year of high school, I applied to Berkeley and was accepted, which made it a family tradition — my father had graduated from UC — and shook the dust of Campbell from my sandals. My sister (Miles’ daughter), seven years younger than me, also went to Berkeley. Four years later, she got married. Three weeks after the wedding, Mother ran away. She took $3000 out of the bank and got on a bus for Monterey, from where she sent out lengthy handwritten letters exposing Miles as the ringleader of a homosexual conspiracy whose purpose was world domination.

My sister and I drove to Monterey and managed to trick her into getting into the car; we drove her to a mental health center in San Jose, where we all had a conversation with a doctor, who after listening to Mother rant for a while, concluded, “Jean, you have what we call a thought problem.” She spent thirty days there, making ashtrays in occupational therapy, before being released with a trank prescription.

Over the next few years, she did all right for a while; then she would say to herself, I feel so good I don’t need to take these pills anymore, and before long, she would run away again. Her letters became more and more vile, where they related to Miles, and lengthier and lengthier. I think the longest was over forty pages. After a while, others got involved.

My father, it turned out, had murdered his third wife by beating her to death with a length of pipe, and while he was not a member of the homosexual conspiracy, my brother-in-law, his friends, and the minister who had officiated at my sister’s wedding were implicated. My sister and I were the only ones she spared. She got all this information from a disembodied spirit named Ace who talked to her through a ouija board. In time, she learned to dispense with the ouija board, taking up automatic writing. Automatic writing is a mediumistic practice; instead of having the spirit speak through your mouth, it guides your hand as you write.

Finally, she bolted one last time and stayed gone for nine years. She lived in an SRO hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district (skid row) and refused to have any contact with anyone.

Unbelieveable. I go away for a couple of days and all hell breaks out and -- this is the unbelieveable part -- I'm not the cause of IT!!! A first!

Anyhow, I just want to say that I think Tahoe and Tracers are amazing. I can't imagine anyone being angry with them for something either said. They are two of the most sensible posters I know. But I haven't read the thread post by post yet. I gotta say this: I'm depressed that this thread has had over 3500 views. It just amazes and frustrates me. But at least MikeM did post some specific things about Penn that he thinks makes him an interesting suspect. That's progress and I welcome it. That said, I entirely agree with Solar Pons's post on page 16.

rand wrote:

Unbelieveable. I go away for a couple of days and all hell breaks out and -- this is the unbelieveable part -- I'm not the cause of IT!!! A first!

Anyhow, I just want to say that I think Tahoe and Tracers are amazing. I can't imagine anyone being angry with them for something either said. They are two of the most sensible posters I know. But I haven't read the thread post by post yet. I gotta say this: I'm depressed that this thread has had over 3500 views. It just amazes and frustrates me. But at least MikeM did post some specific things about Penn that he thinks makes him an interesting suspect. That's progress and I welcome it. That said, I entirely agree with Solar Pons's post on page 16.

Yes, I Concur Tahoe and Tracers are amazing, and they know their Z stuff for sure. They have both been a HUGH help to me on different occasions, and I also call them my friends. Also Mike M. Is a great guy, and a total Penn expert. I for one, totally appreciate that. I admire everyone who takes on a POI and researches them to the fullest. That goes for you also Rand, and your research. This helps all of us be able to read, learn, study, research and decide if we think the POI is for sure a possible one. This thread has gotten a lot of hits because a lot of team work went into making it happen. I actually would like to thank Penn for his part in allowing us to ask him our questions. I'm still myself learning more about Ray G. but I'm very pleased that he is here and able to show us his side of the story. There's a lot of different personality's here, sometimes the trick for all us to get along is to active listen to their perception.

I know there will be more posted in this Thread on Penn, so everyone please be patient with us, that must know more. I , Zam am one of them. I find the twists and turns of Penn's writings and games very interesting. Sometimes i think he
could write something that is a clew, and we might just over look it. So, if he interests you, please go back an re read all his answers, and post your thoughts here in a positive way even if you disagree. This forum is here for all us to learn as much as possible and to also have fun doing it. So, let's all get along even if we are on different sides of Z Page. K (<--- looKz like a 3 stroke K to me, >>grin<<)

That makes two people on my IGNORE list! I love the IGNORE button!

Hi Mike R,

Again, the intent of Times 17 was to stir up interest in the case. I don’t think any of the conspirators believed the public would suspect what was really going on, so they planned to have Gareth Penn eventually give out hints about the crimes.

I have to mention a couple things here to clear up some misconceptions:

1, Gareth Penn did NOT originally name Michael O’Hare as the Zodiac killer, at least within the context of his Mensa articles and mailings. If I’m able to get my scanner working, I’ll download his original 16-page follow-up to “The Calculus Of Evil” (Mensa Bulletin, July/August 1985), where he leads people to Michael O’Hare but doesn’t actually name him. This does demonstrate some hesitancy along the lines you’re talking about. Gareth wasn’t sure if Mensans would be able to see instantly what the police couldn’t grasp at all.

2, The Zodiac Project had a deadline: Friday, August 11, 1989. On that date, Michael O’Hare was going to blow up The MIT Tower and fire on people in downtown Boston from the roof of The Liberty Mutual Building. So Gareth knew, in the summer of 1987, that the denouement of The Zodiac Project was less than two years away, and the likelihood that anyone would realize what was going on and do something to stop it in that short a time was remote.
He was wrong about that, which is why we’re all is this current situation of . . . whatever you want to call it: stalemate, zugzwang . . . or limbo. I’ve accused them publicly, but they can’t sue me, and I can’t get the police to act.

How, exactly, were police going to make O’Hare’s life miserable? Gareth already knew, before he put out Times 17, that police agencies weren’t taking his identification seriously. Times 17 wasn’t aimed at police agencies; it was aimed at people like you and me, who might see that the Zodiac was too sophisticated to be some unemployed derelict like Arthur Leigh Allen.

There’s no such thing as a militant Mensan. Gareth and I were friends for several years partly because we saw the situation within Mensa the same way. Mensans are generally people who were born with high IQs and have decided to rest on their laurels. They want to belong to an exclusive club, but they don’t want to get up off their asses and contribute something to the world the way other social organizations do. Gareth and I were part of the activist minority, and we both eventually left in disgust.

Again, Michael O’Hare knew he only had a couple years to live, so putting part of the story out was worth the risk of people actually believing it (which they didn’t).

But you raise an interesting point. If you look at Michael O’Hare’s progress in his profession up until the year 1989, it’s surprisingly slight. He had several degrees from Harvard, and he’d been an assistant professor at MIT, and yet, at the time I pinpoint for The Terminus Event, he was still just a lecturer in Public Policy at the JFK School.
My guess is, he didn’t care what his job was, since he knew he wasn’t going to be sticking around.

Then, that day, he detected police in the target zones (I put them there). Keep in mind, he had two decades to scout out those locations, and his Ph. D. dissertation was on room usage within office buildings. Any variation in the lighting pattern would have been a red flag to him, so he didn’t show up. I’m guessing he walked around in a bit of a daze for several months, and then my mailing to Harvard in November 1990 caught him with his pants down. Harvard gave him an ultimatum: sue Ray Grant, or leave. He left.

It’s interesting to note that Michael O’Hare was something of a cipher himself in the years leading up to 1989. Since then, with a new base of operations at Cal-Berkeley, he’s been a lot more vocal, actually has a video on YouTube, and, of course, did that article in The Washington Monthly. With his Zodiac years behind him, he has actually become what he only seemed to be before: an academic professional with a lot of high-end credentials. And to think . . . he owes it all to me.

MikeM wrote:

Zabagliona wrote:

...very interesting...and i appreciate the amount, detail, and organization of this information, Mike M... 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 other question I have is this - wasn't Penn's mother diagnosed with schizophrenia...?

On the first question, you've all been treated to what Gareth is like in an interview situation. How many of you got lost in all the verbiage? How hard was it to keep track of what he was saying? The average impatient police officer, especially from that era, would get desperately impatient with Gareth, failing to pay attention to the real point: That here was a man repeatedly and obsessively inserting himself into the investigation, the biggest red flag of all among serial criminal profilers.
.[/i]

I for one got totally lost in his verbiage. I read and re read, an plan on rereading again. It's difficult for me to think like him!? And yes, back in the late 60's early 70's....the average police officer would have been impatient, just like some people are impatient now and don't want to read any more of his writings.
Thanks Mike M. for posting the infor. about his Mom and Step Dad, I found that very interesting. Those were his formation years, and that type of stuff leaves scars for sure. Looking forward to you telling us more!!!!

Graysmith repeatedly inserted himself into the investigation.

So did Allen.

Thats weak sauce in my book for thinking someone is a serial killer.

Read John Douglas - look for prior minor offenses like peeping, assaults; look for the "homicidial trilogy" - torture of animals, arson, bedwetting into teens; look for sexual dysfunction and lack of normal sexual relationships.

(Allen would fit most of Douglas' criteria even though I do NOT think he was Z...He was one f-ed up individual... )

But Allen was a criminal ... a serial child molestor.

The Douglas criteria is to ID serial offenders...usually serial killers, but can be serial rapists, serial arsonists, etc.

He said that in studying serial killers, the overwhelming majority had at least two of the three in the homicidial trilogy. They also often found the prior minor crimes like peeping, B & E, assault, sexual misdemenanors. And the majority had an inability to form normal relationships.

To my knowledge Penn does NOT have any of these, nor does O'Hare, nor his mother.

Majority... What is the point?

AK Wilks wrote:

Graysmith repeatedly inserted himself into the investigation. So did Allen.
That's weak sauce in my book for thinking someone is a serial killer.

You're half right. It's "weak sauce" if you're looking at a disorganized serial offender. But the Zodiac Killer -- as is true with
most serial murderers -- has always been considered an "organized serial offender."

Read Louis B. Schlesinger, Serial Offenders: Current Thought, Recent Findings
2003, CRC Press -- or any number of related criminology texts.

The Organized Serial Offender "often injects himself/herself into the investigation," which is one of the key
defining characteristics that distinguishes organized from disorganized serial criminals.

Organized Serial Offenders are also characterized by:

Antisocial, narcissistic, or psychopathic personality

Have wives, lovers, girlfriends, families

If male, live with a woman

Good to excellent verbal skills

Physically attractive

History of behavior problems/conflicts with authority
(not necessarily law enforcement -- could be on the
job)

One of the common misconceptions I see on these forums comes from people who are trying to compare POIs to disorganized serial offenders, who have an entirely different set of characteristics.

AK Wilks wrote:

The Douglas criteria is to ID serial offenders...usually serial killers, but can be serial rapists, serial arsonists, etc.

He said that in studying serial killers, the overwhelming majority had at least two of the three in the homicidial trilogy. They also often found the prior minor crimes like peeping, B & E, assault, sexual misdemenanors. And the majority had an inability to form normal relationships.

To my knowledge Penn does NOT have any of these, nor does O'Hare, nor his mother.

Again, that criteria applies to disorganized serial killers, not organized serial killers. Though I'm not sure what misdemenanors are, it looks like you're trying to compare apples and oranges. Most organized serial killers can indeed form normal relationships (they often have wives and families) and while they may have had trouble with authority, most are careful to avoid trouble with law enforcement. "Authority" can mean anything from a boss to a parent, and shouldn't be construed to always mean the law.

MikeM wrote:

Quote :

Organized Serial Offenders are also characterized by:

Antisocial, narcissistic, or psychopathic personality

The same characteristics can be seen with a Disorganized serial offender.

Zabagliona wrote:

...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??

Zabaglonia, you are correct.

"Again, that criteria applies to disorganized serial killers, not organized serial killers. "

WRONG, it applies to both.

Seriously, you should read some of the John Douglas books, Mindhunter/Anatomy of Motive/Cases That Haunt Us.

And look at a lot of case histories of serial killers.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, particularly in the field of abnormal human psychology.

But there are demonstrated remarkable patterns when you look at major serial offenders, and Douglas is explicit that this includes orgainized, disorganized and mixed profile. He shows that at least two of the three in the "homicidal trilogy" were present in the vast majority of cases - at a young age torture/abuse of animals, arsons/minor firestarting and bedwetting into teens. He also shows a majority have either minor prior offenses such as peeping, B & E, sex charges, assaultive behavior and/or military court martials, discipline issues at school, inability to hold a job and mostly a lack of normal relationships. To my knowledge Penn has NONE of these qualities or traits - and you are saying he was a prolific and brutal serial killer. Douglas would laugh at this and say it is a non-starter, as would virtually every experienced detective, attorney or criminal psychologist.

I wouldn't rely totally on these psych and background issues IF there was compelling physical evidence or even strong circumstantial evidence. With Penn there is none of this either.

In all my converstaions with detectives on the Zodiac case, NONE has mentioned Penn as a suspect, they don't even regard him as a serious investigator of the case, and he is not at all viewed as a serious suspect. Are they all wrong, and OPORD and you are right? Highly doubtful.

You are way, way, WAY over valuing the sometime serial killer trait of injecting into the investigation. When Douglas discusses this, he gives examples of killers who volunteered to be on a body search team. Not somebody who wrote a book about the case. Why not consider Graysmith a suspect? Or a dozen other writers, reporters, filmmakers and opportunists who injected themselves into the case?

Looking at major serial killers - Manson, BTK, Bundy, Gacy, hell all of them - none became very identified with their own case as a book writer or in any other major way, prior to arrest.

There is not one scrap of physical or strong circumstantial evidence to point to Penn, O'Hare or Mrs. O'Hare as being a serial killer, a felon or even a misdemeanor.


But the interest some have for Penn and/or O'Hare remains a mystery to me, but then, my interest in my POI doesn't make sense to some. To each his won I guess. I think I have said everything I wanted to on this subject.

AK Wilks wrote:

Seriously, you should read some of the John Douglas books, Mindhunter/Anatomy of Motive/Cases That Haunt Us.

John Douglas' books don't contradict anything I've said here. But he did not formulate the distinction between organized and disorganized serial offenders and he does not discuss that distinction at any length that I've ever read.

AK Wilks wrote:

Actually Mike M and Ray G, and others interested in Penn, I would be interested to hear your criticism, questions or comments on this suspect. And Rand's suspect TH. If you are interested. I think it is always a good idea to break away just a little with our own POI's and look with an open mind at others.

At least from my perspective, you're putting thoughts and words into my head and mouth. I'm not rooting for Penn or anyone else as a POI. Ray Grant has his own suspicions, and how he responds to you is his business. I happen to find Gareth Penn the most fascinating person ever involved in the Zodiac case, maybe even more fascinating than the killer himself. And I've tried to answer the many questions people have asked about why Penn has been such a central figure in this investigation for so many years, answers that of necessity include his many verified similarities to the killer himself.

But those similarities and related details were developed by others, and don't equate to "my pet POI."

More importantly, though, you have Ray and I and Mike Rodelli (and Gareth Penn) at a serious disadvantage. You know who we are -- our real identities -- but we know nothing about you. AKWilks is clearly not your real name, and even if it were, what does it say about the person behind the name?

We don't know your level of criminological expertise; we don't know if you're trying to sell a book about Ted Kaczinski; we don't know how you've come by the information you say you've developed; we don't know that you've talked to any detectives about any of this. Maybe you're Penn's ex-wife and you have an ax to grind; or Kazcinski's former parole officer. Who knows? We sure don't.

Are you telling us that you spoke to several detectives about the Zodiac case and Gareth Penn, etc. under an anonymous name, or that you used your real identity? And if the latter is true, why won't you use it here? Even Rand came out of the closet (so to speak), and turns out to be a well-regarded political scientist. That fact alone made me have another, longer look at all the material he's posted here about Troy Houghton.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I'm not comfortable arguing with people who won't provide identification, and I think it would be a major innovation if the moderators of these Zodiac forums would insist that people post under their real names, like Facebook -- at least, if they are putting forth a POI theory.

It's not fair to the POIs these folks accuse; it's not fair to the people they try to argue with; and it's not fair to the science that should be behind the discussion.

The science of criminology isn't about hidden agendas, hidden identities, or ideas people are reluctant to put their names to.

It's about real people with real ideas that they can back up with real facts. So far, the "real people" part of that equation is missing with way too many Zodiac "theorists" -- ironically, the same people so willing to bash those who have put their real names behind their ideas, like Grant, Penn -- even Voigt.

Without an identity, there's simply no way to judge the credibility of the person who puts forth an idea, gives advice (like AkWilks suggesting we read the Douglas books) or offers information. It's the central object of my work: Who is this person, I'm always asking, and why should I listen to him/her?

....sorry Mike...
the "real people" thing is crap, and you know it...a lot of us who have minor-aged children ARE NOT GOING TO PUT OUR REAL IDENTITIES OUT THERE FOR THEIR SAFETY.... I am one of them.

There are nutjobs everywhere, but "true crime" seems to attract some doozies, and I don't blame ANYONE for not putting their real identity out there.

Suffice it to say that anything I have said about myself is true, and you can tell from how people write, I can anyway, if they are as educated, for example, as they say they are, at least...

You don't HAVE to know who someone is in order to debate them....

In fact, it is probably better in some cases if you didn't LOL...

What I like about this forum is that each member has to be "vetted" by someone else so we know we don't have any convicted sex offenders or felons on here for example, at least I hope not...So, at least one person on here knows that each member is OK...

If it were just the members here, I would have no problem with saying my name, etc. But there are others who read here (yes people can "get in" even though it is private), or who let others read here under their ID, etc.; we have no control over that...and we do not know who they are...

Again, to repeat, those of us who are parents of minor children, and take our parenting responsibilities seriously are NOT going to tell you exactly who we are or where we live...

To say "who is that person and why should I listen to him/her" is almost laughable....On his face, Ray Grant is a retired postal worker from PA who claims to be a memebr of Mensa, and Penn is an ordinary librarian with several ex-wives, who also claims to be, and probably is a member of Mensa, I mean we're not talking Ph.D. behavioralists from the FBI here, or forensic scientists, and you listen to them, so what's the diff. really?????????

IOW, NO ONE HERE, myself and you included is some "famous" ACTUAL expert, we're all "hobbyists" insterested in this case, and in that regard we are all equals...

We all bring something here, we all have something to offer, we all have strengths and weaknesses...

Also, Thank you to Bblanco for your professional assessment....I truly appreciate this because, while I am educated, I am not a therapist "by trade"...

I served in the Army Reserve as a military policeman, I have a law degree and have worked for over ten years as an attorney with a majority of my practice in criminal law.

But for the most part that doesn't matter. The evidence about Kaczynski speaks for itself. Yes I have spoken to some investigators on Zodiac, EAR/ONS and Aardsma, and other cases, and several are seeking DNA based in large part on my evidence. None of those I have spoken to regard Penn as anything other than an eccentric footnote to the case.

Doug Oswell has been the leader in the investigation of Kaczynski as Zodiac. Read his book or go to his site www.unazod.com.

If people want to use their real full names that is up to them...many strange people have been attracted to this case over the years.

I don't think Penn or O'Hare was the Zodiac. For those that do, good luck in your investigation.

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