Gareth Penn

MikeM wrote:

Moderators:

With 25 pages and nearly 4,500 views, would it be possible to make the Gareth Penn/Mike O'Hare its own thread, and move the subheadings "Gareth Penn" and "Michael O'Hare" into it?

That way, posting documents, pictures, and other material would be easier and it would stay more organized.

It might even be innovative to move less popular POIs (like Rick Marshall and Jack Tarrance) into the "All Other POI" thread. To my knowledge, it was Tom Voigt -- not the authorities -- who made a lot of these people suspects.

Give me a day or two to open up a new thread for PENN/OHARE as it seems to be a good idea.

Yep, Marshall was definitely a suspect way before Tom came along, and Dennis Kauffman is to blame for Jack T. being a suspect

Latest correspondence from Gareth Penn.

Dear Zam,

It appears the Sunday puzzle I posted at d550.blogspot.com is too difficult — nobody has offered a solution — so I have posted a simpler and easier version called the Wednesday puzzle at gz4216.blogspot.com. Here it is:

5H6D7UA4IOR1V5A10EI6BE3PSV8WC7FJ4J3F12YF9D4Z10GT5K10IPXDW7L3KNNQ11QTWA5TR1012R11M5B11HBE8GLJYSY2UXC6TZ3GN4MOS7IC1H2

I am looking forward to seeing it solved in the near future.

Yours,

Gareth

Zamantha wrote:

Latest correspondence from Gareth Penn.

Dear Zam,

It appears the Sunday puzzle I posted at d550.blogspot.com is too difficult — nobody has offered a solution — so I have posted a simpler and easier version called the Wednesday puzzle at gz4216.blogspot.com. Here it is:

5H6D7UA4IOR1V5A10EI6BE3PSV8WC7FJ4J3F12YF9D4Z10GT5K10IPXDW7L3KNNQ11QTWA5TR1012R11M5B11HBE8GLJYSY2UXC6TZ3GN4MOS7IC1H2

I am looking forward to seeing it solved in the near future.

Yours,

Gareth

If anyone could solve it, it may be some of our cipher guys here.

In Gareth Penn´s D550 blog, he choose to tell a story that he was in NY in July 1977, through a NY black out.
He also choose to specificaly mention Westchester County.
I reseached the NY black out, and it occured July 13-14th of July 1977

Now today I read a newsreport that serial killer Rodney Alcala is suspected of killing murder victim Ellen Jane Hover, who disappeared July 15, 1977, the day after the NY black out.

Here is a quote from today´s Ellen Jane Hover newsreport:

http://www.ocregister.com/news/alcala-257815-hover-new.html

"Her skeletal remains were found 11 months later, spread in the brush on the Rockefeller Estate in nearby Westchester County."



I´m not saying that Gareth Penn killed Ellen Jane Hover, but I have to admit that I find it very odd that GP choose to tell this story of his.



D550

Monday, May 24, 2010

The jig is up


by Gareth Penn

What amazes me most about the furor surrounding my criminal past is how little incriminating material the leading theorists have managed to dig up. In the interest of justice, I would like to contribute a number of items that they have somehow overlooked and which would greatly enhance the quality of the discussion concerning my transgressions.

On 10 November 1965, I was undergoing basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when Fort Dix and the entire northeastern part of the United States — not to mention two Canadian provinces — were blacked out by a power failure that lasted ten hours. Twelve years later, in July 1977, I was in New York when all five boroughs (and Westchester County) experienced a 36-hour blackout. And then when I was in New York in July 2002 (learning late in life about my non-baptism), there was yet another blackout, this time in Brooklyn. I wasn’t actually in Brooklyn when the last of these events took place (I was in Staten Island at the time), but even the dullest among us must see that since there is a power failure in New York City every time I am there (or nearby), I must be responsible for it.

Great spotting TF, how very odd that he mentioned that . Very interesting.

Solar Pons wrote:

Great spotting TF, how very odd that he mentioned that . Very interesting.

Kinda plays with your head, huh!? Like is he teasing us or trying to reel us in. I had a feeling there were clues in this last writings.
The Foreigner is the best for finding this one! Kudoz*
I'm sure if we really scrutinize every word that was just recently written, we will find more. Let the hunt begin. Also did anyone try to solve his
last posted puzzle?

Theforeigner wrote:

In Gareth Penn´s D550 blog, he choose to tell a story that he was in NY in July 1977, through a NY black out.
He also choose to specificaly mention Westchester County.
I reseached the NY black out, and it occured July 13-14th of July 1977

Now today I read a newsreport that serial killer Rodney Alcala is suspected of killing murder victim Ellen Jane Hover, who disappeared July 15, 1977, the day after the NY black out.

Here is a quote from today´s Ellen Jane Hover newsreport:

http://www.ocregister.com/news/alcala-257815-hover-new.html

"Her skeletal remains were found 11 months later, spread in the brush on the Rockefeller Estate in nearby Westchester County."



I´m not saying that Gareth Penn killed Ellen Jane Hover, but I have to admit that I find it very odd that GP choose to tell this story of his.



D550

Monday, May 24, 2010

The jig is up


by Gareth Penn

What amazes me most about the furor surrounding my criminal past is how little incriminating material the leading theorists have managed to dig up. In the interest of justice, I would like to contribute a number of items that they have somehow overlooked and which would greatly enhance the quality of the discussion concerning my transgressions.

On 10 November 1965, I was undergoing basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when Fort Dix and the entire northeastern part of the United States — not to mention two Canadian provinces — were blacked out by a power failure that lasted ten hours. Twelve years later, in July 1977, I was in New York when all five boroughs (and Westchester County) experienced a 36-hour blackout. And then when I was in New York in July 2002 (learning late in life about my non-baptism), there was yet another blackout, this time in Brooklyn. I wasn’t actually in Brooklyn when the last of these events took place (I was in Staten Island at the time), but even the dullest among us must see that since there is a power failure in New York City every time I am there (or nearby), I must be responsible for it.

Pretty interesting, but we also have to remember that people vanish in the state of New York EVERYDAY! The days before Penn was there, and the days after he left people vanished. I can especially see this being true in a blackout.

What I find interesting is that the article really points the finger at Alcala. Also according to LE who interviewed him he admitted being with EJH that day but denies having anything to do with her disappearance. Also another young woman has stated that she was photographed by Alcala very near to the Westchester grounds where Hover's body was found. In a nutshell Alcala more than likely is her killer. But alongside the CJB 'I could have been there' gravy that Gareth spills, is he dropping dates and such like in order to see if someone spots it so we are left wondering. I think it's a good possibility.

Geez... Over at another Site, I had a poster on my back by the name of Zsearcher. Whom seems
to get really upset with others too easy.
Here is a copy of his post, and of my reply



Post subject: Re: Where's The Evidence?
PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:04 am
Level 2


Joined: Sun Sep 27, 2009 10:17 pm
Posts: 53
Zsearcher wrote:
Yeah I read it MrB. This whole thing gets weirder and weirder with every post.

Since Penn has been writing his blog, these posts all come appearing as very personal inside communiques.

They are not.

I believe Penn is in contact with one person: Janice Hendrickson.

He also communicates through his blog.

The whole thing is just so weird, and this last one is the weirdest.

I happen to look at Penn's blog tonight and notice a new post FROM THREE DAYS AGO, and post it here tonight.

Then all of a sudden Zamantha has a new intriguing email from Penn a few hours later saying the same thing about a three day old post?

This all just stinks of fabrication, and sensationalist name dropping.

I want to see screenshots of the emails.

I'm weirded out by all this kookiness.


Hello Zsearcher,
I'm really not into copying screen-shots of private emails, TMI.
But hopefully this entry on Gareth Penn's Blog will put you at ease.
Peace, Zam*

WEDNESDAY PUZZLE (added 10 July 2010):

Nobody has offered a solution to the Sunday Puzzle, posted at d550.blogspot.com, so here is an easier version. I am looking forward to seeing it solved soon.

5H6D7UA4IOR1V5A10EI6BE3PSV8WC7FJ4J3F12YF9D4Z10GT5K10IPXDW7L3KNNQ11QTWA5TR1012R11M5B11HBE8GLJYSY2UXC6TZ3GN4MOS7IC1H2


I owe a belated but appreciative thank-you to ZZamantha and Janice Hendrickson for acting as go-betweens in the above dialogue, and to Zam in particular for getting the Wednesday puzzle out there.

morf13 wrote:

Pretty interesting, but we also have to remember that people vanish in the state of New York EVERYDAY! The days before Penn was there, and the days after he left people vanished. I can especially see this being true in a blackout.

Morf the point is not that somone disappeared when Gareth Penn was in NY, the point is that Gareth Penn, when telling about his NY visit, choose to point out that specific county were the murdervictim was found, and he sure didn´t have to do that, in order to tell about him beeing in NY at the black out, the day before the girl disappeared.
So the interesting part in this coincident? is what pieces of info GP´s choose to include in his NY black out story.

Solar Pons, I agree that it seems that Alcala killed the girl, however it STILL seems possible that GP enjoy to play with our minds, the question is WHY?

And on the long shot, who know if Alcala and GP knew each other? (Seriously; I doubt it)

Dear Zam,

This is to let you know that I have added an appendix, or amendment, or codicil, or something to the Wednesday puzzle, which is a lot easier than the puzzle itself and should help to clear things up. It's posted at GZ4216.blogspot.com, but here it is anyway:

157116B

Gareth

Zamantha wrote:

Dear Zam, This is to let you know that I have added an appendix, or amendment, or codicil, or something to the Wednesday puzzle, which is a lot easier than the puzzle itself and should help to clear things up. It's posted at GZ4216.blogspot.com, but here it is anyway: 157116B

Gareth

Zamantha:

Please tell Gareth that without any context of any kind -- in other words, to what does the puzzle relate -- solving it is virtually impossible. In mathematical terms, we call that problem having too many "degrees of freedom" -- in other words, too many possible "solutions."

I can use a very simple example -- Wheel of Fortune. For each puzzle, they tell you what the puzzle relates to: a famous name, place, etc.

As it is, Gareth is just acting like the Zodiac -- and nothing more -- when he posts these puzzles, taunts the audience, and then titillates with more essentially meaningless information. If he's trying to distance himself as a POI in the case, he's doing a poor job of it.

PS

Here's my solution to 157116B: 1= G 5= A 7 = R 11 = E 6 = T B = H

GARETH

Or how about: 1= M 5= O 7 = R 11 = F 6 = 1 B = 3

MORF13

See what I mean?

Don´t know if this has any significance, but I just noticed that:




Gareth Penn named the 1st puzzle " The Sunday puzzle" but he posted it May 24, 2010, and that was a Monday

Monday, May 24, 2010

Appendix 6: The Sunday puzzle


t41m4w189o951xs234e12a14v9e27e24x9x2ntwoo2xt91j2h2r32uxaxe89nry151e389



Gareth Penn named the 2nd puzzle, "Wedensday puzzle", but he posted it 10 July 2010, and that was a saturday



WEDNESDAY PUZZLE (added 10 July 2010):

Nobody has offered a solution to the Sunday Puzzle, posted at d550.blogspot.com, so here is an easier version. I am looking forward to seeing it solved soon.

5H6D7UA4IOR1V5A10EI6BE3PSV8WC7FJ4J3F12YF9D4Z10GT5K10IPXDW7L3KNNQ11QTWA5TR1012R11M5B11HBE8GLJYSY2UXC6TZ3GN4MOS7IC1H2



The 3rd puzzle GP named "appendix, amendment, codicil, or what have you, to the Wednesday Puzzle " and it was posted 24 July 2010, and that was a saturday


(Added 24 July 2010) Here’s an appendix, amendment, codicil, or what have you, to the Wednesday Puzzle. This is so elementary that it should present no difficulties to the solver:

157116B

morf13 wrote:

Theforeigner wrote:

In Gareth Penn´s D550 blog, he choose to tell a story that he was in NY in July 1977, through a NY black out.
He also choose to specificaly mention Westchester County.
I reseached the NY black out, and it occured July 13-14th of July 1977

Now today I read a newsreport that serial killer Rodney Alcala is suspected of killing murder victim Ellen Jane Hover, who disappeared July 15, 1977, the day after the NY black out.

Here is a quote from today´s Ellen Jane Hover newsreport:

http://www.ocregister.com/news/alcala-257815-hover-new.html

"Her skeletal remains were found 11 months later, spread in the brush on the Rockefeller Estate in nearby Westchester County."



I´m not saying that Gareth Penn killed Ellen Jane Hover, but I have to admit that I find it very odd that GP choose to tell this story of his.



D550

Monday, May 24, 2010

The jig is up


by Gareth Penn

What amazes me most about the furor surrounding my criminal past is how little incriminating material the leading theorists have managed to dig up. In the interest of justice, I would like to contribute a number of items that they have somehow overlooked and which would greatly enhance the quality of the discussion concerning my transgressions.

On 10 November 1965, I was undergoing basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when Fort Dix and the entire northeastern part of the United States — not to mention two Canadian provinces — were blacked out by a power failure that lasted ten hours. Twelve years later, in July 1977, I was in New York when all five boroughs (and Westchester County) experienced a 36-hour blackout. And then when I was in New York in July 2002 (learning late in life about my non-baptism), there was yet another blackout, this time in Brooklyn. I wasn’t actually in Brooklyn when the last of these events took place (I was in Staten Island at the time), but even the dullest among us must see that since there is a power failure in New York City every time I am there (or nearby), I must be responsible for it.

Pretty interesting, but we also have to remember that people vanish in the state of New York EVERYDAY! The days before Penn was there, and the days after he left people vanished. I can especially see this being true in a blackout.

Right, but more important, what does it have to do with the Zodiac case? Am I missing something?
By the way, what happened to Ray Grant? Why was this thread so dead for the past month (not that I'm complaining about that ) Just curious what happened here.

Hi Rand,
Rays around. He was on Chat Sat. nite, and had some interesting ideas on the Z case, with no POI involved. Just Z Chat. He is on a vacation for awhile. like all
of us will be this summer, in & out of the site due to vacation & etc.
Gareth, well there are some of us that have followed him for awhile, and find him and the way he projects himself in the Z case interesting. Not saying he is the
Z, but am saying I myself want to hear more, as do some others!! We had a couple people who tried to solve his last puzzles, I sent their findings to him. If
anyone has an idea, please post it or Pm me. Or If anyone has comments to Gareth, I am happy to pass them on to him. Some of the PM's I received to send off
to Gareth are very thought provoking, and shows to me that the writers really have done their home work studying Gareth.

To answer Rand and comment on what Zamantha said--

I actually took a hiatus (not 100%, obviously) to prepare a general presentation for the board of my thoughts on the Zodiac case. This was announced a month ago on page 7 of my Intro thread.

If you go back to page 1 of THIS thread, you'll notice that it leads off with a discussion of my book (long before I was a member here). Once I got here, I found that, when I made comments on this or that topic, people often interrupted me to ask me to back up and explain where I was coming from, plus several people asked where they could find copies of my book (I hope they don't get to it at the same time Chris Farmer does, or there could be trouble).

I decided it might save me and everyone else a lot of grief if I just posted some material that provides a shorthanded version of what's in The Zodiac Murders--Solved! So that's what I've been doing the past month, and it's taken a couple weeks longer than I expected.

In any case, my self-imposed deadline is Saturday night (the 41st anniversary of The Cryptogram mailing). My plan at the moment is to put some sort of announcement on the Chat thread on Saturday evening, and then appear in the chat room a few hours later if anyone has questions.

One of the problems I've had is that people seem to misunderstand what my theory is, and the more I try to explain it, the less they understand it. Mike Martin actually has a copy of my book, and, though I'm generally in awe of Mike's reporting on it, even he occasionally says something about it that has me scratching my head. I'm guessing that every author goes through this at some point, but my work was completely ignored for two decades, and then suddenly became a hot topic of conversation on several Z boards (you may find it entertaining to Google "Raymond Grant Zodiac" or "Ray Grant Zodiac" and click on the various links).

The other reason activity has died down here is that morf13 seemed to be about to make this topic its own thread (you'll see his announcement at the top of this page or the previous one), but hasn't, as yet. I do think that the board should probably follow what's posted and viewed, as a general rule. In other words, if you have about 5,000 views of Gareth Penn, and only two posts on Mike Rodelli's Mr. X (as much as I respect Mike R), maybe you want to switch them as thread/topic? I have zero interest in The Minuteman thread, but obviously other people do, and I think that's how you differentiate among POIs on a board like this.

By the way, one reason the posts on the Michael O'Hare topic have been few and far between is that all the text goes horizontal when you try to post there, so technical issues sometimes dictate what's on the board as well.

I want the two of you to check out my post on the Tom Voigt thread and offer your opinions on it--that's where I'm going next.

Ray, what do you think is/are the most common misconception(s) about your theory?

The posts about my book on ZodiacKillerFacts.com (accessible if one Googles "Ray Grant Zodiac") suggest, for some reason, that I initially believed Gareth Penn's theory that Michael O'Hare was the Zodiac, but then became suspicious of Gareth and came to believe that HE was the Zodiac. Mike Martin even seems to suggest this on his thread, "The Raymond Grant Books". Chris Farmer apparently also believes this, and went to a fair amount of trouble a couple of months ago trying to establish whether my accusation of Gareth Penn as the Zodiac really preceded his.

Well, that was never true. None of the various editions of my book suggest that, though the 1990 editions do not accuse Hugh Penn of being a conspirator (and the 1990 editions mention Eugene Robert O'Hare, Michael's father, but without actually accusing him of being involved). My books have always said that Michael O'Hare was the "trigger man", and that Gareth Penn was the "press agent" after the fact. Michael O'Hare, by the way, was handed a copy of my book in November 1990; he has never acknowledged the book or me (at least, not to my knowledge).

Thanks for the updates, Zam and Ray.

Thank you for answering my question, Ray!

Gareth gave me permission to share his email:

Dear Zam,

Thank you (I think) for forwarding the sample posts to me. One of the things that dismays me is that they seem to indicate that the two halves of the brain are not communicating with one another. I see a couple of writers questioning whether I graduated from college and another mischaracterizing my employment as a reference librarian (about which more later). These two people need to get together; by cooperating, they could use a logical process called inference to answer at least the first question. Libraries fill reference-librarian slots with candidates who have an MLS or MLIS, which is a postgraduate degree. In other words, to work in such a job, you have to have gotten a diploma in graduate school. And in order to be admitted to graduate school, you have to have an undergraduate degree (usually a BA); this means that you have to graduate from college. Thus, the fact that I was employed in a job requiring a postgraduate degree invites the inference that I have such a degree as well as the undergraduate degree which is its prerequisite. Another poster complains that the University of California will not disclose my records. This person needs to know that Berkeley, like other institutions of higher learning, has a verification office, which is used by prospective employers to verify the degrees claimed by job applicants. They don’t give out records, but they do verify degrees, and if that is what you want to do, then you can make use of that service.

In a spoof of a post from a Dane who goes by the pseudonym “theforeigner,” I suggested a parallel with Albert Camus’ novel L’étranger, saying that “theforeigner” is a translation of that title. To those who object that the novel is titled The stranger, let me point out that étranger means both “foreigner” and “stranger” and that the Oxford Hachette French dictionary gives “foreigner” as the first definition of étranger and étranger as the first definition of of “foreigner.” In “theforeigner”’s country (Denmark), the novel is published as Den fremmede, which means both “the stranger” and “the foreigner.” And for the benefit of those who think that there is a one-to-one relationship between English and foreign-language vocabulary or that book titles are immutable, Camus’ novel is published as The stranger in the U.S.; in the U.K., it appears under the title The outsider.

On the subject of the Sunday and Wednesday puzzles and the codicil to the second, I think that “Reginald Graham Wordsworth” is a delightful solution to the Wednesday-puzzle codicil, but I have no idea how the solver arrived at this result or who Reginald Graham Wordsworth is. In other words, I don’t get it. Before anybody expends any more effort on these paltry little puzzles of mine, I would like to invoke the spirit of Robert Hooke, who proposed, a couple of centuries ago, a law of elasticity, which he published as an anagram: CEIIINOSSSTTVV. The only person who can testify as to the content of an anagram is the one who made it. Hooke intended to establish a claim to the principle by publishing it but to withhold the solution until a time that suited him. The Sunday and Wednesday puzzles (plus codicil) have the same purpose; I believe that they are completely unsolvable without knowing the context in which they are set. Here’s a parallel. When playing Trivial Pursuit, don’t read the question and guess the answer; read the answer and try to guess the question. If the answer is “nine,” the question might be “How many Justices are there on the Supreme Court?” or “How many innings are there in a baseball game?” or “What is the cube root of 729?” It is impossible to come up with the right question without a context. In gz4216, I answer a question by pointing out some formal characteristics of the Zodiac’s ciphers which I feel those interested in them ought to be paying attention to. Those who want to learn something would be better advised, in my view, to concentrate on them than on my paltry essays. For the benefit of those who do so, here’s another formal observation about them. The first two ciphers are written in the format of a perfect rectangle conforming to the description n x 17, where 17 = the number of columns and n = the number of rows. The third and fourth ciphers depart from this general description. Since the fourth cipher has a 17-column row followed by a 15-column row, it appears that the times-17 principle is still in effect and that where the third and fourth ciphers depart from the first two is that they are imperfect. There is a general description applying to the third and fourth ciphers that does not apply to the first two, namely that in both cases, the number of cipher symbols used is a cube plus five (13 = the cube of 2 + 5; 32 = the cube of 3 + 5). If students of the Zodiac were to devote more thought to formal aspects of the literature, I feel they would make more progress than what I see in the posts you forward to me from time to time.

Now, about my employment at Solano County Library. The post you sent me appears, on the basis of internal evidence, to be the work product of Mike Martin, and his informant from the distant past appears to be my onetime supervisor Joyce Crooks. Before going any farther, let me fill in some historical background, which I feel is needed to understand the story. Vallejo city librarian Homer Fletcher’s legacy was a new main library built with federal urban renewal funds, at the foot of Georgia Street, to replace the old Carnegie library. It was monumental by comparison with the old building, having about two acres of floor space on three levels. It was planned when the world price of oil was $2 a barrel and building standards called for air-conditioning and heating systems requiring a boiler and a chiller operating simultaneously and no openable windows. What Fletcher did not foresee was the size of the utility bill. He retired just as the building was being completed, and his replacement, Josephine Becker, almost had a heart attack when she saw the PG&E bill, which threatened to break the bank.

Her first reaction was to save money by closing the only branch library, at Springstowne on the other side of the freeway. Interstate 80 bisects Vallejo, and on the east side of I-80, there are only two outposts of city government: a fire station and the Springstowne branch library (which are housed in the same building). There are no city parks east of the freeway; they are all on the west side. When Mrs. Becker proposed closing the branch, incensed east-siders, who wanted to see some evidence of their tax money in their part of town, lit their torches and sharpened the tines of their pitchforks, threatening to storm city hall and get Mrs. Becker fired from her job. She had walked right into a buzz saw. She withdrew the proposal and decided to recoup the money instead by closing the entire bottom level of the main library, requiring the children’s department and audio-visual to move upstairs and share the main reading room with the reference department. Among the facilities closed off to the public by this arrangement was the McCune Room, which housed the local history collection. The collection stayed there, but it was unstaffed and closed to the public except by special arrangement. The east-siders were somewhat appeased, but a simmering hostility toward Mrs. Becker lingered, which caused her to treat every issue related to East Vallejo gingerly. She received a number of complaints about the Springstowne librarian, whose demeanor and conduct indicated to Springstowne patrons that she could not care less about the branch or about them. There were also complaints having to do with hygiene, some of them from staff. Among other things, the current occupant of the job was given to chewing on toothpicks all day long and discarding them everywhere. The person who provided children’s services at Springstowne complained about having to pick up twisted, frayed, saliva-soaked, lipstick-smeared bits of wood from the checkout counter and elsewhere and having to dispose of them.

The writer of the post you sent me says that I was sent to Springstowne “to earn [my] keep.” In fact, Mrs. Becker chose me for the job, as she impressed on me at the time, because I was a relatively new employee and a fresh face who had not antagonized people in that part of town, whom she wanted to reassure that she was not going to close their branch library, and she charged me with getting that message across. In other words, the reason that I went there was political. Then I read that while at Springstowne, I played the “chauvinist” overseeing a “staff of awestruck, attractive young ladies.” In fact, there was only one other library employee at the branch other than myself. I was there for two years. In the first year, my assistant, who provided children’s services such as story hour, was a woman who had been living for a number of years with a POSSLQ and was about thirty years of age. Attractiveness is a subjective criterion, and opinions will differ on this score; but “awestruck” does not describe this person. She had seen and done it all. Her first stop on Monday mornings was the reference department downtown to leaf through PDR to find out what she had been partying on the previous weekend. When she went back downtown to work, she was replaced by a woman a couple of years younger than I who had been married for a dozen years and was a homeowner. She had a zany sense of humor (which I appreciated) and we got along well. Finally, if Joyce Crooks is saying that I was more productive supervising myself than when she was my supervisor, one would have to conclude that she should not have supervised anybody in the first plce. It appears that neither she nor Martin has thought this through.

Then the author takes me to task for claiming to have “directed” the McCune Room. This just after having quoted me as saying that I was “in charge of” it. Note to posters: if you want to fault me for something that you have quoted me as saying, be sure to falsify the quote first so that it jibes with what you are faulting me for. Joyce Crooks herself put me in charge of the McCune Room, giving me one of the three keys to it. The other two were held by the county librarian (by this time, Vallejo City Library had merged with Solano County) and the janitor. In a pinch, the janitor could open up the room, but most of the time, it was my responsibility to accompany patrons to the McCune Room to use the local history collection. This arrangement was required because the McCune Room had been unstaffed and locked up because of the utility bill problem (see above).

The poster/Martin asserts that I worked on TIMES 17 during the 1970s and that I did so at work, on company time. Like so much else of Martin’s work product, this is a blend of a microscopic amount of truth and a whopping amount of malicious fabrication. The truth is that I did work on a book in the 1970s, but it wasn’t TIMES 17. Its working title was In vivo veritas, and its subject was a biologist named Ted Walker, whom I had met while on an eight-day whale-watching cruise from San Diego to San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja California, in February 1977. Little Brown showed some interest in it but failed to follow through, and the project fizzled. Crooks was indeed annoyed by the book’s impact on my work, but not because I was writing at work. In the summer of 1977, I asked to be reduced to a half-time employee so that I would have time to work on this project, and Mrs. Becker agreed to my request. Over the next six months, Crooks was hard pressed to provide desk coverage; she couldn’t find anybody who wanted a permanent half-time job, and she was reduced to hiring substitutes ad hoc, and sometimes the people who did substitute work were not available. Eventually, she prevailed on Mrs. Becker to put me back on full-time. The only time my work on this book ever intruded on my job was an occasion when an editor at Little Brown called me at home and was referred to my work number by my wife, so he called me at the library, and I confess to having spent ten minutes of company time talking to him.

Elsewhere, I have admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a co-worker, who is probably the inspiration for the “awestruck, attractive young ladies” this author mentions. She was young, and she was attractive, but again, “awestruck” doesn’t fit, since (to provide her with a pseudonym) XYZ had an irreverent attitude toward authority and was particularly contemptuous of Joyce Crooks, whom she despised. I don’t mean to stereotype anybody when I say this, but Crooks was a particularly combative lesbian of the sort who hates men. She resented the presence of male employees on her staff, and she made life difficult for both of us. I cannot suppress a “That’s rich!” when reading that she characterizes me as a wolf preying on innocent young girls. The library employed a few teenage girls, students from the community college, as part-time shelvers, and Crooks was unable to conceal her lecherous inclinations toward them; she fawned over them and addressed them with smarmy pet names. She did, however, draw the line at drooling on them. As a manager, she was volatile and irrational. There were many times when the air around her fairly crackled with tension. She was a prodigious absentee; she overdrew her sick leave and contrived lengthy shopping trips in the East Bay so that she could stay in Berkeley and spare herself the commute to Vallejo. XYZ told me that she had had a conversation with Crooks in the staff lunch room in which Crooks asserted, with all the assurance of someone who has read something written on the firmament in mile-high letters by an angel with a flaming sword, that men cannot satisfy women sexually. XYZ got the feeling that Crooks was hitting on her and flippantly retorted that she ought to try sleeping with me. She knew how much Crooks and I loathed one another and thought this would be a suitable comeuppance. I am sure that Crooks found the suggestion just as revolting as I would have found it had our positions been reversed. I complained about her twice to administration, which took my side both times. Everybody heaved a sigh of relief when Crooks moved on to a job with Alameda County. It didn’t take long for reports from down south to filter through the grapevine about how ticked off her co-workers there were because of her absenteeism. I could go on and on; anyway, this is the person who, in collaboration with Mike Martin (whose work product would be greatly improved by telling the truth now and then) is trying to blacken my name.

I get the general impression from these posts that the reason Zodiac websites are so unproductive is that the people who frequent them become so absorbed in what Bill Clinton calls the politics of personal destruction that they lose sight of their original objective. It seems to me that the best way to get at the subject is through the letters written by the Zodiac and that everybody is doing it the wrong way. The situation is not unlike that of someone who receives a letter written in Lithuanian and insists on reading it as if it were misspelled English, then persists in doing so for forty years, expressing his exasperation every now and then over not finding anything of value in it. It seems to me that the sensible thing to do is either a) learn to read Lithuanian; or b) find someone who knows Lithuanian and can translate it. I have suggested elsewhere, and have put on a demonstration or two to prove it, that the Zodiac is concealing meaning by writing in Morse Code. I have several other proofs of this to offer if anybody is interested. Another aspect of his peculiar means of self-expression is that he writes two-dimensionally. Edwin Abbott’s book Flatland takes place in a world inhabited by two-dimensional (flat) beings. At one point in the story, the Flatlanders are visited by a sphere, a denizen of a three-dimensional world called Spaceland. The sphere tries in vain to explain what Spaceland is like, using ingenious demonstrations as well as verbal descriptions, but the Flatlanders lack the perspective of the z-axis and so cannot grasp what the sphere is saying. This is a similar situation. Everyday language is one-dimensional, and if someone tries to communicate with you two-dimensionally, you will either have to change your viewpoint or give up trying to understand him.

I am attaching four exhibits to illustrate this. All four are excerpts from Zodiac texts from which I have omitted all non-alphanumeric symbols (spaces, ampersands, and punctuation marks). The texts are also formatted the same way as the author’s ciphers, as 17-column rectangles. The first exhibit is taken from “THE CONFESSION,” postmarked in Riverside on 29 November 1966. The author purports to have murdered a woman named Bates with a knife on the previous 30 October, a date written numerically as 10/30. The name BATES appears once in the text and KNIFE twice. I have highlighted BATES and the first KNIFE. The column marked by BATES and the row marked by KNIFE intersect at position #1030 (the 1030th alphanumeric character of the text). In other words, BATES and KNIFE define a point expressing the date on which someone named Bates was murdered with a knife. The second exhibit is excerpted from the letter mailed to the San Francisco Examiner on 1 August 1969. I have highlighted the place name VALLEJO and the phrase 4TH OF JULY. If the Arabic 4 = the fourth of July, and if each subsequent character = one day, then the next fourth of July (i.e. 4TH OF JULY + 365) = the highlighted letter I in Row 37. These two consecutive fourth of Julys intersect at the name of a community in which the author committed a murder on the fourth of July. The third example is excerpted from the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle postmarked on 26 July 1970. It contains four instances of the string PI, of which the first two are highlighted here. PI is, of course, the name of a natural number written with the Greek letter π and approximating 3.14…. PI and PI intersect at position #314. The fourth example is from the letter sent to the Chronicle on 31 July 1969 covering one third of the first cipher. The other two thirds are covered by letters addressed to other newspapers. Each of the other two cover letters contains one instance of END, as part of the word WEEKEND. This letter contains three ENDs. The two surplus ENDs intersect at the end of the text. In short, two things can define a third by intersection: victim and weapon define the date on which the victim was murdered with that weapon, two iterations of a date define the place where the author committed a crime on that date, the verbal form of a number defines a position expressing the same number in numerical form, or two repetitions of a word denoting a thing can define the thing itself. These are examples of two-dimensional effects that are format-dependent. Another way of expressing things in two-D is found in Row 31 of the first example, where we find the first instance in the Zodiac literature of PI (in STUPID). It is conventional to identify grid points by row and column number, in that order. In this manner, the position of PI is expressed as 31, 4 (π = 3.14…).

I think that if people would tear themselves away from trashing me for a few minutes and consider these examples, they might get an idea about how to spend their time more productively than is currently the case. I anticipate that this will never happen, but I want it never to be said of me that I didn’t try.

Yours,

Gareth

Everyone here is entitled to their own opinions regarding suspects, but can anyone show real proof that PENN and/or OHARE were involved in the Z crimes? Seriously, I think Penn loves the attention, and this kind of talk just fuels his ego.

I dont think Penn or Ohare had anything to do with the Zodiac case, and I hear all of these wild, extravegant theories about why & how Penn/Ohare were involved, but I see ZERO in the way of damning info...I mean info that is a handwriting match for either man, witnesses that saw or heard either man claim to be Zodiac, etc.

I know Ray is coming under fire on another forum for his book, and I dont want to dogpile, but as a "non-believer", how would you convince me that either man was involved in the Z crimes? And I dont mean wild theories, formulas, and puzzles, I mean hard clues that link either man to the crimes. I dont pop into this section very often, as I personally think Penn & Ohare are not Z, and again you are welcome to post your thought & theories about these men, but at the same time, you have to be ready to backup statements you make regarding your suspects. Perhaps I should have put this in the Ray Grant book section?

Again, it gets back to what Ed ("87th Precinct") McBain once said about private detectives. There's no such thing as a private investigator handling direct evidence like a dead body in real life. If a real private detective stumbles over a corpse, he immediately calls the police. That doesn't happen in movies, mind you, but it does in real life.

So I don't know what you mean by proof. If any of us had direct forensic proof that our POI was the Zodiac, our suspect would be arrested immediately, and then we'd be arrested for impersonating a police officer.

People on message boards--and people who have their own websites, or write books putting forth Zodiac suspects--aren't allowed to possess forensic material. I can't take the fingerprints left on Paul Stine's cab and go to Michael O'Hare's office and lift his fingerprints so I can make a comparison. Actually, as I've been advised over the years by various police agencies involved in the case, including the FBI, there are actually things Ray Grant can do that the police can't do, because the police aren't allowed to obtain evidence without probable cause. But the point is, I wouldn't have the initial forensic material with which to make a comparison, because the police have it.

All any of us can do with our POIs is make a circumstantial case. That's what Riverside PD had with their local suspect for 33 years--a very solid circumstantial case. And when their suspect's DNA didn't match what was left on Cheri Bates's palms, they no longer had a case or a suspect.

I don't understand why people continually make light of a cryptographic angle to solving the case. The Zodiac sent cryptographic material to the newspapers. He said that material contained his identity. And I've chosen to take him at his word. To people who say that no case has ever been solved along those lines, I say that no case has involved cryptography to the extent the Zodiac case has. You attempt to solve a case by looking at what makes that case unique or unusual, and the Zodiac case has always been about cryptography.

And again--I've openly accused my suspects, who have chosen not to sue me. If you want to say that that doesn't PROVE they're guilty, fine. But don't act like it proves they're INNOCENT! Michael O'Hare was accused of being the Zodiac when he was at the JFK School at Harvard twenty years ago, and rather than sue me, he uprooted his family to take a parallel position (which was actually a step DOWN academically) at Cal-Berkeley. Turning his life upside-down was preferable to taking me to court.

As I said to some posters on the ZKF board recently: there are things about this case that would make you think differently about it, if you knew about them. For example: All the Zodiac letters contain an undertext. This is something that can be demonstrated if everyone on this board were in a room with me.

Here's what I'd do: I'd have someone suggest a Zodiac letter, at random, and I'd digitize it in front of everyone. If anyone had a problem with the process, we'd do it step-by-step so everyone could witness it. Then I'd take a list of common terms in the Zodiac documents (mostly allegorical terms and Classical references) and SEARCH for them in the Zodiac letter. At the same time, we'd find someone who had a book in the audience, and we'd take a random passage from the book, and digitize it in front of everyone. And you'd see that the random document WOULD NOT contain the Zodiac terms, because it wasn't manipulated to do that. After I did that several times with several documents, people would stop telling me I was just making up the things I was finding.

Let's do it right now with the two drivers in Vallejo:

I say both their names contain the word EASTER.

Let's look at that word and see how likely it is to turn up at random:

E A S T E R
0 01 000 1 0 010

EASTER is an 11-digit string. 2 to the 11th power is 2048, which means there are 2048 different ways you can write 11 digits. Which means that, in any given 11-digit string in someone's name, there's a 1-in-2048 chance that that particular sequence will show up. So let's look at the two names:

DAVID FARADAY

100 01 0001 00 100 0010 01 010 01 100 01 1011

DAVID FARADAY contains 34 characters in Morse code, which means there are 24 possible 11-digit sequences. So the chance of EASTER showing up in his name is 24/2048, or about a 1% chance.

DARLENE FERRIN

100 01 010 0100 0 10 0 0010 0 010 010 00 10

DARLENE FERRIN contains 31 characters in Morse code, which means there are 21 possible 11-digit sequences. So the chance of EASTER showing up in her name is 21/2048, or about 1%.

What are the chances of EASTER showing up in BOTH names?

1% times 1%. Which is one in 10,000.

Which means that you'd have to find 10,000 lovers lane couples, paired by location, until you found one where both driver's names contained EASTER.

And that's not even factoring in all the other similarities introduced by the Zodiac, such as both their initials being D-F, both of them appearing somehow on the north leg of a radian angle extending from Mt. Diablo that also intersects Washington & Cherry in SF on the south leg, etc.

I'm not a statistician, so I'm guessing that the odds aren't quite as long as I'm suggesting here, but suffice it to say that this doesn't look like a coincidence.

I'll line up my reasons for believing it's Penn/O'Hare against anyone else's POI, and I'll still be talking long into the night when they've run out of things to say.

And what speaks the loudest is that my suspects aren't even trying to defend themselves.

I dunno, Ray. Them not defending themselves could just as likely mean that they love the notoriety of being associated with Zodiac. Shades of Leigh Allen.

Nachtsider wrote:

I dunno, Ray. Them not defending themselves could just as likely mean that they love the notoriety of being associated with Zodiac. Shades of Leigh Allen.

Or that they think most amateur Zodiac researchers are all harmless loonies and their accusations are not worth getting upset over. Shades of Richard Gaik and Blaine perhaps?