Gareth Penn

By the way....Penn wrote "I hope that this will prove to be the answer to everybody's questions: 2455499".
What does that mean? I am missing something?

It's an "encoded" word or name....(or a phone number LOL)...

Another E mail from Penn, it's a reply to posters questions:
Can you ask him about his 5 puzzles? Nobody seems to be able to figure out either of them. Not even with the appendix. Ask him to clue us in. But I guess he wouldn't want to spoil the game?


I think this is the second time we have gotten this sort of question, and my answer is the same. A couple of centuries ago, Robert Hooke proposed his law of elasticity as an anagram: CEIIINOSSSTTVV (solution: VT TENSIO SIC VIS, “force is proportional to tension”). Hooke was the only one who could say what it meant. His purpose was not to provide readers with something to do with their spare time but to make an announcement whose content he wanted to keep secret for the time being, then reveal when it suited him to do so. I don’t believe that my paltry essays in puzzle-making are soluble unless the solver knows the context in which each of them was composed. If the right circumstances turn up, then I will reveal their contents myself. In the meantime, I suggest that those who are interested in the Zodiac case would spend their time more profitably by concentrating on the Zodiac texts rather than on my poor little puzzles or the minutiae of my biography. I attach three exhibits taken from the Zodiac literature to illustrate this point. The following analysis has two premises: 1) that the Zodiac expresses himself in Morse Code, using 1 for dash and 0 for dot, and that words and names written in this manner are interchangeable with base-two numbers; 2) that the manner in which the literature is meant to be read is the same 17-column rectangular format that the author uses in writing his ciphers. The first exhibit is taken from the Dragon Card (postmarked 28 April 1970). I have highlighted Arabic 1, the word ONE, Arabic 2, and the word TWO. Morse ONE = 111 10 0, base-two 60, and TWO = 1 011 111, base-two 95. If ONE = 60 and TWO = 95, then the operations “2 - 1” and “1 + 1” may have answers that differ from normal experience. For instance, the difference between 1 and 95 is 1; 1 + 35 = 2, and 1 + 60 also = 2. In this text, the Arabic 1 is at position #96. Since 96 – 1 = 95, then it follows that the difference between 1 and 95 is 1 (see above). The first ONE is at position #106, and the Arabic 2 follows at #141. The difference between them is 35 (141 – 106), proving that 1 + 35 = 2. The second ONE is at #200, followed by TWO at #260. Since the difference between 260 and 200 is 60, it follows that 1 + 60 = 2. These three operations all produce results consistent with the assumption that the author writes in Morse Code and that words and names so written are interchangeable with base-two numbers. The second exhibit shows the same text with all ONEs and 1s highlighted. Again, Morse ONE = 60. The four ONE/1s define two rectangles whose areas = 60 (4 x 15, 6 x 10). What this demonstrates is that the author expresses himself two-dimensionally and that these two-dimensional expressions are coherent when the 17-column rectangular format is employed in analysis. The third example is excerpted from the Los Angeles Times Letter (15 March 1971), written in response to the San Francisco Chronicle’s revelation of 16-17 November 1970 that the author was responsible for the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside (30 October 1966). This is the only text in which the author uses the place name “Riverside.” A computer search of the digitized Zodiac texts reveals that this is also the only text in which there is a redivision of RIVERSIDE (RIVERSIDE = 010 00 0001 0 010 000 00 100 0, NTHERETHEREA = 10 1 0000 0 010 0 1 0000 0 010 0 01). For those who came in late, a digital redivision of a name or word is a string of digits which replicates another string (same digits, in the same order) but in which letters are created and destroyed by shifting the spaces between letter-groups (a literal example: SUPER BOWL is a redivision of SUPERB OWL; and a digital example: BUS 1000 001 000 = THREE 1 0000 010 0 0). RIVERSIDE and its redivision form a 6 x 11 rectangle whose area (66) expresses the year in which the Riverside murder was committed. The author had been dropping hints about Riverside for two years before mailing the Los Angeles Times Letter — to name just three examples — by using two six-cent stamps on his mailings (two sixes = 66), by enclosing with one letter a Phillips 66 road map, and by departing from his hitherto consistent policy of mailing letters in San Francisco by mailing the Los Angeles Times Letter in Pleasanton (ZIP Code: 94566). I suggest that those who are interested in this subject stand to gain more by making use of these insights to concentrate on the Zodiac letters rather than by obsessing about such irrelevant and insignificant trivia as my ex-wife’s pasta machine, the number of keys to the McCune Room, and the quality of my relationship with my supervisor at a job that I left 31 years ago.

Screw this guy. He's doing nothing but jerking our chains.

Well yeah Nacht.

He is pointing the finger at himself again......for what ever reason. I personaly think he just enjoys the attention.
He is saying (in his longwinded way) the only way to solve his codes is to have an idea of what the answer is before you start.
He is also saying that the same is true of the zodiac codes......I suspect he is right about that but the only way someone could
Know that is to either be the author or to have been told that by the author.

I think that when he tires of the game that he will release the solutions as a way of underlining his point.

Nachtsider wrote:

Screw this guy. He's doing nothing but jerking our chains.

I agree 110%...he is just having fun, and everytime he exchanges an email, I think he snickers

morf13 wrote:

Nachtsider wrote:

Screw this guy. He's doing nothing but jerking our chains.

I agree 110%...he is just having fun, and everytime he exchanges an email, I think he snickers

LOL* You may be right. But I keep getting questions for him. So as long as I get questions, I will send them
off to him. And as long as I get answers I'll post them.

Some questions received from Posters sent off to Gareth for replies.
**************************************************************

1) You've been taunting readers to solve ciphers, codes, and puzzles for a couple of months now. As we all know, the Zodiac killer did exactly the same thing. And like most of the Zodiac ciphers, your ciphers and codes remain unsolved. What are readers to think of your mimicking the Zodiac killer?

2) Given your comment about Robert Hooke "making an announcement whose contents he wanted to keep secret for the time being, then reveal when it suited him to do so," are you finally planning to reveal all? What would be the "right circumstances" for you to reveal all?

3) How can you dispute so many credible people -- from the Vallejo library to UC Berkeley -- who claim you were "obsessed" with the Zodiac case as early as 1970-72? How can they all be wrong about this?

4) You seem confident that the dispute over the pasta maker was just an empty metaphor. Why? Could anyone else have revealed all?

More questions received. Sent off to Gareth
*****************************************************************************************************************
Post subject:

I have a question.

1a)Why do you think it appropriate to give us "puzzles"?

1b)If you are not the Zodiac then why do you think we have anything to learn from you by solving these puzzles?

2)Why take the tragic murders of several people and turn it in to a game for your perverse amusement?

3)What did your father think of your interest in the Zodiac(if he was around)?

4a)Given that the Zodiac was most likely a deranged idiot and likely had issues with his sexuality, why would you want to cast any suspicion on yourself?

4b)Do you identify with or share any of these traits?

5)Why do you think the Zodiac used "morse code expressed as binary..." when there is no evidence to suggest this? His first cipher was solved quite easily and quickly.

Received questions for Gareth. Sent them off this evening.
*****************************************************************
Please tell Mr. Penn that at least one reader is aware that the Zodiac could only have been one of a very select few high-functioning intellectuals living in the area of the murders at the time. Comments to the contrary should be disregarded.

This, of course, significantly narrows the search, as we are not merely talking about high-functioning, but genius level and beyond. The search then narrows to at most 5 people living in or near or otherwise connected to Vallejo at the time of the murders.

The person in question would be more likely to have been socialized and acculturated as an individualistic Westerner, a cowboy of sorts, comfortable with stalking his victims alone, in an economic backwater completely off the social radar like Vallejo. This profile, if you will, would seem to rule out Mike O'Hare, born and bred on the East Coast and not at all the lone individualist Zodiac had to have been.

The Zodiac was a West Coast, Bay Area killer with a profound comfort in being alone, working along, thinking alone, and planning alone. He would have built his own "space" to think, much like the space Fritz Tubach discusses. It would have been a highly individualistic place, where his secret could have indeed been kept from all the rest.

Reply's from Gareth on posters questions.
*************************************
1) You've been taunting readers to solve ciphers, codes, and puzzles for a couple of months now. As we all know, the Zodiac killer did exactly the same thing. And like most of the Zodiac ciphers, your ciphers and codes remain unsolved. What are readers to think of your mimicking the Zodiac killer?

I haven’t been “taunting readers to solve” anything. As I have explicitly stated on a couple of occasions now, I don’t believe that they are solvable, and I have urged others not to waste their time trying to do so. Speaking of “mimicking the Zodiac killer,” it appears to me that you regard evidence as a kind of dim sum menu from which you can take a little of A because it suits your theory and ignore B because it doesn’t, and so forth. Here’s a taste of B and the other dim sum offerings you are passing up. In December 1980, I walked into the office of a police official who had been investigating the Zodiac case since 1969 to discuss with him a theory that I had just come to; he invited me back four days hence, and I participated in a three-hour meeting with him and three other police investigators from two jurisdictions. I have published magazine articles and a book on the Zodiac, I have made a 90-minute invited presentation at the 15th triennial meeting of the International Association of Forensic Sciences on the subject of the Zodiac (UCLA, August 1999). I submitted an article on the Zodiac letters to a refereed journal (Cryptologia), which was accepted for publication about the same time as my IAFS presentation. Also in 1999, I submitted to an interview with a producer from The Learning Channel which TLC aired and then re-ran several times. Now, I don’t have your background in criminal investigation, not having spent hundreds of hours chatting pseudonymously with other pseudonymous chatters on one message board or another, but it does seem to me that the actions enumerated above are not typical of serial murderers, who generally don’t publish and make public presentations on the crimes they have committed, let alone walking into the offices of the police officials who are trying to catch them, for what ought to be the obvious reason that they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. But that’s the way it seems to a neophyte like me who doesn’t have your extensive background in criminal investigation. Then there’s the fact that SFPD has Zodiac fingerprints and that my fingerprints have been on file with the FBI for the past 45 years. It appears to me — even though I don’t have your vast experience in these things — that when the FBI files became searchable in 1985, SFPD must have availed itself of the opportunity to make use of that new resource. The fact that no one has been arrested in the 25 years since then seems to indicate, at least to an unschooled individual such as myself, that the Zodiac is someone who has never been fingerprinted. Then there’s my left foot, which I don’t intend as a response to one of your preposterous remarks but as a reference to a piece of physical evidence. The Napa Sheriff’s Department is in possession of a shoe print from Lake Berryessa which they are confident was left by the Zodiac. It’s a size 10-1/2. Anybody who cares to survey the contents of my closet or to meet me at a shoe store can easily establish that I wear a size 12. We don’t want to talk about these things, of course, because they don’t fit your cherished theory.

2) Given your comment about Robert Hooke "making an announcement whose contents he wanted to keep secret for the time being, then reveal when it suited him to do so," are you finally planning to reveal all? What would be the "right circumstances" for you to reveal all?

I have already revealed all but one little bit of information, for instance in the presentation which I made at the IAFS conference at UCLA eleven years ago. The last bit consisted of a prediction, and I use the past tense “consisted” because the specific prediction I have recently made in cryptic form has failed to materialize; it may yet do so under different circumstances in the future, but to spell out the circumstances would be to reveal the contents of the prediction, and that might affect the outcome.

3) How can you dispute so many credible people — from the Vallejo library to UC Berkeley — who claim you were "obsessed" with the Zodiac case as early as 1970-72? How can they all be wrong about this?

I can dispute this assertion because it is false. I think it’s interesting that this has become an issue only after all the other extravagant fabrications uttered by people on various websites have been disproven by documentary evidence. There was a time when it was claimed that I was a long-time resident of Vallejo, for instance, and now that that has been refuted by documentary evidence, my slanderers need a new issue to stick their hooks into, and so they trump one up. Before we proceed any further with this question, would you please supply me with a list of the names of the individuals from Vallejo and UC Berkeley that you refer to and the name(s) of the individual(s) who interviewed them? And by “names” I mean real names and not the pseudonyms that irresponsible people hide behind on message boards.

4) You seem confident that the dispute over the pasta maker was just an empty metaphor. Why? Could anyone else have revealed all?

I don’t understand this question at all. I didn’t indicate that it was any kind of metaphor; I suggested that it is irrelevant and that I don’t understand why it was brought up. What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?

Gareth's reply to a poster at Tom's site, m13

1a) Why do you think it appropriate to give us "puzzles"? and 1b) If you are not the Zodiac then why do you think we have anything to learn from you by solving these puzzles?

I don’t think you have anything to learn by solving these puzzles because I believe them to be unsolvable (see below). As to their appropriateness, there is a long history going all the way back to Galileo of presenting information in cryptic form in order to keep the contents secret until the appropriate time. That time seems to have passed without having been appropriate, so they now appear to be irrelevant (see below).

2) Why take the tragic murders of several people and turn it in to a game for your perverse amusement?

I have already stated that I don’t consider these puzzles solvable (see above) and have urged readers not to waste their time on them, so their publication does not constitute a game. And as already also stated, they are offered as a prediction. As it happens, they appear to have become irrelevant due to the passage of time (see above).

3) What did your father think of your interest in the Zodiac (if he was around)?

My father was the one who got me interested in the Zodiac case, which you would know if you had read TIMES 17, which has been out there for going on 23 years now.

4a) Given that the Zodiac was most likely a deranged idiot and likely had issues with his sexuality, why would you want to cast any suspicion on yourself? and 4b) Do you identify with or share any of these traits?

I don’t agree with you that the Zodiac was a deranged idiot nor that he had issues with his sexuality. I also don’t agree with you that I am casting suspicion on myself. 4b is, in light of the foregoing response, irrelevant.

5) Why do you think the Zodiac used "morse code expressed as binary..." when there is no evidence to suggest this? His first cipher was solved quite easily and quickly.

There is quite a bit of evidence to support that conclusion. I presented it in a paper which I submitted to the peer-reviewed journal Cryptologia in 1999. It was refereed by two PhD mathematicians who work in the computer security industry; the referees recommended acceptance, and so the paper was accepted by the editors. These experts obviously do not agree with you. I also made a 90-minute invited presentation on the same subject at the 15th triennial conference of the International Association of Forensic Sciences (UCLA, August 1999). The convenors of that conference also obviously did not agree with you.

Last reply from Gareth
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A couple of those whose questions/snide insinuations you forwarded to me suggest that because I have published a handful of puzzles, I must either be the Zodiac, or, not being the Zodiac, am trying to pass myself off as the Zodiac. Here's a historical case that illuminates the fallacy of this argument.

During the First World War, British military communications were enciphered using what is called a Playfair cipher. (Anybody who wants to know what a Playfair cipher is can look it up at Wikipedia.) The Germans eventually cracked it and the British consequently stopped using it. But the Germans liked it so much that during World War II, they occasionally used it. (For details, see Code breakers, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 205, 209-218, 222, and 223). The fact that the Germans used a British cipher system does not mean that they were either: a) British; or b) masquerading as the British. They used it because they saw some merit in it and thought it would be useful.

I'd like to know if Penn has every paid any attention to alternative theories and POIs regarding the case. If not, why not (are the opinions and insights of others beneath him?). If so, why doesn't he ever address them directly? Any good theory must address alternative explanations. This is the problem I have with Penn and his seriousness about this case. If he truly wants to solve the case and not just promote himself and his theories, then one would expect him to look at what others have had to say about the case. Of course, one can advance a new theory or a particular POI without debunking other viable theories and POIs. But it is very odd and leads to suspicion about one's motives when a prominent thinker/researcher of the case appears so myopic in his rather obtuse ideas to the point that he doesn't even bother to dismiss competing ones. Such behavior leads to rigid beliefs that are resistance to the facts. Penn's theoretical style strikes me as an exemplar of rigid, "fact resistant" thinking.

From Penn the Puzzleman.

Monday, June 7, 2010
GZ 4216
Lost? Try with hot soup!

498PHIT6TI9TOLK5R5SO3FHT2W95T93PUF429AST245EY851378YO

The above supersedes and replaces all previous puzzles (21 November 2010).
Posted by D550 at 9:34 AM

http://gz4216.blogspot.com/

Found this info on Gareth Sewell Penn:

Info from Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) July 3, 1962:

24 Univerity of California graduates students have been awarded Fulbright scholarship to study abroad during the 1962-63 acdemic year.

Further down the newsarticle:

Gareth Sewell Penn, 61 Virginia Ave., Campbell, Calif., literature at Free University of Berlin

So, Gareth Penn address in July 1962 was: 61 Virginia Ave, Campbell, Ca.

And this means....?

www.weeklyscientist.blogspot.com/ Scroll thur & read all the pages 1-8 (10/6/09 & 10/12/09)


Mike Martin's done some great research on Gareth Penn. I'm sure most of us have read this, but IF you have not... well you should.
I for one always appreciate the time an energy people put into looking at some of these POI's.

Some questions recently sent to Gareth Penn, waiting for answers :
Mr. Penn:

You've steadfastly maintained that you lived at 1708 Lincoln Street in Berkeley during the period in question, i.e. from roughly June 1969 to roughly November 1969. You've provided sketchy evidence at best, including pages that appear to be from a reverse telephone directory dated February 1970, on the notion that the timing of this directory might somehow place you at 1708 Lincoln Street during the period in question, nearly a year earlier. Other documents you've provided are similarly misleading.

Further examination of telephone directory records and eyewitness accounts conflict with your account. Firstly, it turns out that a more accurate directory for the period in question is not the February 1970 reverse directory, but the white/yellow pages, aka The Phone Book, issued in June 1969.

The white/yellow pages as well as the reverse directories were both issued by Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company. They are two separate editions published in different months.

QUESTION: Why is your account of having lived at 1708 Lincoln Street during the period in question at odds with virtually every public record available from that time?


1) According to Joel Jaffe

Never knew a Gareth Penn; lived at 1708 Lincoln until late Fall, 1969. Don't know why there would be any confusion about this, unless the person's recall of times/dates is off.


2) According to The Phone Book

1968: Joel Jaffe listed at 1708 Lincoln, Brk, no listings for M.A. Penn, G. S. Penn, or for anyone named Winterrowd.

1969: Joel Jaffe listed at 1708 Lincoln, Brk, M.A. Penn listed at 2804 Webster, Berkeley, no G. Penn listed, no Winterrowd.

1970: Gareth Penn listed at 1708 Lincoln, Brk, G. Penn listed at 248 Trinity Ave., Kensington, no Winterrowd, no M.A. Penn, no Joel or J Jaffe

3) According to The Reverse Directory

1708 Lincoln St., Berkeley

1968: Joel Jaffe
1969: Joel Jaffe

1970: Gareth Penn
1971: Gareth Penn
1972: Gareth Penn
1973: Gareth Penn

1974: M.A. Boydstun


2804 Webster, Berkeley

1968: C.W. Garrett
1969: M.A. Penn
1970: Girard Pessis and Gordon Stout
1971: Aleta Hanna and Dean Armstrong
1972: Jimmie Mack and Ira Kulkin
1973: Nicolas Haralambides, AIA
1974: Nicolas Haralambides, AIA

Penn and Catsass should get together they can write an entire page of notes to each other and really not say a damned thing.

The first of 4 parts. The last answers from Gareth Penn.
Hi Zzam!

I enclose a roundup of a couple of outstanding questions with the note that I will not take any more. Documentation in the form of jpeg files follows attached to other e-mails. I have also posted a valedictory statement to gz4216.blogspot.com in case anybody is interested in reading it.

While I am not taking questions any more, you are always welcome to write if the spirit moves you to do so.

Cheers,

Gareth
**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************


You've steadfastly maintained that you lived at 1708 Lincoln Street in Berkeley during the period in question, i.e. from roughly June 1969 to roughly November 1969. You've provided sketchy evidence at best, including pages that appear to be from a reverse telephone directory dated February 1970, on the notion that the timing of this directory might somehow place you at 1708 Lincoln Street during the period in question, nearly a year earlier. Other documents you've provided are similarly misleading.

What I have steadfastly maintained is that I lived at 1708 Lincoln Street from the summer of 1969 through December 1972, and there’s nothing misleading about it. The Oakland reverse directory shows M. A. Penn living at 2804 Webster Street in February 1969 and the regular telephone directory shows her living there in June 1969. M. A. Penn was my wife. We lived together, as married couples are known to do. The telephone number listed to her name was also my telephone number. The February 1970 issue of the reverse directory shows me living at 1708 Lincoln Street and the June 1970 regular directory also shows me at that address. I lived with my wife, Mary Ann (see above), at that address, just as I had at the previous address. The telephone number listed to my name was also her phone number. The division of labor at both addresses was that when the phone rang, whoever was closer to it picked up and answered it, and we paid the bill jointly. You cite Joel Jaffe saying that his memory differs from mine as to the date on which he moved out of, and I moved into, 1708 Lincoln Street. Given the volume of fabrications circulating on the Web on this subject, I doubt that he said any such thing; but granted arguendo that he did, what the Pacific Telephone directory entries show is that whether I am right or Mr. Jaffe is right, sometime between June 1969 and February 1970, Mary Ann and I moved from one address in Berkeley to another address in Berkeley. I know that for a obsessive-compulsive personality that fixates maniacally on points that don’t even rise to the level of triviality, this must seem to be a stop-presses bombshell. But it moves me to suggest to such a person that he or she is in urgent need of professional help and would probably benefit from medication.


Speaking of people with obsessive fixations about telephone numbers, Ray Grant, accuses me of having murdered Donna Lass, who disappeared from South Lake Tahoe on 6 September 1970, because my phone number in 1983-1996 was 499-0670, of which the last five digits appear to replicate the date of her disappearance (i.e. 9/06/70). I write “appear” because, as those of us with long memories recall, leading zeros were not yet in fashion in 1970, and the Zodiac murderer, for one, did not use them (see his car-door inscription: “7-4-69”). I am attaching an exhibit made up of excerpts from my Marital Termination Agreement (Napa Superior Court case 44854, file stamped 13 December 1984) and the Pacific Telephone directory for Marin County published in May 1980 and 1982. The first document shows that until 9 September 1982, I was living with Mary Ann in Napa. The second shows that as of May 1980, Diane Merrill’s phone number was 456-0670. Her post office box is given as her address; the street address at which she lived was 250 C Street in central San Rafael. In late 1981 or early 1982 (I don’t know which), she moved to 12 Carmel Court in Santa Venetia, which has a San Rafael mailing address but is outside city limits. It is also outside of the 456 telephone exchange, so she had to get a new phone number. She requested and got the -0670 suffix but had to make do with the 499 exchange. That number is listed to her name in the May 1982 issue of the Marin County directory, four months before Mary Ann and I went our separate ways. Diane and I met in August 1982, when she already had the phone number in question, and we lived together at 12 Carmel Court from September 1982 until July 1983, when we moved into a larger house at 13-1/2 Linda Avenue (also in Santa Venetia). I did not have a telephone of my own but used hers; there was no need for me to get a telephone, since she already had one. As with Mary Ann, whoever was closer to it when it rang picked up and answered; each of us paid half the phone bill. These documents are all in the public record; Mr. Grant’s failure to consult them suggests either that he can’t be bothered to fact-check his claims, that he is intellectually incapable of doing the necessary research, or that having done so, he has ignored the results since they conflict with his theory. It all boils down to whether he is mentally feeble or morally feeble.


First it was the Truthers, then it was the Birthers, and now it is the Garethers. I am not in a position to produce the definitive proof of George Bush’s collusion with Osama bin Laden or Barack Obama’s birth certificate; I can, however, augment the record with a few more documents showing my whereabouts in the 1960s. The first is my Abgangszeugnis (certificate of attendance) from the Free University Berlin, showing that I studied there in the winter semester 1962 and the summer semester 1963 (the full academic year 1962-1963). The second is a decree of the Landgericht Berlin (Berlin Superior Court) in the matter of my divorce, dated 31 January 1963. It shows that my address at that time was Graefestrasse 6 in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The third exhibit is my DD 214 (Report of Transfer or Discharge), which indicates that I enlisted in the U.S. Army in Berlin on 29 October 1965 and was released from active duty at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on 27 October 1967. My home of record at the time of my enlistment was 1827 Oxford Street, Berkeley (where I had lived from the fall of 1963 to the summer of 1965; and just to save you some trouble, there is no telephone number listed to my name in that period since, being a penniless graduate student, I economized by not having a telephone at all). The remaining exhibits are pages from my passport showing 1) that I was admitted to the Federal Republic of Germany on 20 August 1965 and readmitted to the United States at McGuire AFB on 30 October 1965; and 2) that I was admitted to Luxembourg on 18 November 1967 — three weeks after my release from active duty — and readmitted to the United States at New York on 2 June 1968. The other pages document my presence in or transit through several European countries in the summer and fall of 1965 and the period November 1967 – June 1968. Obsessive Garethers will doubtless be delighted to have the information revealed in the Greek and Turkish automobile carnets that I was driving a 1968 VW beetle with West German export license plate number 612 Z 9875. They will also doubtless be crushed to find out that the Z stands for Zoll (customs), is part of all German export plate numbers, and does not stand for “Zodiac.”

Penn writes on his Blog,
"This blog is titled GZ4216 for a reason, and I confess to being disappointed that no one has asked why."

The reason why we didn't ask is cos some of us Googled it & knew why. Doh!

Rufus T Firefly wrote:

Penn writes on his Blog,
"This blog is titled GZ4216 for a reason, and I confess to being disappointed that no one has asked why."

The reason why we didn't ask is cos some of us Googled it & knew why. Doh!

Or flat out didn't care.