by Mark Hewitt
The envelope was nearly as mysterious as the card. Two identical sentences, “sorry no cipher,” intersected one another in its interior, the killer perhaps regretful that he had prepared no new encryption for the investigation. The return address was replaced by a strange symbol that also occurred in the card’s interior. Many of the card enhancements were drawn with white artist’s ink, leading to speculation that the killer was somehow artistically inclined, or worked in a profession that made ample use of colored markers, white ink, squared paper, and felt-tipped pens.
At the card’s receipt, investigators strongly believed that their quarry had killed no more than 5. No other murders could be attributed to him. However, because there were 8 unsolved murders in Northern California at the time, they couldn’t categorically state that there were no more than 5 murders committed by the Zodiac. Even though he may have killed out of state or been responsible for accidents that he promised, the SFPD was working with the theory that the killer came so close to being caught after the murder of Stine that he became frightened enough to stop killing.
The San Francisco Chronicle gave front page coverage to the Halloween card and its associated threat on October 31. The story of the graphic card received worldwide attention due to its visual power. In it, many saw a real Halloween horror.
The Pines card
On March 22, 1971, approximately six months following the disappearance of Donna Lass and exactly one year after the Kathleen Johns event, a post office discovered in its system a postcard addressed to The San Francisco Chronicle. Postal officials noticed it and fished it out of circulation before it could be postmarked. Some interpreted the card as the Zodiac’s claim of taking Nurse Lass as a victim. Like so much else in the Zodiac case, the Pines card spoke with an enigmatic message that was open to interpretation.
Despite the conclusions drawn by some, the card may not have originated with the Zodiac, and even if it did, it may not have referenced Donna Lass.
Addressed to reporter Paul Avery, as the Halloween card had been, the new mailing contained cryptic phrases cut from print media. An Abraham Lincoln four-cent stamp was affixed to a simple five-cent postcard. On the address side, three destinations for the card—“The Times,” “S.F. Examiner,” and “San Francisco Chronicle”—corresponded to the three papers that had each received one part of the three-part 408 cipher. These were apparently cut out of newspapers and affixed to the card. In case there was any question as to the identity its author, its creator had drawn crosshair symbols on both the front and back of the card. Above the crosshair symbol on the address side of the card, its creator had written “Zodiac.” The four other handwritten words (“Attn. Paul Averly = Chronicle”) included a spelling mistake: Avery had been spelled with an added L, “Averly,” exactly as it had been on the envelope to the Halloween card. Avery interpreted the mistake as a taunt, and suspected that the killer was playing with the reporter’s ego.
A large picture adorned the front of the card that was later identified as coming from the promotional material of a condominium village, named Forest Pines, at the time under development on the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe. The ad, portraying an artist’s rendition of houses among the trees at a project at Incline Village, had appeared the previous Sunday in several Northern California newspapers, including The Chronicle. Construction of the development had just begun.
Two phrases covered parts of the picture, “Sierra Club” and “around in the snow,” both clipped from other media. To some, this was a clear indication that the Zodiac wrote about Lake Tahoe in general, and specifically Donna Lass, the only unsolved “murder” in the area. A punched hole in the top right corner of the card further suggested to some that Lass’s body ought to be in the vicinity of the indicated location. Below the picture, but also on the front of the card, a number of words and phrases cut from newspapers were affixed: “Sought victim 12,” “Peek through the pines” (in quotes), and “pass LAKE TAHOE areas.”
The card was immediately turned over to SFPD inspectors Toschi and Armstrong. After some tests, it was forwarded to the Questioned Documents Section of the CII for further study.
Morrill confirmed for the CII on March 25 that the several inked words—only five on the address side of the postcard—belonged to the writer of the previous Zodiac letters. In his professional opinion, he believed that it was created and sent by the Zodiac. But it may not have been, others noted. Some opined that it was written by someone who wanted the Donna Lass disappearance linked to the Zodiac murder spree. Many people at the time had a motive for conflating the two cases, some of whom were still investigating the Zodiac crimes and others who yearned for Donna Lass to be found.
The Zodiac case was flagging. The killer had not killed (as far as anyone could determine) in nearly a year and a half. The Lass-related card may have been sent to revive a stalled investigation. Perhaps a law enforcement official wanted to highlight the Zodiac to further his career. SFPD Inspector Dave Toschi would in the late 1970s be accused of sending fake fan letters that promoted him. He would also be suspected of sending a forged Zodiac letter in 1978 to reignite the case.
The search for Lass had also lost steam. A devoted friend or family member, facing a desperate situation—a lack of new leads in the disappearance of a loved one—may have devised this ingenious effort to draw in outside help. The result was as much as any family member could have desired. The Pines card brought a new energy and renewed intensity to bear on the Lass mystery, a quest that persists to this day for a few amateur investigators.
At the time, the police also realized the possibility that the postcard was entirely unrelated to either Donna Lass or the Zodiac serial killer. It made no direct claims about the woman, not mentioning her name or any circumstances of her disappearance. In fact, a very specific interpretation was required to relate it to that case, one only achieved through great effort with a specific understanding of the vague hints conveyed by the card. It may instead have been another in a long line of cruel hoaxes the case has spawned.
If Lass was not a Zodiac victim, hers would not be the only “murder” that someone attempted to embellish with the Zodiac’s infamy.
In April of 1970, Robert Michael Salem, a renowned designer and manufacturer of hurricane lamps, was found dead in his posh 745 Stevenson Street workshop-apartment in San Francisco. As the police entered the home, they noticed that Salem’s killer had written near the body using the victim’s blood, “Satan saves Zodiac.” A crucifix symbol appeared drawn on a wall, and also on the stomach of the corpse.
It was in all probability a copycat trying to throw off detectives. Salem had been stabbed with long knife and nearly decapitated. His left ear had been taken from the scene. The house was thoroughly ransacked, and some money had been removed. His murderer had lingered at the scene long enough to take a shower. He had also turned the home’s thermostat up to 90 degrees and then departed through the front door. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that it was San Francisco’s 40th murder of 1970.
Even as early as October 1969, people were committing crimes and pawning them off as the deviant work of the Zodiac. Daniel Williams, a 24-year-old Martinez teacher who taught at Salesian High, a private Catholic high school in Richmond, California, reported receiving crank calls from someone claiming to the be the Zodiac. The teacher was threatened directly, and then he found a lethal dose of arsenic in an opened can of soda in his house. The police took the threats seriously but doubted that the Zodiac was in any way involved. The Chronicle reported on these eerie events on November 8, 1969.
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An article in the Sacramento Union, dated March 27, 1971, noted a possible link between the Lass case and the murder of two women in the state’s capital. The Sacramento Sheriff’s deputies disputed the claim that the Zodiac was responsible for the slayings of Judith Ann Hakari, 23, and Nancy Marie Bennallack 28, but Lieutenant Jerry Saulter, the Executive Officer of the Patrol Division, acknowledged that it was a possibility.
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Hakari was a nurse who, like Lass, went missing after work on a weekend night. Her car remained at her apartment. Her body was found seven weeks later in a shallow grave near Weimar, outside of Sacramento. Benellack was found dead in her apartment on October 26 with her throat slashed. She had resided less than 200 yards from Hakari. Sheriff’s Inspector Stanley Parsons noted that if the Zodiac had killed Donna Lass, there was a possibility that the killer was also responsible for the deaths of Hakari and Bennallack.
He would later walk back that statement, acknowledging that there was no evidence that the Zodiac was involved in any of the three deaths being investigated.
Any search for Lass in Tahoe, after the receipt of the tantalizing Pines card, would have to wait for the spring thaw. Police Chief Lauritzen, quoted in a Sacramento Union article on March 27, admitted that “we don’t know where we’re going to begin.” There was four to five feet of snow already on the ground, and the flakes continued to fall at a steady pace. Only two feet of the white stuff was observed at Incline Village, the site pictured in the postcard, but a police visit to the area suggested a wait for the search until warmer weather.
The card appeared to reference a wooded area within Incline Village, indicated by the hole punched in the picture. It was explored and excavated numerous times in the succeeding decades, never shedding any light on the mysterious disappearance of Nurse Donna Lass.
11 | THE END
“He plunged himself into
the billowy wave
and an echo arose from
the su[i]cides grave”
The Zodiac eventually ceased his brutality, or at least, the evidence suggests that is the case. When exactly is a point of contention, and difficult to attribute to a particular date. Following the disappearance of Donna Lass in September of 1970, no additional attacks or missing persons were ever tied with any degree of certainty to the Zodiac serial killer, just as Lass herself was never unquestionably linked. As far as anyone knew, Paul Stine was the killer’s final victim. But there may have been more.
It is not uncommon for investigators to harbor uncertainty about the total number of victims attributable to a serial killer. In fact, it may be the exception when a killer’s exact body count is known or generally agreed upon. Gary Ridgeway, Seattle’s Green River killer, was convicted for his part in 49 murders, but later confessed to nearly twice as many—and the true count may be an even larger number. Ted Bundy, who killed in Washington State before embarking on a cross-county spree, was charged with 30 murders. He once intimated that his actual number of victims was more than 100. Even though the Zodiac boasted of many more deaths than the 6 that can be tied to him, elevating the “score” in his letters over time to 37, the final two confirmed Zodiac letters—The L.A. Times letter and the Exorcist letter—appeared to offer some kind of closure for the perpetrator, even if the number of total victims remained unclear.
The remainder of documented information about the Zodiac comes to us from the content of letters, but it is not at all clear which of the many letters suspected to be from him actually are, and which of them are clever hoaxes or from other anonymous sources. Following the receipt of the graphics-laden Halloween card, the press received only two more undisputed letters from the serial killer. Other mailings of questionable provenance continued to arrive; consequently, the murderer’s literary terminus is as unclear as the end of his killing.
The penultimate authenticated Zodiac communication, The L.A. Times letter of 1971, was sent one week prior to the arrival of the disputed Pines card—the mailing that appeared to implicate Donna Lass as a Zodiac victim. Like the Pines card, The L.A. Times letter would broaden the scope of the investigation and draw other deaths into the orbit of the serial killer.
The L.A. Times letter
On March 15, 1971, The L.A. Times letter, postmarked two days earlier in Alameda or its environs, entered the offices of the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper boasting the largest daily circulation on the West Coast. The envelope bearing two Roosevelt six-cent stamps was addressed, “The L.A. Times, Los Angeles Calif, Please Rush to Editor, AIR Mail.” The other side of the envelope had “AIR Mail” in lettering larger than the front. The one-page note inside, scrawled in the now very-familiar Zodiac handwriting, offered very little specificity, and threatened to continue if the perpetrator were not caught.
By this time, few were taking the Zodiac’s claims and threats very seriously. To the general public, the killing appeared to have stopped, and the letters were becoming stranger and less relevant. No one dared to dance in celebration, of course, for fear that it might provide the serial killer a motive to kill again. But as the public dreaded additional murders, none came.
This new letter appeared to have been composed in response to current events. Paul Avery, The Chronicle reporter who had written numerous stories about the Zodiac case and had received the eerie Halloween card from the Zodiac, received a series of tips, anonymous at first, but then signed, informing him that a murder in Southern California resembled a Zodiac hit. The connection between Cheri Jo Bates’s death and the Zodiac was now being established.
The international attention given to the Halloween card had led Phillip Sins to make the connection. Sins first contacted the Riverside Police Department (RPD), but was rebuffed with his theory. He then contacted Avery and implored the reporter to investigate the similarities.
Avery contacted RPD Captain Irvin L. Cross and requested information on the Bates case. Within hours of receiving it, Avery was on a plane to Southern California to research the murder. He was most intrigued by the apparent “Z” on the bottom of two of the three Bates letters.
It was the press’s first indication that the murder of Cheri Jo Bates was connected in any way to the Bay Area’s Zodiac serial killer. Suddenly, all the evidence gathered in the wake of Bates’s murder—the two Confession letters, the three Bates letters, the desktop poem, the latent prints, the cigarette butt, and the watch discovered near the crime scene—had to be incorporated into the Zodiac crime file. It greatly expanded the scope and understanding of the case.
Avery convinced Captain Cross and Sergeant David Bonine (the chief investigator of the RPD) to reopen the case in relationship to the Zodiac, since they could not prove a case against their local suspect. On Thursday, November 12, 1970, Avery hand-carried the carefully sealed Riverside handwriting evidence with a preserved chain of custody to Sherwood Morrill, the Questioned Documents Examiner for the CII in Sacramento.
The following Monday, November 16, the same day that Morrill confirmed that the Riverside handwriting was the work of the Zodiac, Avery authored a long article in The Chronicle about the Zodiac’s murder in Southern California. Avery later speculated that the Zodiac never mentioned this murder (until he was exposed) because he must have made some mistake down there.
Two days later, Toschi and Armstrong, along with Ken Narlow of the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, met with Captain Cross and Sergeant Bonine at the Riverside Police Department in Southern California. Together, the investigators compared notes and shared what little information each had about their respective murder investigations. As a follow-up to the meeting, they scheduled handwriting comparisons, fingerprint comparisons, and a broader search for suspects whose activities had brought them in contact with both the Northern and Southern California victims.
Some Riverside detectives would never be convinced that the murder of Bates was the work of the Zodiac. They felt confident, and would continue to feel in the following decades, that they knew who was responsible for the death of Cheri Jo Bates. They believed that they merely lacked the convincing proof that was required to bring a local youth whom they believed was Bates’s killer before a court of law. Cross in particular believed the local suspect was responsible, a position he had steadfastly held since 1968. The Press-Enterprise had run several stories declaring the department’s firm belief.
News of the possible Zodiac connection to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates
sent investigators scurrying to see whether any of the Riverside City College records contained a match with known Zodiac hand printing.
When the media reports linked the crimes, the killer emerged from his silence. Not to be outdone—and predictably on the move to control his own press—the Zodiac appeared to have been prodded to put pen to paper once again. The reason he wrote to the Times, rather than his usual San Francisco newspapers, the Zodiac claimed, was because the Southern California paper did not relegate him and his letters to “the back pages,” an obvious dig at Bay Area papers who were not printing his material—or covering his story—to the degree they once had. Possibly the motive was attention, drawing it to himself once again with a new note to a new audience. If he had once hoped to keep the Bates murder from the notice of the authorities, now that it had been discovered, he may have felt that he had to get ahead of the story.
The new letter dripped with braggadocio. Beginning with the familiar, “This is the Zodiac speaking,” he claimed that the “riverside activity” was merely one of “a hell of a lot more down there.” The Zodiac was able to successfully regain control of the case because now investigators had to consider the possibility that he had committed some or many of the unsolved murders in Southern California. The necessary follow up may have been a fool’s errand.
Notable on the page was a colloquial use of language not widely present in previous letters. The phrase “fiddle and fart” ridiculed the inactivity of the police, who were called “Blue Meannies.” Either the killer was showing the true colors of his vernacular or he was now masking his identity with words and phrases that could be employed by a hippy, a member of the Manson Family, or someone involved with one of many other 1960s counter-culture groups.
