Has the Zodiac Killer been identified?

A group called Case Breakers claimed to have new evidence identifying Gary Poste as the Zodiac Killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. In this interview with CNN, https://youtu.be/EKncdXxw2OU, Mike Wakshull describes the quality of the forensic evidence offered in the press release distributed by the group.

Forensic evidence presented

The evidence presented by the group linking the suspect to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, CA in 1966 is weak. An example given is a Timex watch with paint splatters was found near the crime scene. The suspect was a house painter. This is circumstantial evidence. The link between the suspect and the Zodiac is one misspelled word (twich) that appears in a Zodiac card and in a writing by the suspect. A better comparison would be to obtain examples of the suspect’s handwriting to compare with the many letters sent to newspapers and police by the Zodiac.

A scar on the forehead of the suspect is an alleged link between the suspect and the Zodiac. The press release alleges there is a scar on the forehead of the Zodiac in the police sketch and described by witness of the Zodiac killings. As I was unaware of any other mention of a scar on the Zodiac’s forehead, I typed “scar on the Zodiac Killer’s forehead” and other variants into Google. The only references discovered were to the Case Breakers. The alleged scar is wrinkles on the forehead. See the attached images.
The press release posts photos of Mr. Poste from 1963 through 2018. Using Photoshop, I overlayed the police sketch of the Zodiac onto the 1963 and 2007 photos to learn how well they comport. When the nose is aligned, the remainder of the face does not align. Also, the police sketch of the Zodiac includes eyeglasses. Mr. Poste is not wearing eyeglasses in any photos.

Missing evidence

The Case Breakers did not compare handwriting of their suspect with the many known handwritten letters sent by the Zodiac to the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle. This would be valuable information.

The evidence presented by the Case Breakers is weak and circumstantial. The evidence in their press release fails.

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Both statements are correct.

What is incorrect are her assumptions about how I performed the analysis, which I documented in my 2014 book, The End of The Zodiac Mystery.

When presented with the challenge in 2012 to perform this analysis, it was immediately obvious that I had too few known documents written by Earl Van Best, Jr. to make a valid comparison with the numerous Zodiac killer documents. The only handwriting I had that was allegedly written by Mr. Van Best was on the marriage certificate for his 1962 marriage to Judith Chandler.

At first, this presented a conundrum. Many document examiners would have declined to continue, stating they could not offer any insight. In fact, at least one document examiner did decline to accept the case, stating there were an insufficient number of exemplars.
Ms. Fisher assumed this was the way I moved forward with the analysis—using one known writing exemplar, which would have provided insufficient data.

This is not how I conducted my analysis. In 2012, after spreading out all the Zodiac documents chronologically in front of me, it took some time, but a lightbulb went off that arose from out-of-the-box thinking. After careful thought, I devised a valid approach to provide the required insight.

The Zodiac documents contained known writing. The killer had provided these documents to the press and to the police departments, in his twisted, manipulative way, to publicize his killings and to taunt the police’s departments’ inability to track him down.
So, rather than treating the Zodiac killer’s letters as questioned documents, I treated them as the known documents. This enabled me to treat the marriage certificate as the questioned document. This shed a whole new light on the subject, enabling me to perform valid research complying with industry standards.

Forensic investigations often require a carefully-constructed approach using unique, valid paradigms. That’s what makes them intriguing.

The ASTM standards Ms. Fisher references in the documentary additionally state that known documents must be compared to determine whether they were written by the same person. The images on pages 17, 19 and 20 in my book, The End of The Zodiac Mystery, validate that I did this.
As a result of this comparison, I was able to eliminate one document provided to me as known Zodiac writing. It was the document written by Detective David Toschi in 1976 to rekindle public interest in the case to increase his visibility and stature. This was revealed in the subsequent documentary. There was an additional document and envelope from 1990 that was not written by the same person who wrote the legitimate Zodiac letters.

After setting the stage using this reverse procedure that enabled me to perform the analysis, the next step I used in my investigation was to determine which words and letter combinations were common—which ones were used in both the known Zodiac documents and the questioned document, allegedly written by Earl Van Best, Jr.

When examining documents, it is invalid to compare different words or letters from two documents with each other—you can only compare the same words or letters to determine if the same person wrote the document in question.
Pages 98 through 108 and 111 of my book illustrate the comparisons I was able to make. In total, I compared 12 letter and word combinations—not just a few cherry-picked items as claimed by Ms. Fisher in the documentary.

Two examples are:
• The letters est from the word Best on the marriage certificate compared with est from the word west in the Zodiac letters.
• The words San Fran on both the marriage certificate and the Zodiac letters and envelopes.

These are only two examples of many letters and words that are common between the Zodiac letters and the marriage certificate. The book provides my complete analysis.

A single similarity of letter or word formations never offers sufficient evidence of a common author. The referenced pages demonstrate many common attributes I discovered among the writings, such as the formation and spacing of the letters, and the location and length of crossbars on the letter E. Again, these are just a few examples of my complete analysis.

Ms. Fisher indicated in the documentary that I cherry picked a few letters, comparing one Zodiac letter at a time with the same letters from the marriage certificate. This is not a proper analysis and it is not what I did. I compared all the writings in the Zodiac letters with the common words and letters in the marriage certificate.

In short, Ms. Fisher’s comments in the documentary did not address the actual procedure I used. Her failure to realize that I was using the Zodiac letters as the known documents as well as not knowing which words and letters I actually compared, led her to reach an erroneous conclusion regarding the validity of my research.

Unfortunately the film crew did not come back to allow me to respond to these criticisms. Had they returned and permitted me to review Ms. Fisher’s critique, the documentary would have been different.

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Imagine that you are driving down the road at high speed. You come to a sharp curve in the road. You have a choice. Either you can slow down and properly execute the turn, or continue at your speed and crash. Logic says you will slow down to execute the turn. The same logic applies when writing features such as a lower loop in a letter f or j. You will write the straight part faster than the curved part. This is an example of using stories and analogies that makes sense to judges and juries. we need to testify in language that is relatable by the trier of fact.

Several years ago when testifying in trial I used an analogy from rowing. Often I will use analogies to make a point. The judge turned and asked, “were you a rower?” I replied that I was a rower in college. The judge told the court reporter to go off the record. He and I then engaged in a 10 or 15 minute conversation about rowing. The point is, using analogy and telling stories can lead to strongly connecting with the trier of fact.

Bring the audience into the story

Another method I have used during a jury trial is to explain differences in writing by pointing to differences among jurors. “Are jurors 5 and 7 the same person? They are both women. They both have long brown hair.” I mention several similarities between the two jurors. Then I point to differences between them. Perhaps one is white and the others black. One is young and the other is old. One has brown eyes the other has green eyes. There are consistent differences between them. They cannot be the same person. This method has been used successfully in some courts while in other courts the judge told me not to use the jury as a method of making a point.

Use simple language

When we testify we want to be certain not to speak in technical language that may not be understood by the trier of fact. We may not be understood by our retaining attorney or the attorney’s client. The result might be a perception we are trying to be disingenuous or appear superior to other people in the courtroom. The result maybe for the judge and or jury to question our credibility or feel a disdain for us as a witness because we were trying to talk down to them.

When you are in deposition or trial be aware of the demeanor of the judge and or the jury. Are they leaning forward as you speak? Are they taking notes as you speak? Is the judge asking you questions? You want to ensure you are keeping them engaged while you explain your work as stories and analogies in their language.

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The conference which was delivered via Zoom featured speakers from #Egypt, #Turkey, #India, the #USA and other countries. My topic was “Little known secrets about altered documents.” The presentation featured examples from cases on which I have worked. The examples include methods discovered to find the winning numbers on a California lottery ticket, using alternate light sources and Photoshop to learn what was written below black scribbling on a real estate contract, using a microscope to show evidence of disguised writing, and other techniques for discovering altered documents.

People have learned to be creative in their alterations. One case involved a signature that was lifted from a PDF document then placed onto a Microsoft Word document. The person stretched the lifted signature so it would not comport with the source signature when they were overlaid onto each other. I used Photoshop to lift both signatures from their respective documents. The signatures were overlaid onto each other. One was shrunk vertically. At one point the matched perfectly. The copied signature had artifacts from the source that were visible when the colors were changed and the signatures were enlarged.

Although the conference started at 10:00 pm Pacific time, it was an excellent opportunity to learn from brilliant forensic document examiners from around the world. I left the meeting at approximately 2:00 am. Fortunately the presentations will be offered on the #IASR’s YouTube channel. Here is a link to the IASR conference schedule and speakers. If you have an opportunity, watch some of the presentations on the YouTube channel.

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