Criminology - Zodiac's Riverside Roots Examined

Episode Date: September 16, 2017

In this episode, we continue the examination into Zodiac's connection with the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, CA. We dissect the letter that was mailed to both the police and the paper about a month after Cheri's death. Then we discuss a poem that was found on a desk at the Riverside Community College where Cheri attended. Was this poem an early work of the Zodiac and if so what clues does it present as to who the Zodiac could be? As time goes by the papers put out articles on the anniversaries of Cheri's murder talking about the state of the case and the investigation. These spark communication from someone claiming to be the murderer. You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology Follow us on social media on Facebook or Twitter by searching criminology podcast.     An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'd like to welcome everyone to episode six of season one of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as my co-host, Mike Morford. Morf, how are you? I'm doing good, Mike. Fantastic. Now, I mentioned episode six. If you've not listened to episode five, you really need to go back for this episode So to make a lot of sense, in fact, I mean, if you're just catching our podcast for the first time right here,

you've got to go back all the way to episode one and start from the beginning so that you know exactly where we are with this Zodiac case and how we got here. I also think it's important to remind everybody where we left off at the end of episode five. In that episode, we recounted the horrible attack and murder of Sherry Joe Bates in Riverside on October 30th, We also got into the police investigation that followed. We left you with a sinister letter that was mailed to the Riverside PD and was also mailed to the Riverside Press Enterprise a month after Sherry's murder. She was young and beautiful, but now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last.

I lay awake nights thinking about my next victim. Maybe she will be the beautiful blonde that babysits near the little store and walks down the dark alley each evening about seven. Or maybe she'll be the shapely blue-eyed brunette that said no when I asked for a date in high school. But maybe it will not be either. But I shall cut off her female parts and deposit them for the whole city to see. So don't make it easy for me. Keep your sisters, daughters, and wives off the streets and alleys.

Miss Bates was stupid. She went to the slaughter like a lamb. She did not put up a struggle, but I did. It was a ball. I first pulled the middle wire from the distributor. Then I waited for her in the library and followed her out after about two minutes. The battery must have been about dead by then. I then offered to help.

She was then very willing to talk with me. I told her that my car was down the street and that I would give her a lift home. When we were away from the library walking, I said it was about time. She asked me about time for what? I said it was about time for her to die. I grabbed her around the neck with my hand over her mouth and my other hand with a small knife at her throat. went very willingly. Her breast felt very warm and firm under my hands, but only one thing was on my mind, making her pay for the brush-offs that she had given me during the years prior. She died hard.

She squirmed and shook as I choked her, and her lips twitched. She let out a scream once, and I kicked her head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her, and it broke. I then finished the job by cutting her throat. I am not sick. I am insane, but that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read it. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that is up to you. It will be on your conscience. Not mine. Yes, I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware, I am stalking your girls now. Now, Morf, we heard this letter in episode five, but we've got to dissect it in this episode. This letter includes some very interesting details and it seems to me as if it may actually have been mailed from the killer of

Sherry Joe Bates. It recounts how her car was disabled, mentions how she was stabbed with a small knife. Now, one thing that's really interesting is that the writer claimed that they were making her pay for the brushoffs that Sherry had given him in years past. Yeah, Mike, the mention of brushoffs in years past would definitely make it seem as if Sherry and her killer knew each other. But the question is, was the letter legitimately from Sherry's killer? And if so, was everything in it true? So I do think that the letter detailing the way Sherry's car was disabled and the kind of knife that was used was interesting. But then again, if you remember us talking from episode five, the local papers had published a ton of information.

in the days following Sherry's murder. And we talked at length about how the police had actually provided the newspapers with all of this information. And one of the biggest pieces detailed in the newspaper was that the coil wire had been yanked loose from Sherry's car. Now, that's a big detail because the author of this letter wrote, I pulled the middle wire from the distributor. And if you know anything about older cars with distributor caps, the middle wire is the coil wire. So this definitely is a detail that anybody that had read the news articles about the murder could have learned from reading those without actually being the killer.

The newspapers laid out the police theory that Sherry's killer had disabled her car and then waited for her to come out of the library. This theory mirrors the details in the confession letter. Additional details in the news articles included information about the knife wounds and about police finding a man's watch at the crime scene. So I think it's pretty clear that the confession letter author didn't necessarily need to be Sherry's killer. He simply could have gotten the details for the letter by reading the newspapers. I personally think it was also a mistake to give out so many details. typically detectives in cases like this like to keep clues and evidence close to the vest in order to weed out false confessions.

This didn't seem to happen in Sherry's case. Now, I definitely agree with you, Morph, because this is a tactic that you see used a lot and it helps weed out those people that come forward with what can only be described as a false confession. Believe it or not, there are some people that come forward to the police and want to confess to crimes that they didn't even commit. But I do think that one thing worth touching on is the motivation for Sherry's killer to send this confession letter in the first place if it really was written by the killer. Because if the killer knew Sherry, if they knew each other, then mentioning the brush off. from Sherry, you would think would cause police to look closer at people that knew her. So if you're the killer and you and Sherry know each other, why would you want police looking closer at people either in Sherry's inner circle or that knew her on the periphery?

I mean, this is just something you wouldn't want to do, Morph. And I think, Mike, we have to look at it from the other way around as well. if Sherry's killer was a stranger to her and would never be connected, the letter would seem to be an attempt to misdirect the police into looking at people that were close to Sherry. But if the killer was a stranger to her, why would he need to misdirect them away from himself? As a stranger, he wouldn't be on police radar. I think one possibility with the confession letter quite possibly could be that it was written by somebody that had nothing to do with the murder, but wanted to take credit and get recognition for it. something Zodiac later would do as he did trying to take credit for killing police officer, Richard Radich.

So, Morf, the next thing we need to discuss about this letter is just how far the author went to make sure that he was not identified. So this was a typed letter and apparently the author wanted to make sure that it would never be traced back to his specific typewriter. So what the author of the letter did, was take several pages of paper, along with the sheet of carbon paper, stuck in the middle somewhere of these multiple pages of paper, typed out the letter, but the page that was ultimately mailed was one of the very last ones in the stack of pages. And this would make it very difficult

for police to tell the make of the typewriter as well as match it to an end of individual typewriter. Now, eventually, police did identify the typewriter as being a royal typewriter with either elite or pica type. But police have never matched any specific typewriter to the confession letter. The envelope that the typed letter came in provided clues as well. It was a hand-printed envelope with big, bold, style, dotted eyes. This was something in documents examiner Sherwood Morrill would see a few years after Sherry's murder while he was examining letters in the Zodiac case. Sherwood Moral would eventually examine the confession letter. And while he couldn't gather much in regards to the type letter itself, he was able to conclude

that the hand-printed envelope was, in fact, the work of the Zodiac. Now, Morp, you and I are no handwriting experts like Sherwood Moral was, but there are some things in this 1966 confession letter that even you and I can see that closely matched things that Zodiac would later use in his letters starting in 1969 and after. One phrase that jumps right out in the confession letter is the one that reads, she squirmed and shook as I choked her and her lips twitched. If you remember back from Zodiac's long disturbing what was termed the little list letter that we played a couple of episodes back, Zodiac wrote and watch them scream and twitch and squirm. So that sounds awfully similar, those two phrases. And the other thing, morph is, I don't think

those are phrases that a lot of people would use. One other thing to touch on regarding those phrases and choice of words shared by the confession writer and Zodiac was that both of them incorrectly spelled Twitch. The correct spelling is T-W-I-T-C-H, and both of them spelled it T-W-I-C-H. So I think it's pretty clear here that before the Zodiac started writing his letters in 1969, that terrified the San Francisco Bay Area, he was responsible for this confession letter in Riverside. So the police have this confession letter that may or may not have actually been written by Sherry's killer, but we know that it was written by the Zodiac. At the time, the Zodiac murders hadn't started and the police didn't have much to go on with the confession letter. There were no prints on the letter or the envelope.

And about the best the police could come up with was the make of the typewriter. And that is hardly a smoking gun. So in the meantime, all they could do was continue to investigate and develop suspects. In December of 1966, just a couple months after Sherry's murder, a janitor at the Riverside City College found a poem on a desk. After reading the poem, the janitor thought it was so morbid and disturbing that he decided to contact authorities in case it was a clue in the Sherry Joe Bates case. It seemed as if people following Sherry's murder were on high alert and looking for anything unusual or out of the ordinary. And this janitor was no exception. The poem, which has been widely dubbed the desktop poem, was actually on the underside of a wooden desk.

Apparently, the desk had been turned upside down and stacked on top of another desk. And this is what allowed the janitor to see the poem on the bottom of the desk. desk. So the poem had been sort of written yet etched into the bottom of the wooden desk, kind of what you might do by pressing the pen tip down hard onto the wood to write. The entire poem was pretty small, roughly five and a half inches in height. There were no obvious clues or details in the poem referring to Sherry Joe Bates or her murder, so police weren't sure if it had anything at all to do with her or not. Since the janitor had found it in the school's storage, it wasn't even clear when the poem had been written. Police photographed the desk.

and logged it in as possible evidence in Sherry's murder. But it wouldn't be until Paul Avery's investigation of the Sherry Joe Bates case four years later that the desk would become a big part of not only Sherry's case, but the Zodiac case as well. Documents examiner sure would Moral would examine this desktop writing. And just like the letter, he would conclude that this had been written by the Zodiac as well. Sick of living, unwilling to die, cut, clean, if red, clean, blood spurting, dripping, spilling, all over her new dress. Oh well, it was red anyway, life draining into an uncertain death. She won't die this time.

Someone will find her. Just wait till next time. R.H. Wow, so Morp, this is another. creepy and morbid bit of writing connected to both Sherry's case and the Zodiac case. Now, while this poem sounds sinister, there's really nothing here that directly ties to Sherry. It doesn't mention Sherry by name. Sherry wasn't wearing a red dress when she was murdered.

So other than the desktop poem being found within RCC, there's not much here that provides major clues as to who wrote it and to whether they were Sherry's killer. But the poem signs off with the initials R.H. And that's probably the biggest clue of all in the poem. The R.H. angle was looked at very closely by police. You'd have to think that anybody and everybody that had those initials and was associated with Sherry or that school had to have gotten some extra attention. Despite the RH initials, the author wasn't found,

and eventually went on to become the Zodiac. Over the years, there's been theories that the R.H. may have stood for red herring, as if it was left to throw investigators off. But that theory was just that, a theory. Another theory that might make the most sense is that R.H. may have been referring to R.H. Bradshaw, who was the president of RCCC at the time Sherry was murdered.

And Morph, I think this desktop poem is another instance where you and I can see some things that clearly match Zodiac's later writing. One thing that really jumps out to me is a candy cane style F that's prevalent here on the desktop. It's very noticeable. It stands out. And it's something that Zodiac would also use on the car door at Lake Beriasa when he attacked Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard.

We'll definitely include pictures of some of the writing. that we're discussing on our Facebook page. When considering this desktop poem as a potential clue in the Bates case, one thing is interesting. It was only found by chance. When the author wrote this poem, it was pretty small and on the underside of a death surface. It was a stroke of luck that the janitor even noticed it

and felt strongly enough to contact the police. The writer had no way to know if it would be found, and certainly had no way to know that whoever found it would link it to the Bates case. And Morph, I think this is very important to point out. Because for the reasons you mentioned, it's pretty likely that this communication was an accidental one. This was somebody putting their morbid thoughts down in writing. Now, the medium that they chose was the underside of a desk, but it's pretty clear that the writer didn't go out of their way to make sure that this was found.

right more of way different than the zodiac mailings that are going to come later i mean those were sent to a very specific place they were designed to be opened and read eventually after the murder of sherry joe and the subsequent confession letter and desktop poem connections her case started to go quiet the town of riverside while shocked and saddened by sherry's murder started to move on The Riverside PD continued to investigate Sherry's murder, but they weren't coming up with much. To mark the six-month anniversary of the Still Unsolved Bates murder, the Riverside Press Enterprise ran an article about Sherry's case. The new article once again brought the case back into people's minds in Riverside. On April 30, 1967, on the six-month anniversary of Sherry's murder, three letters were mailed out, postmarked, and

Riverside. One letter was to the Riverside PD, one to the Riverside Press Enterprise, and one directly to Sherry Joe Bates' father, Joseph Bates. The letters were scrawled in messy, disguised, hand-printed writing. The letters to the Riverside PD and the press enterprise included the identical message, Bates had to die, there will be more. The letter that was sent to Sherry Joe's father was identical other than the word Bates had been changed to she. Apparently, the Press Enterprise article had spurred the sinister letter writer into writing again. These letters were quite different from the previous confession letter mailed in the Bates case. That letter was neatly typed and mailed in an artistically addressed.

envelope. These letters were written in hard-to-read, almost illegible hand printing. But Morph, one thing these letters had in common with the confession letter was that the authors both took great care to make sure that nothing in the letters could identify them. You know, we talked about in the confession letter, the author had used a carbon paper and several sheets of regular paper to keep the typewriter from being identified. In these letters, the writer was clearly writing in what you could only describe as chicken scratch so that there was no way their handwriting could be recognized. And Mike, I think that the fact that one of the letters was mailed to Shuri Joe's father, Joseph, was terrible. To take the time to mail a letter like that to the father of a

murdered girl was despicable. Yeah, tough enough to lose your daughter in the way that Joseph Bates did. And then to have somebody mail a letter like that, you know, six months down the road, I really can't even imagine it, Morp. I mean, having daughters of my own, this is not something that I could even imagine. Now, at the bottom of each of these three letters was what appeared to be a Z. And remember, going back to last episode, it was the Z at the bottom of these letters that caught Paul Avery's attention when he first got a look at them. So you have the Z at the bottom of the letters.

You have a very similar M.O. of the writers. And these two things seem to be way too much of a coincidence to Paul Avery. Eventually, Sherwood Morrill would examine these three letters. and like the desktop poem and confession letter envelope, he would conclude that they were authored by the same person who would later write the Zodiac letters. Sherwood Moral would be quoted as saying that the Riverside writings were unquestionably

the work of the Zodiac. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsurbed. solved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water.

Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. To mark the one year anniversary of the murder of Sherry Joe Bates, the Riverside Press Enterprise once again ran an article updating the Riverside area residents about the hunt for her killer. On November 1st, 1967, just about a year after Sherry's murder, the Enterprise received a letter in response to their article. The letter was postmarked from San Bernardino, California. San Bernardino was a town about 13 miles from Riverside. And if San Bernardino sounds familiar to you, it should.

Back in episode four, when we discussed the Kathleen John's incident, you'll recall that Kathleen had left her. home in San Bernardino before she had her encounter. The letter that the Enterprise received was typed. It read, to the editor, your human interest story, and in parentheses is the date October 1st, 1967, about Sherry, the RCC girl that was killed, was very interesting. Perhaps a story about the boy that killed her could be more rewarding. If people were to read of the life of a boy that turned killer, they might stop to think about the lives of their own children. Are we laying the blueprint for another killer might be one of the questions brought to mind by such a story?

And the letter was signed with Hope, Patricia Hought's fellow student. This letter has gotten a lot of attention online over the years due to a variety of reasons, although it was never considered an official Bates case letter. The reason why it got so much attention was due to the seemingly cold and insensitive nature of the writing. And more, if it does seem as if the writer was marginalizing the murder of Sherry Joe Bates and was more interested in hearing about, as she termed it, the boy that turned killer. This letter has led some online Zodiac investigators to theorized that the letter may have been written by a girl that knew Sherry's killer and may have felt sympathetic towards him, others felt that this letter may have been written by Sherry's

killer himself. This letter had some clues in it. First, there was a handwritten envelope that the letter had been mailed in. Also, the writer had signed off with the name, Patricia Hatz. Within the last decade using this name and other details, a Zodiac researcher named Michael Butterfield was able to track down a Patricia Hotson in the San Bernardino area. Although she had long been married and had a different last name, he was able to contact her and verify that she had written this letter. She provided handwriting which matched the writing on the envelope that accompanied the letter. It turns out this letter had nothing to do with the Bates case letters. It was simply a letter written by a high school student.

There would not be any further letters or writings received in the Bates case after 1967. For decades now, the Riverside PD has had a favorite suspect in Sherry's murder. We're not going to identify him here because the investigation into Sherry's murder is still open and the suspect is still alive. What we will do is refer to him as Bob Barnett. This is a pseudonym given to him over the years by online Zodiac researchers. According to the Riverside PD working theory,

Bob Barnett had supposedly either been romantically involved with Sherry or wanted to be at the time of her murder. They feel that she refused his advances or she had ended whatever relationship that they had, likely because of her engagement to Dennis Highland. They have never been able to come up with enough evidence to arrest Barnett. Now, if you remember from our discussion in episode five, there was a female student that had witnessed a man standing in the shadows near the Bates crime scene. That female student failed to identify any suspects as being the man she saw in the alley that night. And this includes Bob Barnett.

And Morph, I think it's safe to assume that Bob Barnett's prints were not the government. greasy prince found under the hood of Sherry's Lime Green VW, if they had been, he likely would have been arrested. Now, one interesting fact about Bob Barnett is that he moved out of the country and stayed out of the country for a very long time. Back in the 1990s, Barnett came back to the country to visit family and police pounced on this opportunity. Armed with a warrant, the Riverside PD intercepted Barnett upon his return, and they obtained DNA samples to compare to the Bates case DNA evidence. Back when Sherry was murdered

in 1966, cops had no idea what DNA was. But even still, they collected and preserved evidence from the scene of Sherry's murder. This included the hairs found in Sherry's fingers and a cigarette but believed to have come from the man seen smoking in the shadows near the crime scene. By the 1990s, DNA was the new and popular crime fighting tool that police were turning to in an effort to solve cold cases. Riverside wanted to take advantage of this new tool to see if they could develop a positive link between the evidence found at the crime scene and Bob Barnett.

An FBI memo dated March 13, 2000, read in part as follows. A mitochondrial DNA sequence was obtained from the hair from the blood clot at the base of Sherry Joe Bates' right thumb and the blood sample from Bob Barnett. The DNA sequence from the hairs and that of Barnett's blood sample are different. Therefore, Barnett can be eliminated as the source of the hairs. So Morph, the wording of that memo essentially means that the hairs found in Sherry's finger were not, Barnett's. And the same report mentions the cigarette butt, but it does not mention if the DNA from the cigarette butt match the hairs and Sherry's finger or to the suspect. So as far as we know, there has never been a DNA match between the Bates case evidence and any suspect since an arrest

would likely have been made. In addition to the Bates DNA evidence not matching Barnett, documents examiner Sherwood Morrill examined Barnett's writing and concluded that Barnett did not write any of the Bates case or Zodiac case letters. If you asked Riverside PD today if Sherry's case and the Zodiac case are related, they are quick to tell you no way. They feel that the letter writer in the Bates case, who would later become the Zodiac, was not Sherry's killer and therefore is not connected to her case. This may also be because of the possibility that DNA from the Bates case was compared to DNA in the Zodiac case, and there was no match. But if such a DNA comparison between the Batesk DNA and Zodiac DNA has been done,

it hasn't been made public. Although Riverside PD is currently of the opinion that the letters and writing in Sherry's case were not written by her killer, that's not always been the case. Back when Paul Avery started digging into Sherry's case in late 1970, he would actually actually find out that the Riverside PD had reached out to the Napa County Sheriff's Department following the stabbings of Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard at Lake Beriasa. The following was contained in a memo dated October 20th, 1969, sent from the Riverside PD to the Napa Sheriff's Department. Attention Captain Donald A. Townsend. Dear sir, this letter is

in reference to our telephone conversation of October 17, 1969, regarding the similar MO of your Zodiac suspect and the suspect of our homicide file number 352-481. It may age you to have a brief synopsis of our homicide. It is as follows. On October 30, 1966, Sherry Joe Bates, a college student at Riverside City, was brutally murdered. Our investigation revealed that the victim had gone to the city college campus to obtain some books from the library. The library was open on Sunday for the student's benefit.

It was established that she had entered the library and checked out three books at approximately 6 p.m. She returned to her vehicle, which was parked on a city street, a short distance from the library, placed her books in the vehicle and attempted to start her vehicle. The vehicle had been tampered with so it would not start. This was evidently done by the suspect to keep the victim near her vehicle so that the suspect could make his approach. Our victim then left her vehicle accompanied by the suspect and walked approximately 200 feet from her vehicle into a dirt driveway between two houses.

These houses were vacant and a part of the school property, having recently been purchased by the city college. While in this driveway area, our victim was attacked with a knife and stabbed numerous times in the chest. She was also stabbed once in the back and her throat was severely cut, almost to the extent where she was decapitated. In addition to the stab wounds, our victim had been beaten about the face and had been choked. There was no evidence that the victim had been sexually attacked as she was fully clothed and the clothing was not disarranged. There was nothing to indicate a motive of robbery as our victim's purse and its contents were intact. From all indications the knife used by the suspect was one of approximately a half inch width blade by three and a half inches long.

One month after the homicide, letters were received at the press and our department written by the suspect of our homicide. The suspect used a black felt pin to address the envelopes and had used uppercase print. The confession letter was typed.

There are numerous errors in spelling, punctuation, etc., as you will notice. The person who wrote the confession letter is aware of facts about the text about the homicide that only the killer would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect. The original of this letter was evidently destroyed or kept by the suspect as the press and our department received a carbon copy of the original.

These carbon copies were a fourth or fifth copy and difficult to read. A photograph of this letter and the envelope. is attached. A reproduction of the confession letter is also attached. It should be noted that the copies received by the press and our department were on plain white paper of poor quality. Width of the paper is eight inches. The length of the paper is unknown as the suspect of peculiarity tore off the bottom and top of the paper. It might be worthwhile to note that just outside the city limits of Riverside is located March

Air Force Base, a sack base. Physical evidence found at the scene of our crime indicated that heel prints found near the body were made by a heel that was manufactured for military and other government agencies, including

prisons. We were able to lift some latent fingerprints from the victim's vehicle. These prints were not identified. Our unidentified prints are on file with the FBI under the FBI file number 3227195, latent case number 73096. Copies of the latent lifts from your homicide were obtained from CIA and sent to the FBI for

comparison with the latent lifts of our investigation. There are numerous similarities in your homicide and our investigation 352 I thought you should be aware that we are working a similar type homicide investigation. If you are able to determine by handwriting comparison or by any other means that your homicide suspect is the same as ours, please advise. I will notify you of the results in comparing your latent lifts with ours as soon as I hear from the FBI. I hope this information may aid you in your investigation, please be assured of our complete cooperation in all matters of mutual interest. Yours very truly, L.T. Kincaid, Chief of Police. So Morph, I know that was a long

letter. It was actually a tough read for me, but I think you and I both thought it was very important for the listeners to be able to hear the exact communication to really get a sense of how the Riverside PD is starting to put this together that the two incidents might be connected. So from the contents of that memo, it's very clear that in 1969, after hearing about the Beresat attack,

that the Riverside Police Department felt that Sherry's killer might be the Zodiac based on M.O. And the letter writing, et cetera. One thing that is glaringly clear in the memo is that the Riverside Police Department stated the person who wrote the confession letter is aware of facts about the homicide that only the killer would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect. Well, we know, Mike, that this statement is simply not correct. We detailed just how much information that the Riverside Police Department had given to the press

and just how much wound up being printed in the papers soon after Sherry's murder. This is precisely the reason why police should hold back some details close to the vest to eliminate false confessions. In November of 1970, Zodiac investigators were blindsided by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery's reporting of the possible link between the Zodiac case and the murder of Sherry Joe Bates. At one point, a meeting was arranged between the main Zodiac case investigators and the Riverside PD. You had Inspector Dave Toskey from San Francisco, Ken Narlo from Napa, and Agent Mel Nikolai from the California DOJ, all heading down to Riverside to discuss this possible connection between the two cases. reportedly the meeting lasted nine hours. Paul Avery learned that the general consensus of investigators was that Zodiac likely had been responsible for the Riverside writings

and during the mid-1960s had close ties to that town. Despite the Zodiac connection to Riverside being big news in the San Francisco Bay Area in the fall of 1970, Zodiac failed to capitalize on the publicity and went strangely quiet. Normally the attention-seeking Braggart would pounce on the opportunity to get some attention for himself. Was this because Zodiac was fearful

that he had slipped up and after his Riverside connection was discovered that it may bring police to his doorstep at any time? Whatever the reason, Zodiac wasn't heard from again until almost four months later in March of 1971. When he came out of hiding, it was with another letter.

And this letter was mailed to a newspaper that Zodiac had never written to before, the Los Angeles Times. Besides being mailed to a newspaper he had never written to before, this letter to the L.A. Times had been mailed from the town of Pleasanton in Alameda County on March 13, 1971. And this was also different for Zodiac because he usually mailed all of his letters from San Francisco. This is a Zodiac speaking. Like I have always said, I'm crackproof. If the blue meanies are ever going to catch me,

they'd best get off their fat asses and do something. Because the longer they fiddle and fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my afterlife. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones. There are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason that I'm writing to you, the Times is this. They won't bury me on the back pages like some of the others.

SFPD Zero, Zodiac 17 plus. In this letter, Zodiac reluctantly gave police credit for stumbling upon what he called his Riverside activity. Was he only claiming it now for attention? Or did he realize that he might as well own up to it? Nobody knows for sure. But if Zodiac really had been connected to Riverside in the 1916, 66 to 1967 time frame, then this would likely be a huge help to police in narrowing down suspects.

But one thing is for sure, Morp, Zodiac may have waited for months before writing a letter owning up to his possible connection in the Sherry Joe Bates case, but police wouldn't have to wait to get the next chilling communication in the Zodiac mystery. That would come less than 10 days later and would leave them scrambling to identify a new possible victim. But the details of that will be in episode seven of criminology. If you like the show, please subscribe and take the time to rate and review us on iTunes or your favorite Android app. You can definitely find us on social media on Twitter at the handle, Criminology Pod, where you can find our Facebook page by searching Criminology.

Podcast. In addition, we have a discussion group for the podcast and the case. That's called Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. You can find that on Facebook as well. And remember, we want to hear from you. We'd like to do a future Q&A episode towards the end of the season where we read your emails, play your voicemails, and discuss theories and ideas that you might have about this case. You can email us at Criminology Podcast at gmail.com, or you can leave us a voicemail by calling 661-77 crime. So Morph, that's another episode down of Criminology Season 1 on the Zodiac, but we still have a lot more in store for listeners.

Yeah, I think we've got some pretty good stuff coming up in future episodes, and we're going to try and tie up some loose ends and see if we can come to some conclusions in this case. It's going to be pretty interesting. I'd like to thank everybody for downloading, listening to the episode, interacting with us on social media. It really means a lot to us. You know, Morph and I have put a lot of hard work into this podcast, and we appreciate all the kind comments and words that you all have given to us. And we really appreciate the five-star reviews we've been getting. You know, it really, it's really amazing to see that people are appreciating what we're putting out there.

so please take the time to leave us reviews when you can. It means a lot to us and it helps the show. So until next episode, this is Mike Ferguson. And Morph. Signing off for Criminology. Stay safe.