The Channel Nine Letter

Courtesy of Los Angeles Police Department and Tom Voigt. We are grateful to Rick Morton for his discovery of this letter in the LAPD archives.

Analysis of the Channel Nine (or CN) Letter

This is a letter that clearly is written in anger and in a hurry to get it in the mail. It has been some four years since Zodiac has last written so there would very well be some handwriting changes due to age. And, no doubt, some could be contrived. Some old traits would also be evident. Remember, Zodiac makes the rules on how he does anything. And then he changes the rules - because he can! It is all part of his braggadocio of being too clever to get caught. 

"Dear Channel Nine;" This is classic Zodiac. ("Dear Editor", "Dear Melvin", etc.) Zodiac, in most cases, did not end his opening remark, "This is the Zodiac speaking," with a punctuation mark. An exception to this is his 10/13/69 letter where he does use a period. (It has been said that Zodiac never used a person's name. Tell that to Paul Avery, Herb Caen, Melvin Belli and Count Marco Spinelli. In Zodiac's 07/24/70 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle he wrote, "you people [in S.F.]" Here is written, "You people in LA" and on line 7, "You people".

A Zodiac trait is that he will write some things only once, creating unique "clews." Other times he will be consistently inconsistent, even within the same letter. Zodiac has spelled the word "bus" both correctly and as "buss." In Zodiac's 04/26'70 letter he writes "butons" on line 6 but on line 8 it is "Buttons." The writer of the CN letter misspells "gona" twice but uses "going" once, also, and it is correctly spelled.

When Zodiac printed, sometimes the letters in a word would connect or touch each other. In the above letter in line 2 note the word "three" has letters touching. In line 4 note the words "report" and "begin" have letters that touch. The word "of" in line 12 and "after" in line 14 also touch. The "s" probably does touch the "y" in the word "plays" in line 17. The "yo" in the word "you" is very close in line 18.

In Zodiac's 07/31/69 letter the word "parT" has an upper case "T". Two words in this letter end with a capital "T". Zodiac has separated combined words like "him self" (01/29/74.) In line 3 above is written "some thing". Zodiac often did not hyphenate words at the end of a line. Nor would he separate the word properly. See "applause" in lines 5 and 6 above.

Another Zodiac writing trait is that most of the time he writes out numbers. In the above letter the word "three" is written out twice and "five" is written out once.

When threatening others, Zodiac refers to them as "people." On 08/01/69 he wrote, "I will kill a dozen people." On 04/20/70 he wrote, "I have killed ten people." In the above letter it says, "I plan to kill five people . . . ." Zodiac had a fondness for using numbers when explaining some things. This is evident in the above "kill list" - which he never followed up on. Zodiac never followed up on certain threats, also. 

On 07/31/69 Zodiac threatened to kill an exact number of people (12) and when (weekend of the first of August.) Above, the letter writer lists an exact number of people to kill (5) and when (in the next three weeks.)

Zodiac repeats phrases in his letters. In his 12/20/69 letter he writes, "please help me" three times and "I cannot" twice. In the 07/26/70 letter "I shall" is written seven times, "Others shall," is written twice along with "Others will" and "Others I shall" once each.  The writer of the Channel Nine letter uses the phrase "In the next three weeks" twice.

Zodiac used a "box" style of "f" in the word "fire (truck)" in his 11/09/69 letter. In the above letter the same style of "f" is used in the word "for" in both line 2 and line 18. Both the above writer and Zodiac dot their "i"s sometimes and sometimes not.

As to punctuation, in Zodiac's "Dragon card" of 04/28/70, he does not use a comma after "Well" in "Well it would cheer me up . . . ." The above author neglects to use a comma after "Also" in line 12. Exclamation marks and dashes are used by both writers. There is a word crossed-out Zodiac-like on the next to last line. (However, Zodiac did not cross out words as much as many people seem to think.)

In Zodiac's writings he displays a jocular trait such as, "I though you would nead a good laugh . . ." in his 11/08/69 missive. The above author displays this same characteristic, "Hey - - - you actors . . . ." (Some have said that using "Hey" is unlike Zodiac. But "hey" is used twice in the 11/09/69 Zodiac diatribe.) A select populace is addressed (actors) and Zodiac has addressed an entire chosen population, also.

It has been said that the capitalization of words like "Break" and "News" in this letter is not a Zodiac trait. Here is a partial list of some words Zodiac has inappropriately capitalized: String, Bombs, The Blast, Thing, Radians, Code, Sun, Night, Timer, Fry, Paradice (sic), Ask, Twisted Shoes, Police, Mirror, Bat, Person. Some words are used twice, once with a capital and once without a capital.

It has been said that there are none of the Zodiac's characteristic checkmark "r"s found in the Channel Nine letter. See the following:

28 checkmark "r"s out of 143 words. Some are identical to Zodiac's.

Here are other comparisons:

One other objection to Zodiac being the author of the Channel Nine letter is that the "D" in "Dear" doesn't look like a Zodiac "D." The letter "D" is used 3 times in this letter (The salutation line and twice on line 10.) and they are all different! This is a Zodiac trait with upper as well as lower case letters. (Davis has changed his writing style of the same character on the same line, also. See Davis' handwriting.)

Back         Contents         Top of page