The Bates Letters or: The April 30th Letters
Blog Post #4
Before getting into the analysis, I want to say that I’m aware Riverside PD mistakenly believe they have identified the writer of the Bates Letters. I’m also aware that DNA is what their conclusion is based on—but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re wrong. By the way, their “DNA evidence” doesn’t even come from the actual Bates Letters.
The DNA in question comes from an anonymous letter mailed out in 2016. While the letter writer claims to have also written the Bates Letters as a sick joke, he apparently provides no supporting evidence of any kind. And there seems to be no handwriting identification from an expert. Nada. Zippo. And zilch. In other words, the police have identified some guy who offers no proof of anything relevant to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates. . . . Why did they announce this rather useless information?
I don’t trust Riverside PD’s judgment when it comes to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates (and I’m not alone in that regard); they expect everybody to believe them when they say she was not a victim of the Zodiac Killer—even though, ostensibly, they’ve been wrong about her case every step of the way. . . . Since touting their own questionable identification, Riverside PD seems very hush-hush on the matter—and when you operate in the dark, your mistakes cannot come to light.
Coupled with Blog Post #1, this blog post’s main objective is to prove that the Bates Letters could not have been written by anyone other than the Zodiac Killer; they simply have too many idiosyncratic connections with other Zodiac Killer documents. . . . Once in a while, circumstantial evidence is better than DNA—especially when the DNA doesn’t really mean anything.
(Above is an image of all three Bates Letters aka the Riverside Letters. As both labels are confusing for various reasons, these letters will be referred to as the April 30th Letters throughout the rest of this blog post. The letter on the left was mailed to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the one in the middle was mailed to Riverside PD, and the one on the right was mailed to Joseph Bates [Cheri Jo’s father].)
When all three April 30th Letters are placed side by side for fresh observation, the Letter to Joseph Bates looks alarmingly different from the other two. Do any of those visual differences have symbolic meaning? The short answer is yes.
The full answer begins at the end of the z408 cipher where there are eighteen “extra” characters (see image below); they have no apparent meaning to the solution (which ends up being a weird message about collecting slaves for the afterlife). However, that doesn’t mean they can’t serve another purpose. . . . By the way, the z408 cipher came in three pieces of mail, sent to three different addresses, all on the same day—just like the April 30th Letters.
These eighteen symbols represent the seemingly nonsensical letters E, B, E, O, R, I, E, T, E, M, E, T, H, H, P, I, T, and I; the few words that do appear throughout them don’t continue the solution’s basic message. Let’s call these eighteen characters and/or the symbols that represent them the z408 Extras.
More succinctly, the z408 Extras consist of the nine represented letters B, T, E, H, P, O, I, M, and R—some of which appear multiple times. . . . Except for P, all these alphabetical letters appear throughout the April 30th Letters’ Outward Messages, which consist of only five other alphabetical letters: A, S, D, W, and L. And though eight out of nine ain’t bad, nine out of nine would be perfection—a sentiment that seems to have inspired what will be called the PIE or DIE dilemma. To make a long story short, what appears to be D may instead be P on two occasions throughout the April 30th Letters.
While similar to each other, the underlined letters above look quite different from the other Ds throughout the April 30th Letters.
And when stripped of context, they look more like two Ps than two Ds. . . . If these characters’ P-like appearance was intended, they could directly relate to P’s inclusion in the z408 Extras—and then all nine letters from the z408 Extras would appear throughout the April 30th Letters. Moreover, the PIE or DIE dilemma could constitute two instances of a Dual Letter—in other words, a P and a D at the same time. And one Dual Letter would open the interpretational doors to others. Fittingly, the Cursive-Print Zs (as defined and analyzed in Blog Post #1)—which are amalgamations of two different penmanship styles—appear in the same documents as the P-D Dual Letters.
But could the Letter to Joseph Bates contain any Dual Letters? Yes: In the Letter to Joseph Bates, the R in “There” looks exactly like a Backwards N, which could constitute an R-N Dual Letter—and that could be very telling because R and N are the first and last letters in Ross Sullivan.
Below is what the “R” would look like in a mirror. Take the image as is, rotate it ninety degrees (clockwise or counter), and what do you get?
Very importantly, the Backwards N in the Letter to Joseph Bates thematically connects its home with the Zodiac Killer’s Halloween Card, which has its own Handwritten Backwards N. And as N is the fourteenth letter of the alphabet, the Handwritten 14 on the skeleton’s hand in the Halloween Card is not so subtly saying that “The Handwritten Backwards N means something!” Ultimately, the statement is a question: “Did you notice I put a Backwards N in the Letter to Joseph Bates, too?”
If you read fifty random letters and fifty random holiday cards, how many Backwards Ns would you find?
(Disclaimer: This and the next three paragraphs describe things that are designed to sound highly speculative or even crazy when described. In other words, they’re designed to make your eyes roll when I tell you about them—so try to keep them moving left to right.) In the April 30th Letter to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the M in “MoRE [sic]” has a serpentine line at the bottom right—which could constitute an M-S Dual Letter. M-S could stand for the dual middle names in Ross Mercer Stephen Sullivan.
And in the Letter to Riverside PD, the R in “THERE [sic]” has a line similar to the one in the M-S Dual Letter. Despite being much less serpentine, its placement at the bottom-right is reminiscent of the M-S Dual Letter—and its home at R in “THERE” is reminiscent of the Backwards N or R-N Dual Letter from the Letter to Joseph Bates. In other words, the R’s conspicuous bottom-right mark provides another thematic link between the M-S and R-N Dual Letters—therefore, it could be a Dual Letter itself.
According to my eyes, the result would most likely be an R-S Dual Letter. And according to Ross Sullivan’s initials, my eyes are correct. . . . Check out the following images to see if yours agree.
Without the M-S Dual Letter for comparison, I would not see a good argument for an R-S Dual Letter—nor would I be telling you that together they make up the initials for Ross Mercer Stephen Sullivan. Also, he would have had reason to obscure the R-S Dual Letter; if it had been easy to spot, a Riverside cop could have quickly figured out what was going on.
Circling back around, these other Dual Letters provide spiritual support for the idea that the PIE or DIE dilemma was intended by the April 30th Letters’ author. Then together, they provide coded support: The April 30th Letters’ Outward Messages contain the thirteen letters B, A, T, E, S, H, O, D, I, R, W, L, and M; the R-N (or Backwards N) and P-D (from the PIE or DIE dilemma) Dual Letters would add N and P (because R and D have already been accounted for), making a total of fifteen; but the Cursive-Print Zs (and their two-in-one design, like a Dual Letter) could add Z for a grand total of sixteen letters, and the sixteenth letter of the alphabet is P as in PIE.
In other words, the alphabetical total for all three April 30th Letters’ basic and non-basic text could be designed to indicate the author’s spiritual intention behind the PIE or DIE dilemma.
To help us understand the importance of the PIE or DIE dilemma, let’s look at a before-and-after image of The Exorcist Letter.
(The green circle is not original to The Exorcist Letter. I added it to help the coming analysis.)
The Exorcist Letter has weird markings near the bottom—and they make up a rearrangement puzzle that reads “To Kill!” when solved. (That interpretation was put forth by a man named Kevin Robert Brooks. In my opinion, he’s right on the money. Kudos to you, Mr. Brooks.) As seen in the previous image’s green circle, what becomes an exclamation point originally resembles a matchstick—as in the stuff of matchstick puzzles, which are rearrangement puzzles with matchsticks for pieces.
(Matchstick puzzles range in difficulty; some are designed for young children, and some call for the puzzle to be finished in X number of moves—which usually requires lateral thinking and provides a vigorous exercise for any brain.)
And I think I’ve found a rearrangement puzzle quite like the one Mr. Brooks found. It is also quite like a matchstick puzzle. . . . It’s the three-mark T in “There” from the Letter to Joseph Bates.
Rearranged, the three-mark T looks like a pi sign.
Notice the rearrangement’s prominent hook at the bottom right (like that in the pi sign below). Also notice how its top mark is rather like a matchstick, albeit appropriately altered. Let’s give the three-mark T a name: the Pi Sign Puzzle.
Because pi the mathematical term is a homophone for pie the desert, the Pi Sign Puzzle is a very strong indication that the PIE or DIE dilemma was intended by the author of the April 30th Letters.
As you may know, pi is followed by “radius squared” to make the area of a circle. Radius begins with R, while squared begins with S. Put them together and you have the initials for Ross Sullivan.
Pi represents the approximate number 3.14: The third letter of the alphabet is C, while the fourteenth letter of the alphabet is N—and C is the first letter in Cheri Jo Bates, while N is involved with the R-N Dual Letter that seems to represent the first and last letters in Ross Sullivan.
But what about the S at the end of Cheri Jo Bates? Seemingly, a Secret S occurs next to the Pi Sign Puzzle, resulting in what looks like the word “she” between the Backwards N and the Pi Sign Puzzle (that is to say, the nonsense letters frame an actual word).
(The Hidden She seems to be a play on how the word her appears in the direct middle of “there.”)
Appearing in the same document, the Hidden She seems to be a metaphor for hidden meanings behind why “She” is the first word in the Letter to Joseph Bates—unlike the other two April 30th Letters, which begin with “Bates.”
Its first hidden meaning has already been explained in Blog Post #1: Shortening it by two characters, “She” makes the Letter to Joseph Bates a total of twenty-six characters—resulting in one of the Riverside Document’s six secret Z initials (because Z is the twenty-sixth letter of the alphabet). In other words, “She” foreshadows how the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates will become the Zodiac Killer—and it does so in a second, perhaps even more creative way.
The April 30th Letters are a set of three very similar letters—each mailed out on the same day to a different California address; the z408 Letters are a set of three very similar letters—each mailed out on the same day to a different California address. Two of the April 30th Letters begin with “BATES HAD To DIE [sic],” while the other begins with “She Had To Die [sic]”; two of the z408 Letters begin with “Dear Editor I am the killer,” while the other begins with “Dear Editor This is the murderer.” In other words, a language pattern is established in two letters—then broken in a third. And the process is repeated two years later.
Let’s put these similarities into perspective: Does any other event in the history of crime involve an unknown killer who sends out three very similar letters to three different addresses in a single day—two of them beginning one way, the third beginning a slightly different way?
In summation, “She” doubly foreshadows how the author of the April 30th Letters will become the Zodiac Killer (with the moniker’s debuting not long after the z408 Letters).
“MoRE” has a very unusual appearance in the Letter to Joseph Bates—particularly because of its large lowercase cursive M and scribbly E. Furthermore, it has no Cursive-Print Z beneath it—and that distinguishes the Letter to Joseph Bates from the other two April 30th Letters.
In the Letter to Joseph Bates, the Cursive-Print Z from the other two April 30th Letters is revamped into an S-Z Dual Letter and absorbed by the message’s final letter—an E (see images below). The result is an E-S-Z Triple Letter—likely a pun-based metaphor for how the April 30th Letters are a set of three (in other words, three alphabetical letters for three letters in the mail).
The striking appearance of “MoRE” in the Letter to Joseph Bates may very well be intentional; its scribbly E seems to be a coded E-S-Z Triple Letter—therefore, its strikingly Large Lowercase Cursive M could have a coded meaning as well. . . . Together, the Large Lowercase Cursive M and its scribbly E could represent “ME”—and as they occur in a letter that is twenty-six (outward) characters long, the statement could be ME = Z as in Zodiac (and the twenty-sixth letter of the alphabet).
If ME = Z is intended by MoRE’s intentionally strange appearance, it would account for E and Z in the E-S-Z Triple Letter. But what would the S mean? . . . As the E-S-Z Triple letter occurs next to the R in MoRE, the S can couple with it and make RS—the initials for Ross Sullivan. (And the remaining O in MoRE could represent the original Irish O in O’Sullivan—as Blog Post #6 aka The “My Name Is” Cipher would strongly indicate.)
In accordance with how Z is joined with E in the Letter sent to Joseph Bates, Z is a symbol for E in the z408 cipher (see image below)—in a perfect reversal of cryptography’s Z-is-the-least-common-letter logic because E is the most common letter (in terms of standard English spelling). In other words, cryptography is symbolically turned on its head all over every page.
Furthermore—as a triangle has three sides, the z408 cipher’s Triangle = S solution (see image above) works as an analogy for how S is part of the E-S-Z Triple Letter in the Letter to Joseph Bates. . . . All in all, the z408 cipher’s Z = E and Triangle = S solutions could be allusions to the E-S-Z Triple Letter.
Unsurprisingly, the April 30th Letters’ thematic influence does not stop at the z408 cipher; it goes all the way to the very last letter the Zodiac Killer mailed out: the “Red Phantom” Letter (the “I Am Back With You” and “Channel 9” Letters are younger, but they are considered forgeries by handwriting experts [and I absolutely agree]).
Printed by the SF Chronicle on 6/27/1974, “Apple-Pie Nostalgia to Cherish” is a column piece by Count Marco (pseudonym). As its title contains the word “Pie” as in the PIE or DIE dilemma as well as the name “Cheri” (as in Cheri Jo Bates) within the word “Cherish,” it likely inspired the Red Phantom Letter; twelve days after printing the piece, the SF Chronicle received the Zodiac Killer’s “(red with rage)” response mocking Count Marco.
(A Tom Voigt YouTube video [link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mPBH0AXaFc&t=888s] makes a good argument for the Red Phantom Letter’s being authentic, despite how the penmanship is unlike anything else purportedly written by the Zodiac Killer.)
When the April 30th Letters and “THE CONFESSION” letter(s) are counted as they should be, there are 26 Total Zodiac Killer Letters:
1 and 2) “THE CONFESSION” letter(s): 11/29/1966
3, 4, and 5) The Bates Letters: 4/30/1967
6, 7, and 8) The z408 Letters: 7/31/1969
9) Debut of Zodiac Letter: No postmark date; received 8/4/1969
10) Paul Stein Letter: 10/13/1969
11) Dripping Pen Card: 11/8/1969
12) Bus Bomb Letter: 11/9/1969
13) “Happy Christmass [sic]” Letter aka Melvin Belli Letter: 12/20/1969
14) The “My Name Is” Letter: 4/20/1970
15) Dragon Card: 4/28/1970
16) Buttons Letter: 6/26/1970
17) Kathleen Johns Letter: 7/24/1970
18) “Little List” Letter: 7/26/1971
19) 13-Hole Postcard: 10/5/1970
20) The Halloween Card: 10/27/1970
21) The Los Angeles Times Letter: 3/13/1971
22) “Sierra Club” Card: 3/22/1971
23) “The Exorcist” Letter: 1/29/1974
24) “Sla” Letter: 2/14/1974
25) Concerned Citizen Letter: 5/8/1974
26) The Red Phantom Letter: 7/8/1974
As a set, the 26 Total Zodiac Killer Letters could allude to the twenty-six letters in the alphabet. In other words, 26 Letters in the Mail = 26 Letters in the Alphabet because Ross Sullivan/the Zodiac Killer had tons and tons of fun with puns.