The Zodiac serial killer claimed the lives of at least five young victims between 1966 and 1974, and mocked the police with telephone calls, taunting letters, and encrypted messages. Thousands of men have been accused; nearly 2,500 have been investigated. Yet the Zodiac has never been identified.
This painstakingly researched and meticulously detailed compendium to the Zodiac serial killer case by true crime author Mark Hewitt presents the crimes and their effect on a community, including the various sides of the many disputed issues within the case.
HUNTED: The Zodiac Murders is the true story of America's greatest criminal mystery. This indispensable companion book is accessible to anyone interested in joining the pursuit, exploring a mystery, or witnessing the police response to an appalling crime spree.
1 | RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA
“SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL”
Cheri Jo drove herself to the library. It would be the last ride of her life.
At 3:00 in the afternoon, and again at 3:45, 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates, a pretty Southern California brunette, telephoned Stefani Guttman, her close friend and fellow Riverside City College (RCC) student. She invited her friend to accompany her in picking up a few books from the college library. It was Sunday afternoon, and Cheri Jo, a conscientious first-year student, needed the literature to complete a class assignment. Guttman would forever regret passing on the opportunity.
Alone, Bates set out sometime before 6:00 p.m. on October 30, 1966.
Just before she left, she wrote a note for her father, with whom she lived, informing him of her destination: “DAD—Went to RCC Library.”
Joseph Bates arrived home shortly afterwards and found his daughter’s words. Before he departed for dinner at a friend’s home, he too scribbled a note—Stefani had called and left a message. This father and daughter team communicated well and often. Joseph had phoned Cheri Jo from his friend’s home at 5:00, and again at 5:15, to invite his daughter to join them for dinner, but the line was busy on both occasions. He had just missed her when he got back home around 6:00 p.m.
Joseph showered, changed his clothes, and traveled back to his friend’s home. Cheri Jo would have to fend for herself.
Earlier that day, the two had celebrated Mass at Saint Catherine’s Catholic Church, followed by breakfast. When her dad went to the beach at Corona del Mar with his friend to enjoy the unseasonably warm temperatures that afternoon, Cheri Jo had declined to accompany them. She had homework to complete. She also hoped to make time to compose a passionate letter to her boyfriend in San Francisco.
When Joseph finally arrived home to stay around midnight, he discovered that his message remained untouched. A feeling of worry overcame him. Cheri Jo, his only daughter, had not returned from the library.
Alarmed, he hurriedly telephoned Guttman for any information he could gather. He would call her again at 6:50 in the morning. At daybreak, he filed a missing person’s report with the Riverside Police Department (RPD). He and Cheri Jo were so close, and she was usually so careful and punctual, that he refused to wait any longer. He knew something was wrong.
Something was.
At 6:30 on the morning following her disappearance, the body of Cheri Jo Bates was found face down on a dirt pathway that led to a student parking area. It lay between two old, vacant houses that had been purchased by the college in preparation for an expansion. Bates’s remains were approximately 100 yards from her disabled car (one police estimate lists 200 feet instead of 300 feet, possibly a typing error). The grisly discovery was made by 48-year-old RCC groundskeeper Cleophas Martin as he operated a street sweeping machine. Cheri Jo had been stabbed numerous times, including a coup de grace to the neck, a slice that nearly decapitated her.
The furrowed grass in the area bore witness to a horrific struggle. Bates was fully clothed in a yellow blouse (the coroner described it as a “loose pink moderately heavy blouse”), home-made red Capris, and white sandals. She wore no sweater because she was planning to return home immediately after collecting the books—she preferred to study at home. Her arms were drawn in, and her body partially concealed a woven straw tote-bag purse beneath her, papers from which would be used to identify her. She had been beaten about the face and strangled. The autopsy would detail seven deliberate cuts to her young throat.
Born in Nebraska on February 4, 1948 to Joseph C. Bates and Irene Karolvitz, Cheri Josephine Bates lived with her father, a machinist at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory in Norco. Her only sibling, her younger brother, Michael, had joined the Navy and was stationed far from home. She could see her mother anytime, since she too lived in Riverside, having divorced Cheri Jo’s father. The family, which had been intact at the time, had moved to California eight years prior to the attack. A family of four, through divorce and a military assignment, had become a household of two.
Her parent’s divorce and her brother’s absence did not hold Cheri Jo back. She was even-keeled, dedicated, and determined. A full-time student at RCC, she still found time to do typing and other clerical work for Riverside National Bank. She was well liked by her friends, but more importantly, she was respected by them. Never given to erratic impulsiveness, her word was her bond. Everyone who knew her knew that she was as dependable and prompt as she was loyal. Her creative flair never resulted in periods of irresponsibility. She was generous and kind, and always seemed to have a smile on her face. She had no shortage of date requests from the many men drawn to her gregariousness. She was planning a career as a flight attendant. An official at the Ramona High School where Bates had been a cheerleader described her as bright and very popular with both boys and girls during her high school career in Riverside.
Riverside, California, the town where Cheri Jo and her family had lived for almost a decade, was founded in 1870. Named for the Santa Ana River on which it sat, it became the county seat in 1873 when Riverside County was established. No permanent settlement had occurred at the site prior to this time, but the area was well known to the local Native Americans, who had over the years built many temporary dwellings there. The Spanish first arrived in the region in 1774.
Once established as a permanent town, and seat of the county, Riverside became known for the Washington Navel Orange, a popular variety of seedless orange. It boasted large settlements of Chinese and Korean workers, possessing one of the largest Chinatowns to be found in California. It played host to NASCAR racing and other track events at the Riverside International Raceway that operated from 1957 to 1989. When it finally closed, the raceway’s buildings and track were dismantled to make way for a shopping mall.
In the 1960 census, the town boasted a population of 84,332. Cheri Jo Bates would never again be counted among the cities’ residents, however. She had been murdered in cold blood.
***
The 1960s in California was a tumultuous decade. As far as American history, only the 1860s with the Civil War offered more social and cultural upheaval. One consequence of the free love and rebellion was a large number of serial killers spawned in the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s. They may have emerged on the scene as a result of widespread interpersonal alienation, the increased number of absentee parents, or merely the nebulous but palpable angst that permeated the culture. Whatever the cause, the surge of a “new” type of criminal was notable and alarming. At the time of Bates’s death, no one realized that a lone murder in Southern California was the opening salvo of a deadly spree, and the beginning of a decades-long mystery. It was a one-off event when it occurred, and it seemed unrelated to other contemporary crimes.
The crime in and of itself was high profile, and the community felt an urgency to find its resolution. In the usually safe town of Riverside, murder was rare. Riverside Police Chief L. T. “Curly” Kinkead quickly assigned seven officers. They were ordered to drop their current projects and apply themselves full time to the murder investigation. Detective Sergeant Gren was assisted by six detectives: Dick Yonkers, Earl Brown, Wayne Durrington, Cliff Arons, Curtis Best, and Bob Walters. These investigators would in turn be supported by full-time detectives assigned to the case by the District Attorney’s Office, and additional detectives from the Coroner’s Office. On the first day of the investigation alone—the day Bates’s body was discovered—24 officers put in a total of 133 man hours of effort.
And this was only the beginning. The first month recorded a total of 30 different law enforcement agents working the many facets of the murder case.
Gren, Brown, and Yonkers preserved the integrity of the crime scene and began to search for clues, even as students began to flow past on their way to class. Many stopped to stare.
Subsequent investigation revealed that Bates had checked out three books on the U.S. Electoral College system from the RCC library at approximately 6:00 p.m. When she returned to her lime green Volkswagen Beetle, parked on a city street near the library at 3680 Terracina Drive (the address of college), she was unable to start the vehicle. Apparently, not realizing the damage that had been done to her car, she turned over the engine again and again, enough to drain the battery. Three library books lay on the passenger seat of her car; the keys remained in the ignition.
Under greater scrutiny, it was evident that someone had deliberately tampered with Miss Bates’s 1960 Volkswagen. Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies Jack Reid and Jack Elms, who located Bates’s car on the morning after her disappearance, noted that the distributor coil and condenser had been torn out according to one source, and the coil wire dislodged from the distributor socket. A few greasy fingerprints and palm prints that dirtied the driver’s door must have come from whomever had disabled the car. Both windows were rolled down. The passenger door was ajar, suggesting to detectives that her assailant may have been in the vehicle with her. Detective Captain Irvin “Irv” L. Cross of the Riverside Police Department (RPD) ordered the vehicle towed to the police station to be examined.
Dr. F. Rene Modglin, a pathologist on contract with the Riverside County Coroner’s Office, began his preliminary autopsy right at the spot Bates lay. He had been called at home at 7:15 in the morning by Chief Deputy Coroner William J. Dykes and notified of a possible homicide. Dykes called again at 8:30—this time to Modglin at work—ordering him to proceed to the site. The pathologist arrived just after 9:00 a.m. Based on the temperature of Bates’s liver, and the corpse’s stage of rigor mortis, he tentatively estimated that the girl had been killed at 10:30 p.m. That estimate would be modified following a more extensive study of the body.
The detectives gathering clues soon learned that Cheri Jo may have announced her passing.
A woman who lived in the vicinity reported that she heard a scream the previous evening between 10:15 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., followed by a second, muted scream, and then two minutes later by the sound of an older car roaring to life. This information was described in the newspapers as originating from an anonymous caller, who at the time of the sounds did not think them important enough to contact the police. Whether these were related to the violent attack was never established.
The screams could have come from someone unwittingly stumbling across the body in the dead of night, or by someone unrelated to the crime. If they had been made by Bates, and denoted the time of the attack, investigators were left to wonder what Bates was doing between 6:00 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., especially in light of the fact that she could not start her car and may not have shown herself to her friends in the library, which shuttered for the night at 9:00 p.m. The police believed that the screams coincided with Bates’s death, but would not confirm this without corroborating evidence.
Authorities transported the body to Acheson and Graham Mortuary, where Modglin performed a complete autopsy. Those present included: Detective Gerald H. Dunn, Detective Earl T. Brown of the RPD, Investigator Jim Lesseigne (Riverside County District Attorney’s Office), Michael J. Reilly (Riverside County Coroner’s Office), and Mr. Scotty Hill, an embalmer at the mortuary. The pathologist ruled it a death due to hemorrhage of the right carotid artery. Fingernail scrapings suggested that the victim had struggled against a white, male assailant.
Bates weighed 110 pounds. The doctor noted her green eyes and brown hair. Her blood type was AB positive, and tested negative—as expected—for traces of drugs or alcohol. He recorded, among many other abrasions and wounds, a 2-centimeter oblique laceration to her upper lip, numerous petechia in the skin of her forehead, and an area of dark blue-gray discoloration of the skin of her left cheek and chin. He removed from her stomach the roast beef that had been cooked and eaten by Bates on Sunday, evidencing between two and four hours of digestion. He now set the time of death to a range of time between 9:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., but an even earlier time would be stated in a future document.
During the preliminary procedure, still at the crime scene, Modglin found a clot of blood with four sandy-brown hairs attached to it. They were on the base of Bates’s right thumb, and provided a most intriguing potential forensic link to her killer. Analysis conducted by the Trace Evidence Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1999 revealed that the hairs did not match exemplary hairs taken from Bates. The killer may have deposited the clot during the mortal violence.
The wounds on her body revealed that the friendly coed had been attacked with a small knife whose blade measured only three and a half inches by a half inch, possibly a pen knife or a small kitchen implement. She had been stabbed numerous times in the chest, once in the back, and slashed across her neck. Investigators had on their hands a homicide caused by multiple stabbing and slashing wounds of the abdomen and neck—inflicted with a sharp instrument or knife. Despite having no eyewitnesses and no firm time of attack, they remained hopeful that enough clues were present to identify and convict the person or persons responsible. They wanted the case solved.
They wanted it solved quickly.
Detectives Bob Walters and Earl Brown of the RPD used a metal detector to search the area of the crime scene for a murder weapon. None was found. An investigation of the library also proved fruitless. Walter Seibert was one of a few of Cheri Jo’s friends who was at the library from 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. None of them saw Bates, whom they knew and would have noticed, according to the police report. Bates’s friends did report that they saw four men in work clothes sitting on a fence across from the spot where Bates’s car was located. One newspaper reported that Bates had been seen studying at the library until its close at 9:00 p.m. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery later wrote that “numerous witnesses” had observed Bates in the library though none had spoken to her.
The Press, a local Riverside newspaper, carried two stories about the attack on the day after Bates was found. In the first, information about the discovery of a body was shared with the public. Bates was identified by name, and her father’s name and address were listed, the naïve standard of an innocent time, “Joseph Bates 4195 Via San Jose.” The article noted that the area of the crime had to be roped off because students were beginning to arrive for classes. Officer J. Walters was pictured looking for clues. In a separate picture, Officer Ben Castlebury interrogated librarian Harry Back and reference librarian Winifred Turner about the library’s hours of operation. The story noted that officers carefully circumnavigated the pathway, preventing the destruction of any forensic material, until it had been processed.
The second article, titled, “Father waits in vain for daughter’s return,” told the heart-wrenching story of Cheri Jo’s dad. By Monday morning, Joseph knew that a body had been found at RCC, and that Cheri Jo’s Volkswagen, with California license plate PNA-398, had been discovered nearby. Police didn’t say anything to him at first, but he suspected that the remains were those of his only daughter.
The police eventually notified him of what he already knew. He was now very alone.
***
On Tuesday, Gren informed reporters that the detectives had interviewed 75 people, but still had not solved the riddle: “So far we have drawn a blank.” He asked for public assistance from anyone who had seen Bates before her demise, hoping that knowledge of her movements and activities of Sunday night would aid the investigation.
Tips flooded in. Everyone wanted to help, it seemed. When the public was told of the small blade that was used against the popular, young coed, telephone calls came in from people all over town who had located just such a knife. On November 14, the campus gardener raked up a small knife on the college grounds. Unfortunately for the investigation, it had no dried blood on it and the size was wrong.
It was reported that one witness had seen Bates as she drove toward the library on the day she went missing. A 1965 or 1966 bronze-colored car, possibly an Oldsmobile, had been observed following her. No one else could confirm the sighting, and no such vehicle was ever positively identified.
Riverside Police Chief Kinkead revealed on Wednesday that nearly 125 citizens had been interviewed by police, who were working the murder case around the clock.
In the aftermath of the attack, RCC illuminated and provided open space at the spot the crime had occurred. Facing pressure from the community, it moved up its schedule to install mercury vapor lights on the campus between Terracina Drive and Fairfax Avenue.
The few pieces of physical evidence found at the scene of the murder intrigued investigators. A heel print in the soil from a military shoe, sized between 8 and 10, appeared to come from her attacker. It was identified as a B.F. Goodrich waffle design, a men’s four-eighths inch washer-type half heel. At first it appeared that the shoes that made the impression originated in England. Subsequent investigation indicated that they were sold only to federal prison industries at Leavenworth, Kansas, where they were cobbled with leather into shoes for the U.S. government. The pair that made the impressions in the soft ground could have been purchased at nearby March Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command base. Shoes bearing the identified tread patterns were also available to other government agencies, including prison administrations.
A man’s Timex watch, with the fastener on one side of the watch torn off, may have also been deposited by her attacker. It had a white, stainless steel face and no serial number. Located ten feet from Bates’s body, with its hands stopped at precisely 12:24, the watch may have been pulled from her killer during the struggle. It was later determined that the watch had been purchased from the PX at an overseas military base. This resulted in the interrogation of 154 airmen stationed at March Air Force Base—all those who took classes at the college.
The Timex was sent on Thursday to the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (CII) in Sacramento, and subjected to many tests by a private company in San Diego. A summary of the crime five years later indicated that the police were convinced that the watch belonged to her murderer, but they also knew it could have been totally unrelated to the attack or purposefully placed by her attacker as a false clue. If it was worn by Bates’s killer, the police had one more piece of information about him: he had a seven-inch wrist. The watch was dotted with white paint spatter, an intriguing potential clue to its owner’s identity.
The investigation also turned up a discarded cigarette butt near the site of the murder. Law enforcement never determined whether it was related to Bates’s death, or was deposited by someone totally unconnected to the case. The police soon realized that they did not have much concrete evidence from the site of the murder, but would have to somehow move the case forward nevertheless.
***
A murder investigation usually begins with a careful evaluation of the crime scene. It proceeds with a comprehensive study of the victim, and then continues outward in ever-expanding concentric circles of the victim’s social relationships. A crime scene analysis, an integral part of any investigation, makes two important assumptions stemming from what is known in criminology as the Locard Transfer Principle, articulated by Dr. Edmund Locard: “every contact leaves a trace.” The first assumption is that when anyone commits a crime, he or she will inevitably leave something of him- or herself behind at the scene, such as a head hair, fingerprint, or trace fiber. It is not possible for someone to inhabit a place without leaving some evidence of the visit, however small. The question is whether scientific investigative means are available to record and document the evidence before it is destroyed or contaminated.
The second assumption is a corollary: every perpetrator of a crime takes something with him or her from a crime scene, whether it be microscopic traces of the environment, such as soil, vegetation, or water samples; some portion of the victim, such as bodily fluids, a hair, or clothing fibers; or something brought to the scene by the victim or someone else. If a suspect can be identified soon enough, evidence of his or her presence can be preserved and presented in a court of law.
In an investigation, the crime scene evidence may aid investigators in developing the rudimentary beginnings of a profile. The police want to know what type of person might feel comfortable operating in such an environment, and what about the scene itself may have led to the crime. Since the scene can reveal what is likely or possible for the criminal behavior, a good investigator will linger, attempting to understand as much about it as possible.
While the investigators in 1966 lacked many modern investigative techniques, they were able to develop a rough profile of their suspect.
Criminal profiling is as old as investigation. It is an attempt to describe as accurately as possible what is known or can be inferred about an unknown offender. It will incorporate eyewitness reports and any details of the perpetrator’s known physical properties in an effort to eliminate suspects so that law enforcement can focus its attention on a smaller set of likely candidates. Psychological profiling—the activity that attempts to describe the psychological makeup of the offender from the crime-scene evidence—dates back to the 1950s. It was unavailable to the investigation at the time of the murder, however, and would not gain widespread acceptance until published papers on the subject began appearing in reputable journals in the 1970s.
The investigators dutifully took a close look at Bates’s life. Victimology, the study of the victim of a crime, often provides clues as to what happened, and why it happened. If the victim is present in some high-risk category—such as a drug-using prostitute or a known member of a violent gang—an analysis of the risks may suggest a motive for the killing. A victimology may also indicate who was responsible, or at least the type of person who should be considered. A low-risk victim, such as a well-liked member of the community who does not engage in unlawful behavior, may suggest that the killer may be closer to home—an intimate friend or a spouse.
The police were confident in their assessment that Cheri Jo was very low risk in her actions and lifestyle. She did not move in violent crowds, break the law, or use drugs. Her victimology did not suggest a motive for death. In only one respect was she at an elevated risk at all: she was young and attractive. Eyesome females run an increased chance of violent death at the hands of lovers, ex-lovers, and wannabe lovers in all-too-frequently-played-out scenarios of fatal revenge, spite, or misdirected passion.
The Riverside police were well aware that most murder victims are known to their killers. Frequently, the perpetrator is a friend or family member. It is an early step in any investigation to examine and, if possible, clear all close associates. Murder is a deliberate and hostile act, usually having at its root a soured friendship, a broken family tie, a failed business partnership, or love affair gone wrong. The overwhelming majority of murders of young women are committed by boyfriends, husbands, or men who once filled these roles.
Cheri Jo was dating at the time of her death. According to newspaper reports, her exclusive partner, Dennis Highland, had left the area to attend San Francisco State College after studying at RCC. The weekend prior to her death, Cheri Jo had joined Highland’s parents on a trip to visit him at the Northern California campus. The trip went well by all accounts. Cheri Jo and Dennis were very much in love. Highland was questioned and cleared quite quickly. He was far away from Riverside at the time of the murder, and had no apparent motive to kill his girlfriend even if he had been in the area.
Early on, in the initial fog of the murder, two friends of Cheri Jo’s told police that their friend had gone to the library to meet her boyfriend. Further investigation eliminated this possibility. Captain Cross reported on Thursday that the information was based on hearsay, and was incorrect. By this time nearly 200 people had been questioned.
The Tiger Times, the RCC newspaper, in a story published five days after the attack—“Police Still Lack Clues in the Murder”—noted that the police had no suspects. The tentatively held theory was that the killer disabled Bates’s car, then waited for her in one of the driveways on Terracina Drive. The paper indicated that Bates “put up a tremendous struggle” in her valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to survive. It also reported that there was an increase in students who dropped night classes—but added that, according to John Matulich, the Dean of Admissions, this may have been prompted by other factors, including a drop-class deadline.
Exactly two weeks after the murder, according to several sources, the police staged a reenactment of sorts. They invited everyone who had been at the library on the night that Bates was killed to reassemble. Participants were told to wear the same clothes they had worn, park in the same space in which they had parked, and sit at the same desk they had occupied that night. Each of the 65 participants was questioned and asked to give a statement as to what they had seen and done a fortnight earlier. Further, the men were fingerprinted and asked for a lock of their hair. (The color of the hair found on Bates’s thumb was initially withheld from the public.) Everyone willingly agreed to the requests to help locate Bates’s killer.
Through the reenactment, it was concluded that Bates, or a woman who looked like her, had arrived at the library at 5:40 p.m. and waited until it opened at 6:00 p.m. Captain Cross announced that the police sought a 1947 to 1952 Studebaker with light-colored oxidized paint. One had been seen by students at 7:00 p.m. on the night of the murder, but it had not been present for the reenactment two weeks later. Also, police were looking for a heavyset man with a beard. He too had been observed at the library, but had failed to return.
By December 1, no strong suspect or suspects had been developed. Many people brought to the attention of law enforcement had been investigated. One man moved south immediately following the murder. Further investigation eliminated him from suspicion. A mental patient at a nearby State Hospital reported that he might have killed the petite beauty. He was found to be subject to delusions and hallucinations—and not responsible for the murder. Because the attack closely resembled an April 1965 stabbing of another coed in a spot not far from where Bates was found, investigators moved quickly to find the assailant of the earlier violence. The 19-year-old was cleared as soon as he was located. He was still serving time for that attempted murder when Bates was stabbed, and therefore could not have been responsible.
Investigators carefully analyzed the evidence. Drops of dried blood found in a driveway suggested that the killer had returned to Terracina Drive after completing the injuries to Bates. It was also possible that Bates was stabbed at or near her car, and then shed these drops as she fled for her life to the promise of safety among the abandoned homes. Captain Cross initially speculated that the victim had sprinted from the library, noting that scuff marks were found in the gravel along the driveway. His suspicions were revised with the discovery of footprints leading to the crime scene that suggested instead that Bates had gone willingly, unaware of what awaited her, as a lamb to the slaughter. The right window of Bates car was partially open, leading investigators to wonder whether she had been approached at some point in the ordeal from the passenger side of her vehicle.
The odd condition of her car puzzled investigators. Through interviews, they learned that she loved her vehicle, and worked very hard to pay for it. She never left it, they were told, until it had been carefully locked and its windows dutifully rolled up. They could not account for the unlocked doors, the unrolled windows, and the key thoughtlessly abandoned in the ignition. They speculated that she knew her attacker and was comfortable enough to let her guard down and leave with him.
This was reinforced by the knowledge that Bates was afraid of the dark. Because that Sunday was the first day of the return to Pacific Standard Time, the city was dark at 6:15 p.m. Investigators believed that she would only have ventured between the two dilapidated campus homes with someone she highly trusted.
***
As the Riverside Police Department strove to understand what had happened to Bates and locate a perpetrator, the idea of a serial killer was never considered. This was a single murder, unconnected to any other crime at this point. Additionally, the term “serial killer” would not be coined and in common use for another decade or so. Only traditional motives for the killing were explored because those were all the categories that existed in the minds and training of investigators. In 1966, they had no other arrows in their investigative quivers.
Murder for financial gain was quickly eliminated when Bates’s purse was located under her body, its contents including cash completely undisturbed. Investigators also ruled out a sexual attack, because the girl’s clothing was unmolested and no semen or other evidence was present to suggest such a motive. They considered and rejected other common motives, and were left wondering whether it was a drug-related murder, a revenge killing, or a spur of the moment attack committed by a perpetrator in a psychotic fit of rage. Further investigation failed to reveal any known enemies, or any hint of a drug or organized crime connection in Bates’s life.
A few fingerprints were collected and sent to CII in Sacramento on November 4, specifically the Latent Fingerprint Section. The file became latent case #73096. Further analysis would eliminate all but four fingerprints and three partial palm prints, which were never matched to anyone. On November 9, a preliminary report was filed with the Riverside County District Attorney’s office, and nail scrapings, vaginal smears, and hairs from the base of Bates’s right thumb were processed for analysis. Despite the physical evidence, the investigation soon sputtered for a lack of motive, any real suspects, or a single eyewitness. The police were left to scratch their heads at this most mysterious, senseless killing.
One fact regarding the murder seemed clear. If Bates’s attacker planned to kill her, he was a novitiate in murdering with a knife. The three and a half inch by half inch blade was not nearly sufficient for a clean and efficient kill, and it allowed his victim to put up a noble struggle. If he were to murder again with a knife, he would know to bring something larger—much larger. If the attack was unplanned—perhaps an intended sexual assault that got out of hand, or the perpetrator impulsively reacted with violence to some unexpected psychological trigger—and knowing what we now know, perhaps the killer enjoyed his first taste of blood and made the decision that this would not be his last.
The murder investigation, case #352-481, would eventually go as cold as Bates’s lifeless body. No one could be found who had a reason to kill the young coed, and Bates did not engage in any high-risk behaviors that would suggest a motive. Friends and family members were questioned and cleared. Not only were the members of her closest circle not responsible, no one seemed to know by whom or for what purpose their much-loved Cheri Jo was murdered.
***
The Confession letters
The investigation reignited one month after the killing with the arrival of two letters. On November 29, an unstamped envelope addressed to the Homicide Division in Riverside was removed from the collection box in the main post office at 5:00 p.m. The block lettering, done in heavy felt pen, was likely a disguise of the true handwriting of its author. Inside, the RPD found their copy of the Confession letter. The very next day, a Riverside newspaper, The Daily Enterprise (today publishing as The Press-Enterprise), received an unstamped envelope with a separate copy of the Confession letter.
Efforts to locate the identity of the typewriter used in the creation of the letters proved negative. The two letters were carbon copies revealing a common original that was typed, single spaced, and used short sentences and minimal punctuation (only periods and commas). The letter type most closely resembled a font coming from a portable Royal typewriter, likely a Merit Pica 508, its specific font-type an elite Canterbury shaded. The original from which the copies were made never surfaced. There may have been two originals. Whoever had killed Bates wanted the police and the press to know details of the attack, he wanted them to know it was he who had placed a phone call, and he wanted others to know that he would kill again.
Either that, or some hoaxer wanted to claim credit for an unsolved murder. The police had to consider every possibility. Whatever their source, the letters had to be investigated. In detail and tone, they sounded like authentic communications from Cheri Jo’s killer. If the claims were sincere, whether the letters came from Bates’s killer or not was immaterial. Someone had sent terrorist-like threats and used the federal postal system to communicate these, both of which were felonious activities. The writer had underscored his message by providing it in duplicate.
Typed in all capital letters, the Confession letter read as follows:
THE CONFESSION
BY__________________
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 BLOND THAT BABYSITS NEAR THE LITTLE STORE AND WALKS DOWN THE DARK ALLEY EACH EVENING ABOUT SEVEN. OR MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE SHAPELY BLUE EYED BROWNETT THAT SAID NO WHEN I ASKED HER 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 TO 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 MINUTS. 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. SHE 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 CHOAKED HER, AND HER LIPS TWICHED, 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’S 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.
CC. CHIEF OF POLICE
ENTERPRISE
The Confession letter’s unusual use of the word “that” to describe Bates—rather than the grammatically correct “who”—would much later suggest that its writer may also have penned a strange follow-up letter that repeatedly made this same grammatical error. It is not out of character for a callous murderer to describe his victim as an inanimate object.
If the Riverside police believed the letter writer and anticipated additional killings by the same perpetrator, they still did not suspect that they were up against a serial killer because the phrase did not yet exist. The only qualifier of the word “murderer” for investigators in 1966 was that of “mass murderer,” used to describe anyone who kills more than one person in a single incident, for any reason and under whatever circumstances. But the killer would kill again, and write more letters, and make more telephone calls. Finally, years later, he would cease his campaign of terror. All this would be completed before Bob Ressler, of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), would coin the term“serial killer” in the 1980s to distinguish those who kill repeatedly (three or more instances) across expanses of time (often called a “cooling-off period”) from other types of murderers.
The phrase “serial killer” would in time have to be further qualified to differentiate organized serial killers (those who premeditate and bring tools and instruments of their trade to the murder) from disorganized serial killers (those who utilize whatever is available at the scene). There are other kinds of “serial” killers as well, such as paid assassins, gang killers, spree killers, and other types who repeatedly commit murders. Investigators attempt to discern two things about a serial killer: how they physically conduct the murder, and what mentally drives them to commit the murders including the psychological effects of the act of murder on the serial killer themselves. With this information, investigators can begin to unravel the killer’s modus operandi, and with luck identify them before they kill again, or at least use their analysis in prosecuting the alleged killer.
Entire volumes have been written on the science of behavioral analysis. It is beyond the scope of this work to recreate what other authors have already so admirably written on the subject.
***
The Confession letters, so called because of the title centered across the top of the page, were postmarked Riverside, California, and delivered despite their lack of postage stamps. The press copies were eight inches wide by unknown length since the top and bottom of the letters had been torn off by the writer for reasons unknown.
The police attempted to identify the letter’s author. Even when typed—a clever means of disguising any handwriting idiosyncrasies—letters can be traced to their creators. Typewriters have a unique signature that can yield a match for investigators who check the height of individual characters, distinctive wear patterns, or other unique characteristics of the specific letters. The writer of the Confession letters apparently anticipated this: he sent only carbon copies of the typed original, possibly a fourth or fifth copy produced by a multilayered sandwich of papers and carbon sheets. The text was therefore difficult to read, and virtually impossible to link to a specific machine.
Though titled “THE CONFESSION,” the text of the letters would more aptly be described as a narration of events infused with the promise of additional killings. The only “confession” present was a taunting braggadocio. The killer was apparently proud of his work, and looked forward to repeating it.
The motive behind Bates’s death, according to the letters, was revenge because of “BRUSH OFFS” she had apparently given the killer “DURING THE YEARS PRIOR.” This provided for the killer—in his eyes—a reason to kill not only Cheri Jo, but any other women he might choose. He promised to choose more.
The police quickly accepted the authenticity of the letter. They felt strongly that the wording could only have come from the responsible party. By November 30, the RPD advised that they had reviewed news releases, and none of them had mentioned the disabling of the middle wire of the distributor. Also, other points in the letters suggested to them that the writer was the killer: the manner of the murder was correctly described in the Confession letters, as was the mention of a phone call to the police. His quote, “ITS ABOUT TIME,” may even have been a veiled reference to his lost watch. As late as October 20, 1969, the RPD sent a memo to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, attention Captain Donald A. Townsend, declaring, “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.”
The argument would have been forensically bolstered had a piece of the blade been left at the crime scene. The letter writer had claimed that his knife had broken during the struggle, but no piece was located in or around Bates. In a follow-up report, investigators noted that if the responsible knife was ever discovered, it might have a piece missing or be broken. The police could not independently confirm the killer’s claim. The police could also not confirm that a telephone call had been placed by the killer, another specific claim made in the letter.
When a string of murders were perpetrated hundreds of miles away in Northern California, including a few that seemed related to the attack on Bates, the connection was eventually made. Some investigators became convinced that Bates’s death was just one in a series that included: the murder of a couple outside Vallejo; two attacks on two other couples that would each leave a woman dead and a male survivor; and the brutal slaying of a cab driver. However, not everyone believed that the serial killer who would come to be known as the “Zodiac” was responsible for the death of Cheri Jo Bates. Many lists of the killer’s victims omit Bates, or relegate her to a list of possible victims. Such skepticism won many followers due to the unique aspects of the October 1966 attack. Bates was alone, she was killed by a slice to the jugular with a knife, the murder occurred in Southern California, and the follow-up letters were more poetic than the matter-of-fact style the killer known as the Zodiac would later employ. The Zodiac’s future actions and communications would seem borne of a different mind, in the opinion of many.
Despite the differences that exist between the murder of Bates and the future killings of the Zodiac, the similarities strongly suggested to some investigators that Bates’s murderer was in fact the same man who would in time terrorize the San Francisco Bay Area. The modus operandi (MO) may have changed, as they often do between the kills of a serial killer, but to many the criminal signature clearly linked the events. Not only did the killer’s actions during and after the attack match those of future murders (the behavioral details), ample internal evidence—details found within the letters themselves—demonstrated that the writer also penned the known Zodiac letters that would threaten the people of Northern California just a few years later.
The behavioral attributes of the killer surrounding the attack that would link him to additional murders included writing taunting letters, sending multiple copies of nearly identical letters, placing a telephone call in connection with a murder, communicating with the authorities through the U.S. Postal Service approximately four weeks following an attack, and bragging to the police and the press through his mailings. Sending almost identical copies of a letter to more than one recipient was a rather unique activity. Bates’s killer would do this twice, with the Confession letters (2 times) and the Bates letters (3 times, discussed below). The Zodiac would perform this action following attacks in Vallejo just three years later. While the killer claimed in the Confession letters to have made a telephone call in regards to the murder (which remained unconfirmed), the Zodiac would actually call two times in post-attack behavior, and write about one of these conversations. The timing of the Confession letter—almost exactly four weeks after Bates’s murder—would be the length of time between an attack and a letter, or series of letters, on at least three occasions surrounding Zodiac attacks. The killer’s action of drawing the police and the press into the drama of the murder, with plenty of taunting, was another stunt the Zodiac would perform repeatedly.
Additionally, many of the writer’s unusual literary traits would follow him in future missives. Even though later communications would never be as poetic or contain the grammatical flourishes of the Confession letter, the use of specific language, grammar, spelling, and punctuation would identify the same hand at work. The Confession letters contained the unusual word “TWICHED,” incorrectly spelled with the second “T” omitted, as though the writer could not spell the word or wanted investigators to believe that he could not. The killer would do the same in 1970 using the word “twich,” without a second “T.” Where the Confession letter writer began a sentence with the word “Yes,” with no accompanying punctuation following the word, he in a future letter would do the same. The Confession letter writer advised that the letter be published “FOR ALL TO READ IT.” He would later request the publication of numerous letters and parts of letters. Similarly, future communications may have incorrectly used ellipses (a series of periods) without an accompanying space, just as was present in the Confession letters. Bates’s killer twice started sentences in the Confession letter with the words, “I AM,” a trait that would nearly become a staple of Zodiac mailings.
In another most compelling similarity, the Confession letter writer compared a sex act to an incident of violence—and found in favor of the violence, noting that her breast felt warm in his hand, though only one thing was on his mind. This was exactly the same sentiment expressed by the Zodiac in the solution to the three-part 408 cipher that would be composed in 1969, in which he claimed that killing was “more fun than getting your rocks off with a girl.”
There are several possibilities that explain the similarities. The Bay Area killer had read about, studied, and attempted to copy someone else who was responsible for murdering Bates; two killers had independently stumbled upon an incredible coincidence of astronomical proportion; or one murderer was responsible for the Confession letter (and evidently the death of Bates) and additional murders in Northern California. There is also the faint possibility that two killers operated, as some have hypothesized, one in the north and one in the south, the one in the north writing all of the communications, and thereby claiming in Bates a murder he did not commit. However, as details will bear out, this is in the view of many a highly improbable occurrence.
In 1971, the serial killer commonly known as the “Zodiac” would claim Cheri Jo’s murder as his own, calling it his “[R]iverside activity.” He did this only after an article appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle reporting on the connection between that murder and the Bay Area killings. The Zodiac may have been admitting to the crime merely because the series had been made public, and he was acting on a desire to regain control of the flow of information. He would add, “There are a hell of a lot more down there,” referring to other supposed murders for which he was responsible in Southern California.
From first receipt of the Confession letters, the authorities in Riverside believed that their creator was in fact the killer. The narration of events outlined in the communiques had the feel of a murderer re-living his encounter, and the description of the small knife and the wounds to her head, throat, and neck would corroborate with the autopsy details. Though it was possible that someone close to the investigation could also have possessed enough knowledge to create such missives—even if the writer of the letters was not a cop, he could have overheard a conversation somewhere or picked up the knowledge in any number of ways, such as befriending the family of an officer—the RPD at the time held the opinion that the writer was responsible for the death of Bates.
The RPD also believed the motive stated in the Confession letter, and began a search in earnest for a spurned love interest. This would prove to be a firmly held belief on its part, a dogma that would continue to petrify over the years.
The FBI was ushered into the case to evaluate the letters. The field office in L.A. requested that the FBI laboratory do an examination of the Confession letters, making the request in an airtel dated December 1, 1966, which was received two days later.
An “airtel” was in essence an internal memorandum and was often used as a cover letter to describe the contents of a package of documents. More urgent messages were sent via teletype directly to the receiving location. The use of airtels was inefficient and was later replaced by more effective means of communication. But in 1966, they were in common use by the offices of the FBI.
Responding on December 22 to a letter sent by the RPD on the first of that month, the Bureau presented its professional analysis of the Confession letters, opening FBI file #9-46005-1. After a consultation with U.S. Attorney John F. Lally in Los Angeles, it notified Riverside that extortion could not be considered because no specific targets were named or clearly identified. As requested, the FBI searched its anonymous letter file to find similar threatening communications. Nothing of use was found, and the Confession letter was added for future reference.
In their correspondence with the FBI, the RPD shared some of their progress on the case, including the fact that there were no suspects, that they believed that the murder occurred around 6:00 p.m., and that the killer was likely also responsible for the letters.
***
The Bates Letters
At the six-month anniversary of the Bates attack, probably in response to newspaper coverage of the crime, three more letters arrived. These short, eight-word notes, each written on a single piece of ordinary, lined, loose leaf binder paper, provided little new information to the authorities. Two of the letters declared in mostly block lettering “BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE.” They were addressed to the RPD (“Riverside Police Department, Riverside, Calif”) and the Daily Press (“Daily Press, 3512 14th Street, Riverside, California). Joseph Bates, grieving father of the deceased, received a nearly identical iteration that was in title case (addressed, “Joseph Bates, 4195 Via San Jose, Riverside, California”), “She Had To Die There Will Be More.”
At the bottom of the letters sent to the police and press, a small symbol, appearing to the police to be a Z with a flourish, was centered as though it were an identifying signature. The marks may have been used to distinguish these two notes from the alternate version of the letter sent to the victim’s father (which replaced the word “Bates” for the more appropriate word to the father, “She”). The squiggles have also been interpreted by some as a numerical 2 and a numerical 3, both later altered to look similar to one another, making them originally function as page differentiators—the letter to the victim’s father being an unmarked first page.
Each of the three envelopes bore 2, four-cent Abraham Lincoln stamps, and was postmarked April 30, 1967. It would not be for more than three years, on November 16, 1970, that Sherwood Morrill, the State of California’s Questioned Documents Examiner, identified the Bates mailings as having come from the same author of numerous Zodiac letters that had been sent in 1969 and 1970. At the time they were received, the RPD wondered what, if anything, these notes could add to the case.
***
The Desktop Poem
Earlier—sometime in December of 1966—a custodian at the RCC library, while stowing furniture in a separate storage room, discovered a desk whose soft plywood surface had been defaced with a poem. The desk was likely available to students in the library around the time of Bates’s murder. Its doggerel, if tied to the killing, was only obliquely related.
The prose went as follows:
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’ll find her.
just wait till
next time.
rh
Etched with a blue ball-point pen, the words appeared to describe the unsuccessful suicide attempt of a woman wearing a red dress. The only real relationships to Bates’s murder were the poetaster’s references to death, to cutting, and to blood. Bates did not wear a red dress on the night of her demise. The poem may have carried no connection to the case at all.
The desktop message was signed at the bottom by the initials “r” and “h,” interpreted by some to be the initials of the killer of Bates. The letters could also have been a reference to blood typing, which distinguishes a blood’s “rh” factor. At the time of the murder, the president of RCC, where the murder occurred and the poem was discovered, was R.H. Bradshaw, another possible reference to the two signatory letters. Even “Robin Hood” had to be considered as the correct interpretation of these initials.
Because of its possible connection to the murder, the tabletop poem was dutifully collected and preserved by the police for its future forensic value, along with the entire surface of the desk. It would re-emerge in time as an important piece of evidence when Sherwood Morrill of the FBI matched its lettering to future Zodiac letters. At the time, however, the tabletop and the three Bates letters were not considered to be real evidence in the case. They were presumed to be the product of a copycat or hoaxer—or possibly two—and were promptly filed away.
Dated November 1, 1967, just past the one-year anniversary of Bates’s death, an unusual letter, signed “with hope, Patricia Hautz, Fellow Student,” arrived at the desk of the editor of the Press-Enterprise. The typed page referenced a previous article in the newspaper, the writer suggesting that another story about the boy responsible for the killing could be “more rewarding.” It could cause others to think about the lives of their own children, the note suggested. “Are we laying the blueprint for another killer?” is a question the writer hoped might be brought to mind by such an article. Not only was there no “boy” to report on, no Patricia Hautz could be located, leading to suspicions that the note was tauntingly authored by the killer.
The mysterious writer was never publicly identified. If the letter was a hoax, it was a puzzle to the police as to why someone might compose and send it. If Bates’s killer himself was responsible for the effort, perhaps he had a message to convey, or he hoped that the public would take something instructive away from his brutal attack. Many years later, one journalist laid claim to locating a Patricia Hautz, now living under her married name, who admitted to writing notes to editors around that time. Though she provided handwriting samples that could be compared to the Hautz letter envelope, her claimed desire for anonymity prevented any public confirmation of authorship. In other words, though the missive remains an enigma, it may have been an innocuous letter to the editor.
Nearly three years later, on October 20, 1970, the RPD sent a letter to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, attention Captain Donald A. Townsend, as a follow up to a telephone conversation that was conducted three days earlier. In it, Sergeant H. L. Homsher of the Detective Division outlined his reasons for believing that the Bates murder was directly related to a series of killings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Even though Riverside was a long way from the Bay Area, there appeared to be a sufficient number of similarities to investigate whether there was provable linkage between the two cases: a common criminal signature and a similar modus operandi, possible evidence that the same killer was responsible for the entire collection of murders. Of particular interest were the similarities between the attack on Bates and a subsequent attack at Lake Berryessa that had occurred in September of 1969. Both involved the damaging or defacing of a Volkswagen automobile, both ended with a knife attack, both involved the murder of a woman, and both led to the subsequent taunting of the police with notes and possibly a telephone call.
Latent fingerprints lifted from Bates’s car were eventually compared by the FBI to prints that were collected from the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia at Lake Berryessa, but they provided no match. The Bates prints were never identified or matched to anyone else either. They remained with the FBI, file #32-27195. The RPD letter included several enclosures: two reproductions of the Confession letter, a photo of the envelope received by the press, a photo of the envelope received by the police, and two photocopies of envelopes after having been processed for prints. A copy of the letter was additionally sent to the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Chief of Police. The entire package was signed by Sergeant H. L. Homsher, with the letterhead backing of L. T. Kinkead, the Riverside Chief of Police.
***
The death of Cheri Jo Bates became the focus of renewed attention in 1982, Riverside officials expressing confidence that the case would soon be resolved. In a press release on May 20, the RPD reported in response to substantial pressure put on it by the press and the public that in November, 1981 new information had come to light. Accordingly, four investigators had been assigned to the case full time. They would be tasked, the press release notified, with interviewing numerous people and re-examining all the physical evidence available.
The RPD denied that there was a connection to other cases in Northern California. The detectives expressed an awareness of an individual who was being considered by the SFPD, and adamantly maintained that the Riverside suspect was not responsible for additional murders to the north, nor was the man being investigated in the Bay Area responsible for Bates’s murder. Any speculation and creative reporting could hamper successful prosecution, the press release warned, and any media reports that linked the murder of Bates to the killings in the Bay Area were outdated.
The RPD promised a thorough investigation for 90 days before anyone would be charged, a sentiment that was to prove overly optimistic and unnecessarily confident. No one was charged after 90 days; no one was ever charged. Due to privacy concerns, and the fact that the suspect was never arrested, the RPD never publicly shared his name.
Nevertheless, some members of the RPD remained convinced that they had identified the perpetrator but were merely unable to gather sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial—and that he was not responsible for any Northern California activity. No credible evidence against their suspect ever leaked out of the department, and no follow-up was ever provided to the 1982 press release. However, the department’s dogmatic stance would be challenged less than two decades later.
In 2000, mitochondrial DNA testing was conducted on the blood clot discovered on the base of Bates’s right thumb. The resulting sequence was compared to mitochondrial DNA testing done on blood drawn from the RPD suspect. There was no match. The RPD’s suspect was not the origin of the biological material deposited on the victim.
***
Services for Cheri Jo were conducted at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church in the sanctuary that she had visited with her father just hours before her death. Detectives observed the attendees, while police photographers captured faces on film.
Cheri Josephine Bates was laid to rest on a misty hillside at Crestlawn Memorial Park into which she was interred on November 4, 1966. Twenty years later, her body would be exhumed and cremated, and her ashes scattered at sea.
The man responsible for her death would not remain so quiet.
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