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them, and leaving his mark [a crossed circle
    like a gun sight] at the scene. On October 13, 1969 [twenty-two months after Starr’s discussion with Cheney], the Zodiac had threatened to shoot
    the tires out on a school bus and ‘pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.’ The police were guarding the school buses and some parents
    were driving their kids to school in their own cars. The public was frantic, and the police were under a good deal of pressure to find the Zodiac.”
    For some reason Zodiac not only mentioned Bel i in his letters, but phoned him more than once. In some twisted way he either admired Bel i’s
    flamboyant courtroom bravado (a bravado second only to his own) or presumed that Bel i might offer a lifeline to him. The attorney had defended
    both Mickey Cohen and Jack Ruby. Now Bel i climbed a hard rope ladder to the unique bed he kept fifteen feet up in his living room. He slept fitful y,
    unable to escape the thought that he actual y possessed a clue that might solve the case.

    Thursday, July 22, 1971
    The San Francisco detectives failed in their attempt to get Cheney to obtain samples of Starr’s handprinting. “I didn’t have any source for that,”
    Cheney told me much later. “Armstrong kind of hinted around: Would I write a letter to him to try and get some response out of him? If I had been a
    single man at the time I would have done anything they wanted, but I had a wife and two little kids and I didn’t want to open any doors. He could have
    found me by just looking in the phone directory.”
    Next, the Department of Justice requested samples of Starr’s handprinting from Dr. Frank English, District Superintendent of Val ey Springs
    Elementary School, where Starr had once taught. Dr. English complied immediately, and exemplars of Starr’s handprinting were rushed to the
    SFPD. By car Toschi hand-delivered the blockprinted applications to CI&I’s Mel Nicolai in Sacramento. Nicolai quickly submitted the samples to
    Sherwood Morril , the state agency’s crack documents examiner. The scholarly analyst compared them to Zodiac’s letters and reported to Nicolai
    the fol owing Thursday. A. L. Coffey, Chief of the Bureau and Nicolai’s boss, wrote the SFPD the same day.
    “Enclosed are the exemplars for Robert Hal Starr,” Coffey stated. “Mr. Sherwood Morril . . . has compared the printing on the submitted
    documents with the printing contained in the Zodiac letters and advised they were not prepared by the same person.” Agents returned Starr’s
    original applications, and they were replaced in his employment file with no one the wiser. In spite of this setback, the San Francisco detectives
    were not deterred. Zodiac was the most intel igent criminal in their experience. He would know a way around Morril and how to fake handprinting.
    That had to be the answer. They rushed on, heedless in their excitement.

    Saturday, July 24, 1971
    In 1970 Detective Wil iam Baker joined the Major Crimes Unit of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department and was assigned to several
    unsolved cases. One was the tragic double murder on a remote beach of two Lompoc High School seniors, Robert George Domingos and Linda
    Faye Edwards. “I picked up the case seven years after it occurred,” Baker told me. “Several of the investigators on the case were stil active, so I
    took every available opportunity to bug them about it.” One morning Baker came across a Hal oween card Zodiac had written to the Chronicle on
    October 27, 1970. The kil er had drawn an arcane “Sartor Cross,” accomplishing this by crossing two words—“Slaves” and “Paradice.” However,
    Zodiac had printed other words on both sides. These riveted Baker’s attention. The kil er had neatly painted, “By ROPE, By GUN, By KNiFE, By
    FiRE.” Rope, gun, knife, and fire had been part of Baker’s unsolved case.
    “I immediately sent out a statewide Teletype asking for similars,” he said. “I was soon cal ed, in