October 27th, 1969, the following statement was published in the Opinions of the People section of The Vallejo Times Herald.
Interestingly, this was published only one month after the Lake Berryessa attacks and one year prior to the exact date the Halloween Card was sent to The San Francisco Chronicle.
What’s fascinating about this letter is that it contains similar topics, theatrics, narrative structure, intent, and linguistics to Zodiac communications which had not yet been written.
Much like the Zodiac letters, the Concerned Father column discussed Halloween, weapons, children, and newspapers. The phrase “when this mad man could just as easily dress in a Halloween costume and have a gun or knife hidden under his costume” was theatrical in nature similar to that of the November 9, 1969 letter to The San Francisco Chronicle, where the Zodiac stated, “I said yes there was this man who was running by waving a gun and the cops peeled rubber.” The structure of the column is very similar to Zodiac letters in terms of starting out self-focused (in this case the author discusses Zodiac in 3rd person) and ending with a request for the newspaper to act on his request, which is ultimately giving the Zodiac mass publicity.
Perhaps the most important detail tying this statement to the Zodiac is the phrase, “The point I want to bring up is this”. It’s reflective of Zodiac communications which had not been written yet including the Z340 cipher, which was mailed a few days later, and the March 13, 1971 letter sent to The Los Angeles Times.
In the 340 cipher plaintext which was only cracked in 2020, the Zodiac stated, “which brings up a point about me”. Both communications use the word ‘bring’ in connection with the word ‘point’ which is certainly interesting.
But even more damning is the letter sent to The Los Angeles Times which states, “The reason I’m writing to the times is this” which is very similar in structure to “The point I want to bring up is this” in that they are quite wordy phrases; their wordiness used to emphasize the information which follows, which happens to be about the newspaper in which they had written. In the Concerned Father communication the statement that followed was, “could this newspaper please warn the citizens of Solano county” while The Los Angeles Times letter emphasized, “they don’t bury me on the back pages like some of the others”.
