14 YEAR OLD HOAXTER

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The Times Standard
Friday, October 31, 1969

"SOMETHING TO DO"

CC 'ZODIAC' CONFESSES

Crescent City, Del Norte County Sheriff Tom Lawry said yesterday that a week of intense investigation has led to a 14-year-old boy as the writer of a letter to a local newspaper in which he pretended to be the "Zodiac Killer" and said he would kill children coming out for Halloween festivities.

"After comparison with hundreds of handwritings, with cooperation from the staff at Del Norte County High School," Lawry said, "The suspects were narrowed to two. The first interviewed was cleared by us, but the second, after recieving the Miranda warning, confessed the act."

"He said that he did it," Lawry added "For the want of something to do."

The letter read as follows:

"This is the zodiac speaking. I am in Crescent City. Halloween is a time very many children will come out. I will pick them off. If they do not come out, I will come in for them. Halloween is the witches' rabbit. I will have a good time I am assured. Your attempts to capture me are futile."

Lawry said of course, that his office eliminated the real "Zodiac Killer" as the writer "early during the investigation," he said. Undersheriff Tom Hopper took a chartered plane to San Francisco and it was determined that the handwriting was not the same as those written by the killer.

"This investigation," Lawry added, touched people in seven states, and it invollved law enforcement departments throughout California, including the State Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. On the local level, we examined 2, 810 specimens of handwriting.

[Starless]

This is the hoax letter, it is as clear as I could get it.

[Starless]

Hope everyone understands why I started this section. I think it's very important for people to see the kind of stuff these investigators have to deal with on a regular basis and in this case, there was probably a ton.

It is bad that people who have nothing to do with a crime, inject themselves into it and interfere with a serious investigation, but it happens all of the time.