I turn now to several “matters arising” from my solution to the Pines Card. First, I want to pose the question of whether Zodiac’s Halloween Card of October 30, 1970 contains references to the Donna Lass case — or to the Donna Frislie murder. Recall that the “Tahoe Mystery” story in the San Francisco Chronicle was published on September 26, and the disappearance itself happened on September 6. So, whether Zodiac really abducted Donna Lass from the Sahara Tahoe casino and killed her, or only dreamed up a puzzle about a buried body using the Chronicle article as raw material, it wouldn’t be that surprising if the cryptic clues within the Halloween Card included references to the Donna Lass case. What is surprising is that hardly anybody seems to have bothered asking this question.
There’s a lot to unpack in the Halloween Card, but I want to focus here on a relatively obvious and commonplace observation which suggests that Zodiac had the “Tahoe Mystery” in mind when he created it. Zodiac hand-painted twelve disembodied eyes with prominent eyelashes in the gate-fold of the “Secret Pal” Halloween card — the original card features only the single eye in the knot of the tree. We know that Zodiac was a movie buff, and it has long been noted that this looks like it could be an homage to the Salvador Dali dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film, Spellbound.
Especially considered in light of the Pines Card of six months later, this Hitchcock reference seems too apropos for the “Tahoe Mystery” to be just a coincidence. The pivotal dream sequence in Spellbound reveals the clues which lead to the discovery of a murder victim hidden in the snow at a ski resort called Gabriel Valley. Parallel lines suggest ski tracks, sloping roofs and an inclined plane represent mountains and ski slopes, we see a girl in a casino, a card game is played out whose interpretation leads to the clue “21 Club,” and Hitchcock’s camera peeks through a window between fir trees onto a snowscape with figures, giving away the ski resort solution.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Zodiac was inspired by Spellbound, and that he had already conflated it with the “Tahoe Mystery” story in a sort of mashup or fantasia even before he concocted the Pines Card. That doesn’t tell us whether he was consciously setting up a two-part puzzle involving both the Halloween Card and the Pines Card, or if we are simply seeing the evolution of a reverie over a six month interval. It also doesn’t clearly discriminate between the following scenarios:
The Pines Card is a veiled claim of responsibility for a crime Zodiac really committed.
The Pines Card is a bogus claim for responsibility for a crime Zodiac had nothing to do with in reality.
The Pines Card is a puzzle about Zodiac's identity (Frislie's killer) inspired by a current news story.
On the related question of whether the Halloween Card alludes to the Frislie murder, I think there are a couple of things that might suggest that. First, the play on “14,” re-written and re-emphasized as “4-TEEN.” Second, the phrase “PEEK-A-BOO YOU ARE DOOMED!” inscribed in the form of a calligramme around the knot-hole is reminiscent of news reports that Frislie told a friend just before her abduction that she had left the front door to the house cracked open to monitor the driveway.
Now, we don’t have the context of the Los Angeles Times letter “setup” at this point to bolster the inference of a connection. On the other hand, the Donna Frislie murder resembled the story implicit in the “Tahoe Mystery” article — the abduction of a girl, her suspected murder and burial — while being completely unlike any known Zodiac crime. Again, we have the word-play association of “Donna Lass” and a “lass named Donna.” Also, recall that the Halloween Card is what triggered the revelation of a “down there” (Los Angeles) connection to the Zodiac case — probably because the October 30 mailing date added weight to Avery’s informant’s suspicions about the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates. Perhaps, then, the Zodiac was feeling bold enough — or bored enough — to deliberately open up a new front in “the game” by teasing his authorship of apparently unconnected crimes in Southern California.
That speculation aside, if we agree that the Halloween Card reveals a Zodiac already using dream logic and free-association to link the Chronicle’s “Tahoe Mystery” and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, that should inform how we approach the Pines Card. It also tells us something important about how the Zodiac Killer’s mind worked.
To be continued.