Riverside College Library

Source: Graysmith's Zodiac Unmasked c. 2002

     11-16-70 Sherwood Morrill found a match linking Zodiac's printing with three " BATES HAD TO DIE" letters and a wavering blockprinted poem discovered in the RiversideCollege Library. Zodiac had carved a ghastly verse into a plywood-board study desktop with a blue ballpoint pen. The poem was probably written as early as January 1967, when the desk was stored in an unused college basement. "Sick of Living......" it began. Beneath the gory poem were the incised lower-case initials "R H." Morrill checked over six thousand handwriting samples searching for a killer with those initials. " Most of those exemplars came from the Riverside College and military installations," he told me. They were all on microfilm, blown up, and I had a magnifier that I just slipped them under one after another. Now this is the weak link in the case---- some of those registration certificates were typed." Captain Cross was encouraged. "Well, it looks like we're in business," he said. The hunt for Zodiac was statewide.

     It should be noted that Darlene Ferrin, while parked with Mike Mageau at Blue Rock Springs, mentioned the name Richard as to the car that pulled up behind them. The date of that was July 4, 1969. Darlene was killed but Mike Mageau survived.