Gareth Penn

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Among the first authors and amateur sleuths to tackle the famous Zodiac Killer case, Gareth Sewell Penn was born in 1941 in Monterey County, California. His writings for the Mensa Ecphorizer indicate he grew up in San Jose. He retired in 2000 as a librarian at the National Marine Fisheries Service Tiburon Laboratory and Point Reyes Bird Observatory near San Francisco. He now lives in Seattle.

Penn started writing about the Zodiac case as early as 1981. In an article that year for the Mensa Ecphorizer, he offered the Zodiac Killer's "Exorcist Letter of 29 January 1974, reproduced here for the first time in its unexpurgated form from an official photograph of the original." [1]

A long-time Mensa member, Penn authored two oft-referenced treatises about the Zodiac case, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, [2] and The Second Power: A Mathematical Analysis of the Letters Attributed to the Zodiac Murderer. [3]

In Times 17, Penn claimed to have solved a mysterious “radian” puzzle[4] left by the Zodiac with a map in a letter that taunted the authorities.

Though some law enforcement officials and amateur detectives consider his radian work credible, they have also complained that Times 17 and The Second Power are largely unintelligible. Most of Penn's non-Zodiac writings are studies in clarity, perception, and logic, so why his Zodiac musings are so difficult to follow puzzles readers and investigators alike.

In Napa, California in 1981, Penn claims that he was considered an official suspect for a short time, which would make him the only Zodiac sleuth to achieve such a distinction.[5] [6]

Neither the Napa Police Department nor the Napa County Sheriff, however, have any record of a suspect named Gareth Penn.

Contents

[edit] Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer

Unusual behavior has contributed to Penn's reputation as one of the more interesting and eclectic Zodiac investigators. For the November 1981 edition of California Magazine -- a UC Berkeley alumni publication -- Penn wrote Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer under the pseudonym “George Oakes,” also the name of a long-time real estate agent in the Benicia/Vallejo, Calif. area[7]

In Portrait, Penn theorized that the Zodiac crime scenes were selected by the killer in order to create a geometric shape over the surface of the San Francisco Bay Area terrain as a sort of "murderous art project." [8] Part of Penn's commentary about that theory included the observation that, "Other artists had sought to remove their work from the ordinary human perspective. Zodiac trumped them all." [9]

The Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer article prompted a bizarre cat-and-mouse game between Penn and New York Press reporter Alan Cabal. Wanting to meet the author who described the Zodiac murders as high art, Cabal arranged to meet with Penn. In an April 16, 2002 book review of Robert Graysmith's Zodiac Unmasked, Cabal would write that their planned encounter -- which never physically occurred -- turned out to be a “run down the rabbit hole of Northern California weirdness." [10]

In a highly-critical follow-up letter to the NY Press editor some 21 years after his scheduled meeting with Cabal,[11] Penn wrote that although he was "not able to harbor a grudge over a triviality for several decades," Cabal deserved "either a Nobel prize in physics or a Munchausen prize for fabricating whoppers."

Further cementing his idiosyncratic reputation, Penn spent the better part of two decades publicly accusing University of California, Berkeley public policy professor Michael O’Hare of the Zodiac murders. [12]

Oddly, O’Hare never sued Penn for libel.

[edit] Michael Henry O'Hare

Penn's accusation of Harvard-educated architect Michael O'Hare -- now a professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy -- made headlines all over the U.S.

The accusations could not have been directed at a more unlikely person.

O'Hare hails from a noted family. His grandmother, Kate Richards O'Hare, was one of this nation's leading socialist agitators in the early part of the 20th century. At the height of her fame, Richards-O'Hare was second in popularity only to one-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.[13]

O'Hare's grandfather, Francis P. "Frank" O'Hare was a leading activist in his own right. A Teamster newspaper referred to Frank O'Hare as "one of the truly great men of St. Louis--possibly the ONLY one."[14]

Kate O'Hare divorced Frank P. O'Hare in 1928, eventually marrying San Francisco attorney Charles C. Cunningham in San Jose. In 1939-40 she was assistant director of the California Department of Penology. She died in Benicia, California, on January 10, 1948. [15] [16].

O'Hare's father, Eugene O'Hare, was born in Oklahoma. He married noted sculptor Berta Margoulies, O'Hare's mother. He also wrote several how-to books.[17].

[edit] Zynchronicity

Autobiographical tidbits and numerous writings have led to comparisons between the Zodiac and Gareth Penn which may help explain his one-time status, if true, as an official Zodiac suspect. [18] [19]

[edit] Profiles Compared

Police profilers considered the Zodiac killer an "extremely shrewd, methodical planner" who would have had knowledge of cryptography, guns, map reading, meteorology, astronomy, drafting, and a probable military background. [20]

Self described as the son of an Army cryptographer and former employee of the California Attorney General’s office, Penn has written that he had a "checkered career" as a “medievalist, artillery surveyor, free lance writer, economic researcher, reference librarian, and receptionist in a robot factory.” [21]

In Times 17 Penn writes that he received artillery training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma during the mid-1960's. A U.S. Army artillery surveyor performs astronomical observations; measures azimuths, grid coordinates, and angles on maps; and operates/maintains vehicles, radios, weapons, and other survey equipment in support of artillery operations. [22]

Amateur investigators have noted that in Times 17, Penn audaciouly lays out a scenario whereby, as duty person in charge of daily roll call, he could have falsified an entry and left Fort Sill in October, 1966, taken a military hop to March AFB, and killed Cheri Jo Bates in nearby Riverside. [23] [24]

Based on his dates of service, Penn would have served during the Vietnam War.[25]

[edit] A Disguise for the "Rest of the Time"

In a recent appearance on a WE Television's Case Reopened: The Zodiac, Gareth Penn wore glasses and a beard [26]. The Zodiac made reference to a disguise that could simply have been a beard in what is known as his "bomb letter, i.e., where he was clean-shaven "like the description" on the wanted posters when he did his "thing," and having a full beard otherwise. [27]

On the night of her murder, Riverside police connected Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates with a young man, about 25 years of age, wearing a brown beard.[28] [29]

[edit] Please RUSH to Editor

A prolific letter-to-the-editor writer, Zodiac used British phrasing that incorporated numerous references to theatrical, literary, or linguistic works.

Recurring Zodiac themes included Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado; Old Norse limericks and poetry; epigrams, acrostics, and cryptograms; and high-handed word play intended to baffle and belittle the authorities.

Gareth Penn’s proclivity toward astute, officious, and often biting letters to the editors of the world’s top intellectual periodicals -- such as Scientific American, Nature, The Economist, and at least 15 letters over the years to National Public Radio -- has tantalized amateur sleuths as another similarity between Penn and Zodiac [30]

In an Ecphorizer article entitled Lima Riki, Penn notes that "in a previous incarnation," he used to write limericks "in Old Norse." A Zodiac letter mentions Old Norse writing, an issue Penn subsequently addressed.[31] [32] [33]

Penn also made several contributions to Tom Burnam's 1980 book, More Misinformation, including an at-length discussion of the ancient Norse poem Edda and its author, 12th century Norse historian Snorri Sturluson.

As the Zodiac killer did in his letters to the press, Penn frequently cites Gilbert and Sullivan in his own writing. In Lima Riki, Penn notes that, "While some purists insist on pure rhyme, a contrived or near rhyme, especially in the pointe, heightens the humorous effect, a technique well known to fans of Ogden Nash, Sir William S. Gilbert, and the shaggy-dog story."

In a Time Magazine letter to the editor regarding a review of The Mikado in which the reviewer mistakenly attributed the lyrics to Sullivan and the music to Gilbert, Penn writes: Let's see, now. Sullivan wrote the words, and Gilbert wrote the music. Holmes is the doctor, and Watson the detective. Harpo had the cigar, and Groucho tooted the auto horn. Thanks for setting the record straight. [34]

Penn has also signed his emails with a quote from a British duo known for their Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, Flanders and Swann: But people have always eaten people! What else is there to eat? If the Juju had meant us not to eat people, he wouldn't have made them of meat![35] [36]

Finally, like the Zodiac, Penn has used British phrasing -- some of it obscure -- in his writings. In his 1981 story for the Ecphorizer, Cruising the Baja Triangle, Penn twice used the obscure British term "trash midden," which refers to a garbage heap. [37]

[edit] Berkeley's Blue Meanies

A Barrington Hall resident at UC Berkeley during the 1960's, Penn may have been familiar with the brutal tactics employed by the Alameda County sheriff deputies (dubbed the Blue Meanies) who were responsible for Berkeley's Bloody Thursday police riot in 1969. In one of his letters, Zodiac made a reference to the Blue Meanies and also made frequent derogatory comments about police officers in his letters. The term 'Blue Meanies' was also popular vernacular during the late 1960s. The Beatles featured characters of that name in the film 'Yellow Submarine'.

Penn was a long-time librarian, even referencing library practices at UC Berkeley's Doe Library in the appendix of his 1972 academic treatise, Gottfried von Strassburg and the Invisible Art. [38]. Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates was killed outside the Riverside City College library just after studying there.[39].

One other interesting coincidence involved a controversial article in the The New Republic that preceded -- by three months -- the first appearance of theatrical references in Zodiac’s letters. [40]

[edit] Revolution (and Murder) as Theatre

With references to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, Badlands, and The Exorcist, theatre became a recurring theme in Zodiac's communications in the summer of 1970.

On July 26, 1970, Zodiac began this new set of allusions with a misspelled version of the Mikado aria, “I've got a little list” in a letter he sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. [41]

The Mikado letter appeared almost three months to the day after a letter to the editor Gareth Penn wrote from Berkeley in the April 25, 1970 issue of the New Republic.

In his letter, Penn responded to "Revolution as Theatre," a March 9, 1970 New Republic article by Yale University drama professor Robert Brustein.

Brustein bemoaned a “selfish white working class” so paralyzed it could not move a Vietnam-torn nation toward revolution against a “government that holds absolute power to suppress any insurrection.”

Revolution had become not real but theatrical, Brustein surmised, with revolutionaries “broadcasting their violent plans, including the intention to overthrow the government, to a wide audience.”

Penn agreed, writing that members of the “selfish white working class” were in direct need of “spiritual revolution” because they had not “paid their admission into the ‘moral institution’ of the theatre.”

“The revolution has to be brought literally home to them,” Penn added. “The revolutionary show has to go into the streets where everyone can see it, must see it, nolens volens, and force itself to the attention of the great unwashed public.”

Brustein later incorporated Penn's letter into the appendices of his book, Revolution as Theatre. [42]

According to Penn's account in California Magazine, the Zodiac Killer may have been following a similarly theatrical approach to serial murder.[43]

[edit] Berkeley Academic

Based mostly on his behavior and his Zodiac writings, Zodiac sleuths have dismissed Gareth Penn as everything from “childish” to “a few french fry's short of a happy meal." [44]

But his 25 articles for the 1981-82 Mensa Ecphorizer and a 1972 academic treatise he wrote while attending UC Berkeley, Gottfried von Strassburg and the Invisible Art, suggest Penn may be a Zodiac investigator whose intellect rivals that of his quarry.

A reflection on the legend of Tristan, a 12th century hero of Celtic folklore, Gottfried von Strassburg and the Invisible Art is a dense academic tome published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal of Germanic studies, Colloquia Germanica.

Penn suggested that in writing Tristan, which scholars consider one of great narrative masterpieces of the German Middle Ages, von Strassburg employed the use of so-called “memory theatre,” a Renaissance method of recall that used space, location, and architecture as a form of physical mnemonic.

Frances Yates' The Art of Memory is considered the definitive text on this idea, which Penn regarded as “no more nor less than an internalized information-retrieval system” that anticipated everything from the Dewey decimal system to the computer.

Von Strassburg also used acrostics -- a form of word puzzle -- in Tristan. Penn refers to him as a "crypto-magician" in the paper's appendix.


[edit] True Obsessive

Perhaps a movie review best summarizes the continuing fascination Zodiac sleuths and experts have with Gareth Penn.

Reviewing the 2007 David Fincher film Zodiac for the Las Vegas Weekly, Mike D'Angelo wrote, "I think the movie erred in selecting [author Robert] Graysmith as its source and nominal protagonist. Zodiac buffs know well that the true obsessive is a fellow named Gareth Penn." [45]

[edit] Other Works by Gareth Penn

[edit] About the Zodiac

11.0010010000 11111101101

Incline Village Unit 6

Te Moriarty Salutamus

"The Calculus of Evil," Mensa Bulletin, July/August 1985. (This article contained an offer by the author to "expand on the conclusions offered here for any Mensans who send a SASE to him." That expansion came in the form of 16 supplementary pages that do not name his suspect but do provide the means to identify him.)

[edit] Also written as George Oakes

Domebuilder’s Blues

Same story about building a geodesic dome written as Gareth Penn: Paint It Yellow

[edit] Selected Letters to the Editor

The Economist December 16, 2000 from Larkspur, California; Correction regarding use of the word "elector"

The Economist August 26, 2000 from Tiburon, California; Correction regarding invention of the acronym WASP.

The Economist January 29, 2000 from Stinson Beach, California; Correction regarding first political jurisdiction to give women the vote.

The Economist October 16, 1999 from Tiburon, California; Clarification regarding ancient Greek riddle.

The Economist August 21, 1999 from Stinson Beach, California; Comment regarding leftwing activists of the 1960's and 1970's.

The Economist January 9, 1999 from Larkspur, California; Correction regarding steel used in barbed wire fencing.

San Francisco Chronicle November 23, 1997 from Corte Madera, California; Correction regarding Latin roots of the word "skibby."

National Public Radio 20 July 2002; Comment that "nobility does not sell newspapers."

Scientific American July 1996 from San Rafael, California; Comment about Jules Verne

[edit] Additional Publications

Twenty five stories from The Mensa Ecphorizer

Light under a bushel: a profile of Point Reyes Bird Observatory

Coastal Awareness: A Resource Guide for Teachers

[edit] US copyrights relating to the Zodiac case[46]

Papers relating to the impending suicide of Michael Henry O'Hare

The Geometry of life and death: Resolution of the Zodiac mystery

A Secret kept from all the rest

The Red king's dream

The 13-character cipher

Papers relating to the impending suicide of Michael Henry O'Hare

The Geometry of life and death

Resolution of the Zodiac mystery

Language as geometry

Zodiac calendars

Papers relating to the resolution of the zodiac matter

Zodiac problems

Digital, two-dimensional, private language : the letters of the zodiac murderer

[edit] Brief Biographical Information

Gareth Penn's wife Mary Ann Winterrowd Penn, was from Cincinnati, Ohio and died in Solano County, California in 1991. [47]

Penn has written about his daughter, son, and a brother-in-law, Rick Winterrowd.[48]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mensa Ecphorizer
  2. ^ Penn, Gareth, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
  3. ^ Penn, Gareth, The Second Power: A Mathematical Analysis of the Letters Attributed to the Zodiac Murderer and Supplement to Times 17 (self-published booklet 1999).
  4. ^ Mt. Diablo and the Radian Theory
  5. ^ Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, p. 29 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
  6. ^ Zodiac Message Board Archive: Zodiac Fingerprints?
  7. ^ George and Corrine Oakes Real Estate.
  8. ^ Rowlett, Curt, Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy, Chapter 9, The Z Files: Labyrinth13 Examines the Zodiac Murders, The Rhyme of the Radian, pp. 64-68. (Lulu Press, 2006). ISBN 1-4116-6083-8.
  9. ^ Penn, Gareth (writing under the pseudonym "George Oakes") Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer, California Magazine November 1981, pp. 114.
  10. ^ Book review of Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac Unmasked.
  11. ^ Penn, Gareth. Not Solved Yet, NY Press, April 23, 2002
  12. ^ O’Hare biographical statement
  13. ^ Letters of Kate Richards O'Hare
  14. ^ Rebel Against Injustice: The Life of Frank P. O'Hare
  15. ^ Letters of Kate Richards O'Hare
  16. ^ Speeches of Kate Richard's O'Hare
  17. ^ Works of Berta O'Hare Margoulies
  18. ^ Penn notation in Michael O'Hare profile
  19. ^ Zodiac expert Ed Neil suggests Gareth Penn DNA Test October 20, 2002
  20. ^ Graysmith, Robert, Zodiac (Berkley; reissue edition, January 2007). ISBN 0-4252-1218-1.
  21. ^ Penn, Gareth, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
  22. ^ Penn, Gareth, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
  23. ^ Zodiac killer message board archive entry
  24. ^ Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, p. 29, (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
  25. ^ Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981, p. 29, (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
  26. ^ WE Photograph of Gareth Penn
  27. ^ Zodiac bomb letter
  28. ^ Oct. 30, 1966 Cheri Jo Bates
  29. ^ Cheri Josephine Bates: Possible Zodiac Victim
  30. ^ Zodiac Killer Message Board: Penn's Non-Zodiac Writings.
  31. ^ "Lima Riki"
  32. ^ This Is The Zodiac Speaking; SLA letter
  33. ^ Crime Library Zodiac article, SLA letter
  34. ^ Time Magazine, July 20, 1994
  35. ^ Email about "journal quality," 23 Jul 1997, NMFS Tiburon Laboratory
  36. ^ Zodiac Killer Message Board: Penn's Non-Zodiac Writings
  37. ^ Cruising the Baja Triangle
  38. ^ Penn. Gareth S. Gottfried von Strassburg and the Invisible Art Colloquia Germanica 1972
  39. ^ The Cheri Jo Bates Murder
  40. ^ The New Republic, April 25, 1970
  41. ^ Zodiac Mikado letter
  42. ^ Brustein, Robert, Revolution as Theatre: Notes on the New Radical Style (Liveright Publishing Corporation, September 1970). ISBN 0-87140-045-6
  43. ^ Oakes, George: Portrait of the Artist as a Mass Murderer, California Magazine, November 1981
  44. ^ Zodiac Killer message board archive: The Gareth Penn Show
  45. ^ Magnificent obsession: "Zodiac" finds glory in investigative details
  46. ^ U.S. Copyright Office Search
  47. ^ Solano County Genealogical Society Death Index
  48. ^ Mensa Ecphorizer


[edit] Further reading

  • Graysmith, Robert, Zodiac, (Berkley; Reissue edition, January 2007). ISBN 0-4252-1218-1.
  • Kelleher, Michael D. and Van Nuys, David, “This is the Zodiac Speaking”: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer (Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, January 2002). ISBN 0-2759-7338-7.
  • Penn, Gareth, Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981 (The Foxglove Press, CA, April 1987). ISBN 0-9618-4940-1.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../g/a/r/Gareth_Penn_71ee.html"