Unsolved '66: Vanishing Evidence
Valerie Percy's killer murdered sixty-nine others, and it was covered up. (15th in a series)
I posted information in web forums and social media that I believe proves William Thoresen was the Zodiac Killer, the murderer of Valerie Percy and scores of others. But before the posts were censored, or in some cases deleted, other mysterious things happened.
My books, which had been garnering reader reviews at the rate of approximately one per month on amazon.com, suddenly stopped being reviewed.
Though they continued to sell at approximately the same rate, the last review for my first book was July 2020. The last review for the second was in May 2021. For over a year and a half, reviews for the first book were stuck at seventy-eight, for six months reviews for the second at fourteen.
No less mystifying, around the time that I noticed the reviews ceased, both titles on Amazon’s site suddenly dropped in their ratings by half a star each. That seemed odd as no one was reviewing them and the ratings are a reflection of reader reviews. This certainly was not helping sales.
Most of that time, the final review posted for the first book was a negative one based only on the fact that there was apparently a problem with the physical printing of the book.
When I became aware of this, I wrote to Amazon and asked for the review to be removed as the reviewer’s complaint was not about the book’s content but its printing. “Sorry!” one of their representatives replied. There was nothing they could do about it.
In November 2021, just after I sent the first draft of this piece to my editor, and after not budging for almost a year and a half, the number of reviews for my first book jumped from seventy-eight to eighty-one, and those for the second from fourteen to seventeen.
I took screen shots of the book’s listings on Amazon’s site on November 14, when beginning this article. They reveal the earlier, stalled count of reviews.
Then, when I started working on this piece again in January, wouldn’t you know it? The first book gained another review.
However, when they arrived, none of six “new” reviews (nor the one that was added in January) budged Amazon’s star ratings of the titles.
Around this time I read something journalist Kit Klarenberg wrote. He noted that Steve Pandelides, security chief at Amazon Web Services previously served at the NSA, CIA, and FBI at the highest levels.
All of this reminded me of a quote credited to an anonymous World War II bomber pilot: If you’re taking flak, you’re over the target.
Meanwhile, after the release of my book on the Zodiac case, I noticed a surge in Zodiac Killer stories dished out by mainstream media outlets like the New York Post. None of them mention William Thoresen. One of them, as a source, cited the work of dozens of FBI agents who fingered yet another Zodiac suspect whose reception by those who study the case appears to be underwhelming.
Conspicuously, such stories seem to be based exclusively on ciphers Zodiac sent to the media, which reveal little. Elsewhere, an autopsy report reveals that Zodiac stabbed two victims with a bayonet—a highly unusual weapon to be used against civilians, and a type used in the unsolved murder of a neighbor of William Thoresen’s parents, Valerie Percy.
Nothing about this made me think that I am wrong about him and that there’s an ongoing cover-up of his crimes.
The media also ignore a case I previously mentioned that is examined in Zodiac Maniac, the murders of two teenagers in Illinois, William’s home state, in 1969.
Michael Morrison was shot and Debbie Means strangled during a long lull between the first two Zodiac attacks, a time about which many have theorized Zodiac was somewhere, up to no good.
For the press to ignore that the case contains numerous elements that are uniquely Zodiac-like seems unusual.
In 2019, I contacted Kim Bell, a crime reporter with the St. Louis-Post Dispatch. The paper also covers the Southern Illinois area, where Morrison and Means were slain. It ran a story on their case in 2019.
I pointed out numerous unique similarities of the Morrison-Means case to those of Zodiac. One would think a story probing whether two area residents were murdered by the Zodiac Killer might be interesting to Post-Dispatch readers as there is credible evidence this is so.
Bell called the similarities between the Zodiac and Morrison-Means cases interesting. But to date, her paper has not run such a story.
Meanwhile, while my editor was editing my second book, I requested that he read through the manuscript for my first book. This required me to read it as well.
When I did, I came across something I had forgotten. It came from the files of Chuck Percy’s neighbor, the late Doctor Robert Hohf. It was a three-page, typewritten letter that Hohf received a year after Valerie was murdered.
It was actually a copy of a letter that was sent to Hohf. The letter’s writer, a mysterious “V. Kachur,” claimed the original was mailed to Chuck Percy, who by the time Hohf received it was a US Senator.
In the book, I document the letter’s existence and quote from it. This includes a handwritten note that was written to Hohf in blue pen in the margin of its first page. I thought the letter was sent to Hohf by a crank, one who presumably saw Hohf’s name in one of the news stories about Valerie’s murder.
However, later I learned that there are connections, including handwriting evidence, between the cases of Morrison-Means and presumed Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates, who was murdered a month after Valerie Percy. Because the Zodiac Killer had a unique penchant for communicating (by phone and mail), and because other evidence reveals that William Thoresen was Zodiac, I realized he may have written the letter to Hohf.
So I went immediately to my files in search of my copy of it, knowing that the handwriting in its margin could be further proof that William murdered Valerie and was Zodiac.
I found the file that contained the Hohf documents and the letter. But its first page, the one with the handwritten note to Hohf on it, was missing.
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