Part 5 (of many) . . . Links to: Part 1 .. Part 2 .. Part 3 .. Part 4

To review where we are at:

1. The Mikado review in the Stanford Daily was written by an aficionado of the show’ but we don’t know who wrote it.
2. The review has many layout mistakes, cut off letters, bad spacing, and white blemishes on each of the article’s two columns; almost like it was made in a hurry or under duress.
3. It shares the page with a review for an album named “The Electric Zodiac” but in the photo “Electric” is missing, leaving just “The Zodiac.”
4. The “spots” or blemishes on the Mikado review also appear on page 3 on the back side of the same piece of paper. Page 3 also shows a third mark several inches above those on the Mikado article. Closer examination of page 4 reveals the spot is there too, it was just hard to see. I posited the theory that someone poured a solvent on the page in the archived bound volume of the Daily. If so, that would be the second instance of an archive volume being modified in a Stanford student publication.

I continued to closely examine the October 31, 1969 issue. The spots seemed definitely bigger on page 4, so I figured the solvent was poured there, and had bled down to page 3. I wondered if it bled past page three and onto page two.

Upon a general viewing of the page, to my disappointment it did not have the spots.

But I wondered if perhaps the spots only bled a small amount onto page two—perhaps too small to see. Photoshop contains many tools for contrasting and imaging that allow you to examine pages and find things not obvious to the naked eye. Perhaps I should do that with page two? I went ahead and imported it into the same Photoshop document and aligned it to pages three and four.

Well, there was no faint spot on page two, but my disappointment turned out to be wonderment. Cue the spooky music as that eerie feeling came back yet again. When I brought page two into the document and aligned it to pages four and three, it aligned a short letter to the editor on it–about the Zodiac. Not astrology, the Zodiac Killer. It not only fell perfectly underneath the Mikado review, but exactly under the largest spot. Exactly.

Let me restate it for clarity because this is very important: The letter to the editor about Zodiac on page two falls EXACTLY under the largest spot on the Mikado review on page four when the pages are aligned. So when reading the paper, if you have it open to page two on the left, and page three on the right, when you turn page three over, page four opens and the large spot on the page on a Mikado review lands exactly over the Zodiac letter.

“That’s one F of a coincidence.” I said aloud.

And if this is not just a coincidence, then this is actually more important than the Missing Link Chaparral issue. That issue has the name Dick Geikie, but that is all. Taken with the six Daily articles in 1971, it only shows that someone named Dick Geikie was on campus and writing for the Daily. Neither of those are a crime. No, this is different. Very different.

Here we have a Mikado review sharing the page with the review for The Electric Zodiac, yet it’s photo only shows “The Zodiac.” The Mikado review is aligned with the Zodiac letter on the page below, with spots on the article making an additional “joke,” to make sure you see the alignment, a “Hey! Look right here you idiots!”

I wondered how this could exist if it were not coincidence. What were the possible ways this Zodiac-Mikado quirk could come to be in the pages of the Stanford Daily?

Well I really didn’t think this could be a coincidence. There are too many things all occurring together for it to be random chance. The most likely to me was that it was a college prank. Some mischievous college prankster could have read about Zodiac quoting the Mikado, and seen an opportunity for this “hidden joke” in the issue. I realized I needed to find the exact date Zodiac referred to the Mikado.

I reviewed the Zodiac timeline. The first Zodiac letter quoting lines from the Mikado was in July 1970, and that information was not released to the public until October 1970. This possible “prank” I had discovered in the Stanford Daily was in October 1969.

O.M.G.

I thought about it for a while and realized if the blemishes were caused by someone pouring solvent on the archives, this could indeed have happened after October 1970. But here’s the kicker: SPOILER ALERT, THE SOLVENT THEORY IS INCORRECT.

Stay tuned for Part 6; this story is far from over.

The Only Time Richard Got Angry at Me
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