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One of the main questions in regards to the Patricia Hautz Letter is who actually authored it. Here we considered the principal possibilities that either the letter has been written by a fellow student with the name Patricia Hautz, or a person that pretended to know or that definitely knew the killer, or that the killer himself authored the letter.
There are conflicting statements and opinions if or if not a person with the name "Patricia Hautz" lived in the Riverside area at the time of the letter. In any case, no person with the name Patricia Hautz confirmed authorship of the letter until today, and there is no record of a fellow student of Cheri Jo Bates with such name. We believe that therefore the possibility of a real Patricia Hautz fellow student being the author of the letter can be neglected.
This leaves us with the possibilities of the author being a hoaxster, or a person that closely knows the killer, or the killer himself.
Typical motives of hoaxsters are monetary rewards, identity theft for financial and personal benefit, personal gratification, thrill, practical joke, tarnishing the name of others, revenge, disappointment, or mental instability. In our opinion, monetary, financial, identity theft, revenge and name tarnishing reasons can be eliminated, because they would not fit the context of the letter. Furthermore, the letter does not look like a practical joke to us. There is nothing funny about it. However, there is a possibility that the letter has been written by a thrill seeker for personal gratification or by a mentally instable person. Therefore, the possibility of the letter just being a hoax cannot be ruled out. However, for the purpose of a big thrill the letter does not look thrilling enough to us, and for a product of a mentally instable person the letter looks too well-thought, structured and timed. Therefore, the possibilities that the letter has been either authored by a person that knew the killer closely or that the letter was authored by the killer himself look more plausible to us.
Analysis of the letter's structure suggests that it has been designed and formulated very carefully. Its structure is fully consistent with the structure of a compare and contrast essay. In its alternating style, the Patricia Hautz Letter is also fully consistent with the Confession Letter, although structured differently. We see further consistency with the RCC Desktop Poem, where in both communications the author played with word alignments. Even if we over-interpreted the Patricia Hautz Letter in this regard, there are too many contrasting word alignments in the letter text to be just a matter of coincidence. Furthermore, there is also a very clear time pattern consistent with other communications attributed to the killer, including but not limited to the dates mentioned in the letter itself. Already for these reasons, we would lean much more towards the theory that the real author of the Patricia Hautz Letter was again the killer.
In order to gather further insights, we tried to translate the author's framed message to plain text, which reads as follows:
"I don't like that you give so much sympathy and attention to the victim. Forget Cheri! The actual victim here is me. What I experienced in my life so far was so terrible that it made me a killer, and this already at a rather young age. I am the one who deserves all the sympathy and attention. It is my story that should be in the papers, not Cheri's. Realize that the key to safety of your children is care and attention. Change your focus and mindset. If you start caring about me and others that are in similar situations, it may prevent you and society from creating more killers; it may prevent further killings. If not, more killings are likely to happen. It is in your hands, not in mine".
Also here, we see full consistency with the Confession Letter.
While, admittedly, our conclusions are deductive and interpretational, we have no doubt that the Confession Letter and the and other Riverside communications in connection with the Cheri Jo Bates homicide have been authored by the same individual, the killer.
If the killer was indeed of rather young age or not is difficult to say. If the age indication was true, then the killer took a rather high risk providing such lead. Therefore, the age indication should be considered with great skepticism.
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