The B's look fairly close. The 4's are different.
Posted on 09/17/2007 8:21:43 AM PDT by LurkedLongEnough
Police Release 9 Threatening Postcards
OCALA, Fla. -- Investigators in Marion County, Fla., are searching for the author of nine postcards sent to different schools on the same day with the words 'Jihad-Boom" and handwritten cartoons of a building apparently exploding with people inside.
Investigators released the postcards with the threatening drawings on them Monday in hopes of generating leads in the case.
Officials said that the postcards are made up of various and traditional themes, and each one has a distinctive hand-drawn cartoon on it. Several of the threats arrived on postcards featuring Walt Disney World.
Detectives said the threat-maker crossed his or her No. 7s and attached a suffix to the address. Six of the nine postcards spell the word "Jihad" correctly, while the others are incorrect.
The U.S. Postal Service said that the postcards were all mailed to the schools from the Ocala-Gainesville mailing district before the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
A $10,000 reward has been issued to anyone who provides information which leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for using the postal service to mail the threatening postcards to schools.
[See site for pictures of the postcards.]
In my opinion it is not the handwritting of a kid, but an adult who wants to make it look like a kids handwriting
Thanks for the ping.
I could be totally wrong, but the way I see things is as follows:
(1) The 9-11 ? 10-10 on the postcards is most likely connected to The Culture of Peace Initiative:
30 DAYS OF PEACE
A Global Call To Action
9 ⁄ 11 - 10 ⁄ 10 2007
(2) The question mark probably asks the question: Will those thirty days truly be days of peace?
(3) The nature of The Culture of Peace Initiative and the fact that highschools are targeted probably says that the postcard mailer is of highschool age.
(4) The slash through the 7 probably indicates someone foreign born. I think the periods after FL could mean the same thing. (I put a period after Fla. but I stopped when the abbreviation became FL and I think the vast majority of Americans do not put periods after FL I don't recall ever seeing anyone doing it. But a foreigner might do it because it's an abbreviation and he wouldn't realize it's an exception to the rule of putting periods after abbreviations.)
(5) The fact that The Marion County School Board was addressed on one of the post cards probably indicates that they are the main target of the anger. The postcards to actual schools are just ways to spread the message of anger around and to make more people aware of his or her anger. I'm guessing that the postcard sender has a grievance with the Marion County School Board. It's the target that doesn't quite fit with the others.
I hope this one gets solved. I hate doing an analysis and then never learning if I was right or wrong. ;-)
Might be able to get a partial print off the stamps
I thought the same thing. This is not a prank by some stupid kid. The type of dopey American deliquent who would be tempted to do a prank like that would not know fine details like the fact that some people cross their sevens. The fact that "jihad" was spelled inconsistently makes me think this person is not a native speaker of English.
I will go out on a limb and guess that since the person left out the vowel in the last syllable of jihad, writing "hd" instead of "had," it may be that the person is not a native speaker of any European language. I think it would be an odd mistake for a native speaker of almost any European language to write a syllable that does not have a vowel in it. I admit that I am probably reading too much in it.
Islamic Center of Ocala
1410 Ne 14th St
Ocala, FL 34470
How did you ever find it, it’s off the beaten tract.
I’ve been here about 7 years and have run into muslims females three times. Once there was a woman in full islamic gear at ToysRus, once a scarfed mom and daughters at Walmart, and once a veiled woman at the Interfaith Thrift Shop in Reddick. From the looks of her, I assumed she hooked up with guy who converted in jail.
I’m bad .... on each occasion I stopped what I was doing to glare.
The B's look fairly close. The 4's are different.
You could be right. But when you look at the fact that he or she puts a slash through 7's, you have to wonder if the period after FL doesn't indicate that he or she is a foreigner who doesn't know the exceptions to the rule. Coming from overseas, he or she may not be familiar with seeing such abbreviations everywhere without periods.
But I could be totally wrong.
The question marks and the 9s lean towards arabic or farsi script and the way the small a is scripted is very unusual in the US.
For all I know, there could be 20-year-old postcards in racks in some store in Gainesville right now. Postcards tend to stay in the racks until someone buys them.
But since they all seem old, it seems more likely that they came from someone's drawer. If I wanted to go wild on guessing, I'd guess that some teenager from overseas is staying with grandparents or other older relatives who moved to America many years ago, and the teenager found the cards in the garage from when the grandparents were routinely sending postcards back to the old country.
That is PURE guesswork, however. Don't hold me to it. ;-)
PING~~!
There are VAST differences. There are loops in the 2's, there are no serifs on the 1's, there's both upper and lower case characters, the center of the M's don't go all the way down to the baseline, he's got some kind of screwball spot at the top of his O's and 0's, etc.
Interesting about the Arabic or Farsi script. Do you think it would be natural for a native Arabic speaker to write “hd” instead of “had” in “jihad”? I just don’t see that this would be a normal mistake by a native speaker of a European language - we like our vowels too much to leave them out of a syllable.
Crossed sevens are also found in math classes.
eBay is a good source for old postcards.
Yes, but getting postcards from eBay also leaves a trail right back to you.
Found postcards are less likely to leave a trail to you.
Those post cards went thru a lot of hands before reaching the schools. What surprises me is that these weren’t detected at a local post office.
The Post Office promulgated the two-letter abbreviations at the same time they introduced the ZIP code system (1963). So, Ark. became AR, Ariz. became AZ, Fla. became FL, etc. Two characters, all caps, no period.
Probably a radical student(s) at UF in Gainesville. Ultra liberal university, like most.
Before anyone jumps me about railing against UF, I bleed Orange & Blue!
Wierd I just did a search on jiahd and found this.
http://www.islamonline.net/livedialogue/english/browse.asp?hGuestID=Oie2Gy
Seems this site spells jiahd and jihad, speaking of 2 different groups islam.
Looks to me like it’s just a typo, but maybe it would be common for an Arabic speaker to make that type of reversal of letters in English. Also, many non-Germanic European languages do not have an “h” in them, or at least do not pronounce it, and therefore their speakers are often inclined to leave it out or put it in the wrong place. Then again, native born speakers of American English who are lousy spellers could do the same thing!
On the whole, I thought his penmanship looked pretty standard American. Bad, but standard.
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