We will take a look at the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966 strictly from the perspective of the vehicle used by the killer, obviously presuming he had used one that evening. Robert Graysmith made an unusual reference in his book 'Zodiac Unmasked' stating "Cheri Jo checked out three books from the local college library. Though her friends were at the small, cramped library between 7:15 pm and 8:57 pm, none recalled seeing her there. At 9.00 pm when the archives closed, she returned to her car to discover the engine would not catch. And here she had been working part-time at the Riverside National Bank. Parked behind her car was a Tucker Torpedo that had not been there before". 
Robert Graysmith would claim nobody recalled seeing Cheri Jo Bates in the cramped library between 7:15 pm and 8:57 pm, but somehow he surmised she had returned to her vehicle at 9:00 pm, where a Tucker Torpedo was observed parked directly behind her Volkswagen Beetle. This obviously flies in the face of everything we know about her movements that night. Robert Graysmith clearly embellished many sections of his book, blurring the line between fact and fiction, but to pluck a Tucker Torpedo out of thin air for no apparent reason, could suggest a semblance of truth - particularly when we consider only 51 Tucker Torpedo's were ever made before the company folded in 1949. Also, based on the very small production of this vehicle, it may be extremely likely that this vehicle was mistaken for an altogether more common make of car.      

Although the front end grill is different, it is conceivable that the person who originated the Tucker Torpedo sighting was an attendee at the Riverside City College library on that fateful night and gave this description to police during the library reconstruction on November 13th 1966. A young student, more familiar with current day automobiles, could easily have made an error in identifying a vehicle 18 years old. Parked behind Cheri Jo Bates' vehicle in relative darkness, the Studebaker vehicle shown above exhibits similarities to the Tucker Torpedo. This vehicle parked facing westwards toward the library entrance would most likely have been observed from its front end as students were leaving the library annex. The sheer fact this vehicle was highlighted by Robert Graysmith is of particular interest when we consider the sighting of a 1947-1952 Studebaker on Riverside Avenue on the evening of the murder.    

After the library reconstruction an article appeared in the Daily Enterprise on November 1966. It stated "Detectives investigating the murder of Cheri Bates are looking for a car almost identical to this one. Police say a 1947-52 model Studebaker with light-colored, oxidized paint was parked on Riverside avenue just south of Terracina about 7 p.m. on the night that the Riverside City College freshman was stabbed to death. Detectives said a recent re-enactment of the murder at the college campus provided this information. They ask anyone who knows of a car similar to this one, used by police to stage this photograph, to contact the Police Department".

I highly doubt this information was given by a student attending the library reconstruction, since Riverside Avenue is 1.3 miles south of Terracina Drive and it is extremely unlikely this would have been noticed by a student as anything suspicious in the course of just passing a random vehicle parked on a street. I took a cursory look into Riverside Avenue on street view in Google maps and discovered this is a fairly affluent and scenic road, with properties in the order of $400,000. The very place that a homeowner would notice an old oxidized vehicle sitting outside their property for any length of time. Had they read the Daily Enterprise in November, it is certainly feasible they had contacted the Riverside Police Department and shared this information of a suspicious, out of place vehicle sitting idle for a noticeable time period. If this were the same vehicle parked behind Cheri Jo Bates' vehicle just two hours later, misidentified as a Tucker Torpedo (built in the same time frame of the 40s), then this is at the very least noteworthy. The Studebaker was described as a 1947-1952 model, suggesting the person who described the vehicle knew their cars. This may add weight to a resident of Riverside Avenue, with a decent income and more mature in years, being knowledgeable enough to specify the exact years of 1947-1952 when the Studebaker Champion third generation was manufactured in a completely redesigned fashion.  

These sightings would not necessarily be significant, if it wasn't for the fact of an earwitness to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates later that night, described in the newspapers as "a neighbor who heard an 'awful scream' between 10.15 and 10.45 pm, and then about two minutes of silence, and finally the sound of an old car starting up." They obviously felt it significant enough to describe the vehicle as an "old car", which ordinarily wouldn't catch the attention, but for the two previous sightings mentioned by Robert Graysmith and the witness in the Daily Enterprise newspaper. The final thing to examine, is whether this brief audible recollection of an old vehicle starting up approximately two minutes after the scream, tallies with the location of the old vehicle (Tucker Torpedo or Studebaker) parked behind Cheri Jo Bates' lime green Volkswagen Beetle.  

As shown in the diagram above, we can see that if the murderer parked his vehicle behind the Volkswagen Beetle, then he had a 325 foot journey back to his vehicle after leaving the crime scene. Average walking pace is approximately 4.5 feet per second, so we will raise this to 5.0 feet per second for somebody leaving the scene of a crime. Our perpetrator should take about 70 seconds to reach his vehicle just beyond the Volkswagen Beetle. We will now use the 'Confession' letter mailed on November 29th 1966 (assuming it was typed by the killer) to determine the time period from the scream to when he departed the crime scene. It stated "She let out a scream once and I kicked her in the head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her and it broke. I then finished the job out cutting her throat". This suggests that after Cheri Jo Bates had screamed, she was thrown to the ground, where the perpetrator performed three actions [1] Kicked her in the head [2] Plunged the knife into her back (the only wound to the rear of her body), and [3] cut her throat. Allowing approximately 20 seconds to achieve what he stated, he proceeds to walk the 70 seconds to his vehicle. To enter his vehicle and start the engine roughly another 20 seconds. The total time elapsed from the scream to the engine starting is now approximately 110 seconds, or 1 minute and 50 seconds, exactly matching the "about two minutes of silence" described by the earwitness close to the alleyway. This would corroborate the unknown eyewitness who described an old 40s vehicle parked behind the Volkswagen Beetle of Cheri Jo Bates.   

If all these three vehicles described are actually one and the same, it is then a matter of formulating the movement of this vehicle between the 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm sighting. Did the killer park his vehicle a distance from the library and walk to the Riverside College to disable Cheri Jo Bates Volkswagen Beetle, thereby reducing the chances of his vehicle being noticed by passing library traffic, only getting into position closer to the time the library closed? Did he drive to the library briefly (before 7:15 pm), disable her vehicle and then drive away (parking up at various locations in the vicinity, such as Riverside Avenue), before returning into position to be the first 'good Samaritan' to offer Cheri Jo Bates his help? There could be any number of possibilities. There is every chance these vehicles are completely irrelevant to the murder of the young college student, but with so little to go on, it is certainly worthy of consideration.     

With the search for the infamous Zodiac Killer through DNA looking ever more threadbare, one very much overlooked tool in locating our offender is the 'science' of geographic profiling pioneered by Canadian criminologist Kim Rossmo, who utilizes the software geo-profiling tool Rigel to analyze the likely home residence of the Zodiac Killer. Rigel uses an algorithm called criminal geographic targeting (CGT) to identify hot and cold zones on a map and give the areas that our killer may (or may not) likely reside. In the case of the Zodiac Killer, it would take into account such things as the murder sites, phone calls, commuter routes, and geographic profiling models such as buffer zone, comfort zone, least effort principle, mental map, target backcloth and distance decay function. As Kim Rossmo points out, this is an accompaniment to law enforcement to narrow the pool of suspects, but takes a back seat to powerful forensic evidence. However, with limited forensic evidence available from the Zodiac crimes, this appears our best bet to narrow down the home location of our killer before venturing outwards. Searching for suspects the length and breadth of California is a thankless task, with many researchers identifying a potential suspect and ultimately layering weak circumstantial evidence upon weak circumstantial evidence, until they become convinced the totality of the evidence should now be reclassified as powerful and irrefutable proof of their suspect's guilt. There is a tendency to fit the suspect around the evidence, rather than let the evidence be the driver. 

Kim Rossmo stated: ​​"The San Francisco murder differs significantly from the Zodiac's other crimes. Up to this point he was hunting in locations that had a good probability of containing his desired victims. Target selection was a function of area, not of an individual. However, it is unlikely the Zodiac was successful in all his searches; serial killers typically engage in extensive hunting activities, and for every attack there are many unsuccessful search attempts. In San Francisco, however, the Zodiac controlled the situation through his selection of victim type. The need for such control could be indicative of the distance the Zodiac had to travel to the crime site. Criminals who travel longer distances to offend are less likely to use uncertain target selection techniques. In respect to the killer's home residence, he continued "There's a number of possibilities. But remember, Rancho Vallejo was possibly 26,000 people at that time, of which only 13,000 will be male, and only a certain proportion of those are of the correct age, and a certain portion of those are only going to be white. Then we start looking at the neighborhoods involved, we have a pretty small subset. Then we start combining that with some of the personal and behavioral descriptors, and then we work in the vehicle information. If this case was active today, it would not be too difficult to find this person." 

There is an excellent interactive online tool that has generated geo-profiling heat maps for killers such as Jack the Ripper, Dennis Rader (BTK), Atlanta Child Murders, Golden State Killer, Night Stalker, Yorkshire Ripper, Long Island Serial Killer and more. It can be found here at geographicprofiler.com. The Kim Rossmo heat map for the Zodiac Killer is located here. 
You can toggle the geoprofile using the sidebar to remove the heat map and identify the locations underneath the color. The red color is the most likely residence of the Zodiac Killer, with a graded scale to the least likely areas of purple and beyond. This is classified as a percentage search cost (link) - Suspects are ranked based on their search cost—the percentage of the map searched before reaching the suspect’s anchor point. The search is conducted from the highest point of probability to the lowest; therefore, the lower the search cost, the more viable the suspect. If the geographic profile is accurate, the offender will have a low search cost. In the case of search cost, “map” refers to only the portion of the profile containing the crime scenes. As a result, suspects can have a search cost greater than 100%, which means a space larger than the area containing the crime scenes would have to be searched before reaching their anchor point.

One can see that the search cost is lowest for the area just east of the Napa Junction, the area of Ridgeview Park, Mare Island Naval Shipyard and across the Carquinez Strait Bridge to the area of Crockett Hills (just east of Rodeo). The area I favor, around the Springs and Tuolumne payphone, is afforded a 4% search cost. Despite the majority of the Zodiac mailings originating from San Francisco, this area features low on the geo-profiling heat map, and backed up by the statements of Kim Rossmo above. He states that "geographic profiling can't solve a crime; there are only three ways to do that - eyewitness, confession or physical evidence - the role of geographical profiling is to allow a detective to get to that stage, where he or she can apply one of those techniques sooner, faster, more effectively and more efficiently". 

This means we target the red hot zones first, before extending outwards to orange, yellow, green, blue etc.The hot zones will inevitably sometimes fall over an unpopulated area, so the areas around them become the focus of our search. The technique of geographic profiling is a supportive tool to narrow the suspect pool and search parameters, especially in a case over 50 years old with limited physical evidence - narrowing the search field in order to prioritize our efforts. The possible candidates for the Zodiac Killer can be massively whittled down, as shown in the case of Rancho Vallejo, highlighted by Kim Rossmo above. After all, he did state "If this case was active today, it would not be too difficult to find this person."

In an attempt to cover all possible Zodiac communications, I will add the June 18th 1970 letter, postmarked Vallejo and addressed to Gerald Tagert of 1423 Roleen Drive in the northern section of Vallejo. Thanks to Michael Morford for featuring this correspondence on the Zodiac Killer Site forum. The letter contained two tickets for the Oakland A's baseball game for June 20th 1970, wrapped in a piece of paper with the brief message "GIFT FROM ZODIAC". Barbara Tagert was totally perplexed as to who may have sent the letter. It was analyzed and ultimately determined that it exhibited a slight similarity to confirmed Zodiac correspondence. 

The only address of any note in close proximity to 1423 Roleen Drive was the address of James Owen (1735 Mini Drive), the last person to pass the turnout on December 20th 1968, before the double murder of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Of course, we have no idea whether this communication was by the hand of the Zodiac Killer fifty years after the fact, but let us assume for the purpose of this article, it was. Did the Zodiac Killer know Gerald Tagert, an electrician employed at the Mare Island Shipyard? It seems unlikely that the murderer of five would unnecessarily aid the police in his capture, by linking himself as somebody known to Gerald Tagert or possibly a work colleague at the Shipyard. It could be a threat by somebody pretending to be Zodiac in order to scare the couple, but this could have just as easily been achieved without the need to spend money and purchase two valid baseball tickets - a sinister Zodiac threat of murder would have been far more effective, if your intention was to scare the living daylights out of the couple. What other possibilities exist?

1423 Roleen Drive is a corner house, so would be visible from not only neighboring properties along the same road, but several in the adjoining Alice Drive. This would only be of importance if the Zodiac Killer resided in one of the houses nearby and wanted the cheap thrill of watching the police visit the Tagert's property. However, this not only relies on the police visiting the Tagert's home address, but also necessitates the Zodiac Killer remaining at his residence throughout the relevant period. A threat to murder the couple would have been a far more effective tactic by the Zodiac Killer had he wanted to observe police activity around the property. It seemed that the Oakland A's tickets were of particular significance to the sender.   

To verify whether the Zodiac Killer was responsible for this correspondence, it is often prudent to look at the last confirmed Zodiac communication prior to  this one. The April 28th 1970 'Dragon' card stated "I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my blast" - so is it logical to assume he would lure the couple to the Oakland Coliseum with the intention of detonating a bomb at the stadium. This is extremely unlikely. The only vague connection to the Oakland A's contained in the 'Dragon' card is the mule/donkey depicted on the card. Charlie-O the Mule was the mascot used by the Kansas City Athletics and Oakland A's from 1965 to 1976. But this is an extremely weak link and highly unlikely to have any connection to the baseball tickets mailed to Gerald Tagert.

Is it conceivable that the police would have allowed the couple to attend the baseball match with a possible threat hanging over them, covertly viewing the area in and around them for suspicious activity and anyone showing an unhealthy amount of attention towards them? Would the Zodiac Killer seriously have expected the police to have advised the couple to attend, or agreed to such a dangerous tactic even if they were willing?

The fact that the tickets were accompanied by the message "GIFT FROM ZODIAC", as opposed to a direct threat on their lives, seems to suggest the purpose behind the communication lay at the Oakland Coliseum and the half-chance that the Zodiac Killer could observe the couple squirming in their seats. But without knowing what transpired on June 20th 1970, one can only speculate. I highly doubt the couple ever attended the baseball match because of the possible ramifications had anything unsavory occurred.

One of the main reasons for covering this topic is to understand the motive behind the mailing (if the Zodiac Killer), and get some other opinions. Why were the tickets added to the correspondence, if not to center the focus on the Oakland Coliseum?   

The Symbionese Liberation Army mailed the S.L.A letter just a day or two prior to the kidnapping of Patricia Campbell Hearst, seized on February 4th 1974. It was postmarked February 3rd 1974, so unless it was delayed significantly, there is an argument to be made it was relevant to the actual kidnapping itself. But why would the Symbionese Liberation Army invoke the "Old Norse" language in a rather benign and meaningless message. The S.L.A letter stated "Dear Mr Editor, Did you know that the initials SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) spell "sla", an old Norse word meaning "kill". a friend". The message itself would be totally irrelevant but for the inclusion of the North Germanic language - once spoken predominantly in Scandinavia. Old Norse was divided into three dialects: Old West Norse, Old East Norse, and Old Gutnish. Old West and East Norse formed a dialect continuum, with no clear geographical boundary between them. For example, Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway, although Old Norwegian is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden. Most speakers spoke Old East Norse in what is present day Denmark and Sweden.     

The Symbionese Liberation Army (much like Zodiac) were often reactionary to the injustice they perceived had been burdened upon them - often responding to newspaper articles, or referencing them, directly or indirectly within their correspondences. This is the approach we will take regarding the S.L.A letter, bearing in mind the Scandinavian element and the impending kidnapping of Patricia Campbell Hearst. In other words, we have to look backwards at recent newspaper articles in the preceding months that encapsulated these features, especially considering one S.L.A associate, Sara Jane Olson (born Kathleen Ann Soliah), had Scandinavian ancestry.

On August 23rd 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson entered the Sveriges Kreditbanken in Norrmalmstorg Square armed with a submachine gun and took three women and one man hostage, demanding the release of his friend Clark Olofsson from jail. In a strange turn of events, an unlikely friendship formed between the hostages and captors, in what was eventually dubbed the ​Norrmalmstorgssyndromet by Nils Bejerot​ and the "Stockholm Syndrome" by overseas media in the latter months of 1973 and early months of 1974. It is therefore ironical that the Symbionese Liberation Army would then mail a communication using a Scandinavian translation of the word "kill" (albeit strike) just one or two days before Patricia Campbell Hearst was to also be taken hostage. In an uncanny turn of events, her case too was argued to have exemplified the term "Stockholm Syndrome", as she formed a bond with her kidnappers and eventually 'assisted' them in the Hibernia Bank robbery on April 15th 1974, also armed with a high capacity weapon.   

The definition of "Stockholm Syndrome" is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance or friendship with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity. The S.L.A letter has the key ingredients of "a friend", a Scandinavian language and an impending hostage situation. The Symbionese Liberation Army would soon mail another letter demanding the release of two apprehended S.L.A members (Joseph Remiro and Russell Little), much like Jan-Erik Olsson successfully demanded the release of his friend, Clark Olofsson. Joseph Remiro and Russell Little had been arrested and charged with the murder of Marcus Foster who was gunned down with cyanide laden bullets on November 6th 1973 in Oakland. The following Symbionese Liberation Army communication contained all the key ingredients of threatening "to kill" Patricia Campbell Hearst if their demands were not met, akin to the S.L.A letter, while also highlighting the word "FRIEND". The comparison can be noted below.       

In the previous article we discussed the feature film Vanishing Point, which previewed in the January of 1971, had the usual trailers, and was released to the general public on March 13th 1971, the exact mailing date of the Los Angeles letter, presumably authored by the Zodiac Killer. Here is some of the wording from the trailer: "They want to get him and put him away, but there'll have to catch him first". The author of the Los Angeles letter stated "If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses + do something".  The trailer of the film continued with a radio host from KOW reporting the chase "And there goes the Challenger being chased by the Blue, Blue Meanies on wheels". So, was the Vanishing Point trailer the inspiration for the March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter, with its mailing date deliberately manufactured to marry up with the release date of the film? The Los Angeles letter arrived six months after the disappearance of Donna Ann Lass, who vanished close to the end of her shift at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino, never to be seen again.  

Nine days after the Los Angeles letter, another communication arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle entitled the 'Pines' card. Harvey Hines, a former detective, wrote "after studying the card, I drove to Nordin, located on old Highway 40, north of Lake Tahoe, and found the SIERRA CLUB. I learned the club was not called the Sierra Club. It was named the Claire Tappaan Lodge and it was a private club for Sierra Club members only. I believed if I followed the directions on the postcard I would find Donna Lass' grave. I believe she was buried near the Sierra Club and most likely on the Donner Ski Ranch. I would later have the pictures of the Sierra Club developed. Then using a copy of Zodiac's card, I cut out the phrases he had pasted on his card. Using these phrases, I overpasted them on the copy of the Sierra Club picture. It was striking similar to the original card".  

Bearing in mind the Pines card was mailed just over a week after the Los Angeles letter, I considered whether the Vanishing Point film had any connection to the Sierra Club, Clair Tappaan Lodge by Lake Tahoe - and if Donna Lass could have been buried near to the lodge? Harvey Hines speculated that the young woman may have been buried near to this location, stating "I believe she was buried near the Sierra Club" - and the Zodiac Killer was leaving us a trail of breadcrumbs in the Pines card.

The final scene in the Vanishing Point movie was filmed in Cisco, Utah, but in the film it was portrayed as Cisco, California. This is the location that the film's main character, Kowalski, met his death. "Kowalski picks up the Challenger, plus a load of uppers, in Colorado and bets the dealer he can get from Colorado to San Francisco in 15 hours, which underpins and gives purpose to the mad cross-country chase. Serafian originally intended to end the film in San Francisco, somewhat reversing the notion of Bullitt's iconic chase scene by having cars race up the hills of the City by the Bay, rather than down. But after a visit, he and the production team didn't sense a warm welcome there, and weren't sure they could do the stunts and chase scenes that they wanted to. So they elected to bring the chase, and thus Kowalski's life, to an end in Cisco, California, a mostly abandoned town north west of Lake Tahoe" link..

Cisco, California is 11.7 miles west of Clair Tappaan Lodge. If you "pass the Lake Tahoe areas", including the lodge, you arrive at this location. Donna Ann Lass vanished from her place of work at the Lake Tahoe casino, but does the Vanishing Point film mirror the location of where her life came to an end, or possibly her final resting place, just like the death of Kowalski. Cisco, California is in Placer County, the burial site of murder victim Judith Hakari on March 7th 1970, also a nurse: 'At 11:30 pm. Hakari calls her fiance to tell him she's leaving Sutter Memorial Hospital where she works as a nurse. By 1:30 in the morning, she has still not come home. Her fiance, waiting at her apartment, begins to worry. "He went out to the apartment complex parking lot and discovered her car was parked in the assigned space that she had," Links said. But Judith was nowhere to be seen. She was found one month later, strangled and bludgeoned to death. "Some hikers discovered a body in a shallow grave up in the town of Weimar, in Placer County. And during their investigation they determined that it was Judith Hakari," Links said.' Fox40.com.

Here are some interesting observations regarding the Los Angeles letter, postmarked Pleasanton, Alameda County and mailed to the Los Angeles Times on March 13th 1971. This marked a shift in assumed Zodiac correspondence, from mailings in San Francisco to elsewhere. This communication was followed (albeit three years later) by the Exorcist letter (postmarked San Mateo or Santa Clara County), then the S.L.A letter (postmarked Los Angeles), the Badlands card (postmarked Alameda County), and finally the Red Phantom letter (postmarked San Rafael, Marin County). Three of the four 1974 communications referred to films, including The Exorcist, an  American horror film released on December 26th 1973, Badlands, a spree-killer movie released on March 24th 1974 and The Red Phantom, a film that played on April 27th and 28th of 1974 at the Lyric Theater in Mill Valley, California (Marin County). Bearing in mind the deviation in the areas these communications were mailed from, I considered that the March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter may also have been inspired by a film. Despite finding a likely answer to this question, I then discovered that somebody else had already came to the same conclusion in 2008. Nevertheless, I will feature it here and add a little extra into the equation for people unaware of this connection.     

The March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter stated "This is the Zodiac speaking Like I have allways said, I am crack proof. If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses + do something. Because the longer they fiddle + fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my after life. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason I'm writing to the Times is this, They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others".

Everybody knows the Blue Meanies connection from Yellow Submarine, a fictional army of beings who allegorically represent all the bad people in the world. The author of the 1971 letter used this to represent the police. People's Park in Berkeley, California is a park located off Telegraph Avenue, bounded by Haste and Bowditch streets and Dwight Way, near the University of California, Berkeley. The park was created during the radical political activism of the late 1960s. The local Southside neighborhood was the scene of a major confrontation between student protesters and police on May 15th 1969. Reinforcements were called in from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, who arrived carrying shotguns and shells of buckshot. They wore pale blue jumpsuits and were quickly nicknamed the Blue Meanies. The author of the 1971 letter used the term "Blue Meannies", but notably, the letter was mailed from Alameda County rather than San Francisco. Was the author of the letter integral to the People's Park uprising, or just somebody who remembered it from the news?

One other notable event at Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley at the same time period, has often been touted as a potential Zodiac occurrence. In the latter half of 1968 in Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, two girls were offered a lift by a brown-haired man, estimated at 30-40 years of age, yet despite politely declining his offer, indicating their Volkswagen was parked up on the nearby avenue, it appeared he was determined to lure the girls into his vehicle. After declining his offer they proceeded to a local snack bar, where they remained chatting for approximately 45 minutes. After leaving the snack bar they headed back to their vehicle only to discover they were unable to start the Volkswagen, when the man they had encountered earlier promptly reappeared to offer his assistance once more. The man helped the girls push the vehicle along the road, when a second man came along to assist in their plight, but this only seemed to infuriate the initial 'good Samaritan', who then, apparently annoyed by a perceived intrusion, got back in his car and made a hasty exit from the scene. Some time later it was discovered that their car had been tampered with - the distributor cap having been torn from the engine, similar in fashion to Cheri Jo Bates' Volkswagen Beetle. Was the Zodiac Killer somehow integral to Berkeley during 1968 and 1969, and the March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter was drawing from this experience? Or was the Los Angeles letter fashioned by yet another political activist piggybacking off the Zodiac crimes?       

The Vanishing Point film was released in 1971, so bearing in mind the propensity of certain Zodiac communications to reference movies, in particular the 1974 letters, what relationship does this film have to the March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter. Well, the film was released to the public in the USA on March 13th 1971. But it had the usual trailer before the film's release. 

The film itself features Kowalski driving a 1970 Dodge Challenger to San Francisco. Through flashbacks and the police reading of his record, we learn that Kowalski is a Medal of Honor Vietnam War veteran, former racecar driver, and motorcycle racer. He is also a former police officer who was quickly promoted to detective, likely for preventing the rape of a young female suspect by his partner in the back of their patrol car. We learn that he was dishonorably discharged from the force, and although the record is classified, other flashbacks hint at the cause. During what was supposed to be an investigation and apprehension of a beautiful woman, Kowalski "goes native" and falls for the lovely blonde Vera. Rather than arrest her, he allows her to "surf off into the sunset" on a cold winter day, once again showing that he understands the people he is charged to deal with as fellow humans rather than just criminals. A newspaper later claims her as his girlfriend, emphasizing that the classified nature of the case was never revealed. Driving west across Colorado, Kowalski is pursued by two motorcycle police officers who try to stop him for speeding. Recalling his days as a motorcycle racer, he forces one officer off the road and eludes the other officer by jumping across a dry creek bed. Later, the driver of a Jaguar E-Type roadster pulls up alongside Kowalski and challenges him to a race. After the Jaguar driver nearly runs him off the road, Kowalski overtakes him and beats the Jaguar to a one-lane bridge, causing the Jaguar to crash into the river. Kowalski checks to see if the driver is okay, then takes off, with police cars in pursuit. Wikipedia.

Here is some of the wording from the trailer: "They want to get him and put him away, but there'll have to catch him first".
The author of the Los Angeles letter stated "If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses + do something".  The trailer of the film continued with a radio host from KOW reporting the chase "And there goes the Challenger being chased by the Blue, Blue Meanies on wheels". So, was the Vanishing Point trailer the inspiration for the March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter, with its mailing date deliberately manufactured to marry up with the release date of the film?

Zodiac Killer Message Board on Vanishing Point (1971)

The Symbionese Liberation Army enjoyed thumbing their nose at the FBI, law enforcement, Hearst Corporation and newspapers, in a general attack on the capitalist society they believed harmed the everyday lives of the American people. Their propensity for imitating Zodiac communications, I believe, just another avenue to obfuscate the investigation into the Zodiac murders and surreptitiously irritate any law enforcement agency. I have argued they were the agents in the design of at least three (if not all) of the 1974 communications widely attributed to Zodiac. Evidence in the form of documented Symbionese Liberation Army correspondence was used to discredit the February 3rd 1974 S.L.A letter, mailed to the Hearst family through the Burlingame, California, U.S. Postal Annex on February 10th 1974. For a full list of Symbionese Liberation Army articles visit here. It has been argued they were responsible for the Exorcist letter, S.L.A letter, Badlands card, Red Phantom letter, Albany letter and Channel Nine letter. In fact, none of the 1974 letters made any reference to the Zodiac Killer whatsoever and never utilized the infamous crossed-circle symbol.

On December 27th 1974, a Christmas card was mailed to Mary Pilker, Donna Lass' sister, portraying trees covered in snow. Once opened it revealed a message that was part of the card itself- 'Holiday Greetings and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year', followed by the handwriting "Best Wishes, St Donna & Guardian of the Pines". The envelope was addressed to Mrs Mary Pilker, 1609 South Grange, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was postmarked 940, either from San Mateo or Santa Clara County.

If my contention is correct, and the four purported Zodiac communications from 1974 were actually mailed by the Symbionese Liberation Army, then there is a reasonable argument to be made, that this is the fifth - and may explain the four year delay between the disappearance of Donna Lass from the Sahara Tahoe Casino and the mailing of this cryptic communication. The height of Symbionese Liberation Army activity was in 1974. 

We also have to question why this card was mailed from San Mateo or Santa Clara County to South Dakota rather than the Chronicle newspaper. It could be perceived as a sick ploy to upset the family of Donna Lass - although this could have just as easily been achieved by directing the correspondence through a newspaper outlet with greater publicity. After four years since the disappearance, one can't help thinking that the area the card was mailed to, had some significance regarding the Symbionese Liberation Army. The Symbionese Liberation Army targeted individuals in their communications, something the Zodiac Killer never did through his four confirmed canonical attacks. So let us take a look at three of the four alleged 1974 Zodiac correspondence to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Prior to the March 13th 1971 Los Angeles letter, every Zodiac communication was mailed from San Francisco. The January 29th 1974 Exorcist letter was postmarked 940 from either San Mateo County or Santa Clara County. The December 27th 1974 Mary Pilker Christmas card was postmarked 940 from either San Mateo County or Santa Clara County. William Peter Blatty, allegedly retired to a remote and rented chalet in woodland off Lake Tahoe, and wrote The Exorcist, a story about a twelve-year-old girl being possessed by a powerful demon. 

One possible author of the S.L.A letter (and possibly the Exorcist letter) was Sara Jane Olson (born Kathleen Ann Soliah on January 16, 1947). She was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s. She grew up in Palmdale, California, the daughter of Norwegian-American parents, Elsie Soliah (née Engstrom) and Palmdale High School English teacher and coach Martin Soliah. Engström, Engstrøm and Engstrom are surnames of Swedish and Norwegian origin. Was she responsible for authoring the S.L.A letter on February 3rd 1974, one or two days before the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst? To examine this possibility we have to examine her background. The S.L.A letter was postmarked "U.S. Postal Service, CA 913 PM 3 FEB 1974". Kathleen Ann Soliah was brought up in Palmdale, Los Angeles County, California, often frequenting the nearby census-designated area of Agua Dulce. In fact, Agua Dulce was the commuter route from Palmdale to 1466 East 54th Street, Los Angeles -  the site of the deadly shootout between Symbionese Liberation Army members and law enforcement on May 17th 1974, resulting in the deaths of six urban militants. The Symbionese Liberation Army had its main headquarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Agua Dulce had a postal zip code of 91390, tying in nicely with the postmark on the February 3rd 1974 S.L.A letter. It is less than five miles from Palmdale. Kathleen Ann Soliah was brought up in Palmdale, California but was born in Fargo, North Dakota. This obviously borders the state of South Dakota (the address on the Christmas card), possibly giving us three links to Soliah through three 1974 communications. But this isn't the only link to South Dakota regarding the Symbionese Liberation Army. Something began in South Dakota in 1973 and continued through the mailing of the Mary Pilker Christmas card.  

Let us move on to the Badlands card, I have argued, was written by the Symbionese Liberation Army as an attack on the capitalist agenda and yellow journalism of the Hearst Corporation - and why Patricia Campbell Hearst was kidnapped in the first place. Here is the introduction of a two-part article outlining this concept. 

The Badlands card was postmarked Alameda County and mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle on May 8th 1974. It stated "Sirs -- I would like to expression myconsternt (crossed out) consternation concerning your poor taste + lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie "Badlands", featuring the blurb: "In 1959 most people were killing time. Kit + Holly were killing people." In light of recent events, this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable) why don't you show some concern for public sensibilities + cut the ad?  A citizen".

But why would the Symbionese Liberation Army choose this particular movie to highlight their consternation at the running of advertisements? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia detailing the plot of the Badlands movie:

South Dakota; 1959. 15-year-old Holly Sargis is a teenage girl living in a dead-end town called Fort Dupree. She lives with her sign painter father, although their relationship has been strained since her mother died of pneumonia some years earlier. One day Holly meets a 25-year-old garbage collector named Kit Carruthers. Kit is a young, troubled greaser and Korean War veteran, who resembles James Dean, an actor Holly admires. Kit charms Holly, and she slowly falls in love with him. As Holly falls deeper in love for Kit, his violent and anti-social tendencies start to slowly reveal themselves. Holly's father disapproves of Holly and Kit's relationship, and shoots her dog as a punishment for spending time with him. Kit then comes to Holly's house and shoots her father dead. The couple fakes suicide by burning down the house and go on the run together, making their way towards the badlands of Montana.

The movie was based upon the real life events of Charles Raymond Starkweather (20) and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate (14). They were a pair of spree killers who embarked on a two month rampage, killing 10 people in total, including her entire family in the area of Nebraska and Wyoming back in 1958, before they were finally captured. ​Charles Raymond Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair at Nebraska State Penitentiary on June 25th 1959, while Caril Ann Fugate received a life sentence but was ultimately paroled after seventeen years,.in the June of 1976. Caril Ann Fugate lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her mother and stepfather. In 1956, at age 13, she formed a relationship with Charles Starkweather, a high school dropout five years her senior. However, the film was mentioned in the purported "Zodiac" card (not the real events), which featured an impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend, who embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands. IMDB.

So, were the Symbionese Liberation Army responsible for the Mary Pilker Christmas card in the December of 1974, hinting at the Donna Lass disappearance through their connections to this area of Dakota? So far, there is only a weak connection through Kathleen Ann Soliah (possibly being the 1974 S.L.A author) and the South Dakota Badlands card. The Mary Pilker Christmas card used the almost spiritual or symbolic phrase of "Guardian of the Pines", as though somebody was protecting a region of Pine trees. So that is exactly what we will look for in the area of South Dakota, spanning the time period in question. But crucially, we must find a link to a Symbionese Liberation Army member who was effectively a "guardian of the Pines".

On November 6, 1973, in Oakland, California, two members of the SLA killed school superintendent Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, as the two men left an Oakland school board meeting. The hollow-point bullets used to kill Foster had been packed with cyanide. The SLA had condemned Foster for his plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools, calling him "fascist". In fact, Foster had opposed the use of identification cards in his schools, and his plan was a watered-down version of other similar proposals. On January 10, 1974, Joseph Remiro and Russell Little were arrested and charged with Foster's murder, and initially both men were convicted of murder. Both men received sentences of life imprisonment. Seven years later, on June 5, 1981, Little's conviction was overturned by the California Court of Appeal, and he was later acquitted in a retrial in Monterey County. Remiro remains incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison serving his life sentence. Wikipedia. Joseph Remiro's commitment to fighting the United States government led him to the Wounded Knee, South Dakota battleground on the Sioux reservation in April 1973. While there he assisted by running ammunition from bunker to bunker during firefights. He also became a member of Venceremos, a Maoist action oriented Bay Area organization which had a tremendous influence upon the future SLA. link.

We can now link a Symbionese Liberation Army member to South Dakota from April 1973 with a link to the word Sioux (both present on the Mary Pilker envelope). This however, is not enough on its own.  

The image on the right is seven-headed SLA hydra-like cobra symbol based on the seven principles of Kwanzaa, each head representing a principle. The Swahili words for these seven principles are: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith). The appearance of the symbol of the seven-headed cobra on SLA publications indicates that it was copied from the ancient Sri Lankan and Indian seven-headed nāga; carved stones depicting a seven-headed cobra are commonly found near the sluices of the ancient irrigation tanks in Sri Lanka and are believed to have been placed there as guardians of the water. The particular graphic of the seven-headed cobra used by the SLA may have been copied from an illustration in The Lost Continent of Mu by James Churchward. Wikipedia. Had the Symbionese Liberation Army shifted guardians of the water to guardian of the Pines?

Wounded Knee Creek is a tribunal of the White River, approximately 100 miles (160 km) long, in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota in the United States. Its Lakota name is Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála..The creek's name recalls an incident when an American sustained an injury to his knee during a fight. The creek rises in the southwestern corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, along the state line with Nebraska, and flows northwest. It borders the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, in which the 7th US Cavalry under Colonel James W. Forsyth massacred approximately 300 Sioux, mostly women and children, many unarmed. Towns in this region include Wounded Knee and Manderson. The Wounded Knee Creek flows NNW across the reservation and joins the White south of Badlands National Park. But as already stated, the Wounded Knee incident began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) to impeach tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents. Additionally, protesters criticized the United States government's failure to fulfill treaties with Native American people and demanded the reopening of treaty negotiations. Oglala and AIM activists controlled the town for 71 days while the United States Marshals Service, FBI agents, and other law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area. The activists chose the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre for its symbolic value. Wilson stayed in office and in 1974 was re-elected amid charges of intimidation, voter fraud, and other abuses. The rate of violence climbed on the reservation as conflict opened between political factions in the following three years; residents accused Wilson's private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), of much of it. More than 60 opponents of the tribal government died violently during those years, including Pedro Bissonette, director of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO). Wikipedia.

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, who is also of Lakota and Dakota descent. He is a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first-degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In the early 1970s, he learned about the factional tensions at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota between supporters of Richard Wilson, elected tribal chairman in 1972, and traditionalist members of the tribe. Consequently, Peltier became an official member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1972. Wilson had created a private militia, known as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), whose members were reputed to have attacked political opponents. Protests over a failed impeachment hearing of Wilson contributed to the AIM and Lakota armed takeover of Wounded Knee in February 1973, which resulted in a 71-day siege by federal forces, known as the Wounded Knee incident. In 1975, Peltier traveled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as a member of AIM to try to help reduce the continuing violence among political opponents. Wikipedia.

The links are there to South Dakota, Sioux, Pines, guardians, Joseph Remiro and the Symbionese Liberation Army, but where is the connection to Donna Lass? We already have St. Donna, however, we don't have the surname Lass. Leonard Peltier is known in his native country of Great Turtle Island as Gwarth-ee-lass - "He Leads the People." Also known among his Sioux brethren as Tate Wikuwa - "Wind Chases the Sun." Also known as U.S. Prisoner #89637-132. Worldcat.org.  

Through the actions of Joseph Remiro, the author of the Mary Pilker Christmas card may have been alluding to the defense of Wounded Knee by a Symbionese Liberation Army member, from the "guardian of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation" to the "guardian of the Pines" - and concealing lass within its obscure meaning. However, the connections made in this article are an example of the lengths we can go to in the Zodiac community to forge a link that in all likelihood doesn't exist.

It is a perfectly reasonable assumption that the biggest clue to the identity or inner mind of the Zodiac Killer should reside within the many communications he mailed over several years - the window to his soul if you like. He began his contact with the newspapers using three encoded messages on July 31st 1969, in part stating "when I die I will be reborn in paradise and all the (people) I have killed will become my slaves". The November 9th 1969 'Bus Bomb' letter continued this theme, promising to "change the way the collecting of slaves". The emphasis on paradice and slaves would continue through the July 26th 1970 'Little List' letter, the October 27th 1970 'Halloween' card and the March 13th 1971 'Los Angeles' letter. One could make the argument that this was designed to throw investigators off the scent, but one could equally make the case that the Zodiac Killer picked up the concept of victims becoming his slaves in the afterlife through personal experiences in his everyday life. The language we use and the words we speak are a product of the environment we live in. The 1960s and 1970s were a turbulent time in respect to race relations, with San Francisco no exception - and the Zodiac Killer having mailed the overwhelming majority of his communications from this location was not impervious to the society he operated in. As still exists in American society, the enmity between police and the black community has a long and well documented history.

Taking the Zodiac Killer as a product of his society, in tandem with the volatile racial tensions that permeated 1960s San Francisco and beyond, we will explore the "slaves in the afterlife" reference in the Zodiac communications from the angle of a racist connotation. Zodiac researcher Randall Scott Clemons, author of the website 'Zodiac Killer Enigma, Cracking the Zodiac Killer Code', contacted me regarding this topic - and the information he provided is the inspiration behind this article.

Entitled Spiritualism, Summerland, Slavery in the Afterlife by Emily Sosolik, this informative piece of writing showed the undeniable connection between religiosity and racism as a never ending bond of subservience. Here is a small extract: 
"No topic illustrated this dichotomy more than slavery. Much has been written about the egalitarian nature of Spiritualism, but the focus of the present piece is on Spiritualism in practice and how Spiritualists often used the movement to preserve the systemic racism of American society. When confronted with the overarching issue of slavery, Spiritualists used spirit messages to fashion a version of the afterlife called the Summerland which calmed their fears but perpetuated the subservient role of African Americans. And since Spiritualism’s focus was inward, on enlightenment of adherents, and upward on knowledge of the afterlife, the movement invariably distracted from acknowledging, understanding, and remedying the social inequality present on Earth". Zetojournal.com. 

Randall Scott Clemons was searching for a link between "slaves in the afterlife" and the Zodiac Killer, from the perspective of where this phrase originated in his mind, prior to putting pen the paper. In other words, the Zodiac Killer didn't just pluck this phrase out of thin air - his interaction within society shaped him as a person and possibly influenced his propensity to adopt this form of language within his communications. Randall Scott Clemons then found an extremely interesting book entitled Parental Discretion is Advised; The Rise of N.W.A and the Dawn of Gangsta Rap featuring a section on the brutal beating of Rodney King on March 3rd 1991 by Los Angeles Police Department officers, sparking riots in 1992 after the acquittal of three of the four defendants. The book made reference to phrases used by LAPD officers via computer transmissions in their patrol cars.    

Here is an extract from the book:
"Racial bias was rampant in the department, with an LAPD survey agreeing that prejudice on the part of officers towards citizens contributed to a negative interaction between police and the community, and that bias often led to use of excessive force. The report also showed how often incidents involving racial slurs from white officers against minority colleagues were frequently ignored. The culture of racism was so prevalent, officers were comfortable enough typing disparaging messages on computer transmissions between squad cars: "If you encounter these negroes, shoot first and ask questions later". "Sounds like monkey-slapping time". I'm back over here in the projects, pissing off the natives". "Everybody you kill in the line of duty becomes a slave in the afterlife". 

These phrases are not only deeply racial, they also do not exist in isolation of the time they were uttered - but have origins -often passed from one generation of police officers to another. This drives to the heart of the question - as to how long these 'police phrases' have been in existence and whether the Zodiac Killer may possibly have been involved in law enforcement prior or current to the murders in the Bay Area. Had the Zodiac Killer worked for the Los Angeles Police Department during this racially charged era in American history, picking up the phrase "Everybody you kill in the line of duty becomes a slave in the afterlife", and conveniently dropping the introduction to disguise his profession? As a law enforcement officer seeking victims in his spare time, access to copious seized weapons would be of little difficulty. 

Black slavery in America is well documented, and may shed new light on the design of the October 27th 1970 'Halloween' card, featuring four methods of execution commonly employed in the burning, lynching, shooting and stabbing of appropriated slaves. When we tie in the cross formation of paradise and slaves back into the equation, the inspiration and motivation of the Zodiac Killer in choosing this form of language may focus the eye in a whole new direction. The March 13th 1971 letter to the Los Angeles Times stated "If the Blue Meannies are evere going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses + do something. Because the longer they fiddle + fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my after life". 

The admonishment of police by the Zodiac Killer and his adoption of the phrase "slaves in the afterlife" may indicate a history between the two - albeit one that likely didn't end on the best of terms.     

The 408 cipher, mailed in three parts to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald on July 31st 1969 had 18 unsolved characters at its foot. However, the Zodiac Killer likely made an error when transferring his original message into the encrypted version, accidentally omitting the word "people" from the section of code mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle: "The best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the (people) I have killed will become my slaves". Had he transferred the message correctly, the intended version would have had only 12 unsolved characters in which his identity may have resided, such as "I am the Zodiac". After all, he promised us his identity not his name. What are the chances the Zodiac Killer left a similar message at the foot of the 340 cipher?

Professor D.C.B. Marsh, in the October 22nd 1969 San Francisco Examiner newspaper article by Will Stevens, laid down a challenge to the Zodiac Killer to reveal his name. The newspaper stated "Dr Marsh told the Examiner today: "The killer wouldn't dare, as he claimed in letters to the newspapers, to reveal his name in the cipher to established cryptogram experts. He knows, to quote Edgar Allen Poe, that any cipher created by man can be solved by man. Zodiac has not told the truth in his cipher messages to the Examiner, the Chronicle and the Vallejo Times-Herald. Zodiac has not done this, because to tell the complete truth in relation to his name -in cipher code - would lead to his capture. I invite Zodiac to send The American Cryptogram Association a cipher code - however complicated - which will truly and honestly include his name". It was speculated that the Zodiac Killer certainly wasn't going to provide another conventional cryptogram to be easily decoded, so instead created the appearance of a cryptogram with hidden "puzzles" contained within it, such as "paradice" and "slaves" running vertically and horizontally across its mid-section. This was later revealed in the 'Halloween' card, where the Zodiac Killer belatedly informed us the 340 code was "sorry no cipher" and placed "paradice" and "slaves" in a cross formation to point us in the right direction.   

The "sorry no cipher" section of the 'Halloween' card has one section running from bottom to top. The '13 Hole' postcard mailed before this offering has "Fk I'm crackproof" flipped upside down. This gave rise to the idea that the 340 cipher needed to flipped vertically, which I was able to do on Dave Oranchak's excellent Webtoy on the Zodiac Killer Ciphers website. 

​When Professor D.C.B. Marsh laid down the challenge to Zodiac, it was initially considered that the message at the foot of the 340 cipher may have teased the American Cryptogram Association with something like "next time I will tell you who the Zodiac is", bearing in mind where the near-pseudonym was placed. Then, five months later he would follow this up with the reveal of his name, which he effectively teased us with by stating "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you. My name is...."  

This statement is very telling, when we consider that it was patently obvious that his last cipher hadn't been solved - so why did he add this to the opening of the April 20th 1970 communication? The final section of the 340 cipher may explain why he began this correspondence in the way he did. It may be conceivable that the last section of the 340 cipher promised to reveal his name in the next cipher, hence the blatantly obvious introduction in the April 20th 1970 communication, of "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you. My name is...."  We effectively have to bridge the gap between "I am the Zodiac" (if correct) on the 408 cipher to "My name is" on the April 20th letter. The obvious connector would be the promise of a new cipher or code containing the Zodiac Killer's name. 

It is notable that the 340 cipher begins with "her" (the last three letters of cipher), however, it is impossible to form the word "cipher" in the format offered. The uniform 17 X 20 pattern of the cipher would be broken by adding "cip" to the beginning. For this section to provide us with the word "cipher" within the existing pattern and the promise of a new cipher containing the Zodiac's name, the 340 cipher has to be flipped - possibly as the 'Halloween' card and '13 Hole' postcard had hinted nearly a year later. Other than the 408 cipher mailings, every other Zodiac correspondence began with the introduction of "This is the Zodiac Speaking". The 340 cipher, when flipped, enables this introduction to begin the 340 character message also. ​ 

But what is the likely message encoded at the foot of the cipher? Without having decoded it, I can only make a calculated guess from other Zodiac correspondence. In the August 4th 1969 'Debut of Zodiac' letter, the killer wrote "By the way, are the police having a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up; when they do crack it, they will have me".  

In the April 20th 1970 communication, the killer wrote "By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you. My name is...." 

Therefore, I will use the literal words of the Zodiac Killer to complete the last 27 characters of the 340 cipher, obviously changing "last" to "next".
​
By flipping the 340 cipher vertically we are able to use the clue of "Zodiac" to generate his usual introduction and then form the bridge between cipher one and cipher three with the promise of his name in cipher two, using the words of the Zodiac Killer himself. Whether this analysis has any semblance of truth is another matter entirely. 

Some of the questioned Zodiac communications address certain individuals using the lower case format, and the March 13th 1971 'Los Angeles' letter refers to Riverside in the same fashion: "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there". The Riverside Desktop Poem, written sometime in 1966 and believed to have been signed off with the author's initials, also featured two lower case letters. The clue to "rh" may lie in the poem itself and in the first correspondence by the Zodiac Killer on July 31st 1969 - assuming you believe a connection between Riverside and the Bay Area murders. That is because there is a real possibility the Riverside Desktop Poem was authored prior to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966. If you believe that Cheri Jo Bates was stalked surreptitiously in the weeks or months before her death, then the Desktop Poem is the precursor or warning, and the Confession letter is the completion of that threat. 

If we look at the wording on the Riverside Desktop Poem (below) from the standpoint of somebody stalking Cheri Jo Bates, then it is perfectly conceivable that at some point in time the wannabe killer has noticed the young woman wearing a red dress and fantasized about making her pay for the "perceived brush-offs" he has endured. But what is noticeable, is that the author states "she won't die this time, someone'll find her". If the young woman was to be stabbed, why would someone necessarily find her? If his mind is seeing his fantasy in the present during school hours and in the context of a busy Riverside City College campus, then one could easily see how she could be rescued and survive. However, in the next line he is projecting his mind to the future by stating "just wait till next time". The only way "next time" could conceivably have a different outcome, is if he lures Cheri Jo Bates away from the Riverside City College campus - and this is exactly what he said he was attempting to do when he typed the November 29th 1966 Confession letter, thirty days after Cheri Jo Bates' murder. He stated "I then offered to help. She was then very willing to talk to me. I told her that my car was down the street and that I would give her a lift home".  

If the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates had made a promise to seek her out "next time" in the Riverside Desktop Poem, and had some connection to the college, or was in her near or outer circle, is it really realistic he would give his true initials at the foot of the Desktop Poem to give law enforcement a helping hand? On the other hand, if they weren't really his initials and he had just placed two random letters together, then it is a rather pointless exercise. The Zodiac Killer wrote "riverside" in the 1971 'Los Angeles' letter and "halloween"/"Halloween" in the questioned 1987 correspondence, showing yet again his ability to ignore the upper case form of these titles. It is these two words that may give us the meaning to the "rh" at the foot of the Desktop Poem. The poem indicated the necessity of the killer to separate Cheri Jo Bates from the college campus so somebody wouldn't find her in time, thereby resulting in her death. Had he achieved such an objective, then her death may very well have occurred past the midnight of October 30th, rather than around 10:30 pm when screams were heard emanating from the campus alleyway. He was ultimately thwarted by Cheri Jo Bates, who likely fought back vigorously when she was being coerced towards his vehicle. The killer ultimately boasted that this was not the case by stating "I said it was about time. She asked me 'about time for what'. I said it was about time for her to die".  This was clearly a line pulled straight from his imagination, to give the impression he was in complete control throughout. Had Cheri Jo Bates not fought valiantly against her abduction, then the prophecy of "rh" would have been realized: "Just wait till next time, riverside halloween".

On July 31st 1969, the Zodiac Killer wrote "If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Fry.1st of Aug 69, I will go on a kill ram-Page Fry. night. I will cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend". The Bay Area murderer was always promising more bloodshed in the future - and the Riverside Desktop Poem was no different. But on that occasion he gave us the exact time and place.    

I would like to expand on a previously discussed topic, regarding two cards likely mailed by the Zodiac Killer on March 22nd 1971 and July 13th 1971, dubbed the 'Pines' and 'Monticello' cards respectively. The March 22nd 'Pines' card contained the phrases [1] Sierra Club  [2] Sought Victim 12  [3] Peek through the pines  [4] pass Lake Tahoe areas and [5] around in the snow. The 'Monticello' card stated "Near Monticello Shought Victims 21 ...... In The Woods Dies April." One can see the similarities, with "sought" and "shought", "woods" and "pines", as well as "near Monticello" and "pass lake Tahoe areas". They were both directions to the location of a murder victim, but crucially, both postcards held the victims forenames within the design of each. They were so cleverly designed, it is difficult to believe they were not authored by the same individual, with two words linking both cards - Memorial Park. A memorial park is a designated area for remembrance of the departed. 

In the case of the 'Pines' card, the author chose a postcard of "an artist's rendition of houses among the trees at a Boise Cascade Company project at Incline Village, where construction has just begun on the development". He then directed us to "pass lake Tahoe areas" to an area by the "Sierra Club". If we follow these simple instructions we find ourselves at two locations in close proximity. The first is Clair Tappaan Lodge on Donner Pass Road - but more importantly - the second is Donner Memorial State Park (preserving the site of the Donner Camp, where members of the ill-fated Donner Party were trapped by weather during the winter of 1846–1847, resulting in 39 deaths). Bearing in mind the 'Pines' card was thought to have been mailed by the murderer of Donna Ann Lass, this may be the motivation behind its design. The author was pointing us towards the Donner Memorial to signify the forename of his murder victim. Of course, this could be a simple coincidence and not the intended meaning behind the postcard. Therefore, if we can find the identical design or meaning within its sister card, mailed on July 13th 1971 (just 4 months later), then we can just call it a double coincidence, or quite possibly accept that the designer fashioned them both with the intention to give us the forename of the murdered women in question.

The July 13th 1971 'Monticello' card stated "Near Monticello Shought Victims 21 ...... In The Woods Dies April." So we need to be looking for a woman who was murdered in April, in the woods and near Monticello. On Sunday, April 11th 1971, Kathy Bilek (18) visited Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, having planned to read a paperback book (The Gabriel Hounds) and engage in a spot of bird watching​ in the seclusion of a remote, wooded portion of the park, near a small stream. Her body was found the next day by her father, Charles, while Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies searched nearby. She had been stabbed 17 times in the back and 32 times in her chest and stomach. Villa Montalvo is situated 9 miles west of the neighborhood of Monticello. The author of the 'Pines' card directed us to a Memorial Park called Donner. In the case of the 'Monticello' card, the author didn't need to direct us to her body, because she wasn't missing - and therefore we have to discover the purpose behind him choosing Monticello. This has to be the clue to the woman's forename, as well as the destination of a Memorial Park, if we are to satisfy the template of the 'Pines' card. 

Fortunately for us, another coincidence exists. Sitting in the Monticello neighborhood is Oak Hill Memorial Park, where one of Zodiac's previous claimed victims is interred. The Zodiac Killer insinuated his involvement in the brutal stabbing of Deborah Gaye Furlong (14) and Kathy Ann Snoozy (15), who were found murdered on August 3rd 1969 in the Bay Area of San Jose. By writing "Aug" on the November 8th 1969 'Dripping Pen' card, he was effectively laying claim to the Furlong and Snoozy murders - and the very reason he chose the location of Monticello on the July 13th 1971 postcard. Not only was Kathy Snoozy buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park, but she shared the same forename as Kathy Bilek. The Zodiac Killer was leading us towards a memorial park and forename in both postcards - Donna and Kathy.

Whether the Zodiac Killer was responsible for the murder of Cheri Jo Bates (18) in Riverside on October 30th 1966 has been widely debated. The young woman was found brutally stabbed on Halloween morning by groundskeeper Cleophus Martin. The Zodiac Killer would lay claim to this murder on March 13th 1971 when he stated in the 'Los Angeles' letter "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there". This made it curious that the Zodiac Killer's previous communication was the October 27th 1970 'Halloween' card and its obvious implications of a murder related to Halloween. Sandwiched between the 'Halloween' card and 'Los Angeles' communications was the November 16th 1970 Paul Avery article in the San Francisco Chronicle declaring there was 'New Evidence in the Zodiac Killings.'  This seemed rather convenient timing immediately after a card based around Halloween.

The Riverside and Zodiac connection was first proffered by Phil Sins, who Michael Morford was fortunate enough to interview in 2012. He stated "that as far as he can remember, he initially asked Avery to contact Riverside Police, and that he only got involved directly with Riverside Police Department after he made contact with Avery. He stated that he linked the two cases just by the overall similarity in the taunting letters. It also got his attention that Bates was killed on Halloween Eve and Zodiac sent a Halloween card. He told Avery to look into it, and get a writing expert as there were writing samples in Riverside. He says he has monitored the case since making the connection. He himself never had any suspects nor did he have any theories in particular". This peaked my interest regarding the design of the Halloween card, and whether the Zodiac Killer was finally incorporating Cheri Jo Bates into his running victim total (now 14), whether or not he was responsible for her murder or not. If Phil Sins drew a connection between the 'Halloween' card and Riverside, what else may he have observed?      

The pumpkin placed over the first skeleton has always been a curiosity - unless of course - the Zodiac Killer is effectively 'date stamping' this claimed fourteenth victim. He placed the number 14 on the hand of the skeleton and placed a pumpkin over the pelvic region, not only associating this victim with Halloween, but scoring the victim count of 14 onto the skeleton itself. Bearing in mind the murder of Cheri Jo Bates was four years prior, was this choice of imagery relevant?

David Faraday (17), Betty Lou Jensen (16) and Michael Mageau (19) were three teenage victims of the Zodiac Killer, despite the fact that Michael Mageau survived the attack at Blue Rock Springs. Cheri Jo Bates (18) was also a teenager. The Zodiac Killer wrote the number 14 on the hand of the first skeleton, so could easily have written this number again over the skull of the skeleton on the card inner (shown right). He could have written "fourteen", but deliberately chose to separate the "4" and "TEEN", indicating that these offerings were to be interpreted as two separate words. In the spoken word, this could mean FOUR TEEN or FOR TEEN. The Zodiac Killer placed twelve eyes onto the 'Halloween' card (one was already present at manufacture), suggesting that these held an important significance to the message the card was attempting to prompt from the reader. The simplest answer, when we consider the addition above the skeleton's head, is "look for teen". In totality, the Zodiac Killer is effectively saying "look for teen, who I have inscribed as my fourteenth victim, discovered on Halloween". The pumpkin attached to the skeleton should be the biggest clue in this regard. 

Phil Sins contacted Paul Avery regarding the taunting letters and the 'Halloween' card observation, so it is no surprise that the Paul Avery article surfaced on November 16th 1970 putting forth a possible connection between the Zodiac murders and the brutal stabbing of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside. But was the Zodiac Killer telling the truth when he stated "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity", and was the 'Halloween' card the prompt, subsequently interpreted by Phil Sins? 

Nobody knows for certain what the Zodiac Killer developed into after his brief, but deadly reign over Northern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but what we do know is that he mailed numerous letters threatening the police and promising to terrorize the citizens of the Bay Area by planting bombs. The December 7th 1969 and December 16th 1969 'Fairfield' letters stated "I will go for the Goverment life" and expressed disdain for the police, promising "any time now the will be a cop". 
These two letters were authored by the same individual, expressing "I just need help", but neither were published in the newspapers - so when the December 20th 1969 'Melvin Belli' letter arrived just days later with a piece of taxicab driver Paul Stine's shirt and proclaiming "please help me", it goes a long way to authenticating the Fairfield letters as genuine Zodiac correspondence. Rubislaw, a regular contributor to this site, pointed me in the direction of the Spiro Agnew Files in the FBI archives, regarding threats (including bomb threats) made to President Richard Nixon in 1973 (return address Leavenworth, Kansas). Rubislaw pointed to a comparison between these threats (of which there were many) to the Steve McQueen threat letter mailed in 1977 (which included a threat to President Jimmy Carter), and highlighted on the Zodiac Killer Site forum. The comparison is justified, irrespective of whether they were authored by the same individual, as the threats were aimed at high profile people in news and television. But for now I shall concentrate on the Richard Nixon threat and the December 16th 1969 Fairfield letter.    

Mark Hewitt, author of a trilogy of Zodiac books, argued a case for Theodore Kaczynski as the infamous Bay Area murderer, taking his bomb threats of 1970 into reality, when he initiated a bombing campaign in the late 1970s. Whether this is in fact the case remains to be seen, but the concept of the Zodiac Killer metamorphosing into another form of terrorism, clearly illustrated by his shift in emphasis during 1970 is not without merit. So, without further ado, we will compare the Richard Nixon threats with the December 16th 1969 Fairfield letter.

The December 16th 1969 Fairfield letter opened with the line "I just want to tell you this state is in trouble..I will go for the Goverment life". One of the Richard Nixon letters dated May 14th 1973 began "This is just to tell you, that you will die. There is no way to stop it believe me". There is a similarity in wording, which obviously may be coincidental, but both are a threat on "government life", refer to "pigs" or "cops", the two communications are written on lined paper and both have a circle as part of the logo. They are probably two separate individuals, but nevertheless, it cannot be dismissed out of hand that the Zodiac Killer may have gone through an evolution in the intervening three and a half years, developing the gravity of his threats. I certainly understand the drawbacks of handwriting comparisons, but here are the December 16th 1969, May 14th 1973 and June 8th 1977 (Steve McQueen) letters, all written on lined paper - and in which - each contained either "to tell you that", "to tell you this" and "to tell the people". 

Eduard Versluijs brought to the attention of the Zodiac Killer Site forum a threatening letter directed toward Harland David Sanders,  best known for founding fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was titled 'Colonel' Sanders, although this was not an official rank, merely an honorary title. The envelope was addressed to Shelbyville, Kentucky. This letter was discussed with regards to the Zodiac Killer, but in actual fact it was almost certainly mailed by - you've guessed it - the Symbionese Liberation Army. The letter signed off with 'The General', which could be interpreted as a play on words, bearing in mind the 'Colonel' title of the recipient. However, it probably had more to do with the sender of the letter, or somebody sending it on his behalf. 

The SLA began as a collaboration between convicts and prison activists. Led by DeFreeze, an escaped convict and initially the only black member of the group, the seven other members, who were white middle-class men and women, adopted Swahili names and took up arms for the self-styled Symbionese Federation. The group’s motto, “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people,” was included on each of their communiqués. The Symbionese Liberation Army were a small group of multiracial militant revolutionaries based in California during the 1970s that owes nearly all its notoriety to the kidnapping and subsequent indoctrination of Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress. Founded in the Berkeley, California-area in 1973 by Donald DeFreeze, he was known to the group as General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume. This alone, would not be proof that the Symbionese Liberation Army mailed this communication, so we will dig a little further. 

Michael Morford unearthed a similar threatening letter mailed to Sammy Davis Jr in Las Vegas, Reno, Nevada, also signed off with 'The General'. There was an additional pink sheet of paper enclosed with a typewritten message beginning "Dec. 4, 1973..." and signed "Der Fuhrer". Both this and the Colonel Sanders threat were written on paper with the pre-printed address of Riverside Drive, Sherman Oaks, California, indicating they were almost certainly mailed by the same individual or group. 

The 'Colonel' Sanders threat was dated by the sender as January 14th 1974, and the Sammy Davis Jr threat was dated January 19th 1974. It is my contention that these two threats were probably mailed under the shortened pseudonym of General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume, aka Donald DeFreeze. The Symbionese Liberation Army were prolific letter writer's to the newspapers, radio and television stations, high profile individuals, along with the FBI and police. They used handwritten and typewritten communications - the latter of which is something the Zodiac Killer never did in any of his confirmed correspondence subsequent to July 30th 1969. These two threats were mailed to Shelbyville, Kentucky and Las Vegas, Nevada, and both were self-dated in January, 1974. So, you wouldn't be too surprised to hear that the Symbionese Liberation Army, led by a 'General', also mailed letters to Kentucky and Las Vegas in the same timeframe. 

Three letters from the Symbionese Liberation Army were mailed in February, 1974 to the 'Kentucky State Police in Henderson, Kentucky' (return address Henderson, Kentucky) and 'City Police Department, Berkeley, California' (return address Henderson, Kentucky). They also mailed a letter to the FBI in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 14th 1974. 'In early 1960s, the city of Las Vegas was growing rapidly, and the Bureau’s caseload there was rising right along with it. As a result, FBI Headquarters ordered the transfer of all cases and files pertaining to Nevada from the Salt Lake City Division to Las Vegas. In December 1960, John H. Williams was designated Special Agent in Charge and in February, 1961, the opening of the new division was announced. The new division was first housed in an office at 300 Fremont Street, but moved into a new federal building at 11th and Bridger Streets in May 1961'. FBI. In other words, the Symbionese Liberation Army were mailing to Kentucky and Las Vegas within one month of 'The General' mailing letters to 'Colonel' Sanders and Sammy Davis Jr, in Kentucky and Las Vegas respectively.  

The Symbionese Liberation Army appeared to target wealth (as they did with Randolph Hearst), in line with the seemingly anti-capitalist or anti-greed agenda they had built for themselves. Below are the four relevant envelopes mailed by the militant group, outlining their agenda.

In the last article we focused on the 1978 Channel Nine letter as a product born from the Symbionese Liberation Army, and highlighted the very real possibility that all the 1974 'Zodiac' communications were in fact authored by people connected to this militant organization. We discussed how the Symbionese Liberation Army specifically targeted the Hearst Corporation, not only by the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst on February 4th 1974, but by mailing the S.L.A. letter on February 3rd 1974, along with the subsequent Badlands and Red Phantom correspondences, all of which were designed with the Hearst family in mind. But it doesn't stop there. The Channel Nine letter stated "You people in LA are in for a treat. In the next three weeks you are finally gona have something good to report. I have decided to begin killing again". The August 1st 1973 Albany letter began in similar fashion: "You were wrong. I am not dead or in the hospital. I am alive and well and I am going to start killing again". This familiar trope of the Symbionese Liberation Army mimicking Zodiac correspondence may have possibly extended through a five year period, from August 1st 1973 to May 2nd 1978. The widely questioned Albany letter, I suggest, is another letter penned by this militant group for one specific reason - their hate of corporate greed and the Hearst family's apparent stranglehold on the narrative through their newspaper collective. The biggest question that has to be asked regarding the Albany letter is, why would the Zodiac Killer randomly pluck the Albany Times Union newspaper out of a hat when choosing to write his first correspondence in nearly two and a half years? What connection did the Zodiac Killer have with this newspaper? Many have put forward the notion of Richard Gaikowski and Darlene Ferrin as a connection, but this is a real stretch four years after her death. The Albany letter arrived at the Times Union only five months before the sequence of 1974 letters - it has been argued - were a subtle rebuke of the Hearst Corporation. So why should this correspondence be any different. The Symbionese Liberation Army had every reason to target this Hearst run newspaper, and may explain why it was chosen, despite being nearly 3,000 miles away from San Francisco.  

'The Times Union is an American daily newspaper, serving the Capital Region of New York. Although the newspaper focuses on Albany and its suburbs, it covers all parts of the four-county area, including the cities of Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Springs. It is owned by Hearst Communications. The paper was founded in 1857 as the Morning Times, becoming Times-Union by 1891, and was purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1924'. Wikipedia.

George Randolph Hearst III (born 1955) is the Publisher and CEO of the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York, and a director of the Hearst Corporation.
He is the second child of George Randolph Hearst, Jr. and Mary Astrid Thompson and great-grandson of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was previously the Director of Operations of the Times Union and then its Associate Publisher and General Manager. He is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Albany Institute of History & Art, a member of the board of directors of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center  and St. Peter's Health Care Services, a hospital in Albany.

The threat issued to the Albany Times Union newspaper was the forerunner to the attack on the Hearst Corporation in at least three of the four 1974 communications, that sandwiched the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst on February 4th. Below are some communications mailed by the hand of the Symbionese Liberation Army to New York, including Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).